Across the Great Divide

How Town Hall Meetings Reflect Leaders as Well as Protesters.

The St. Paul Legal Ledger/Capitol Report ran this column by me in today's edition.

Recently, I got an earful after writing a blog post that casually compared opposition to proposed bike-friendly changes along St. Paul’s Jefferson Avenue with the anti-government outrage on display at public town hall meetings on health care.

My post provoked even more outrage from one resident who thought I’d ridiculed him and his neighbors and dismissed their concerns.

There’s been a lot of that going around lately, and I was sorry to add to the fire. I’d failed to follow one of my own principles: Listen to understand the other guy — not to refute him.

But I had also failed to make this point clearly: When you arrive at a meeting looking for a fight, you can’t expect to find a solution.

Although not as publicized as the fights, we’ve seen some examples in the past weeks of how airing our differences in public, face-to-face, can begin to rebuild the trust so necessary in a democratic system that relies on consent of the governed.

Last week, President Obama staged a town hall meeting on health care in my conservative Colorado hometown, where the county gave him only 34 percent of the vote in November.

U.S. Rep. Collin Peterson, D-7th, began a series of meetings in his district, not long after he took flak for saying he didn’t care for town halls because they were too often dominated by conspiracy theorists.

Both leaders showed a willingness to engage their critics — and their critics responded in a civil fashion.

In other cases, we’ve seen apparent gamesmanship. Who’s doing the gaming, however, is open to interpretation.

U.S. Rep. Tim Walz, D-1st, reached out to the other side from another angle. He invited neighboring U.S. Rep. John Kline, R-2nd, who favors more controlled roundtables and telephone town halls, to join him in co-hosting health care reform town halls in their respective districts. Walz’s staff reached Kline’s staff with a call and an emailed invitation Friday morning, but not Kline himself. When a press release and copy of the invitation went out that afternoon before Kline had responded, his office pronounced the offer a publicity stunt.

In Winona, state Sens. Sharon Erickson Ropes, DFL-Winona, and Katie Sieben, DFL-Newport, announced a “High-speed Rail Summit” to discuss building high-speed rail connecting Chicago and the Twin Cities. The invitees included Democratic U.S. Sen. Al Franken, MnDOT officials and local business leaders, but not the Southeast Minnesota Rail Alliance, which includes the Mayo Clinic and other Rochester interests that have been pushing for the city to be considered a stop on a high-speed rail line.

Meanwhile, Gov. Pawlenty declined an invitation from DFL legislative leaders to attend a “Minnesota Leadership Summit” that would bring together a variety of expert perspectives to discuss how to deal with the state’s budget woes.

“The state already has an annual ‘Minnesota Leadership Summit,’” Pawlenty quipped. “It’s called the legislative session, and it lasts approximately five months.”

Unfortunately, the governor was often a no-show during the session, too.

To be sure, town hall meetings and leadership summits are designed with public relations in mind. The listening that occurs is more about selling solutions than directly solving problems. But such meetings also set the tone for general discourse and signal how leaders intend to carry out their responsibilities on the public’s behalf.

The signals are decidedly mixed when some leaders say “Come, let us reason together” and others declare “I don’t trust you, so I’m not going to cooperate.”

Unfortunately, the best outcome we can expect from such a polarized approach is likely to be something between forced compromise and doing nothing. That’s just not good enough as we try to address complex, systemic issues such as health care, climate change and a healthy economy.

Maybe consensus problem-solving has become forever secondary to partisan point-scoring, but I’m trying to be optimistic here. In that spirit, I offer up some of the principles I try to follow in my own imperfect discourse. Leaders and citizens alike are encouraged to steal freely from this list:

1. Listen to understand instead of to refute. Try to grasp the deeper interests and concerns behind people’s perceptions rather than to label them or change their reality to match yours.

2. Ask about motivations, don’t ascribe them. Where facts are in dispute, don’t assume others are being deliberately dishonest. Look at the sources and discuss.

3. Speak to each other as individuals, from your own unique experience, rather than striking a pose as your side’s champion. Talk about perceptions, issues and solutions. Don’t become distracted by politics and personalities.

4. Don’t take the bait when others go ballistic. Demonstrate the values you believe are essential to the process, such as inclusiveness, tolerance, mutual understanding and respect.

5. Seek a higher common denominator. If Minnesotans can’t find any common ground to start from, we’re really in trouble.

No matter what issue we’re wrangling over, we have choices about how to act. We can bring together people with different perspectives to weigh fact-based analysis and seek workable solutions. Or we can pursue policy by placard, in which case, I’m right and you are, at the very least, a dishonest idiot.

