Deacon’s Blog

From the December 2009 issue of the Cosmopolitan Review, published by the alumni of Poland in the Rockies, a biennial symposium in Polish studies held at Canmore, Alberta.

Cosmopolitan Review Turns One

Work on this issue was in full swing before we suddenly realized that this is actually an anniversary issue. Cosmopolitan Review has turned one year old. Thanks for joining us on this adventure and stick around. It’s going to be a fun ride.

EXCITING NEWS: Poland in the Rockies Announces 2010 Symposium

Poland in the Rockies, the 10-day Polish studies symposium in Canada’s Rocky Mountains, is set for July 21-31, 2010. The slate of speakers is already posted on the website and it guarantees the liveliest exchange of ideas to be found anywhere between the Rockies and the Tatras.

FEATURE Americans in Warsaw

What can I say about Poland, after one month in Warsaw? That the Poles have become more American than the Americans? If not entirely accurate, like other facile observations, there’s a grain of truth here. Part of the reason is that Poles are doing well these days. By Wanda Urbanska.

REVIEWS The Polish Review

Someone once joked that the best thing about reading Reviews is that you can discuss the books at dinner parties without actually having to read them. Well, if you read the very best of the Reviews there is an element of truth in that, though do bear in mind that not all Reviews are created equal…

CONVERSATIONS A few questions for…Prof. Marek Suszko

As we reflect on the 20 years since the fall of communism in Europe and ponder what the future may hold, CR recently had a chance to ask a few questions of Professor Marek Suszko, who teaches at the Department of History at Loyola University in Chicago. He shared some insight about the positive developments that have taken place in Poland since 1989, the country’s role in the EU and its relationship with the United States.

HISTORY The Noble and Compassionate Heart of the Maharaja Jam Saheb Digvijay Sinhi

Between August 1942 and November 1946, close to 1,000 Polish children and their guardians lived in idyllic settlements on the Kathiawar Peninsula in India not far from the summer residence of the Maharaja Jam Saheb Digvijay Sinhi. They had come at the Maharaja’s invitation from orphanages in Ashkabad, the capital of Turkmenistan, and Samarkand … by Irene Tomaszewski.

FOOD for thought Google, Poland, cultural projections

Artist Ian Wojtowicz, a 2008 PitR alumnus, has put together an interactive animation inviting reflection about identity. TRY it (This is really cool!)

Op-Ed The Pole Position: be like Dexter and tap into your inner glee for success

Young professionals face a tough climb. They’re full of ambition, talent and determination, but the climb is often a tough one. The competition is plentiful and opportunities sparse. How than do you stand out from among the crowd? A hard work ethic and wisdom is important; but people also like working with those that they find interesting. By Filip Terlecki.

…and more.

Current Events, Media, Perspective, Poland - Polish - Polonia Announcements, Arts, Culture, Education, Ethnicity, freedom, History, immigration, Literature

Save the Date for Interfaith Worker Justice’s Public Policy Training!
March 14th-16th – Chicago

Learn from experts on the IWJ national staff and local organizational leaders. The trainers bring extensive experience in interfaith organizing, worker and union campaigns, and organizational development.

This Training is designed for:

• Organizers with faith-based organizations or workers centers
• Board members, leaders, or volunteers of interfaith organizations
• Religious or community outreach staff of unions

Sessions covering…

• How you can be involved in moving federal, state, and local legislation?
• How to engage in multi-racial alliance building around policy issues?
• How to engage labor and religious leaders in your policy goals?
• The current status of Immigration, Jobs, and Wage Theft campaigns and legislation?

IWJ National Office
1020 W Bryn Mawr, 4th floor
Chicago, IL 60660

More information on registration and costs is available at the IWJ website.

Perspective, Political Education, immigration, Labor, Training

“Those who don’t know history are destined to repeat it.” — Edmund Burke

The current method of filibuster being used in the U.S. Senate reminds me of the corrupted version of the Liberum Veto as practiced during the periods in which the Polish Commonwealth was weakened.

