Senator Kirsten Gillibrand has just introduced the Federal Student Loan Refinancing Act, legislation which would allow students to refinance their college debt at a much lower fixed rate of interest. These reforms are especially needed now, because in July student loan rates in the US are set to double to nearly 7%. Strangely, this is also happening at a time when our government continues to allow billionaire Wall Street bankers to borrow money for a small fraction of that cost.

This important legislation could potentially save students billions in education debt, and would also function as a massive economic stimulus. Research from the Center for American Progress found that such proposed student loan refinancing would increase disposable income nationwide by an estimated $14.5 billion in just the first year.

The Huffington Post recently reported details of the senator’s bill, which would mandate that the U.S. Secretary of Education immediately refinance nearly 90% of all existing federally backed student loans:

The plan sponsored by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) would force the U.S. Secretary of Education to automatically refinance most government loans carrying interest rates above 4 percent into fixed, 4-percent loans. Roughly nine of 10 federally-backed loans would be affected, saving nearly 37 million borrowers billions of dollars in annual interest payments.

“At a time when corporations, homeowners and even local governments are refinancing at historically low-interest rates and saving millions of dollars, students and families who take out loans to pay for college are getting left behind,” Gillibrand said. “Ensuring that our graduates are not saddled with unmanageable debt by keeping interest rates low is just common sense.”

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It’s 5 o’clock, and Yasmina is running late for her after school drawing and painting class. She quickly grabs her watercolors, kisses her mother, and runs out the door. The public school is in the neighborhood, so luckily she doesn’t have far to go. She walks in the classroom and sees her four female classmates; but what you might not realize, is that Yasmina and her fellow students are all defying their culture’s norms just by showing up to their art class today.

Yasmina is 12 years old and is a Gypsy; her people are also known as Roma or Gitano. According to the Spanish census, the Roma population here is around 650,000; but this group is frequently wrongly stereotyped as uneducated and criminally inclined.

In Spain this community is extremely marginalized and oppressed — perhaps out of fear, but more likely out of ignorance. Some Spaniards incorrectly believe that all Gypsies only deal drugs and steal. In fact, many gypsies are often business entrepreneurs, working as traveling salespeople in public markets, while others labor as scrap collectors, or unappreciated recyclers.

But today Yasmina is still a student in Otxarkoaga’s public school, although she may not remain one for long. Since attending school might encourage interacting with boys and facing temptation, girls are often discouraged from continuing their education once they have reached a marriageable age. It is not that young women are expressly forbidden to go to school, bust most of their parents did not complete their studies, so they sometimes do not really see the point of it all.

In the traditional Roma culture, commonly girls were married off between the ages of 12 and 14, but now the appropriate age to wed is considered to be between 15 and 19 years of age. All girls are expected to comply with several honor codes to prove their loyalty and respect towards their future husband, such as not going out unaccompanied or wearing bikinis. Females are also subjected to a virginity test, or “prueba del pañuelo“.

Yasmina’s parents have allowed her go to this after school activity because they were assured only other Gitana girls were attending; the education has helped this aspiring young artist to remain hopeful:

“I really like coming to this class. I’m not a good painter yet, but maybe someday I will be. I really like it.”

When I asked her what she thought about dropping out of school, she stated that she didn’t want to; as she looked at the floor and smiled, she replied:

“Maybe I can go to school and have a family also. I really like seeing my friends and learning things like math and history. I also want to get married, but not yet! What if my husband us ugly?”

As Westerners, we often assume that such gender related restrictions only happen in remote Asian or African countries, but not here in “civilized” and “developed” regions. Too often we can take the right for girls to access education for granted, and wrongly assume that all women are actually allowed to live freely and marry whomever they choose.

Who would have thought that a single art class could reveal to me so much about our ignorance?

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Senator Elizabeth Warren has introduced her first bill, which allows for college students to borrow money at the same low rate of interest which Wall Street banks enjoy. Why would billionaire bankers be given a much more favorable loan rate than poor, struggling students? That is a very good question that the senior senator from Massachusetts has been asking.

Inexplicably, the US Congress is poised to allow our nation’s student loan interest rate to double to almost 7 percent, while huge banks are lent taxpayer money at a rate of less than 1 percent. Warren explained that the rate that students are being charged:

“…is nine times higher than the rate at which the government loans money to the big banks…The federal government is profiting off loans to our young people while giving a far better deal to the same Wall Street banks that crashed our economy and destroyed millions of jobs.

 That’s why I’ve introduced the Bank on Students Loan Fairness Act as my first bill in the Senate: To allow students to borrow money at the same rate as the biggest banks. Why should the big banks get a nearly-free ride while people trying to get an education pay nine times more? It isn’t right.”

