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This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com.
I would have liked to know what the drummer hoped and what she expected. We'll never know why she decided to take a drum to the central markets of Paris on October 5, 1789, and why, that day, the tinder was so ready to catch fire and a drumbeat was one of the sparks.
Those who doubt that these moments matter should note how terrified the authorities and elites are when they erupt.
To the beat of that drum, the working women of the marketplace marched all the way to the Palace of Versailles, a dozen miles away, occupied the seat of French royal power, forced the king back to Paris, and got the French Revolution rolling. Far more than with the storming of the Bastille almost three months earlier, it was then that the revolution was really launched—though both were mysterious moments when citizens felt impelled to act and acted together, becoming in the process that mystical body, civil society, the colossus who writes history with her feet and crumples governments with her bare hands.
YES! Magazine's Occupy Coverage
YES! covered Occupy closely from its inception to its transformation into descendent organizations like Strike Debt. Click here to look at the archives.
She strode out of the 1985 earthquake in Mexico City during which parts of the central city collapsed, and so did the credibility and power of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, the PRI that had ruled Mexico for 70 years.
She woke up almost three years ago in North Africa, in what was called the Arab Spring, and became a succession of revolutions and revolts still unfolding across the region.
Such transformative moments have happened in many times and many places—sometimes as celebratory revolution, sometimes as terrible calamity, sometimes as both, and they are sometimes reenacted as festivals and carnivals. In these moments, the old order is shattered, governments and elites tremble, and in that rupture civil society is born—or reborn.
In the new space that appears, however briefly, the old rules no longer apply. New rules may be written or a counterrevolution may be launched to take back the city or the society, but the moment that counts, the moment never to forget, is the one where civil society is its own rule, taking care of the needy, discussing what is necessary and desirable, improvising the terms of an ideal society for a day, a month, the 10-week duration of the Paris Commune of 1871, or the several weeks' encampment and several-month aftermath of Occupy Oakland, proudly proclaimed on banners as the Oakland Commune.
Those who doubt that these moments matter should note how terrified the authorities and elites are when they erupt. That fear is a sign of their recognition that real power doesn't only lie with them. (Sometimes your enemies know what your friends can't believe.) That's why the New York Police Department maintained a massive presence at Occupy Wall Street's encampment and spent millions of dollars on punishing the participants (and hundreds of thousands, maybe millions more, in police brutality payouts for all the clubbing and pepper-gassing of unarmed idealists, as well as $47,000 for the destruction of the OWS library, because in situations like these a library is a threat, too).
In these moments of rupture, people find themselves members of a "we" that did not until then exist.
Those who dismiss these moments because of their flaws need to look harder at what joy and hope shine out of them and what real changes have, historically, emerged because of them, even if not always directly or in the most obvious or recognizable ways. Change is rarely as simple as dominos. Sometimes, it's as complex as chaos theory and as slow as evolution. Even things that seem to happen suddenly turn out to be flowers that emerge from plants with deep roots in the past or sometimes from long-dormant seeds.
It's important to ask not only what those moments produced in the long run but what they were in their heyday. If people find themselves living in a world in which some hopes are realized, some joys are incandescent, and some boundaries between individuals and groups are lowered, even for an hour or a day or—in the case of Occupy Wall Street—several months, that matters.
The old left imagined that victory would, when it came, be total and permanent, which is practically the same as saying that victory was and is impossible and will never come. It is, in fact, more than possible. It is something that participants have tasted many times and that we carry with us in many ways, however flawed and fleeting. We regularly taste failure, too. Most of the time, the two come mixed and mingled. And every now and then, the possibilities explode.
In these moments of rupture, people find themselves members of a "we" that did not until then exist, at least not as an entity with agency and identity and potency. New possibilities suddenly emerge, or that old dream of a just society reemerges and—at least for a little while—shines.
Utopia is sometimes the goal. It's often embedded in the insurrectionary moment itself, and it's a hard moment to explain, since it usually involves hardscrabble ways of living, squabbles, and eventually disillusionment and factionalism, but also more ethereal things: the discovery of personal and collective power, the realization of dreams, the birth of bigger dreams, a sense of connection that is as emotional as it is political, and lives that change and do not revert to older ways even when the glory subsides.
Sometimes the earth closes over this moment and it has no obvious consequences; sometimes it's the Velvet Revolution and the fall of the Berlin Wall and all those glorious insurrections in the East Bloc in 1989, and empires crumble and ideologies drop away like shackles unlocked. Occupy was such a moment, and one so new that its effects and consequences are hard to measure.
I have often heard that Freedom Summer in Mississippi registered some voters and built some alliances in 1964, but that its lasting (if almost impossible to measure) impact was on the young participants themselves. They were galvanized into a feeling of power, of commitment, of mission that seems to have changed many of them and stayed with them as they went on to do a thousand different things that mattered, as they helped build the antiauthoritarian revolution that has been slowly unfolding, here and elsewhere, over the last half century or so. By such standards, when it comes to judging the effects of Occupy, it's far too soon to tell—and as with so many moments and movements, we may never fully know.
If aftermaths are hard to measure, preludes are often even more elusive. One of the special strengths of Thank You, Anarchy, Nathan Schneider's new book about Occupy Wall Street, is its account of the many people who prepared the fire that burst into flame on September 17, 2011, in lower Manhattan, and that still gives light and heat to many of us.
We know next to nothing about that drummer girl who walked into a Parisian market where many people were ready to ignite, to march, to see the world change. With every insurrection, revolution, or social rupture, we need to remember that we will never know the whole story of how it happened, and that what we can't measure still matters. But Schneider's book gives us some powerful glimpses into the early (and late) organizing, the foibles and characters, the conflicts and delights, and the power of that moment and movement. It conveys the sheer amount of labor involved in producing a miracle—and that miraculousness as well.
Student debt suddenly became (and remains) a topic of national discussion.
Early in Thank You, Anarchy, Schneider cites a participant, Mike Andrews, talking about how that key tool of Occupy, the General Assembly, with its emphasis on egalitarian participation and consensus decision-making, was reshaping him and the way he looked at the world: "It pushes you toward being more respectful of the people there. Even after General Assembly ends I find myself being very attentive in situations where I'm not normally so attentive. So if I go get some food after General Assembly, I find myself being very polite to the person I'm ordering from, and listening if they talk back to me."
This kind of tiny personal change can undoubtedly be multiplied by the hundreds of thousands, given the number of Occupy participants globally. But the movement had quantifiable consequences, too.
Almost as soon as Occupy Wall Street appeared in the fall of 2011, it was clear that the national conversation had changed, that the brutality and obscenity of Wall Street was suddenly being openly discussed, that the suffering of ordinary people crushed by the burden of medical, housing, or college debt was coming out of the shadows, that the Occupy encampments had become places where people could testify about the destruction of their hopes and lives.
California passed a homeowner's bill of rights to curtail the viciousness of the banks, and in late 2012 Strike Debt emerged as an Occupy offshoot to address indebtedness in creative and subversive ways. Student debt suddenly became (and remains) a topic of national discussion, and proposals for student loan reform began to gain traction. Invisible suffering had been made visible.
Change often happens by making the brutality of the status quo visible and so intolerable. The situation everybody has been living in is suddenly described in a new way by a previously silenced or impacted constituency, or with new eloquence, or because our ideas of what is humane and decent evolve, or a combination of all three. Thus did slavery become intolerable to ever more free people before the Civil War. Thus did the rights of many groups in this country—women, people of color, queer people, disabled people—grow exponentially. Thus did marriage stop being an exclusive privilege of heterosexuality, and earlier, a hierarchical relationship between a dominant husband and a submissive wife.
Occupy Wall Street allowed those silenced by shame, invisibility, or lack of interest from the media to speak up. As a result, the realities behind our particular economic game came to be described more accurately; so much so that the media and politicians had to change their language a little to adjust to—admit to—a series of previously ignored ugly realities. This, in turn, had consequences, even if they weren't always measurable or sometimes even immediately detectable.
Though Occupy was never primarily about electoral politics, it was nonetheless a significant part of the conversation that got Elizabeth Warren elected senator and a few other politicians doing good things in the cesspit of the capital. As Occupy was, in part, sparked by the vision of the Arab Spring, so its mood of upheaval and outrage might have helped spark Idle No More, the dynamic Native peoples' movement. Idle No More has already become a vital part of the environmental and climate movements and, in turn, has sparked a resurgence of Native American and Native Canadian activism.
Remember how unpredictably the world changes. Remember those doing heroic work that you might hear little or nothing about.
Occupy Wall Street also built alliances around racist persecution that lasted well after most of the encampments were disbanded. Occupiers were there for everything from the Million Hoodie Marches to protest the slaying of Trayvon Martin in Florida to stop-and-frisk in New York City to racist bank policies and foreclosures in San Francisco. There, a broad-based housing rights movement came out of Occupy that joined forces with the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment to address foreclosures, evictions, corrupt banking practices, and more. Last week a conservative warned that "Occupy may soon occupy New York's City Hall," decrying mayoral front-runner Bill de Blasio's economic populism, alleged support for Occupy, and opposition to stop and frisk (while Schneider warns that the candidate is a liberal, not a radical).
Part of what gave Occupy its particular beauty was the way the movement defined "we" as the 99%. That (and that contagious meme the 1%) entered our language, offering a way of imagining the world so much more inclusive than just about anything that had preceded it. And what an inclusive movement it was: the usual young white suspects, from really privileged to really desperate, but also a range of participants from World War II to Iraq War veterans to former Black Panthers, from libertarians to liberals to anarchist insurrectionists, from the tenured to the homeless to hip-hop moguls and rock stars.
And there was so much brutality, too, from the young women pepper-sprayed at an early Occupy demonstration and the students infamously pepper-sprayed while sitting peacefully on the campus of the University of California, Davis, to the poet laureate Robert Hass clubbed in the ribs at the Berkeley encampment, 84-year-old Dorli Rainey assaulted by police at Occupy Seattle, and the Iraq War veteran Scott Olsen whose skull was fractured by a projectile fired by the Oakland police. And then, of course, there was the massive police presence and violent way that in a number of cities the movement's occupiers were finally ejected from their places of "occupation."
Such overwhelming institutional violence couldn't have made clearer the degree to which the 1% considered Occupy a genuine threat. At the G-20 economic summit in 2011, the Russian Prime Minister, Dmitry Medvedev, said, "The reward system of shareholders and managers of financial institution[s] should be changed step by step. Otherwise the 'Occupy Wall Street' slogan will become fashionable in all developed countries." That was the voice of fear, because the realized dreams of the 99% are guaranteed to be the 1%'s nightmares.
We'll never know what that drummer girl in Paris was thinking, but thanks to Schneider's meticulous and elegant book, we know what one witness-participant was thinking all through the first year of Occupy, and what it was like to be warmed for a few months by that beautiful conflagration that spread across the world, to be part of that huge body that wasn't exactly civil society, but something akin to it, perhaps in conception even larger than it, as Occupy encampments and general assemblies spread from Auckland to Hong Kong, from Oakland to London in the fall of 2011. Some of them lasted well into 2012, and others spawned things that are still with us: coalitions and alliances and senses of possibility and frameworks for understanding what's wrong and what could be right. It was a sea-change moment, a watershed movement, a dream realized imperfectly (because only unrealized dreams are perfect), a groundswell that remains ground on which to build.
