PETER CAMEJO

first published in As It Ought To Be, September 14, 2009

Peter Camejo, Socialist Workers Party candidate for US President, 1976.

REMEMBERING PETER CAMEJO

by Matt Gonzalez

Yesterday marked the one-year anniversary of Peter Camejo’s death. He had been battling cancer (lymphoma) for over a year. It was in remission then came back suddenly and killed him.

I spoke to Peter the last week of his life, in fact, just a couple of days before his death while I was in Ohio campaigning with Ralph Nader. Nader and I took turns talking with Peter by telephone. It was apparent that he was going to die, so there were many heartfelt words exchanged. I made sure to tell him that he had much to be proud of, that we loved him greatly, and that we would miss having him at our side.

Most people know Peter Camejo as a three-time Green Party candidate for Governor of California and for his run with Ralph Nader in 2004. Others recall his days with the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), when he ran for US President in 1976 (with running mate Willie Mae Reid) against both Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter.

Peter was also an author. He wrote about post-American Civil War politics (Racism, Revolution, Reaction 1861-1877, The Rise and Fall of Radical Reconstruction) and about progressive financial investing (The SRI Advantage: Why Socially Responsible Investing Has Outperformed Financially).

Many of his speeches from his period with the SWP were published by Pathfinder press in pamphlet form including: Who Killed Jim Crow?; Allende’s Chile: Is It Going Socialist?; Liberalism, Ultraleftism, Or Mass Action; How to Make a Revolution in the US; and Cuba and the Central American Revolution.

Peter marched with Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma and participated in the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, culminating in his expulsion from the University of California and subsequent run for mayor of Berkeley. It was during this era when then Governor Ronald Reagan declared Peter “one of the 10 most dangerous men in California”.

It is without question that Peter was one of the important members of the American Left of the last half-century. He had combated injustice his entire life and helped plant the seeds for many progressive ideas that are popular now.

None of the things we fight for today: gay marriage, equal rights for women, fair wage laws, immigrant rights, universal health care, would exist or even be conceived of, had there not been men and women like Peter pushing from one side — agitating and making people uncomfortable. It amazes me how once these ideas are commonplace, we celebrate the politicians who joined the effort at the last moment, when victory was all but assured. There’s little credit given to how we got on the beachhead in the first place.

What does it mean to stand up against something that won’t budge, long before it’s poised to be the majority sentiment?

Peter knew the system would crumble someday. Politics as we know it will someday buckle under the pressure of human desires for a more egalitarian and democratic world. And when it happens, the “successful” politicians will not be remembered. They were the ones that took the easy path. Worked for change on the margin. Wanted the winner’s circle at all cost. Even if it meant denying what they knew to be the truth.

Peter believed the two-party system was a failure, pure and simple. He mused how years from now historians will scratch their heads and wonder how people tolerated its oppressiveness? Its days are numbered. Just as slavery was, just as the overt subjugation of woman was, just as concentrated capital’s refusal to pay decent wages and give human beings the benefits they deserve cannot be sustained for much longer.

Peter stood up to say that both parties defended corporations such that the differences, we’re told matter, hardly alleviate any true suffering.

Peter wanted to live in a democracy. He wanted an economic system that produced for human needs not profits. He often said that the only reason someone hires you when you’re looking for a job is that they decide you can make them more money than what they’re going to pay you. He dared to say this was wrong.

He noted that the wealthy mistakenly believed they had earned their wealth and that they believed the poor just didn’t work hard enough. He pointed out that the notion that people should be allowed to do as they please with their earnings overlooked that the manner in which this wealth was invested and enjoyed often meant whether you and I would have a job, whether there would be pollution in the air, and what wars we would be fighting.

Many disparaged Peter’s electoral efforts. The press often referred to the “perennial candidate”, as if to say “here we go again, this candidate doesn’t have a chance”. In their minds they’d say, he barely registered, in terms of percentage of the vote, when he ran for president (91,000 votes or 0.1% of the vote in 1976) or governor (in his best showing, 400,000 votes or 5.3% of the vote in 2002) so why should they cover his efforts?

But Peter wasn’t discouraged by these election results because he understood that the things we fight for today will come to pass, if only by the sheer strength of the logic and decency of the principles we advocate. He was very aware of Latin American examples of minor parties becoming ruling parties in a matter of a single generation.

Peter spoke of Hugo Blanco who led a peasant revolt among the Quechua in Peru in the early 1960s. He was nearly killed by the government and ultimately was given a 25-year jail sentence. Peter visited him at the prison on the Island of El Fronton, during the period of his “exile”. 15 years later in 1978, Blanco was elected to Parliament, as a member of the Workers Revolutionary Party.

