This is US – This is Obama, This is Hillary, This is Trump - Standing Rock Meets Edward Snowden

This may be a photo of Afghanistan, it may be Iraq, it may be Syria, but it is Standing Rock, North Dakota in the United States. This photo reminds me of the Hollywood filmmaker who shot his movie about war-torn Beirut in the Bronx.

What you are looking at in the above photo, according to Unicorn Riot on Facebook, are “military style walls to protect the oil pipeline from protestors: a barrier of six foot walls and three rows of razor wire followed by a second barrier that is twelve feet tall with a row of razor wire across top. Excavators and bulldozers continue construction as pipe is laid out and crews await the drills so they can begin boring the holes to connect the pipeline under the Missouri River. Military, sheriffs, and mercenaries patrol the perimeter night and day, 24 hour surveillance on the camps.”

This is happening now. Hundreds of protestors, calling themselves Water Protectors have assembled near Cannon Ball, North Dakota in a camp called Standing Rock where they are attempting to stop the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline, planned to stretch from Stanley, ND to Patoka, IL. The Army Corp of Engineers has overridden the 1851 Treaty of Fort Laramie to approve the pipeline. It’s not the first time the United States has broken a treaty with Native Americans. However, the way land grabs are going right now, it may be one of the last. There’s not much left, and our National Parks are currently in danger of being confiscated by Republicans who think we should be drilling on all available land, whether it’s available or not.

The camp at Standing Rock is a militarized zone. Veterans for Peace have said that law enforcement, sheriffs and mercenaries there are armed more than they, veterans, were for war. Dogs have been used to attack peaceful demonstrators; journalists and filmmakers have been arrested; demonstrators have been arrested, tear-gassed and shot. In a cry to the public for help, protestors stated, “DAPL is now flooding the camp with huge lights and flying drones, helicopters, planes, and even fighter jets over us. This is a war zone!! And where is our president? No one is protecting us…they protect the pipeline…so sad to see that they only care about short term profits…where will their children live once the earth is poisoned and they can't drink water..”

Many Americans don't want more fossil fuels. We stand with the the protestors at Standing Rock. Solar Power! Wind! Water! God has given us all we need. We could live in Paradise.

What has President Obama done about this confrontation? President Obama is great at double speak. His smile is worth a dozen promises. Obama said he’d look into asking the Army Corp of Engineers to consider re-routing the pipeline away from Native lands, sacred lands, and Native water supplies, namely the Missouri River, which water protectors are guarding, which was basically saying nothing at all, meanwhile making everyone happy and hopeful. (UPDATE: On November 15, the White House announced President Obama is calling for a halt in the pipeline construction so that representatives from pipeline builder, Energy Transfers Partners and the Native American tribes can sit down and negotiate terms on which they can agree. This is huge. However, it is also a brilliant ploy on Obama’s part. He knows that no matter what both sides agree upon, President Trump will certainly over-turn any plan that does away with the pipeline or costs too much money and time. Obama gets the credit for being reasonable and kind while the investors only have to wait patiently.)

What was candidate Hillary Clinton’s response? More double-speak. Only she doesn’t have that killer grin. “…all of the parties involved—including the federal government, the pipeline company and contractors, the state of North Dakota, and the tribes—need to find a path forward that serves the broadest public interest. As that happens, it's important that on the ground in North Dakota, everyone respects demonstrators' rights to protest peacefully, and workers' rights to do their jobs safely.”

You can’t have it both ways, Hillary. And, we know about your oil connections, your bank ties and your fracking friends. Many people have been starry-eyed over the possibility of the first woman President. But, just like the first African-American President, we can't let sentiment blind us to the truth. Hillary, like Obama, would have allowed this pipeline to go forward.

And Trump? He has indicated that he will support the building of the pipeline. According to Time.com, “…Trump owns stock in the company building the pipeline, Energy Transfer Partners, as well as another company that will own a share of the pipeline once it is completed. He also received more than $100,000 in campaign contributions from the company’s CEO…Making matters worse for environmental activists, they now also face the possibility of the Trump White House reversing Obama’s decision to reject the Keystone XL pipeline. Trump has listed reviving that project, which would have carried crude oil from Canada to the Gulf Coast, as a priority for his first 100 days. TransCanada, the company behind Keystone, said it planned to work with a Trump administration shortly following the election.”

