politics

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The city pigeon is the bird of peace

I used to imagine the bird of peace as a small white dove with an olive leaf in its mouth, like the one Noah sent out to see whether the waters had abated. But now I think it’s really the big city pigeon, which some people call the “rat with feathers.”

This change of image started when I heard about the improbable scheme of Bertrand Delanoë, currently the Mayor of Paris. Delanoë recognized a problem: Pigeons are messing on the beautiful statues and buildings of Paris, costing huge piles of euros and displeasing both residents and visitors. But there are pigeon-lovers as well, many of whom risk fines to share their day-old bread with the hungry birds. Is there any way to recognize the divergent needs of pigeons, pigeon-haters and pigeon-lovers?

The Mayor proposed something, along the lines of his beach on the Seine or the ice skating rink 95 meters up the Eiffel Tower. I learned later that people in Basel, and then throughout Germany, had this idea also, but initally it seemed crazy to me. I’m afraid that when I talked with others about it they attributed that craziness to me as well.

pigionnier The idea was to build a home for the pigeons, a pigeonnier, where they could live comfortably and safely, and even be fed by the pigeon-lovers. This would preserve “the only sign of biodiversity in the city center.” In return, the pigeons would not mess the statues and they’d undergo population control. The money saved on cleaning statues would pay for the €40,000 construction and €9,000 annual maintenance.

Some people asked rude questions, such as “what will make the pigeons stay near their houses?” or “how can their population be controlled?” Yet the pigeonnier had been built and more were promised. I had to see for myself.

I set out for the Place de la Porte de Vanves in the XIVème arrondissement. This is in the SW of Paris, near the Périphérique, so it meant a good walk, and as I’ve discovered many times in Paris, a walk that would take on its own character.

Along the way, I stopped briefly in the Jardin de Luxembourg. On the west side of the garden, near rue Guynemer, I looked for a while at the bronze model of the Statue of Liberty by Frederic Auguste Bartholdi. The statue itself was given by France to the United States in honor of our first centennial. Next to the model was an oak tree, planted to commemorate the solidarity of the French and Americans in response to 9/11. These made me ponder the deep intertwining of French and US histories, as well as the current political divisions. But I couldn’t dewll on that, as I had a goal—to see the pigeons in their new home.

Walking a bit south of the garden, I came upon the unusual sight of a man getting into a late-model car and driving away. What caught my eye was that he wore sandals and a brown robe with a rope around the waist. He was a Capuchin monk coming out a monastery, next to Notre-Dame de la Paix, at 6, rue Boissonade. The image of old and new, religious and secular, somehow seemed relevant to my ponderings on the French/American relations, to accommodating and understanding differences, especially next to the “our lady of peace” church, but again, I had a goal to pursue, and couldn’t afford to linger there.

Walking along rue Schoelcher, I passed Montparnasse Cemetery. There were plaques describing Victor Schoelcher (1804-1893), best known for the decree of April 27, 1843 abolishing slavery in the French colonies. Reading more about him, I learned of how he became the most well-informed French person on the Caribbean colonies, and of his efforts to show how sugar production could be continued without relying on slaves. He helped the French people see that their interests in peace and well-being were not counter to justice, but in fact depended upon it. As Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

But I moved on, not relinquishing my goal of seeing the pigeons in their house. At the town hall of the XIVème arrondissement, at 2, place Ferdinand Brunot, I stopped briefly at one of those innumerable monuments to the “enfants mort pour la france” (the young people who died for France). If I were ever to lose a loved one to war, I would certainly want to believe that it was for something noble, but I wondered, especially having just visited the battlefields of Verdun, whether all those deaths were really for France, or instead, for greed, stupidity, injustice, the inability to see from the perspective of others, and all the other vices that foster wars and violence.

Still moving toward my goal, I walked along rue Didot to the Cité Croix Rouge. This is a reconsturction of the Broussais charity hospital, which is to become “un grand projet humanitaine du couer du XIVème” and “un lieu d’échanges ouvert à tous.” This new Red Cross center will be open to all and serve 1000 people a day as a hospital and education center. It seemed like a grand and noble project, but I couldn’t avoid seeing the graffitti and tags marring the large banner proclaiming the project. I wondered about whether the “writers” were the intended beneficiaries of the Cité Croix Rouge and about the difficulties of working for the justice that Schoelcher and others saw as so necessary to civil society.

