The real miracle is not to walk on water or thin air but to walk on the earth!Yes, live in the here and now.There is nothing else. Thich T. Nacht
Monday, October 6, 2008
Saturday, October 4, 2008
Che! Prof. Tracy's Buddy Passes!
I just got word from one of my favorite sista blogs, Aunt Jemima's Revenge, that Che, Professor Tracy's beloved dog and buddy has passed on. We at A Choice of Weapons send our love and condolences. For all y'all who don't own a pet, you just don't understand how much they mean to you. My cat has a personality and likes and dislikes and its amazing when you come to the understanding that this animal is a sentient being even if it's only 2 feet tall and four pounds. Mostly hair. Morning Katt not Che. Now Che, he was an 85 pound tongue with feet! I personally applauded his stand against the current lipstick on a pig and pit bull in a skirt comments. I would have voted for Che had he chosen a life of public service beyond keeping mailmen, birds and yes, cats in check. When I inquired of his Katt Killing policy, he informed me that he did not believe in such things and that while he may Chase a cat, he would never kill one. In fact he has a current buddy that's a cat. So there!
Bounce over to Aunt Jemima's Revenge and leave a note for Tracy. Keep doing what you doing!
BE Mindful! BE Prayerful! BE Careful!
Jaycee
Friday, October 3, 2008
Kongo Square Chat With Odie Hawkins! Part 1
Hello, it is indeed a pleasure to interview Author, Journalist, Screenwriter, Poet, and dramatist Odie Hawkins. Welcome to A Choice of Weapons.Odie: Thank you and hello all.
Jaycee: This is going to be a good interview, covering a lot of stuff but I gonna publish our chat in two sections just for length.
Odie: Cool anything you feel is necessary.
Jaycee: Odie over the course of your career you've had over twenty five novels published. That's amazing! Well let's get into all of it. I want to talk with you about Chicago, The Watts Writers workshop, Holloway House, Iceberg Slim, Ghana, and the genre you've created since called Pan Afrikan Occult literature. Is that cool?
Odie: Excellent! Real cool.
Jaycee: Well alright then. Here we go. Odie, you're from the Midwest right, by way of the continent, of course?
Odie: Yeah, the south side of Chicago to be exact.
Jaycee: Odie, what's the first story you ever wrote? Do you remember it?
Odie: No, not really. I do remember how it came about. I was sitting around the table with my three uncles from Mississippi. They were great storytellers. I think that's where I picked it up from because they added color to it. One of my uncles, I won't mention his name, but I don't think he could read or write but he knew how to describe and use what I'd like to call picture words. He was a wonderful storyteller. My uncles told stories; My Father was a big liar! (laughter)
Jaycee: How did you choose writing as a profession?
Odie: It chose me. There is no other way I can answer that. I would have been a storyteller. A verbal storyteller, but well, I was in high school and Dr. Margaret Burroughs, one of my high school teachers, who by the way founded the first Afrikan American Museum, The Du Sable Museum of Afrikan American History in this country, persuaded me to stop stealing and gave me a ream of paper and encouraged me to start writing.
She was a wonderful, stern, powerful lady who took our people back to the continent. When I was Ghana in the 1992, she was leading a tour group. She was eighty at the time. She was full of energy. The group she was leading tongues were hanging out trying to keep up with her. (laughter)
She literally put the pen in my hand. She also taught at the county jails and different places you know....I believe she was in the Chicago public school system for like 30 years. She just believed in giving people a chance you know.
Jaycee: Did you take alot of creative writing classes in school? Did they have those then? Were they available? Nowadays we have writer’s colonies?
Odie: There was a creative writing class at my high school and I took that and well, Dr. Burroughs, encouraged me to enroll in another creative writing class as well led by a girlfriend of hers named Margeret Peterson.
Ummmm! I flunked out! You know how it is. The people in the class were so sophisticated. They smoked and they drank martinis after class. I mean what does a fourteen year have to talk about? I was writing stories about tigers giving birth an sh*t!
The word shit was a big word for me at that time and these grown ups were writing and "then I said to this motherfu*ker, fu*k you!"
I was embarrassed! I hadn't been around so called intellectuals who cursed. I thought they talked intellectually. (Laughter)
They would be like "Odie would you like to come to a party"? "Have you been with a girl yet?"
