LA Times: The reelection campaign for President Barack Obama is getting a modest boost from some major names in the art world — John Baldessari, Ed Ruscha, Richard Serra, Bruce Nauman, Claes Odenburg, Chris Burden and Frank Gehry.

“Artists for Obama” is a portfolio of limited edition prints and other works that will be sold to benefit the president’s campaign. Nineteen artists contributed works to the portfolio, which was created in collaboration with Gemini G.E.L., a Los Angeles art workshop and print studio…

Other contributing artists to the portfolio are Jasper Johns, Richard Tuttle, Joel Shapiro, Jonathan Borofsky, Robert Gober, Ann Hamilton, David Hammonds, Ellsworth Kelly, Brice Marden, Julie Mehretu, James Rosenquist and Susan Rothenburg.”

Complete Graphic Portfolio here

SPIRIT AND ELECTION 2012
Commentary by Kay Whitlock

Better than a thousand hollow words, is one word that brings peace.
Siddhartha Gautama, founder of Buddhism, 563-483 B.C.

This is an unusual Critical Mass Progress post, written because almost everyone I know is feeling psychically worn and battered by this election season. I certainly am, although I know the tide has turned and we will see any number of necessary and heartening victories – including the presidency. I hope you know that, too.

Even so, we can’t ignore what’s been happening, or its meaning as we come through the election and work to give even deeper strength to the many interdependent struggles for freedom, human rights, social and economic justice, and environmental integrity.

Constellations of psychic energy are in motion, and the most difficult ones to deal with are embedded in the onslaught of Republican/Right messages and tactics that emphasize fear, rage, resentment, enmity, racism, misogyny, heterosexism, xenophobia, brutal disdain for poor and working class people, and callous disregard for the climate and our natural environment.

Unleashed in these frenzied storms of fear and rage are mythic images and archetypes that touch us all in unconscious ways, even if we reject them: white supremacy; violent and patriarchal authoritarianism; bully boys; religious inquisitors; tricksters and confidence men (yes, men) who offer only lies, deception, and greed. And this is what’s coming cloaked in the language of faith and values. It’s clear that politicized religion either works for liberation or against it.

The Right’s messages, mythic images, and violent, emotion-soaked archetypes call out the worst in all of us – whether we reject them or, out of a desire for vicarious power over others, embrace them. They often keep us reactive to and bound within the great whorls and whirlpools and quicksand created by those who prefer an ethic of dominance and subordination.

I’m not having it. I want leaders and neighbors and colleagues to be calling out the best in us, not the worst, the smallest, the meanest. And I don’t mean just speaking out on issues. I mean calling us all to something much larger than ourselves – and to engaged, community-based organizing that goes on before, during, and after elections.

I’m no spiritual leader (hear that roar of raucous laughter from my pals and partner in the background?), but I am a person whose spirituality (Buddhism) is central to who I am. So I decided to post something here and send it out into the Great Noise because I believe that everything we say and do matters, for good or ill. I’m not doing it because I believe everyone must or should be religious or spiritual. We’re all so different, and there has to be room for us all. I’m doing it because I have to.

Many (too many) years ago, I was a member of the NGLTF’s National Religious Leadership Roundtable, representing an organization I worked for at the time. I wrote something for the NRLR for a particular event, and it’s never been used again. I’ve tweaked it somewhat and offer it here as my personal prior-to-the-election and after-the-election reflection.

ON LOVE, JUSTICE & SPIRIT

The presence of Spirit, or God, is the life-giving presence of love and justice for all people and for the earth itself. The presence of Spirit, or God, is the realization, here on earth, of just and beloved community in which we celebrate the dignity and sacred worth of every person and all peoples.

The spiritual call to love and justice is a joyous call to resistance and transformation. We are called to resist the unjust beliefs, structures and practices in ourselves, in our communities, and in society that declare some categories of people superior or subordinate to others. We are called to transform by example the corrupt ethic of domination and supremacy, which justifies the social, economic, environmental, and spiritual evils of racism, misogyny, xenophobia, heterosexism, and ecological devastation.

The call to love and justice is a call to radical generosity and open-heartedness in a time of spiritual and social stinginess, greed, insularity, and indifference to the suffering of our neighbors. We reject the fearful message of scarcity and enmity preached by some who claim there are not enough civil and human rights to go around, not enough social and economic goods to meet everyone’s basic needs. Only by taking up others’ burdens of injustice and suffering along with our own will we transform the curse of fear, hatred, and human brokenness that afflicts our society in so many painful ways into the blessing of just, generous, and compassionate community.

The call to love and justice is a call to radical nonviolence in the midst of great storms of psychic, structural, physical, and economic violence. It lifts up a vision in which all of us, not only the most privileged of us, can live freely and exercise our rights and responsibilities without fear of exclusion, threat, intimidation, or violence.

The call to love and justice is a call to spiritual wholeness within our churches, synagogues, mosques, sanghas, ashrams and other sacred gathering places. Where stifling boundaries constrain our ability to claim wholeness, the call to love and justice gives us the strength to shatter them.