There are many stories like this one, where political efforts are totally marginalized, before becoming the dominant strand. Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva helped found the Brazilian Workers Party in 1980. He ran three times for the presidency unsuccessfully, finally winning the 4th time in 2002.

It only took two decades, Peter would have said.

Peter placed his vision of what was possible in the context of these struggles. He couldn’t be dissuaded of his politics just because they weren’t in fashion yet.

Our society has a way of romanticizing past radicals. We don’t think twice when we see Che Guevara on a t-shirt. Many hold up the agrarian revolution that Emiliano Zapata participated in, and think romantically that they would have fought at his side, but the truth is far from that. How many of these people condemn the efforts of politicians like Peter Camejo? How many would have said the timing isn’t right? How many wouldn’t have lifted a finger to help?

Peter Camejo was a beautiful man. He was unreasonable. He thought the timing was right now. He didn’t capitulate like so many of his contemporaries did. He was a socialist.

Peter Camejo’s memoir, North Star, will be published in 2010 by Haymarket Books.

VINCENT VAN GOGH

first published in As It Ought To Be, August 5, 2009

The Painter on the Road to Tarascon by Vincent van Gogh, 1888.

THE PAINTER ON THE ROAD TO TARASCON by Matt Gonzalez

Laden with his brushes and props, one is struck by the spring in his step, his single-minded purpose. Yet anticipation hovers over the Provencal landscape, for one cannot help but guess what subject the painter will capture later this day. Straw hat firmly on his head, blazing sunlight cascading over the path… One can get thirsty looking at this painting.

But the thick, seemingly wet paint, masks an unexpected truth: The painting does not exist. For though the artist painted it, only technology, the very thing that today spoils the once calm rural landscape depicted, allows us to still view the painting. The original was lost during WW II, believed destroyed when Allied forces bombed Magdeburg, setting fire to the Kaiser-Friedrich Museum where it was housed.

Striding along a row of trees the painter is alone, but for the presence of his shadow that figures prominently in the lower right foreground of the canvas. His bold walking companion could easily pass for a bullfighter, but now runs alongside and only barely keeps up with his friend to whom he’s tethered.

Wearing a broad-brimmed yellow hat and carrying a camp stool and easel strapped to his back, rolled canvas also, and walking cane in his left hand… the painter on the road to Tarascon cuts the very image of the plein-air painter…off to find his ground, to peer at the world from. Painted in July 1888, it prefigures so much for Vincent van Gogh. Within a month Paul Gauguin will join him in Arles. By the end of the year he will suffer his first seizure, and within two years he will both sell his first painting in Brussels, and fatally shoot himself in the chest at Auvers-sur-Oise. Dead at the age of thirty-seven.

This rural thoroughfare then, running north from Arles to Tarascon, is his last peace before so much turmoil envelopes and overtakes him. But that is later… I believe the painter on the road to Tarascon to be content.

THE PUBLIC DEFENDER

first published in Fog City Journal, July 8, 2009

Jeff Adachi conferring with a client, photo by Robert Gumpert

DEFENDING THE PUBLIC DEFENDER

by Matt Gonzalez & G. Whitney Leigh

SAN FRANCISCO’S PUBLIC DEFENDER, Jeff Adachi, is facing a $1.9 million dollar cut from his budget. The cut comprises nearly 10% of his operating budget, which is primarily used to pay for lawyers who provide services to the City’s poor.

No other big city department in San Francisco is facing cuts of this magnitude. And the machinations that have led to this are among the most unusual at City Hall.

First, Mayor Gavin Newsom proposed cutting the public defender budget under the guise of saving money. He decided, against a trend followed in many other California cities (who are working to expand or create “second” public defense offices), that the public defender is too expensive and a large portion of its cases could be transferred to the private defense bar at a savings.

But audits by the City’s controller showed that Newsom’s plan to substitute private attorneys for public defenders would cost the city more, for simple reasons. Public defender lawyers work on a salary and do not earn overtime, even though their workload routinely compels a 10-hour+ workday. Private attorneys, by contrast, who customarily only handle cases the public defender cannot due to a conflict of interest, charge $85-$125 an hour. Not surprisingly, the evidence established Newsom’s plan to transfer cases to private attorneys would significantly increase the costs to the City by over $1 million dollars each year.

So why was this plan put forward in the first place?

Jeff Adachi, the only publicly elected Public Defender in California, is unafraid to disagree with our mayor (or any other public official) on policy issues and routinely exhibits independence.

For example, Adachi is a vocal opponent of the City Attorney’s use of so-called “gang injunctions”, that facilitate the profiling and unlawful arrest of African American and Latino youth based on vague criteria easily susceptible to abuse. Adachi’s critique has proved prescient, as trial courts have found that several men have already been wrongfully identified by police as gang members.

