Baby Steps Into Activism

This Friday we're reading The Real Rosa Parks (plus two other articles) in class. I like this small article, because it's about the little things that go into making big changes. The article explains the danger of idolizing (essentially) key figures in historical movements, because it gives us the impression that they are somehow in possession of above average ability.

This conventional portrayal suggests that social activists come out of nowhere, to suddenly take dramatic stands. It implies that we act with the greatest impact when we act alone, at least initially. And that change occurs instantly, as opposed to building on a series of often-invisible actions. The myth of Parks as lone activist reinforces a notion that anyone who takes a committed public stand, or at least an effective one, has to be a larger-than-life figure--someone with more time, energy, courage, vision, or knowledge than any normal person could ever possess. This belief pervades our society, in part because the media tends not to represent historical change as the work of ordinary human beings, which it almost always is.

What is more important is realizing all the little things that led up to the big action.

Think again about the different ways one can frame Rosa Parks's historic action. In the prevailing myth, Parks decides to act almost on a whim, in isolation. She's a virgin to politics, a holy innocent. The lesson seems to be that if any of us suddenly got the urge to do something equally heroic, that would be great. Of course most of us don't, so we wait our entire lives to find the ideal moment.

Parks's real story conveys a far more empowering moral. She begins with seemingly modest steps. She goes to a meeting, and then another, helping build the community that in turn supported her path. Hesitant at first, she gains confidence as she speaks out. She keeps on despite a profoundly uncertain context, as she and others act as best they can to challenge deeply entrenched injustices, with little certainty of results. Had she and others given up after her tenth or eleventh year of commitment, we might never have heard of Montgomery.

Parks also reminds us that even in a seemingly losing cause, one person may unknowingly inspire another, and that person yet a third, who may then go on to change the world, or at least a small corner of it. Rosa Parks's husband Raymond convinced her to attend her first NAACP meeting, the initial step on a path that brought her to that fateful day on the bus in Montgomery. But who got Raymond Parks involved? And why did that person take the trouble to do so? What experiences shaped their outlook, forged their convictions? The links in any chain of influence are too numerous, too complex to trace. But being aware that such chains exist, that we can choose to join them, and that lasting change doesn't occur in their absence, is one of the primary ways to sustain hope, especially when our actions seem too insignificant to amount to anything.

Sometimes all the little things you do may not lead to something greater, at least in your lifetime, maybe. But it is the striving that is the important thing. The striving is what inspires people to do something besides watch events unfold around them. Striving gives people a model to follow. It leaves people without an excuse as to what they could be doing. Striving tells people who would take advantage of others that they won't be able to do so without opposition; that if nothing else, someone will point a finger at the problem and direct attention to it.

It is my opinion that being a good citizen means being an engaged citizen. To me, that means being educated and it means being active. It means understanding my part in the issues of my community. It means I don't get the luxury of pretending not to care about the news or yawning about politics, because that makes more work on someone else. It especially means connections and community building to me. I believe in small steps that make small differences. I believe in being conscious.

It is easy for me to get caught up in the minutia of my job and my life and ignore those things that I could do. It's easy to think that my job is enough, since it is in academia and I mentor students who are living on the cusp of changing the life cycle of generations. And maybe it is enough; but it doesn't feel like enough to me.

So I'm going to devote some regular space to reminding myself of the small acts of power that are within my control, things that can make an actual difference. Who knows? Maybe somebody else will be inspired by it, too. :)

-- DV

Report Cards Are In!

How does your state fair when it comes to women's health?


National Women's Law Center Report Cards

Check out your state or just look at the key findings, if you want an overview. Interestingly, no state got a Satisfactory. The rankings start at a Satisfactory minus - and only three states achieved that! Most states rank as Unsatisfactory with the next biggest category being a flat out Fail. These health measures look at access to early screenings, dental health, pregnancy services, life expectancy, obesity and abortion providers, among many other things. Something else to think about in the ongoing health care debate.

