Armed Renta-Goon
Protects Museum
By Richard Carreño
[Writers Clearinghouse News Service]
Philadelphia
I visited the National Museum of American Jewish History, on Philadelphia's historic Independence Mall, earlier this week. As on previous occasions, I was impressed. This museum is, yes, an 'identity museum.' In other words, as other like institutions, it sets to identify, define, and explore its fixed ethnic mandate. There are other similar museums, those for American Indians, African Americans, and the like. When these museums simply celebrate and trumpet their themes, the museums fail as institutions of learning. Read, hagiographic propaganda. This not the case with Jewish museum. While the museum is hardly an institution of 'higher' learning (many exhibits often fall short of true depth), the overall achievement of the museum is first-rate. The museum, at this site and in this new building, is only a year old. During my visit this week, I wandered for more than four hours. I would have stayed longer. But I had another afternoon appointment. On the way out, I filled out a comment card.


And I commented --  on the only real objection I have (other than the museum's unwieldy, tongue-twisting name): the black-shirted, armed, renta-goon that 'welcomes' visitors as they enter the museum's Market Street entrance. Like all museums, the Jewish museum needs security. And, given its special circumstances as a Jewish identity museum, added security is no doubt necessary. But like the most TSA airport security, the armed guard, festooned with a bullet-proofed vest labelled AGENCY, is simply security theatre. (That's AGENCY, as in Acme Security Agency. Hardly, FBI). A crazy, like the nut-case that attacked Washington's Holocaust Museum a few years ago, or a committed terrorist, will not be deterred by the guard. On the other hand, the guard does send a message of another form of terror -- that the museum administration is sufficiently insecure that that it needs intimidate the average museum goer. Hello, hardly kid-friendly. Even the TSA has backed off on scaring children.


Proper security is smart security. Fright wigs aren't the answer.


I was surprised to receive that following thoughtful response:


Mr. Carreno –
Thank you for visiting the Museum and for your note. I’m glad you had a positive experience.

As you can imagine, we must take security concerns very seriously. We are in a highly visible and accessible public location and, sadly, Jewish institutions have frequently been the targets of terrorist attacks and other unfortunate incidents. Our aim is to make our visitors feel safe and secure, which is why we station an armed security guard at the entrance and employ numerous other security measures. Clearly we do not want anyone to feel threatened by our security guards, but we do want those guards to be a visible presence that acts as a deterrent against would-be attackers. We follow this procedure per the advice of some of the leading experts in the security field.

As it happens, yours is only the second complaint or concern about our policy of stationing an armed guard at our entrance since our opening last November. Indeed, many visitors have praised our security measures and told us that they appreciate our attention to that concern.

I hope this answer was helpful and that you’ll visit again.

Sincerely,
Jay Nachman
Public Relations Director
National Museum of American Jewish History
101 South Independence Mall East
Philadelphia, PA 19106-2517

Old Wars Provide Lessons...

... In Stopping Our Current Ones 

Drunk on Wars: the Long Hangover.

Rabbi Arthur Waskow

50 Years of Staggering down the Wrong Road

By Arthur Waskow
[Special to Writers Clearinghouse News Service]

Between 1961 and 1971, the United States undertook three different wars. All of them were abysmal disasters.

One was the war against Vietnam, begun in 1961 by President John F Kennedy and expanded after his death by President Lyndon Johnson. The second was “the war on poverty,” initiated by President Johnson in 1964. The third was the “war on drugs,” initiated by President Richard M Nixon in 1971.

The first war resulted in the deaths of about 50,000 Americans and more than 1 million Vietnamese, and ended in 1975 with military and political defeat for this attempt to extend the American Empire and with the hasty withdrawal of American troops.

One might say “ignominious withdrawal” except that the true ignominy was that of the US government under three presidents, who had for no decent purpose wasted these lives and enormous resources that could have been meeting human needs, in America and the world. Indeed, the Pentagon Papers, published forty years ago, show that the Pentagon soon knew the war could not be “won.” From then on, its purpose was to terrorize nationalist movements in countries other than Vietnam by showing how bloody would be the cost of any uprisings against Western control.

The second “war” was – laudably -- not a war at all. Utterly unlike a war, which tries to impose order by violence from the top down that disempowers most of the country and people under attack, this policy tried to abolish poverty by empowering the poor. Indeed, one of the key elements in its efforts was “maximum feasible participation of the poor” in shaping the change in their own lives.