Recently, I saw an interview with Edward Snowden broadcast from the Tuschincki Theatre in the Netherlands. One thing he said resonated and, he outta know, he urge us to not “look at this as a question of single election or a single government…a vote will never be enough…we should be cautious of putting to much hope or fear in one person. President Obama campaigned on a platform of ending mass surveillance, ending torture and we all put a lot of hope in him because of this. We thought because the right person got into office everything would change…We can not hope for an Obama and we can not fear a Donald Trump rather we should build it ourselves.”

Edward Snowden

I’ve been thinking about Snowden a lot lately. Not because of the election, not because I sympathize with him. I don’t. I’m sorry that the whole thing happened. What whole thing, you ask? I’ve been thinking about Snowden because I saw the Oliver Stone movie and one scene keeps haunting me. The scene in which we gaze over the techie's shoulder to see on his computer screen keywords highlighted in a random Facebook news feed. As the techie explains the purpose of the surveillance to Snowden, who has just arrived, we realize, that could be our Facebook page, and our stupid, meaningless chatter about hating the President, or the policies of the United States has just been misinterpreted by the National Security Agency.

I’ve been trying, subtly, to tell my friends they must see the movie, but, of course, no one listens to me. Now, I’m going to tell you why I’ve been haunted by that scene.

  

According to Snowden, the government has been peeking into our emails and social networking such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, etc. using violent or threatening keywords they consider key to finding terrorists. I’m not going to type these words here. See the movie and you’ll see the words.

Now, this has been happening since the technology was available in the early 1990s - and please don't forget that the internet itself comes from the U.S. Department of Defense - and since the Patriot Act and since 9/11. Obama had nothing to do with starting it, but he continued it. Hillary, as Secretary of State knew about it. And Trump, Trump is gonna love it.

Not only the government looks at our keywords. So do sites that sell stuff to us. I’m not going to mention any by name. You know what they are. You probably have noticed by now that if you’re in the market for shoes and you click on a shoe, that shoe follows you around the internet all day.

Now, for the scary part. And again, you can’t blame either of the candidates or the current President – these sites are not only looking at your keywords, they are listening to them. Yes, if you say, in the privacy of your own home, “I need shoes,” and you say that in the presence of any device into which you may speak, that device is listening to you whether it is turned off or not. It does help if your computer, for instance, is on and the cover is up. But, it doesn’t need to be on. If the cover is up, someone may be watching and listening through the camera and microphone abilities of your lap-top. Or phone or TV or iPad.

I know this because after a conversation with my daughter about blenders versus food processors, a certain shopping site sent me an email offering blenders and food processors though I hadn’t clicked on anything yet. A conversation a friend and I had over lunch about Rosemary’s Baby author Ira Levin yielded an email for books by a scientist named Kendra Levin. A conversation on the phone about how the hotel did not have robes available – this on the OTHER END of the phone – led to an email for hotel spa robes.

Again, you may see Snowden for the details. In the movie, we see a Muslim woman removing her burka in what she thinks is her private bedroom. The techie says, “I always wondered what was under those.” Snowden is shocked. We also see a woman and her daughter Facetiming and discussing Botox treatments.

Snowden has said about mass surveillance that it does not stop terrorism because of the huge amount of useless information that must be sorted. He recommends more targeted surveillance, stating that our mass surveillance of American citizens did not stop the Boston Marathon bombing, for instance. “When you collect everything you understand nothing - you get drowned in so much information you can’t find what’s relevant...Targeted surveillance does not destroy the rights of everyone else in society.”

Snowden went on to say he felt optimistic about the future, “Despite the challenges and statements by President elect this is a nation that will strive to get better…this is a dark moment in our history but it’s not the end.”

Again, if Snowden can say that, I think we can listen.