A couple other good perspectives on these town hall meetings, from D.J. Danielson (he visited John Kline's office to ask about town hall participation),  and Norwegianity (on media coverage of Tim Walz's town hall).

Fear of Criminal Immigrants is Misplaced.

Former Senator Dave Durenburger's commentary about reforming health care made mention of El Paso, Texas, and its relatively low costs compared to other parts of the country. It reminded my of this post, which was still sitting in my hopper.

From Reason magazine:

A city of illegal immigrants with easy access to guns, just across the river from a metropolis ripped apart by brutal drug war violence. Should be a bloodbath, right?
[...]
Many criminologists say El Paso isn't safe despite its high proportion of immigrants, it's safe because of them.

"If you want to find a safe city, first determine the size of the immigrant population," says Jack Levin, a criminologist at Northeastern University in Massachusetts. "If the immigrant community represents a large proportion of the population, you're likely in one of the country's safer cities. San Diego, Laredo, El Paso—these cities are teeming with immigrants, and they're some of the safest places in the country."

Rates of crime and conviction for undocumented immigrants are far below those for the native born, and according to social scientists, that's not surprising. It's the general pattern with immigrant groups throughout history.

"Overall, immigrants have a stake in this country, and they recognize it," Northeastern University's Levin says. "They're really an exceptional sort of American. They come here having left their family and friends back home. They come at some cost to themselves in terms of security and social relationships. They are extremely success-oriented, and adjust very well to the competitive circumstances in the United States." 

Well, That Was a Morning Wasted...

From Hal Davis:

Congress ... in 1924 enacted the Johnson-Reed bill that limited European immigration to just over 150,000 per year with nationality quotas based on the origins of the U.S. population, which heavily favored western and northern Europe, especially Britain. The act required entry visas, with photographs -- another facet of control -- and largely excluded Asians. It exempted most of the western hemisphere so that Mexico could continue supplying western farmers with cheap labor.

— Allan J. Lichtman, WHITE PROTESTANT NATION: The Rise of the American Conservative Movement

From MinnPost, a story on Minnesota's "best and brightest" video bloggers includes Melinda Jacobs, whose other stabs at sincerity, authenticity and attention-grabbing included promoting herself as a flirting expert. She got her start in March after devoting:

two years studying the economics and technology of the industry before jumping into the digital era to do long-form celebrity interviews.
 

Even though she hopes to eventually make a living with online video, she refuses to put ads or product placements into her pieces if she doesn't believe in them.

The Craig Show, also featured, does product placement right, with a Taylor guitar slipped into his golf instruction video. (Maybe he's only hilarious if you play golf.)

And in this, via The Daily Glean,  Michele Bachmann proves herself a much better Autotune singer than Sarah Palin.

Lessons from the Last Shift at the Homeless Center.

Today I spent my entire shift at the Day Center, where Grand Junction's homeless come to enjoy some of the features (if not comforts) of home — a place to store valuables or extra clothes; coffee; a shower and laundry facility; a telephone, message machine and mailing address.

The mix of guests ranges from chronic homeless to people temporarily down on their luck, from babies of seven months to dessicated old timers of more than 70 years. Every dental variation is represented, from perfect teeth to nothing but gums. Some people look downright normal; a few are clearly disturbed; at least one could play a role in the next Kevin Costner Cowboy movie and a pair of brothers would look right at home on Newhart.

I watched a woman with perhaps five teeth fix her hair for an upcoming job interview, while man carved away at his head with hair clippers. As it became apparent he had nowhere to go but bald, she helped him take it down to his scalp. He looked pretty good.

I listened to a young woman as she wrote an angry letter to her mother. "She says it's my fault," she fumed. Silently, I felt solidarity with the parent telling her daughter a truth about responsibility she didn't want to hear. Later, I learned the mother is an addict who is in prison, and she blames her daughter for her problems.

A man shows up looking for two people to help him move out of his apartment. He'll pay $10 an hour. A couple gets a call from a woman who wants them to tend her yard. They head off for work. So does the father of one of the babies.

There are some really ill-advised tattoos in poorly chosen locations here.

A mother and her 20-ish son stop for a shower on the way out of town. They could be anyone heading to a ballgame, ready to board a flight, waiting for a table. As they wait their turn, the young man sits quietly, observing the others. I wonder if he notices the man next him and how much they resemble each other 15 years removed. Both of them dark and handsome. One hasn't figured out what to do with himself yet. The other may have stopped figuring.