Adachi also is a vocal critic of the community courts, a pet project of the mayor that diverts enormous funds to the prosecution of “quality of life” crimes – a project that many view as more important to Newsom’s gubernatorial aspirations than to making San Francisco a safer place to live. (Adachi staffed the court himself after the Mayor refused to allocate any resources to his office for doing so and a recent report shows that the court has been ineffective in its first three months of operation.)

Newsom’s proposed cuts would effectively require Adachi to lay off at least 15 lawyers –each of whom already handles a caseload that would stagger the average San Francisco attorney. The impact of such a reduction on the ability of attorneys to provide the poor and indigent with a basic criminal defense is hard to overstate.

Facing such severe budget cuts, Adachi sought help from the Board of Supervisors. Given the uncontested evidence that slashing the Public Defender’s office would cost the City greatly – in addition to harming the poorest among us, one would assume he would have found a receptive, or at least fiscally responsible ear.

But several members of the Board –including many “progressives”, have endorsed a new, equally foolish, and in fact more suspect justification for not helping preserve the Public Defender’s resources, inexplicably not understanding Adachi’s office’s role in aiding the poor.

The Board’s budget and finance committee initially voted 4-1 to reinstate $600,000 of his budget, but under the direction of Board President David Chiu the budget committee decided to transfer $300,000 from Adachi’s budget to the District Attorney’s office. Chiu, a former prosecutor who once handled misdemeanor cases, justified his actions on July 1, 2009 by saying he could not support giving money to the Public Defender and not giving the equivalent to the District Attorney’s office.

Chiu’s reasoning is flawed for a number of reasons. Budgeting is based on need. Adachi established that his caseloads were high and that he would most likely be forced to outsource cases if the cuts took effect. So why on earth should there be an expectation that some of these monies first cut from, then restored to, his budget should be allocated to the District Attorney’s office?

But Chiu’s comments also demonstrate a deep misunderstanding of the fundamental differences between each office. The District Attorney’s office budget is $40 million dollars, nearly twice the amount of the Public Defender’s budget. And the District Attorney receives over $7 million a year in state and federal grant funding not available to the Public Defender’s office.

Under these circumstances, simply taking $300,000 from the Public Defender’s office and giving it to the District Attorney for the sake of “equity” makes little sense, to put it mildly.

Even the San Francisco Chronicle published an editorial in Adachi’s favor. On June 29, 2009 they called the Mayor’s proposed cuts “seriously shortsighted and dishonest”. They noted the Public Defender’s office’s 90 lawyers handle nearly 29,000 cases a year.

No Supervisor that votes to cut this budget while transferring monies to the District Attorney’s office should call themselves progressive. By comparison, the District Attorney’s office has only suffered a 3% general fund cut (more easily absorbed in a budget twice the size) and will likely grow in size when homeland security and stimulus package money is taken into account.

So why are progressives taking money from our Public Defender and transferring it to the District Attorney’s office? That’s a question that the full Board will answer when it reconsiders the Public Defender’s budget on July 14th – ironically, Bastille Day.

In trying economic times, the workload of our Public Defender’s office is only going to expand. Gutting a department that is already overloaded with cases with substantially fewer attorneys and resources than the City Attorney’s office and District Attorney’s office doesn’t make sense. And turning a blind eye to the effect such cuts will have – on poor people accused of crimes denied adequate representation – or to the increased costs the City will incur as a result, is not consistent with San Francisco values or common sense.

Comment from Matt Gonzalez: The proposed restoration of 600K to the Public Defender was cut in half when Board President David Chiu stated he would not support giving the Public Defender money if equal money were not given to the District Attorney.  Thereafter 300K was given to the District Attorney (According to Budget Chair John Avalos this was done via stimulus package money, ARRA funds) and only half of the proposed restoration (300K) was given to the Public Defender.

As things stand now, despite the 300K restoration, the Public Defender’s budget has been cut by $1.6 million.

Further comment by G. Whitney Leigh: All of this, of course, underscores the fundamental illogic of tying a restoration of funds taken from the public defender’s budget with a “quid pro quo” allocation of funds to the district attorney’s office in the first place.  As previously observed, the district attorney’s budget dwarfs the public defender’s budget and is backed by multiple additional funding sources (including stimulus funds, like the ARRA) not available to the public defender.

EMINENT DOMAIN

first published in The Argonaut, July 3, 2009

Great Seal of King John attached to Magna Carta, from the British Library

A MODEST PROPOSAL TO CONTAIN EMINENT DOMAIN by Matt Gonzalez

“[N]or shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.” United States Constitution, 5th Amendment, Takings Clause

WHEN JAMES MADISON WROTE THE “takings clause” he couldn’t have expected courts would misread it in subsequent years. Madison plainly wrote that only a “public use” would justify taking private property by government, but courts have found that takings resulting in a “public benefit” meet those criteria. This reading falls far from its origins.

