video: Guest MINDSETTER™ Stewart: Sam Zurier is Not a Jew, he’s Just White

Tuesday, May 02, 2017

Guest MINDSETTER™ Andrew Stewart

 

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Sam Zurier

I have been a lowly activist agitating in favor for the passage of the Community Safety Act (CSA) in the past year. It would be a tremendous disservice to all those involved in the cause to put my face on the front of it and it is extremely important to center the conversation about the CSA on women and people of color because it needs to be. Those opposed to this set of checks and balances on the state are the types of anti-libertarian thinkers who are in favor of a Big Government abrogation of individual freedom and rights in an ever-expanding police state.

But with that said, I have a unique position to understand a certain dynamic here. The dynamic I speak of is the cowardly game afoot on the part of Councilman Sam Zurier, who has stalled and procrastinated with regard to a law that needs to be passed purely on the basis of wanting to stay part of a certain club.

“To me, being "white" means being part of a club, with certain privileges and obligations,” says Prof. Noel Ignatiev, a scholar of race and racism. “People are recruited into that club at birth, enrolled in that club without their consent or permission, and brought up according to its rules. Generally speaking, they go through life accepting the rules and accepting the benefits of membership, without ever considering the costs.”

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“The cost of membership in the white club is that it requires a loyalty and conformity to official American society in a way that’s making life very uncomfortable and even dangerous for all of the ordinary folk in this country–those who are called white, as well as those who are called black.”

The irony of this is that Councilman Zurier has invoked the part of his identity, his Judaism, to justify this behavior. By this I mean that he has invoked for calculated and manipulative purposes the memory that his forebears were once made the demonized Others by our white supremacist society. Over the past few weeks, I have heard from several of his constituents who, when asked why he was absent from important City Council meetings regarding the CSA, were told in response how important Passover was to his family and why they should be sensitive to these religious obligations.

Yet he does this to perpetuate a white supremacist state of affairs, effectively negating if not defiling the memory of when Jews were the Others amongst us and making himself white. And it was James Baldwin who said, "So long as you think you are white, there is no hope for you."

Let’s further explore that history of Jews being Othered because it bears important lessons Zurier might do well to heed. First, recall that the Fraternal Order of Police, the union of cops, endorsed Donald Trump. While it is difficult to judge at times whether Trump is a fascist or the political force whose failure to Make America Great Again will prepare the way for a fascist third party, there is absolutely no doubt that the police, ICE agents, and correctional officers within his base fit the definition of fascism. The noxious xenophobia and racism they trafficked in by casting a ballot for the Donald is undeniable. That stench that has wafted across our body politic of late is absolutely the same thing as the antisemitism that Adolf Hitler invoked and exploited as he took power in Germany. Glen Ford, the executive editor of Black Agenda Report radio show, said last year with little irony “Fascists in America don’t wear brown shirts, they wear blue. They are cops.” What movements like Black Lives Matter have represented in the past several years are nothing more or less than the ideological and moral equivalent of the Warsaw ghetto uprising. At this point, there is plenty of documentary material that demonstrates clearly how Providence Police officers behave like choirboys for members of the white club and pillaging barbarians towards people of color. Officer Matthew Sheridan, the brutal sadist who needs to be removed from our society for his violence, is allowed to prowl the streets of Providence preying on men and women of color even after video footage has been posted online showing him behaving like a character out of a Mad Max picture. Those who are interested in seeing Providence cops engaged in behavior and activities including extortion, drug trafficking, sexual malfeasance on the job, excessive use of force, and any other number of things needs to merely contact the independent press outlets to be directed to video that is available on YouTube, this being just one example: 

Second, let’s consider the history of the East Side. Though Zurier would love to pose as a progressive politician, the sad fact is that he is part of a cohort of Providence residents that ethnically cleansed the historic Cape Verdean population of Fox Point out of existence. We see very little effort on his part to make reparations for this in any real and tangible way today. Then again, the unjust seizure and occupation of black and brown peoples’ land is not exactly a new thing to be given a pass by this cohort. Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein, and Ilan Pappe have filled literal reams about that topic. Finkelstein in particular homed in on a key issue when he wrote the bitter and darkly funny polemic The Holocaust Industry, which pointed out how the specter of antisemitism was invoked for political gain by advantageous and wholly unsavory white politicians who could throw on a yarmulke for the cameras but then behave like the goyim did after landing in 1492.

Sam Zurier effectively traffics in is known in the discourse as identity politics. The political scientist Adolph Reed, Jr. has written that identity politics “is not an alternative to class politics; it is a class politics, the politics of the left-wing of neoliberalism. It is the expression and active agency of a political order and moral economy in which capitalist market forces are treated as unassailable nature.” What is so important to grasp here, however, is the nature of capitalism itself and particularly in relation to black and brown folks. The capitalist system arose at the end of the 15th century as a three-legged behemoth that unjustly and mercilessly stole the land and freedom of millions upon millions of black/brown folks. In other words, the economic system I speak of was born of the Triangle Slave Trade. This is particularly relevant here because a significant element of that system was formulated right here in Providence. Roger Williams created one of the first slave ship cargoes in this city with prisoners taken in the Pequot War. These American Indians were sold into bondage in Bermuda and the profits from that sale went on to finance the foundation and endowment of Brown University. Like the site says, Go Local.

Ignatiev speaks elsewhere about “well-meaning folk who would be horrified at the suggestion that they are, in fact, reproducing the structures of racism.” I know there are plenty of members in the white club who would react like that.

