Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.Carl Jung

Inner Life Directions

Expanding Reality

Danielle Levy

  • Pre-Empting Laws

    Decades ago the tobacco industry developed a strategy to reach state governments in order to get their agenda across. The strategy was perfected by the National Rifle Association. Now it is being used by the restaurant industry to fight wage increases and by a group of corporations in order to better fight common issues. The trend recently came to the fore after the new Texas governor, Greg Abbott, warned cities that by passing certain ordinances and regulations they were undermining the business friendly image Texas has been working towards. Pre-empting the power of local government, as this is called, is now standard practice in several states such as Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, South Carolina or New Mexico, states where Republicans control state houses. A new law in Arkansas, for example, forbids municipalities from passing ordinances protecting gays and lesbians from discrimination. In New Mexico, the restaurant industry says it will support a small wage increase only if the state promises to pass laws forbidding other increases. In Washington D.C. a variation is at work where the Congress is trying to override a law legalizing marijuana which was passed by 70% of the D.C. electorate in November 2014. Given Republicans’ emphasis on local control, critics see hypocrisy in the use of these pre-empting laws. Democrats have been known to use them too, but apparently their practice is more sporadic and not as organized.

    Understanding the uses and consequences of pre-empting laws defies easy explanations. That, of course doesn’t lessen their importance because if we believe in the democratic process, these laws are an instance showing us the need to know what corporate money is buying, or as in the case with Marijuana in D.C., one where the will of the people is being superseded and ignored—Both corroding, interfering and restricting the working out of what is meant to be a basic tenet of any country believing in democracy.

  • Rights For The Homeless

    A Berkeley School of Law study found that since 1990, 58 California cities have enacted numerous laws that discriminate against the homeless. The average city studied had 9 such laws. San Francisco and Los Angeles each led with 23 restrictions. Homeless people are arrested far more than the average, for vagrancy, for “drunkenness”. And if they are not arrested, the homeless are cited or harassed for sleeping in public, sometimes for sitting or lying down. In essence the study concludes that the laws are used to punish people’s status, not their behavior. Researchers found that often the homeless are harassed by police or security guards without reference to any law at all. Also noted is that the trend of laws against the homeless does not seem to abate. In 2013 in California, advocates tried to pass a Homeless Bill of Rights. While it passed the Assembly Judiciary Committee, it died in the Appropriation Committee. This year the same advocates are back with a “right to rest” bill meant to extend basic human and civil rights protection for the homeless. Oregon and Colorado are also introducing similar bills.

    The homeless are a neglected and vulnerable group deserving equal treatment too often denied them.   As researchers put it in an L.A. Times op-ed, “One day we will look back at these anti-homeless laws, as we do now at other antiquated vagrancy laws, and wonder how we could have been so inhumane.”

  • The Face of a Baby

    The first baby born in Hungary January 1, 2015, was news and had his picture in the paper. Because Rikardo Racz is Roma, also known as gypsy, the picture attracted the attention of Elod Novak, the deputy leader of a far-right party. He posted a picture of himself with his wife and three children on Facebook decrying the presence of the Romas, with statements such as the fact that to him they were multiplying and will soon make people like him a minority in their own country. The post triggered s torrent of both condemnation and approval and reflected the racism—and anti-racism—currently at work in the country.

    Not long before this incident a Roma baby in a village south of Paris was denied burial by the mayor. In this case the mayor of a neighborhood village shocked by the refusal offered a spot in the cemetery of his village.

    There’s something foul and pernicious about the use of a baby to vent one’s prejudices. It happened with Roma babies, since Roma are a shunned and unwanted minority and presence in several European countries. No doubt it happens in other countries about the babies of any of the many groups who are discriminated against. When racism shows its face through that of a baby, it’s time to ask ourselves how we would react to the babies of minorities or even to those we hold prejudices against.

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