One more thing: a lot of us have been pretty freaked out and disillusioned by the rash of

sexual harassment and human rights violations being committed since the election in the name of Trump. A 10-year-old girl was grabbed by a classmate who said, “If the President can do it, I can too.” An Asian woman was beaten in the street when she tried to ignore a man telling her “This is America, you should go home.” He held on to her and told her she had to listen to him. When she punched him in the throat to get away, he called the police and claimed she attacked him. She was arrested. Swastikas and white supremacists graffiti are appearing over-night. the KKK has promised a Trump victory parade. But, think about it, when have we not had racial, ethnic incidents? The KKK and white supremacists have been waiting in the wings for decades. These are being done in the name of Trump, but Trump is not the cause, he is the excuse. He has certainly fanned the flames that already burned. 

Now, consider all the race riots and killings we've had during the administration of our first African-American President.

Think about this: Journalist Kelly Oxford requested women to tweet her their first incidents of sexual harassment  - THEIR FIRST INCIDENT – and she received 30 million tweets from women. 

Trump's attitudes toward women and accusations of his sexual assaults on women have been inflammatory to the behavior of the kinds of men who want to assault women, but he is only one of the men responsible for a centuries-old climate of disrespect that caused at least 30 million assaults and counting.

My point is this – This is US – this is Obama, this is Hillary, this is Trump. Only we have the power to be better people. To withstand oppression as best we can right now. To protect others. To be healthy. To fight. 

Remember - the only reason Obama stepped in to try to stop the pipeline in the convenient eleventh hour of his term as President is because of the Water Protectors' long, enduring protest.

In Snowden’s words - and a lot of us are already doing this, but it’s good to hear someone who’s been in the trenches say it  - if you can’t organize, then support the people who do organize. Sign petitions, send money to the organizations who can carry out the work you believe in, who can take those petitions to court, who can organize marches and protests, who can research and appeal to the proper channels to get bills passed and laws changed, who can safeguard our freedoms and our future. 

Let me quote SNL’s Hillary Clinton, “I’m not giving up. And neither should you.”

Ironically, that means going against Hillary and oil/banking business as usual for me, but Hallelujah!

©PatriciaGoodwin, 2016

Patricia Goodwin is the author of When Two Women Die, about Marblehead legends and true crime and its sequel, Dreamwater, about the Salem witch trials and the vicious 11-year-old pirate Ned Low. Holy Days is her third novel, about the sexual, psychological seduction of Gloria Wisher and her subsequent transformation.

Did Trump Kill the American Dream?

“The American Dream is dead.” Donald Trump

First of all, the American Dream is not dead. The American Dream will never die. People will always, always dream of a better life – not always a materialistic dream, sometimes a dream of being healthy or free. People will always work hard to make that dream come true. I’m not even sure the dream is particularly American. I mean, who doesn’t want the girl/boy, the family, the home, the good life?

The year was 1979 and we were newly married. We lived in a small one bedroom apartment on Beacon Street in Boston. We paid about $580 a month. The apartment was simple, yet elegant. Three rooms, galley kitchen, non-working fireplace, walk-in-closet. In the bedroom, the view of the Hancock Building was stunning; the aged stone of Trinity Church reflected in the Hancock’s mirrored windows. The landlord kept it clean. We’ve been told that if we saw one cockroach, just one, we were to call maintenance. We didn’t see any bugs. But, we were freezing; we broke into the locked thermostat when our cat started to sneeze. The maintenance man came and re-locked the thermostat; I don’t know how he found out. “Do I have to say it?” he asked. “No,” we answered.

What does this have to do with Trump? Nothing. Yet. Unknown to us, at this time, he was busy buying up New York City real estate. Our life is Boston was lovely. People were friendly. I could hear real live piano music and students who would stop in the alley sometimes to play violin or cello; one opera singer who used to practice her scales as she walked. One day, after seeing me for years, she told me I had beautiful hair. Once, in the middle of the night, I heard a mysterious “clop-clop” sound. I woke to see a policeman on horseback slowly traveling down the alley in a light snow. I used to joke that the phone at the coffee shop on the corner was my office. I both made and received calls there, while sitting at a sidewalk table having coffee. You could buy fresh flowers on the street for $2.00 a bunch. I always had fresh flowers. The movie theater was a few blocks down, restaurants, art galleries, and museums abounded, all the wonderful things the city provides, including impromptu music. People will suffer a lot of inconvenience, even hardship, in order to live in the city.

