In the autumn of 2014, still settling into retirement in Durham, a question began nagging at me: was Barack Obama going to get shot in Selma Alabama the following March?
Now stay with me: was I just being more than normally paranoid?
Consider: March 7, 2015, would be the 50th anniversary of the first march for voting rights over the Edmund Pettus Bridge out of Selma, headed for the state capitol in Montgomery.
[Chuck worked for the Postal Service from late 1985 to mid-1994. He first delivered mail on a rural route, then moved inside to work as a Mailhandler at a huge mail processing facility in Merrifield VA, an outer D.C. suburb. After four years of moving mail, there was a change]:
Chuck: I noticed around 1991 a posted opening for a part-time EEO (Equal Employment Opportunity) Investigator at Merrifield. I applied, showed them my books on Selma and the Poor Peoples Campaign, and was selected; spent two weeks outside Chicago in training to do investigations and reports.
Chuck ready to do some EEO work
Thereafter, I was called periodically to the EEO office, for some weeks at a time. To make the switch I traded my work clothes and union apron for a suit and tie left over from my years on The Hill; the transition was from one work culture to another: blue collar/calloused hands to white collar, college-educated office guy with a primitive laptop.
At first it was good to be back dealing with racial justice issues concretely. This was not protest or jail, but the humdrum nitty gritty of making the legal progress achieved through struggle and sacrifice work, day-to-day.
There was a possibility I could have been transferred to EEO permanently, but I didn’t pursue it. I did not want to “advance” in the USPS ranks, as that would involve at least a tacit commitment to stay for a career. Also, such jobs often required taking work home (like complex cases), and I didn’t want to do that. Mailhandler work, despite the tedium, could be left behind when I clocked out, and the rest of my time, packed with family and Quaker projects, was too precious to intrude on.
Even so, I learned much during my stints on EEO duty. With two to three thousand employees of many different ethnicities, Merrifield was both a testament to the “success” of integration in the federal workforce — and simultaneously its reality as an always simmering pot of subdued race-tinted conflicts.
This was, I should note, in the years when “going postal” became an accepted term for mass workplace shootings (twenty-eight USPS employees and bystanders had been killed by postal workers in several rampages during my tenure); the year I left, it even became a visual punchline for a slapstick movie series, The Naked Gun. Fortunately, we didn’t have any such in my time at Merrifield, but the tensions were always there.
A postal worker murdered 14 other employees in this Oklahoma massacre, wounded six, and then shot himself.
I saw telltale signs of hate in the men’s toilet stalls, scrawled on the doors. A lot of it was aimed at Asian-Americans. This didn’t surprise me; there were a great many middle-aged Vietnam-era veterans in the USPS workforce. PTSD was plentiful, and the sight of Asians, particularly from the defeated South Vietnam, now working nearby, set some of them off.
Two personal examples: one of the most confusing EEO cases I had was brought by a woman against her supervisor, based not on race but religion. The complainant was Hindu, and her crew included mainly South Asian persons, some Hindu and some Sikh. The supervisor was, I believe, a Sikh. The complaint was that he chronically favored other Sikh employees when assigning overtime (many employees sought to maximize better-paid overtime; I did not).
Since I knew very little about either religion, it wasn’t easy to sort this out. The supervisor stonewalled, stoutly denying everything.
The case went nowhere; I did not have the “rank” in the system to actually compel the supervisor to produce records or sign a sworn statement.
So, I learned then about the weakness (and protect-management-above-all-else bias) of the EEO machinery, as well as the difficulty in resolving many cases.
The other example was the “biggest” case I ever had, and it also taught me much, especially about gaming the system.
Background: among the many Vietnamese refugees at Merrifield, most were exemplary employees: good at the repetitive work and memorization, rarely absent or sick. They stuck together, and didn’t complain.
However, there was a white male employee, let’s call him Arthur, a Vietnam veteran, who had a thing for Asian females. He habitually stalked the Vietnamese women.
It was creepy: he followed them to the restrooms, repeatedly approached them in the cafeteria, propositioned them (even clearly married ones), ignored brushoffs.
When someone in EEO advised him to cut it out, he proceeded to file complaints against the EEO office Director and staff. I was not named in those complaints, but only because I hadn’t been there when this started.
Which meant the case landed on my desk, as the newbie. Or a piece of it did, one very fat file. But this was just the tip of the iceberg: the EEO supervisor showed me a filing cabinet, in which the Arthur files filled two drawers.
Arthur was like a “jailhouse lawyer.” He was clever and had studied all the regulations I had just recently been introduced to.
One of them was that, if a complaint alleged more than one type of discrimination, each type had to be separately investigated and reported on. At the time, the EEO regs recognized seven types or “purviews”: race, color, religion, sex, age, national origin, disability, plus reprisal for filing. On each complaint, Arthur had checked every single purview. (Disability? What the heck was that about?) And each time he was interviewed by an EEO staffer or supervisor, he filed a new complaint, all purviews checked.
