Happy 2/22/22, y'all!

In eight and a half years on Twitter, until yesterday morning I had never posted anything that has generated this many Likes, Retweets, and Follows. I honestly didn't expect the reception that this one received. It's not kerjillions, but it's still a bit of an ego boost. I did expect that people would misinterpret my statement, simple as it is, because of the way people plug messages into their own frames of reference whether they fit or not.

The Tweet was conceived as a pre-emptive response to something I've observed in elections past. A whole week into this year's midterm early voting primary season, I haven't yet seen any selfies on Facebook of friends smiling as if they've accomplished something, sporting their I VOTED stickers, rehashing that horrid cliché about "doing my civic duty." However, when I have seen these selfies, they're from smart, earnest Progressives who cling to the absurd notion that the Democratic Party is an avenue for their ideological aspirations rather than a dead end.

​Yes, participating in small-d democratic activities in general is, in my view, a civic duty—i.e., one's duty as a citizen. Voting in a primary election, however, is only a duty to one's political party, not to one's nation, state, or community. It's debatable whether voting in the big-d Democratic Party's primary elections is a democratic activity, given that DNC attorneys have successfully argued in court that their party is not bound by law to respect the will of its voters.

So far, at least, I haven't seen any replies defending the Partisan Duopoly, and for that I'm grateful.

Harris County Greenfolk and other Progressives who have given up on the Partisan Duopoly:

Please clear your busy social calendars to make room for these important upcoming events:

• Tuesday 8 March, 7-9 pm: Harris County Consolidated Precinct Green Conventions, La Granja Disco y Cantina, 5505 Pinemont Dr. (just east of Antoine Dr. in the Near Northwest)
• Saturday 12 March, 3 pm: Harris County Green Convention, same location
• Saturday 9 April, all day: Green Party of Texas Convention, Kyle TX, actual venue still TBD (delegates may also attend online)

Skip down to the bottom of this entry for a list of important things to remember about attending the conventions.

(Jacket photo would appear here, except that Weebly wouldn't let me upload the image, grumble-grumble. This also appears on Goodreads.)

First, regarding the three-star rating (out of five on Goodreads): This is only partly the fault of the author—and, at least according to the Foo Boss himself, he is indeed the author, with no professional ghost writer in the picture. Also, it is not a reflection of the level of enjoyment I received from reading this rock star memoir: I LOL'ed more times than I could count.

In the late 1990s, I played bass in a cover band with a repertoire that I liked to call "31 flavors of rock." We played everything from Chuck Berry and the Rolling Stones to 311 and Sublime. Our set lists included the Foo Fighters' "Big Me" and "Everlong." The latter of these two was something of a highlight of our gigs: The vocal harmony on the chorus, my bass tuned to a drop-D, and the faces of the young women in the bars singing along combined in ways that were so incredibly right, so incredibly '90s, for reasons I could never explain so don't ask.

The Foos were the real deal. Along with Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam, and Soundgarden, they stood out from all the pseudo-grunge acts that the big labels were thrusting onto the so-called alternative rock stations. They seemed admirably willing and able to experiment in sounds that could vault them over the walls of the grunge ghetto. But I couldn't envision them as Hall of Fame material, or even wanting to be considered for such an honor.

David Eric Grohl, the Craig Biggio of post-grunge (a Hall of Famer in two positions, drummer and rhythm-guitarist/lead vocalist) has a particular knack for communicating just how awesome his favorite musical acts are without falling back on tired adjectives like awesome. From Little Richard to Elton John to Neil (Rush) Peart to Joan Jett to Lemmy (Motorhead) Kilmister to AC/DC to Naked Raygun to his pal Paul McCartney to the Preservation Hall Jazz Society, Grohl lionizes them all without falling too deep into the pit of clichés. As an aging punker with varied influences myself, I resonate to all of that. More than anything, Grohl is grateful that such people and their music exist in this world and during this time.

Now in his fifties, Grohl is at root a father, a fan, and a Foo Fighter—in that order. Nothing illustrates this better than his story of flying back to California from Australia, mid-tour, to escort his first two daughters to their school's annual daddy-daughter dance. It's a cool story, and it's always pleasant to be reminded that rock stars can be functional, family-oriented people. Grohl is passing on the grace that his mother extended to him, her blessing for him to follow his bliss and his destiny, to his own three daughters.