From Wikipedia: Liberum veto (emphasis mine):

[The] Liberum Veto (Latin for I freely forbid) was a parliamentary device in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. It allowed any member of the Sejm to force an immediate end to the current session and nullify all legislation already passed at it by shouting Nie pozwalam! (Polish: I do not allow!).

From the mid-sixteenth to the late eighteenth century, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth utilized the liberum veto, a form of unanimity voting rule, in its parliamentary deliberations. The “principle of liberum veto played an important role in [the] emergence of the unique Polish form of constitutionalism.” This constraint on the powers of the monarch were significant in making the “rule of law, religious tolerance and limited constitutional government … the norm in Poland in times when the rest of Europe was being devastated by religious hatred and despotism.”

This rule evolved from a unanimity principle (unanimous consent), and the latter from the federative character of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which was essentially a federation of countries. Each deputy to a Sejm was elected at a local regional sejm (sejmik) and represented the entire region. He thus assumed responsibility to his sejmik for all decisions taken at the Sejm. A decision taken by a majority against the will of a minority (even if only a single sejmik) was considered a violation of the principle of political equality.

…

In the first half of the 18th century, it became increasingly common for Sejm sessions to be broken up by liberum veto, as the Commonwealth’s neighbours — chiefly Russia and Prussia — found this a useful tool to frustrate attempts at reforming and strengthening the Commonwealth. The Commonwealth deteriorated from a European power into a state of anarchy.

Many historians hold that a major cause of the Commonwealth’s downfall was the principle of liberum veto. Thus deputies bribed by magnates or foreign powers, or simply content to believe they were living in some kind of “Golden Age”, for over a century paralysed the Commonwealth’s government, stemming any attempts at reform.

In the past, the U.S. Senate was governed by a high degree of decorum. It was the house of slow deliberation, and where disagreement arose, it arose in a gentlemanly form. As with the way the Liberum Veto was used as part of proper deliberation, the atmosphere of discourse and compromise had worked to strengthen the country.

In momemts of severe disagreement, a Senator could rise and invoke a filibuster (as everyone points to, recall Jimmy Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington). The Senator invoking the filibuster had to occupy the floor and continue deliberation, expounding on the reasons he was against the legislation or otherwise wasting time. It was a personal effort at blocking legislation.

Certainly, power and politics played a role in the past, but not to the extent to which it has over the past 20 years. We have moved from a proper system of checks and balances to the misuse of such, much as the Liberum Veto came to be misused. In this day, one Senator may simply state that he disagrees with some legislation, nomination, or treaty and retire to his golf game while that issue remains blocked indefinitely. Any issue may now become the hostage of any one man.

In order to move past the filibuster a super majority is required. In effect, most legislation now requires a super majority to get past the whim of any one Senator. Our government in general, and particularly any effort at substantive reform, may be brought to a grinding halt. As with the corruption of the Liberum Veto, a Senator’s objections are no longer personal, deeply held beliefs that a Senator was forced to defend in person. They are no longer part of the art of gentlemanly disagreement. The filibuster is a weapon in the hands of every Senator doing the bidding of his masters, i.e., the interest groups, lobbyists, and moneychangers.

The danger of the corrupted Liberum Veto lives on in the form of Senate filibusters under current Senate rules. While the filibuster does have a role in defending the opinion of the minority, it should not be used to permanently impede the will of the majority. That is not how the framers envisioned our system. More dangers lie ahead. The filibuster in the hands of a Senator kowtowing to a foreign power (Israel, China) will further speed the end of the American experiment. It is time to get this powerful tool back in check.

Perspective, Political Education, filibuster, freedom, History, Liberum Veto, YouTube

From Christian Newswire: Lithuanian Priest and Free Market Advocate to Receive Acton Institute’s 2010 Novak Award

Lithuanian scholar and Roman Catholic priest, Fr. Kstutis Kevalas, is the winner of the Acton Institute’s 2010 Novak Award.

