Month: <span>July 2022</span>

Garry Davis Portraits of World Citizens.

Garry Davis: “And Now the People Have The Floor”.

Featured Image: Garry Davis by Wim van Rossem for Anefo, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Garry Davis; who died 24 July 2013, in Burlington, Vermont; was often called “World Citizen N°1”. The title was not strictly exact as the organized world citizen movement began in England in 1937 by Hugh J. Shonfield and his Commonwealth of World Citizens; followed in 1938 by the creation jointly in the USA and England of the World Citizen Association. However; it was Garry Davis in Paris in 1948-1949 who reached a wide public and popularized the term “world citizen”.

The First Wave.

Garry Davis was the start of what I call “the second wave of world citizen action”.  The first wave was in 1937-1940 as an effort to counter the narrow nationalism represented by Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany and militaristic Japan. This first world citizen wave of action did not prevent the Second World War; but it did highlight the need for a wider cosmopolitan vision.  Henri Bonnet; of the League of Nations’ Committee for Intellectual Co-operation; and founder of the US branch of the World Citizen Association; became an intellectual leader of the Free French Movement of De Gaulle in London; during the War.  Bonnet was a leader in the founding of UNESCO — the reason it is located in Paris — and UNESCO’s emphasis on understanding among cultures.

League of Nations

Stanley Bruce chairing the League of Nations Council in 1936. Joachim von Ribbentrop is addressing the council. By Commonwealth of Australia, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The League of Nations and its unused Peace Army.

The Second Wave.

The Second Wave of world citizen action in which Garry Davis was a key figure lasted from 1948 to 1950 — until the start of the war in Korea and the visible start of the Cold War; although, in reality, the Cold War began in 1945 when it became obvious that Germany and Japan would be defeated.  The victorious Great Powers began moving to solidify their positions.  The Cold War lasted from 1945 until 1991 with the end of the Soviet Union. During the 1950-1991 period; most world citizen activity was devoted to preventing a war between the USA and the USSR, working largely within other arms control/disarmament associations and not under a “world citizen flag.”

The Third Wave.

The Third Wave of world citizen action began in 1991 with the end of the Cold War and the rise again of narrow nationalist movements; as seen in the break up of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia.  The Association of World Citizens with its emphasis on conflict resolution, human rights, ecologically-sound development, and understanding among cultures is the moving force of this Third Wave.

The two-year Second Wave was an effort to prevent the Cold War which might have become a hot World War Three.  In 1948; the Communist Party took over Czechoslovakia; in what the West called a “coup”; more accurately a cynical manipulation of politics.  The coup was the first example of a post-1945 change in the East-West balance of power; and started speculation on other possible changes as in French Indochina or in 1950 in Korea.  1948 was also the year that the UN General Assembly was meeting in Paris.

The United Nations did not yet have a permanent headquarters in New York; so the General Assembly first met in London and later in Paris.  All eyes; especially those of the media, were fixed on the UN.  No one was sure what the UN would become; if it would be able to settle the growing political challenges or “go the way of the League of Nations”.

Un General Asembly

Basil D Soufi, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons.

U.N. General Assembly: Can It Provide the Needed Global Leadership?.

“Song and Dance” Actor.

Garry Davis, born in 1921; was a young Broadway actor in New York prior to the entry of the US in the World War in 1941. Garry Davis was a son of Meyer Davis; a well-known popular band leader who often performed at society balls and was well known in the New York-based entertainment world.  Thus it was fairly natural that his son would enter the entertainment world, as a “song and dance” actor in the musical comedies of those days. Garry had studied at the Carnegie Institute of Technology; a leading technology institution.

When the US entered the war; Garry joined the Army Air Force and became a bomber pilot of the B-17, stationed in England with a mission to bomb targets in Germany.  Garry’s brother had been killed in the Allied invasion of Italy; and there was an aspect of revenge in bombing German military targets until he was ordered to bomb German cities in which there were civilians.

The Creation of a World Federation with powers to prevent War.

At the end of the War and back as an actor in New York; he felt a personal responsibility toward helping to create a peaceful world and became active with world federalists; who were proposing the creation of a world federation with powers to prevent war; largely based on the US experience of moving from a highly decentralized government under the Articles of Confederation, to the more centralized Federal Government structured by the Constitution.