As fun a read as The Storyteller is—especially for someone like me who turned punk at a young age despite having a mostly OK childhood—the book as a whole just isn't up to the level of quality I'd hoped. The problems are more editorial than authorial. The whole work seems hastily thrown together in places. Particularly in the later chapters, it has a tendency to repeat phrases used a few paragraphs, pages, or chapters ago, sometimes verbatim. It's as if he couldn't decide whether to insert a clever turn of phrase at the end of this paragraph or that one, so he left it in both places.

Another quibble I have with the latter chapters is that they consist mainly of anecdotes in which Grohl meets or otherwise interacts with this or that musical idol. These are all in the service of underscoring just how blessed a life Grohl has led, how he has never allowed himself to become a jaded rock star because dammit he's just a grown-up version of that kid from suburban DC whose whole life was changed the first time he heard (insert godlike artist or band here).

Despite now having spent about half his life as leader of the Foo Fighters, Grohl doesn't provide much material about the creative process involved in the band's recordings beyond the first three albums. The tours get plenty of ink, as do Grohl's various side projects, mostly because the Foos have proven over the years to be much more of a live sensation than a prolific recording outfit. Ten studio albums in 26 years? Srsly? It reminds me of the omissions in Elvis Costello's memoir Unfaithful Music and Disappearing Ink, in which Elvis skips completely over two of my all-time favorite albums, Trust and Imperial Bedroom, as if he has blocked out those unpleasant years 1981-83 either intentionally or due to chemical overindulgence. Nonetheless, Elvis and the Attractions had ten albums out in the space of about nine years, if you count the compilation of singles and B-sides.

Maybe Grohl doesn't find much of interest in the Foos' output beyond 2000. The three songs they played at their induction ceremony were all early material. IMHO, nothing after the third FF album There Is Nothing Left to Lose has had quite the same impact on society or culture, whereas the first three albums introduced some truly fresh sonic flavors, as inspiring as they were inspired by Grohl's omnivorous musical explorations.

The anecdote from this memoir that rubbed me the wrongest was the tale of performing "Who Are You?" in honor of The Who at Kennedy Center Honors for none other than President George W. Bush. By the early 2000s, Grohl was already rock & roll establishment, assured of his place in the Hall of Fame for his efforts with Nirvana and quite likely the Foo Fighters as well. Grohl could not turn down the invitation despite his ideological disagreements with Bush. He rationalizes the whole process as an exercise in civility among people of different partisan affiliations, recalling the way DC used to be. But there's a huge difference between respectful disagreements on policy and facing someone for whom millions of deaths are just the cost of doing business.

Later in the same chapter, he recounts performing in honor of McCartney at the White House in 2010, expressing his great admiration for then-President Barack Obama and...oy, I thought my stomach couldn't have turned any more after reading the parts involving the Bushes. At least fellow Nirvana alumnus Krist Novoselic sees the anti-democratic nature of the partisan duopoly and works on finding ways to wrest power from the duopoly's tentacles.

In 2021, a 79-year-old Sir Paul McCartney stayed up well past his bedtime to officially induct the Foo Fighters into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. As I watched the ceremony, I had no idea that McCartney was a close family friend and frequent dinner guests of the Grohls. Macca shows up in multiple chapters of The Storyteller, an ever-looming numinous presence that keeps Grohl connected to the Beatle-worshipping preteen within, inspiring him to keep rocking into his pre-dotage. Considering the Macca is pushing 80 and still making some quality records, perhaps some of that will rub off on his protégé Dave Grohl.

'Twas the week before Christmas, and, as is my habit, on behalf of Kayleen and me, I cobbled together a newsy year-end letter to enclose with the Syracuse Cultural Workers holiday cards that we sent to friends and relations far and near.

In the writing of that letter, I kept it to what would fit comfortably on both sides of a sheet of letter-size printer paper. That meant taking a "just the facts" approach, a type of discipline that I must consciously self-impose. As a big-picture person, I generally like to include ancillary details (e.g., explaining the peculiar etymologies of words like ancillary), as well as occasional opinions (of which I have many). Doing so would not have worked to our benefit.

Fortunately, I have website with a blog section, albeit one that has been underutilized these past two years. So I have plenty of space to take my two-page letter and expand it to include additional information, plus some hyperlinks that the print edition could not accommodate. Be advised that it contains what appear to be not-so-subtle advertisements for some corporations, very atypical of this blog.

Though I've said it many times and not entirely followed through, I earnestly hope to make this blog less underutilized in the coming months. One of my resolutions for 2022 is to post more regularly.

This summary of our 2021 is for any and all who carer to read it, including those who received the two-pager. The additions are all in red italics.