Various Magna Carta clauses gave birth to due process rights, resulting from King John’s abusive 13th century reign in England, including section 39, which addresses takings:

“No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land.”

Chaos forced John to make concessions. He had legitimacy problems stemming from the death of his brother and claims to the throne by a nephew, Arthur of Brittany. Bishops agitated for rights in selecting the Archbishop of Canterbury; and he lost Normandy in a failed war against France, levying heavy taxes in the process.

Rebelling barons, tired of his abuses, asserted rights, forever altering the throne’s power. Consequently, due process, grand juries and eminent domain protections were codified on June 15, 1215, at Runnymeade, west of London, when John affixed his seal to Magna Carta.

Our founders incorporated eminent domain constraints in the US Constitution, but subsequent legal decisions have negated those recognized customs.

The Supreme Court ruled in Boston & Roxbury Mill Corp. v. Newman (1832) that a private mill company could flood a neighbor’s property while building a new industrial area because it served a public benefit, though the government did not directly use the property.

Berman v. Parker (1954), held that so-called “blighted” structures could be razed as part of a revitalization plan for the District of Columbia. Even non-blighted property could be forfeited in furtherance of a plan allowing private developers to build office space and a shopping center.

In Kelo v. City of New London (2005), our Supreme Court allowed a Connecticut city’s claim that new jobs and increased tax revenue were sufficient to justify takings of private homes. Justice O’Connor rightfully noted the decision effectively deleted the words ‘for public use’ from the Constitution.

Often justifications for takings never materialize. Only 3 of 80 factories the Boston & Roxbury Mill Dam was to attract were ever built. And the Kelo development has yet to break ground.

The question is what to do if the building of any shopping center can justify the taking of private property?

Runnymeade

California voters have considered two statewide propositions since Kelo, yet problems persist.

Voters properly rejected the expansive Proposition 9 (2006) mandating compensation if any state action caused economic loss, while voters passed Proposition 99 (2008), which prohibited residential takings for conveyance to another private person. However, the measure created a new “blight” analysis allowing takings in instances of “public health and safety” and “preventing serious, repeated, criminal activity.” Seemingly clear, these terms are no more likely to keep their meaning than Madison’s “public use” was.

California’s Constitution should be modified:

–Define “public use” narrowly to exclude “public benefit”, disavowing takings for all private development. South Dakota does this.

–Require any taking be the “least disruptive” to achieve the desired public use; meaning no other reasonable alternative to the taking exists.

–Mandate compensation be 150% of the property’s assessed market value. Adding a substantial sum to what must be paid disincentivizes government takings. Missouri and Indiana require a minimum of 125% be paid. Kansas requires 200% in some cases.

Governments have a way of encroaching on rights, even settled ones. The Patriot Act, Military Commissions Act, and Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act are other examples of this. Vigilance is necessary if we’re to benefit from past civil rights struggles.

TRANSBAY AUTHORITY

first published in the San Francisco Chronicle, June 15, 2009; an edited version appears below

Event poster by Chuck Sperry

A BLACK BART LESSON FOR TRANSBAY AUTHORITY by Warren Hinckle, Matt Gonzalez & Jello Biafra

IF WE CAN LEARN FROM HISTORY, attention should be paid to Black Bart. The legendary gentleman stagecoach bandit robbed only the strong boxes, not the passengers. He was always polite, apologized for any inconvenience, and even left a poem on his departure. Many call eminent domain robbery, which may be true; but what is inarguable is that government taking of private property should be polite and, above all, financially fair to the victims of “progress.”

This regrettably hasn’t been the case with the actions of the Transbay Joint Powers Authority. In 2005, San Francisco Supervisors approved the Transbay Redevelopment Plan creating “the Grand Central Station of the West” – a central terminal for Bay Area trains and buses. In its wake the project is slated to devour private property through the use of eminent domain (the law by which government can take private property). The legal taking has unfortunately shown little regard for compensating the small businesses located within the project’s boundaries.

Twelve businesses are scheduled for condemnation this year and another 21 are to be “taken” next year, including the oldest photography business in the city, Adolph Gasser. Others are well known, including Zebulon restaurant and bar, John Collins bar and Reynoso Florist (which has been at the same location for 30 years).

An egregious example of those immediately threatened is Varnish Fine Art, which is a 7-year-old art gallery, on Natoma between First and Second streets. Co-owners Jen Rogers and Kerri Stephens created one of the city’s most inventive art galleries and wine bars, housed in a two-story, early 20th century brewery, which they went to great costs to seismically retrofit and refurbish, only to abruptly have their lease terminated by the authority when it became their new landlord.

The building which hosted hundreds of art openings, book parties and weddings, will be torn down in October, and Varnish hasn’t even been offered a nominal courtesy of a reduction in rent for the remaining months.