On the second anniversary of that day in lower Manhattan when people first sat down in outrage and then stayed in dedication and solidarity and hope, remember them, remember how unpredictably the world changes, remember those doing heroic work that you might hear little or nothing about but who are all around you, remember to hope, remember to build. Remember that you are 99% likely to be one of them and take up the burden that is also an invitation to change the world and occupy your dreams.
Copyright 2013 Rebecca Solnit
At a certain moment during last night's Rolling Jubilee, MC David Rees announced to the cheering crowd that the group had raised enough money to purchase and abolish $5 million of medical debt owed by ordinary Americans. As the folks standing behind him tossed sparkling confetti out over the crowd, I realize that I was watching something I hadn't seen before.
It's been said that David Graeber's book Debt: the First 5,000 Years was required reading for participants in Occupy Wall Street. But now we're seeing the consequences of having a mobilized political movement that actually understands how the complex economics of Wall Street work. By raising $292,000 and turning it into $5.9 million dollars through the banker's craft (as of the time of this writing, updated numbers are available at www.rollingjubilee.org), Strike Debt has captured the basic unfairness of the economy and made it work against itself. Bankers, beware.
The plan was simple. Use OWS's impressive communication skills to promote a "People's Bailout." Then encourage everybody to give just a little money, telling them that Strike Debt would make it worth 20 times more to some stranger being pursued by a collection agency for medical debts. People donated more than a quarter million dollars, aided by a telethon featuring left-leaning celebrities like Jeneane Garofalo and Sonic Youth's Lee Ranaldo. The plan is to send the randomly selected recipients of the bailout a note telling them that Strike Debt has abolished their debt, along with a copy of the Debt Resistors' Operation Manual.
It sounds somehow shady, or least like "civil disobedience," as Graeber himself said when speaking from the stage early in the Rolling Jubilee telethon. But people in various parts of the economy buy debt all the time and get rich doing it. After a hospital or a university or other business gets tired of trying to get you to pay for something, they sell your debt to collection agencies for "pennies on the dollar." The debt is cheap because there's no certainty that the collectors will get their money.
In transactions like this, the economy has a kind of relativity to it. Money is worth more in certain places than it is elsewhere. Your debt might be worth $100 to you (plus collection fees, of course), but someone can buy it for $25.
This system creates a lot of inequality because there is a kind of fence between the place where your money is worth a lot and the place where it is worth a little. Most of the time, bankers, hedge funders, insurance executives, and other kinds of Wall Street finance workers can get the money where it's cheap; ordinary workers and students cannot. They look on in despair as their money keeps flying over to the other side of the fence.
With the Rolling Jubilee, we crossed that fence. And we did it through solidarity between Strike Debt followers and unfortunate Americans who were being hounded by collection agencies for their medical bills.
There were times during Occupy when I wondered if "the 99 percent" really meant anything. Was there any real solidarity in the 99 percent, any chance that we would actual help one another out? If Strike Debt is any example, then the answer is yes.
This article originally appeared on Waging Nonviolence.
All Images courtesy of Strike Debt Facebook Page
Sung in unison by 50 voices and accompanied by the melancholic twang of a banjo, these lines echoed throughout the otherwise vacant Deutsche Bank atrium at 60 Wall Street last Sunday:
Every day, several times a day, a thought comes over me.
I owe more debt than I can pay back, more money than I'll ever see.
For Some Debtors, "Coming Out" Is First Step Toward Resistance
Chris Kasper hadn't realized how much shame he felt for being in
debt until he stood up in public
and spoke about it.
The lines were taken from the Depression-era Woodie Guthrie song "The Debt I Owe," and had been recomposed for collective song by Dave Backer, an organizer with Occupy University. It was the weekly assembly of Strike Debt, a movement of debt resisters that has emerged from Occupy Wall Street over the past six months. While haunting in their sense of despair and isolation, when we vocalized them together the lines created a sense of beloved community, temporarily transfiguring the grim postmodern atrium of a bailed-out bank into a kind of secular cathedral of debt resistance.
The participatory sing-along highlighted the importance of cultural work and aesthetic experience in the development of Strike Debt. It segued into a report-back from a small team working on the People's Bailout. The People's Bailout is a high-profile cultural event scheduled for November 15 at the West Village club Le Poisson Rouge. Details are being withheld in advance of a strategic media rollout, but here is what we know so far: appropriating the kitschy Americana format of the Telethon variety show—think Jerry Lewis—the People's Bailout will be a hybrid multimedia spectacle combining music, comedy, performance, speed lectures, video projections, global live-streaming and more.
The event has already received coverage from Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, and Spin for featuring headliners such as Jeff Mangum of Neutral Milk Hotel, Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth, Guy Piciotti of Fugazi, and Tunde Adimpe of TV on the Radio, alongside non-musical entertainers and artists such as Lizz Winstead of The Daily Show, comedian Janeane Garofalo, and David Rees of the comic strip Get Your War On. Woven among these celebrity voices will be presentations and performances by groups allied with Strike Debt, such as Occupy Faith, Healthcare for the 99%, and the Yes Men.
This will not be the first time that an Occupy-related event has sought to deploy the social capital of high-profile figures, despite the movement's emphasis on horizontal power over charismatic showmanship, its critical relationship to mainstream culture industries, and the risk of co-optation by ulterior agendas. While there have been notable successes—especially in the early media-intensive phases of OWS—the question has always been how to strike the right tone so that celebrity power is not treated as an end in itself. As Natasha Baghat Singh put it in the first issue of Tidal: Occupy Theory/Occupy Strategy:
We should use celebrity status as a resource that gets coupled with a strategic objective. … We do not want our movement mainstreamed in order to make activism cool for people to join. Our movement should radicalize people to act in a civil and disobedient manner.
Moving beyond the paradigm of the one-off solidarity rally—exemplified by the May Day concert—the People's Bailout has an extremely precise strategic objective: to launch the "Rolling Jubilee." According to a meme on the People's Bailout Facebook page:
The Rolling Jubilee is a bailout of the people by the people. We buy debt for pennies on the dollar, but instead of collecting it, we abolish it. We cannot buy specific individuals' debt—instead, we help liberate debtors at random through a campaign of mutual support, good will, and collective refusal.
Although otherwise still cryptic, the page informs us that tickets will go on sale Friday, November 2, at 10 a.m. and provides the following breakdown for the prices:
Rather than simply staging a charity or a fundraiser, however, Strike Debt is ushering in an entirely new tactical model for bringing together cultural capital, collective resource-mobilization and the principle of mutual aid.
"Banks got bailed out, we got sold out!" is among the most enduring chants of Occupy Wall Street, and it speaks to the basic impetus for the movement that sprang up last fall in Zuccotti Park. In the aftermath of the global economic crisis of 2008, government policy was overwhelmingly oriented toward shoring up the financial institutions that had precipitated the meltdown rather than helping the majority of the population suffering from its effects—foreclosures, layoffs, service-cuts, fee-increases, and a deepening hole of personal debt for basic human needs like food, healthcare, education, shelter and transportation. The figure of "the 99 percent" emerged out of this chasm between received ideals of democratic governance and the sobering reality of a political system rigged to support the profits of banks over the lives of people—despite the promise of "change" made by Barack Obama.
Some appeals to the 99 percent over the past year have focused on repairing the actually existing system through campaigns targeting the corporate lobbying complex exemplified by the Citizens United decision, for instance.
However, many organizers in OWS have always seen the crisis as a window of opportunity to rethink political and economic life more deeply through a process of education, creativity, and experimentation with new forms of living. It is thus no coincidence that arts and education have played a crucial role in the evolution of Strike Debt. Exemplary in this regard is the work of Strike Debt organizer Thomas Gokey, whose isolated artistic experiments with debt purchasing laid the groundwork for what would be collectively transformed by Strike Debt assemblies into the Rolling Jubilee project.
The occupations last fall were a crack in the system, unleashing the political imagination. Strike Debt aims to deepen that crack, calling for us to imagine actively refusing compliance with the power of creditors over our lives. Significantly, the launch of the Rolling Jubilee falls on the one-year anniversary of the eviction of Zuccotti Park; while the work of Strike Debt has taken a very different form than physical occupation, since its start last summer it has channeled and refined the principles of direct action, mutual aid, and dual power that were at the heart of the original camp.
Throughout this period, Strike Debt has woven together days of action in the conventional sense—mass assemblies, marches, and physical interventions at sites of financial injustice—with a wider diversity of tactics. Two major dates in this regard have been the September 17 OWS Anniversary Convergence and the October 13 Global Day of Action Against Debt and Austerity. In both cases, Strike Debt kept its eyes on the prize of long-term movement-building by supplementing the negative call to "Strike Debt" with the affirmative principle of " reclaiming the commons."
A key date in the overall evolution of Strike Debt was the one-year anniversary of Occupy Wall Street, held in New York from September 15 to September 17—conventionally referred to as "S17." From the beginning of the S17 planning process, Strike Debt was always averse to fixating on a single day of action—especially one that ran the risk of appearing too circular or self-referential relative to OWS. Instead, S17 was approached strategically as a nodal point in a widening network of organizing and escalation for the fall.
Strike Debt members planned their participation S17 as a nonlinear feedback loop in which the media visibility of the anniversary would both highlight past work and point forward. Strike Debt began its expanded fall sequence of " Year II" activities with a speak-out and debt burning in Williamsburg a week prior to the S17 convergence.
Having people gather and burn their debt statements together has become a signature ritual for Strike Debt—a replicable action-logic that is amenable to scaling up, moving around, and being creatively transformed in new contexts in a manner similar to the occupation itself last fall. In recent weeks, debt burnings have taken place across the country, in cities including Portland and Minneapolis.
Stoked by the positive media coverage of the event and Strike Debt more generally—ranging from the New York Daily News to The Village Voice and The Nation—debt resisters took the OWS anniversary in stride. On Saturday, September 16, a large debt assembly was held at Washington Square Park as part of the Occupy Town Square, followed by a release of The Debt Resistors' Operations Manual (DROM) at Judson Memorial Church that evening. The latter was inaugurated by an 18th-century sermon against usury from Occupy Catholics, which was an important supplement to the DROM event insofar as it inaugurated future collaborations with the faith community around the political theology of a debt jubilee.
Intensive outreach continued on the following day in Foley Square, where Strike Debt set up an outreach table as part of the pop-up occupation supplementing the OWS anniversary concert. Onstage, folks from Strike Debt appeared in balaclavas as the Zapatista-inspired Invisible Army of Defaulters. Holding aloft copies of Tidal and the DROM, they read a short, choreographed communiqué:
We are the invisible army of defaulters. We are the millions of students in default, the millions of households in foreclosure, the millions who cannot and will not pay our medical charges and credit card bills to the banks. We are everywhere. The liars and thieves on Wall Street claim we owe them money. They humiliate us. They take our homes, our health, our dreams, our dignity. Out of fear and isolation, we have remained hidden. Now we know that we are not alone. We are not a loan. To occupy is to overcome shame. In Year II, we step out of the shadows.
As the Invisible Army peeled off their masks, they declared:
We say to the 1 percent: We owe you nothing. We say to our friends and families and communities: we owe you everything. We are debt resisters. We reject this system. On our birthday, we present to you our sharpest weapon: the debt resistors' manual. Strike Debt, Occupy Wall Street, join the resistance!
With that, hundreds of copies of the DROM were disseminated to the audience, while those on stage proceeded to burn an oversize cardboard prop reading "Our Debt to the 1 Percent."