His output had quickly brought the EEO machinery to a standstill, while he continued to stalk the Vietnamese women.
So, I was supposed to master all this material, gather testimony from the women and other witnesses, and put it into a report solid enough to withstand his counterattacks and move some senior official to action.
What kind of action? Theoretically Arthur could be fired; but in fact, such firings were all but unheard of. Between union rules, civil service protections, and just residual racism, Arthur had better job tenure than any professor I ever knew of.
But long story short, though: I pulled it off. Sort of.
Besides burrowing through the mountain of paperwork, the hardest part was getting testimony. I needed the women to tell me what had happened, and then sign statements summarizing it, usually one I wrote and read back to them.
But to a person, they were petrified at the prospect. Several refused and hid. More than one sat across from my desk sobbing and trembling, afraid not only of Arthur, but also terrified of me.
Why me? “I’m on your side,” I protested. “I’m here to help.”
Yeah, sure.
An older veteran explained much of it: back home, besides the North Vietnamese invaders, there were petty and cruel dictators in the South. Official violence, interrogations with torture, unsolved disappearances, were routine. Plus, they or their families had worked for the American military during the war, which was why they had to leave the country after the Communist victory in 1975: they were enemy collaborators and lucky to escape alive. One survival skill they all had developed was that of keeping their head down and saying nothing.
But here they now were: away from their friends, sitting across from me, a strange white man with a beard, a power necktie (and for all they knew, a pistol tucked under my suit jacket, like the Postal Inspectors), interrogating them again, about another white man, and talking English just like that other white man who was after them).
I felt for them. I hated that my very presence was retraumatizing. But there was a job to do, and I really was on their side. After many tears, but without any physical torture, I finally extracted enough admissions for a report.
My senior EEO colleague was Quincy, a Black man who had no legs. He got around on leg-size prosthetics and long crutches. He looked at my report and his eyes widened. “That,” he pointed, “is a piece of art.”
That wasn’t exactly true, but it was Quincy’s highest compliment. And the report worked.
As I said, sort of. A high manager somewhere read it, likely consulted legal counsel, and told Arthur to go home.
On his way out the door, Arthur filed new complaints, again checking all the boxes, and now with my name at the head of the defendants list.
And the supervisor, to stay on the right side of the union, lower the risk of a lawsuit, and generally to cover his butt, did not fire Arthur. Or even suspend him.
Instead, Arthur was put on “administrative leave.” That meant: with pay. And benefits. Accruing seniority and retirement credits.
The term? Indefinite.
That is, Arthur got to sit home (or travel, learn a useful trade, whatever) and collect paychecks, until the matter was settled, which could take years.
That was my big achievement.
On the upside, Arthur was finally off the workroom floor. The Vietnamese women could now eat meals redolent of their pungent fish sauce, chatter in their tuneful tongue about hopefully non-traumatic topics, tend to calls of nature without being accosted.
Was this a piece of the “justice” I stepped into the streets of Selma for, 29 years earlier, walking behind Dr. King, ready to stop a bullet? Was it worth the sacrifice that Goodman, Chaney and Schwerner made a year earlier?
(Gimme a minute ….)
Yeah, I think so.
* * * *
Emma Lapsansky-Werner: How did Arthur’s case finally turn out?
Chuck has no idea.
About the time the report on Arthur was filed, in spring 1994, Chuck got a job offer from a Quaker center near Philadelphia. It paid less than half of what Chuck was making at Merrifield. But, “It was my longed-for escape from postal captivity,” he said. “I jumped at it, and never looked back. Somebody else had to pick up Arthur’s case.”
From “The Naked Gun, 33 1/3”: “O my God, it’s the disgruntled postal workers , , ,”
At about the same time, a new movie was released. Wikipedia notes: “The 1994 comedy film Naked Gun 33 1⁄3: The Final Insult (the third and last entry in a “Naked Gun” comedy series) includes a scene where the main character must deal with a series of escalating threats, including the sudden appearance of dozens of disgruntled postal workers, randomly firing automatic weapons in every direction.”
One critic said, “By the time the disgruntled postal workers show up, you’ll howl with laughter. The laughs don’t stop there. … “
Chuck got the jokes, but didn’t laugh.
The film co-starred former football player-turned actor O. J. Simpson, in his last film role before being arrested for two real, non-postal murders in June of 1994.
The Western Friend is continuing evidence (tho it’s still news to some) that there is lively Quaker periodical publishing outside Philadelphia. When the editor learned about Tell It Slant, she didn’t hesitate: Friend Mitchell Santine Gould’s review, the first, was included in its current online newsletter edition.
Mitch is a distinguished independent historian with a theological bent. His special interest in the quasi-Quaker poet Walt Whitman has produced many impressive essays, including Walt Whitman: 10 Misconceptions, Least to Greatest, which is here, and very much worth a look (but read this review first . . .)
Reviewed by Mitchell Santine Gould, Multnomah Monthly Meeting (6/19/2024):
Emma and Chuck at a 2017 history roundtable at Earlham School of Religion.