During the past nine years, Fr. Kstutis Kevalas has initiated a new debate in Lithuania, introducing the topic of free market economics to religious believers, and presenting a new set of hitherto unknown questions to economists. Fr. Kevalas is a respected figure and well known expert on Christian social ethics, the free market, and human dignity to the people of his home country. In addition to his active work as a speaker and pastor at national events, he serves as a lecturer on moral theology at Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas, Lithuania.

After studies at the Kaunas Priest Seminary and St. Mary’s Seminary and University in Baltimore, Md., Fr. Kevalas was ordained to the priesthood in 2000. In 2001, he received his Licentiate Degree in Theology writing the thesis “Catholic Social Teaching and Economic Development: A Case Study of Lithuania.” He received his Doctorate in Sacred Theology with his thesis on “The Origins and Ends of the Free Economy as Portrayed in the Encyclical Letter Centesimus Annus” in 2008.

Named after distinguished American theologian and social philosopher Michael Novak, the Novak Award rewards new outstanding research by scholars early in their academic careers who demonstrate outstanding intellectual merit in advancing the understanding of theology’s connection to human dignity, the importance of limited government, religious liberty, and economic freedom…

Perspective, Political Culture, Education, freedom

Dr. John Z. Guzlowski’s blog Lightning and Ashes will begin posting a series of audio and video interviews with people who were interviewed by Dr. Bogusia Wojciechowska for her book on the Polish Catholic experience in WWII, Waiting to Be Heard.

The first of these interviews is with Lilka Croydon-Trzcinska who, as a young girl, fought with the Polish resistance and was sentenced to Auschwitz.

Poland - Polish - Polonia Education, History

M. Patricia Smith’s nomination as Solicitor of the Department of Labor has moved forward with a cloture vote today along party lines. There should be an up-or-down vote on the nomination tomorrow or the day after. See SENATUS for details on the vote.

Senator Enzi, the leading Republican on the Senate HELP Committee, had been blocking the nomination, for no good, valid, or honest reason. As both Republicans and Democrats have done in recent years, he has abused the whole practice of filibuster (I’ll write more on that later).

To respond to his ignorant criticism would take volumes. Frankly, he is scandalous in his use of innuendo and distorted facts to paint those he doesn’t like as incompetent managers and liars (an example of his blathering at the Washington Examiner). I would hate to be his child and have made a mistake. Of course his blather is par for the course in Washington (a pox on both houses). If someone won’t bow to your personal agenda, destroy them by whatever means possible.

Sen. Harkin, no flaming liberal, provided the facts that refute Sen. Enzi line by line during his pre-cloture vote statements. The Congressional Record should have his factual testimony in-full by tomorrow. I encourage you to check it out.

So to my title above, ‘What does Sen. Enzi really want?’ I believe he wants the following:

• That workers not be educated as to their rights under the law.
• That low wage workers have no recourse when their wages are stolen.
• That any person or organization providing assistance only do so according to an approved script and to approved eligible individuals.
• That employers who skirt the rules, especially those who hire low wage and immigrant workers presuming that they can abuse them, be free to establish a system of indentured servitude.
• That disreputable, race-to-the-bottom, employers be free to re-establish the company store and a chit and voucher program.
• That rights are only for those in Sen. Enzi’s social and economic demographic.
• That the law is only a set of suggestions and optional guidelines, especially laws that protect the lower classes.
• That truth be subservient to agenda.
• That the United States be known as the land of permanent masters and servants.
• That the Republican Party abjure its tie to the abolition of slavery.

Amy Traub, writing at Huffington, gives a great narrative on the things Ms. Smith has done and works to prevent in New York in New York’s Hidden Crime Wave

And we thought crime in New York City was low. According to the NYPD just 418 robberies were reported in New York last week, along with 695 incidents of grand larceny. Not bad for a city of more than 8 million people. But the rosy numbers overlook a devastating series of thefts that never make it into the police statistics: last week the city may have experienced just 375 burglaries but it also saw an estimated 317,263 cases of employer wage theft from their own low wage workers. More than $18.4 million were stolen from wages in that week alone. And because the wage violations are systematic and ongoing, the crimes recur every week throughout the year.