But Zurier has no excuse like that for his resistance to the Community Safety Act. The City Solicitor and the ACLU have both approved of this Act. Now it is merely a case equivalent to that described by Sebastian Haffner in the 1930’s. Sitting as a legal clerk in a courthouse in 1933, he was eyewitness to the Nazis transforming the institutions of law into the Third Reich in real time. A Brown Shirt walked up and asked him whether he was an Aryan. “I had said ‘Yes! Well, in God’s name, I was indeed an ‘Aryan.’ I had not lied, I had allowed something much worse to happen. What a humiliation, to have answered the unjustified question as to whether I was ‘Aryan’ so easily, even if the fact was of no importance to me! What a disgrace to buy, with a reply, the right to stay with my documents in peace! I had been caught unawares, even now. I had failed my very first test.”

Though Zurier has insisted repeatedly on saying no, he is actually also saying yes. He is just a white man, a “miserable, petulant, subordinated creature”, quoting Ignatiev.

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Andrew Stewart is a member of the Rhode Island Media Cooperative, an organization created for freelancers by freelancers which you can join for free.

 

Related Slideshow: Winners and Losers in Raimondo’s FY18 Budget Proposal

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Winner

Criminal Justice Reform

Per recommendations from the Justice Reinvestment Working Group, the Governor is proposing nearly $1 million in investments such as the public defender mental health program ($185,000), improved mental health services at the ACI ($410,000), recovery housing ($200,000) and domestic violence intervention, in her FY18 budget. 

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Winner

English Language Learners

Under the heading of “promoting 3rd grade reading,” Raimondo proposed adding $2.5 million to make English Language Learning (ELL) K-12 funding permanent.  The Governor’s office points out that RI is one of four states that doesn’t have permanent funding.

The suggestion was one made by the Funding Formula Working Group in January 2016, who said that “in the event that Rhode Island chooses to make an additional investment in ELLs, the funding should be calculated to be responsive to the number of ELLs in the system and based on reliable data, and include reasonable restrictions to ensure that the money is used to benefit ELLs — and promote the appropriate exiting of ELL students from services.”

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Winner

Car Owners - and Drivers

Governor Raimondo wants to reduce assessed motor vehicle values by 30% - a change that would reduce total car tax bills by about $58 million in calendar year 2018. Speaker of the House Nicholas Mattiello, however, has indicated that he might want to go further in its repeal.  

In her budget proposal, Raimondo also put forth adding 8 staffers to the the Department of Motor Vehicles to "address wait times."

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Winner

T.F. Green

The “Air Services Development Fund” would get an influx of $500,000 to “provide incentives to airlines interested in launching new routes or increasing service to T.F. Green Airport.” The Commerce Corporation set the criteria at the end of 2016 for how to grant money through the new (at the time $1.5 million fund).

Also getting a shot in the arm is the I-195 development fund, which would receive $10.1 million from debt-service savings to “resupply” the Fund to “catalyze development & attract anchor employers.”

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Tie

Minimum Wage Increase

An increase in the state minimum wage is part of Raimondo’s proposal, which would see it go from $9.60 an hour to $10.50 an hour.  Raimondo was unsuccessful in her effort in 2016 to bring it up to $10.10 — it was June 2015 that she signed legislation into law that last raised Rhode Island’s minimum wage, from $9 to 9.60.  

The state's minimum hourly wage has gone up from $6.75 in January 2004 to $7.75 in 2013, $8 in 2014, and $9 on Jan. 1, 2015.  Business groups such as the National Federation of Independent Business however have historically been against such measures, citing a hamper on job creation.  

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Tie

Cigarette Tax

Like the minimum wage, Raimondo is looking for an increase - in this instance, the cigarette tax, and revenue to state coffers.  Raimondo was unsuccessful in her effort to go from a tax of $3.75 to $4 last year. Now she is looking for an increase to $4.25 per pack, which the administration says would equate to $8.7 million in general revenue — and go in part towards outdoor recreation and smoking cessation programs.  

The National Federation of Independent Business and other trade groups have historically been against such an increase, saying it will hurt small businesses - i.e. convenience stores. And clearly, if you’re a smoker, you’re likely to place this squarely in the loser category instead. 

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Loser

Hospitals

As often happens in the state budget, winner one year, loser the next. As GoLocal reported in 2016, “the Rhode Island Hospital Association immediately lauded the budget following its introduction, and addressed that while it is facing some reductions, that it "applauds" this years budget after landing on the "loser" list last year.”

This year, it falls back on the loser list, with a Medicaid rate freeze to hospitals, nursing homes, providers, and payers — at FY 2017 levels, with a 1% rate cut come January 1, 2018. 

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Loser

Online Shoppers

The taxman cometh — maybe.  Raimondo proposed an “Internet Sales Tax Initiative” — which would purportedly equate to $34.7 million in revenues.

"Online sales and the fact that online sellers do not collect sales tax has created a structural problem for Rhode Island's budget — our sales taxes have been flat," said Director of Administration Michael DiBiase, of the tax that Amazon collects in 33 states, but not Rhode Island. "We think mostly due to online sales, we’re able to capture the growth. The revenue number is $35 million dollars — it improves our structural deficit problem. It’s an important fiscal development."

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Loser

Long Term Care Funding

The Governor’s proposal recommends “redesigning the nature” of the State’s Integrated Care Initiative, by transferring long-term stay nursing home members from Neighborhood Health to Medicaid Fee-for-Service and repurposing a portion of the anticipated savings (from reduced administrative payments to Neighborhood Health) for “enhanced services in the community.” “The investments in home- and community-based care will help achieve the goal of rebalancing the long-term care system," states the Administration. 

Cutting that program is tagged at saving $12.2 million; cuts and “restructuring” at Health and Human Services is slated to save $46.3 million. 

 

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