Mickey Friedman

Stop Kony. Stop Us.

March 24, 2012
By Mickey Friedman

If 80 million people had seen a short film I made about Joseph Kony, an African madman/dictator who kidnaps kids and makes them slaves and soldiers, sent me $30 bucks for a bracelet, then expected me to help them catch this maniac in some remote section of Sudan, well I, too, would probably run into the street in my underwear. And end up in the hospital.

The young members of Joseph Kony's Lord's Resistance Army - Photo 2006, AP

To be absolutely clear, I hate African madmen/dictators who enslave kids and turn them into killing machines.

I watched the KONY2012 video at Fuel surrounded by people, so I didn’t openly weep. It’s difficult not to cry when you hear Jacob’s story, what happened to his family, his friends, to Uganda: “We worry the rebels when they arrest us again then they will kill us. My brother tried to escape. Then they killed him using a panga. They cut his neck … I saw.”

Jason Russell, the filmmaker, made Jacob a promise: “We are also going to do everything that we can to stop them … we’re going to stop them.”

GE Brought A Good Thing To Life

March 10, 2011
By Mickey Friedman

Having grown up on city streets, I wouldn’t have known a vernal pool if I had fallen into one.

Today I’m writing about vernal pools because they are central to the battle about how best to clean toxic PCBs from the Housatonic River.

The Vernal Pool

Vernal pools are “ephemeral fresh-water wetlands which do not hold water permanently and are free of breeding populations of fish.” (MA Fisheries and Wildlife). Fresh water pools formed by rain and snow during the autumn and winter, but dry at other times of the year. Because there are no predator fish, many important species are born in vernal pools. These species cannot live without these critically important vernal pools. (2011 Phase 4C Floodplain Property Vernal Pool Monitoring Summary, p.1: (http://www.epa.gov/region1/ge/thesite/floodplain/reports/phase4/501650.pdf)

We’re talking about invertebrates like fairy shrimp (don’t tell Rick Santorum), daphnia, fingernail clams, water striders, and caddishflies. These inveterbrates don’t have backbones and make up 97% of all animal species. Then there are amphibians like green frogs, wood frogs, and salamanders. These “indicator species” are easy to collect and tell us what’s in the water and how it is effecting animal life.

The Rick Sanitorium

February 26, 2012
By Mickey Friedman

I’ve been spending time at the Rick Sanitorium. There, I learned it’s the values. It’s all about the values. You won’t last long at the Sanitorium if you don’t have the right values. Granted, values are a tricky thing, so you’ve got to listen carefully to what Rick is really saying, not just to what he seems to be saying.

Photo: Rick Santorum Campaign Website

Take Christianity. Rick is a Catholic and he knows that a lot of people go to church and a lot of people think they’re Christians. And a lot of the time, Rick, especially when he’s speaking to the larger public, will act like all Christians are Christians. Like Protestants. But those of us who have spent time in the Rick Sanitorium know what Rick really thinks. There are Christians and then they are Christians. Christian Christians. In 2008, Rick said it straight up: “mainline protestantism” is “gone from the world of Christianity.” That’s right. Done. Gone. Because there are Christians and then there are Christians. Protestants just don’t have what it takes when it comes to the Gospel.

Housatonic Has A Pulse

February 10, 2012
By Mickey Friedman

With all the horrendous things adults do to children, from forcing them to fight and kill in Sierra Leone, making them make soccer balls for pennies in Pakistan, abusing them physically and emotionally, there are still many adults who love and care for, teach and nurture their own kids and the kids of others.

The Housatonic Mills - Photo: Berkshire Property Agents

In our town, I’ve heard from several parents about the great work Bettina Montano does at Berkshire Pulse in Housatonic.

In the old Barbieri Mill in Housatonic, Massachusetts, Bettina has been teaching hundreds of kids about music and dance and movement.

That’s the same Housatonic, Massachusetts you’ve been reading about in the local newspapers.

