Public Housing Rules

I recently read an interesting letter to the editor commenting upon those in public housing obeying the rules. The letter reflects a general strongly held viewpoint that is having a strong sway in American politics, a sway that has greater influence than their raw numbers would indicate.

The letter entitled, “Public Housing Must Have Rules That Are Obeyed” reads, “Of course, ‘these people will smoke, drink, and do whatever they want in subsisted housing,’ if they don’t have a manager to enforce rules and regulations.

 “It seems that people in public housing think, ‘Well, I pay rent, I can party, smoke, drink and do what I want to.’ What happened to the rules and regulations? Yes, stop smoking in public housing, really everywhere. Think of the lives that could be saved – lung disease and other things that smoking causes.

 “They should get better managers to enforce all rules and regulations. You go into public housing knowing they must be obeyed.

 “I would think anyone who pays $55 a carton would want to quit for themselves as well as everybody else’s health.”

 

Many comments and observations could be drawn from this short letter regarding the author’s views regarding law and human rights. Following are a few comments upon the letter.

The letter’s author views those in public housing as being unemployed, lazy and generally unproductive citizens. Unfortunately such dangerous stereotyping is held by a significant portion of our communities. Yes, there are people in public housing who reflect the picture, but they are not the norm as I’ve discovered in working with and assisting people who live in public housing. While there are exceptions while there are those who are unemployed, including the disabled, in public housing there are far more productive citizens who are employed, but employed in low waged jobs. They are those who are drive our children to school on school buses, our receptionists, clean our offices, cook and serve our lunches, who look after our children in day care, are sales staff at discount stores, etc.  

I wish that we could all agree that the cost of housing in many areas is out of reach for those earning a low hourly wage, and that because we are not willing to pay 10 to 15% higher costs for a TV bought at a discount box store or 15% to 20 more for our fast food meal, public housing is a necessary burden we carry.  What we save on fast food and in discount stores becomes a larger burden on our taxes for public housing to help support these low wage workers that serve us every day. We pay one way or the other, and as a society we want low cost products from retailers who keep their overhead low by paying a very low wage.   

The letter clearly states that the lays the problem of smoking, drinking and holding parties in public housing to the lack of rules enforcement. The thought that such rules as being unjust or improper escapes the letter's writer. Evidently he is comfortable with the government limiting and denying American citizens rights held by other citizens, and that those rights should be denied to them solely because they live in public housing. In other words, if you enter public housing, you become a second class citizen. What should we then deny these citizens next? The right to travel? The right to watch television or own a car? The right to vote?  I would disagree with any rule in public housing which limits or denies legal behavior in the privacy of one’s home the rights allowed other citizens to the same behavior. This is supposed to be a nation where all citizens are treated equally. Since America is a nation that prides itself on personal liberty, we must be slow to limit those liberties.

The author of the letter reflects the all too common tendency of holding that as one has experienced life or religion in a particular manner, or reasons in a particular fashion, that too should others think in the and experience the world, event or religious experience in the same way. And if you don’t have the same experience, then you are deficient at some point and you need to correct yourself. It is a version of my view is better and more righteous than yours. Since humanity and life is not so simple, measuring/judging others primarily upon one’s own experience is a most dangerous enterprise.

America Attacked From Within

I learned of this story today. Jamie Leigh Jones, an employee of Halliburton was required to sign an arbitration agreement regarding issues that arise within the context of her employment with Halliburton. What Halliburton knew, and Ms Jones did not know, was that she was signing away her civil rights as a condition of employment. Thinking that such arbitration pertained to minor disagreements and differences between employees and between employer and employee, I have looked favorably upon such agreements.

No longer do I support such agreements. Such agreements must be explicitly outlawed if such agreements protect a firm and its employees from being held accountable. Once again we have exposed the ugly underbelly of the corporate environment in America. Halliburton remains unapologetic for its shameful conduct and not working swiftly and diligently to bring the perpetrators to justice. While threats to America do come from without the country, Halliburton has shown that an equal threat to America can and does flow from its corporate boardroom.

While no American should be asked to sign away their civil rights as a condition of employment, such an expectation is far more common in the United States than its citizens realize.

Screaming Past Each Other

As noted in Saturday’s blog, there is great anger from various groups such as People For the American Way, and Gay and Lesbian organizations for Obama asking Rick Warren to pray at his inauguration because he supported Proposition 8. Warren supported Proposition 8 “if [Proposition 8] did not pass, then any pastor could be considered doing hate speech if he shared his views that he didn’t think homosexuality was the most natural way relationships, that that would be hate speech.”

Those who are against Proposition 8 argue that Warren’s claims are preposterous. Frankly unless the matter is clearly defined in various legislations neither side knows one way or the other how courts could rule ten or twenty years in the future. It is not uncommon for a court ruling turn out to be contrary to how legislation was first understood decades before.