Following the concert, hundreds of attendees made their way from Foley Square across the street to 1 Police Plaza, where a massive Affinity Group Spokescouncil was held in preparation for the "99 Revolutions" actions in the Financial District the following morning. Of the four zones mapped out by S17 planners, the debt zone was the largest, and it included the participation of intellectuals and artists such as Michael Hardt, George Caffentzis, Martha Rosler, and concert participant Michelle Shocked (who had earlier begun her musical set with "99 Ways to Loathe Your Lender").
On the morning of September 17 itself, several hundred debt resisters gathered at 55 Water Street, attached to the global credit-rating agency Standard and Poor's. Banners, birthday paraphernalia, and the People's Debt Boulder were on hand. The first of several morning affinity groups set out for a nearby JPMorgan Chase lobby in "civilian" mode, a technique developed by the OWS Plus Brigades during Spring Training and the Summer Disobedience School. Accompanied by Michelle Shocked and a number of journalists, the group entered the lobby and tossed hails of red-square confetti while mic-checking a letter addressed to Chase CEO and notorious financial criminal Jamie Dimon written by a victim of the 2008 foreclosure crisis. As the group exited the building after its three-minute intervention in the lobby, we were tackled by a phalanx of NYPD officers in riot gear.
Kicking off the day with a bang, our non-deliberate arrests provided a moral boost to fellow Strike Debt participants. They proceeded to swirl throughout the Financial District for the rest of the day, shutting down intersections and creating joyful chaos for the NYPD through small creative actions. Looking forward, however, Strike Debt organizer Pam Brown suggests the need to develop:
large-scale action-logics that clearly communicate to a wide public the grievances we have concerning the predatory debt system and its relationship to economic and racial inequality. When folks put their bodies on the line and risk arrest for an action, that action should match the power of our analysis.
Tactical debates aside, moving through the criminal justice system was a lesson in personal privilege and the racial injustices baked into the system we are fighting. Imprisoned on charges ranging from petty theft to subway-fare evasion, the consequences of debt, poverty, and austerity were evident in the stories we heard from non-Occupy prisoners at Central Booking. As members of Strike Debt were greeted by lawyers and a jubilant OWS jail support team after 35 hours of imprisonment, most of our cellmates remained locked underground in "the tombs," their fate uncertain.
S17 brought new media opportunities for Strike Debt. For instance, I was invited to discuss the circumstances of my arrest on Al Jazeera, where I made sure to plug the DROM for an international television audience. On MSNBC's Up With Chris Hayes, Amin Husain and Alexis Goldstein elaborated on the intergenerational connections between historic social movements such as ACT UP, the trajectory of OWS, and the analysis being developed by Strike Debt—the website of which temporarily crashed due to an overload of visits. Meanwhile, a week's worth of debt-related assemblies and teach-ins took place at the Free University at Madison Square Park, including discussions from Occupy University based on the DROM's analysis of debt and race, municipal debt, and more. Free University provided a space for Strike Debt to decompress and to further cultivate relationships with allies in the student movement.
The month following S17 also saw the strengthening of relationships between Strike Debt and the art community, such as through the debt-themed exhibition To Have and to Owe at the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts.
Recalling the synergy between progressive artistic spaces and the work of ACT UP in the 1980s, exhibitions such as To Have and to Owe and related programming at Momenta Art by Occupy Museums have functioned as a platform for reading groups, meetings, teach-ins, and performances.
Strike Debt also had a strong presence at the annual Creative Time Summit. Tidal: Occupy Theory/Occupy Strategy was invited to present its work and distribute literature to nearly 1,000 participants from around the world. Internationally renowned artist Martha Rosler held aloft the DROM during her keynote address, and communist philosophical impresario Slavoj Zizek posed for a photograph with the Strike Debt red square flag.
A small-scale breakout discussion was also hosted by Tidal to address the evolution of OWS, the project of Strike Debt, and the ways in which the skills and resources of contemporary art might be tapped for growing the movement.
A key point to emerge from the discussion was the proliferation over the past decade of experiments with alternative economies by artists, ranging from skill-shares to gift-exchanges to time-banks to collectively managed spaces of all sorts. What might it look like to channel these energies and resources into affirmative spaces of debt resistance and mutual aid? As Vanya S. of Tidal put it, for many artists the advent of Occupy "has dissolved the boundaries between their practice and their experiments with new ways of living, alternative ways of inhabiting time and space."
Participants in the Tidal assembly at Creative Time then made their way to Columbus Circle, the convergence point for the October 13 Global Day of Noise against debt and austerity called in solidarity with the Spanish Indignados, Yo Soy 123 in Mexico, and others. Hundreds were in attendance equipped with pots, pans, and other noisemakers. Then, moving in small, sauntering groups, the assembly converged on 61st Street at the home address of Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs; the threshold of the courtyard was lined with police as the first few demonstrators arrived. A mic check addressed to Blankfein detailed his responsibility for the mortgage-backed securities crisis and the $12 billion TARP bailout ultimately received by Goldman Sachs.
Citing Blankfein's cynical remark that the company was doing "God's Work," mic-checker Debra Thimmesch looked upwards to the penthouse and concluded, "Lloyd, you're not a god. You're a common criminal."
The clamor of the banging pots and pans reverberated up the walls of the residential towers, bringing residents to their windows as so many 1-percenter silhouettes. The massive gates to the building were then closed shut with the help of NYPD officers. From there the march headed for Times Square, hitting targets including the Plaza Hotel, a Trump Tower, Fox News, and Rockefeller Center.
Marches, banner-drops, clamorous denunciations of the 1 percent—it all felt good, and proved the benefit of continuing to organize for concerted days of mass protest. But negatively highlighting debt as the vampiric engine of Wall Street profits is only one side of the Strike Debt coin. Strike Debt also opens a space for imagining and enacting alternative ways of living without relying on existing authorities—hence the importance of the Rolling Jubilee, in which the people bail out one another rather than waiting for the government to do it.
And the Rolling Jubilee is but one preliminary tactic in an overall dual-power strategy currently under development. Crucial next steps for Strike Debt will be developing relationships with groups that have long practiced forms of alternative economics, including arts collectives, community-based organizations, religious organizations, gardens, squats, strike committees, worker co-ops, credit unions, and more.
Large strategic questions include the problem of national and international scale, alliance-building within and outside OWS, the development of debtors' clinics and debtors' unions, the securing of spaces to house critical infrastructure and bring people together, the relationship between the debt economy and the climate crisis, the specter of " communization," and more.
As the People's Bailout approaches, a happy but daunting concern looms: How will Strike Debt absorb growth as it gains more attention? What structures and processes will be optimal for sustaining it? What lessons does the ongoing history of OWS offer, and what can we learn from other social movement histories?
This sense of multiple histories was palpable last weekend during the performance of Woody Guthrie's "The Debt I Owe" at 60 Wall—the sounds of the '30s, the '60s and the 21st century co-mingled in the air. The aesthetic legacy of a figure such as Guthrie is not the only strand of history to which we are, so to speak, indebted, as we move into Year II. From the banging of casseroles at Blankfein's doorstep to the special guests joining us onstage at Le Poisson Rogue on November 15, Strike Debt will continue to bring the ruckus to the 1 percent while amplifying the beautiful noise of the people.
Debt—and the shame that surrounds it—is the tie that binds the 99 percent. Can young people reimagine it as something productive, rather than a tool for profiteering?
Who's lining the pocket of your representatives? Here's a tool you can use to find out.
Inside the biggest demonstration of civil disobedience in Canadian history.
I could buy a two-bedroom home in most American cities with what I owe on my student loans. I've been making monthly payments for four years now and, thanks to a locked-in 4.5% APR, my debt is bigger than when I started paying. I'll most likely die before it's gone.
So when I heard that people from Occupy Theory, the Occupy Student Debt Campaign, and OWS Free University, among others, were holding open assemblies in Washington Square Park on the topic of debt, I showed up to the next one scheduled.
Occupy Wall Street's Next Move: Bailing Out the People
Strike Debt organizers are mobilizing arts, eduction, and media for a "People's Bailout."
It took place at noon on a Sunday in early June. Just a handful of people were there at first, but our numbers grew to around 25 over the next couple hours. The conversation focused on debt, and how something had shifted in Occupy that was turning our focus toward this issue. I recognized some labor folks, some professors, and people who I had been in marches with. There were also people I didn't know.
One professor talked about his work with the Occupy Student Debt Campaign, and about a personal conflict he had been having. He had realized, he said, that he was participating in an exploitative system of education that was sending students out to start their lives in service to enormous burdens of debt. This struck an immediate chord with me, being in service to enormous burdens of my own through that very system.
Another speaker described the idea of debt as a negative commons, how most of us shared a permanent state of docile servitude to our creditors through a constant, nagging anxiety of maintaining credit ratings. People talked about their own medical bills and horrific experiences with the American healthcare system. Municipal and sovereign debt was discussed. People talked about their experiences with credit cards and underwater mortgages, which are mortgages that exceed the current value of the property they're paying for.
The conversations fluctuated between analytical ruminations on debt and its effect on people's lives, and emotional anecdotes about speakers' personal experiences with debt. Some people floated ideas of debt abolition and debt strikes, different ways that we could mobilize large masses of people to refuse to pay their debts.
I felt compelled to speak and began talking about my experience being brought up in a working-class family, and how all of my education was financed by loans I'd taken on. In the flow of what I was saying, I felt angry, and then sick with nerves as I approached the specific amount in dollars that I owed.
I realized in that moment that, while I've spoken about how much I owe to a very few close people, I had never before stood up in public and spoken about how enormous my debt actually is. This is something I have always kept secret, in the dark. My debt is something I had always been ashamed of. In spite of my sick nerves, I let it out, and was met with a circle of nodding heads and twinkling fingers. It was liberating and empowering to, for lack of a better phrase, come out with that.
By the end of the assembly, quite a few others spoke out about their debt. We had this eureka moment, realizing shame was a powerful tool used by all different types of creditors to manage us, keeping us working and committed to treating our debts as if they were actual moral obligations.
We came to understand that this shame is one of the things that gives debt power over our lives, both individually and collectively. Perhaps letting go of the shame around our debt was a first step toward identifying other debtors and beginning to lay the groundwork toward building a global movement of debt resistance. We vowed to pick up this conversation the next time we met, and to allow time for a debtor's speak-out.
The next week, our assembly had more than doubled in size. We dedicated an hour for debtors to speak out about their debt. What followed was, judging from a palpable range of affect, something very powerful for the speakers and assembly alike. A diverse group of women and men of all ages stood up one at a time and spoke emotionally of their own struggles. They received spontaneous encouragement, attentive respect, and applause from the group. They spoke of their fears, humiliations, regrets, and choices they may have made differently in life if these burdens of debt hadn't been weighing down on them. It was clear, having listened to these testimonials, that we really are not alone.
Weekly meetings continued all summer. In addition to the speak outs, rigorous research and organizational work continues to be done. Several initiatives were developed in time for September 17, the anniversary of Occupy Wall Street and the beginning of Year Two. On Saturday, September 15, Strike Debt released the Debt Resistors' Operations Manual (DROM) at Judson Church.
The DROM is a living document collectively written for collective action. It provides useful information for any debtor considering becoming a debt resistor, with a focus on dealing with types of debt such as: municipal, housing, student, medical, fringe finance, credit card, and bankruptcy. In addition to being available online, 10,000 copies have been printed and distributed. Translations into other languages are currently being made.
