By Ted Quant
Below is the edited text of a speech by Ted Quant to a class at Loyola University (New Orleans) that was studying Pope Francis’s Encyclical on the Environment, given 4/18/2016.
Mr. Quant has been a laborer, longshoreman and forklift operator, and served in the US Army from 1966-1969. He has worked with and helped lead the National Equal Rights Congress, the Southern Voter Education Project, the Louisiana Survival Coalition, and the New Orleans Police Brutality Committee. Ted Quant served as Director of the Twomey Center for Peace through Justice, Loyola University New Orleans from 1986 until 2014. The Twomey Center is an expression of Loyola University’s Jesuit commitment to social justice. In 2012, Quant was given the Integritas Vitae Award, the highest award given by Loyola University New Orleans.
The opinions expressed here do not necessarily represent those of the Kairos Center or its staff.
[aesop_image img=”https://kairoscenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Ted-at-Selma.jpg” align=”left” lightbox=”on” caption=”Ted Quant at the 50th Anniversary of the Selma Voting Rights Campaign” captionposition=”left”]
Thank you for inviting me to contribute to your discussions and study of Pope Francis’s encyclical on the environment—Laudato Si. The encyclical’s perspective is global. I want to bring that perspective home to the United States, to three cities in the state of Michigan—Detroit, Benton Harbor, and Flint. I also want to point to some direction for where we go from here. How you can get involved.
Pope Francis’s encyclical is a religious leader’s prophetic demand for change. Change has to happen. The current reality is already intolerable for over a billion of our fellow human beings and for the environment we are destroying. Change is never easy. Change on the scale needed today is extremely difficult to achieve, yet we need to work like our lives depend on it, because our lives do depend on it.
Scholars of leadership say that the first act of change-leadership is to “establish a sense of urgency” that demands action. Leaders must develop a “vision of change,” a vision of the resolution of the crisis and the brighter future that is possible, and an analysis of what is required to get there. This inspires followers to take action. Followers become leaders themselves in building the movement for broad- based action, winning short-term victories, learning lessons, empowering itself to achieve substantial substantive change. Leaders create a culture of change that is self-generating and they never let up.((John Kotter, Leading Change, (Harvard Business,1996). Warren Bennis and Burt Nanus, Leaders: Strategies for Taking Charge, (HarperBusiness; 2nd edition, May 22, 2007).)) That is what is required today.
Laudato Si is part of this leadership process. It establishes a sense of urgency. It demonstrates the necessity for change. It provides a vision of a brighter future that can be achieved, and it calls us to action to bring it about.
The pope’s message points to an immediate and urgent crisis that requires radical change. Change will come regardless of what we do. But if we do nothing or fail to generate the political will and power to bring about real humanistic democratic change in the interest of humanity, we will face catastrophic environmental change with all its economic, social, cultural, and politically devastating consequences.
We don’t need a crystal ball to see that we are already facing this crisis as evidenced by worldwide abject poverty, droughts, famine, migrations, war, and environmental evidence such as rising sea levels, more intense storms, desertification. Today, absolute poverty afflicts 1.3 billion people in the world.((“Nearly 1/2 of the world’s population — more than 3 billion people — live on less than $2.50 a day. “Do Something.org: 11 Facts About Poverty” https://www.dosomething.org/us/facts/11-facts-about-global-poverty )) What is unconscionable is that it exists in a world that has the wealth and the productive capacity to end poverty and raise the standards of living of everyone on earth.((The world’s 100 richest people earned enough money in 2012 to end extreme world poverty four times over,according to a report by Oxfam. Also in 1998, the UN estimated that it would take $40 billion annually to offer basic education, clean water and sanitation, reproductive health, and basic health and nutrition to every person in every developing country. That would be about $58 billion today. https://www.dosomething.org/us/facts/11-facts-about-global-poverty))
Canary in the coal mine
We don’t need to look around the world for the evidence of what is to come. It exists here and now in Michigan, home of the United Auto Workers, birth place of the assembly line, of industry on a massive scale, of high wages and unions. Michigan was the mecca for the mass migrations of African Americans escaping the new slavery of the new south for what must have felt, for a minute, like the freedom my ancestors dreamed of. Today, Michigan is the canary in the coal mine.
In case you don’t know this reference, let me explain. In the old days miners would take a canary into the mine with them to warn them of odorless poison gases building in the mine. The canary would die from the gases before the gas would kill the miners, thus warning the miners that the air had become toxic.