One author on CBN wrote, “The tolerance crowd [liberals] has tolerance only for people who agree with them. They are blindly and hypocritically intolerant to the point of tyranny towards advocates of the Judeo-Christian tradition.” The CBN author has rightly noted an issue. That said his argument vanishes when one examines the history of the church. What the author has overlooked and left unstated for his faith community audience is that the conservative, evangelical and fundamentalist branches of the church have again and again lacked tolerance.

Going back to the Middle Ages the Church has attempted to impose its will upon civil matters. Though John Calvin felt many in Geneva were predestined to hell, he forced residents of Geneva to live by Christian precepts, including mandating everyone attend church on Sunday morning. As late as the late 1970s, Ocean Grove NJ prohibited its residents from driving cars on Sunday as it was a violation of keeping the Sabbath holy. Residents who had to travel outside Ocean Grove on Sunday had to part their vehicle in a lot outside town and beyond its locked gates.

While both side cry for tolerance and understanding from the other on a host of civil rights issues, rarely does either side grant it to the other. Instead each side screams at the other saying that the other side is out to silence the other and to dictate how the other side should believe/live. Each decries the other as being a hatemonger. Lack of such a tolerant dialogue on civil matters is a shame. Rather than acting like two pit bulls trained to attack each other with vengeance, it is time to tone down the rhetoric, sincerely listen to the other and their concerns, attempt to understand the other’s pains, concerns and fears.

Conservative, Strict-constructionist Judiciary

As noted in my earlier post of November 10 I noted that in America the far political right holds that government has a narrow role to play in society. As part of their argument they frequently speak out about the need to eliminate “judicial activism”, that is, the courts by their ruling expanding civil liberties. They heatedly argue for a strict understanding of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, not within an evolving civil context but within the original setting. They hold that it is a travesty to read into the Constitution and the Bill of Rights issues not envisioned or addressed by the Founding Fathers.

Until recently have been somewhat perplexed by the strength of this narrow understanding of the role of the judiciary within the religious right who like Dr. Dobson openly call for the President and Congress to appointment “conservative, strict-constructionist judges.” They want judges who will strike down rulings laws that expand civil liberties, impact personal and corporate property and trade rights that are not in keeping with what the Founding Fathers envisioned. Three issues drive their viewpoint,
1. Abortion
2. Gay rights and marriage
3. Broadening of the definition of the separation of Church and State which has led to the removal of the Lords’ Prayer and prayer in general from schools and the public square.

In all three areas the courts issued created rulings that permitted abortion, accepted the gay lifestyle that citizens are free to pursue rather than imprisoned as sexual perverts, and recognized the rights the validity of non-Christian faiths without being confronted daily in government settings by government sanctioned Christian worship and expression.

Many evangelical and fundamentalist Christians would freely nod in agreement that the courts have been prime movers in these areas. Hence, their stand against judicial activism makes sense, at least within a narrow context of just these issues over recent decades.

Their position puts the conservative strict-constitutionalist in a position of affirming that the courts were:
1. Correct in upholding the Dred Scott ruling and that slavery is an acceptable practice.
2. Wrong is upholding and expanding child labor laws.
3. Wrong is upholding minimum wage laws that helped to break the cycle of indentured servitude to their employers.
4. Wrong in its rulings such as Brown vs. the Board of education that integrated public schools.
5. Wrong in ruling after ruling of civil rights cases that eliminated segregation
6. Wrong in helping to define and uphold truancy laws.
7. Wrong in issuing rulings that eliminated laws that institutionalized the mentally handicapped.
8. Wrong in issuing rulings that allowed the mentally and physically handicapped to attend the same public schools as their neighbors rather than “special schools.”
9. Wrong in invalidating legal contracts with children that were not signed by the parents.
10. Wrong in granting Miranda Rights (the right to remain silent and be interrogated only with one’s lawyer present).
11. Wrong in allowing those who appear before the court to have a translator when they do not speak English.
12. Wrong in addressing in firm terms lynching and other forms of rush to judgments by the public.
13. Wrong in defining due processes that we now all value as part of our judicial system.
14. Wrong in defining slander and issuing other statements that affect the public safety of others, such as screaming “fire” in a crowded theatre, as not protected free speech.

A host of other issues could be added to above list. While the modern strict-constructionist would distance himself/herself from issues on the list, by the very nature of their static view of justice, they are against each of the civil rights issues in the above list. If one is a strict-constructionist, one cannot pick and choose what rulings are judicial activist rulings were appropriate or not appropriate.

Even though the courts may issues rulings with which I do not agree, I am pleased that our judicial system recognizes that society progresses and evolves, and the laws need to be understood afresh within that changing context. Though we hold our Founding Fathers in respect, a dynamic view of the judiciary recognizes that their views and writings are not divine writ. They may have been insightful, but they did not envision our contemporary society with its plethora of issues, nor are their views without flaws that subsequent generations have had to address.

I am pleased with a dynamic posture of the judiciary for a fixed view of the Constitution and Bill of Rights is not justice. A static posture is blind legalism which as the decades pass creates an unjust judicial system that lacks wisdom.