The recent deaths of President Jimmy Carter and former U.S. Senator Fred Harris have reminded many frayed and embattled Americans that good-hearted and decent people can still succeed in politics and help lead our country in ways that are economically sound, socially fair-handed, and respectful of the human rights of women and men of all classes, colors, creeds, and economic status everywhere.
President Carter was a peacemaker, a humanitarian of deep religious faith who struggled to establish human rights as a foundation of American foreign policy. He worked tirelessly for the disadvantaged, was a pioneering advocate of environmental conservation and renewable energy, and a tenacious champion of arms control and public health.
Senator Harris and President Carter were cut from different cloth but they flew the same colors when it came to progressive politics, economic justice and humanitarian decency.
Much has been written about Harris since his death at 94 in New Mexico in November last year. Like Carter, he was considered a Washington outsider, adored by his followers but often looked upon by the mainstream media as a populist eccentric. Today, however, Harris’s life and passions are more central to American political health and well-being than ever.
With half the country fearing the future will be dominated by a psycho clown car of lunatic racists, neofascists, billionaire oligarchs, rapists, and haters of liberals, women, people of color and “common folk,” and the other half of the country seeing the future succumbing to tyrannical oppression with “enemies from within” to be vanquished by patriotic knights of white supremacy, fanatic capitalism and Christian nationalism, Fred Harris’s political courage serves as role model for many of us in what promises to be months if not years of national chaos.
Harris grew up on a tenant farm in Oklahoma. He was a U.S. senator from that state from 1964 to 1973. He ran “successfully” for president in 1972 and 1976, even though he didn’t win. His “no more bull shit” populism and unwavering support of the War on Poverty, Civil Rights, humane immigration reform, and Native American sovereignty, moved many people to take politics seriously again, inspired by his “radical optimism,” and his pioneering, down-to-earth genius for fair play. Harris moved to our state in 1976 and taught political science at UNM for many years. As he wrote in the introduction to his book “New Mexico 2050,” “I’ve been nearly all over the world … and I’ve never found any place I like as much as New Mexico. That’s the truth.”
Harris modeled the necessary contradictions of being a politically responsible, active citizen in our democracy. Kind-hearted, courtly and armed with a wonderfully barbed but genteel kind of humor, Harris had the grit to never pull his punches or back off from a righteous struggle. He fought tooth and nail for policies that embodied the decency and compassion that guided his populist career. Tough as he was, he never resorted to the kind of mean small-mindedness that has polluted so much of our politics today.
Harris would have considered it graceless to call himself courageous. It takes a certain kind of spine, though, to believe in the best of people, to be a person who faithfully tries to give everyone a fair chance. Hate and blame weren’t in his vocabulary, even though he loathed the lazy cowardice of bigotry. Fred Harris believed the common good would win out in the end if most of us stood tall and loyal to what he called “economic democracy,” the notion that in a truly egalitarian society hard work, talent and dedication to humane values actually matter.
At the heart of his progressive views was not only a faith in fairness and effort, but also a rock-bottom disgust with power brokers using fear as a political weapon. His radical optimism was rooted in his desire to help people gain the kind of economic and social stability needed to overcome their political scars and terrors, and standup for the principles of inalienable human rights and equal justice under law. He knew that as long as Americans didn’t start shooting each other, the promise of the Constitution, its Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence always had a chance to win out over narcissistic greed and the remorseless pursuit of power.
In the wake of some 150 urban riots in 1967, Harris served on the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, known as the Kerner Commission. He maintained until the end an unshakable commitment to its findings even when President Johnson refused to endorse its condemnation of entrenched and systemic white racism in America. He also gave unwavering support as a U.S. Senate colleague to Frank Church who chaired the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, known as the Church Committee. Turning over the stones and finding dirty illegalities and abuses of power at the FBI, CIA, NSA, and other intelligence agencies is certainly not for the faint of heart.
Fred Harris had a wide and generous influence on the lives of countless New Mexicans. He was one of those rare secret helpers. If you were one of his students or someone he backed, when a new chance came into your life you figured it might be Fred working on your behalf behind the scenes, though you would never know for sure.
The certainty that Fred Harris brought to American politics was free of any signs of airy idealism. It was a strength that flowed from his unshakeable belief in the ground rules of fairness, justice and equal opportunity. He didn’t call us to be heroic. He showed us what it takes to be politically tough minded, to be, like him, dogged and uncowed.
In the shadow of Republican threats to deport as many as 15 to 20 million undocumented workers beginning later this month, the following is a prescient 2014 New Mexico Mercury interview with former senator Fred Harris on the tragic plight of abused and exploited workers-without-papers in the United States.
*Nullius in verba: take nobody’s word for it
In Uruguay, where I am visiting family, it’s good to see these two honest politicians remembered and honored for precisely what’s lacking in US politics today. A reminder that we have such people there and must fight to empower them again.
Fred Harris PRESENTE! Jimmy Carter PRESENTE!
Thanks for this post VB. Thank you for reminding us of the good ones. We remember and carry on.
We were blessed to know Fred, and I was lucky to work with his daughter Kathryn for four years from 1993-1997, during which we finalized the acquisition of Alan and Shirley Minge’s collection and the donation of Casa San Ysidro in Corrales, a seed that was sown by you on a sunny morning sometime in 1980 as we shared a meal with Alan at the Central Torta. I suspect that Fred might have pulled one or two strings behind the scenes. Fred’s memorial at the National Hispanic Cultural Center was a rare and inspiring gathering of friends near and far. As we left, I thought that only Fred could bring Comanche and Taos Pueblo elders together on a stage to sing a Woody Guthrie song.