Today, Michigan is the canary in the mine. It provides a dire warning of what the unity of the corporations and the state means for the general population. The merger of the corporations and the state is one of the definitions of fascism.((Political Resolution of the League of Revolutionaries for a New America. “Today fascism — the merger of the corporations and the State — is an objective reflection of an economic revolution which is destroying the foundation of private property itself. While there are subjective aspects to the development of fascism — things that are consciously engineered by the ruling class — the fascism we are experiencing in the U.S. and elsewhere today is not a subjective choice of the ruling class, but is an objective reflection of this economic development. As the economic base of society is transformed, the social and political superstructure that rests on and reflects the base must also be transformed.” https://rallycomrades.lrna.org/2014/08/political-resolution-league-revolutionaries-new-america/))
What does it look like? It looks like an outright complete attack on democracy and total control by a single state-appointed person known as an emergency manager, who replaces the mayor, city council, and all elected officials. The emergency manager is a single appointed person who can break all contracts, bust unions, take control of the schools, and give away or sell off all the assets of a city to private corporations. The emergency manager is not elected but appointed by the governor of the state and answers only to the governor.
Benton Harbor
Benton Harbor, a small majority-black city, was among the first to come under an emergency manager in the state of Michigan. The Whirlpool Corporation, a major appliance manufacturer, had been the city’s largest employer, but in the late 1990s, manufacturing jobs began to be taken over by robotics, and outsourcing sent remaining jobs out of the country in search of cheap labor. Benton Harbor’s once thriving working class suffered high unemployment and rising poverty.
Whirlpool and other corporations set out to find other means of profiting from the resources of this community. They proposed the takeover of 465 acres of Benton Harbor, including the city’s only beach, for the development of a $500 million complex consisting of a marina, golf course, and residential area. They proposed paying the city less than $1 million for the massive land grab.
Benton Harbor residents opposed the plan. Leaders emerged, most notably Rev. Edward Pinkney, a black community activist and member of the Black Autonomy Network Community Organization (BANCO).
In 2004, BANCO, led by Rev. Pinkney, won a recall campaign that should have led to the ouster of a commissioner who supported Whirlpool’s proposed resort plan. But the will of the people was thwarted. Whirlpool’s powerful allies in the judiciary and law enforcement conspired “to overturn the recall election, to isolate and crush Pinkney, and to contain the people of Benton Harbor.”((Benton Harbor MI: Fighting the corporate Dictatorship in America’s Rust Belt. Pamphlet by the People’s Tribune. https://peoplestribune.org/pt-news/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/BH-Pamphlet.pdf))
Rev. Pinkney was tried before an all-white jury on the trumped up charge of “changing five dates on the recall petition.” The judge disallowed evidence of his innocence, including testimony from the city clerk who cleared him of wrongdoing. And although no evidence was presented and no witnesses testified to this “crime,” Rev. Pinkney was found guilty and sentenced to prison.
Benton Harbor citizens staged demonstrations, spoke out at council meetings, and ran candidates for office. They conducted a massive voter education, registration, and voter turn-out campaign. They won many victories. But the governor decided to appoint an emergency manager—one man endowed with the authority to strip all the elected officials of any power. The city clerk, who allied herself with Pinkney, was forced out of office.((Ibid. Remaining elected officials were rendered powerless. Benton Harbor citizens now had no voice in their democracy, in fact, no democracy at all. The emergency manager proceeded to sell off the city’s assets. Whirlpool got its beachfront acres with tax breaks thrown in.
For a time, Rev. Pinkney continued to lead his community from his prison cell, raising awareness nationwide of the dictatorial emergency manager system. To prevent him from speaking out, Rev. Pinkney has been placed in solitary confinement.((BANCO Breaking News: Rev. Pinkney in Solitary Confinement https://www.bhbanco.org/2015/11/breaking-rev-pinkney-in-solitary.html))
This is what fascism looks like.
Detroit
Detroit, the home of the UAW and strong unions in the age of industrialization, is now a shambles of poverty as the auto industry employs robots to build cars and the workers are no longer needed. This is also true of Highland Park, which is geographically within Detroit and is the birthplace of the Henry Ford assemble line, the first the world. As with Benton Harbor, an emergency manager was appointed to take over Detroit and Highland Park. Soon, the city’s water bills skyrocketed. The emergency manager demanded that water be shut off from families delinquent in paying their exorbitant bills. He did not demand or shut off water for the corporations with huge unpaid bills. After shutting off people from the human right to water, the emergency manager then threatened to have Child Protective Services remove children from homes in which water had been shut off.((Food and Water Watch https://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/news/congressional-representatives-and-157975-concerned-americans-demand-president-obama-and))
This is what fascism looks like.