At the time, Garry had read a popular book among federalists; The Anatomy of Peace by the Hungarian-born Emery Reves.  Reves had written:

“We must clarify principles and arrive at axiomatic definitions as to what causes war and what creates peace in human society.” If war was caused by a state-centric nationalism as Reves, who had observed closely the League of Nations, claimed, then peace requires a move away from nationalism. As Garry wrote in his autobiography My Country is the World (1) “In order to become a citizen of the entire world, to declare my prime allegiance to mankind, I would first have to renounce my United States nationality. I would secede from the old and declare the new”.

United World Citizen International Identity Card.

In May 1948, knowing that the UN General Assembly was to meet in Paris in September; and earlier the founding meeting of the international world federalists was to be held in Luxembourg, he went to Paris. There he renounced his US citizenship and gave in his passport.  However; he had no other identity credentials in a Europe where the police can stop you and demand that you provide identity papers. So he had printed a “United World Citizen International Identity Card” though the French authorities listed him as “Apatride d’origine americaine”. Paris after the War was filled with “apatride”; but there was probably no other “d’origine americaine”

Giving up US citizenship and a passport which many of the refugees in Paris would have wanted at any price was widely reported in the press and brought him many visitors.  Among the visitors was Robert Sarrazac who had been active in the French resistance and shared the same view of the destructive nature of narrow nationalism; and the need to develop a world citizen ideology.  Garry was also joined by the young Guy Marchand; who would later play an important role in structuring the world citizen movement.

Guy Marchand

Guy Marchand By Georges Biard, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons. 

World Citizenship.

As the French police was not happy with people with no valid identity papers wondering around; Garry Davis moved to the large modern Palais de Chaillot  with its terraces which had become “world territory” for the duration of the UN General Assembly. He set up a tent and waited to see what the UN would do to promote world citizenship.  In the meantime; Robert Sarrazac who had many contacts from his resistance activities set up a “Conseil de Solidarite” formed of people admired for their independence of thought, not linked to a particular political party.

The Conseil was led by Albert Camus, novelist and writer for newspapers, Andre Breton, the Surrealist poet, l’Abbé Pierre and Emmanuel Mounier, editor of Esprit, both Catholics of highly independent spirits as well as Henri Roser, a Protestant minister and secretary for French-speaking countries of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation.

Albert Camus

Albert Camus, Nobel prize winner. By Photograph by United Press International, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Albert Camus: Stoic Humanist and World Citizen.

An Interruption.

Davis and his advisors felt that world citizenship should not be left outside the General Assembly hall but had to be presented inside as a challenge to the ordinary way of doing things, “an interruption”. Thus, it was planned that Garry Davis from the visitors balcony would interrupt the UN proceedings to read a short text; Robert Sarrazac had the same speech in French, and Albert Crespey, son of a chief from Togo had his talk written out in his Togolese language.

In the break after a long Yugoslav intervention, Davis stood up.  Father Montecland, “priest by day and world citizen by night” said in a booming voice “And now the people have the floor!” Davis said “Mr Chairman and delegates: I interrupt in the name of the people of the world not represented here. Though my words may be unheeded, our common need for world law and order can no longer be disregarded.”   After this, the security guards moved in, but Robert Sarrazac on the other side of the Visitors Gallery continued in French, followed by a plea for human rights in Togolese. Later, near the end of the UN Assembly in Paris, the General Assembly adopted without an opposition vote, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which became the foundation of world citizens’ efforts to advance world law.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Eleanor Roosevelt holding poster of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (in English), Lake Success, New York. November 1949. By FDR Presidential Library & Museum, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Human Rights: The Foundation of World Law.

The Rue du Cherche Midi.

Dr Herbert Evatt of Australia was the President of the UN General Assembly in 1948.  He was an internationalist who had worked during the San Francisco Conference creating the UN to limit the powers of the Permanent Five of the Security Council.  Evatt met with Davis a few days after the “interruption” and encouraged Davis to continue to work for world citizenship, even if disrupting UN meetings was not the best way.

Shortly after highlighting world citizenship at the UN; Garry Davis went to the support of Jean Moreau; a young French world citizen and active Catholic; who as a conscientious objector to military service, had been imprisoned in Paris as there was no law on alternative service in France at the time. Davis camped in front of the door of the military prison at the Rue du Cherche Midi in central Paris.  As Davis wrote:

“When it is clearly seen that citizens of other nations are willing to suffer for a man born in France claiming the moral right to work for and love his fellow man rather than be trained in killing him, as Jesus, Buddha, Lao Tsu, Tolstoy, St Francis of Assisi, Gandhi, and other great thinkers and religious leaders have taught, the world may begin to understand that the conscience of Man itself rises above all artificially-created divisions and fears.” (2).