It was abandoned within two years because there was no money to put into serious change in ending and preventing poverty in America. The reason there was no money? The enormous costs of the real war against Vietnam.

In other words, 'guns over butter.' Choosing between a top-down war that killed more than a million people and a bottom-up effort to abolish poverty, the US political system chose war.

Then in 1971, the Nixon Administration announced an all-out “war” on drugs. This looked a lot more like war -- top-down violence, massive numbers of prisoners, increasing deaths. But the war was fought mainly against the nonviolent users of drugs, not against the sometimes violent purveyors.

And after forty years -– by far the longest “war” in US history -– the results are: more than a million nonviolent “criminals” in US prisons; the supply of tens of thousands of guns by US sellers across the Mexican border to drug cartels which use them against Mexican and US police and against civilians; spiraling deaths in cities like Juarez -– and no diminution in the use of drugs!

When the US government chose to fight wars in Vietnam and on the street corners where drugs are sold, it did not bother to look either at why Vietnamese were prepared to die in order to choose their own government, or why Americans were taking drugs.

If the US had looked carefully at Vietnam, it might have actually encouraged the impulse to end colonialism and foreign domination.

If the US had looked carefully at the urban street corners and the small towns where jobs had disappeared and at the GI hangouts of trauma and despair in Vietnam that themselves became hotbeds of the “drug epidemic,” they might have realized what the unmet needs were that led to the drug use. They might have realized that a “war on drugs” was precisely the wrong answer.

What were those unmet needs? Three: worthy jobs, a meaningful place in society, and non-drug moments of spiritual exaltation.

Paul Goodman’s book Growing Up Absurd addressed the first two, and became the sacred literature of many in the social-change movements of the Sixties because it named what young people knew was missing from their lives. (Goodman addressed only the plight of young men, but women soon realized they were suffering the same lacks.)

The absence of worthy jobs and a meaningful social place in some chunks of American society was a result of the failure of the misnamed “war on poverty.” If the effort to assist a grass-roots self-organizing movement of the poor had continued, instead of being snuffed out by Vietnam, and if military “service” in Vietnam had not itself poisoned a generation of many young men with despair that only drugs could nullify, then absurdity would not have been the fate of many young Americans. Drugs would not have been their need and their escape.

As for exaltation: In 1971, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel was writing, "I interpret the young people's escape to drugs as coming from their driving desire to experience moments of exaltation.... The classical form of exaltation is worship.... But exaltation is gone from the synagogue [and] from the church....

“Our life thus devours the wisdom of religious tradition without deriving from it sources of renewal and uplift.... The new witnesses for a revival of the spirit in America may well turn out to be those poor miserable men and women who are victims of the narcotics epidemic. If we will but . . . try to understand their misguided search for exaltation, we can begin the task of turning curse into blessing." ("In Search of Exaltation," pp. 227-229, Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity, Susannah Heschel, ed. (Farrar Straus Giroux, 1996.)

Just as the ”war on drugs” was beginning under President Nixon, Rabbi Heschel was more truly naming the response we needed. And still need:

Worthy jobs paying enough to make an honorable life possible, and time for celebration that can exalt the place of a citizen in the eco-system of human society interwoven with the eco-system of all life-forms.

A living wage, and livable hours. “Six days shalt thou labor and do all your work, and on the seventh you shall pause to celebrate, give thanks, experience exaltation, reflect, share, love.” Given the technology we now have, the ratio should probably be “Four days shalt thou labor,” but the rhythm is crucial.

Why then did the US government and even such institutions as churches, synagogues, mosques, temples, not follow the path that Goodman and Heschel were blazing?

Because if you are powerful and reluctant to share your power by empowering the powerless, it is far more attractive to make war from the top-down than it is to encourage self-organizing at the grass roots or the cement pavements.

Because if you are afraid of uppity young black men but can no longer humiliate and disempower them into subservience with pleasant “White-only” soda fountains, grungy “Black-only” bathrooms, and lousy black-only schools, then you can write laws that define black ways of consuming cocaine as worthy of five times the prison time as white-suburbanite ways of consuming cocaine, and throw millions of blacks into prison. While they are there, they are not counted among the “unemployed,” and when they get out, they cannot get jobs anyway.

And so America got drunk on war, and the hangover has lasted fifty bleary years. Those who controlled our government, our lives, first found themselves lying filthy in a ditch of their own disenchantment, being challenged by the myriad movements for self-empowerment that grew out of the war-spree of the Sixties. But soon the powerful recovered from a brief period of alcoholics’ remorse.