Two young men who are camping rough down by the river stride in. Of all the guests who turn up here, they project the most menace. They wear their hair in long dreds which are not improved by smoke, dirt or the bottle caps one has bent around some of his locks. The other, a bit more clear-eyed and powerful, has a swastika on his inner forearm, one tattoo among many. When he signs in, I notice he is left handed, like the woman writing the letter.

On previous shifts, I've been over at the food pantry and have not been through the routine of closing the place. About 11:30, most remaining guests leave to find a place in line at the nearby soup kitchen. The showers, bathrooms and floors must be swabbed down, trash emptied, coffee post and cups washed and put away.

A few men stick around to help us with these chores. Among them, the two toughs from down by the river. They work efficiently, wiping down the tables and chairs with disinfectant, then stacking them out of the way, vacuuming the reception area and emptying the wastebaskets.

I begin to revise my estimate of the two and recalibrate my antenna once again.

Perhaps they have some community service obligation to work off, but maybe it's just a good impulse. Either way, why should I judge them any differently from the other guests who are helping with these mundane tasks? We're all volunteers here.

It's my last volunteer day before I return to Minnesota and go back to working with kids in the shelter preschool. I started out with kids because I thought it would be more satisfying than working around adults whose mistakes have been made, whose ways are set.

But now, I'm not so sure. I've seen a lot of people struggling and stuck, but also helping each other and trying to do better.

If my tax money is being redistributed to the undeserving, I sure haven't seen much of it land here.

I'm going to miss this place.

More Value for the Way We Live.

I spent the morning at the Day Center and then at the Food Pantry. Highlight of the first shift was listening to three women discussing the various fine points of double jeopardy, then providing two of the women envelopes, paper and stamps for correspondence to men in detention facilities.

One woman returned the sheet of paper to me as if I were an idiot. "I want lined paper. I'm writing a letter, not drawing a picture!"

Good to have that one for future reference.

I've also been acquainting myself with low cost foodstuffs during time between filling orders. Our Beef and Chicken Rice Mix packages come from Brooklyn Park, Minnesota. The Beef Ravioli comes from Second Harvest of Middle Tennessee, with the catchy slogan on the back: "Non-Profit Serving Non-Profit Serving Hungry People."

The vegetable soup comes from the Church of Jesus Christ Latter Day Saints in Salt Lake City. The label advises our guests can visit www.providentliving.org for advice on self-reliant living, which I'm sure many would do if the wireless connection just reached down to their camp by the river.

Guests come in for various types of assistance, and my job is putting together three meals each for three days for those who the counselors determine need help with food. For one or two people, it's a pretty simple process, heavy on rice, canned goods, tuna, generic Cheerios (No Cap'n Crunch!), peanut butter and assorted other items to fill out the order.

Things can get a bit complicated when an extended family is getting help, since you're trying to integrate nutrition, variety, ages and larger quantities with the stock available. We always have peanut butter, but not always bread, for example. And some guests have no cooking facilities, or they're walking and can't carry a lot of canned goods.

All we had for non-canned meat product today were the same two frozen containers (chicken livers and tripe) that were there last week. Midmorning, someone cleaning out their freezer brought in a reasonable stock of roasts, steak and stew meat. I forgot to take a picture of the elk steak from 2003. The newest package was dated February 2007.

I suppose some person went home feeling good and maybe planned to claim a charitable deduction. No one got the meat, unless there are some brave dumpster divers out there.

Speaking of unsafe food, the top photo is from the supermarket today, where they were having a special on pistachios.

The Outreach Center is church affiliated, though not all volunteers and staff belong to the Catholic Church. They do not push religion in any way on the people coming through the doors. They do pray before they start work, but it's about humility and serving people and seeing Jesus in the faces they meet during the day. 

It's an aspect of religious faith in action that would be good for us non-believers to see once awhile, to remind us that the religious are not all the same, either.

 

Discomfort is in the Eye of the Beholder.

I can't speak for when Mitch Pearlstein's experiences on Hennepin Avenue, but his offices at the Center of the American Experiment place him at the scene. Consequently, it seems odd he can't summon personal experience to illustrate Hennepin Avenue: One Mean Street. Instead, he makes generic references to  vaguely specificied past horrors.

I'm happy to stand corrected if I'm wrong. But I've spoken to any number of women as well as men over the years who say they feel a lot less comfortable on Hennepin than they do on other signature streets such as Fifth Avenue in New York, Michigan Avenue in Chicago and Connecticut Avenue in Washington.