Strike Debt also has several special events planned for the fall. The Rolling Jubilee is a Strike Debt campaign to liberate debtors at random by purchasing and abolishing bundles of anonymous debt for pennies on the dollar. [Editor's note: organizers aren't sharing the financial details behind this project at this time.] The Rolling Jubilee will launch a People's Bailout with a variety show & telethon on November 15, with 100 percent of ticket proceeds to benefit the Rolling Jubilee. Comedian Janeane Garofalo, songwriter Jeff Mangum (of Neutral Milk Hotel), and members of the Yes Men are among those scheduled to perform.
Strike Debt aims to transform the shame and fear of being burdened with debt into outrage, and turn that outrage into action, resistance, and mutual aid. Strike Debt is the beginning of a radical movement of international debt resistance.
Personally, I have more hope and faith in the possibility of Strike Debt continuing to spread and to build viable alternatives to living at the service of credit ratings, than I do in ever paying down my own debt.
Click here to view the photo essay
On September 17th, thousands of protesters marched through the streets of New York's financial district, calling for deep changes to unjust financial and political systems. Referring to themselves at "the 99 percent"—as opposed to the top 1 percent of Americans who control a majority of the nation's wealth—the mostly young demonstrators held signs saying, "Too Big Has Failed," "Tax the Rich," and "Our Democracy Isn't for Sale."
Though their numbers have dwindled, many of the protesters are still camped in Zuccotti Park (renamed Liberty Square) nearly a week later. They meet in daily General Assemblies to discuss issues such as police relations and meeting their food and shelter needs (as during the workers' rights protests in Madison, Wisconsin, supporters from far and wide have sent thousands of dollars worth of free pizza). Indeed, some protesters say they were inspired by the way demonstrators "liberated" public spaces during the Madison protests, the Arab spring, and anti-austerity protests in Europe.
"We occupy Wall Street as a symbolic gesture of our discontent with the current economic and political climate and as an example of a better world to come," the demonstrators wrote in a recent dispatch on their website.
GOP candidate Tim Pawlenty observed the 10th anniversary of the Bush-era tax cuts by proposing $2 trillion in additional tax cuts, primarily for millionaires and global corporations.
Have we learned nothing?
A decade since their passage, its clear that the Bush tax were a $2.5 trillion mistake that put us on the road to fiscal instability.
At the time they were passed, Congressional budget analysts projected a $5.6 trillion surplus over these last ten years. But even after the rosy projections turned to red ink, the tax cut bonanza continued. As a result, Congress engaged in a "decade of magical tax cut thinking," responding to the deep economic challenges of the last ten years with a one-point program: cut taxes for the wealthy and expand tax loopholes for global corporations.
In 2001, Bob McIntyre of the group Citizens for Tax Justice argued that the tax cuts were a bad idea—that they were overly tilted to benefit the rich—and would eventually lead to deficits. Last week, in the face of massive deficits and deep cuts to crucial programs, CTJ released a report projecting that another ten-year extension of the Bush tax cuts would cost $5.5 trillion.
"There are some in Congress who believe that the best way to deal with the struggling economy right now is to extend the tax cuts and see if they work the second time around," said McIntyre. "They didn't work the first time, and they aren't going to work the second time."
A report from the Economic Policy Institute points out that the Bush tax cuts cost over $2.5 trillion over the last decade. An estimated 38 percent of those tax cuts—almost $1 trillion—went to households in the richest 1 percent, those with incomes over $645,000. Tax cut beneficiaries include some of the highest paid CEOs in America.
At first glance, the prospects for shifting this anti-tax environment appear bleak. GOP presidential candidates and Congressional leaders are beating the same drum: "We're broke," "Deficits Kill Jobs," "Must Cut Taxes…"
Behind the headlines, however, public attitudes are shifting. A growing number of citizens are taking on the fundamental unfairness of the current tax system. They see how growing inequality is destroying the middle class and contributing to economic instability.
Historically, public attitudes about taxing the wealthy have been somewhat ambivalent. In the abstract, many U.S. voters are reflexively anti-government and anti-tax. But when it comes down to the concrete ways we use tax revenues, citizens want a responsive government that includes retirement security, environmental protection, healthy communities, and the wide range of public services that we enjoy.
As states and the federal government make deep budget cuts, the things people appreciate about government will start to deteriorate or go away: the bus will be late, the state park closed, the school art department gone, the police unavailable.
Though GOP congressional leaders talk austerity and imply that the only solution to budget deficits are spending cuts, a strong majority of people in the U.S. want to put raising taxes on the table.
Public opinion polls reveal that over 72 percent of the public favors increasing taxes on millionaires and closing tax loopholes before further budget cuts. And support for progressive taxes will only increase as the impact of budget cuts further degrades the quality of life, public services, and infrastructure in our localities.
Revelations that huge corporations and the wealthy are paying historically low tax rates are fueling this public attitude shift. Recent IRS data reveals that the richest 400 U.S. taxpayers have seen their effective tax rates fall to their lowest levels since prior to the 1930s Great Depression. The cover story in Business Week during April's tax season was "The Billionaires Guide to Paying No Taxes." And reports that General Electric pays no federal taxes—and that other companies including Verizon, Federal Express, Boeing and bail-out recipient Bank of America pay no or ridiculously low taxes—touch a deep nerve.
The grassroots US Uncut movement has emerged to draw attention to the powerful juxtaposition between budget cuts and corporate tax dodging. As a result, the public conversation is shifting. A year ago, the Tea Party narrative dominated April 2010 tax day. This year, however, the news on Tax Day focused on millionaire and corporate tax deadbeats.
The 10th anniversary of the Bush tax cuts focused new attention on the irresponsibility of further tax cuts. Grassroots groups convened actions and press events around the country to dramatize the link between the tax cuts and local budget cuts that worsen unemployment.
Wisconsin: The First Stop in An American Uprising?
Activists are coalescing around a number of revenue proposals that could raise trillions of dollars over the next ten years. One initiative is the Fairness in Taxation Act, introduced by Illinois Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky. Her legislation would add additional tax rates for millionaires, generating $74 billion a year. In an op-ed in the Chicago Tribune, Rep. Schakowsky writes, "Middle-class and low-income families didn't create these budget deficits or reap economic rewards over the last generation. So our nation's plan to get our fiscal house in order should not sacrifice the vitality of our middle class and our commitments to address poverty."
An organized group of 200 millionaire business leaders added their voices to the debate. The Patriotic Millionaires, organized by the Agenda Project and Wealth for the Common Good, released a video message to Congressional leaders to increase taxes on millionaires. "It is self-defeating to pursue these tax policies, and it is inconsistent with our values as Americans," said Dennis Mehiel, Chairman of US Corrugated at a press conference on the tenth anniversary. "We need to throw out the Bush tax cuts in a hurry and begin the process of restoring some fiscal sanity to the country's budget."
Business leaders are also speaking up about troubling economic implications created when global corporations use offshore tax shelters to dodge taxes. Paul Egerman, founder of eScription, wrote in the Madison Capital Times, "it is myopic to require domestic enterprises to compete on an unlevel playing field against another company based not on product quality and services, but on accounting gymnastics." A new business coalition is backing the Stop Tax Haven Abuse legislation that will be reintroduced later this June.
Opposition is also building against the idea, lobbied for by companies like Google, Apple, Pfizer, and Oracle, of a "tax holiday" for corporations that have shifted more than $1 trillion in profits to offshore tax havens—a move that would cost the U.S. Treasury $80 billion. Business for Shared Prosperity is circulating a business sign-on letter to Congress calling on them to "reject demands by U.S. multinationals for a tax holiday to "repatriate" the funds they shifted offshore to avoid paying taxes." Last week, US Uncut began to challenge Apple Computer for its role in lobbying Congress for a "tax holiday" for corporations that have moved over $1 trillion in corporate profits to offshore tax havens.
The message of these emerging movements is getting louder: No more budget cuts until millionaires and corporate tax dodgers pay their fair share.
At a time when federal and state lawmakers are grappling with huge budget deficits, the impact of corporate tax dodging is getting vigorous attention.
Public outrage is growing over reports that General Electric paid no taxes in 2010. Other global companies such as Boeing, Verizon, Bank of America also haven't chipped in a dime to Uncle Sam.
At the center of the movement to change that is US Uncut, a 7-week-old grassroots effort with the message: "No Budget Cuts Until Tax Dodgers Pay Up." Since February 26, US Uncut has organized over 170 local demonstrations at the storefronts and offices of notorious tax dodgers.
On April 13, US Uncut teamed up with the theatrical Yes Men to play a huge prank on General Electric. They issued a mock General Electric press release with the headline "GE Responds to Public Outcry—Will Donate Entire $3.2 Billion Tax Refund to Help Offset Cuts and Save American Jobs." Associated Press and other news outlets ran the story before the hoax was revealed, and the value of GE stock dipped dramatically.
US Uncut activists are planning over 100 demonstrations over the tax day weekend, April 15-18th. Some of the more creative actions include a reenactment in Boston of the ride of Paul Revere—and a "guerilla book-signing" in Washington, DC with Nicholas Shaxson, the author of the new book, Treasure Islands: Uncovering the Damage of Offshore Banking and Tax Havens.
According to Shaxson, tax havens—or "secrecy jurisdictions"—are the mechanisms through which wealthy individuals and multinational corporations move money around the planet to avoid taxation and regulation. These same mechanisms facilitate criminal activity, from laundering drug money to financing terrorist networks.
An American Uprising
Wisconsin and beyond: While wealth and power concentrate in the hands of a few, the rights, jobs, and services that everyday Americans depend on are on the line. Across the country, people are rising up to defend them.
The cost of tax havens is estimated to be over $100 billion in lost revenue each year. And a coalition of more than 20 U.S. companies have launched a "WinAmerica" campaign to lobby for a "tax holiday" on $1.2 trillion in overseas profits they want to bring back to the United States. US Uncut is mounting a campaign to educate the public about this organized tax dodge.
A year ago, the Tea Party's views about taxes dominated the news around Tax Day. But this year, media and public focus is on millionaire and corporate tax dodgers. Business Week's cover story this week is "The Billionaire's Guide to Paying No Taxes." Reporter Jessie Drucker, who wrote the article, summed up his findings: "the more you make, the less you pay." For our nation's millionaires and billionaires, "this could be the best tax day since the early 1930s."
At a time when many governors and lawmakers are saying "we're broke," polls show that the public wants to hike taxes on millionaires and corporate tax dodgers before cutting budgets.
A new report that I co-authored, Unnecessary Austerity, demonstrates that budget cuts are unnecessary if we reverse fifty years of huge tax cuts for the wealthy and tax dodging corporations. If corporations and households with $1 million income paid at the same levels they did in 1961, the Treasury would collect an additional $716 billion a year—or $7 trillion over a decade.
With Congress virtually captured by corporate interests, it will require a powerful social movement to turn the tide on budget and tax matters.
The good news is efforts like US Uncut are touching a nerve as Americans think about unequal sacrifice in the face of budget cuts to schools, mental health services, infrastructure, and even home heating oil for low income elderly residents.
The creative spirit of local actions is flourishing as volunteer organizations use Facebook and Twitter to meet up and protest. The budget cuts will likely worsen over the coming year—but the seeds of a movement to build a more fair economy are starting to sprout.
Thousands of people gathered on the streets of St. Paul, Minnesota yesterday to take part in a "March for the Middle Class." As they made their way from the St. Paul Cathedral to the State Capitol, they carried signs defending the rights of working Americans and chanted, "We are one."