Confronted with the murderous attacks of 9/11, they chose to use the drunkards’ response to being an alcoholic: They chose to “drink the hair of the dog that bit them” –- the hair of war and violence. They chose to repeat the blindness of the war on Vietnam and the war on drugs. Instead of asking what had led a tiny band of terrorists to do these murderous deeds, and then seeking to do at home and abroad the grass-roots empowerment that the misnamed “war on poverty” had promised and abandoned, they went to war.

They smashed Iraq, they are still smashing Afghanistan, they have started smashing Pakistan and Yemen, they have allied themselves with a right-wing Israeli government’s effort to smash any vestige of Palestine.

And even when the most respected scientists throughout the world shout warnings that they are smashing the planet itself, even when climate-driven droughts and floods destroy crops, when food prices jump and people starve and movements of the hungry shake the Arab world, they multiply their own wealth and power and pretend that global scorching is not happening.

But once again, the disempowered are stirring. Tens of thousands of teachers, firefighters, social workers in Madison Wisconsin, and thousands of supporters around the country. Conservative elders in upstate New York. Tens of thousands of people at thousands of locations around the world, speaking out against the Drug Lords of Big Oil Big Coal, demaning action to restore the bearable ceiling of 350 parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere.

And finally, even the US military budget is no longer a sacred cow. Finally, a bipartisan vote fell only 11 votes short (204-215) in the House of Representatives of requiring the US to begin detailed planning now to withdraw troops from Afghanistan and prepare for the transition to Afghan civilian and military control.

The need to meet civilian needs in the US is finally beginning to match the hangover of war-drunk top-down power. But the shift needs our energy!

Giving our energy, against the entrenched power of those drunk on war and violence, will not be easy. Here we must listen to Rabbi Heschel. “Exaltation” is what we will need, as the exalted prayerful joy of black folk singing prayer in the streets is what we needed fifty years ago.

(Arthur Waskow is a rabbi who heads the Shalom Center in Philadelphia).

Museum Security: Part II

'May I Help You, Sir?!'

Does it really have to come to this?

By Richard Carreño
[Writers Clearinghouse News Service]
Museum security is a necessary evil.

True, much of it -- at the public level, at least, like shoe removal at airports -- is just security theatre. How much do public security measures, bag inspection, the watchful eyes of guards, the hidden 'eyes' of CCTV, and the like thwart the bad guys is hard to say. And like the tight-lipped airport personnel of the Transportation Security Administration, those who really know about the inner-workings of a particular museum's security aren't saying much.

What is certain, invasive protective measures are here to stay. In other words, get used to it.

Or, do we? My recent visit to the expanded American Jewish Museum, newly opened on Independence Mall, was an eye-opener -- and jaw-dropper. Never mind the airport-like baggage scanners. What I'm figuring is that guard with an automatic rifle, bullet-proof vest, and military fatigues isn't going to give visitors from Peoria the warm fuzzies this summer when Philly's tourist season gets into high gear.

What we also don't have to get used to is capricious, arbitrary, and, even, mean-spirited security. Something akin to TSA bullying. Worse, the 'up against the wall' approach of some big-city cops.

It's not that I'm not unfamiliar with the security hysteria that professionals in the field share about backpacks, rucksacks, bookbags, well, anything that's strapped to your torso. (In Venice a while back, I had to stuff my bag in a companion's handbag before entering the Basilica on San Marco Square. Of course, the putative bomb I might have had in my bag would just have been transferred to her bag. Never mind).

A more recent visit to the Art Institute of Chicago turned up no surprises. Backpack phobia was in full swing. Banned, banished, prohibited, outlawed, shunned, and, for good measure, Verboten.

Some security personnel seem to believe that backpacks are the hand-held carriers of choice for suicide bombers and other lunatics who, er, go to museums. With the horrible exception of the shooter at the Holocaust Museum in Washington a few years ago, I can't recall a single incident of public violence at any major American museum in recent years. Theft, yes. Vandalism, sure. But museum-goers by and large -- and we're talking about millions who patronise museums annually --hardly meet any profile for personal violence, or much less for bombing.

Foreign terrorists, then? Sorry, fine arts museums also don't meet the right profile. No wings.

People, puleeze, some common sense.

My backpack is a small, lightweight black nylon job about the size of small plastic grocery bag. (I carry my 'tools' within, pads, pens, research materials, camera, and the like).