I was just embarrassed like a fish out of water. Now sex didn't intimidate me. I was born in a whorehouse on the south side of Chicago. I knew sex but this was well different. (laughter)
Jaycee: It sounds just ribald! (Laughter)
Odie: So, well I flunked out! (Laughter)
But now concerning workshops one of things this class did for me opened me up to books about writing. I went and got everything about writing I could get my hands on. I began to read about four books a week. I still do.
Jaycee: Yeah, I read a book by Stephen King on writing and he stated that if you don't have time to read then you definitely don't have time to write.
Odie: Yeah, you must read. That is essential to being a writer and especially to become a great writer.
Jaycee: So who are your favorite writers?
Odie: Oh! There are just too many but I believe the best writers you could read are the Afrikan writers, Chinua Achebe, Senghor, Oyono, The Russians, Doskefski, Pushkin, Turgennev, Gogol, Tolstoy, The Japanese, Tanazaki, Oshima, The Afrikan Creole, (Afrikan American) James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, Richard Wright and the Jewish writer Issac Bashavis Singer.
I go from the old to the new. I read everybody! One of my favorites Nikos Kazantzakis (forgive the spelling) (Zorba the Greek) he has a book called "Report to Greco" and of course, Nabokov who wrote "Lolita" and of course.....Speak Memory! About a dude who asks his memory to speak to him.
You know years ago a brotha asked me that same question and he was disappointed that I hadn't basically named a Black reading chart. I read whatever interests me, whatever speaks to my experience. It's like a rapper who only knows rap! No Indian music, no jazz! No Afro Cuban music! No Afrikan music! That rapper may be great but if he doesn't allow any other music into his vocabulary then all he knows will be limited.
Jaycee: Do you remember the book that turned you on? For me, it was S.E Hinton's The Outsiders!
Odie: Well... (Laughter) The book that did it for me was the Kama Sutra. It made my d*ck hard! And the Ananga Ranga and also Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer Page 9 (Laughter)
Jaycee: When you first went out on your own, did you write from a gut level experience, or did you just absorb the rhythms around you? Langston Hughes spoke of that. He absorbed the energy of Harlem. The sights and sounds, the rhythms of Jazz music.
Odie: Well, growing up on South side of Chicago, I soaked up everything. I'm a Langston Hughes disciple. I think that it's natural to soak up everything around you and then write from that gut level experience.
Jaycee: What was your first published story?
Odie: There were some before this, but the one I can remember was for a French art magazine started by Leopold Senghor called Presence African, called The Great Lawd Buddha. That story has metamorphosed into three or four different stories including a novel but the character has made appearances in several of my novels.
Jaycee: I know that you are a follower of Chester Himes. What is it about his writing that influenced you so....I remember hearing you speak about how you traveled Spain attempting to follow the same route that he took? Kinda like a pilgrimage.
Odie: I know that this may sound like blasphemy but I was always more impressed by Chester Himes autobiography "The Quality of Hurt" than any of his short stories or novels. I never was impressed by Cotton comes to Harlem or the Cotton Ed or Gravedigger Jones stories. I'm not saying he wasn't a good writer, who am I to say that?
Chester's autobiography was just so powerful. He fell down an elevator shaft and ....his real life was just more raw and real than his fiction. Anyway, I was always more drawn to Richard Wright. I mean I know there are people who would mention Toni Morrison and Alice Walker and that's cool let them be given all the accolade's there are and make the money. Some of their stuff though is just unreadable to me. (Laughter) I'm not saying its unreadable or anything like that just some of their stuff to is to me. (Laughter)
I did travel Spain following the landmarks Chester wrote about but when I was there no one remembered him.
Jaycee: Odie, How long had you been at writing by the time you got published?
Odie: About 20 years. I started writing when I was eight. I don't mean to sound flippant or anything. I was published in my high school newspaper constantly but I didn't start getting paid for it until my thirties. I didn't know writers were supposed to get paid. I just sent things, wrote articles about anything I was interested in. Even now, I sent a story to Latin Beat magazine about Chanzo Pozo and Dizzy Gillespie how they started Cu bop! (Afro Cuban Jazz)
I was a late bloomer. No one told me that writers could get paid for things like magazine articles, short stories, proposals, letters, and such.
Jaycee: What got you out of Chicago? The Army or a dude chasing you? (Laughter)
Watts, California
In 65 they burned the city down! I felt like "Hey, that city is about to be happenin!"