-- DV

Credit Card Catastrophe

From the comments section in the most recent post:

"Additionally, many cards will soon be charging 5% minimum payment instead of 2%, which is more than doubling what you would be paying per month -- some people just aren't going to be able to afford this, especially with the economic conditions going on now."

This is one of the smarter regulations put in by the government. It is not the credit card companies that want people to pay more, they realize when individuals only pay the minimum 2% balance on their cards now they are not touching the principal portion of their debt and will never be able to pay off their balance. So, they have a consumer right where they want them a lifelong slave to the credit card company. By increasing the minimum payment balance to 5 percent it is ensuring that individuals who should've never put themselves in financial crisis to begin with by using credit instead of actually spending money they had, will actually begin to put a dent in the financial mess they created for themselves.

Anon, your first statement is simply wrong. The government did not put this regulation in place, and for good reason. The credit card companies put that new rule in place, although some like Bank of America have recently come out to say they will not raise the minimum payment percentage. Yes, it forces people to pay more on their principle and in theory that would get them out of debt faster. And I would agree with you that much of the debt Americans have gotten themselves into shouldn't have been racked up in the first place. But you have your facts wrong, and I'm afraid you're not thinking about the actual financial implications of this decision.

The government actually ruled that credit card companies could NOT impose rate hikes on customers (who weren't in default), and that law kicks in February 2010. To make sure they could get more money out of people, the credit card companies decided to hike the minimum pay back percentage to 5% during the grace period before the new rule takes effect, because the new law says nothing about raising the minimum payments, only stipulating that cc companies give 45 days notice to customers before changes are made. The only way out of the situation is to call the cc company and "opt out" -- but that means you must close the card down and make no new charges, which ultimately hurts your FICO credit score, because it is partly a measure of how much credit you have access to. You reduce that amount when you close a card down, which is why it is better to pay it off and leave it open rather than close it. A damaged FICO score means you will have a harder time qualifying for a good credit deal on everything from insurance for your car to the percentage you have to pay on a bank loan.

Mandatorily raising the minimum repayment amount is not the bright idea you think it is. The average American household has about $8300 in credit card debt. At a 2.5% minimum payment, they are paying on average a little over $200/month as a minimum balance. They can always pay more, but they have to pay at least that much. With this increase, it means that the average household must now pay $415/month minimum, without choice. If they cannot pay this 100% increase in minimum payments, then they will be hit by penalties and automatically fall out of the protection of the federal rule that does not allow cc companies to jack interest rates to 32%. Once they have defaulted once on a payment, that 32% kicks in.

Now how hard will it be to get out of debt, with your minimum payment at $415, and the interest rate at 32%? Do the math for a typical American household on 32% interest for $8300, and you'll discover that raising the minimum payment to 5% won't help these people get out of debt -- once the twin problems of 32% and 5% minimum are in play. With the number of people having difficulty paying their debts, with all the unemployed folks out there, could there be a worse time to raise the minimum payment? This is a catastrophe waiting to happen. And this is just on the personal level -- think of the small businesses that use their credit cards as a line of credit for growth and development. Who, in fact, have been explicitly encouraged to think of their cards as a business line of credit by credit card commercials! Doubling their minimum payments hurts small business owners at a time when small businesses are being forced into bankruptcy right and left. It's a piss poor idea.

People who can get out of credit card debt and can pay more than the minimum payments often do. Once you are forced to pay that much more, you'll have to start digging the money out of some place else. Maybe it'll come out of the "right" spots. Maybe you'll eat out less or stop going to the spa. And those folks who live above their budgets are one thing, sure. But there are lots of Americans who are living within their means, and this move is going to drive some of them to default on their credit cards, which is going to drive up the interest rates on their other financial products like car insurance, mortgage loans, car financing, student loan payback percentages, etc. The market is all interconnected. We'll see the ripples from this shortly after it becomes permanent for a lot of people.