Soon after entering the Art Institute, I sensed that a 'May-I-Help-You-Sir?!' moment was quickly about to be in the offing.

I was lucky. 'You must check that bag, sir!' was a lower-level variant. The order, from a stern-looking security officer, was in robotic voice that's now the lingua franca of the TSA and others in the growing rent-a-cop security busyness. The ominous tone is always a breath away from the truly menacing 'May I help you, Sir?!' That being, of course, a prelude to a Red-Alert Situation, leading ultimately, to handcuffing and arrest.

I suppose I learned my lesson. Instead of stuffing my bag, as I had at the Basilica in Venice in my companion's handbag (this time, by the way, hers was the size of a small duffel bag), I meekly checked my bag with the proper authorities. (Everything else, I transferred to my companion's duffel).

Well, that was that. Or was it?

Most of us, of course, face security issues -- at work, during travel -- almost every day. We have a stake in the process. As I write frequently about museums and their caches, I have a singular interest in museum security. Almost all, undertake some public display of security -- not to catch the odd thief -- but rather to declare the institution's dedication to deterrence.

Most of this visible, obvious security -- at museums, as is the case at airports -- is a feel-good sham. Out of 10,000 persons, there's the odd knucklehead with a penknife. As for the real bad guys, do you think they're still carrying their plastique in shoe heels?

Some museums get it right. Smart museums like the Corcoran in Washington, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the National Constitutional Center in Philadelphia and many, many others bow to the need for a public display of alleged security by visually inspecting all bags. This upfront eye-balling is done by the museum's rent-a-cop staff. The pros are in the back of the shop.

Maybe, it's just a Chicago thing, this undue emphasis on backpack security, I thought. After my visit to the Art Institute, I made my way to the Museum of Contemporary Art, where I also read that backpacks were not welcome in galleries. Really? Nah. Not a problem, I was told as I was ushered into the museum with my backpack slung over a shoulder. (That's the same procedure, by the way, that I follow at the PMA and the Met).

The Art Institute, one of the country's great museums, needs to lighten up. So does the Jewish Museum in Philly.

May I Help You, Sir?!

Art Museum Channels TSA
By Richard Carreno
Junto Senior Staff Writer Bio

Oops! 'You must check your bag!' barks the pint-sized security guard at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
     I was at the Perelman Building, reviewing the debut of the 'new' Gross Clinic, the Thomas Eakins painting that's been newly restored. I was on my own. Not a press preview. I was like hanging with the paying customers.
     Never mind that on that very same day, I toured the PMA's main building with my bag in hand. But duely admonished by Miss Pint-Sized, I deposited my knapsack with the kindly lad who was making the best of it handling that day's flotsam and jetsam at the check counter.
     But first, on my way out, I see another guard -- he looks a bit more senior, and not as angry, as my midget tormentor in the gallery -- and I ask whether photography is permitted. 'Sure, no flash,' he says. Friendly like. I note that.
     I'm looking at Gross Clinic. Miss Uppity is telling viewers -- nay, drill-sarging orders, again -- 'Stand back! Away from the painting!' Like 10 feet maybe. Jeez, on all days, I didn't bring my binoculars.
     Camera ready? I snapped away.
    'No photography allowed!' the Miss Uppity almost shouts. It's obvious this is her domain. The Queen of Eakins, like.
     'But, but,' I said, 'the head guard told me that photography is OK. Just no flash.'
     'I am the head guard,' the pipsqueak responded. I figure I'm getting Mall-policed.
     'OK, let's get this sorted with the other guard,' I said, in turn.
     Mighty Mouse follows me as I return to the senior guard.
     'No photography,' he says.
     'Hold on, didn't you just tell me that photographs were OK? Just no flash.'
     'Yes.'
     'Then?'
      'They changed the rule four hours ago,' the senior guard said.
      Mighty Mouse, vindicated, smiles.
      'Who changed the rule?' I asked.
      'The captain did,' the senior guard said.
      They have 'captains' in this place?
      I'm pointed in the direction of yet another more senior-looking security official.
      'I'm with the press,' I sort of stammer. 'Examiner.com, and I just want to take....'
      Mas senior gives me a temporary, one-off photography day pass.
      I clip it to my shirt. Miss height-challenged Rent-a-Cop frowns. Not pleased at all. In fact, I sense, she being Royalty and all, We are not pleased.
      I'm thinking. This is not going well. Yes, I have the pass. OK. But this scenario smacks too much of one of those run-away train wrecks that Daniel Rubin, the brilliant columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer, has been reporting lately. You know, innocent traveler at the airport meets Transportation Safety Adminstration guard, wherein the moment quickly escalates to what is perceived as a confrontation. Women who get felt up. 'What?! You have liquids?!' Never mind. You lose.
     I know. I'm an old guy, and I have a right knee replacement with a lot of loose change.
     Back to the gallery. Snap. Snap. Miss Midget is clearly seething. I reckon the smoke coming out her nose like a cartoon bullfight bull counts for something.
     The big guy -- El Capitan -- approaches me. 'Who did you say you were with?'
     'Examiner.com. But [I'm nervous now] I also write for The Philadelphia Junto www.Junto.blogspot.com, www.BroadStreetReview.com, and the Weekly Press www.weekly press.com.' I'm impressed that I can remember all the dot coms. But, like, I'm also wondering if I'll need to get Bob Christan, the Weekly Press' editor to get me out of the pokey. Dot com.
     'Do you have a press pass?' the Big Guy says. This is now getting serious. What, I'm thinking, would Thomas Eakins think?
     Actually, I did. A press ID issued by the Philadelphia Police Department. Right there in my wallet. First time I've been asked for that, like, in 20 years. What did I give the Big Guy? My business card. I was so flustered I forgot, yes, forgot the press ID.
An hour later. Not arrested. Not evicted. No telephone calls to Homeland Security.
     Miss Charm-School-Challenged approaches me when I'm scribbling notes on the Agnew Clinic, another Eakins master-work that's in the exhibit.
     'You're not permitted to use pen!' she exclaims. Huh? 'Pencil only!'
     I'm walking out. 'She's our best guard,' El Capitan tells me.