The march in Minnesota was just one of hundreds of events that took place around the country. The events marked the forty-third anniversary of the death of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who, shortly before his death in 1968, had gone to Memphis, Tennessee to support a strike by local sanitation workers. Carrying signs that read, "From Memphis 1968 to Madison 2011," thousands of workers, students, civil rights activists, and supporters gathered at rallies in all 50 states to continue Dr. King's fight and to show their support for workers who have been under attack by conservatives in recent months.
This tremendous outpouring was remarkable not only for the demonstration of nationwide support for working people and their collective bargaining rights, but also for the broad coalition of organizations that came together in this powerful moment of solidarity. But, unless we seize this opportunity to change the way that the labor movement works and the way in which it is perceived, that's all this will be—a moment.
Following months of assaults by Republican governors in states such as Wisconsin, Ohio, and Michigan, the labor movement is now in a unique position. Despite efforts by conservatives to portray the tens of thousands of pro-union protesters in Madison and elsewhere as violent or greedy, Americans by and large recognized in them the hard-working teachers and firefighters they know in their own communities. And polls now show strong public support for embattled unions in the states.
But we should not misinterpret this information. Americans have not suddenly decided that they love public sector unions. Instead, they have reacted against the overreach of Republican politicians who said they were going to create jobs and deal with real economic problems, but who instead used the economic crisis as an excuse to lash out against political foes.
It is a mistake to see Wisconsin and other state battles as marking a sea change in public opinion about unions. However, these fights have put the labor movement in the spotlight. And, in doing so, they have given us an opportunity to rebuild our relationships with the community. Instead of assuming that we have already won a public stamp of approval, we must use the moment to truly earn this support.
Polls show that Americans have rejected Republican characterizations of unions as the cause of the state budget crises. But this is not enough. If we want to build sustainable support among a majority of Americans, community members need to see us playing a proactive, productive role in solving these crises. That means doing more than changing our rhetoric. It means changing the way we do business.
To go forward from here, we need to do three things: expand the range of issues we take on when we represent employees in the workplace, change the way we relate to the community, and begin to move away from outdated models for labor activism rooted in the era of the industrial economy.
An American Uprising
Wisconsin and beyond: While wealth and power concentrate in the hands of a few, the rights, jobs, and services that everyday Americans depend on are on the line. Across the country, people are rising up to defend them.
As a first step, with regard to representation in workplaces, we need to be making demands that highlight our role as problem solvers. If we only negotiate over things such as pay and benefits, the public will always see unions as special interests. Instead, we must be concerned with advancing service delivery and using collective bargaining to improve the departments in which we work.
This is especially true in the public sector, where unionized workers are often teachers, firefighters, social workers, and others working for the common good. When public unions began organizing in earnest several decades ago, they bargained over issues like the amount of time social workers would be allowed to spend on a given case: over-hurried employees stood up to management to insist that they get the time they needed to help families. Unions are still very much involved in these kinds of issues, but questions of service delivery have often been overshadowed by wage negotiations. We need to re-embrace demands that highlight unions' roles as public interest advocates, bringing a focus on service to the fore of our efforts.
Second, we must change our relationship to those outside the labor movement. The time to reach out to community allies and to develop deep relationships is not in the middle of an emergency campaign or a contract fight. Instead, community outreach should be a part of the ongoing organizing work of every union local. Locals should be developing training programs that teach people about the value that our organizations add to their communities. We should use these programs as a way to educate candidates about our work before they receive labor's endorsement, so that elected officials have a substantive commitment to supporting our efforts. And while we're teaching, we should also be learning, understanding the concerns of other community organizations and developing durable bonds based on mutual interest, not momentary convenience. That way, where there is an emergency, we have real community partnerships that we can turn to for help.
A third way we need to change how we do business is to move beyond outdated models of unionism developed in the age when America's economy was based on manufacturing. When public sector unions began to seriously organize, they looked to the dominant model of industrial unionism then in place. Organizations such as AFSCME brought in representatives from the United Auto Workers (UAW) to lead trainings for emerging union leaders. They formed labor operations based on then-dominant norms. These structures might still be relevant in some manufacturing environments. But most of America's economy has dramatically transformed in the past 40 years, and most union structures have not. As Jim Grossfeld points out in a forthcoming article in the American Prospect, even new auto workers' President Bob King has recognized the need to build a "21st-century UAW" to adapt to changing times.
The Moral Underground
All around you are everyday heroes who refuse to be complicit in the economic mistreatment of other people.
Today, we need to be more decentralized, recognizing that framing issues in national offices doesn't always work. We need to empower local unions to develop their own capacities to proactively engage their communities—allowing them to step forward with research, policy, and coalition-building proposals uniquely suited to their metropolitan regions. That means redirecting resources from the national level into the locals. National officials need to provide the leadership, funding, and support that will allow locals to enter their communities as problem solvers.
In order to move forward and harness the kind of support we saw in yesterday's demonstrations, we cannot merely tell our story differently. We must act differently, earning lasting support from the public by showing, in concrete and local fashion, how much the labor movement serves the public good.
The world's eyes are on the escalating struggle to defend the collective bargaining rights of Wisconsin public workers. Some people have even called the growing mobilization a transformational movement.
But transformational organizing takes more than growing numbers.
Revisiting the 1955–56 Montgomery Bus Boycott can help us understand what it takes.
In the 1950s, humanity was at a watershed. During World War II nearly 50 million people, more than half of them civilians, had been killed. To win the war, we had created and dropped an atom bomb on the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Yet Americans were celebrating our winning this "good war" and even proclaiming the American century because our factories were busy producing the goods that the war-devastated factories of Europe and Japan were unable to produce.
As Einstein put it, "the splitting of the atom has changed everything but the human mind, and thus we drift towards catastrophe."
It was under these circumstances that the people of Montgomery, Alabama, launched their yearlong boycott to protest the arrest of Rosa Parks for refusing to go to the back of the bus.
Responding not only to the indignities of segregated busing but to the brutal murder in September 1955 of 14-year-old Emmett Till, a people who had been treated as less than human began a struggle against their dehumanization not as angry victims or rebels but as forerunners of a new, more human society. Practicing methods of non-violence that transformed themselves and increased the good in the world, creating their own transportation system by walking or car pooling, always bearing in mind that their goal was not only desegregating buses but creating the beloved community, they carried on a struggle that grew their own souls and inspired the civil rights movement and the other humanity-redefining movements of the 1960s.
In 2011 we are again at a watershed that calls for growing our souls. The U.S. empire, which sustained the American Dream of upper mobility and middle class lives for all Americans but also included supporting the world's Mubaraks, is dead.
That means we have to create a New American Dream. To do this we need to look in the mirror and begin making the radical revolution of values that Dr. King called for in his 1967 anti-Vietnam War "Break the Silence" speech. To make this revolution:
The struggle in Wisconsin and other states can become a transformational movement if those involved in the struggle recognize that our current crises are rooted in the decline of the empire which made possible the welfare state with its thousands of public employees to take care of tasks for which we the people must become increasingly responsible.
With the end of empire, we are coming to an end of the epoch of Rights. We have entered the epoch of Responsibilities which requires new, more socially-minded human beings and new, more participatory and place-based concepts of citizenship and democracy.
In cities like Detroit and Milwaukee, abandoned by global corporations, community people are struggling to build more self-reliant, localized economies, growing our own food, restoring the neighbor to the 'hood, and in the process also growing our souls.
The Wisconsin struggle can be deepened by connecting with these community struggles.
This interview and its transcript originally appeared on Democracy Now!
Amy Goodman: Rallies for workers' rights are spreading across the country. In Michigan, over a thousand people rallied at the State Capitol in Lansing to oppose a measure allowing the breaking of labor contracts by placing schools and districts under emergency management. In a scene reminiscent of Wisconsin, hundreds of demonstrators packed the Capitol Rotunda chanting slogans. Protests were also held against anti-union bills Tuesday in Indiana, Ohio, Iowa, Florida and Tennessee.
Meanwhile, in Idaho, the state legislature has given final approval to a measure restricting the collective bargaining of public school teachers. The bill would limit teachers' collective bargaining to salaries and benefits. It also ends teacher tenure, limits teacher contracts to one year, and removes seniority as a factor in determining layoffs.
As a wave of anti-union bills are introduced across the country in the wake of the Great Recession, many analysts are picking up on the theory that award-winning journalist and author Naomi Klein first argued in her bestselling book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. In it, she reveals how those in power use times of crisis to push through undemocratic, radical, free market economic policies.
Nobel Prize-winning economist, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, recently referenced the book in his column called "Shock Doctrine, U.S.A." He wrote, quote, "The story of the privatization-obsessed Coalition Provisional Authority [in Iraq] was the centerpiece of Naomi Klein's best-selling book'The Shock Doctrine, which argued that it was part of a broader pattern. From Chile in the 1970s onward, she suggested, right-wing ideologues have exploited crises to push through an agenda that has nothing to do with resolving those crises, and everything to do with imposing their vision of a harsher, more unequal, less democratic society.
"Which brings us to Wisconsin 2011, where the shock doctrine is on full display," Krugman wrote.
Well, Naomi Klein joins us today in our studio for the hour. In addition to The Shock Doctrine, she's the author of two previous books: No Logo: Taking Aim at Brand Bullies and Fences and Windows: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Globalization Debate. She's currently writing a new book which focuses on the public relations campaign distorting climate change facts.
Naomi Klein, welcome to Democracy Now!
Naomi Klein: Hi, Amy. Great to see you.
Amy Goodman: It's great to have you with us. Let's talk Wisconsin. What do you see is happening in this uprising?
Naomi Klein: Well, first of all, it's such an incredible example of how to resist the shock doctrine. And it should not be in any way surprising that we are seeing right-wing ideologues across the country using economic crisis as a pretext to really wage a kind of a final battle in a 50-year war against trade unions, where we've seen membership in trade unions drop precipitously. And public sector unions are the last labor stronghold, and they're going after it. And these governors did not run elections promising to do these radical actions, but they are using the pretext of crisis to do things that they couldn't get elected promising to do.
Wisconsin Awakens a Sleeping Giant
And, you know, that's the core argument of and the thesis of the book, is not that there's something wrong with responding to a crisis decisively. Crises demand decisive responses. The issue is this backhanded attempt to use a crisis to centralize power, to subvert democracy, to avoid public debate, to say, "We have no time for democracy. It's just too messy. It doesn't matter what you want. We have no choice. We just have to ram it through." And we're seeing this in 16 states. I mean, it's impossible to keep track of it. It's happening on such a huge scale.
Teachers' unions are getting the worst of it. As you know, it's overwhelmingly women who are providing the services that are under attack. It's not just labor that's under attack; it's the services that the labor is providing that's under attack: it's health care, it's education, it's those fundamental care-giving services across the country, which could be profitable if they were privatized.
Amy Goodman: In Ohio, more than 20,000 people marched to oppose the Republican Governor John Kasich's attempted anti-union legislative putsch. Kasich recently defended his policy proposals on Fox & Friends.
Gov. John Kasich: It's part of a big piece of reform. Come March the 15th, we will be reforming Medicaid, K-through-12, higher ed, prisons. It is going to be a reform agenda in Ohio like no one has ever seen, all designed to get us in a good position. In terms of unions? I respect unions. I come from a union family. I mean, the idea that we're attacking anybody is—look, what we're attacking: poverty, joblessness. OK, that's what I'm attacking. And all I'm doing is saying to everybody, participate. Everybody jump in this. Together, we can make Ohio stronger. If we do not do that, you know, then we'll continue to lose jobs, and that means misery for everybody. That's not going to happen. We are going to be successful here.
