Presentation

My presentation on Green Grass, Running Water had a few incompletely formed thoughts. They were meant to express something along the lines of the following.

Green Grass, Running Water is a social commentary using Native American culture to look at the state of society.
The Death and Rebirth of American Radicalism I understood to be a discussion of where the Old Left failed, and how the New Left would have to be formed and conducted to make the differences that other movements have been unable to complete. It also discusses the difference between the Left and extremist ideas.
Precarity: NYC was site with a proposal of how to form a vehicle for change, accessible to the public other than just scholars and activists.

Part of Green Grass that struck me was the necessity for balance. There were several examples, such as Alberta's desire to strike a balance between being a mother and having a career- feminism versus traditional values and instincts. Eli's balance between leaving the tribe, and eventually coming back and staying. The contrast between Lionel and Charlie, with Lionel starting in school and ending up at the electronics store, and Charlie starting at the electronics store and ending up going back to school and becoming a flashy lawyer.

I loved the point where it was Eli who was keeping the dam, that supposedly once in use would make the tribe millions of dollars (and they hadn't even asked for it to be built), after he finally came back to the reservation and chose (though he supposedly knew that this was the only choice) to live in his mother's old cabin. And Charlie, who left for the modern value system that one finds in America (success=money and power), and he is the lawyer fighting for the company that built and wants to use the dam. On page 126 of Green Grass Charlie is having a conversation with Norma, saying that even if the tribe won't make money off the dam, at least he is. It clearly makes the point that in today's society, it is easy to trade value systems- from traditional values of a tribe to today's value in money.

In all of this balance is precarity. Once the dam breaks, Eli dies, Charlie loses his job, and the dam that costed millions of dollars to build and millions in lakefront property is gone. In the end, nature took her course- and it wasn't necessarily how everyone expected.
There is a good point in this situation: Charlie, who started out as a salesman, went to back to school, became a lawyer, was making a lot of money off of a situation that benefited no one, especially not his own tribe (and in the book it notes that the papers liked the contrast of a blackfoot lawyer against the blackfoot living in the cabin), and he was the one who eventually lost his job.

Another point on precarity is how easily Lionel lost his credibility. He mentions one of his mistakes, where he goes to a conference to present a paper, and within a few weeks he is an ex-con with few options. He is brought into the situation by being at a certain place at a certain time, and because of his race he loses his job, his clean record and his ability to progress on the path he was on.

American Radicalism has a lot of things to say about the worker versus the current economic and social systems. He provides an example from when Guiliani ran for mayor after previously losing the election- he had plans for major cuts in public services and programs, privatizing certain services (such as trash collection), finding ways to save the city money by changing the budgets significantly. He didn't cut from the police forces, because he has an anti-crime campaign, but other groups either had to find ways around these plans or they cut their workers, so as to fit the new boundaries. Aronowitz says, "The unions, which by the mid 1970s represented all of the city's manual and clerical employees and most nonsupervisory professionals, felt constrained to go along with the program, fearing the reaction of investors more than their own rank and file." He explains how the systems in place did not favor the worker, but the investor, and how "the power of the capital resides in the public perception that in the absence of alternative economic discourse and plan corporations such as those engaged in financial services hold the economic strings; that they- and not the production companies- are indispensable for the life blood of the cities." Essentially, the workers, who create the capital, are not even in charge of the capital they create- the people for whom they are creating the capital are the ones in charge. Of course, this is how the system has worked for a long time. Just look at slavery and the people who literally owned the workers. However, this is illogical. Shouldn't the people doing all the work be the ones in charge of the goods and services they provide and produce?

Precarity: NYC offers a plan for change. By creating a way for the workers, not just the people who have theories about how things should work, but the real people who have to live and work in the conditions that many think they understand but cannot without experience can help invoke a change in this inherently flawed system. This would allow for real problems, not just theoretical or political problems, to be addresses and hopefully improved.

This all relates to Green Grass in that the tribe, whose values are not monetary but traditional, centered upon many generations of culture and a way of life and belief system, is constantly abused by the government. They had treaties that would last "as long as the grass is green and the water runs," but the book gets to the point that even the younger generations of Blackfoot have stopped believing this. Society has corrupted them, urging the modernization of their ways and beliefs and value systems, seducing them towards a materialistic world based on money and power. They attempt to join it through education and shedding of their traditional backgrounds- the rest of the world doesn't appreciate their roots and culture (such as the confiscation and disrespect of the native costumes worn for the ceremonies at the Canadian/American border). However, this does not boost them any further from the precarious situation of their tribe (the company that made the dam came up with three proposals for locations of the dams, none of them on reservation territory, but they went ahead and used the reservation land anyways because it was more convenient and "the treaties don't really mean anything anyways, they're not legal documents"). We see this with Charlie, the dam that made him rich also lost him his job when it broke.

Honestly, our society abuses the worker that makes it rich, and even when the worker tries to move up into a more secure position in society by following its rules, getting an education, working hard, etc. it does not secure anything. The truth is, no one is truly safe from our society except for the people who have too much money to start with, and they don't need to work anyways.