Security

Full-Foot Scan?

By
Richard Carreno
Junto Staff Writer
Washington.
If we get a full-body scan, does that include feet?

Will this new technology eliminate the need for airline passengers to remove their shoes in the name of travel security?

Interestingly, I haven't heard anything about this. Odd this, in that shoe removal has to be the biggest complaint passengers lodge as they line up, for the most part, compliantly in areoport security queues.

Everyone believes in airline security -- and is willing support most measures, as long as they're necessary, appropriate, and undertaken respectfully. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has gone a long way in accomplishing this mission. With the exception of the shoe sham, that is. Security stagecraft at its worst.

Visiting the White House yesterday, I got the full monty. No gate-crashing this.

My name was on the list, and they were checking it twice. I got ticked at the 15th Street gate, and then again as I entered the East Wing. I emptied my pockets, went through a metal detector and, as is the case at aeroports, my artificial left knee set off the alarm, necessitating a wanding.

The process was respectful, efficient, and thorough. In fact, I was told by a person who knows about these things that anyone that is, anyone, who enters the White gets a security check that amounts to a 'Secret' clearance. That's why you need to submit your personal details before showing up.

(Does this mean I can now get fast-tracked at areoports? I don't think so).

Of course, the list of no-nos is hysterical. If you've any doubts how literal Americans are, all you have to do is consult one of the banned-item lists you find here, at the Capitol, at the White House. The White House bans, in its long list, handbags, tabacco, combs, knitting needles, pens (oops, I carried one in), mace, knives, martial arts items, fireworks, guns and ammunition,and, my personal favourite, electric stun guns. Just beautiful! Where else but in America would there be an explicit prohibition against electric stun guns?

The good news, even though somewhat contradictory: We were allowed cell phones, umbrellas (blunt tips?), wallets, and car keys (rubber?)

'Please power off your cell phone,' I was told as I entered by the 15th Street gate.

When I got into the East Wing, the person I was waiting for hadn't arrived yet. I feared that there might have been a mix-up. I asked a guard if I might use my cell.

'Sure,' he said.

I powered on my phone, and made the calls I needed to.

Yet no removal of shoes.

A few years ago, at Hartsfield in Atlanta, I experienced my first body scan. Actually, it was a foot scan. Instead of removing my shoes, I inserted by shod feet in a device that scanned them. An X-ray? Who knows? Maybe it was something like those infernal machines in some shoe stores when I was a kid. They were supposed to size your feet. (Actually, I think they were responsible for the bunions I have now).

Obviously, these Atlanta-based feet machines went nowhere.

Even the White House security official I spoke to yesterday had never heard of the device.

What about feet getting scanned if we submit to body scanning? He was stumped.

'Anyway, don't expect those full-body scanners anytime soon,' he said.