Amy Goodman: Republican Governor John Kasich, going back to his old haunt. He was a commentator for a long time for Fox and, before that, a conservative congressman.
Naomi Klein: You know, the reason why this isn't working and why people are so outraged by it and why they're in the streets and we're finally seeing the resistance in this country that we have seen in Europe, with this chant, "We won't pay for your crisis," that really started in 2008 in Greece and spread to Italy and France and England—and, you know, the rest of the world has been waiting for the United States to—you know, how much are Americans going to take of this? It seems that Americans were willing to say, you know, "We will pay for your crisis, and would you like a tax break with that?" Right? And finally, they went too far. And so, that resistance is finally happening.
And this attack on collective bargaining, the reason why people won't take it is precisely because they understand that this is not shared pain. It is not being shared equally. The people who created the crisis in the first place are not sharing the pain. And the injustice of this response is so blatant. This isn't just any economic crisis. This tactic has worked. And this is, you know, what I've tracked over a 30-year period, that it is really easy to use an economic crisis—people panic, hyperinflation, issues like that.
In the '90s, when Newt Gingrich was Speaker, it was possible for him to argue that the source of the budget crisis really was so-called entitlement programs. You cannot do that in this moment in history because everybody understands that the crisis was created on Wall Street, it was created through speculation and greed, and a decision was made to bail out the bankers with public money and to pass the bill on to the public. And they're seeing the bonuses back. They're seeing the outrageous salaries. They're seeing corporations not paying their taxes. And it's just too unjust. It's just so morally outrageous. And then to turn on the television and talk about everybody sharing the pain? I mean, people are just not that stupid. Thankfully.
Amy Goodman: And where does the Obama administration fit into this? We have played that clip of President Obama when he was running for president, saying, "If anyone challenges your collective union rights, I will be walking with you."
Why Every American Should Care About Wisconsin
Naomi Klein: Yeah. Well, I mean, this is the irony of this moment, and this is—it really is about democracies. Scott Walker was not elected with a mandate to bust unions and to strip collective bargaining rights. He did not mention that in his campaign. He talked about balancing the budget. He made some vague statements, you know, about shared sacrifice. But he absolutely did not campaign promising to do what he is now doing. Obama, on the other hand, campaigned promising to strengthen union rights. He promised, again and again, whenever he had a labor audience, that he was going to pass the Employee Free Choice Act, and he promised to stand with them.
And, you know, one of the things that's so important for us to understand about why—you know, there are many reasons why the resistance is so strong in Wisconsin and why they've become this beacon for not just the rest of the country, but the world, and so much of it, I think—you know, my colleague at The Nation, John Nichols, has written beautifully about it this week in a cover story where he talks about the rich sense of collective history, of collective memory, and the fact that people know their progressive history in Wisconsin, so they're harder to exploit. You know, they're not going to fall for the latest Fox News messaging, because they know their history. But, you know, this is—there's something else that's going on here.
Amy Goodman: Well, let me ask you about Michigan. About a thousand people rallied in Michigan—reminiscent of Wisconsin. Talk about the proposal there.
Naomi Klein: Well, I just found out about this last night, and like I said, there's so much going on that these extraordinary measures are just getting lost in the shuffle. But in Michigan, there is a bill that's already passed the House. It's on the verge of passing the Senate. And I'll just read you some excerpts from it. It says that in the case of an economic crisis, that the governor has the authority to authorize the emergency manager—this is somebody who would be appointed—to reject, modify, or terminate the terms of an existing contract or collective bargaining agreement, authorize the emergency manager for a municipal government—OK, so we're not—we're talking about towns, municipalities across the state—to disincorporate. So, an appointed official with the ability to dissolve an elected body, when they want to.
Amy Goodman: A municipal government.
Naomi Klein: A municipal government. And it says specifically, "or dissolve the municipal government." So we've seen this happening with school boards, saying, "OK, this is a failing school board. We're taking over. We're dissolving it. We're canceling the contracts." You know, what this reminds me of is New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, when the teachers were fired en masse and then it became a laboratory for charter schools.
And what we're seeing with the pretext of the flood is going to be used with the pretext of an economic crisis. And this is precisely what's happening. So it starts with the school boards, and then it's whole towns, whole cities, that could be subject to just being dissolved because there's an economic crisis breaking collective bargaining agreements. It also specifies that—this bill specifies that an emergency manager can be an individual or a firm. Or a firm. So, the person who would be put in charge of this so-called failing town or municipality could actually be a corporation.
Amy Goodman: Whose government they dissolve, a company takes over.
Naomi Klein: A company takes over. So, they have created, if this passes, the possibility for privatization of a whole town by fiat. And this is actually a trend in the contracting out of public services, where you do now have whole towns, like Sandy Springs in Georgia, run by private companies. It's very lucrative. Why not? You start with just the water contract or the electricity contract, but eventually, why not privatize the whole town? So—
Amy Goodman: And what happens then? Where does democracy fit into that picture?
Naomi Klein: Well, this is an assault on democracy. It's a frontal assault on democracy. It's a kind of a corporate coup d'état at the municipal level.
Amy Goodman: Let me ask you a question that came to us from Facebook. This is a question about the Madison protest. Kelvin Williams asks, "Are there any specific ways that Wisconsin workers can use the ideas in [your book] The Shock Doctrine to go on the offensive and force true fiscal responsibility, perhaps even rolling back the compromise contract?"
Naomi Klein: Mm-hmm. It's a great question. I think what's finally starting to happen, and this is—Wisconsin has really been going from one victory after another. This started off with an attack, but people have been—have just found such incredible reserves of resolve and dignity and collective history that the ground is shifting. So, the situation under which those compromises were made, those concessions were made, it's changed. You know, people are feeling their power and their possibility.
Amy Goodman: I mean, it's amazing now. The Governor, who was just elected, Scott Walker, a few months ago, is now—his popularity has dipped to the 30s. And even the conservative newspapers are asking serious questions.
Naomi Klein: Mm-hmm, yeah. I mean, he clearly made a real miscalculation. I mean, what was obvious is that he was really playing to the national stage. He's clearly a very ambitious guy. He's got real national political aspirations. I think that's clear. You know, in that conversation with fake David Koch, the prank call, he compares himself to Reagan. He compares his actions to Reagan's firing of the air traffic controllers, that sort of "shot heard around the world" moment. That's what he wanted, you know? And he is not getting that.
Amy Goodman: And then he said, first he fired the PATCO strikers, and then the Berlin Wall came down. He made that link.
Naomi Klein: He said it. And it's not a crazy link, in the sense that it was part of a frontal assault on labor and the left, and it continued for many, many years. But, you know, it's not the '80s anymore, and people are on to these tactics.
Bigger Than Unions, Bigger Than Wisconsin
And I do think—you know, just coming back to that question—that it is possible. But the real key is that we have to be having the debate about where the money should be coming from. I mean, if there is a fiscal crisis—and in Wisconsin, there's a crisis that was created by tax cuts, and this is why there's so much outrage, because it comes back to that false claim that there's shared sacrifice here. There isn't shared sacrifice here. There are gifts that are being handed out to the elites. Scott Walker is governing based on this radical free market ideology that if we just create the perfect, most hospitable, most gentle, less demanding conditions for corporations to do business, then we'll have a booming economy, and it will trickle down, and everyone will benefit. And that is exactly the ideology that Obama campaigned against—and won—saying we can't keep giving more and more to the people at the top and waiting for it to trickle down. And that was a message that really resonated with voters.
One thing I wanted to come back to that I was starting to get at earlier about why what's happening in Wisconsin and what we need to take from it is that when bad things are happening, it's helpful to have a bad guy. And Scott Walker is a good bad guy. And he has galvanized progressives. And people have, you know, an enemy to organize around and to point out these disparities. It hasn't happened at the federal level, despite the fact that Obama is also involved in attacking labor rights with his pushing of charter schools and draconian budget cuts. He's not a good bad guy for progressives. So, we're still in a situation where Obama is getting away with, in my opinion, shock doctrine-style tactics, because people still don't want to believe that Obama is doing it, too. So, when you have an easy bad guy, a Republican governor who's obviously trying to be the reincarnation of Ronald Reagan, you can mobilize the left. But it won't just work if we are only going after the Republicans and if this is fought along just partisan lines, as opposed to being fought based on principle. No matter who is doing it, we need to be mobilizing, if it's Obama, if it's Scott Walker.
Amy Goodman: And the people that President Obama surrounds himself with, especially when it comes to the Wall Street insiders, especially as we move into the 2012 election, when it's said Obama will raise more than a billion dollars for the presidential election?
Naomi Klein: There's a lot of denial, still, about who Obama is and who he surrounds himself with. And, you know, we're going to talk a little bit later about Tim DeChristopher, but I've said it many times: Obama is fundamentally a centrist. And I do think that when there is a mobilized progressive movement in the United States that is putting pressure on him, on Democrats in Congress, they will respond.
And that's another lesson that we can take from Wisconsin. You know, I was talking, once again, to John Nichols the other day, and he said, "What's really working here is that we have the inside-outside pincer." Right? You've got people in the streets, but you also have Democratic lawmakers willing to put themselves on the line, being surprisingly courageous, leaving the state, and blocking it. So it isn't just the people in the Rotunda. It isn't just the protesters at the rally. It's a kind of a partnership that's going on. Why is that happening? Well, they looked out the window, and they saw their voters in the streets really committed and really mobilized, and that gave them courage.
And that's something really important to remember. So many liberal groups are involved in this gentle backroom lobbying, a token protest here and there, which says, "I'm willing to spend a couple of hours on a Saturday, but I'm not really willing to fight to win." And what's going on in Wisconsin is something very different. It's not just a rally on a Saturday afternoon. It is people really upending their lives for weeks and weeks and weeks on end. That sends a message to politicians who want to get re-elected that this is a big issue, a top priority. And they hear that.
In one sense, the struggle over union rights in Wisconsin is over. It took some breathtaking, possibly even illegal, shenanigans (click here for details), but the union-busting "Budget Repair Bill" has been passed, signed, and celebrated. In other ways, though, the weeks of historic protests in and around Wisconsin's capitol were just the first act of what may prove to be a far longer—and larger—struggle.
Around the country, state governments are targeting union rights, workplace protection, social services, and the ability of middle-class and working poor to have a voice. But, in large part thanks to the momentum of the Wisconsin protests, they're finding it difficult to do so quietly. In state after state, the Americans whose rights and services are being cut are rising up against the decades-long shift of wealth and power to corporations and the very wealthy.
The passage of Wisconsin's anti-union bill on March 10 came after weeks of protests, an extended occupation of the state capitol building, and the self-imposed exile of 14 Democratic senators, whose absence prevented a vote on the bill as it was originally drafted.
Following Thursday's passage of the Wisconsin bill, hundreds of students in Madison's middle and high schools walked out to join those demonstrating at the capitol. Then, in the largest protest since the bill was proposed, an estimated 100,000 people filled the streets and squares around the state capitol on Saturday. The Family Farm Defenders and the Wisconsin Farmers Union joined the protests, bringing more than 50 tractors with them.
"This is the beginning of phase two," Fred Risser, one of the 14 Democratic senators, told the crowd.
He was referring to a rapidly growing campaign to recall eight GOP senators who supported the bill; the Wisconsin Democratic Party reported yesterday that over 45 percent of the necessary signatures have already been collected. Because Wisconsin law only allows recalls of officials who have been in office at least a full year, Governor Scott Walker and other supporters of the bill are not yet eligible to be recalled—though opponents of the anti-union law are already laying the groundwork for a recall next year.