The call to love and justice gives us the strength necessary to lift up a bold, audacious vision of spiritual community in which all are welcome and invited to participate equally in worship, sacred ceremonies and blessings, and in which the gifts of spiritual leadership are recognized and honored in people of all races, cultures, genders, gender identities, and sexual orientations.

A commitment to love and justice is one that demands everything of us – and in return, it offers us infinite possibility. It calls us to nurture – in ourselves as well as others – the courage, integrity, kindness, and generosity necessary to create just and beloved community, in which none of us is cast aside and all of us are kin.

See you on the far side of the election.

Early voting ends on Friday in Colorado, Nevada, and Wisconsin, and on Saturday in North Carolina and Florida.

Everything You Need Right Here

UAW Charges Romney With Profiteering From Auto Bailout

EXCLUSIVE: GREG PALAST FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT:

Toledo, Ohio – Wednesday Evening October 31, 2012

For Mitt Romney, it’s one scary Halloween. The Presidential candidate has just learned that tomorrow afternoon (November 1) he will be charged by the United Automobile Workers (UAW) and other public interest groups with violating the federal ethics in government law by improperly concealing his multi-million dollar windfall from the auto industry bailout.

At a press conference in Toledo, Bob King, President of the United Automobile Workers, will announce that his union and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) have filed a formal complaint with the US Office of Government Ethics in Washington stating that Gov. Romney improperly hid a profit of $15.3 million to $115.0 million in Ann Romney’s so-called “blind” trust.

The union chief says, “The American people have a right to know about Gov. Romney’s potential conflicts of interest, such as the profits his family made from the auto rescue. It’s time for Gov. Romney to disclose or divest.”

“While Romney was opposing the rescue of one of the nation’s most important manufacturing sectors, he was building his fortunes with his Delphi investor group, making his fortunes off the misfortunes of others,” King added.

The Romneys’ gigantic windfall was hidden inside an offshore corporation inside a limited partnership inside a trust which both concealed the gain and reduces taxes on it…..

In 2009, Ann Romney partnered with her husband’s key donor, billionaire Paul Singer, who secretly bought a controlling interest in Delphi Auto, the former GM auto parts division. Singer’s hedge fund, Elliott Management, threatened to cut off GM’s supply of steering columns unless GM and the government’s TARP auto bailout fund provided Delphi with huge payments. While the US treasury complained this was “extortion,” the hedge funds received, ultimately, $12.9 billion in taxpayer subsidies.

As a result, the shares Singer and Romney bought for just 67 cents are today worth over $30, a 4,000% gain. Singer’s hedge fund made a profit of $1.27 billion and the Romney’s tens of millions.

The UAW complaint calls for Romney to reveal exactly how much he made off Delphi — and continues to make. The Singer syndicate, once in control of Delphi, eliminated every single UAW job –25,000– and moved almost all auto parts production to Mexico and China where Delphi now employs 25,000 auto parts workers.

See Truthout for the back story

† Criminal InJustice is a weekly series devoted to taking action against inequities in the U.S. criminal justice system. Nancy A. Heitzeg, Professor of Sociology and Race/Ethnicity, is the Editor of CI. Criminal Injustice is published every Wednesday at 6 pm.

CI: PRISONERS IN THE EYE OF THE STORMS
by Kay Whitlock

Two storms are making their way through wide swaths of this country.

The devastation being wrought by Hurricane Sandy staggers the imagination. It is almost incomprehensible in its scope, and it resurrects nightmares of Katrina.

The second storm, instigated by the Republican/corporate Right – and its current head cheerleaders, Romney/Ryan – has been building for a long time. It also wreaks havoc and devastates with its frenzies of racism, misogyny, anti-LGBTQ venom, xenophobia, and economic savagery fueled by blatant lies.

Its impacts stagger the moral and spiritual imagination.

It is axiomatic that those who suffered the worst economically before the disaster are sure to bear the heaviest brunt of the devastation in its wake.

Here are a couple of snapshots of the impacts of these storms on one of this country’s designated “most expendable” population: prisoners and former prisoners, who are disproportionately people of color and poor.
(more…)

Atlantic Wire: A $5,000 Shopping Run to Walmart Turned Romney’s Campaign Stop into a ‘Relief Event’

Mitt Romney was really concerned that his “Storm Relief Event” in Kettering, Ohio yesterday would look like a dud, so he and his team stocked their donation tables with $5,000 worth of supplies at Walmart. The props, according to Buzzfeed’s McKay Coppins, were things like granola bars, canned food, and diapers which were strategically placed to make sure that the photographs taken at Romney’s “Storm Relief” campaign didn’t a show very un-busy, un-stocked relief table (what else do you expect when you give people short notice to donate their canned goods?)

Heckuva Job Brownie!!!