Herbert Evatt

Dr Herbert Evatt By Max Dupain, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Others joined Davis in camping on the street.  Garry Davis worked closely on this case with Henri Roser and Andre Trocme of the Fellowship of Reconciliation. Davis was put in jail for camping on the city street and also for not having valid identification documents, but his place on the street was filled with others, including a German pacifist, an act of courage so soon after the end of the War.  It took another decade before alternative service in France was put into place, but Davis’ action had led to the issue being widely raised in France, and the link between world citizenship and non-violent action clearly drawn.

Garry Davis was never an “organizational man”.  He saw himself as a symbol in action.  After a year in France with short periods in Germany, he decided in July 1949 to return to the US. As he wrote at the time:

“I have often said that it is not my intention to head a movement or to become president of an organization. In all honesty and sincerity, I must define the limit of my abilities as being a witness to the principle of world unity, defending to the limit of my ability the Oneness of man and his immense possibilities on our planet Earth, and fighting the fears and hatreds created artificially to perpetuate narrow and obsolete divisions which lead and have always led to armed conflict.”

Perhaps by the working of karma, on the ship taking him to the USA, he met Dr. P. Natarajan, a south Indian religious teacher in the Upanishadic tradition.  Natarajan had lived in Geneva and Paris and had a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Paris.  He and Davis became close friends, and Davis spent some time in India at the center created by Natarajan who stressed the development of the inner life.  “Meditation consists of bringing all values inside yourself” was a motto of Natarajan.

It was at the home of Harry Jakobsen, a follower of Natarajan, on Schooly Mountain, New Jersey that I first met Garry Davis in the early 1950s. I was also interested in Indian philosophy, and someone put me in contact with Jakobsen. However, I had joined what was then the Student World Federalists in 1951 so I knew of the Paris adventures of Garry. We have since seen each other in Geneva, France and the US from time to time.

As well as a World Citizen.

Some world federalists and world citizens thought that his renunciation of US citizenship in 1948 confused people.  The more organization-minded world federalists preferred to stress that one can be a good citizen of a local community, a national state as well as a world citizen.   However Davis’ and my common interest in Asian thought was always a bond beyond any tactical disagreements.

Today, it is appropriate to cite the oft-used Indian image of the wave as an aspect of the one eternal ocean of energy.  Each individual is both an individual wave and at the same time part of the impersonal source from which all comes and returns.  Garry Davis as a wave has now returned to the broader ocean.  He leaves us a continuing challenge writing:

“There is vital need now for wise and practical leadership, and the symbols, useful up to a point, must now give way to the men qualified for such leadership.”

Notes.

1) Garry Davis. My Country is the World (London: Macdonald Publishers, 1962)

2) Garry Davis.Over to Pacifism:A Peace News Pamphlet (London: Peace News, 1949)

Rene Wadlow, President, Association of World Citizen.

Here are other publications that may be of interest to you.

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Frantz Fanon Portraits of World Citizens.

Frantz Fanon: The New Humanism.

Featured Image: Frantz Fanon represent the FLN (National Liberation Front) and Algeria in the war of independence at the Pan African conference at the Palais de la Culture in Léopoldville, on August 27, 1960, in the former Belgian Congo, which has just conquered. By Unknown authorUnknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Frantz Fanon (1925-1961); whose birth anniversary we mark on 20 July; was a French psychologist, writer, and participant in the Algerian struggle for independence (1954-1962).

He was born in Martinique; then a French colony which now has the status of a Department of France.  The bulk of the population are of African descent; having been brought to the West Indies as slaves.  Although the basic culture is French; some in Martinique are interested in African culture; and as in Haiti, there are survivals of African religions; often incorporated into Roman Catholic rites.

In 1940 as France was being occupied by the German forces and a Right-Nationalist government was being created in the resort city of Vichy, sailors favorable to the Vichy government took over the island and created a narrow-nationalist, racist rule.  Fanon, then 17, escaped to the nearby British colony of Dominica, and from there joined the Free French troops led by General De Gaulle.  Fanon fought in North Africa and then in the liberation of France.