Though the weeks of demonstrations have focused national attention on Wisconsin, workers' rights are on the line in dozens of states across the country, and workers are fighting back. Newly elected Republicans in state legislatures and in the U.S. Congress are pressing—and in some cases, passing—deeply unpopular measures that target workers' rights to unionize and such basic protections as minimum wage laws.
The Ohio Senate has passed a bill that takes Wisconsin union-busting one step further, Reuters reports. The bill prohibits collective bargaining for nearly 62,000 workers and blocks 300,000 others (including firefighters, police, and public school teachers) from striking or negotiating about health care benefits. In Indiana, House Democrats, taking a cue from Wisconsin legislators, have left the state to prevent a vote on a bill that limits collective bargaining rights. Idaho has approved a measure to limit public school teachers' right to bargain collectively. Michigan is on track to approve a law that would allow the state to break union contracts. And union dues or collective bargaining are also on the line in Iowa, New Hampshire, Kansas, Tennessee, Colorado, Nebraska, Nevada, Oklahoma, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Washington, Alaska, and Arizona.
Nor are unions the only form of worker protection under attack. The Missouri House of Representatives has approved a bill that caps the state's minimum wage, even if the Consumer Price Index rises, essentially revoking a law that was passed just five years ago and supported by 76 percent of voters. Seven other states are considering similar bills, according to the Progressive States Network.
Other proposed measures would cut deeply into education funding, public safety, health care, and infrastructure maintenance. These bills are presented as necessary in order to balance state budgets, but recent state and federal tax giveaways to the wealthy make that a questionable claim.
Instead, this may be an example of what Naomi Klein describes in her book, The Shock Doctrine: Wealthy elites often use times of crisis and chaos to impose unpopular policies that restructure economies and political systems to their further advantage.
And many of these policies are deeply unpopular with the American public. Recent polls show that more than 60 percent of Americans believe that public employees should have the right to bargain collectively; that states should not be able to renege on pension commitments to retirees; that the minimum wage should be raised; and that tax breaks for wealthy Americans are a bad move. According to a recent Bloomberg poll, one of the reasons that "Americans reject Republican efforts to curb bargaining rights" is that they widely believe that union power is "is dwarfed by corporations."
Of course, the proliferation of anti-union bills isn't just an economic blow. Unions are a bulwark of political power on behalf of middle- and working-class Americans, a long-standing counterweight to the political influence of the wealthy. Not only do they give employees bargaining power within the workplace, they allow workers to join their voices to have some say in the political debate.
When union members' economic power is weakened, so is their political voice—a fact not lost on those leading the charge against them. As Wisconsin Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, a leading proponent of the state's anti-union bill, noted in an interview with Fox News, "If we win this battle, and the money is not there under the auspices of the unions, certainly what you're going to find is President Obama is going to have a much difficult, much more difficult time getting elected and winning the state of Wisconsin."
"If there is one good thing about this bill, it's that it has brought middle class workers together, made our unions stronger and our relationships closer," Mahlon Mitchell, the president of the Professional Firefighters of Wisconsin, said in an interview with YES! Magazine.
Indeed, all over the country, the attack on union rights has awakened a dormant class-consciousness. "I think that what's happening in Wisconsin is sort of Ground Zero for workers," said Jane Cutter, a 47-year-old teacher who attended a Wisconsin solidarity rally in Seattle. "It's going to drive down wages and living standards for all different kinds of workers."
An American Uprising
In-depth coverage of grassroots responses to the consolidation of wealth and power.
In the weeks since Wisconsin teachers and firefighters began occupying their state capitol, thousands of others have been inspired to make their opposition more vocal. Protests many times the size of the Tea Party demonstrations are spreading across the nation. Some are being organized by unions and their supporters; others, by MoveOn.org and Van Jones to "Defend the American Dream." Still others are part of US Uncut, which is organizing flash mobs to confront corporations that haven't been paying taxes. From Indiana to Ohio and Tennessee to Texas, workers are demanding to know why corporations and the wealthy get bailouts and tax breaks while teachers and steel workers bear the burdens of budget crises they didn't cause.
One of the farmers who rode through downtown Madison on his tractor summed it up on his handmade protest sign: "Walker woke a sleeping giant."
Additional reporting in Seattle by Oliver Lazenby and Robby Mellinger.
"Enough is enough."
That's what Wisconsin Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald said in a statement about why Wisconsin Senate Republicans on Wednesday evening carved the anti-union provisions out of the state's now-infamous Budget Repair Bill and quickly passed them, 18-1. There was no debate and not a single Senate Democrat was present; some observers say less than the legally required notice was given. The bill is widely expected to pass the Assembly on Thursday, then be signed into law by Governor Scott Walker.
"Enough is enough" also describes the sentiment on the other side of the debate. Following the vote, protesters streamed by the thousands into the capitol building they've been largely excluded from over the past several days, many of them chanting "This is not democracy."
The 14 Senate Democrats, of course, were in Illinois, where they've been for the last weeks in an effort to prevent the quorum needed to bring the Budget Repair Bill to a vote. But since a simple majority is needed for non-fiscal bills, Republicans decided to split the bill and move quickly on the anti-union items.
Opponents of the bill are pointing to a number of irregularities in the way it was passed:
Wisconsin: First Stop in an American Uprising?
protests in Wisconsin show that poor and middle class Americans are ready to push back against the policies that hurt them most. Madison may be only the beginning.
So what happens next? Immediately after the bill was passed, thousands of protesters demanded entrance and surged into the capitol building. After more than two weeks of round-the-clock protests, they had been restricted from the building itself since last Sunday. On Wednesday night, though, protesters were again unfurling sleeping bags and preparing to preparing to spend the night.
Meanwhile, rumors were circulating of plans for a general strike, either in Wisconsin or nation-wide. Some of the protesters in the capitol chanted their support for the idea. Michael Moore called for a nationwide walk-out of high school students, to begin at 2 pm local time. Momentum is also building around the movement to recall the eight senators who supported the bill and are eligible to be recalled. Protests are also spreading to other states where anti-union laws are being proposed or passed.
And Wisconsin protesters are affirming—in protest signs, on Twitter and Facebook, and in interviews—that the passage of the bill doesn't mean they consider this fight to be over. In fact, many see the way the bill was passed as nearly as antagonizing as its contents: "Nothing says democracy like voting with no notice, preventing the public from observing, and locking the doors of the capitol," Wisconsinite Michael Mirer tweeted.
Though the protests are undoubtedly entering a new phase, they're likely far from over. "The jig is now up," Barca said. "The fraud on the people of Wisconsin is now clear."
When Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker announced his Budget Repair Bill on February 11, Lieutenant Mahlon Mitchell had been president of the Professional Fire Fighters of Wisconsin for just short of a month. The bill, which eliminates collective bargaining rights (as well as many other rights and benefits) for nearly all of the state's public employees, specifically excluded the firefighers' union.
But Mitchell and the firefighters he represents say they feel just as involved as if their own rights had been on the chopping block. Firefighters have been a visible presence throughout the historic protests happening in Madison over the past three weeks; a fellow protester reports that, "in the large rotunda rallies, no other group draws such raucous cheers as the firefighters." Firefighters and law enforcement (also excluded from the bill) have offered to share in the bill's pay reductions (already agreed to by other union) in order to retain collective bargaining rights for all public employees and to prevent the lay-offs that Governor Walker has threatened.
Mitchell—the youngest and first African American president of the PFFW—represents 57 local departments and nearly 3,000 firefighters across the state. I spoke to him about why he and his fellow firefighters think Wisconsin's fight for workers' rights is their fight, too.
Robert Mellinger: How did you get involved in the firefighters' union?
Mahlon Mitchell: I got hired here in the Madison fire department when I was nineteen years old. I've always wanted to be a fire fighter, even as a young kid. My older brother is a firefighter in Rockford, Illinois; my younger brother is a firefighter in St. Paul, Minnesota. So it's kind of in our blood, you could say. I've been here in the Madison fire department for fourteen years now.
I'd only been president of the Professional Fire Fighters of Wisconsin about a month or so, and suddenly all this stuff goes on [laughs]. So I am definitely getting baptism by fire, as they say.
Robert Mellinger: Firefighters weren't included in the unions targeted by the Budget Repair Bill. So why did you get involved?
Mahlon Mitchell: We could have just sat on our hands and done nothing; the police officers could have, too—they weren't included in the bill, either. But, personally, I truly believe personally in solidarity—I always have. I know a lot of people just pay it lip service and a lot of people think it's a cliché, but I truly believe that "an injury to one is an injury to all."
Being involved in the community is what I love about being in the fire department. It's helping people everyday. People who call you, who call 9-1-1, it's usually on the worst day of their life. But we're there to help ease the pain and give some type of helping hand to people in need.
And the union does the same. A union basically speaks up for the voiceless and the people who can't speak up for themselves. That's what unions do. A lot of people say that unions have passed their time, but I think they're still important so that there's somebody to speak up for the middle class.
Robert Mellinger: Why do you say that these protests are about the middle class, instead of just unions?
Mahlon Mitchell: This is also about the rights of all workers. Especially in these times, I think that we in the middle class need to stick together and look after each other's rights. The last thing we want is a decline in what's available to people in the middle class. That's not good for anybody. It's not good for the economy, it's not good for jobs.
We Are Wisconsin
In this beautiful video, filmmakers Finn Ryan and David Nevala introduce you to the people making history in Wisconsin.
The ability to sit down at the table with your employer and talk about hours, wages, and working conditions is not a fiscal matter. All these workers want is a seat at the table—to be able to talk to their employer about their working conditions and hours. It just makes sense.
Look at union salaries—we're solidly middle class. And Wisconsin is a hardworking, blue-collar state. You don't become a fire fighter or a teacher or a police officer to be rich. You don't do it because you want to be wealthy. You do it because it's a job that helps you take care of your family, helps you to have a better life for yourself, and also to give back to your community.
Robert Mellinger: What's it been like to be in the crowds of protesters in Madison over the last few weeks? What's the atmosphere been like?
Mahlon Mitchell: I have never seen energy quite like this in anything I've done in my life. Even during one-day events, I haven't seen it, and this event has been going on for weeks. The energy is unbelievable. And it's just not stopping. I thought it would wane, especially from my members since we're carved out of the bill, for now. But we still have guys coming. I just got a call from firefighters from Florida that want to come up and march with us. I've heard from guys in L.A. who want to come up and march with us, from New York and Chicago. It's amazing how much enthusiasm there is and how many people want to come and lend a helping hand.
It's harder now to get access to the capitol; they've sort of locked it down on us. But firefighters are still saying, "Well, we'll march around the capital." So the energy keeps going.
Of course, rallies are great, but when you're speaking at a rally, you're speaking to the people who generally agree with you. You also have to go out and speak with people who don't necessarily agree with you, to make sure the people hear what's actually going on.
Robert Mellinger: What do you think the lasting impact of these protests will be?
Mahlon Mitchell: The biggest impact for the unions will be the way this has brought us together. Years ago, you wouldn't see firefighters working right alongside police officers working right alongside the carpenters working right alongside the sheet metal workers and the plumbers and the SEIUs. It's really brought together the leaders of the unions, but also the members—the people that go to work everyday and just want to get a decent paycheck and take care of their families. They're out in droves now. If there is one good thing about this bill, it's that it has brought middle class workers together, made our unions stronger and our relationships closer.
