Distractions from Democracy

It's not big government that is the problem, but bad government. We all have a right to be pissed at what's going on in so many different areas. But let's focus our ire--our righteous indignation--and focus our work for change on the root source of the problem.

Let's connect some dots, and put issues in their larger context. We must stop granting distractions offered by proponents of the status quo the power to guide our actions.

Did an immigrant move your factory or call center overseas? Did an immigrant steal your pension? Did an immigrant cut your health care? Did an immigrant destroy American workers' right to organize? Did an immigrant crash the financial system? Was it immigrant workers who wrote the trade laws that have led to wage depression on both sides of the border while bonuses to banksters and corporate CEOs have grown to even more obscene levels?

The simplistic mantra of "What part of illegal don't you understand" must be turned back on those who utter it. Under American immigration law, being in the United States without legal status is a civil violation, not a crime. If we're merely a society of laws that must be upheld regardless of context, why don't these same people call for the immediate arrest of BushCheney for starting two illegal wars and eviscerating the American Constitution?

The American dream is not one in which only a few of us get insanely rich at the expense of the rest of us. The American dream is one where we all have a fair portion of the good things in life. Quality time with our family and friends. Opportunities to pursue our interests. Time to enjoy a natural world that is healthy and vibrant. The ability to further our education. Where our laws protect us, not oppress us. Where we have quality leisure time instead of spending one billion working hours per year in order to buy leisure wear. We must quit confusing standard of living with quality of life.

We cannot achieve economic prosperity by lowering wages and increasing consumption. The only way this can possibly come about is by increasing debt, which devalues our economy. Our future is now in the hands of foreign banks. Increasing poverty and debt levels, both personal and government, are contributing factors to America now qualifying as a third-world nation. America has become a debtor nation that cannot meet the needs of its own people without imports that exploit the people in developing nations and degrade and deplete our finite global store of natural resources.

This has all come about because we have allowed the fiction of a corporate person to overrule democracy. We have handed our sovereignty to a legal fiction. Corporations, which are supposed to be a tool of society, not the ruler of society, have bought our government, control our regulatory agencies--and now to add insult to injury--an activist Supreme Court has ruled corporations can buy our elections with impunity with the further fiction that money is speech.

It's long past time for we the people to reclaim our democracy and assert our sovereignty. We can and must do so. Relocalization--a rational, practical, affordable process to develop a sustainable future--provides a framework to support the opportunities to do so.

Dave Ewoldt's Opening Speech for AZ Senate Campaign

After securing and prepping a building for campaign headquarters, Dave Ewoldt gives a speech before opening ceremony.

Is the border Arizona's primary problem?

Is the border "problem" really the most pressing issue we have to deal with today?

Well, let's see. The planet is heating up, we've run out of the cheap, polluting energy necessary to continue economic growth, our elders are overdosing on prescription drugs at a rate three times higher than all illegal drugs combined, biodiversity is disappearing at a rate high enough to be called the Sixth Great Extinction, our local economies are being sucked dry by the corporate and financial elite who have stolen our democracy, and the activist Supreme Court has made it easier for them to continue doing so--as well as greasing the skids to ensure all these other problems continue unabated.

For the past 100 years we've depended on Mexicans to pick our food, make our beds, build our homes, and now we want to build an apartheid wall and militarize the border in order for us to continue denying our responsibility to fix the mess we've created by scapegoating the oppressed.

Can someone please explain to me the thinking, and I use that term very loosely, behind all this?

The "we" I'm referring to is the Western industrial civilization on steroids that is known as the American way of life. We feel so entitled to this way of life that our political leaders insist that it is "non-negotiable" when trying to formulate even weak and vapid responses to the environmental and social collapse rapidly heading our way due to ecocide, injustice, and inequity.

There is indeed a whole lot of room for improvement. Which is what makes it all so frustrating for me. There is a readily available alternative in relocalization--a rational, practical, affordable process to develop a sustainable future--that could actually serve to improve quality of life for all life. But here in Arizona people have allowed themselves to be distracted over the border issue as if it's the only thing that matters.

I mean, we can't blame the Mexicans for the Colorado River going dry, as it doesn't even make it to Mexico any longer.