And, crime. We were broken into while we were away at a book conference. That same week, on our street, a graceful main thoroughfare of brownstones in Boston, close to the State House, there were two horrific murders and my husband said we needed to get out now. We had to go anyway. Our building was “going condo.” We were offered to buy our own apartment for a price we couldn’t afford, $39,000, a ridiculous sum by today’s standards. Trump would say, “You should have bought it, you idiot! It would have been worth over $500,000 in 2016!"

But, in 1979, $39,000 was way out of our price point. We learned a new word that year – two new words, actually - “condo” and “homeless.”

We heard that New York City had gone condo or co-op. Rent control still existed, but, we were told by the media, it was doomed to die out with the folks who then occupied the apartments. More and more people were being kicked out of their homes as their buildings “went condo.” More and more people were becoming – horror of horrors – homeless! We had never heard that word before. Before 1979, homeless people were called bums. Now, we heard that some of the homeless were people who had "lost their homes" and "been foreclosed." Now, veterans were homeless. We were horrified! How could this be? Veterans? Men and women who had served their country in Vietnam, then, as time went on, the Gulf War, then Iraq, then Afghanistan were living out of cardboard boxes, pushing their belongings in shopping carts, enduring cold, malnutrition, and crime in a new war on the home front they had defended from those very horrors.

What had happened? I can tell you in one word, another new word then, one we’ve all heard too much of now – Trump.

I recalled a 1985 60 Minutes interview with Leona Helmsley. She would soon go to prison for tax evasion - hear that, Donald? This interview is seared on my brain. At least the image of that interview, this – Leona Helmsley standing next to Mike Wallace at the window of her NYC apartment. The view was a vast one, all park, edged with tall buildings on three sides. Leona was pointing, like a queen, ruling all she could see. She referred to her husband, Harry Helmsley’s, at the time, $5.5 billion dollar NYC real estate empire. “Harry owns this, Harry owns this, that building, all that down there,” she pointed and pointed again, “That too, that, and - she waved her arm - Trump owns the rest.”

Trump owns the rest.

In 1979, the Average Cost of new house was $58,100.00; Average Income per year $17,500.00; Average Monthly Rent $280.00 and the cost of a gallon of Gas 86 cents. A Toyota Corolla cost $3,698.00, a Mercury Cougar XR7 $6,430.00.

What happened?

Here’s my theory and it’s only a theory. It’s not a scholarly treatise; it’s not even journalism. It is, as Mel Gibson says in Edge of Darkness, "Just a personal observation."

Trump fucked the country. He fucked the American Dream. Maybe he didn’t kill it, but he certainly raped it. When the cost of real estate was artificially inflated, so was every other cost of living. When greedy landlords realized what people would pay, and what some of them could pay, they raised their rents and leases. How many people were homeless because their buildings went condo? Forced out of their homes so that the building could be renovated for condos? How many business failed - AND ARE STILL FAILING TODAY - because their leases went up to exorbitant rates they couldn't pay? How are we going to get a decent minimum wage if businesses cannot afford their leases, let alone pay a living wage to their employees or offer employees insurance?

The cost of New York real estate per square foot rose, and kept rising. And as New York City goes, so goes the country and, often, the world. The price of everything rose. Soon you couldn’t live comfortably without two incomes, after a few years, it took two six-figure incomes to live without the wolf at your door. I can hear some people laughing at this - for some, that still wasn’t enough.

If you’re wondering why you were foreclosed on, you can blame Trump, and Helmsley, but Trump is the one who kept the crisis going. He started real estate inflation and a lot of other very greedy people followed suit.

When you own half of Manhattan and a good part of other boroughs in New York City, you can raise the price per square foot to whatever you want and I think that’s what Trump did. According to a 2004 study by Harvard University, “Why Is Manhattan so Expensive?” “Manhattan condo units have been selling for around $460 per square foot over the past two decades [that would be the ‘80s and ‘90s], with recent values reaching above $600 per square foot.” That was 2004.