A Bay Area appraisal firm calculated their loss of business goodwill at $470,000, taking into account cash invested and the sweat equity the owners expended. By contrast, the authority hired a Los Angeles appraiser who calculated losses – without ever visiting the site – at less than $66,000.  Obviously something is amiss, but the authority refuses to budge off its number and Varnish reports that the authority has been cold and arbitrary in its communications.

The authority has shown none of the class of Black Bart, who at least tried to make the “taking” experience less painful on stagecoach passengers. All told, the monetary difference between what business owners are seeking and what the authority is offering doesn’t even amount to 1/10 of 1 percent of the project’s estimated cost of $4.2 billion. The authority seems fixated on staying within those projections instead of ensuring the affected businesses are cared for.

Businesses can demand a trial to settle property appraisals. For most, however, the costs to retain trial attorneys and additional delays isn’t practical when they simultaneously face the logistics of relocation. The word “redevelopment” in the enabling act of the authority gives pause to those who remember the botched Fillmore District plan decades ago when the property of the city’s black population was grabbed for farthings and the property owners were left with only broken promises of relocation under the guise of eliminating “blight.”

The scars of the tragically mishandled Fillmore redevelopment remain both on the physical landscape and psychic history of the city. The fact that city supervisors have a voice in the Transbay Joint Power Authority’s redevelopment gives hope for equitable treatment to the small businesses effected. We trust they will command the attention of the authority bureaucrats running this project and teach them some manners.

TAXI-MEDALLION SYSTEM

first published in the San Francisco Examiner, June 10, 2009

STOP ROMANTICIZING BROKEN TAXI-MEDALLION SYSTEM

by Matt Gonzalez

RECENT SUGGESTIONS BY Mayor Gavin Newsom’s administration that San Francisco should consider selling taxi medallions to raise revenue have been greeted with cynicism from some quarters. Such a plan would replace the current system of giving away medallions to the next driver on a first-come, first-served basis. Some have called Newsom’s idea outright theft; others proclaim he wants to institute a sweatshop system undermining a venerable entitlement program supporters claim favors working drivers.

While I disagree with Newsom’s motives, other critics ignore what many in the taxi industry now openly acknowledge: The current system is already a sweatshop that serves few at the expense of many hard-working drivers who want to make this their lifelong profession, but stand no chance of receiving a medallion. Moreover, even medallion holders aren’t left with any kind of graceful “exit strategy” at the end of their career.

Our taxi system works like this: The City has a limited number of medallions that sets the amount of taxis that can be in service at any time. Medallions are not issued to cab companies. But when a driver isn’t using a medallion, it’s usually “leased” to a company.

A medallion is valuable because it generates roughly $2,000 a month when someone else is renting it.

The system, implemented in 1978 when Proposition K was passed by voters, intended to keep medallions out of the hands of taxi companies and ensure that working drivers received the greatest benefit. Initially successful, the wait-list for a medallion is nearly 20 years now, pitting drivers with a medallion against those waiting for one.

Many medallion holders are now in their 80s.

Because of the driving requirement, an older or disabled driver who can’t drive can be stripped of their medallion with no compensation for not working an average of three shifts a week. In one instance, a driver who reported advancing blindness was told by the Taxi Commission to keep driving or surrender his medallion.

Presently, the working driver builds no equity with their medallion — therefore receiving nothing when it’s taken. This incentivizes hanging on regardless of safety concerns and encourages fraud.

Prop K supporters say the “fix” is not enforcing the driving requirement against old or disabled drivers, which is more in keeping with the Americans with Disabilities Act (an issue pending in court). In doing that, however, the wait-list will certainly grow and the purpose of Prop. K would be undermined — “working drivers” wouldn’t have medallions.

Others urge creating a transferability system that allows a driver at the end of their career to sell the medallion to another working driver through a city-operated public auction. Cities, including the nation’s largest, New York, run such a program, with auction proceeds from new medallions going to the city. Proceeds from driver-owned medallions benefit the retiring driver, less any added city fees, thus creating a constant revenue stream.

There are some concerns, but the primary argument raised, that drivers can’t afford to purchase medallions, overlooks the obvious: monies earned “leasing” a medallion to a cab company generates income that can assist in its purchase and banks risk little making a loan secured by medallions that can be transferred to others upon default.

Just as home buyers rarely own their homes outright, the equity drivers would earn paying off “mortgages” is valuable and may even serve as a surrogate for savings.

Not surprisingly, in New York City hundreds of drivers lineup for the opportunity to purchase a medallion at auction.

Certain issues need addressing before a new system is adopted. What if banks won’t finance medallions without hefty down payments? Can The City develop a down-payment-assistance program? What about drivers at the top of the wait-list who are close to receiving a medallion?