General Charles de Gaulle. By Office of War Information, Overseas Picture Division. [1] The image prefix (LC-USW3) at the Library of Congress image page matches that of pictures from the OWI collection (see prefix list here., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Black Skin, White Masks.

Once the war over, he received a scholarship to undertake medical and then psychiatry training in Lyon.  His doctoral thesis on racism as he had experienced it in the military and then during his medical studies was published in French in 1952 and is translated into English as Black Skin, White Masks.

In 1953, he was named to lead the Psychiatry Department of the Bida-Joinville Hospital in Algeria shortly before the November 1954 start of the war for independence in Algeria.  He treated both Algerian victims of torture as well as French soldiers traumatized by having to carry out torture.   He considered the struggle for independence as a just cause, and so in 1956 he resigned his position and left for Tunisia where the leadership of the independence movement was located.  As a good writer, having already published his thesis followed by a good number of articles in intellectual journals, he was made the editor of the Algerian independence newspaper.  There were a number of efforts by the French security services to kill him or to blow up the car in which he was riding.  Although wounded a number of times, he survived.

The Gold Coast.

In 1959, the British colony of the Gold Coast was granted independence and took the name of Ghana under the leadership of Kwame Nkrumah.  Nkrumah was a pan-African, having participated in a number of pan-African congresses starting in the 1930s.  He viewed the independence of the Gold Coast as the first step toward the liberation of all colonies in Africa, to be followed by the creation of African unity in some sort of federation.  Ghana attracted a good number of activists of anti-colonial movements.  Fanon was sent to Ghana to be the Algerian Independence Movement (FLN) ambassador to Ghana and as the contact person toward other independence movements.

Portrait photograph of Kwame Nkrumah. By The National Archives UK – Flickr account, OGL v1.0OGL v1.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Arise, Wretched of the Earth.

From his anti-colonial activity he wrote his best known study of colonialism, the mental health problems it caused, and the need for catharsis Les damnés de la terre, translated into English as The Wretched of the Earth.  The title comes from the first line of the widely-sung revolutionary song “L’Internationale”.  For French readers, there was no need to write the first word of the song which is “Arise”  Arise, you wretched of the Earth.  The meaning of the book in English would have been clearer had it been called Arise, Wretched of the Earth.

Frantz Fanon was very ill with leukemia, and Les damnés de la terre was written by dictation to his French-born wife that he had married during his medical studies.  He received in the hospital the first copies of his book three days before his death.  He had been taken for treatment to a leading hospital just outside Washington, DC by the C.I.A.  The role of the C.I.A. in support of, or just infiltrating for information, the Algerian independence movement is still not fully clear.  Frantz Fanon was buried in a town in Algeria then held by the independence forces.  The 1962 peace agreement with France granting independence followed shortly after his death.  Fanon is recalled warmly in Algeria for his part in the independence struggle.

The final four pages of Les damnés de la terre are a vital appeal for a new humanism and for a cosmopolitan world society based on the dignity of each person.  For Fanon, there is a need to overcome both resignation and oppression and to begin a new history of humanity.

Note.

Two useful biographies of Fanon in English are David Caute. Frantz Fanon (New York: Viking Press, 1970)   and Irene Gendzier Frantz Fanon. A Critical Study (New York: Pantheon Books, 1973).

Rene Wadlow, President, Association of World Citizens.

Here are other publications that may be of interest to you.

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Woody Guthrie Portraits of World Citizens.

Woody Guthrie: This land is my land and I…

Featured Image:  Woody Guthrie, half-length portrait, facing slightly left, holding guitar / World Telegram photo by Al Aumuller. By New York World-Telegram and the Sun staff photographer: Al Aumuller, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Woody Guthrie or Woodrow Wilson Guthrie (1912-1967); whose birth anniversary we note on 14 July; was the voice of the marginalized; especially those hit by the drought in the west of the U.S.A. during the late 1920s-early 1930s – what has been called the “dust bowl”. (1)

This land is your land, this land is my land, from California to New York island,
from the redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters, this land was made for you and me.

Nevertheless; many lost their farms due to unpaid bank loans; and others moved to the greener pastures of California; where they were not particularly welcomed.  However; nearly all were U.S. citizens; and they could not be deported to another country.

Times have changed.  Today, there are the homeless who would like to reach the U.S.A. There has been a good deal of media attention given to those at the frontier; including those who have died trying to reach the U.S.A.