This October 2019 article from Houston Public Media distills the message of Angie Schmitt's important book Right of Way: Race, Class, and the Silent Epidemic of Pedestrian Deaths in America. Auto-pedestrian collisions, including fatal ones, are becoming more frequent year over year, outpacing the growth in population. And we cannot just keep blaming the dead pedestrians or just accepting the inevitability of traffic deaths as the cost of improved mobility.

I am amazed that there aren't a lot more such collisions on Old Spanish Trail. My wife and I live just a few feet from OST, a segment of US-90A that runs about five miles south of Downtown Houston. West to East, it diverges from Main Street near NRG Park, passes through portions of the Texas Medical Center, crosses the South Freeway (TX-288), divides the relatively upscale South MacGregor district from the low-to-mid-level homes mid-century bungalows of South Union, continues through some industrial areas south of the University of Houston, veers northward, and becomes South Wayside Drive just before reaching the Gulf Freeway (I-45).

For most of its length, OST is six lanes plus left-turn cutaways, with speed limits at 35 or 40. Motorists with sports cars, muscle cars, motorcycles, Polaris Slingshots, jacked up pickups and SUVs ignore the limit constantly. Day and night, drivers gun their engines, show off their glass-pack exhaust systems, act like they don't know what a school zone is and even accelerate through the zone to pass the slow-pokes complying with the reduced limit. It certainly doesn't help that somebody built a gigantic sports bar/night club/hookah lounge right at OST and 288.

Pedestrians, many of them low-income POC, many of them seniors with mobility issues (but also schoolchildren and young families) cross OST at random points constantly, day and night, seeming not to care whether a young dude in a modified Dodge Challenger is bearing down on them. In parts of OST, the sidewalks are either crumbling or blocked by trees, bus shelters, or lamp posts that a driver has knocked over—so pedestrians just walk in the highway to get around these impediments.

In other words, OST fits the profile of the hyper-perilous traffic corridors that feature so prominently in Right of Way. It is designed to expedite the movement of cars and trucks...which it doesn't do very well. Particularly from 288 to Spur 5 by UH, the traffic lights are poorly timed. Far too often a driver can encounter red lights at every lighted intersection. So, to avoid the red lights, drivers speed from light to light, maybe treating the red light as a stop sign, maybe just plowing through the intersection.

But enough about my hood. What's so remarkable about Schmitt's book? Top on my list is that it takes a holistic approach to this under-reported phenomenon. Individual crashes may be reduced to a single cause; the rapid, steady increase in fatal auto-pedestrian crashes results from combinations of factors, most of which in turn result from planning that shows callous disregard for the lives of people who walk or use wheelchairs to get around. There's also the heavy marketeering of taller, heavier pickups and SUVs by the auto industry, mostly because the profit margins on these vehicles dwarf those for sedans. In just a few years, these motorized behemoths have practically erased all the progress toward improved fuel efficiency and curtailing climate chaos that has been made since the 1970s, the advent of Tesla and other electric vehicles notwithstanding. (She even mentions, as an aside, how auto companies are making their trucks and SUVs look meaner, appealing to the untamed ids of car shoppers, as well as outfitting them with "bull bars" and other such dangerous accessories.)

Second, Schmitt dives into the details to show that these factors actually cause increased traffic violence rather than merely correlate with it. How? By citing examples of places that have applied fixes and seen their traffic fatality numbers decrease instantly. Fixes include redesigning streets and roads in line with Vision Zero guidelines, reducing speed limits, adding crosswalks (too often crosswalks are too far apart, potentially adding half a mile to one's walk), installing traffic-calming devices, removing auto traffic entirely from specified business districts, and educating the public about safe navigation of urban streets. Maybe government agencies can eventually concentrate on discouraging citizens from buying those god-awful SUVs.

Third, Schmitt has collected material from sources all over North America and beyond. That source material includes not only the stark statistics kept by advocacy groups and government agencies, but also the anecdotes of regular folks whose loved ones were killed by drivers who mostly faced no consequences for their "accidents." Schmitt constructs a big-picture view of the root of the problem: over-reliance on statistics, but not all the relevant statistics. In an attempt to appear "evidence-based," agencies and policy makers tend to make decisions based partly on the stats, partly on budgetary considerations; however, they tend to work only with the stats that support their plans. They tend not to listen to the people who will be or have been harmed. It's only when a politician or local luminary takes up the cause of those harmed that media outlets pay attention and the issue enters public consciousness.