Flint
Flint, Michigan was next. The governor appointed an emergency manager who switched the Flint water supply from the Detroit River to the polluted Flint River to save money. They soon realized that the water was corrosive when the General Motors plant complained about the water corrupting their machines. The plants were switched back to Detroit River water, but the residents of Flint were told that the brown water coming out of their taps was safe.((“General Motors shutting off Flint River water at engine plant over corrosion worries,” by By Ron Fonger. https://www.mlive.com/news/flint/index.ssf/2014/10/general_motors_wont_use_flint.html)) Citizens’ complaints were ignored. As a result, Flint is now in crisis, having been poisoned since 2014. The people of Flint are still without clean water in the richest country in the world. The children have been lead poisoned and brain damaged for life.((From The New England Journal of Medicine March 24, 2016 Lead Contamination in Flint — An Abject Failure to Protect Public Health David C. Bellinger, Ph.D. At this time (4/2016), Flint residents are still without safe water, except bottled water, while the politicians argue about who will pay for what.))
This is what fascism looks like.
Every thing is connected and interconnected. As the Pope’s encyclical points out, we need to see deeper than the surface of things to the deeper causes and roots of the problem. He looks at the problem from many separate perspectives and then shows how all are interrelated and interconnected. He looks at the science of the environment, social science, the impact of culture, economics and economic theory, and faith, religion and spirituality.
Capitalism and human rights
For the Pope, the root of unity—that which is common to all of nature and humankind—is that the environment is a gift from God for all of nature and not the private property of a few to use and misuse for personal gain at the expense of this God given sacred trust. Thus he calls for many levels of spiritual renewal on the basis of understanding this relationship with God and nature that will animate the social, political and cultural revolution in the defense of the Earth.
Pope Francis’s encyclical is a radical message. It is a prophetic rebuke of capitalism although Pope Francis doesn’t say that. In fact, he says the opposite. Pope Francis, quoting Saint John Paul II, wrote that, “The Church does indeed defend the legitimate right to private property.” If we stop there it is a defense of Capitalism. But he goes on to say, “The Christian tradition has never recognized the right to private property as absolute or inviolable, and has stressed the social purpose of all forms of private property. Saint John Paul II forcefully reaffirmed this teaching, stating that ‘God gave the earth to the whole human race for the sustenance of all its members,without excluding or favoring anyone.’” He goes further, stating “[the Church] also teaches no less clearly that there is always a social mortgage on all private property, in order that goods may serve the general purpose that God gave them.” Consequently, …”it is not in accord with God’s plan that this gift be used in such a way that its benefits favor only a few.”((Laudato Si’, Encyclical Letter Of The Holy Father
Francis on Care for our Common Home, paragraph 74. https://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html#_ftn74))
Pope Francis writes “The principle of the subordination of private property to the universal destination of goods, and thus the right of everyone to their use, is a golden rule of social conduct and ‘the first principle of the whole ethical and social order’.”((Laudato Si’, paragraph 93.))
The contradiction that I see between the defense of private property in the form of capital, and the demand that corporations obey the “golden rule” is that corporations—if they are to stay in business—are not free to violate the drive for maximum profits. They cannot violate “business ethics” or “capitalist morality.” It is not a moral choice. It is how the system works. Any business under this system that does not rationalize production and maximize its profit will be driven out of business in the competitive market. The system rewards and it punishes. Therefore, the statements about the moral limits of private property are really incompatible with capitalism.
I believe Pope Francis understands this and is pushing the contradiction into the open by demanding that the wealth of this earth provide sustenance for the whole human race “without excluding or favoring anyone.” Capital cannot be constrained by the demands of the “golden rule” and continue to exist as capital. The fight to make capitalism obey the “golden rule” is a fight to transform capitalism itself.