Newsom’s administration unfortunately emphasizes selling medallions to balance The City’s budget rather than because it’s good policy. But money raised through any new system should be committed to health care and retirement, the absence of which has been a chronic industry concern for all drivers, including those who don’t purchase medallions.

Providing benefits in this manner would retain the independence of drivers who aren’t interested in obtaining benefits through any system that categorizes them as city employees, yet keeps the system’s unique San Francisco feature: medallions only to working drivers.

While attempts to raid taxi coffers by Newsom should be opposed unless driver health care and retirement issues are addressed, we shouldn’t cement Prop. K into stone, as Supervisor Chris Daly has proposed. It doesn’t address the chronic deficiencies in how The City manages taxi affairs, and romanticizing Prop. K only perpetuates a broken system.

The Municipal Transportation Agency has recently assumed responsibility for taxi regulations. Let’s not squander this opportunity to fix Prop. K.

WILLIAM THEOPHILUS BROWN

first published in the San Francisco Bay Guardian, May 27, 2009

ACCIDENTAL, WITH PURPOSE

by Matt Gonzalez

WHAT BEGAN AS A FRUGAL effort to make use of leftover paint, something all painters grapple with on occasion, has spawned a late career style that realigns everything previously thought about the artistic practice of Theophilus Brown, now 90 years old. Best known for his figurative paintings as a seminal member of a group of painters gathered around David Park and Richard Diebenkorn, Brown has also been associated with painters as diverse as Rothko and Picasso, both of whom he knew.

These new pieces, embarked on during the last decade, originated as abstract works composed on a peel-away palette. Brown then cuts and pastes his way to a new composition, adding acrylic paint when necessary. Part collage, part painting, the finished products have all the gravitas of the large canvases of the New York School. Although relatively small (they range from 8 1/2 by 6 1/2 inches to 17 by 21 inches), these works conceive a larger, formal enterprise reminiscent of the monumental experience projected by Conrad Marca-Relli’s smaller works.

On exhibit through mid-June at Elins Eagles-Smith Gallery, “Theophilus Brown at 90: Recent Abstract Collages” reveals little evidence of Brown’s earlier figurative style other than a general nod to formal elements of spatial configurations; the collages on view are rather more akin to the Abstract Expressionist gestural emphasis, and to the movement’s early work when the Surrealist influence was greatest (of note here is Brown’s 1950s friendship with Chilean Surrealist Roberto Matta).

Some undoubtedly will see this as an interesting turn in the well-known official account of Bay Area Figuration, which is commonly said to have diverged from the East Coast fixation with abstraction, in favor of emphasizing the figure, with the exhibition of Park’s canvases Rehearsal (1949-50) and Kids on Bikes (1951). Brown’s collages might evoke that narrative, with a new twist, or return, to abstraction.

But the official story belies a well-known truth among the painters themselves: many of these artists never fully abandoned abstraction. And many of the New York painters whom the Bay Area painters were said to oppose still rendered the figure at the height of Abstract Expressionism (for example, de Kooning’s “Woman” series began in 1950-52).

Paul Wonner & Theophilus Brown

Theophilus Brown first came to prominence in 1956, when Life magazine published photographs of a series of his football paintings — cubist-influenced modernist compositions that somehow allowed figuration to coexist with the abstract. What may not be known is that these works were preceded by fully abstract experiments he started while living in post-World War II Paris on the GI Bill (Brown fought in the Battle of the Bulge when he was assigned to the U.S. Army Signal Corps), and in New York City among the burgeoning artist scene of the late 1940s and early 1950s.

These recent collages, then, are a re-engagement with the formal elements of abstraction that Brown experimented with when he was in the circle of Elaine and Willem de Kooning in the early 1950s. Less concerned with the hard edge and lines of those earlier years, Brown fully embraces greater ambiguity and freedom here, suggesting a surrender to the subconscious, which the Surrealists likewise sought to achieve.

These collages are non-objective color experiments and shape studies. Brown succeeds in presenting a finished canvas that evokes something accidental, yet with purpose — the natural expression of a skilled painter who has the courage to embark on a new path regardless of what those comfortable with his thought-to-be “settled style” might say. Ultimately, Brown’s figurative era will be seen as preparatory for this mature work.

THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY

first published in CounterPunch.org, October 29, 2008

THE TRAIL OF BROKEN PROMISES

by Matt Gonzalez

What Do They Have to Do to Lose Your Vote?

WATCHING THE DEMOCRATS IN THE FINAL weeks of the presidential election has been a lesson in revisionist history. While they lament the terrible crimes perpetrated against the American people by George Bush and vow to keep fighting for our rights, they conveniently gloss over the fact that they have no standing to make such claims. Indeed, the Democrats, including Senator Barack Obama, have actually voted with President Bush’s agenda, making them complicit in his acts, not valiant opponents defending our liberties.