Of course, it's possible he doesn't have any good stories about how bad it is downtown. Neither do I, despite working downtown for 15 years, walking to lunches and client meetings, attending Timberwolves games as a season ticket holder, and passing through as a runner, cyclist and transit rider.

I won't say there aren't issues downtown, but a lot of discomfort is designed in.

First of all, the skyways siphon off most of the street life. When streets are for traffic, people lose. Lack of a diverse human presence on the street creates unease — especially if the only people left on the street are the poor, the destitute and the criminal.

Second, street level facades without windows or regular foot traffic are forbidding. Block E and City Center, the two suburban-style downtown developments closest to Mitch's office, turn their backs to the street. Many businesses along Hennepin are only alive at night, including bars and theaters. Add to that entrances that only lead to elevator banks or parking ramps, and you have Gaza-in-the-making — where streets feel like blast wall-lined gauntlets instead of places where it's safe or enjoyable to stop.

And a lot more is in the eye of the beholder.

Ride an inner city bus once and it might be scary. Ride it more often and it's routine. Drive through the North Side once, and you'll have shields up the whole way. Bike through it daily and you'll say hi to people.

If you live in a city, accept responsibility for your fears. Respect the people you meet. And don't be stupid. Otherwise, you'll be like my commenter of the day.

Hennepin Ave in and around block E is disgusting. My wife and daughter are in the entertainment business, and frequently are downtown in the evening. There is absolutely no reason that groups of mannerless, vulgar, loud mouth, in-your-face, push-it-to-the-limit black youths should be allowed to loiter, and pollute our city. Add to this the uber-panhandlers that refuse to let my wife pass without giving her a hard time. And other exepiences such as where one 'sister' decided it would be 'funny' to open my daughter's car door, while she was stopped for the light at 6th and Hennepin. IT'S OUR CITY. THE OTHER 99.5% OF THE CITIZENS IN MINNEAPOLIS HAVE GOOD MANNERS. SEND THIS SCUM HOME!

posted by dgb049

Of course, Discordian Stooge has total dispensation to disagree on this.

And Norwegianity points out the Robocop subtext of Mitch's meanderings.

UPDATE: And I neglected one other obvious design factor related to discomfort downtown. Don't be female.

Shoving Perversion Down Society's Throat.

Osseo schools got hit with a king-size legal bill -- $460,143 -- in its fight to keep a Maple Grove High School student-run gay-rights group from having the same privileges as other, officially approved, school clubs.

— Star Tribune

Reading the comments attached to this story, I wonder if all those people who "canceled their subscriptions" because of liberal bias are the only ones still reading the paper. Angry, intolerant sorts certainly seem to make up a disproportionate number of commenters.

Here's one of my favorites:

Gay activist trash - Quit demanding public santion of your perversion! I'm tired of Gays shoving their perversion down societies throat! Demanding we "approve" of their lifestyle. Nobody is stopping you from practicing your immorality, so quit acting like your being discriminated against. Bunch of trouble making whiny brats, now trying to bankrupt struggling schools unless they allow them to preach their perversion over the school PA system..... posted by bob0001 on Mar. 26, 09 at 10:24 PM

Many of those outraged have trouble connecting the election of a moralistic school board with wasting money on lawsuits that other school districts have managed to avoid. No, it's the gays' fault because they want to sit around and talk about sex. No matter that the student organization is Straights and Gays for Equity (SAGE).

Maybe the answer is an all-gay charter school.

That money would have made a nice down payment for an all-gay school somewhere (think Alaska), then wouldn't everyone be happy! To hell in a handbasket is right. I suppose next week the Blondes will be suing wanting their own Club, then the Mexicans over five eight Club, and on and on and on. And yet people can't figure out why kids are stupid, lazy, attack teachers, budgets are overrun, etc. Send the damn Nukes out and put us all out of our misery (hopefully the lawyers, judges and politicians melt first).  posted by sloey51 on Mar. 26, 09 at 11:14

Then there was the commenter who cites this as one more reason he "left the state and never looked back" — except, perhaps, to read the old hometown paper looking for something that will offend his sensibilities from afar.

You Talkin' to Me?

Out here in McCain country, this Obama sign was still hanging in there. Not sure if it was stuck in the hay bale because the ground was too hard, or it was a statement by a farmer for Obama.

Word is, the Obama signs disappeared from our block in Minnesota last night. Since we live on a non-through street with little traffic besides neighbors, garbage trucks and roofing salesmen, I'm confident a few Obama-less days in our neighborhood will not tip the election.