I have seen something like this phenomenon up-close, especially in the last few years with the proposed North Houston Highway Improvement Plan (NHHIP), also known as the I-45 expansion. The Texas Department of Transportation's own impact statements include estimates of the number of residents and businesses displaced, the number of schools and parks brought within 500 feet of the freeway's exhaust cloud, etc. Following a longstanding American tradition, those displaced are mostly (you guessed it!) low-income African American and LatinX folk.

Nevertheless, TxDOT and the Houston-Galveston Area Council have pushed ahead with the plan despite impassioned testimony from residents and advocates, including Houston's legendary furniture guy Jim "Mattress Mack" McIngvale. It has taken a lawsuit from Houston and Harris County government to block NHHIP on civil rights grounds, but even that injunction is temporary. I've also seen commuters on Facebook and Twitter saying basically that they don't give a shit who gets displaced as long as the North Freeway gets widened and their commute times lessened—but guess what, guys! That solution is also temporary! More lanes lead to induced demand, as we've seen on the expanded Katy Freeway; those lanes will fill up again, especially with more housing development along the corridor and more subdivisions springing up around Conroe, so...you see where all this is going, right?

In recent years, I have also seen our city and county governments respond positively to the need for alternative and multi-modal transportation options: improved pubic transit, protected bike lanes, bike racks on the fronts of buses, better connectivity between hike-and-bike trails, etc. Gentrification is often an unfortunate side-effect of these improvements, but that would be happening with or without the addition of bike lanes in traditionally black and brown neighborhoods. Sadly, real estate development trends and heavy demand for heavier vehicles are working against local governments' efforts: Pedestrian fatalities are still increasing. We have a long way to go to catch up with the Portlands of the world, let alone the Copenhagens and Amsterdams. We have a lot of attitudinal barriers to overcome, which is nice way of saying there a lot of sociopaths making and influencing policy, especially in Texas and elsewhere in the Sun Belt. As long as they get paid, these assholes don't care who lives or dies as a result of their decisions.

Indeed, if there's any way to summarize the combinations of factors contributing to the increase in pedestrian deaths, it's assholes. Whether those assholes are driving policy or driving (or selling) Hummers, they are creating the conditions that make walking in the US a high-risk activity, especially in Sun Belt cities. Making our society less assholish is an uphill battle; Schmitt and other transportation wonks, including myself, are grateful for the people waging that battle to halt traffic violence.

This train of thought began with Briahna Joy Gray's observations (below) on the OH-11 special election about which I blogged earlier this week. The replies were full of Democratic loyalist trolling, which is typical for one of Briahna's Tweets. After all, she has actively campaigned to get Senator Not a Real Democrat (I-VT) nominated for the presidency. Normally I avoid wading into such an environment; however, the trolling included some abuse of the term "progressive" that I could not leave unanswered.

It chaps my whole nether region when I see centrist, incrementalist Democrats referred to as "progressive." It irks me even more deeply when that leads to McCarthyite tropes hurled at anyone to the left of Nancy Pelosi, as happened later in the thread.

The question in my reply had a twofold purpose:

1. to set the parameters, via hashtags, of what "progressive" even means; and
2. to point out that most of the self-identified Progressives in Congress don't check those policy boxes (perhaps they used to, in their younger days, but don't any more).

Personally, I believe that if you're not at least anti-war (including the Drug War), anti-corporatocracy, pro-worker, pro-choice, pro–universal health care, and pro–swift strong action to thwart climate change (yes, all of these), you have no business calling yourself "progressive." Maybe the label worked for Teddy Roosevelt 100-plus years ago, but the boundaries of progressivism have, well, progressed a lot since then.

My reply made no reference to the Green Party itself. But of course my Twitter bio is quite candid regarding my partisan affiliation. So, relevant to nothing in particular, up came the "What Has the Green Party Ever Done?" line of argument. To that I replied (not shown below), "Far more than a single Tweet can encapsulate" and promised to put a complete answer on this site later. Well, more complete anyway, because I'm sure that my bulleted list below leaves out some important achievements.

Millions of Progressive folk across the US literally love Nina Turner, the former Ohio state senator from Cleveland. She's the sequel to Dennis Kucinich, but with badassery to burn. Too bad for Ms. Turner that those millions couldn't all move to northeastern Ohio and cast a vote for her in yesterday's special election for the House seat vacated by new HUD Secretary Marcia Fudge.