The average price pre square foot of Manhattan real estate, according to the Douglas Elliman report report released in July of 2016, is $1,759. Luxury units cost a lot more per square foot. If you ever watch Million Dollar Listing, New York, you know that the real estate agents on that reality show and the sellers of the units try desperately to get the price per square foot up to $2,000 or more. Trump is no exception. Quoting CityRealty Daniel Goldstein writes in MarketWatch that “in 2016 sales prices for Trump-brand condo units in Manhattan averaged $1,974 a square foot, compared with $1,873 a square foot for all other units, a 5% premium advantage…” In April, Donald Trump, Jr. bragged that the 63-story Trump International Hotel & Tower in Vancouver had sold all 214 units at “a higher price a square foot than any other property in Canada.” Clearly, getting the cost of living up is a good thing to a Trump.

As for rents, in 1979, the average rent in the country was $280, let’s double that for NYC and say, $560 a month, the average rent in NYC today, in 2016, according to a recent Douglas Elliman report – a whopping $3,280!

Trump fucked the country. Because as New York City real estate goes, so goes the nation, so goes the world. As NYC real estate became more and more expensive, so followed every other city in the United States all the way to San Francisco, still one of the most expensive places to live in the country. According to Zillow the median list price per square foot in San Francisco is $948…The median price of homes currently listed in San Francisco is $1,112,500.

It wasn’t long before these two six figure incomes and the price of real estate imploded in the crash of 1988. But, recovery was inevitable and the survival instincts of New Yorkers kicked in.

How are people living right now in New York City? What is the human cost of enjoying all the amenities the city has to offer? Sure, landlords have always had the reputation of being greedy and unfair. In the 1800s, there were cold water flats and shared bathrooms for tenants – these continued through till after WWII. The good old days. But what about right now?

The young woman in the photo above pays $1,945 a month for this tiny (looks like approx. 150 sq ft) 3rd story walk-up little north of Delancey Street on the Lower East Side that is clean, roach-free, and well-lighted. The landlord insists that he rents at 15% lower than the normal rate and his apartments rent quickly because of that edge. In other words, no time to think about it! You can see from the image that her bed couldn't be closer to her stove without being in it, but in glowing 2016 NYC real estate terms - she has a window! When I commented on this story I wrote that NYC should be ashamed of stories like these, not proud, not entertained, I got over 430 likes from other people reading the same story.

The Worst Landlords in New York City is a list released each year by a public advocacy group. According to CBS, "Landlords of buildings with 35 units or more are placed on the Watchlist if their buildings have an average of two or more serious violations or active complaints per unit. Landlords of smaller buildings — 35 units or less — require three open, serious violations or active complaints."

The nightmare stories, including hidden cameras, walls between apartments made out of plastic tarp, the usual rats and other vermin, weeks without heat and hot water, are too numerous to tell. But, here's a very similar one from San Francisco -

"…Take for example the programmer who lived in my closet: Every night he’d come home around 9 p.m. He’d sit on the couch, pour himself a bowl of cereal and eat in silence. Then he would grab his laptop and head directly into the closet — a so-called “private room” listed on Airbnb for $1,400 a month. It was the only time I’d ever see him. The only way I could tell he was home was by the glow of his laptop seeping out from under the closet door. Hours later, deep into the night, the light would go out, and I would know he had to gone to sleep. By the time I arrived, he had been living there for 16 months, in a windowless closet with a thin mattress placed right on the floor. During the day he codes for Pinterest. Yeah . . . that Pinterest." To me, Airbnb is a gut reaction to the living situation everywhere.

You might say that Trump isn't responsible for the behavior of these bad landlords. But, I think, in a big way, he is. He had every opportunity to do things right. He didn't. He took advantage of everyone in his path and called it good business. And, now, he wants to be President on the platform that he is for the common man - that he will take care of the wants and needs of the common man. 

Let's see how Trump treats the common man -

Besides all the vendors and individuals (including veterans) he has weaseled out of paying for work and services from which he benefitted, let’s see what he did in Aberdeen, Scotland. You can see the whole film here You've Been Trumped. Witness for yourself what he did to a small coastal eco-system in Aberdeen, Scotland and the average people who lived on it in order to build a failed golf course that no one goes to. There’s a special place in hell for anyone who destroys an ecosystem for profit. There’s a special place in hell for anyone who pulls up whole trees by the roots and buries them upside down in the ground.