Less Student Debt is a Good Investment

Warren reminds me of the insightful child who is repeatedly pointing out that the emperor has no clothes. The simple honest powerful words that Senator Elizabeth Warren speaks shine like brilliant undeniable earnest truths, clearly illuminating a thick dank sea of opaque political quagmire. How could anyone argue that the banking industry, which nearly bankrupt our nation, somehow deserves lower money lending rates than hard-working college students?

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Recently I was listening to an engrossing radio interview with the visionary economist and author, Gar Alperovitz, as he was discussing his new book, What Then Must We Do?,  which highlights the rise of cooperatives, worker ownership and the restructuring of our failing economy from the bottom up. The fact that this volume shares a title with the 19th century classic by Tolstoy, gives an indication of the scope and influence of this important work.

During the interview with Matthew Rothschild, editor of The Progressive, Alperovitz explained how economically stratified our nation has become, and illustrated just how distorted the distribution of wealth now is:

 ”400 people currently hold more wealth in this country than the bottom 180 million people. . . I threw that out in a lecture at one point, and some, in the question and answer period — I said that’s medieval, and some medieval scholar said, no, no, it was never that concentrated in medieval times.”

Our Cooperative Future 

Even though income inequality is more extreme now than it has ever been, who owns the wealth is starting to shift. Currently, over 140 million people in the United States are already involved in credit unions and cooperatives. Alperovitz explained that with the increasing rise of collectives and worker owned business, like the Evergreen greenhouse co-ops in Cleveland, there is now a rapidly expanding decentralized collective approach that is changing both business creation and ownership across our nation.

You can listen to the entire Gar Alperovitz radio podcast at The Progressive.

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Women began cycling during the late 1800s, and were often met with fierce derision because they defied and threatened the oppressive social norms  dictating that they must stay at home. The advent of the bicycle meant that girls were liberated to direct their own movement freely and unaccompanied. Females abandoned their ridiculously heavy skirts and corsets and started wearing “bloomers,” or loose fitted pants; but this new-found freedom and blatant dress code violations came at a price.

In the 19th century the bicycle was deemed inappropriate; women who rode were ridiculed, verbally assaulted, and sometimes even fined for being so “scandalous“. These pedal revolutionaries were considered indecent, crude, and smutty. According to writer Clare S. Simpson, women who rode bikes were:

“…far from respectable: not exactly prostitutes, perhaps, but possibly women of loose morals or with an undeveloped sense of propriety.”

But this is outdated history, right?

While I was riding my bike last month a man screamed that he would rather put me in his sandwich instead of the “chorizo” he was eating. A week later another male whistled and hooted that I was “beautiful” and “hot”.  Many of my male friends have posters of bicycles and women depicted in awkward sexy positions with contrived pouting sultry faces. They often pose with high heels, short shorts, skimpy tank tops, make up caked on and stylized hair. These images are overtly sexualized, and somewhat ludicrous. I mean, why would anyone wear high heels to ride a bicycle?

These images are problematic because they create an unrealistic standard to which every woman is expected to aspire. Many men who observe females riding bicycles do not see a sensible sustainable method of transportation, but instead instantly objectify us, and seem to think that we are merely some sex toy that is bent over for their pleasure and amusement.

Bicycling as a Revolutionary Act

When we ride are we expected to be like those overtly feminine poster girls? We can’t sweat, can’t mess up our hair, can’t have runny eyeliner and can’t even fall down, because bruises are unattractive and not lady-like. When we challenge society’s gender rules we are then frequently masculinized, and considered to be “bad-ass” and “one of the boys”.

But patriarchal hegemony wants us to believe that our value lies only in being attractive to men, so we fight against being strong and capable, and instead strive to be superficially idolized, like the silly women in these illustrations. In 1896, the activist Susan B Anthony stated that bicycling:

“…has done more to emancipate women than any single other thing in the world. It gives women a feeling of freedom and self-reliance.”

This is still true in many cases. Many girls in India now have a chance to go to school because of access to free bicycles. Females in Nepal have a lower risk of being raped due to the freedom provided by bicycles.

Cycling also helps the body stay fit and is environmentally friendly, and provides numerous benefits that allow for self autonomy, mobility, and health, all factors that help our society to evolve and improve. Although when I am riding my bike, some days it still feels like some people do not understand just how truly liberating riding a bicycle can be.

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Last month we returned to our beloved Latona Community Garden in San Francisco’s Bayview District for a spring party. Scores of local families came to the festive event, which included free face painting, egg decorating, crafts and lots of donated fresh healthy food, as well as a fundraising raffle, local speakers, plantings and compost education.