Odie: (Laughter) A dude chasing me...(Laughter) Well, you're not that far off but it was the Army! I got drafted and was in boot camp in Fort Ord, California in 1962. I got out in 1964 and got married to a Sistah with two girls. I had one from my first marriage. We formed a family and we decided to move to where we wouldn't have to buy any winter clothes.
The Watts Revolt happened in 1965 and Black folks burned the city down! I felt that "Hey that place is about to be happening!" I was just reading the signs ya know. There was about to be some money there. We moved out here in 1966. In 1966, I came to Watts and promptly joined the Watts Writers Workshop and that's where it happened for me.
I have to mention my teachers at the workshop. Dr. Louise Merriweather, Harlan Ellison, and my personal mentor John W. Bloch. Bloch had me rewrite the Ghetto Sketches for like two years, parts of it. He would say that "Hey! You got a dog in the story, what is the dogs’ point of view? (Laughter)
This taught me how to write a three dimensional story. Around 1967, he, (John Bloch) took me to see his agent who became my agent. The agent, Stew Robinson of Robinson and Weintraub got me into screenplays and radio scripts. He wasn't into novels and such; he was into screenplays and radio scripts, that kinda thing. He got me some television work. Sanford and Son and some others that I wrote scripts for that were never shown.
Jaycee: Now after the Watts Revolt, Budd Shulberg received a grant from the government and started the workshop to mentor writers from the inner city.
Odie: I joined the workshop when it opened its doors in 1966. I was a real carpetbagger but I was in there before alot of other people who came later. Some folks referred to the workshop as the Shulberg Plantation but I came and tried to learn whatever I could get from it.
Jaycee: Odie, I've always wanted to know how the Watts Writers felt about Shulberg? In the fifties he named names in the House of Un-American Activities Committee. What did y'all think of that?
Odie: Ok, I can't speak for everybody but for the people I know we were so politically unsophisticated it didn't matter to us. I definitely want to stress that point. At the time the artists they showed us were banned, the Hollywood Ten, when I was a member of the writers union and they tried to get us to join this protest or sign this petition.
But Black writers were always banned! Can you name any Black writer that Hollywood banned? They weren't even interrogated! They weren't even known!
I mean they banned Paul Robeson but you know Shulberg may have been doing something political but for us it was a chance to learn how to write a screenplay. His politics were irrelevant. Years later by the time we found out about Kazan and Shulberg it was just excess news. Black folks were always called communist.
If you were protesting and fighting socially, economically, intellectually even religiously the government called you a communist! If you wanted to be free, you were communist. Russia was telling us what to do! Why did we need Russia to tell us that we wanted to vote?
Jaycee: What writers were there from the beginning that didn't get known but are still waiting for their time?
Odie: James Thomas Jackson, Sonora Mckellar, Dean Jackson, so many little people that you only heard their name once or twice. Occye Slaughter, people like that. They might stand up in the workshop. Dee Dee McNeil, who was original members of the Watts Prophets, she's still out there doing it. Singing from San Diego to San Francisco and beyond. There were writers like Ojenke and Eric Priestley who just were not interested in mass acceptance. They never got famous beyond where they were.
"Hey! Lets burn this muthafuck*r down!" "Lets kill Whitey!"
The Writers Guild
Jaycee: Tell me about the Writers Guild. What was that about?
Odie: The Watts Writers Workshop by 1967-68 was in decline. It was targeted by J. Edgar Hoover's FBI. Some of the artists were targeted as well. The workshop was infiltrated with spies and agent provocateurs. I remember, there was this one dude who always seemed to suggest "Hey! Let's burn this thing down! Let's kill whitey!" I don't know what happened to Shulberg at that time. It was hard to be called a communist! How could you be Black and Red?
The left wing members of the screen writers guild, people like Harlan Ellison and John W. Bloch let Black writers in through the Open Door Program. They were just people who knew that it was wrong to call themselves the Writers Guild and then deny Black writers the chance to write screenplays. I always felt they were just trying to do the right thing.
Jaycee: What Black writers were a part of the Writers Guild?
Odie: I had a girlfriend at the time Andi Richardson Reese; she's living in Australia now for the last twenty years. She worked on Star Trek! She walked into Gene Roddenberry’s office and said they "Hey! We got alot of Black Trekkies and you got an all White office"! I need to be in here!" They gave her a job. (Laughter) Iceberg Slim was in the Open Door program. He came out of it, well I don't know if he ever came out of it but he was there! This was definitely before Pimp hit! Hey! Maybe he learned something.