Less media attention has been given to those living in the U.S. and who are being deported to their “home country” although some have been living in the U.S. since childhood and could sing:

“This land is my land.”

Deportation.

A large number of persons; an estimated three million, were deported during the 8-year presidency of Barack Obama; with relatively little attention given except by specialists.  The more flamboyant speeches of former President Trump have awakened more people to the issue of deportation; and the conditions in which people are held prior to deportation.

Those in danger of deportation are not organized in a formal way.  The U.S. trade union movement is a weak organizational force; whose membership has vastly declined.  In practice; trade unions never fought to protect “illegal” foreign workers; even when trade unions were stronger.  There are legitimate, non-racist concerns that an influx of immigrants will lower wage rates and overburden welfare services.  These non-racist concerns join in with the noisier, racist-voices.

President Barack Obama

U.S. President Barack Obama‘s official photograph in the Oval Office on 6 December 2012. By Official White House Photo by Pete Souza, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

President Donald Trump.

President Donald Trump poses for his official portrait at The White House, in Washington, D.C., on Friday, October 6, 2017. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead). By Shealah Craighead, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Sanctuary Movement.

Opposition to deportation has come largely from religious-spiritual groups stressing human dignity and using places of worship as sanctuaries; in which to house people in danger of deportation.  This sanctuary movement began in the early 1980s to provide safe-havens for Central American refugees fleeing civil armed conflicts.  Obtaining refugee status and asylum in the U.S. was difficult.  

Some 500 congregations joined the sanctuary movement to shelter people; based on the medieval laws which protected church building against soldiers.  Other congregations used the image of the Underground Railroad which protected runaway slaves prior to the Civil War.

religious sanctuary

Photo by Tungsten Rising on Unsplash.

 

Woody Guthrie would no doubt lend his singing voice.

There is now a new sanctuary movement started in the Age of Trump, focused on the protection of undocumented families from the newly created police of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).  Woody Guthrie would no doubt lend his singing voice to help those in danger of deportation; as he did for the farmers and workers of the 1930s.

You can also read Rene Wadlow’s: Woody Guthrie: Dust Bowl Blues and Revolt, HERE!.

 

Rene Wadlow, President, Association of World Citizens.

Here are other publications that may be of interest to you.

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Rex Tugwell Portraits of World Citizens.

Rex Tugwell: Planning and Action for Rural Reconstruction.

Featured Image:  Rexford G. Tugwell, administrator, Resettlement Administration.

Rex Tugwell (1891 – 1979 )  active in the world citizenship movement, was an economist and an advocate of government planning.

Back to Nature

As world-wide climate change has made the issues of land use, water, desertification, and land reform vital issues; it is useful to recall the contributions of Rexford Tugwell; whose birth anniversary we mark on 10 July .

He did his PhD studies at Columbia University in New York City.  He was influenced by Scott Nearing in the Economics Department and John Dewey in Philosophy. 

Scott Nearing was a socialist very interested by the efforts of planning in the USSR.  Nearing was also a follower of Leo Tolstoy.  He gave up university teaching; bought a farm in New England and became an advocate of “Back to Nature” and simple living.

Scott Nearing, 1883- Abstract/medium: 1 photographic print. By Miscellaneous Items in High Demand, PPOC, Library of Congress, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

John Dewey, bust portrait. By Underwood & Underwood, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Leo Tolstoy in Yasnaya Polyana, 1908, the first color photo portrait in Russia. By Sergei Prokudin-Gorskii, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

The “Brain Trust”

Rex Tugwell started teaching at Columbia; and his writings on the need for economic planning was quickly noted after the 1929 Wall Street “crash” and the start of the Great Depression. He was asked to be a member of the early circle around Franklin D. Roosevelt; then Governor of New York. 

The circle of economists became known as the “Brain Trust“; and they prepared proposals and drafted speeches for Franklin Roosevelt’s campaign for President in 1932.  Once elected; Roosevelt named Tugwell as Undersecretary of the Department of Agriculture to work closely with the Secretary of Agriculture; Henry A. Wallace.

Franklin D. Roosevelt. By FDR Presidential Library & Museum, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Cropped photograph of Henry Agard Wallace, 1888–1965, bust portrait, facing left (1940).D.N. Townsend, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Dust Bowls

The agriculture sector was one of the hardest hit sectors of the economy by the 1929 – 1939 Great Depression.  To meet the war needs of the First World War; US agriculture had been stimulated.  Land which  had never been plowed was opened to grow wheat and other grains. 