On other walks, I’ve focused on architecture or art, music, history, science, the clothes, or most often, the ordinary people on the street. This one presented me with images of peace and justice, which I hadn’t intended. I simply wanted to see the folly of the pigeon house.

Nevertheless, I reached my goal, and was able to see it in a way I hadn’t expected. The pigeonnier was set in a small park, with benches and trees. Pigeon-lovers could watch the pigeons and even feed them there. Pigeon-haters could stay away, or perhaps learn that pigeons aren’t so bad when they have a place to live without harming others. The pigeons seemed happy, too. I also realized that the Place de la Porte de Vanves had become a more humane place. Softening the nearby railroad tracks, construction projects, and its general gritty urban character, the little park offered a hint of the natural beauty and gentility I had felt earlier that day in the Jardin de Luxembourg. I learned from the Pigeon Control Advisory Service that killing pigeons simply doesn’t work; they breed too fast, and attempting to kill them all simply helps them evolve into stronger, faster, smarter birds. I don’t know whether providing comfortable, modern homes, with ample food and water, perch sites, and a garden nearby will work either, but I saw that there was something grand, not just foolish, in the idea.

Jane Addams showed that tragedy lay in “believing that antagonism is real,” in assuming that a gain for one must mean a loss for the other. In contrast, the pigeonnier represents an attempt to realize what she called “affectionate interpretation,” to see the world as others see it, and thereby, achieve progress toward a common outcome. Pigeons need food and water, and a safe place to live and rear their young. But they don’t need to mess up the statues. Similarly, pigeon-lovers, pigeon-haters, Parisians, and visitors each have their own needs and interests, which need to be understood and accepted, rather than quashed. The pigeonnier and its park is a common good, which is based on interpreting each party in an “affectionate” way. In fact, no one’s interest is served either by killing pigeons or by indiscriminate feeding.

The final story of the Paris pigeonniers remains to unfold. But regardless of the outcome, it stands as a lesson for larger conflicts. Many people assume that their interests are served by military force or by building walls, indiscriminately imposing their interests over those of others (consider US prisons, immigration policies, the war in Iraq, etc.). The tragedy here is not just that injustices are done, that we commit these injustices on ourselves.

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Aristide Briand

Today, I saw the monument to Aristide Briand on the Quai d’Orsay in Paris, where on August 27, 1928, fifteen nations signed the Pact of Paris, or Kellogg-Briand Pact, renouncing war. Briand won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1926, just five years before Jane Addams did.

There’s a story that he

attended a dinner in Geneva where the guests were given menu cards on which was printed a cartoon depicting the statesmen of the world smashing a statue of Mars while Briand, alone, talked to the god of war trying to convince him to commit suicide. The cartoon caught not only Briand’s main objective in public life – the elimination of war in international relations – but also his method: his penchant for personal diplomacy, his renowned persuasiveness, and his habit of attacking the heart of a problem rather than its symbols or symptoms

(see his bio on the Nobel Prize site).

The first article of the Kellogg-Briand pact states: “The High Contracting Parties solemly declare in the names of their respective peoples that they condemn recourse to war for the solution of international controversies, and renounce it, as an instrument of national policy in their relations with one another.” Should the US now formally renounce its signing of the pact or just pretend that what it’s doing in Afghanistan and Iraq isn’t war?

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Foreign aid

Has the US abandoned its role as moral leader in the world today? At a time when many people and countries actually look to the US as a model, we seem to have chosen the low road on many issues.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has closely monitored foreign aid for years. They use the ratio of “official development assistance” to “gross national income” as a way to account for the different sizes of economies (for example, Iceland vs United Kingdom). They also distinguish between developing countries, such as Indonesia, whose GDP is almost as high as Austria’s, but can’t be expected to contribute nearly as much given its huge population and less developed economy.

Among developed countries, the average ratio is .41, that is, about four tenths of one percent of gross national income. Around 1980 the UN set seven tenths as a goal, but Denmark, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden are still the only countries to meet the target. Three other countries have given firm dates: Belgium by 2010; Ireland by 2007; and France by 2012. Norway is the most generous, at .92. There’s a wide range, with the US at the very bottom, .14. The US has made no pledge to reach the UN target, and as far as I can see, barely acknowledges it exists.

This is all on top of the facts that much aid is pledged but never delivered, 2/3 of US aid goes to just Egypt and Israel, much of the aid is tied to military needs or with strings to US companies, more money flows from poor to rich nations than the other way around, and first world trade subsidies dwarf even the seven tenths target.