The shocking new wage theft data come from research [pdf] unveiled this morning by the National Employment Law Project. After a rigorous study involving thousands of front-line workers in New York’s low wage industries, researchers documented the prevalence of New York City’s workplace violations for the first time.

The study reveals a crime wage centered on the city’s most vulnerable workers. More than one in five workers in the city’s low-wage industries was paid less than the minimum wage. More than three in four were denied the overtime pay they were legally owed. When workers tried to stand up for themselves (for example, by filing a complaint with a government agency or attempting to organize a union) they faced a high risk of illegal employer retaliation: being fired, getting their hours cut, or having the boss threaten to call immigration authorities. Not surprisingly, many workers decided to remain silent, even as they continued to work in dangerous conditions or saw their earnings stolen.

Imagine the destructive impact on New York’s families and communities. Although the average worker in the city’s low-wage industries earns just $20,644 a year, they lost an average 15 percent of that to wage theft. That amounts to an average $3,016 annually stolen from some of the lowest-income working families in the city…

Are you ready for your employer to arbitrarily cut your salary by 15%? That 15% cut isn’t for any good economic reason, and certainly no legal reason. It is just so you can continue to work the same hours at less pay, and he can take it home to buy himself a better bottle of scotch. Maybe he’ll share that scotch with Sen. Enzi. Wonder if he hypocritically likes it neat.

Funny that my son was recently studying indentured servitude. I can’t wait till my son learns about human trafficking. I will be able to point to Sen. Enzi (if he’s still there) as a proponent of the very things that aid in its continuance.

Perspective, Political Education, Ethnicity, freedom, History, immigration, Labor

I absolutely got a kick out of the recent story of a plane that was “forced” to land because an Orthodox Jew was doing his morning prayers. The story from the BBC covers it succinctly. There’s a lot of other ones out there too.

My immediate thought is that Christians should know this. Not sure any of the flight crew was Christian, there’s fewer and fewer of us around anymore, but if they were they should have recalled Jesus words in Matthew 23:5

They do all their deeds to be seen by men; for they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long

In other words, they should have known better.

Of course Jesus was talking about the hypocrisy of the Scribes and Pharisees who did things in big ways only to be seen and recognized, not because they believed in what they were doing. Don’t get me wrong, I am absolutely against Christians doing any type of Jewish ritual (we don’t need no Seders or tefillin for salvation), but we should know these things because our roots are in these very rituals. We should also take the time to know what Jesus was talking about, what He practiced, and what He was referring to.

For the uninitiated, from Wikipedia:

Phylacteries or tefillin (Hebrew: תפלין‎) are two boxes containing Biblical verses and the leather straps attached to them which are used in traditional Jewish prayer. This practice is derived from commands found in the Biblical books of Exodus and Deuteronomy (Exodus 13:9, Exodus 13:16, Deuteronomy 6:8, Deuteronomy 11:18).

Christian Witness, Perspective Biblical, Education, History

The Dana Foundation is pleased to invite you to a free Webposium for Teaching Artists, Friday, January 29, 2010, 12:00-1:00PM (EST).

Join us online for a discussion about the challenges and successes of working with students with disabilities. The event will be streamed live and viewers will be able to join in the Q and A at the end of the session.

What do teaching artists need to know to be successful when working with students with disabilities?

What do teaching artists need to know, understand, and be able to do to achieve success in a self-contained or inclusion classroom? The panel consists of artists and educators dedicated to making the arts accessible to all students. The panelists will discuss practical classroom strategies, lesson plan modifications, as well as the necessary questions to ask in order for everyone (artists, students, teachers, para-professionals, and administrators) to be successful.