"Hey! We got alot of Black Trekkies and you got an all White office! I need to be in here!"
The Open Door Program
Odie: The Open Door program hit the screenplays and the technical aspects of writing a screenplay and television show. People like Al Jenner, Harlan Ellison. The Open Door program was much more structured they weren't like the WWW. They weren't interested in your experiences, the short stories and the like.
Jaycee: I know that Iceberg Slim went to Holloway House did that take you there as well?
Odie: Like most people I was doing four or five things at the same time. I was doing plays at the PERFORMING ARTS SOCIETY OF LOS ANGELES on 89th and Vermont. Community Theatre. I was starting to write novels and Holloway House was the only, the only easy way out at the time. They wanted Black Authors and I wanted them. I had also started writing screenplays for one after another MGM, Warner Bros, Universal, 20th Century Fox, Paramount, American International (AIP).
The screenplay they released was the exact opposite of what I'd written. I wrote something positive and redeeming and they turned it into this Nigga, Yak, Yak film.
Monkey Hustle
The thing for them at the time for the studio since they saw money in the Blaxpoltation era was to buy up Black material and bring it out whenever they wanted to. I got lucky and I wasn't included in the mix. Only one screenplay that I wrote got to the screen. It was called The Monkey Hustle. The screenplay they released was the exact opposite of what I'd written. I wrote something positive and redeeming and they turned it into this Nigga, Yak, Yak film.
Jaycee: Hey now! I loved that film and so does my wife. I am grateful to you for it anyway.
Odie: I still get fifty or sixty dollars from the foreign distribution. The Europeans like it. Maybe I'm too close to the thing. (Laughter)
Jaycee: Where was the Open Door Program meetings held?
Odie: They were held all over but mostly at Nick Stewart's Theatre on Washington Blvd.
Jaycee: Nick Stewart, he played Lightnin on the old Amos and Andy television program did he?
Odie: Yeah, he did. He took his earnings and started a theatre group, putting on plays and training actors. I want to emphasize that it was the left wing writers who facilitated the Open Door program. The right wing writers felt everything was okay they felt it was okay to have basically an all white union. Could you imagine one group writing for all of America? That would be like having Oliver North speak for you? (Laughter)
Jaycee: Did the Watts Writers Workshop or the Writers Guild teach the writers about publishing and royalties?
Odie: No, the Watts Writers Workshop didn't but The Writers Guild did a little bit. Al Jenner who was a teacher had his mind blown because we didn't know about structure they way television wanted it. We learned about the long form, the short form. There was a woman who a member and she threw some idea out there and it ended up being on the Twilight Zone. You see some of the established writers stole ideas from us. We just wanted to get our stories out. They didn't teach us about the business. You had to learn on your own. They, the White writers were about the business and we, the Black writers were just about the art. We were far behind. What makes a good agent? What makes a bad agent? That's what we had to learn the hard way.
Jaycee: What Black publishing companies were there at the time? Were there any?
Odie: Good question. Other than Ebony who was busy showing how good the middle class was doing, I don't know. I could remember broadsides and poetry journals here and there. Mostly local. Essence was starting up but it was just poetry, not novels or short stories. Third World Press, Haki Madibuthi hadn't come on the scene yet.
Journalistic Apartheid!
I once submitted a piece to the LA Weekly on journalistic apartheid and they rejected it. But the strange thing was they told me why they rejected it.
Jaycee: What's strange about that? I mean what's so unusual about that?
Odie: That's unusual. Most publishers just send a form letter rejection letter. They don't usually take the time to tell you why they are not going to publish a piece. But in their letter they suggested it was Racist! They wrote "we (the Los Angeles Weekly) feel that we are a really liberal paper."
Odie: Liberal though they may be they don't seem to notice that there is not one Black jazz critic writing for the paper. We don't have one Jazz critic or one Black restaurant critic. The Weekly does have one film critic in the great Elvis Mitchell.
Jaycee: But what does it matter the color of a critic's skin? They're still critics right? (Laughter)
Odie: In a city this size? How could you not have a resturant critic that's Black?
Jaycee: To be fair Odie, most papers are downsizing entire sections of the paper including staff so isn't understandable that a newspaper, even the LA Weekly might now have but one critic at the entire paper covering the city?