I used to think that the US made up in private donations for what it failed to do officially. But the evidence I’ve seen says we do even worse in the private sector. Norwegians, for example, give at five times the rate Americans do.

Now, President Bush’s Millennium Challenge Account (MCA) proposal, actually works against sustainable development. it abandons the idea of helping people learn how to fish. Instead, it holds out fish to starving people in return for their compliance with US strategic and financial interests.

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Scientific manipulation

As I’m sure you know, on February 18, 2004, a group of 60 prominent scientists issued a statement, “Restoring Scientific Integrity in Policymaking”, which expressed concern over the Bush administration’s misuse or suppression of science in areas such as environment, health, and nuclear weapons. Signers included 20 Nobel laureates and scientists from a broad spectrum of political views. When the statement was released, Russell Train, a lifelong Republican, who served as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency under Nixon and Ford said “this administration has obstructed that freedom and distorted that objectivity in ways that were unheard of in any previous administration.” The Union of Concerned Scientists issued a companion 37-page report detailing practices such as censorship of scientific documents, rewriting to distort the evidence, packing scientific panels, and dismissing panelists who arrived at the wrong conclusions. Since then, there have been numerous incidents showing that these practices are continuing.

This issue seems absolutely central to the GSLIS mission to promote access for all to reliable information. At the level of National policy, open access to the best information we can obtain is essential in every area and the wanton distortion of evidence undermines effective governance. I’ve signed the statement for those reasons, but also because I believe that manipulation of information in this way is a crucial element in the erosion of democracy.

A closely-related issue is the large-scale removal of scientific and information from the public domain.. There is a National Academies of Science report on this “The Role of Scientific and Technical Data and Information in the Public Domain: Proceedings of Symposium”. (I have a paper copy as well). That report, by the way, took an entire year to come out (compared to the usual 4-5 months); the extra time was most likely for security review. That’s consistent with an environment in which the CIA can mark as “classified” its report on the National Research Council meeting on scientific openness (held in Washington, DC on January 23-24, 2003).

If you’d like to sign the statement, “Restoring Scientific Integrity in Policymaking,” or to read more about the issue, just start with the update message below or follow the links at http://www.ucsusa.org/global_environment/rsi/. You can also see the Bush administration’s April 2 response.

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Denounce the peacemakers

From No Iraq Attack: An Open Letter

“Naturally the common people don’t want war: Neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, It is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”

Hermann Goering at the Nuremberg trials, 1946.

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12 steps to respond to 9/11, because "we have to do something!"

The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it… Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate…. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. –Martin Luther King, Jr., “Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?”, 1967

Last September I was struck by what seemed to be universal support for the US government actions against terrorism. It seemed to me that many of these actions were unlikely to achieve their stated goals and might even be counterproductive. The pain I felt and saw around me only heightened my concern that these actions weren’t addressing the problem.

When I questioned these actions, a common response was “but, we have to do something!” My feeling then, and now, was not to doubt that some action was needed, but that the US response was both wrong-headed in many ways, and not nearly enough. Even the idea of a “war on terror” seemed to reflect a lack of understanding of what terrorism is, how it arises, and the opportunities to do something about it.

I jotted down then a set of actions, which I thought would actually hold more hope of reducing terrorism. In an effort to keep this relatively brief, I hope I didn’t make the items too cryptic. It’s a very incomplete list; I might add tolerance education, anti-racism, comparative religions, health care, libraries and schools, infrastructure development, and a number of other things, but doing even what’s listed below would be a start. I’d welcome any questions, reactions, suggestions.

Are bombings and restriction of civil liberties all we can do to combat terrorism? Here are a dozen other ideas for things the USA could be doing, none of which are being implemented today:

  1. Educate: Institute major formal and informal education programs aimed at global understanding: history that is more than European and American experiences; investigations of the relations among globalization, new technologies, and economic development; dissemination of scholarship on world religions, economies, and cultures. Our lack of understanding makes it difficult to combat terrorism, and worse, serves as fuel for the hatred behind it.
  2. Establish proactive diplomacy: Concentrate on improved relations with among others, Muslim and Arab countries and peoples, not only when oil interests are concerned.
  3. Stop arms sales: Reduce, if not eliminate, global arms production and sales. The US supplies over half of the new weapons in the world today, and 2/3 of those sold to developing countries (see http://salt.claretianpubs.org/sjnews/2001/09/sjn0109d.html).
  4. Cooperate with the international community: Become a full partner in international efforts to improve the environment, reduce disease, and protect human rights. The US go-it-alone approach after 9/11 is exactly what infuriates many around the world. Very few of those people would condone, or even consider, terrorist acts, but the response to terrorism would be greatly aided if the US were viewed more as a partner, and less as an overlord.
  5. Support democracy: Establish a priority of supporting democratic governments and democracy movements. Where in the Middle East have we done that? Where in Africa? Asia? the Americas? All too often, the US sides with autocratic regimes, thus allying itself with the enemy of ordinary people.
  6. Alleviate poverty: Poverty, especially in contrast to conspicuous consumption, provides a fertile ground, if not justification, for a violent response. The US has the lowest percentage of GDP going to foreign aid of any industrialized nation in the world, currently 1/7 of the already low OECD target (see http://www.globalissues.org/TradeRelated/Debt/USAid.asp). What counts as foreign aid rarely goes to the areas of greatest need and allocations are often earmarked for buying military equipment from US manufacturers.
  7. Open dialogues: The opportunities for communication across countries, religions, and ethnicities, or even within communities, are limited by governments and the concentration of media control in a few corporations. The US could lead the way in promoting new and improved channels for communication, especially for groups that have little voice today.
  8. Conserve: The US foreign policy is inordinately shaped by our dependence on foreign oil. Even modest conservation efforts would reduce that dependence and allow a focus on other considerations for the long-term interests; this, in addition to the beneficial environmental effects.
  9. Improve literacy: Most people in every region of the world are against violence and seek similar goals related to family, culture, economic survival, and personal fulfillment, but their participation in decision-making is limited, because they lack the basic literacy needed for written communication and access to information. The US possesses the tools and resources to have an enormous, positive impact on world literacy development, which would, in turn, facilitate democratic and economic development, and lessen the support for terrorist responses to desperate conditions.
  10. Resolve conflicts: Not every conflict can be resolved easily, but the US has the stature, the political and economic clout, and in many cases the neutrality to play a major role in resolving conflicts before they become disasters. In Kashmir, Rwanda, Bosnia, East Timor, Sudan, and many other regions, we could engage as mediators and perhaps lessen the violence. Very often, conflicts far away are treated as irrelevant to USA interests, until they become all-too-relevant and nearly impossible to address.
  11. Protect the rights of women: When women’s rights to health care, education, and political participation are ensured, most societies show economic development, population control, reduced disease, and reduced violence. Aside from the intrinsic justice issue, culturally-sensitive support for progress in women’s rights will also protect against terrorism. In the long run, this will do far more than hiring more armed guards.
  12. Learn languages: It is difficult to do any of the items above without full communication, attentive to the nuances of culture and politics. The US educational system, which strives for monolingual learning, is swimming against history. Although English is used widely in the world today, there is evidence that other spoken languages are growing faster than English and writing in the thousands of world languages is expanding with the support of new digital technologies.
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JAAL Technology Department

During 1997-2002, I edited the Technology Department in the International Reading Association’s Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy (JAAL). The columns were intended to promote dialogue about new communication and information technologies and to explore what these media mean for literacy and literacy educators. Each had several distinct sections, including an “email” message from me, an “issue of the month,” often written by a guest author, descriptions of selected websites, and a glossary. In addition to the print version, each column appeared in the Electronic Classroom section of Reading Online.

The columns have now been collected into a book, Literacy in the Information Age: Inquiries into Meaning Making with New Technologies (2003, Newark, DE: International Reading Association).

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Curriculum & Instruction

I was a Professor in the Curriculum & Instruction department, in the College of Education, at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from 1990 to 2000. I taught courses such as

  • Computer Assisted Instruction,
  • Classroom Science,
  • Inquiry Teaching and Learning,
  • Evaluation of Information Technologies,
  • Ethical & Policy Issues in Information Technology,
  • Discourses of Science,
  • Technologies for Learning,
  • Reader Response Criticism,
  • Children’s Composition,
  • Social Contexts and Functions of Writing,
  • Epistemology and Education,
  • Teacher Communities, and
  • Discourse Across the Disciplines.
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Science for the People

science_for_the_people_magFrom a brochure produced by the Boston group (1975)

Science for the People means recognizing the political nature of science; it means access for all people to useful human knowledge; it means the organizing of women and men in science to struggle along with other communities aimed at fundamental social change.

I was an active member from 1976 to 1989, working especially with the Sociobiology Study Group.