Panelists include:

• Judith Jellison, Regents Professor of Music and Human Learning, Butler School of Music, University of Texas, Austin (expertise in music and disabilities)
• Allison Orr, Artistic Director, Forklift Danceworks (expertise in dance and disabilities)
• Sherry Snowden, Lecturer, Art Education, Texas State University (expertise in lesson plan design, visual arts, and disabilities)
• Moderator: Russell Granet, Founder, Arts Education Resource (expertise in theatre and disabilities)

Register here. Registration ends January 28 at 5:00pm.

Art, Current Events Announcements, Arts, Education

United States Institutes 2010 (program szkoleniowy w USA dla nauczycieli i wykładowców z całego świata)

USA Ambasada USA w Warszawie zaprasza do składania podań na program Study of the United States Institutes (SUSI), który odbędzie się w lecie 2010 roku.

Applications Accepted until January 25, 2010 (Podania można składać do 25 stycznia 2010).

The U.S. Embassy in Warsaw is pleased to invite candidate nominations for the Summer 2010 Study of the United States Institutes (SUSI) for University Faculty and Secondary School Educators. University-Level and Faculty members participate in intensive post-graduate level academic programs with integrated study tours. The programs provide foreign university faculty and other scholars the opportunity to deepen their understanding of American society, culture and institutions. The ultimate goal is to strengthen curricula and to improve the quality of teaching about the United States in academic institutions abroad. Secondary School Educators attend a six-week post-graduate seminar in the United States. All of the institute programs will be held this summer at different U.S. universities and colleges beginning in mid-June 2010. Space in the institutes is very limited. To be competitive, candidates must have excellent proficiency in English and outstanding qualifications. Application Deadline: January 25, 2010.

The SUSI programs in six institutes for University-Level and Faculty members:

• Study of the U.S. Institute on U.S. Culture and Society
• Study of the U.S. Institute on American Politics and Political Thought
• Study of the U.S. Institute on Contemporary American Literature
• Study of the U.S. Institute on Foreign Policy
• Study of the U.S. Institute on Journalism and Media
• Study of the U.S. Institute on Religious Pluralism

SUSI Programs for Secondary School Educators:

The institute programs are an opportunity for secondary school teachers, teacher trainers, curriculum developers, textbook writers, and other educational professionals to attend a six-week post-graduate seminar in the United States.

All of the institute programs will be held this summer at different U.S. universities and colleges over the course of six weeks beginning in mid June 2010.

Current Events, Poland - Polish - Polonia Announcements, Education

Dr. John Z. Guzlowski recently posted a short blog about journalist Justine Jablonska’s series of online articles about four Poles who survived the Nazi and Soviet invasions of Poland. In The Stories of Four Poles he notes:

The population of Poland was about 36,000,000 when the Nazis decided to destroy the country and its people. Six million of them died. The ones who didn’t die lived unimaginable lives for decades and decades to come, first under the hammer of the Nazis and then under the hammer and sickle of the Communists.

Not all of them want to talk about what happened. Some Poles don’t want to remember the killings, brutality, deportation, enslavement, deprivation, and suffering that many of them felt would never end. My mother was one of these Poles. If I asked her about what those years under the Nazis were like, she would wave me away and tell me simply, “If they give you bread, you eat it. If they beat you, you run away.”

I respect the silence of those like my mother who wouldn’t talk about those years. I’m sure she felt that she was protecting my sister Donna and me from the kind of sorrow few can bear.

Other Poles, however, were like my dad. He was a man who felt that it was his duty to let people know about the terrible things that were done. He didn’t want people to forget the evil that came down upon the Poles.

Justine Jablonska, a graduate student in the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, recently published a series of reports about four Poles who, like my father, feel that they must keep the memories of what happened alive.

These reports are gathered together under the title “Four stories: The nurse, the child, the Resistance fighter and the Home Army soldier.”…

Poland - Polish - Polonia Education, freedom, History, immigration