Times are stressful, and we have a transformative national election overlaying an economic mess that is trying a lot of souls. Some of them are acting out larger frustrations in a political context, but I don't believe most of them pulling signs are any more about partisan politics than your average loser shooting up a high  school.

Trying to pick out the exceptions from a distance can be hazardous, too.

Take the recent vandalism of homes belonging to some of Minnesota's Congressional delegation. Or the assaults on campaign workers that turned out to be a hoax or are as yet unproven.

Mental illness or deliberate provocation to spark a voter backlash? Either way, these acts say no more about the majority of Republicans and Democrats than John Hinckley's shooting Reagan reflects on Jodie Foster.

But when parties and candidates continue to spout intolerance, they can't pretend it has no effect.

After the recent Sarah Palin rally in Grand Junction, it appears some of the departing weren't too tolerant of each other in the parking lot.

Gonzales told police Cheskaty rolled down his window and shouted, “If you want to get ahead of me, you’ll have to deal with my insurance agency.” Gonzales said he replied, “I’ve got insurance, too,” according to an arrest affidavit.

Gonzales told police Cheskaty reached down and came up with a handgun in his left hand. He said Cheskaty racked the slide and held the gun over the steering wheel. Gonzales’ 14-year-old daughter told her father that Cheskaty had a gun. A woman in Cheskaty’s car said “knock it off,” the affidavit said.

I'm not drawing any conclusions about whether the antagonists were both McCain-Palin supporters, but the odds say the Obama supporters are off the hook on this one.

 

Sure, I'll Respect You in the Morning. Now Put the Bag Over Your Head.

In a post on finding my antique RNC credentials, I made a swipe at what it takes — or doesn't — to get in the door as a credentialed blogger. (Note: I did not apply, and the GOP can admit whomever they want.) A contempt for liberals, it seemed to me, ranked rather high on the list.

Two of the credentialed bloggers I cited protested — Chad Everson, with humor, and Lady Logician with um, logic — that they don't hold liberals in contempt, just their policies.

Charlie honey - I don't have "contempt" for Liberals.....I may have contempt for liberal POLICIES, but not liberals themselves....

It is possible to separate personal relationships and politics. The success of any free political system depends on it. But over the past 20 years or so, it seems to be happening less and less. Contempt — not just philosophical disagreement — has been ratcheted up and real tolerance for human differences over policies is given the sort of smirking pro forma observance we see between Hannity and Colmes...

Or bloggers and their invisible moonbat/wingnut friends. Which is why here I try to make those exchanges real and open, aimed at understanding rather than refuting the other.

At some point, contempt for ideas and values becomes contempt for a group becomes contempt for a person, as the bones in mass graves the world over attest.

Kersten Parades Her Pharisee Pride.

Joining an argument with someone like Katherine Kersten is like agreeing to an eating contest with a pig. Sure, a pig has a bigger appetite and capacity, but that's not what makes the contest so impossible. To stay in the contest, you will have to gulp down all manner of offal.

This is an eating contest, grunts the pig. Who said anything about food?

There is way too much for me to swallow in Kersten's lecture on the real story behind gay pride. I finally choked on this fishy passage.

The theologian C.S. Lewis called pride "the great sin" — the root of almost every other transgression. Pride, he wrote, "has been the chief cause of misery ... since the world began."

So "gay pride" is out of place in church. But so is straight pride, black pride, white pride — or any kind of pride.

And gay pride is especially bad because, well, you know, it's really just about sex:

In recent years, however, a different vision of sexuality has grown fashionable. In this view, sex of all kinds — whether straight, gay or otherwise — is best understood as a vehicle for pleasure and self-expression. Today, this vision of sex dominates our entertainment industry, is taught in our schools and inspires events such as gay pride celebrations.

Kersten wants you to demands you accept Lewis's sinful pride as the proper definition of what these movements are about and denies this meaning: "the correct level of respect for the importance and value of your personal character, life, efforts, or achievements."

Gay pride, like black pride, Irish pride and even southern pride are expressions of solidarity, not individualistic claims of superiority. They're a response to oppression, discrimination and the feelings of diminished self-worth that a dominant culture seeks to instill and that Kersten cannot see because she is a part of it.

This was the same point that made Spot stop and sniff:

But Katie is right; it's just like the blacks. First they just wanted to own themselves. Then they wanted jobs and an education. And they they wanted to vote. Can you believe that?

Next thing you know, they'll want a parade.