Personal note, my Bank of America card raised my APR by several unacceptable percentage points several months ago. I didn't have a lot on the card, I hadn't missed payments or made late payments. So I called to find out why I was being punished, and they couldn't give me a good answer. They said that they were having to raise rates on everybody in order to collect form the few people they couldn't get money from. I promptly closed the account, and told them they had permanently lost any future money from me, once the balance was paid off. If that's how they want to treat good customers, I don't want to do business with them. I wouldn't touch a Chase card with somebody else's wallet. That's why I'm sticking to my credit union credit card -- which has done absolutely none of the things that the giant banks (who took your tax dollars in the form of bailout money) are doing to people during one of the worst economic disasters in our history.

Screw them. Go to a credit union.

-- DV

Another One Bites the Dust

No, not blog stalkers -- although this guy probably had the same major.

By committing insider trading (JP definition: Verb. Def. 1: buying/selling stock based on inside knowledge you have that has not been made public yet. Def. 2: very, highly illegal. Def. 3: layman's terms -- getting first crack at it because of an unfair advantage; known examples: Martha Stewart), the CEO of Galleon Group Raj Rajaratnam and several others are being charged in court although they haven't pleaded to the charges yet. article link

These sorts of unethical and illegal things helped propel Rajaratnam to the status of billionaire, with his net worth at 1.3 billion. Happy Raj:


Now, lawyers will be getting a good chunk of that wealth to defend him against the charges that he greedily jumped ahead of ordinary investors trying to do the right thing with the information they have available to them to make wealth for themselves. Sad Raj:


If the gap between CEO pay and regular workers weren't so damned large, perhaps there would not be the incentive to cheat. After all, even the shoddy argument that the CEOs "produce" something that is so much more intrinsically important than those who work for them is completely blown away by the state of the economy that their clever decisions helped to create. CEO pay and bonuses need to be reviewed, in my opinion. The financial industry itself is full of ethical problems it doesn't want to examine. I remember one of my finance profs answering my question about the quality of information really available by looking at things like p/e ratio, etc. His response, "We assume everybody's honest." I lol'd. This was just before the Enron collapse.

There are always things a single investor can do to try to make a difference on the high seas of finance -- an ocean absolutely riddled with pirates. Credit card companies are a good place to start. Currently, some credit card companies are jacking up the annual percentage rates on some customers as high as 30-32% -- for people who have never had a late payment! Additionally, many cards will soon be charging 5% minimum payment instead of 2%, which is more than doubling what you would be paying per month -- some people just aren't going to be able to afford this, especially with the economic conditions going on now. So, why not move your money to a credit union? They offer credit cards, they're easy to get hold of, and they're staffed by people who live in the community. Oh, and they are not the same people who took a government bailout -- your money, remember -- and are set to turn around and pay out bonuses to their employees, all the while telling you they can't possibly give you a break on that 30% APR or that 5% minimum payment.

As for the stock market, there are places like Ethical Investing

that monitor both stocks from companies with ethical behavior and stocks without such companies. You can simply google "ethical investing" and be on your way. Of course, there is the usual caveat to make sure you're really picking an ethical stock, etc. Just because it says it is, doesn't mean it is. And finally, there's always the "make noise" category, for whatever it's worth. For every Raj Rajaratnam there are probably ten more who haven't been caught yet. Or maybe Raj was looked into because some of his donation money went to a Tamil Tiger front posing as a charity. Who knows why they were clued into him. But politicians need to know how angry people still are at the financial inequality in the market right now. It isn't fair that we have no money for health care (regardless of what you think of the plan) but we do have money to bail out businesses that turn around and put the squeeze on already squeezed citizens. They need to know how unfair it is that the average citizen tries to buy stocks on decisions made on the market based on good faith, while people like Rajaratnam and his crew take advantage of what they know to grow even wealthier than they already are. It doesn't always work, but at least it shakes the foundation a little.

-- DV

What We're All Singing Around the House Today ...