For a while now, the papers have been filled with articles about the man from Miami. Stephen Muss, we were told, was willing, no anxious, to spend hundreds of thousands on a master plan to reconfigure the old and ailing mills, the mills he didn’t own, to bring renewed hope to Housatonic. No ulterior motive, just a rare, pure and heartfelt gift from a man who had a galvanizing vision of new jobs, happy artists, and new tenants. A revitalization, a renovation, and a renewal. And, to prove his purity and silence the skeptics, Mr. Muss assured us he wasn’t interested in buying property in Housatonic.

Small Schools

By Mickey Friedman
February 4, 2012

No kids, a different district, so I am just an interested bystander in the raging debate about the small schools of Monterey, Egremont and New Marlborough.

Having taught I have a continuing interest in how education happens; as a citizen and taxpayer, I care about how much education costs and whether those dollars are spent wisely.

I’ve tried to teach seventh, eighth, and ninth graders in New York City. I’ve taught and counseled college students in both New York and Massachusetts. While being a student is hard, being a good teacher is even more difficult.

It’s hard to separate the issue of small schools and rising school budgets from the larger money mess we find ourselves in. More and more, because of a radically unfair tax structure that favors the wealthy, the middle class is ask to pay a disproportionate share for government services. And the middle class has less to offer up. Here, in the South Berkshires, struggling taxpayer/voters are asked each year for an up/down vote for a rising school budget they can barely understand.

A More Mickey America

Mickey Friedman
January 25, 2012

I’ve tried to convince Bill Shein not to run for Congress. But my friend hasn’t listened to me. Don’t get me wrong, Bill would make a fine Congressman. And I’ll vote for him.

It’s just that I no longer believe in Congress. And don’t think it’s worth Bill’s time to try and get there. Or the time, energy and money his supporters will spend in the effort.

I was surprised by my response. I hadn’t realized I had gotten that cynical. But as I debated Bill, my anger and annoyance at what government has become was impossible to deny.

I think of it as playing in a crooked card game. Richard Neal, who many will tell you is as good a Congressman as you will find, has raised millions of dollars from lobbyists near and far. If you search the Federal Election Commission for Richard E. Neal you can get a list of all those who over the years have given him big money. Try this: http://query.nictusa.com/cgi-bin/can_give/H8MA02041. Don’t try printing it. It comes to 221 pages.

The War’s Not Over

Mickey Friedman
January 7. 2012

Few Americans know about David Emanuel Hickman. The media jabbers about Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum and neglects David Emanuel Hickman.

After attack in Ramadi, Iraq 2006, U.S. Army photo: SFC David D. Isakson

For all their rhetoric about standing tall and tough and fighting the fight against Islamic extremism, the politicians do their talking surrounded by the trappings of wealth and power. They are the 1%. They are safe. David Emanuel Hickman went out to do their work and died. The Defense Department says he died in Baghdad on November 18, 2011 “of injuries suffered after encountering an improvised explosive device.”

The Army Times called Hickman “the last American fighter killed in combat” in Iraq. To our ever-lasting shame, Hickman will be remembered by his family and friends in North Carolina and by those who watched him playing outside linebacker for Northeast Guilford High School, but will never be known by the American people. There will be no parade past Wall Street for David Emanuel Hickman nor for Marine Pvt. Jonathan Lee Gifford, our first casualty.

Occupy Christmas

Mickey Friedman
December 25, 2011

As 2011 comes to a close, it’s fair to say Occupy has occupied the land.

Graphic Image: Alexandra Clotfelter

Far from the opening and closing bells of Wall Street, and its powerful bull, here in the southern Berkshires, Occupy Berkshires demonstrates each Sunday (excepting this Sunday) from 1 PM to 2:45 PM in front of Great Barrington’s Town Hall on Main Street. It then holds its General Assembly at 3 PM at the Quaker Meeting House on 280 Main Road (Route 23 towards Monterey.) There are similar groups in Pittsfield and North Adams.