PELOSI’S PROMISE TO END THE WAR

Democratic Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi said that if she became the speaker of the House of Representatives she would end the war in Iraq. Remember that? The Boston Globe noted, “Pelosi vows no ‘blank check’ on Iraq funds.” (1/8/07). In her own words: “If the president wants to add to this mission, he is going to have to justify it. And this is new to him, because up until now the Republican Congress has given him a blank check with no oversight, no standards, no conditions.” Rick Klein of the Globe noted “Pelosi’s comments mark the first suggestion by a Democratic congressional leader that Congress could use its authority over the nation’s finances to hasten an end to the war. Her remarks point toward an aggressive stance on Iraq from Congressional Democrats in their opening days of control of the House and Senate.”

Yet after she became the speaker of the House in Jan 2007, war appropriations actually went up by $50 billion, with no strings attached and no date for the withdrawal of troops. This year, 2008, they’ve gone up by another $25 billion for a two-year total of $350 billion, with no end in sight. So what happened to the promise of “no blank check?”

REID’S FILIBUSTER RULE

Sen. Harry Reid, the leader of the Democrats in the Senate, has complained that the Republicans have filibustered (a procedure used by the minority party to delay voting on legislation) more times in the last two years than in the entire history of the United States to explain why he can’t move forward a progressive agenda. First he said it was over 70 times, then adjusted it by saying it was 65 times (Las Vegas Sun 3/6/08); yet still the highest for any two-year period (the previous record was 57 filibusters) (Politico, 3/6/08; Gov.Track.us 4/15/08). But Sen. Reid’s frustration has proven to be a red-herring. Did you know that Reid lets the Republicans filibuster telephonically, meaning that he doesn’t require that they physically present themselves on the floor of the Senate? Why is he making it easy on them? Is this what an opposition party looks like?

Continue reading The Trail of Broken Promises here

HARRY BOWDEN

first published in Plastic Antinomy, Spring 2008

The Accordion Player by Harry Bowden, oil on canvas, c. 1934

HARRY BOWDEN THE ACCORDION PLAYER by Matt Gonzalez

WHEN I FIRST SAW THIS PAINTING it seemed old and stiff. It didn’t instill any kind of excitement in me.

I was at the Charles Campbell Gallery on Chestnut Street, just down the street from the San Francisco Art Institute where I was teaching a course in Art & Politics, when I first saw it. It was my custom to walk down the hill after teaching and hangout at the gallery talking with Charlie or his then gallery director Steve Lopez. I had seen Harry Bowden (b. 1907-65) paintings before. He was a Southern California native who studied with Hans Hoffman one summer at UC Berkeley after graduating from the Chouinard School of Art in Los Angeles.

Later, Bowden followed Hoffman to New York City where he fell in with the WPA artists. He painted murals for the Williamsburg Housing Authority and worked on another project led by Fernand Leger with contemporaries Willem de Kooning and George McNeil.

The Bowden work I was most accustomed to seeing was fully abstract. In fact, Bowden had been a founding member of the American Abstract Artists (1936-39). Gradually, he moved away from purely geometric nonobjective work and created abstractions having a Cezanne-like distortion to them. Landscapes and cubist-influenced figures eventually came to predominate his work. So I was a bit surprised to encounter this awkward painting of an elongated accordion player, leaning up against a bookshelf at the Campbell Gallery. I was intrigued to learn it was by Bowden (undated but signed “Harry Bowden New York”) and that it must have prefigured his work with the American Abstract Artists, but otherwise it did little for me. I understood that one of the gallery’s patrons had brought it in as partial payment toward another, more expensive, painting. In any event, I hardly glanced at it.

After several of my weekly visits, during which I couldn’t help but notice that odd Bowden again, it all hit me at once — just how fabulous the painting really was. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t seen it right away. The elongated figure playing the accordion ceased to be a figurative painting for me and instead turned into an assortment of colorful abstract paintings pieced together to make the figure. The color was stunning. For a painting that must have dated to the early or mid 30s, just after Bowden had his first shows at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor and at the Paul Elder Gallery in San Francisco, it had a freshness that was palpable. Suddenly I wanted to own the painting and feared it had already been sold. As it turned out, all my earnings for teaching that class at the Art Institute went right into buying that painting. And I’ll tell you, I’m certain I got the better part of the bargain.

As is often the case, once I purchased the painting everyone looked closer at it and became enchanted by it. Years later, it still holds up for me because it makes a visual music that splashes color off the canvas. It pops off the wall. Look closely and you’ll see Franz Kline in there, you’ll see Hans Hoffman, and others. It’s a remarkably mature work for a young painter, who was probably in his late 20s when he made it.