Why you so obsessed with me...boy I wanna know ...

....

It's clear that you're upset with me.

Finally found a girl that you couldn't impress

Last man on the earth still couldn't get this

You're delusional, you're delusional

Boy you're losin' your mind

It's confusin' you, you're confused and yo

Why you wastin' your time?

:D

-- DV

Pix 2!

So, the most recent Fight Night saw two stars hit this town.

Michael Clark is currently #12 in the US in the lightweight division, former #1 boxer in his division and appeared on The Contender, a reality show about boxing. And he was sweaty. Very sweaty. I have no idea why he came to this town, but I was happy to see him box in person.

Tommy's fight was something of a nail biter. Chuck "The Professor" Mussachio gave him a real challenge, and he clearly wanted Tommy's Fedecentro belt. The fight went the full distance, which if I'm not terribly mistaken is only the second time in Tommy's 19 fights he's ever gone to the cards. He outboxed Mussachio that night, taking punches, but giving them back in combos. He won unanimously on the cards -- but to Judge Jim Frio who scored the bout 100 - 94, are you kidding me?! I know he's this town's (and my) golden boy, but come on! Tommy lost a few rounds on points in there, most obviously in rounds 2 & 3. Judging by favoritism does NOT help boxing, thank you very much. Besides, if he had truly dominated that much, the The Prof would've been laying on the canvas. This fangrrl would know.

Pretty! And sweaty.
His comment: "I'm really sweaty, do you mind that?"
Me: "lol"

So, I got my fangrrl pic, in the "locker" room, no less. It helps to schmooze the people around him and drop some boxing talk. That's really what got us in the back door. In a disturbing but predictable sign of things to come, Tommy t-shirts were for sale this time. The boy's moving up. He's not ready for the cats who dominate the top five -- but he'll get there.

And yes, I got the t-shirt. And I got it signed. What are you looking at?

-- DV

Pics!

Due to an interesting combination of Mac/PC incompatibility and internet malfunctions, I'm behind on pics. Wa-a-ay behind. I'll do the Derbys first. I attended my third KY Derby this past May (giving up an opportunity to see Tommy Karpency fight -- why, oh why, does everything I enjoy have to happen all at once?). Yeah, I know, only about five months behind.

We dressed for disaster that never materialized (at least for us). The thing over the shirt is supposed to be the dress I was going to wear. Instead, because of the gloom and fear of cold, I ended up going with leather pants, galoshes and a white shirt under the dress. I looked like Paddington the Pimp, but I stayed dry and had a good time. The people in the tent behind us took turns falling over by mid-afternoon. D/B also whalloped a trollup later. It was funny watching her say: "Get out of my face one .... Get out of my face two ..."

Sister won over $400 on the long shot horse, Mine That Bird. She cried when the ticket lady cashed her bet. LOL. My horse, Papa Clem, got shut out just as he was making his move. Mine that Bird went on to run in the WV Derby, my first time attending.

Same outfit, take two. This is Mine That Bird's trainer, just standing around and waiting to take pics -- a much different atmosphere than the high security KY Derby. MTB actually placed third in that race. In other exciting races, D/B chased down Gene Simmons from Kiss, took a pic of his mug and then ran away. Why Gene Simmons was there in the first place is equally funny. But it was like its own race, watching her white feathered hat chase his black mullet: "D/B is three lengths back, making her move around the outside, now they're neck in neck, it's going to be a photo finish ... a-a-and ... she ran away??"

Good times.

I also learned I don't really like casinos. I don't like the concept of putting hard earned $$ down on the chance you might lose all of it. I passed a man with 198 credits in a $1 pull slot machine. Somebody put 200 perfectly good dollars in damned slot machine?! There's no IRA that needs funded? No nonprofit that could use the cash? I'm not passing judgment. It just doesn't seem like fun to me, and the people doing it didn't seem like they were having fun either. They seemed tense and anxious and they liked to bang on the machines. Seems kind of stressful.

-- DV