It’s easy to get rhetorical about the extent and impact of Occupy but a recent study by researchers at the University of California, Riverside (UCR) found occupy movements in 143 small towns and cities in California alone.

“Big cities got the movement early. The spatial depth of the movement to small towns is not well-known,” said Christopher Chase-Dunn, a distinguished professor of sociology who is known internationally for his research of social movements.

People in medium and small-sized towns are occupying space, organizing events, and lending their voices to the movement in their own towns, graduate student Michaela Curran-Strange added. “They are focusing on local issues as well as national and regional ones.”

Let’s Buy A Farm

Mickey Friedman
December 17, 2011

If there’s one thing I learned from hearing “Oklahoma” eight million times it’s that the cowboys and the farmers should be friends. We’re short of cowboys and growing short of farmers around these parts. Which is all the more reason to help those farmers we’ve got left.

Shaw Farm From Seekonk Road - Photo: David Scribner

It’s really not the fault of our farmers that they’re forced to consider selling or leasing their land to others. For solar farms or real estate developments. We’ve allowed the corporatization of farming to overtake the small farms that for so many years were a critical part of life in New England. In the 40 years I’ve been here I’ve seen one small dairy farm after another disappear.

My conservative friends never tire of proclaiming the evils of government, and the army of corrupt bureaucrats who over- and incompetently regulate us. Yet they have remained silent as corporations gained one unfair advantage after another with lower taxes, taxes they don’t pay, and enormous government subsidies. Real and fair competition, the bedrock of Adam Smith’s theory of capitalism, has long disappeared.

Hasta Luego, Pablo – Occupy Everywhere

By Mickey Friedman
December 12, 2011

I’ve been very sad lately, having lost another dear friend to cancer, Dr. Paul Epstein, Pablo to me, Rufus to his family. Paul was one of the world’s leading experts on the ever-increasing effects of the climate crisis on disease. Pablo was a constant, continuing inspiration to me. He was energetic, sympathetic, and so very quick to smile and laugh. As cranky and curmudgeonly as I am, Paul was happy and gracious.

Dr, Paul Epstein

I met him in New York a long time ago and watched him study and become a doctor and marry my friend, Andy. He practiced medicine, wrote, taught, and organized. He worked for the Center for Health and the Global Environment at the Harvard Medical School. I am sure his kindness to patients and students, to friends and family, and the great work he’s done lives on.

Click here to listen to Living on Earth’s Steve Curwood’s short tribute to Paul Epstein.
READ MORE >>

Some More Moments Of Occupy

Mickey Friedman
November 22, 2011

Remember the mythic and mystical friendly neighborhood policeman. He is alive and well in the form of Retired Police Captain Ray Lewis of the Philadelphia Police Department. Captain Lewis was recently arrested as part of activities at Occupy Wall Street. Here is what he told the very hardworking streaming videographer, Tim Pool, of wearetheother99:

And then there’s the inside look at the creative projectionists of the OccupyTheVerizonBuilding. I was able to watch some of this live on New York City television as it was happening:

And then for those of you who once took English or taught English, here’s how the brave English faculty at UC Davis responded to the immoral and anti-collegial acts of the Administration. This is what was posted on their webpage:

UC Davis & Some Teachable Moments

Mickey Friedman
November 21, 2011

It’s been quite awhile since I dwelled in academia. So I’m out of practice. No longer speak the language. Maybe you do. Maybe you know what Chancellor Katehi is saying. Maybe it’s the wax in my ears. Maybe I need to sit in on some faculty meetings.

It sounds suspiciously like sophistry to me. You know, slightly deceptive reasoning or argumentation.

So concerned that events could get out of hand, so worried someone would get hurt, that she might have to inform a parent that somehow because she hadn’t acted she would have to inform them that their kid had been hurt … Following what in fact was the protocol …

Never really owning up to the fact that she was the one who, in fact, set in motion the very act of hurting students.

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