A Tricky Balance

The other day, David Simon—creator of HBO’s The Wire and former writer for the Baltimore Sun—came to speak to the Johns Hopkins and greater Baltimore communities about his thoughts on the state of the media in America. Surprisingly, given the changes that the Internet and digital cable have brought in expanding the variety of options people have, Simon was quite pessimistic. He painted a depressing picture of the media (one of the beauties of HBO is the fact that no one has to worry about commercials and how the viewers will react to a commercial break). On a larger scale, however, he was pessimistic about the future of the city that he loves and, to an extent, the country.

Why does Simon, known more for the unique characters and plotlines he devises in The Wire than for his political savvy, believe Baltimore is headed (or already in the midst of) a downward spiral? According to him, it is no longer guaranteed—as he thinks was the case fifty years ago in this city—that people who work hard and honestly will be better off than their parents and grandparents were. Industries (like some revolving around the longeshoremen in the Baltimore ports that Simon covers in Season Two) are going by the wayside, and there don’t appear to be replacements at the ready.

Technology and globalization were two of Simon’s reason for the stated trend. With cheaper labor elsewhere and mechanized labor in other places, it has become easier and easier to lay workers off and replace them with others in other countries. Globalization has obviously been a big boon for the world (and certainly most Americans); we can buy more goods at cheaper prices, and our quality of life has risen accordingly. Thanks to globalization, most members of American society can do things we never could have dreamed of in the yesteryear to which Simon refers. In addition, many members of world society have prospered and owe their newfound wealth to what Thomas Friedman would call the “flattening” of the world.

But what about those other people, right here in our own cities, our own country? What are we to do with those who can’t hold on and are living in an endless cycle of poverty and despair? One answer might be to just let them go, but that seems—to me at least—to be too easy. The question, then, is what do we do, and how do we balance our desire for a globalized world with the need to protect our own country’s citizens? Or do we actually need to, if we truly consider all human beings equal? Is there a difference between hardworking man in Nairobi and a man looking for employment in Baltimore? To be honest, I’m not sure, but it’s a question that we as citizens of the United States (but also of the world) will have to grapple with in the 21st century.

The Beauty of the First Amendment

As some of you might know, I've been interning for the Council on Hemispheric Affairs for a short while now. The Council (or simply COHA) aims to provide its readership with a sense of what is going on in the Western Hemisphere--from Canada to Chile--politically, economically, and socially. So far, it's been an incredible experience; I've learned an incredible deal about what goes into producing internationally reputable work on a subject I'm interested in, and I recently published my first piece for COHA, something which I was very excited about.

It's titled "Préval of Haiti--A Provisional Report Card: Grade B+" and goes into a fair amount of detail analyzing the current state of the Haitian government and the status of democracy and democratic institutions there. In doing so, I aimed to provide a bit of context to set the stage for the Préval government. I hoped to show the bleak landscape that awaited Préval after his election a year ago. Both heads of state (President Aristide, who was ousted in a coup, and Prime Minister Lartortue, who ran an interim government following that coup) failed miserably at their jobs. Neither garnered the respect of the international community, and both are considered miserable failures.

A week after the piece went up, a quick Google search led me to an article in the radical Narco News--this one a direct rebuttal to my own article. In it, the writer, Joe Emersberger, ignores the main point of my article (that Préval has done an infinitely better job of leading a government that is much more democratic in practice than did either of the past two leaders). Instead, he focuses on how I characterize the Aristide and Latortue regimes: "Citing no evidence, Glenwick equates Aristide to Latortue by writing that Aristide’s time in office was an 'equally rocky period.'" First and foremost, I’d hope that citing Haiti’s rigged elections in 2000 that led the United States, Europe, and the International Community in general to withdraw aid would be enough evidence. Second, the folks at Narco seemed to be under the impression that I came down easy on Latortue; in describing his term, I wrote of the “hundreds—if not thousands—of opposition party members [who] were murdered.” I don’t know what Emersberger thinks, but that’s not exactly high praise in my book.

Neither Aristide nor Latortue were quality leaders. In fact, they were far from it. Both had dictator-like moments, and neither reflected the democracy that is a fundamental part of the Haitian constitution. It was not my goal to determine which ruler was worse than the other; they both were extremely flawed, governed poorly, and did not gain the respect of many people outside of their own party. All I intended to convey was the fact that Préval had a lot of work to do. How that is interpreted is up to the reader, but I believe I did my job. Lastly, my piece was about Préval, not Aristide or Latortue. For the people at Narco to not even mention the focus of my article is a disservice to their own credibility and, more importantly, their readership.

Freedom of speech is a beautiful thing. It’s what has separated our country from so many others for so long and is one of the biggest reasons why I am so proud to be an American. Do I support Narco News’s right to criticize my article? Absolutely. Do I agree with Emersberger’s criticism? No, and I believe that his criticism is severely flawed, misconstruing my minor points and ignoring my main ones.

P.S. My newest piece, on microcredit in Latin America, is now up on http://www.coha.org/. Let the criticism (and maybe even some praise?) begin!

The Name, The Photo, The Blog

So there might be a few things that need to be clarified before this blog gets going.

First, yes, I am the real Michael Glenwick, rather than a man of the same name residing somewhere in Texas who has a sex podcast. I do not know this man, and I have nothing to do with him. A google search will bring up his podcast before anything having to do with me...I can only hope that this blog gets more hits than his online sex talk sooner or later. I do not know how this 26-year old Dallas-native got his name, and I couldn't care less. All I know is that this is where you will find the real Michael Glenwick's thoughts. And, yes, Jordan is my middle name.

Second, and most importantly, the name of my blog--Live From the Mountaintop--is a reference and a tribute to the late, great Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and his final speech, given in Memphis on April 3, 1968. In that speech, . King said he had reached the mountaintop, looked over, and saw the promised land. He said he might not get there with the rest of us, and he was right. But what he might not have known is that today, in 2007, we are in, many aspects, in the same place, treading water before getting to that promised land. Certainly, we've made tremendous gains, but we've still got a lot of work to do. According to the Census, 37 million Americans are impoverished and 47 million citizens are without healthcare. These are just some of the problems we still have to face, and those are just two of the reasons why we are still very much hovering on top of the mountain., unable to journey down.