For decades this small patch of land functioned as a blighted dumping ground, replete with mounds of nasty garbage and noxious weeds. My spouse and I helped to transform and create this shared neighborhood space several years ago, so it was especially gratifying to see that the urban garden is continuing to thrive.

Many different people worked together to create the social spring garden party on Latona Street, including our old friend Jeffrey Betcher and the Quesada Gardens Initiative. Other organizations who helped out include the Girls 2000 program from Hunters Point Family, SEFA Food Guardians, SF Environment, Seed Library SF, as well as student volunteers from the University of San Francisco.

Here are more photographs from the recent community gathering in our old San Francisco neighborhood garden:

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President Barack Obama did not give his regular public address to the nation this week; in his place was Francine Wheeler, whose six-year-old child was brutally murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary School four months ago. The grieving parent used the national broadcast to express why she believes that the United States must implement common sense gun safety reforms.

In her heartfelt video address, Ms. Wheeler explained that even though the public outrage over last year’s bloody mass shooting in Connecticut may have waned, the excruciating daily pain of her son’s tragic death has not faded at all:

“I’ve heard people say that the tidal wave of anguish our country felt on 12/14 has receded — but not for us. To us, it feels as if it happened just yesterday; and in the four months since we lost our loved ones, thousands of other Americans have died at the end of a gun. Thousands of other families across the United States are also drowning in our grief. Please help us do something before our tragedy becomes your tragedy.”

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On her show this week, Rachel Maddow highlighted a satirical commercial featuring Exxon that is especially funny, because the bizarre scenario that it depicts is actually strangely close to reality. Comedian Andy Cobb is presented as a spokesperson for the corporate oil giant’s newest method of petroleum delivery, flooding your neighborhood streets and lawns directly with their viscous toxic crude:

“Our nationwide lawn immersion systems, or ‘pipelines’, make our industry the Johnny Appleseed of getting shit fucking everywhere. So explore, wherever you’re going, we’re already there. Exxon — this rancid sludge won’t spew everywhere all by itself.”

Rancid Rivers of Tar Sands Sludge

There have been over 300 oil pipeline spills industry wide in 2012 alone; and just in the first few months of this year, there have already been a rash of catastrophic crude spills and petrochemical pipeline disasters. The rivers of putrid tar sands oil that have been spewing into the suburban neighborhoods of Mayflower, Arkansas clearly illustrate that continued investment in this increasingly obsolete and polluting technology is unsustainable.

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A new study from the Center for American Progress (CAP) has discovered a strong correlation between robust weapons regulations and much lower rates of gun violence.

The research is entitled: “America Under The Gun“, and utilized various metrics to measure gun violence in each of the United States; the factors ranged from aggregating gun related murders and crimes, to counting how many weapons the state exports to other regions. The information was compiled and averaged, then each state was ranked from 1-50 on the gun violence scale. Louisiana had the highest firearm violence score, while Hawaii’s 45.4 ranking was the lowest in the nation.

Unless you are inclined to believe the fatuous fiction spewed by the NRA, it will not shock you that when these statistical rankings were compared with how strong each state’s gun control laws are, the study found a powerful correlation between weak weapons regulation and higher violence levels. States with inferior gun control laws contributed much more to the overall rates of gun violence across the nation:

“While many factors contribute to the rates of gun violence in any state, our research clearly demonstrates a significant correlation between the strength of a state’s gun laws and the prevalence of gun violence in the state. Across the key indicators of gun violence that we analyzed, the 10 states with the weakest gun laws collectively have a level of gun violence that is more than twice as high—104 percent higher—than the 10 states with the strongest gun laws.”

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The long-term personal costs of waging violent foreign wars are rarely discussed before our nation decides to launch one of these unnecessary military invasions. How the devastating psychological aftermath and traumatic physical injuries caused by war directly impact the lives of millions of veterans, and their families, somehow seems to get lost in the blind rush to attack.

Body of War

Decorated Iraq War veteran Tomas Young was paralyzed in 2004, after being injured during his service in Iraq. Young has since become a vocal activist working for peace, and is a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War. He has also recently stated that he has decided to stop receiving his liquid diet and medicines — which must be administered through a feeding tube — a choice which will lead to his death.

Joining Democracy Now from his home in Kansas City with his wife Claudia, Young read from his powerfully honest letter, “A Message to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney from a Dying Veteran”. On the ten-year anniversary of the occupation of Iraq, this is what the brave young soldier told Bush and Cheney:

“I write this letter on the 10th anniversary of the Iraq War on behalf of my fellow Iraq War veterans. I write this letter on behalf of the 4,488 soldiers and Marines who died in Iraq. I write this letter on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of veterans who have been wounded and on behalf of those whose wounds, physical and psychological, have destroyed their lives. I am one of those gravely wounded. I was paralyzed in an insurgent ambush in 2004 in Sadr City. My life is coming to an end. I am living under hospice care.