Odie: It's not just a numbers game I'm talking about here. I'm really talking about the scope of the coverage. Black folks eat Thai Food! We eat Ethiopian food! Where are the reviewers of those resturants. It speaks to taste. A Black food critic could share a different insight on a recipe highlighting a different palate. A different range of flavors and the way they are discribed. I mean even our own LA Sentinel; you only see a review of Aunt Kizzies Back Porch.
Black folks go to plays and films beyond what would be considered the stereotypical Black fare. Why not have someone Black to review it? Black folks go to art house films but what insights would a mass audience enjoy from reading a Black reviewers perspective? What jewels are out there that the masses will never know or what's considered great because it hasn't been compared to anything beyond the accepted perameters?
Jaycee Well, we can always review and write it ourselves.
Odie: Well, I've never looked to the White establishment to make a way. Music, Food, Plays. You got Black plays coming out with no Black reviewers to review it.
Jaycee: I wanted to know do you remember if there were any Black publishing company that went out of business because the white publishers were outbidding the talent once the Black Arts Movement became en vogue?
Odie: This is how I ended up at Holloway House. They certainly were not the high end but they were out there. The Watts Writers Workshop alot of them were poets so they had a much better time getting published.
Stay tuned! Odie and I vibe on Donald Goines, Black Street fiction, Iceberg Slim, the Rise and Fall of Holloway House Publishing, What's a Kosmic Muffin? and The birth of Pan Afrikan Occult Fiction! Listen for the drums and tune in for part two of Kongo Square Chat with Odie Hawkins.
BE Mindful! BE Prayerful! BE Careful!
Jaycee
The opinions and views expressed are the views and opinions of the author and interviewee. They are not neccessary the opinions of anyone associated with Mista Jaycee or A Choice of Weapons, Kongo Square Chat or Odie Hawkins.
Kongo Square Chat with Odie Hawkins Tonight! Kongo Square Chat with Odie Hawkins Tonight!Kongo Square Chat with Odie Hawkins Tonight! Kongo Square Chat with Odie Hawkins Tonight!
Kongo Square Chat with Odie Hawkins Tonight! Kongo Square Chat with Odie Hawkins Tonight!
Kongo Square Chat with Odie Hawkins Tonight! Kongo Square Chat with Odie Hawkins Tonight!
Kongo Square Chat with Odie Hawkins Tonight! Kongo Square Chat with Odie Hawkins Tonight!
Biden and Palin Square Off!
Why You Bringin up Old Sh*t!- Smokie from the Movie Friday
I watched the vice presidential debate between Republican Govenor Sarah Palin and Democratic Senator Joe Biden. I watched and Gov. Palin handled herself quite well. She didn't answer any questions, she didn't lay out any strategies but she didn't embarrass herself or her party.
Governor Palin however deftly changed the subject all throughout the debate to areas that she was confident like energy policy in or just inserted key Buzz words like Maverick and reminded the American housewife that she sits around the kitchen table just like them. She did an excellent job at that reminding American housewives hey I look and talk just like you.
When defending Republican Nominee John Old Kane Mccain from Biden's (Hey I lost my wife and my kids were hurt, i'm not a rich guy, I raised two boys alone) experience laden factual volleys on Old Kanes policies and decision's throughout his experienced career in the senate she retorted "There you go talking about the past again Joe!" I'm a soccer Mom! Maverick ! Blah Blah! Blah! (GAG)
Which brings me to my point! The past, (what has occurred) When something is successful then it's our record but when something is an abject failure or the biggest boondockle ever then it's the past and it shouldn't be brought up!
I feel the same way about a jheri curl that I wore for a short time in the 1980's.
Why you Bringin up old sh*t? Smokie from the Movie Friday
We bring up the past because of what we are going through in the Present! The here and now remember? The housing crisis didn't occur because you gave home loans to minorities. It occurred because you allowed wall street and bankers to sell bad loans to anyone and everyone, make large amounts of money with no oversight and now it's failed! America is suffering from it right now in the present! The past matters because the same policy implemented by John Mccain and Phil Graham destroyed the savings and loans industry in the eighties. Check it out! It's all true.
The past matters because we have a candidate John Mccain, a former Prisoner of War,(acually a police action Vietnam wasn't declared a War by Congress) who has not led America when it comes to how America treats its veterans. Vets are coming home with less benefits that vets from previous wars. Check it out! Walter Reed hospital where I believe Mccain once stayed was in atrocious condition just a couple of years ago.