It’s worth noting that the canvas lacks any of the simplistic qualities of social realism or the stylization of art deco and mural work. But the subject matter, depicting a man engaged in recreation or entertainment, epitomizes the beauty of WPA work – that it can elevate seemingly unworthy people and events into legitimate subjects for works of art. The departure from portraits of aristocrats, church paintings or staid landscapes to depictions of the common man or worker is a pivotal moment in art history. Here Bowden does it fusing both WPA and Abstract Expressionist styles. He manages to paint both these histories in the same canvas because he infuses the figure with smaller abstract canvases into that single figure, in effect, meshing together these two movements. By doing so he projects the figure into motion and helps the viewer imagine the accordion’s sound.

Harry Bowden, 1943

In an exhibition brochure for a show at the New School for Social Research in 1940, Bowden expressed the sentiment that led him into joining the American Abstract Artists and illustrates his method:

“An artist, who only portrays a geometric arrangement of colored forms he has in mind, contributes nothing more than the artist who tries to copy nature. They show us the possibilities of a painting, but do not fulfill the promise…. A painting embraces many ideas, symbols, forms, tones, and colors, but all are resolved into a new thing. The metamorphosis make the painting real—gives it a life of its own.”

The painting I first thought was boring is in fact, the most radical painting I own. And it reminds me of how much artists working today are indebted to this earlier, and youthful, leap into abstraction.

SPOILING ELECTIONS

first published in the San Francisco Chronicle, March 12, 2008

2008 California Peace & Freedom Party ticket: Nader/Gonzalez

WHAT’S GOOD FOR THE GOOSE IS GOOD FOR THE GANDER by Matt Gonzalez

I’M SO TIRED OF THE DEMOCRATS talking about how Ralph Nader spoiled the 2000 presidential race for Al Gore. The energy they put into perpetuating this story could be much better spent on election reform so that candidates, like Gore, who win the popular vote could be victorious. Or they could push for laws requiring a candidate to have a majority of the vote before being declared the winner. Unfortunately, they’d rather dwell on Nader.

But what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. The Republicans lost the election in 1992 because independent Ross Perot “spoiled” it, and Democrat Bill Clinton won with less than 43 percent of the vote – further from a majority than George W. Bush in 2000, I might add.

If you look back on the last 100 years, this is a recurring phenomenon: Eight of the last 24 presidential races were won by a candidate who didn’t have 50 percent of the vote.

The most egregious example was Woodrow Wilson’s victory in 1912. Teddy Roosevelt, a former Republican president, entered the contest on the Progressive ticket against incumbent Republican President William Taft, and succeeded in throwing the contest to Wilson, who went on to serve two terms.

It’s not just the presidency that has been “spoiled.” The outcomes of several U.S. Senate contests have been affected by third-party candidates, all of them favoring Democrats and helping them keep their edge over the Republicans. But you’ll never hear the Democrats talk about that.

Right now, the Democrats and Republicans both have 49 senators. The other two are independents – Bernie Sanders from Vermont and Joe Lieberman from Connecticut – who caucus with the Democrats, giving them a 51-to-49 advantage.

You might be surprised to learn that four Democratic senators now in office won their seats because Libertarians “spoiled” contests for the Republican candidates. They are:

– U.S. Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada, who won his seat in 1998 when he beat John Ensign by a mere 428 votes, and with less than 48 percent of the vote. The Libertarian candidate, Michael Cloud, got 8,044 votes, and the Natural Law candidate won 2,749 votes.

– Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., who won her Senate seat in 2000 by beating Republican Slade Gorton by 2,229 votes. Libertarian candidate Jeff Jared won 64,734 votes.

– Sen. Tim Johnson, D-S.D., who beat John Thune in 2002 by 524 votes to win the South Dakota Senate race. Libertarian Kurt Evans earned 3,070 votes in that contest.

– Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., who won his Senate race in 2006 by beating Republican Conrad Burns by 3,562 votes. Stan Jones, the Libertarian candidate, won 10,377 votes.

Despite this unexpected help, Senate Democrats have supported President Bush’s war, voted to approve every war appropriation, and passed the Patriot Act.

2008 Michigan Natural Law Party ticket: Nader/Gonzalez

Federal contests in this country aren’t spoiled by the entry of third-party candidates; the system is rigged so that the outcome might discourage any third-party candidate from considering entering the race. Both major parties would rather occasionally lose elections than institute electoral reform that might create a more diverse Congress. In doing so, the political spectrum stays narrow, and the contest of ideas – even in a democracy as diverse as ours – is downright bland.

Before you criticize Nader for entering a political race, ask yourself: If Congress approved the war in Iraq, all war appropriations, and the Patriot Act, then who is really spoiling this country? And doesn’t being scared to vote outside of this very narrow range of choices guarantee that this system and the candidates it produces will remain in place?