Yesterday, ahead of the storm’s pummeling of the eastern seaboard, Brown gave an interview to the local alternative paper, the Denver Westword, on how he believed the Obama administration was responding to Sandy too quickly and that Obama had spoken to the press about Sandy’s potential effect too early.

Romney Releases Another False Ad, Revives Claim That Obama ‘Gutted’ Welfare Reform:

As reporters, fact-checkers, and the directive Obama signed made abundantly clear, the welfare work requirements will remain in place even if states are granted waivers. The major change is that states will be granted more leeway in how they transition welfare recipients into jobs. That is a change sought and supported by many Republican governors, like Romney endorser Rick Snyder (MI), who said of the program, “More flexibility to governors is a good thing.”

FEMA Emergency Info

State by State Guide

Obama”s Statement:

President Obama promises swift action by the federal government and specifically by FEMA. Obama called it a “a serious and big storm.” Obama promised to “to respond big and respond fast.”

President Obama has been in touch with the governors of the potentially impacted states, as well as the mayors of some of the mayors of the major cities in the region. He has also been in touch with regional officials of FEMA as well.

President Obama emphasized that “my main message to everybody involved is that we have to take this seriously. The federal government is working effectively with the state and local governments. It’s going to be very important that populations in all the impacted states take this seriously, listen to your state and local elected officials.”

Obama also promised that federal action will be swift and said that his message to governors and mayors in the impacted areas is that “we’re going to cut through red tape. We’re not going to get bogged down with a lot of rules.”

Video: President Obama promises FEMA’s response to Hurricane Sandy to be ‘big and fast’

Meanwhile, Romney/Ryan would slash Federal Disaster Funding and have states – or the private sector – responsible as first responders. From a CNN interview last spring:

“Absolutely,” he said. “Every time you have an occasion to take something from the federal government and send it back to the states, that’s the right direction. And if you can go even further, and send it back to the private sector, that’s even better. Instead of thinking, in the federal budget, what we should cut, we should ask the opposite question, what should we keep?”

“Including disaster relief, though?” debate moderator John King asked Romney.

“We cannot — we cannot afford to do those things without jeopardizing the future for our kids,” Romney replied. “It is simply immoral……

“A rape culture is a complex of beliefs that encourages male sexual aggression and supports violence against women. It is a society where violence is seen as sexy and sexuality as violent.

In a rape culture, women perceive a continuum of threatened violence that ranges from sexual remarks to sexual touching to rape itself.

A rape culture condones physical and emotional terrorism against women as the norm.”

Transforming A Rape Culture

by Emily Buchwald, Martha Roth, and Pamela Fletcher (2004)

Still undecided?

Feeling stuck in a “Binder?”

Wake Up — The GOP War on Women is real all right.

Republican Definitions of Rape:

GIFT-FROM-GOD-RAPE

“When life begins with that horrible situation of rape, that is something that God intended to happen.” -Richard Mourdock (R), candidate for Senate in Indiana, on October 23, 2012

“The right approach is to accept this horribly created, in the sense of rape, but nevertheless…a gift of human life, and accept what God is giving to you.” -Rick Santorum (R), Senator and Presidential candidate, on January 20, 2012

“Richard and I, along with millions of Americans…believe that life is a gift from God.” -Republican Senator John Cornyn of Texas voicing his support of Richard Mourdock’s statement about rape-induced abortions, on October 24, 2012

LEGITIMATE RAPE

“If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.” -Republican Congressman & Senate candidate Todd Akin of Missouri on August 20, 2012

HONEST RAPE

“If it’s an honest rape, that individual should go immediately to the emergency room, I would give them a shot of estrogen.” -Republican Congressman & Presidential candidate Ron Paul of Texas on February 3, 2012

EMERGENCY RAPE

“It was an issue about a Catholic church being forced to offer those pills if the person came in in an emergency rape.” -Republican Senate candidate Linda McMahon of Connecticut (also confusing churches with hospitals) on October 15, 2012

EASY RAPE

“If you go down that road, some girls, they rape so easy.” -Republican State Representative Roger Rivard of Wisconsin, on December 21, 2011 and endorsed by VP Candidate Paul Ryan on August 9, 2012

FORCIBLE RAPE

Republican Vice-Presidential nominee Paul Ryan, Todd “legitimate rape” Akin and 214 other Republicans co-sponsored the “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act”, which would prohibit federal funding of abortions except in instances of “an act of forcible rape or, if a minor, an act of incest.” -H.R. 3, 112th Congress, January 20, 2011

ENJOYABLE RAPE

“If it’s inevitable, just relax and enjoy it.” -Republican Gubernatorial candidate Clayton Williams of Texas on March 25, 1990

Republicans’ Shocking Positions on Rape and Pregnancy Aren’t Outliers — They’re Central to the GOP Agenda.

See also: Pennsylvania Bill Would Reduce Welfare Benefits For Women Who Cannot Prove They Were Raped

The Atlantic: Richard Mourdock, Mitt Romney and the GOP Defense of Coerced Mating

And VOTE.