There was an increase in the production of animals for meat.  Much of the land opened for grain was not really appropriate; having been used in the past for pasture.  With several years of drought; the soil eroded and turned to dust; swept away by winds.  Thus the term “Dust Bowls” which covered much of the Middle West and Western states such as Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico.

An Agriculture Scientist

Tugwell and Henry Wallace who had been the editor of a leading farm journal and an agriculture scientist concerned with seeds; saw things in very much the same way; as reflected in a book each wrote the same year. (1)  Tugwell as Undersecretary; helped in the creation of the Soil Conservation Service in 1933 to restore poor quality land; and to promote better agricultural methods. 

Greenbelt Towns

He also helped to create the Resettlement Administration; whose aim was to create new healthy communities for the rural unemployed relatively close to urban centers; where they would have access to services – what came to be called “Greenbelt towns.”

As Henry Wallace; testifying before Congress in 1938 concerning a program of loans to farm tenants  said :

” Our homestead and reclamation movements were aimed primarily at putting agricultural land of the Nation into the hands of owner-operators.  But we failed to such an extent that a large proportion of our best farm land fell into the hands of speculators and absentee landlords.  Today, we are faced with the problem of stemming the tide of tenancy and reconstructing our agriculture in a fundamental manner by promoting farm ownership among tillers of the soil.”

Rex the Red

Tugwell pushed for government planning for food production by being able to control production, prices and costs.  He was influenced by the economic thinking of John Maynard Keynes on the role that government could play through intervention in the economy.  However to political opponents, Tugwell’s views seemed closer to the planning of Joseph Stalin than Maynard Keynes, and  he started being called in the press “Rex the Red”. Tugwell was pushed out of the Department of Agriculture.

Joseph Stalin in uniform at the Tehran conference (1943). By U.S. Signal Corps photo., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

John Maynard Keynes (1933). By Unknown authorUnknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

The Planning Commission.

He returned to New York City which had just elected a progressive mayor with hopes to transform the city, Fiorello La Guardia.  La Guardia selected Tugwell to become the first director of the newly formed New York City Planning Commission.  The Planning Commission developed proposals for public housing, new bridges and public parks.  It was one of the first efforts at over-all planning by a city government.

At the outbreak of the Second World War, Roosevelt named Tugwell as Governor of Puerto Rico.  At the time the Governor was appointed and not elected.  Tugwell was Governor from 1941 to 1946.  He created the Puerto Rico Planning, Urbanization and Zoning Board in 1942.  He worked to overcome years of neglect by Washington of the island.  He improved the University of Puerto Rico so that more Puerto Ricans would be prepared to deal adequately with the economy and government service. (2)

Mayor LaGuardia. By I.am.a.qwerty, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Committee to Frame a World Constitution

At the end of the Second World War, Tugwell left government service to return to academic life.  He joined the economic faculty of the University of Chicago to teach economic planning.  At the University of Chicago at the time, there had been created an interdisciplinary Committee to Frame a World Constitution to make proposals for world institutions adequate to meet the post-war challenges.  Tugwell saw the need for global planning at a world level and became an active member of the Committee. (3)

The new Progressive Party. 

As the 1948 campaign for President was approaching and the Cold War tensions between the USA and the USSR were heating up, there was an effort in the USA to create a new political party more open than the “Truman Doctrine” to negotiations with the USSR as well as stronger measures for poverty reduction within the USA.  Henry Wallace, who had been Franklin Roosevelt’s second Vice President was chosen to lead the new Progressive Party. 

Wallace chose Tugwell to be chairman of the Progressive Party Platform Committee charged with setting out the aims and program proposals for the campaign. Tugwell, reflecting the efforts of the Committee to Frame a World Constitution, wrote and had accepted the main foreign policy framework of the party.  “The Progressive Party believes that enduring peace among the peoples of the world community is possible only through world law.

The Atomic Age

Continued anarchy among nations in the atomic age threatens our civilization and humanity itself with annihilation.  The only ultimate alternative to war is the abandonment of the principle of the coercion of sovereignties by sovereignties and the adoption of the principle of the just enforcement upon individuals of world federal law enacted by a world federal legislature with limited but adequate power to safeguard the common defense and general welfare of all mankind.”