President Bush and Vice President Cheney with assistance from former Secretary of State Colin Powell and Sectary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld have led America into the Iraq war, costing billions of dollars, weakening our political standing in the world, outsourcing the military by using mercenary professionals such as Blackwater. It strengthened Iran. It weakened efforts in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The past matters! Why because we are suffering now because of past decisons! We are suffering now because of the past! America can't just forget about it and move on.
You keep talking about the past Joe! That's doesn't speak of change.- Sarah Palin
On domestic policy where was Mccain when the levee crashed in St. Louis? Where was Mccain who had every intention of running for America's top job when Katrina occurred? When America citizens had lost their homes, were stranded without food and water in horrible conditions. Where was his leadership? What state, local or federal official did he call? I'd like to know. When the Insurance companies found loopholes not to pay people insurance for lost homes and valuables where was Mccain? Don't want to talk about the past? Ok fine.
America is still in the Iraq war, still paying billions, the soldiers are still being stop loss ed, It's highly likely torture occurred, and most of all the American people and the congress feels they got lied to. That's the here and now!
Bam Bam Obama said it well. Mccain doesn't get it! He's right but even more tragically that Mccain doesn't wanna get it!
BE Mindful! BE Prayerful! BE Careful!
Jaycee
Thursday, October 2, 2008
DID YOU READ THE SEPT 5th Kongo Square Chat?
Did You read the September 5th KONGO SQUARE CHAT WITH RENEE MANNING?
DID YOU SEE HOW AWESOME SHE LOOKED? WELL IF YOU LOVED RENEE THEN ODIE HAWKINS DON'T LOOK THAT GOOD BUT HEY YOU GONNA LIKE THE OCTOBER 3RD KONGO SQUARE CHAT! DIG?
Go Read the SEPTEMBER 5th KONGO SQUARE CHAT WITH RENEE MANNING while you wait for THE OCTOBER 3rd ODIE HAWKINS ONE! GO NOW!
Did You read the 1st EVER KONGO SQUARE CHAT WITH ANANDA KIAMSHA LEEKE?
Ananda Leeke, a lawyer, poet, life coach, reiki instructor, Unitarian Christian, practicing Buddhist meditator, Yoga Teacher and all around cool peaceful, beautiful Sista took time out of her busy Love Troupadour book signing tour to do an interview with me Mista Jaycee for the First ever KONGO SQUARE CHAT! July 9th, 2008 Go Back and Read it! WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH THE OCTOBER 3rd KONGO SQUARE CHAT WITH ODIE HAWKINS? Well, it is a KONGO SQUARE CHAT! Just Read it!Jaycee
Read the July 9th, 2008 Kongo Square Chat with Ananda Kiamsha Leeke, then read the one with Renee Manning then OCTOBER 3rd ODIE HAWKINS! Dig?
Jaycee
Upcoming Kongo Square Chat With Odie Hawkins!
What the heck does this photo have to do with the UPCOMING KONGO SQUARE CHAT With ODIE HAWKINS Scheduled for FRIDAY, OCTOBER 3rd, 2008???????????????Absolutely NOTHING! IT has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH THE UPCOMING KONGO SQUARE CHAT WITH ODIE HAWKINS SCHEDULED FOR OCTOBER 3rd!
But....(Pun intended!) It got your attention though didn't it?
Jaycee
Thanks to Afrobabe for the photo. Check her blog!
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Just a Thought!
Clowns are evil! They just are! I apologize if you have clowns in your family but if you saw a clown in your backyard just doing clown stuff after midnight, Would You think it was funny?
Kevin Williams -Bookstore Owner 2000
Means to Combat the Right Clawed Pundits Evil Ways!
I copied this from our good friends over at Tom Paine Common sense. It was just too good and so timely. PS. Don't forget to visit Tom Paine Common sense. A link is on my blog to the right.
Jaycee
The 2008 Housing Crisis!
Campaign for America's Future - Home
Conservative pundits and politicians have piled onto the excuse like shipwreck victims clinging to a passing log: The real blame for the current economic crisis lies not with anything they did, but rather with the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act—a successful Carter-era program designed to get banks to stop covert discrimination, and encourage them to invest their money in low-income neighborhoods.
It's always easy to tell when the cons are completely lost at sea. The lies get more absurdly preposterous—and also more transparently self-serving. But when they go so far as to openly and unapologetically latch onto race and class as an excuse for their woes (which this is, at its heart), you know they're taking on water fast—and scared of going under entirely.