Public sector worker sitting in a bar: "They're trying to take away our pensions."
Private sector worker: "What's a pension?"
—Cartoon in the Houston Chronicle
As states struggle to meet their budgets, public pensions are on the chopping block, but they needn't be. States can keep their pension funds intact while leveraging them into many times their worth in loans, just as Wall Street banks do. They can do this by forming their own public banks, following the lead of North Dakota—a state that currently has a budget surplus.
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, whose recently proposed bill to gut benefits, wages, and bargaining rights for unionized public workers inspired weeks of protests in Madison, has justified the move as necessary for balancing the state's budget. But is it?
After three weeks of demonstrations in Wisconsin, protesters report no plans to back down. Fourteen Wisconsin Democratic lawmakers—who left the state so that a quorum to vote on the bill could not be reached—said Friday that they are not deterred by threats of possible arrest and of 1,500 layoffs if they don't return to work. President Obama has charged Wisconsin's Governor Scott Walker with attempting to bust the unions. But Walker's defense is:
"We're broke. Like nearly every state across the country, we don't have any more money."
That's what he says, but according to Wisconsin's 2010 CAFR (Comprehensive Annual Financial Report) [pdf], the state has $67 billion in pension and other employee benefit trust funds, invested mainly in stocks and debt securities drawing a modest return.
A recent study by the Pew Center for the States showed that Wisconsin's pension fund is almost fully funded, meaning it can meet its commitments for years to come without drawing on outside sources. It requires a contribution of only $645 million annually to meet pension payouts. Zach Carter, writing in the Huffington Post, notes that the pension program could save another $195 million annually just by cutting out its Wall Street investment managers and managing the funds in-house.
The governor is evidently eying the state's pension fund, not because the state cannot afford the pension program, but because he sees it as a potential source of revenue for programs that are not fully funded. This tactic, however, is not going down well with state employees.
North Dakota: Banking on the Locals
Video: David Brancaccio visits a bank that is invested in its community.
Fortunately, there is another alternative. Wisconsin could draw down the fund by the small amount needed to meet pension obligations, and put the bulk of the remaining money to work creating jobs, helping local businesses, and increasing tax revenues for the state. It could do this by forming its own bank, following the lead of North Dakota, the only state to have its own bank—and the only state to escape the credit crisis.
This could be done without spending the pension fund money or lending it. The funds would just be shifted from one form of investment to another (equity in a bank). When a bank makes a loan, neither the bank's own capital nor its customers' demand deposits are actually lent to borrowers. As observed on the Dallas Federal Reserve's website, "Banks actually create money when they lend it." They simply extend accounting-entry bank credit, which is extinguished when the loan is repaid. Creating this sort of credit-money is a privilege available only to banks—but states can tap into that privilege by owning a bank.
The state-owned Bank of North Dakota (BND) has allowed North Dakota to maintain its economic sovereignty, a conservative states-rights ideal. The BND was established in 1919 in response to a wave of farm foreclosures by out-of-state Wall Street banks. Today, the state not only has no debt, but it recently boasted its largest-ever budget surplus. The BND helps to fund not only local government but local businesses and local banks, by partnering with the banks to provide the funds to support small business lending.
The BND is also a boon to the state treasury, having contributed over $300 million to state coffers in the past decade, a notable achievement for a state with a population less than one-tenth the size of Los Angeles County. In 2008, the BND returned a 26 percent dividend to the state. In comparison, California's public pension funds are down more than $100 billion—that's billion with a "b"—or close to half the funds' holdings, following the Wall Street debacle of 2008. It was, in fact, the 2008 bank collapse rather than overpaid public employees that caused the crisis that shrank state revenues and prompted the budget cuts in the first place.
Faced with federal inaction and growing local budget crises, an increasing number of states are exploring the possibility of setting up their own state-owned banks, following the North Dakota model. On January 11, 2011, a bill to establish a state-owned bank was introduced in the Oregon State legislature; on January 13, a similar bill was introduced in Washington State; on January 20, a bill for a state bank was filed in Massachusetts (following a 2010 bill that had lapsed); and on February 4, a bill was introduced in the Maryland legislature for a feasibility study looking into the possibilities. They join Illinois, Virginia, and Hawaii, which introduced similar bills in 2010, bringing the total number of states with such bills to seven.
Why All Americans Should Care About Wisconsin
If Governor Walker wanted to explore this possibility for his state, he could drop in on the Center for State Innovation (CSI), which is located down the street in his capital city of Madison, Wisconsin. The CSI has done detailed cost/benefit analyses of the Oregon and Washington state bank initiatives, which show substantial projected benefits based on the BND precedent. See reports here and here.
For Washington State, with an economy not much larger than Wisconsin's, the CSI report estimates that after an initial start-up period, establishing a state-owned bank would create new or retained jobs of between 7,400 and 10,700 a year at small businesses alone, while at the same time returning a profit to the state.
Economists looking at the CSI reports have called their conclusions conservative. The CSI made its projections without relying on state pension funds for bank capital, although it acknowledged that this could be a potential source of capitalization.
If the Bank of Wisconsin were to use state pension funds, it could have a capitalization of more than $57 billion—nearly as large as that of Goldman Sachs. At an 8 percent capital requirement, $8 in capital can support $100 in loans, or a potential lending capacity of over $500 billion. The bank would need deposits to clear the checks, but the credit-generating potential could still be huge.
Banks can create all the bank credit they want, limited only by (a) the availability of creditworthy borrowers, (b) the lending limits imposed by bank capital requirements, and (c) the availability of "liquidity" to clear outgoing checks. Liquidity can be acquired either from the deposits of the bank's own customers or by borrowing from other banks or the money market. If borrowed, the cost of funds is a factor; but at today's very low Fed funds rate of 0.2 percent, that cost is minimal. Again, however, only banks can tap into these very low rates. States are reduced to borrowing at about 5 percent—unless they own their own banks, or, better yet, unless they are banks. The BND is set up as "North Dakota doing business as the Bank of North Dakota."
That means that technically, all of North Dakota's assets are the assets of the bank. The BND also has its deposit needs covered. It has a massive deposit base, since all of the state's revenues are deposited in the bank by law. The bank also takes other deposits, but the bulk of its deposits are government funds. The BND is careful not to compete with local banks for consumer deposits, which account for less than 2 percent of the total. The BND reports that it has deposits of $2.7 billion and outstanding loans of $2.6 billion. With a population of 647,000, that works out to about $4,000 per capita in deposits, backing roughly the same amount in loans.
Wisconsin has a population that is nine times the size of North Dakota's. Other factors being equal, Wisconsin might be able to amass over $24 billion in deposits and generate an equivalent sum in loans—over six times the deficit complained of by the state's governor. That lending capacity could be used for many purposes, depending on the will of the legislature and state law. Possibilities include (a) partnering with local banks, as in the North Dakota model, strengthening their capital bases to allow credit to flow to small businesses and homeowners, where it is sorely needed today; (b) funding infrastructure virtually interest-free (since the state would own the bank and would get back any interest paid out); and (c) refinancing state deficits nearly interest-free.
The budget woes of Wisconsin and other states were caused not by overspending on employee benefits, but by a credit crisis on Wall Street. The "cure" is to get credit flowing again in the local economy, and this can be done by using state assets to capitalize state-owned banks.
Against the modest cost of establishing a publicly owned bank, state legislators need to weigh the much greater costs of the alternatives—slashing essential public services, laying off workers, raising taxes on constituents who are already over-taxed, and selling off public assets. Given the cost of continuing business as usual, states can hardly afford not to consider the public bank option. When state and local governments invest their capital in out-of-state money center banks and deposit their revenues there, they are giving their enormous credit-generating power away to Wall Street.
After two weeks of protests in Wisconsin, we are now watching demonstrations spread across the country. Over the weekend, the online advocacy group MoveOn.org helped mobilize tens of thousands of people, who marched in all 50 state capitals in support of Wisconsin workers. Demonstrators are speaking out against attacks by Republican governors in Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan and their own states.
It is entirely appropriate that protests should spread, because recent events in Wisconsin are only a window into what is happening in states scattered across the country. It is important that we understand the scope of this debate. This is a discussion that has impact on all Americans, not just union members. One point should be clear: This is not a story of public employees trying to feed at the trough. It is a story about whether or not governors can take away fundamental workers' rights.
Everyone in this country is entitled to their opinion about politics and public policy. Every governor is free to propose policies that he or she feels are in the public interest, even if others might disagree with those actions. But they must follow the rule of law.
In this case, newly elected Republican governors can certainly negotiate contracts with public employees. But there is a lawful process for such negotiation. It involves sitting down at a bargaining table, talking through disagreements, and coming to a mutual agreement. Instead of engaging in this process, governors like Wisconsin's Scott Walker want to unilaterally take away people's rights, while claiming that they are doing something entirely different. He and others like him are using budget issues as a subterfuge for their power grab. That is not acceptable. And it is why they have stirred the passions of so many.
Bigger Than Unions,
Bigger Than Wisconsin
How Americans across professions, religions, and states are uniting in opposition to Wisconsin's anti-union bill—and cultivating a movement that reaches far beyond the state border.
Many people may not see collectively bargaining as relevant to problems in their own work lives. You might think, I don't need a union because I'm a professional. Even if this is the case, you are nevertheless affected by a growing imbalance of power in today's workplaces.
There was a time in America when employers couldn't unilaterally decide to take away health care or pensions. Workers had some say in deciding to accept less in wages in order to hold on to their families' health care coverage. Yet in recent decades, we've moved toward a situation where there are little or no counterbalances to the whims of employers. America's once-strong middle class has dwindled as a result.
Whether any of us happen to be union or non-union, we need to get back to the day when people had a say in negotiating the terms of their employment. In the past, public employees opted to prioritize their health care and retirement over other forms of compensation. They should still have a right to believe their employers will abide by the legitimate contracts they previously negotiated. They have the right, in other words, to be treated just as any of us would expect to be treated when we've come to an agreement with an employer regarding our livelihoods.
It is important to understand that this is not a question of tightening belts to cope with a moment of economic crisis. Public employees in Wisconsin and beyond have been very clear that they are willing to bear their share of common sacrifice in tough times. But they are not willing to give up the basic rights to associate, to belong to a union, or to organize collectively.
This is something that should matter for all Americans. Because if our rights related to association and collective bargaining can simply be denied, taken away as part of an executive initiative disguised as being about something else, then other rights are also at risk. We avoid restricting freedom of speech in our country because we recognize that encroachments on our freedoms create a slippery slope. One violation of basic rights leads to another. If we don't stand up now against abuses of power on the part of state executives, the safety of our dearest liberties could be called into question.
Wisconsin: The First Stop in An American Uprising?
Our ability to freely associate and form organizations to advance whatever political and economic interests we might have is one of the things that makes this country great. It is something that Alexis de Tocqueville admired about American democracy when he wrote his renowned observations about our political system in the early nineteenth century.
We abandon this democratic tradition at our peril. A politics that condemns public employees for being greedy because they insist on maintaining their rights is profoundly dishonest and dangerous.
The fact that we have elections in this country is not enough to safeguard our democracy. If we allow rights to be restricted, under the auspices of a twisted interpretation of the rule of law, we follow a treacherous path that has historically led the way to tyranny.
Those outside of Wisconsin who have joined in solidarity protests, and those speaking out against assaults by their own governors on middle-class employees understand that this issue impacts us all. Our rights are too precious to be sacrificed without a fight.