Emma Lapsansky-Werner offers us a sprawling biography of Quaker journalist, activist, and gadfly Chuck Fager, in Tell It Slant. I read the first half with growing appreciation for two essential aspects of Chuck’s life. The first is his truly impressive involvement with so many historic moments in politics, society, and religion. The second, which nicely humanizes this history, is a very frank, very modest account of his own life – warts as well as triumphs. It must be rare that a biography succeeds so admirably on both aspects.
Chuck’s long experience as a professional journalist and author gives perfect clarity to his parts of the overall narrative. However, he had so much to say, that in order to marshal some flow and organization to so many anecdotes, memories, and histories, he was lucky that Emma Lapsansky-Werner extended her invaluable editorial contributions into the role of co-author.
As she put it, “In crafting this narrative, I have echoed Chuck’s scaffolding, weaving my spin together with many of Chuck’s own words; biography is interwoven with autobiography.” Although Dr. Lapsansky-Werner is an academic — a professor of Quaker history — she delivered the kind of powerfully clear and simple journalistic prose that seamlessly matched Chuck’s own. I think given all the constraints, Lapsansky-Werner acquitted herself well.
We’re no longer in an age of book-reading — info-snacking is more like it — and one might set the book aside rather read the whole thing at once. But should you resume in the middle of the book, its humor, charm, interest, and insight will even more deeply impress you. Tell It Slant is inspiring and above all, highly relevant. In addition to his decades of involvement with Quaker faith, practice, and internal politics, Chuck really kept his finger on the pulse of American society and politics — precisely because of his investment in his faith, of course.
When the stories are this compelling, you want the book to be perfect. Viewing Friend Chuck as the modern-day equivalent of history’s Publick Friend, I wanted him to be the exponent for liberal Quaker faith as I understand it. I hoped to see a conscious allegiance to the key innovation of Quakerism: its Inner Light theology. Informal polling that I did years ago revealed that Friends today have reduced the doctrine of Inner Light to little more than a sentimental “that of God in everyone.”
But historically, the Inner Light was recognized as a secret, silent hotline to the Divine, quite specifically as a source of guidance in times of an ethical crisis. Crucially, it was seen as capable of over-riding the two ubiquitous avenues for all moral supervision: the Bible and the clergy. Chuck mentions the Inner Light only twice, exclusively in anecdotes about an old Quaker lady he once admired. In reality, the Light is the power behind the often-praised Quaker virtue known as “discernment.”
Mitchell Santine Gould
Having said all this, let me turn to the controversial proposition that Quakerism can be succinctly described as SPICE: simplicity, peaceableness, integrity, community, and equality. I could write a whole sequel review showing how Chuck hits quite robustly on all these cylinders. And that ultimately trivializes all my criticisms of his book. I believe every Quaker should read it, and non-Quakers will also be deeply inspired, as I have been, by it.
A week in North Carolina politics is like a year anywhere else. (At least sometimes.)
This past week produced a bunch of memorable events. Topping the list was the overnight political superstar status that’s been conferred on the state by lieutenant governor Mark Robinson, who won the GOP primary to succeed term-limited Democratic governor Roy Cooper. Not yet settled is the contest for the most apt nickname for the firebrand Robinson: hot contenders in the Alliteration Division are Repulsive,” “Revolting ” and “Repugnant,” with polls saying that one’s too close to call.
Garrison Keillor: “It’s the anniversary of the first March from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama (1965), known as “Bloody Sunday.”
Six hundred civil rights activists left Selma to march the 54 miles to the state capitol, demonstrating for African-American voting rights.
They got six blocks before state and local lawmen attacked them with billy clubs and tear gas.
ABC News interrupted a Nazi war crimes documentary to show footage of the violence. In the blink of a television set, national public opinion about civil rights shifted. Demonstrations broke out across the country.
Two weeks later, the March from Selma made it to Montgomery, led by Dr. Martin Luther King, federal court protection, and these words from President Lyndon Johnson: “There is no issue of States rights or national rights. There is only the struggle for human rights.” When they got to Montgomery, they were 25,000 strong.
In response, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act in August 1965. That law enfranchised millions of excluded Americans. It made possible the election of three presidents: Carter, Clinton & Obama.
The American right worked relentlessly to roll back the law. In 2013 the Supreme Court began to gut it, and vote suppression has become a legislative crusade in much of the country.
How to order.
This past week produced a bunch of memorable events. Topping the list was the overnight political superstar status that’s been conferred on the state by lieutenant governor Mark Robinson, who won the GOP primary to succeed term-limited Democratic governor Roy Cooper. Not yet settled is the contest for the most apt nickname for the firebrand Robinson: hot contenders in the Alliteration Division are Repulsive,” “Revolting ” and “Repugnant,” with polls saying that one’s too close to call.
violence. In the blink of a television set, national public opinion about civil rights shifted. Demonstrations broke out across the country.
In response, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act in August 1965. That law enfranchised millions of excluded Americans. It made possible the election of three presidents: Carter, Clinton & Obama.