Pope Francis is from South America. He served in Argentina during the horrific years of the “dirty war.”((The “Dirty War” (Spanish: Guerra Sucia), also known as theProcess of National Reorganization(Spanish: Proceso de Reorganización Nacional or El Proceso), was the name used by the Argentine Military Government for a period of state terrorism in Argentina from roughly 1974 to 1983 (some sources date the beginning to 1969), during which military and security forces and right-wing death squads in the form of the Argentine Anticommunist Alliance(Triple A) hunted down and killed left-wing guerrillas, political dissidents, and anyone believed to be associated with socialism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirty_War)) He praised Archbishop Oscar Romero who was assassinated in El Salvador in 1980 for his “particular attention to the most poor and marginalized,”((Óscar Arnulfo Romero y Galdámez (15 August 1917– 24 March 1980) was a prelate of the Catholic Church in El Salvador, who served as the fourth Archbishop of San Salvador. He spoke out against poverty, social injustice, assassinations and torture. In 1980, Romero was assassinated while offering Mass in the chapel of the Hospital of Divine Providence. Pope Francis stated during Romero’s beatification that “His ministry was distinguished by a particular attention to the most poor and marginalized.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Óscar_Romero)) and he probably knew the six Jesuits murdered in El Salvador in 1989 during the El Salvador civil war. Pope Francis’s encyclical parallels the sentiment of Archbishop Romero’s words: “Let it be quite clear that if we are being asked to collaborate with a pseudo-peace, a false order, based on repression and fear, we must recall that the only order and the only peace that God wants is one based on truth and justice”.((Oxford University Catholic Chaplaincy, “The Six Jesuit Martyrs of El Salvador” Six Jesuits were murdered in El Salvador 11/16/1989. https://www.catholic-chaplaincy.org.uk/the-six-jesuit-martyrs-of-el-salvador/))
I can’t speak for Pope Francis, but I believe he understands that the violence of imperialist domination in the neo-colonies((Neocolonialism,neo-colonialismorneo-imperialism is the geopolitical practice of using capitalism, business globalization, and cultural imperialism to influence a country, in lieu of either direct military control (imperialism) or indirect political control (hegemony). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neocolonialism)) created the bribe that allows “democracy” in the imperialist nations. But that bribery is no longer sustainable. The brutality practiced in the neo-colonies is coming home to American cities like Benton Harbor, Flint and Detroit.
The model in Michigan was already tested in other countries where the CIA overthrows governments and the US props up dictators. Economists like Milton Friedman (Chicago School of Economics) go in to instruct dictators in how to implement unrestrictive market driven capitalism.((1973 Sep 11, Pres. Salvadore Allende of Chile was toppled in a bloody military coup in Santiago… The government was taken over by Gen. Augusto Pinochet and his economic managers dubbed the “Chicago boys,” for their training at the Univ. of Chicago and belief in free markets. The first 3 months of fighting claimed 1261 victims. The air force bombarded the presidential palace to put down resistance by Allende and a small group of followers. (SFC, 8/31/96, p.A23)(WSJ, 10/30/98, p.A19)(SFC, 9/30/99, p.A31)(AP, 7/20/11). https://www.timelines.ws/countries/CHILE.HTML)) This model has always needed brutal dictatorial power to crush the natural resistance struggles arising out of desperation and abject poverty.((Naomi Klein, Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (Picador; 1st edition, June 24, 2008)) In Michigan it means evicting families from their homes for unpaid water bills, taking children from families, jailing the resistance fighters like Rev. Pinkney, selling off the assets of the city, and privatizing as much as possible.
“Fascism is imperialism turned inward.”((R. Palme Dutt, “Fascism and Social Revolution.” (Proletarian Pub; 2 Reprint edition September 1974))
This is what the Pope meant about profit motives ruling over human rights.
In this together
Today, the homeless, the undocumented immigrants, the poor, unemployed, hungry, imprisoned, all existing in the context of the destruction of the environment, let us know that the system is poisoned and has to be changed. It is causing illness and death, yet many do not see what is going on because they are doing fine. They don’t support those who are sick and dying from the poisonous system, but in fact blame them, labeling them “takers,” “people who don’t want to work,” “rapists and drug dealers.” The condemnation of over a billion people living in poverty, and hundreds of millions migrating to escape poverty, war, the destruction of the environment, and famine, is unconscionable.
People are not poor because they don’t want to work. Robots have replaced labor, eliminating whole categories of unskilled and skilled workers. Those with jobs are seeing their wages decline to poverty levels, and when even that is not low enough, the jobs are outsourced to even lower wage workers, even as productivity goes up.
Robots and automation are good things. They make possible great leaps in productivity and the production of abundance to meet the needs of the human race. Advances in science and knowledge of how to maintain sustainable economies while protecting the environment already exist. But the system by which these goods are created and distributed is keeping this abundance from meeting basic human needs.