Turner finished a strong second in the Democratic primary field of eleven, six points behind winner Shontel Brown. Those millions of Progressives can take some encouragement from her coming so close to victory: A growing percentage of urban POC are tired of mainstream Democrat bullshit and are willing to back someone who takes on the Democratic establishment.

Apart from Brown's endorsements from big-name Clintonites and the money that poured into Brown's campaign in the past month-plus, Turner ran into the same snag that Bernie Sanders did: Like Bernie, she's "not a real Democrat." I put that in quotes because, if the Democratic Party weren't the place progressive ideas go to die, if it weren't abundantly clear that the Sanders wing of the Party is unwelcome there, she would be as real a Democrat as Kucinich, Ron Dellums, Barbara Jordan, Paul Wellstone, et al. However, because she has bolted from the Donkey faction of the Duopoly and hooked up with the emergent People's Party, she can no longer operate on Democrat bona fides.

So, props to Turner for giving it a try. When she announced her run last December, I spurned her strategy of running as a Democrat. But it got her causes and issues the attention they deserve in all levels of national media, not just on Democracy Now! Running third-party, on the other hand, would likely have relegated her to the funny pages.

Now that the People's Party has ballot access in Ohio, Turner (and other fed-up progressives who for whatever reason continue to ignore the Green Party) can run under that banner. Beyond the question of will she or won't she? the more important question now, as I see it, is this: How many of the 33,000-plus votes Turner received will peel off in disgust with the Democrats—and in which direction: People's Party, Green Party, independent, or this-whole-system-sucks-I'm-not-gonna-play-any-more? Corollary to that is whether her nationwide fundraising apparatus will follow her after she quits the Democratic Party cold turkey forever.

While we're getting hypothetical, what if Turner had won the primary and gone on to take the Congressional seat? Once she took her exalted place among The Squad, would she have to kneel before Speaker Pelosi, pick her battles instead of fighting against the current on every issue, take turns being among the Squadsters who either (a) provide the necessary votes for Pelosi's desired outcomes or (b) make fiery, indignant speeches against the corporatocracy?

Congratulations are due to Georgia's Green Party, which has become the second state GP organization to get itself disaffiliated from the Green Party of the United States within the past year or so. Georgia is the largest state so far to have its chapter ejected from GPUS. The vote tally was 119 Yeas, 17 Nays, and 6 abstentions.

​The other state that lost affiliate status this year is Alaska,"de-accredited" in January 2021 rather than "disaffiliated." Alaska's official Green presence, according to some National Committee members to whom I've spoken, was just "one guy, and he's a Berniecrat."

After last year's Presidential Nominating Convention, there was talk of tossing Rhode Island due to its State Executive Committee's decision not to place the duly nominated presidential ticket of Howie Hawkins and Angela Walker on the state's ballot. The official affiliation for Rhode Island was instead switched to a group called the Ocean State Green Party. There is no National Committee vote on Rhode Island to which I can link you.

TERF War, Anyone?
As you might see from a keyword search for Georgia Green Party, the site georgiagreenparty.org has been taken down. There is currently a brief Wikipedia entry summarizing the disaffiliation.

The National Committee's motivating factor for kicking out Georgia was the adoption of "trans women are not really women" language in its platform, in violation of at least one of the Ten Key Values. The platform language arises from the Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist angle, not the "God made only male and female" perspective. Not all Georgia Greens share that view, as you might imagine, but enough of the state's Green leadership does that it warranted disaffiliation. The Lavender Greens Caucus led the campaign to remove Georgia's affiliate status.

This was not a summary judgment: It followed months of negotiations, including with a "Dialog, Not Removal" faction (DNR) that wanted to reach a compromise, with Georgia's GP censured at most rather than removed. The problem was that the Georgia group dug in its heels on the matter.

Apart from disassociating the party from a group of TERFs, it's tempting to just say "no great loss." Due to Georgia's absurdly prohibitive ballot access laws, the Greens there have never (or maybe once?) secured a statewide ballot line. Jill Stein and Ajamu Baraka were successfully included as a write-in ticket there in 2016. The hope is that a different group will do the work required to get the state organized again.

Blatantly Burying the (Potential) Lede
Teaser: In a future post (sorry I've continued to post so infrequently of late), we may learn how this disaffiliation trend will affect Greendom in the Houston area. However, at this time there isn't enough useful information to make a complete story of it. I will say that there is a group within GPTX that wants to disaffiliate a county chapter due to its leadership sharing the position of the Georgia Greens' leaders. More if anything actually happens.