You can hear the conservative commentators burbling this CRA fable from the Wall Street Journal to the National Review; from Rush to YouTube. Neil Cavuto put the essence of the argument right out there on Fox News: “Loaning to minorities and risky folks is a disaster.” See! It's all the liberals' fault for insisting on social justice!
Conservatives are twisting the facts beyond the breaking point to support their revisionist history. But don’t be fooled: the financial crisis was caused by conservative financial follies and bankers run amok and nothing more. Here are the basic myths they're trying to push about the CRA—and the facts that will enable you to fire back.
1. The CRA was a liberal boondoggle designed to con banks into funding housing for undeserving, unqualified minorities.
False! The Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 was the result of decades of disinvestment in poor and working-class neighborhoods. It was designed to put an end to "redlining"—a widespread practice in which banks refused to write mortgages for houses in certain neighborhoods, no matter who was applying or how creditworthy they were.
The Fair Housing Act of 1968 had made it illegal for real estate agents and banks to discriminate against homeowners on the basis of race. Redlining soon emerged as a not-so-subtle way to continue this discrimination, by declaring, ahem, certain neighborhoods as unfit to invest in. By 1977, the results of this practice were becoming all too obvious, so Congress stepped and gave lenders a choice: if you want the FDIC to insure your deposits, you need to knock off the redlining.
The CRA didn't force lenders to make riskier loans than they would have otherwise. It simply required that they take each applicant on his or her own merits, and give people in poorer neighborhoods the same fair chance at a mortgage that everybody else in town was getting. It wasn't about preferential treatment. It was just about basic equality.
2. The CRA forced banks to lower their standards and make loans to all low-income families and people with poor credit—and find banks that refused to comply.
No! The CRA has encouraged banks to lend fairly and responsibly for over 30 years. It does not impose fines. It does periodically examine FDIC-backed banks, and issues them a CRA compliance rating. A highly-rated bank must meet the financing needs of as many community members as possible, and must not discriminate against racial and ethnic groups or certain neighborhoods. However, a bank will not receive a high rating unless it is also maintains “safe and sound banking practices.” In other words, the CRA requires banks to lend to working-class families and people of color—but only when those people have been deemed as creditworthy as anyone else.
3. The housing bubble burst when too many people with home loans mandated by the Community Reinvestment Act failed to make their mortgage payments.
False! The CRA only applies to FDIC member banks and thrifts. Back in the 1970s, these institutions were responsible for most of the country's mortgage lending. But starting in the 1980s and on up to the present, we saw a huge boom in lending businesses—such as finance companies like Countrywide—that weren't banks, and didn't take deposits that required FDIC insurance. Thus, they didn't have any obligation to the CRA. And they were free to set their own lending standards, which were often far less cautious than those required of FDIC-insured banks.
4. The bulk of the "junk" loans that have been packaged into mortgage-based securities are CRA loans.
False! An analysis of Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) data in the country's 15 biggest metropolitan areas found that 84.3 percent of the high-cost loans made in 2006 were originated by non-CRA lenders—including 83 percent of high-cost loans to low- and moderate-income individuals. The Federal Reserve notes that, across the country, non-CRA lenders were twice as likely as CRA lenders to issue subprime loans to vulnerable borrowers. Furthermore, the Fed also reports that responsible mortgages made by CRA lenders have about the same low rate of foreclosure as other traditional mortgages.
5. If the government had just set the lenders free to do their thing, the market would have prevented this. It's just another example of how government oversight always leads to market failure.
Wrong again, buckaroo! As explained just above, up to four-fifths of these loans were issued by financial institutions that operated with little or no federal regulatory oversight. In fact, in 2006, only one of the top 25 subprime lenders was a CRA institution. A few others were mortgage/finance company affiliates of CRA-covered lenders, but even these were separate businesses that didn't operate under CRA rules (including Countrywide, CitiMortgage, and Wells Fargo Home Mortgage). Likewise: the vast majority of the top 20 issuers of risky interest-only and option ARM loans were not CRA-affiliated lenders.
If anything, the CRA example proves—once again—that government oversight not only works; it's essential to maintain safe and sane capital markets.
6. The CRA is just another failed liberal handout program.
No! The benefits of CRA have been substantial. Citibank executive and former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin recently estimated that the law has channeled upwards of $1 trillion into distressed neighborhoods across the country —including both inner cities and rural areas without much access to investment funds—without putting up any taxpayer money beyond what it takes to operate the CRA itself. In these areas, home ownership is up—and with it, the local tax base, which means more parks, more cops, more street repairs, and so on. There's more decent rental housing, too, because landlords can get loans for upgrades and improvements.