I write this letter on behalf of husbands and wives who have lost spouses, on behalf of children who have lost a parent, on behalf of the fathers and mothers who have lost sons and daughters and on behalf of those who care for the many thousands of my fellow veterans who have brain injuries. I write this letter on behalf of those veterans whose trauma and self-revulsion for what they have witnessed, endured and done in Iraq have led to suicide and on behalf of the active-duty soldiers and Marines who commit, on average, a suicide a day. I write this letter on behalf of the some 1 million Iraqi dead and on behalf of the countless Iraqi wounded. I write this letter on behalf of us all—the human detritus your war has left behind, those who will spend their lives in unending pain and grief.

I write this letter, my last letter, to you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney. I write not because I think you grasp the terrible human and moral consequences of your lies, manipulation and thirst for wealth and power. I write this letter because, before my own death, I want to make it clear that I, and hundreds of thousands of my fellow veterans, along with millions of my fellow citizens, along with hundreds of millions more in Iraq and the Middle East, know fully who you are and what you have done. You may evade justice but in our eyes you are each guilty of egregious war crimes, of plunder and, finally, of murder, including the murder of thousands of young Americans—my fellow veterans—whose future you stole.

Your positions of authority, your millions of dollars of personal wealth, your public relations consultants, your privilege and your power cannot mask the hollowness of your character. You sent us to fight and die in Iraq after you, Mr. Cheney, dodged the draft in Vietnam, and you, Mr. Bush, went AWOL from your National Guard unit. Your cowardice and selfishness were established decades ago. You were not willing to risk yourselves for our nation but you sent hundreds of thousands of young men and women to be sacrificed in a senseless war with no more thought than it takes to put out the garbage.

I joined the Army two days after the 9/11 attacks. I joined the Army because our country had been attacked. I wanted to strike back at those who had killed some 3,000 of my fellow citizens. I did not join the Army to go to Iraq, a country that had no part in the September 2001 attacks and did not pose a threat to its neighbors, much less to the United States. I did not join the Army to ‘liberate’ Iraqis or to shut down mythical weapons-of-mass-destruction facilities or to implant what you cynically called ‘democracy’ in Baghdad and the Middle East. I did not join the Army to rebuild Iraq, which at the time you told us could be paid for by Iraq’s oil revenues. Instead, this war has cost the United States over $3 trillion. I especially did not join the Army to carry out pre-emptive war.

Pre-emptive war is illegal under international law. And as a soldier in Iraq I was, I now know, abetting your idiocy and your crimes. The Iraq War is the largest strategic blunder in U.S. history. It obliterated the balance of power in the Middle East. It installed a corrupt and brutal pro-Iranian government in Baghdad, one cemented in power through the use of torture, death squads and terror. And it has left Iran as the dominant force in the region. On every level—moral, strategic, military and economic—Iraq was a failure. And it was you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, who started this war. It is you who should pay the consequences.

I would not be writing this letter if I had been wounded fighting in Afghanistan against those forces that carried out the attacks of 9/11. Had I been wounded there I would still be miserable because of my physical deterioration and imminent death, but I would at least have the comfort of knowing that my injuries were a consequence of my own decision to defend the country I love. I would not have to lie in my bed, my body filled with painkillers, my life ebbing away, and deal with the fact that hundreds of thousands of human beings, including children, including myself, were sacrificed by you for little more than the greed of oil companies, for your alliance with the oil sheiks in Saudi Arabia, and your insane visions of empire.

I have, like many other disabled veterans, suffered from the inadequate and often inept care provided by the Veterans Administration. I have, like many other disabled veterans, come to realize that our mental and physical wounds are of no interest to you, perhaps of no interest to any politician. We were used. We were betrayed. And we have been abandoned. You, Mr. Bush, make much pretense of being a Christian. But isn’t lying a sin? Isn’t murder a sin? Aren’t theft and selfish ambition sins? I am not a Christian. But I believe in the Christian ideal. I believe that what you do to the least of your brothers you finally do to yourself, to your own soul.

My day of reckoning is upon me. Yours will come. I hope you will be put on trial. But mostly I hope, for your sakes, that you find the moral courage to face what you have done to me and to many, many others who deserved to live. I hope that before your time on earth ends, as mine is now ending, you will find the strength of character to stand before the American public and the world, and in particular the Iraqi people, and beg for forgiveness.”

 

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