While automation has driven down the cost of production wages continue to plummet. Poor people can’t buy the products they produce, and robots don’t eat, thus we end up with the contradiction of abundance being the source of poverty.((Political Resolution of the League of Revolutionaries for a New America https://rallycomrades.lrna.org/2014/08/political-resolution-league-revolutionaries-new-america/)) We have to have a new understanding to replace this faith in a moribund system of oppression and exploitation. Those driven into states of abject poverty form a class of excluded people who are already engaged in the fight for survival, human rights and for immediate needs, like stopping deportations, demanding jobs, health care, housing. But all these fights are part of a larger picture of a world dominated by a system that, at its root, creates, perpetuates and expands absolute poverty for hundreds of millions, and absolute wealth for a tiny few. It is critical that we understand which side we are on. The poor, dispossessed and excluded people of every race and ethnicity are objectively united in their class position, but subjectively divided by lack of understanding of their shared common interest and the necessity for unity.
This can only be resolved by organizing for power. Education and study must be part of the organizing effort. We are all in this together objectively as human beings, but we are not all in this together equally at this moment in history. Those who are doing well are comfortable with the way things are. The comfortable can stand aside and be blind to the reality of the poison that will eventually kill us all. We must recognize that those most affected are leading the fight, but it is in the interest of our common humanity to join that fight. Securing the needs of the most excluded, the poorest of the poor, “the least of these,” for food, housing, medical care, safety and security, must be the impetus for real unity of action and revolutionary systemic change.
In the 1930’s during the great depression, there were two positions, just as there are now, about how to resolve the crisis of millions of unemployed and starving people. The market capitalist position is simple: depressions are the operation of capitalism’s self cleansing system. That which is not profitable is destroyed so the new levels of advanced production can rise on the ashes of the old. It must be allowed to work itself out. When enough of the worthless people die off—people whose “cost of production” is higher than their productive worth—the unemployment rate will fall, the value of labor will rise, and the survivors can go back to work.
The satirist, Jonathan Swift took this calloused analysis to it logical extreme when he wrote “A Modest Proposal”((Jonathan Swift, “A Modest Proposal” https://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Texts/modest.html)) to end the Irish famine. He said the Irish should eat their children. That would end starvation, reduce the population, and adjust food production to the population size. Furthermore, the Irish could open restaurants and make money turning their children into dinners for the tourists.
I heard an Austrian economist say, “if you see a person starving and begging for food, I say let him starve until his belly button touches his back bone and then he will want to work.” Later I heard a pastor preach to his mega church that, “Compassion is evil. The poor need tough love.” Such modern day Jonathan Swifts are not being satirical.
The other solution is massive governmental intervention to create jobs and put people to work doing construction on our failing infrastructure and public spaces, like the Work Progress Administration’s (WPA) creation of New Orleans City Park.The New Deal put artists and writers to work, built schools, employed teachers, and achieved a great deal of success in many other areas as well. The wealth already existed for this scale of endeavor, but as long as it was held as private property by the few, a recovery that would benefit society as a whole was not possible.
Social Security, public hospitals and health care, Medicare, etc. were the products of the mass movement of people demanding these programs to meet human needs. All of these are under attack today. All things publicly owned are under attack, being defunded and taken over and privatized for the profit of the few. Public schools, hospitals and health care, public utilities, the post office, even in some places, fire departments are being privatized or so underfunded as to become non-functional. Michigan is an extreme example, but similar takeovers are probably happening in your city. In my city, the New Orleans Recreation Department that for years has provided playgrounds, pools, free sports and other programs, is being privatized in a so-called public private partnership.
We need to make the demand that ensuring the basic human needs of people is a social responsibility. Protecting our environment is not an option depending upon profitability but essential for life on the planet.
The human race and the environment face great peril at this time. The politics of greed threatens us all. Now is the time to take a stand with the people of Flint, Detroit, and Benton Harbor and the billion people living in absolute poverty. That people starve in the midst of abundance is morally reprehensible, unjust and unsustainable.
Decide whose side you are on and take a stand.
What you can do now:
- Study the Encyclical with others and take action on its recommendations in the defense of the environment and humanity.
- Demand the restoration of democracy in Michigan and ending that state’s emergency manager system.
- Demand that the governor and emergency manager be held accountable for poisoning a hundred thousand people in the city of Flint Michigan.
- Support the demand that the people poisoned in Flint get Medicare, that is, free health care for life no matter how old they are now.
- Demand that Flint be declared a disaster area to get full federal support.
- Demand the end to the attacks on voting rights, like those in Michigan, that are aimed at disenfranchising minorities, the poor, elderly, and students.
- Support the campaign to free Rev. Edward Pinkney. Visit bhbanco.org to see how you can help, or to donate to Rev. Pinkney’s legal defense.
- Stop the privatization of our public spaces and the transfer of public property to private corporations.