Small business ownership is also up. Low-income communities have become more attractive to outside investors, and more able to support community redevelopment efforts. And in places where people once cashed their paychecks at the convenience store and depended on payday loans, there are now full-service bank branches offering the same affordable financial services people in better neighborhoods take for granted.
The cons like to talk about the "ownership society." There is no ownership without access to capital. For 30 years, the CRA has been making private capital available to qualified people who want to bootstrap themselves into home and business ownership, and a secure place in the middle class.
7. OK—if it works so well, why do we still need it? Haven't the banks finally figured by now out that redlining was a stupid idea?
If only. The very fact that the conservatives are trying to blame the mess on the CRA is, in itself, ample proof that we still need anti-redlining laws on the books. Fifty years into the civil rights era, and they're still arguing that it should be acceptable to permanently exclude people from the capital markets on the basis of race and class. Different millennium, same ugly story: "See? This is what happens when you give money to minorities and poor people. You end up wrecking the country!"
In other words: no, they haven't learned their lesson; and yes, they still believe in redlining as much as they ever did. Racism is alive and well, and there are still plenty of Americans who would bring back housing discrimination in a heartbeat if the law allowed them to. Which is precisely why we can't allow them to.
8. If we can't blame the CRA, then who can we blame? How about the federal banking agencies, which outright told banks to go ahead and adopt risky lending practices? In particular, a 1992 Boston Federal Reserve Bank publication, Closing the Credit Gap: A Guide to Equal Opportunity Lending, told the banks that it was OK to adopt unsound lending practices.
Nice try, but still wrong. According to the National Community Reinvestment Association, the document cited above offered three new guidelines to lenders—none of which are applicable to the current subprime crisis.
The first guideline was that the lack of proper credit history shouldn't be counted as a negative factor for potential homebuyers. Banks could use other evidence to assess the borrower's payment habits, including the timely payment of rent, utility bills, and other scheduled loans. Borrows still need to prove that they're reliable; they're just allowed to use documentation besides a credit report.
The second was to remind bankers that some households with debt ratios above the standard 28/36 criteria might still qualify for home loans. This guideline is very conservative by today's standards. Many problematic subprime loans were granted to borrowers with debt-to-income ratios above 50 percent, which was in no way sanctioned by the 1992 guidance document.
The third was that lenders could count Social Security, second jobs, and other verifiable income streams as valid sources of income when evaluating loan applications. But most subprime loans failures aren't related to alternative income sources. The real problem has been with "liars' loans," in which the reported income streams are never verified at all.
9. Well, then...it must be Bill Clinton's fault, right? In 1995, Clinton changed the Community Reinvestment Act to allow the securitization of CRA and subprime mortgages. That's what started all this.
Talking point regurgitation at its worst. The 1995 revisions to the CRA only changed the way in which a bank’s CRA compliance is evaluated. They made no mention of mortgage securitization at all. Under the 1995 rules, banks are rewarded only for making mortgages in their communities, not for re-selling mortgages as securities.
10. OK, then—it's the Democratic Congress's fault! President Bush and Senator McCain tried to stop the subprime mortgage crisis, but Democrats blocked their efforts.
It's not lying. It's a gift for fiction. This one's actually made it into a TV ad. The claim is that Bush and McCain supported the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005, which would have created a new government agency to oversee Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and other federal housing programs.
However, there's no pony in this manure pile. This bill would have done nothing to stop the rash of subprime lending that preceded the housing bubble. It only provided oversight for Fannie and Freddie—but it said nothing at all about the companies that issued subprime mortgages.
11. No serious conservative economist would have ever approved of the CRA.
False! In March 2007, Federal Board Chairman Bernanke—no liberal he—noted that CRA has helped institutions discover and enter new markets that may have been previously underserved and ignored by insured depositories.
These myths are floating around everywhere this week—a Big Lie that's being repeated so often that Americans may well start to believe it. The real objective of the "blame the CRA" campaign is to pre-emptively discredit any future progressive proposals that involve using government regulation to make the capital markets behave—and to get the free-market fundamentalist faithful back in the fold.
Time to fire back, and replace the Big Lie with some real truth.
Sources:
H/T to Steve Adamske
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