Ten years later, when as a graduate student at the University of Chicago, I met Tugwell, he had largely left the field of economic planning to write about political leadership, especially the style and experiences of Franklin Roosevelt.

Department of Agriculture

Today, however, the issues that Tugwell raised in the Department of Agriculture have become world issues: adequate food production and distribution at a price that most people can pay, protection of the soil, water and forests, land ownership and land reform, rural housing and non-farm employment in rural areas.  We build on the efforts of those who came before.

Notes:

1) Henry A. Wallace. New Frontiers (New York: Reynal and Hitchock, 1934).

   Rexford G. Tugwell. The Battle for Democracy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1935).

2) On conditions in Puerto Rico see Rexford G. Tugwell. The Stricken Land (New York: Doubleday, 1947).

3) Each year on the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, he would write his reflections on the year past including the debates within the Committee to Frame a World Constitution.  These yearly reflections have been brought together in Rexford G. Tugwell. A Chronicle of Jeopardy: 1945-1955(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955).

Rene Wadlow, President, Association of World Citizens

Here are other publications that may be of interest to you.

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Iraq Appeals

The Utopians of Tahrir Square: Poetry of witness and…

Featured Image: a Crowd of protesters in Tahrir square (30 October 2019). By Revoulation2019, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons.

Translated by Dr Anba Jawi and Catherine Temma Davidson (Palewell Press, London:U.K.).

Iraq has been in violent turmoil at least since 1989 when Saddam Hussein started an 8-year war against the newly created Islamic government of Iran.  For historical reasons, the Middle East has failed to build-multi-State structures or dialogue forums to handle strong disputes.  While many States in the world have to deal with diversity and plurality, creating a national cohesion has been particularly difficult in Iraq since its inception as a State after World War One.
 
    There was a short period of hope linked to protests held at Al Tahrir Square in Baghdad from October 2019 to March 2020 when the protests were brutally put down by the police and the military, killing some 700 young people.  It is this period of hope and its crushing that is the theme of this book of poems translated from Arabic to English.
 
    The book is dedicated:
 

“To the young people of Iraq and around the world whose protests of hope flared up in the darkness of 2019… We who watched this senseless sacrifice in the name of a more hopeful future can only redouble our efforts to make the world worthy of your light.”

 
    The Al Tahrir protests, unlike earlier or later protests which were usually regional or religiously sectarian, crossed confessional and regional barriers, bringing together especially youth no longer trusting government promises for better services – promises that were never carried out.
 

    As Muhammad Karim writes in This is How You Go Out:

 

“With your hot blood

 With your terror

 With your voice in the ears of deaf gods

 With your clothes soaked in soot and blood

 With your bare chests

 This is how you go out…this is how you go out.”

 

    There were both young women and men among the protesters, sometimes in love with each other but with a sense of doom as Enas Philip Muhammad writes:

 “You know, my love

   You know very well

    The roads I walk cannot accommodate two.”

 
   Most of the poems were written after the movement had been crushed.  Thus there is a melancholic tone to many and the theme of the dead as martyrs, as in Maytham Rad’s The Martyrs Don’t Want Anything.
 

“The martyrs don’t want anything

    Except that the holes in their bodies

    Made by bullets

    Become the punctuation marks

    Of an incomprehensible language.”

    As Ali Riyadh wrote:

 

    “There is a seed of freedom that has been handed down

     From alley to street, from square to cafe, from town to town

    The seed fell upon her soil hundreds of times and never tooted.”

 

There is little hope for future action.  As Ayad Al-Qala’ay writes: 

 

    “Absorbed in counting their heavy days they did not know – were were the last generation of a sunken ship.”

In the same spirit Hamid Al-Madamii writes:

 

“Neither the just end

     Nor the right start

     Will ever happen.”

 
This book of moving poems is a cooperative effort.  Sama Hussein in Iraq had collected the poems for an Arabic anthology published in Baghdad upon which this book is based.
 
Dr. Anba Jawi and Catherine Temma Davidson are part of Exiled Writers Ink organisation, which works to help refugees and asylum-seekers in England to have their writings  known.
 
Camilla Reeve is the publisher of Palewell Press.  All are to be thanked for bringing these poems to a wider public.
 
 
    René Wadlow, President, Association of World Citizens.

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