The idea that as rational creatures we could use our highly vaunted intelligence to reverse direction as we discover we're going the wrong way is a concept I've been using in my research, writing and community work challenging the growth lobby for about a decade now. I've also found myself recently paraphrasing, on a rather regular basis, a line from Swami Beyondananda (Steve Bhaerman): Maybe it's past time for nature's children to start acting like nature's adults.

Hmm, do ya think?

We (Americans in the generic sense) aren't doing enough to turn the ship of state around--squiggly lightbulbs and hybrid cars not withstanding. The American way of consumer life is still being sold to the developing world as the highest good they could possibly aspire to. This is done for no other good reason but to support and continue economic growth that actually only benefits a very small sector of the global population--to the ultimate detriment of the majority as well as to the planet that supports our lives and economies.

What I'm discovering in my campaign for political office is that quite a few people don't want to think about the actual issues and what could be done about them. They just want to slap a band-aid on a few symptoms (what I call the wounds of empire) and get on with their life. They want things to return to normal and don't want to think about the fact that normal is what got us to this point.

For instance, the current status quo fantasy is that we're not really running out of water in the Southwest desert. It is taken as a given that some technology will come along to allow us to "invent" new water supplies (this used to be referred to as alchemy). The only thing we need to do is secure the border and everything will be just fine. Then we can go back to paving over the desert so the tourists who come to enjoy the desert will be able to quickly and more easily get from one place where the desert used to be to another place where the desert used to be.

The tourists just better hope their cars don't overheat. And that enough Americans--75% of whom, according to the Pentagon, are too overweight and/or out of shape to qualify for military service--will be available and willing to do all that paving for a minimum wage with no benefits for an out-of-state contractor enticed here with tax exemptions and waivers of development impact fees.

How Can We Really Change the Immigration Problem?

Dave Ewoldt

When asked, "What kind of policy changes would address the
root cause of the immigration problem?" Here's the answer I posted on Facebook. This evolved from a conversation I've been having over the past week with a Phoenix Republican on Daniel Patterson's (D-LD29) Facebook page.

It starts with a reframing of the issue. The fear-mongers like to say that the US is being invaded by illegals. But it sure seems to me like less of an invasion than the fact that they're being driven. We can't just simplistically explain away the ravages of corporate globalization by scapegoating. We're confusing effect with cause. For example, we want to believe that it's not wage depression due to NAFTA, or job loss due to off-shoring for higher profits, but that it's unsecure borders that are allowing "illegals" to come steal our jobs and consume our social resources.

The reality is that people's lands and livelihoods are being taken from them (all over the Global South) as a direct result of foreign and domestic policy that benefits a very narrow band of special interests. Understanding the cause is the first step in creating solutions. Scapegoating and only slapping band-aids on symptoms will make life worse for Arizonans, as well as everyone else. And, it can be objectively shown that these same US policies are responsible for a deteriorating quality of life for the majority as well as the quickly disappearing middle class.

We must also keep in mind that there's not a single fix, no magic bullet, but a number of interrelated strategies. We have to at least be honest about how the system we've setup is operating, what its real-world consequences are as opposed to what the theory insists should occur, and see what areas of agreement both sides in the debate can find to both return America to its greatness on the world stage and improve people's quality of life (which is too often confused with standard of living).

The actual policy response to immigration starts with strengthening local economies, both our own and Mexico's. This means ending subsidies for BigAg, dumping NAFTA and the WTO, and moving beyond the myth that export economies actually help anyone--besides Central Banks, that is. We must end the practice of off-shoring jobs in the race to the bottom as we elevate profit above people and planet. Profit does have its place, but I have a hard time believing it is more important than life. Further, states must reclaim their sovereign right to revoke corporate charters when harms outweigh benefits to society. If corporations want to claim the rights of
personhood, then they must also accept the responsibilities. We must also start being honest about the need for family planning, pre-natal and childhood nutrition, equitable access to health care, and elderly care. This would go a long way toward lowering birthrates without draconian Chinese style mandates that many opponents like to insist would be necessary.

What it comes down to is that if people's needs can be met in the homes with the families that they love, they won't feel the need to go somewhere else.