America, please don’t allow Trump to fuck the country any more than he already has. His name, if it isn’t now, will be synonymous with getting fucked.

Don’t Get Trumped!

©PatriciaGoodwin, 2016

Patricia Goodwin is the author of When Two Women Die, about Marblehead legends and true crime and its sequel, Dreamwater, about the Salem witch trials and the vicious 11-year-old pirate Ned Low. Holy Days is her third novel, about the sexual, psychological seduction of Gloria Wisher and her subsequent transformation.

HOLY DAYS - Luke Was Real

Most of the questions I get from readers about my novel Holy Days are personal, about my experiences. However, some readers have asked me about a couple of seemingly far-fetched elements in the book – namely the bow and arrow and the handsome young Italian who seems to step out of Romeo & Juliet (Luke was more of a Tybalt than a Romeo) right into Holy Days.

I wrote Holy Days almost exactly as it happened. I had to. In order to do justice to what happened and how it happened. To do justice for the victims. I did not want to change the truth. 

*First, I’ll address the bow and arrow. A few readers have said the bow and arrow seemed to appear out of nowhere. “What a surprise!” I wondered if they’d been paying attention? As a young girl, Gloria was enamored of the Robin Hood story. She loved Robin, and Maid Marion, whom the story told, was a better rider and marksman than Robin. Gloria found the words wonderfully beautiful. She found the ideals courageous and powerful. Gloria, after being raped, regresses somewhat into the comfort and strength she found in childhood in the noble beauty of the Robin Hood legend. The night of the rape, Gloria falls asleep with her body wrapped around her old Robin Hood book so tightly, she wakes with cramped arms. The next day, when her friend is molested in broad daylight on a crowded street, Gloria is furious; she runs after the man clutching the long bow she just bought. So passionate and distraught is she that she forgets she has it and nearly trips over it. Remembering, Gloria stands and readies the weapon. Gloria had to use the bow and arrow. No other weapon would have sufficed because Gloria commits a hero’s murder and she needed a hero’s weapon. The truth of the matter is that the molestation really happened and I ran after the molester. I obviously did not have a long bow and arrows or you would have heard about it.

Now, our young man, Luke.

It may be astounding to my readers, but Luke was real. I was his teacher, not his love. Such an amazing person really did appear in my classroom on the first day of my student teaching. He really was from Italy. He really had long, dark hair. He really was 20 and turned 21 during the school year. The other kids really did love him. They were a wonderful class, full of joy and affection for each other. It was a revelation to me to witness how they treated one another, as I had mostly known spite and violence. They really kidded him gently about his name, which was not Luke, but in its formal expression did sound feminine like Luciano. He really was working as a shoe repair guy and he really planned to return to Italy against his father’s wishes. His girl friend really did not want to go back with him, which caused him pain and confusion. She really preferred to enjoy her material success as a Firestone tire saleswoman. Luke really drove a classic red Alfa Romeo of which he was very proud.

The real Luke inspired me. He showed me that living another kind of life other than the one expected of you was a possibility. (Sometimes I think he was an angel sent by God to show me another way to live.) I developed him into a character because I wanted Gloria to have someone unique. Someone younger than she, someone to inspire hope for the future, someone with a fresh outlook, someone brave and smart enough to take her on, someone who desired a simple, natural life. I never would have believed such a young man existed in reality if I had not met him myself. Luke was real. He was really fine, really intelligent, really sweet. Quiet, and more serious than the others. I never forgot him. I gave him to Gloria.

*Note: Holy Days was finished in 1996. Obviously, I wrote the murder scene long before The Hunger Games books (2008) were written. Not crazy about sharing my hero’s weapon, but I’ll be gracious to a fellow writer.

©Patricia Goodwin, 2016

Patricia Goodwin is the author of When Two Women Die, about Marblehead legends and true crime and its sequel, Dreamwater, about the Salem witch trials and the vicious 11-year-old pirate Ned Low. Holy Days is her third novel, about the sexual, psychological seduction of Gloria Wisher and her subsequent transformation.