Sunset Park Rent Strike: Scenes from the Struggle

The first rent strike support flyer

My local Occupy group, Occupy/Ocupemos Sunset Park, has been immersed in a local struggle, a rent strike in a series of buildings on 46th Street in this Brooklyn neighborhood. Here are some of the flyers we've been producing for the actions.

The strike has been receiving terrific media coverage and terrific support from the Occupy network. I will be back in the next few days with a post to detail what's been happening and put the struggle in context.

The first action ended with an impromptu hour-long occupation of state assemblyman Felix Ortiz' office, which was truly awesome. Tonight, see the last flyer below, we're staging a sidewalk sleep-in and people's inspection of the buildings.

This video was taken at the first action; it sums up what was happening at the beginning. Yours truly is interviewed at length toward the end. Enjoy.

A terrific account of the strike with interviews with many of the rent strikers can be found here: "Brooklyn Women Make Their Building Theirs."

"The Most Powerful Workers in New York City"

Locked-out Con Ed worker in Brooklyn: "If We Go Out the Lights Go Out!"

On Sunday, July 1, contract negotiations between New York City's electric utility, Consolidated Edison or Con Ed, and its 8,500 unionized workers represented by the Utility Workers Union of America broke down. Even though New York City was entering a heatwave, stressing the electrical grid across the city, the electric company locked out the workers, replacing them in their crucial jobs with a smaller number of managers and bosses. The union for the workers has continued to try to negotiate with the electric company, but they've also been holding daily pickets and solidarity rallies across New York City.

A group of revolutionary organizers calling themselves the New York City Renegades have been agitating among the workers with some of the most powerful worker-focused propaganda I've seen in years. This is a brilliant example of some of the fruits of the Occupy Wall Street movement: class consciousness, solidarity, autonomous community/worker organizing outside the confines of existing organizations, all in convergence with solid revolutionary organizing traditions. The goal of these organizers is to "unite the workers with the 'hood." I met with some of the Renegades in time to pass out some leaflets at a rally of the UWUA workers outside the Con Ed offices on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn; I found the gathered workers hungry for solidarity, the leaflets flew out of my hand.

These leaflets are a necessary challenge to the top-down strategies of existing union leadership. Union-busting is a priority strategy of state and local governments, both Republican- and Democratic -led, across the country. The Renegades are arguing that the small minority of working people who are still unionized must unite with those who are not, in order to beat back a fundamental attack on the right of people to organize themselves. A bitter defeat is possible: the unions who still hold sway with public employees desperately need allies.

Here are two of the leaflets distributed by the Renegades to the locked-out Con Ed workers in preparation for organizing a workers and community meeting to plan a course of action.

THE MOST POWERFUL WORKERS IN NEW YORK CITY

Con Ed, MTA and healthcare workers are the most powerful workers in the entire city. But they have been defeated by the bosses and politicians in every major labor fight in the last decade. Unless things change quick, more defeats are coming.

The bosses win because they pit the poor and working class public against the workers when the workers resist. In this right over the Con Ed contract, many everyday people see the wages of Con Ed workers as the cause of their high utilities bill, instead of a small taste of what all working class people could win if they stick together. Others consider the lockout a private matter to be handled between Con Ed and its workforce, instead of an issue that affects all New Yorkers. This is a trap set by the bosses and politicians, and it has worked all too well.

The only way to escape this trap is for workers to lead the whole of New York City in a struggle for a better life, including people outside their own workplaces and unions. If MTA workers called a fare strike with free transit for everyone in the city, all poor and working people would immediately support it. If Con Ed workers called for a strike to end stop and frisk and make utilities free, every young person of color in the city would have their back.

If workers provided this kind of leadership, all the crap about young people smoking weed and acting like delinquents would disappear. Young people would show up at picket lines and throw eggs at managers. They would fight the police tooth and nail if scabs were brought in. Instead of beefing with each other and hurting the community, poor and working class youth would direct their anger at the bosses, politicians and police who oppress us all. One million students are on summer vacation right now, with no work and few social programs, waiting to take up this fight.

Will Con Ed workers provide this leadership for New York City? It will require leaving isolated pickets outside Con Ed yards, and doing public actions at drop-in centers and other busy locations across the city. It will require explaining to millions of everyday people what the Con Ed workers are fighting for, and discussing how to fight together against the bosses in the common interest. It will require finding new ways to fight, and taking initiative without waiting for direction from the union leadership.

If free utilities, healthcare, and transport become part of workers' demands, the working class of New York City will unite, and become unstoppable. Then workers will be able to win not only a contract, but a hell of a lot more.


And here's a second, follow-up flyer:

THE MOST POWERFUL WORKERS IN NEW YORK CITY, PART 2

Management is preparing for a long battle with Con Ed workers, and is willing to risk the deaths of New Yorkers and its own management to win. An opponent like this can't be defeated with kid gloves. Con Ed workers need to take their gloves off and beat management to a pulp. But how?

Praying for a blackout to bring Con Ed to its knees is hardly a winning strategy. It's more like the hail mary of people who don't have a plan to win by their own initiative. Rallies are often just glorified pep rallies, and do little to win over the public. The rally on July 5th was like the festivals put on during Roman times. Orgies and spectacles were the order of the day while the rest of the society was collapsing. Right now we have millions in prison, many more in failing schools, and even more with no jobs and no hope of finding them — many Black and Latino. These same people are being told in the Daily News that stubborn workers are the cause of their problems.

There is a lot of big talk about the power of the union. But a lockout tells another story, that management was preparing this for months, getting ready to sucker punch the workers. Where were the union leaders when this was happening? Sitting around, reassuring workers that they were powerful, while sipping margaritas with [NYC mayor] Bloomberg and the ruling class of this city. That's not a winning strategy.

Con Ed workers have a choice: either build a citywide counterattack against the bosses, or submit to a drawn-out, exhausting negotiation process that will probably end in an ass whooping. Tough talk is not enough.

A growing crew of young people is ready, willing and able to join with Con Ed workers. We want to strategize and try out new ways to bring the workers' struggle to millions of everyday New Yorkers. We want to uppercut [Con Ed CEO] Kevin Burke and knock his ass out. Together we can make it happen.


Here's an excerpt from a third flyer calling for a community meeting:

WORKERS AND COMMUNITY MEETING

We believe only the rank and file of Local 1-2 can win against Con Ed and lead NYC. The ranks have power, but they have not used it so far. There are only two endings to this struggle: defeat or victory. The next 10 days will determine the next tens years of your life. Won't you wish you gave everything you had to fight against Con Ed?

The point of this meeting is not to tell each other Burke is a jerk, Con Ed is making lots of money, and the unions are under attack. All of us know these things. The purpose of this meeting is so Con Ed Workers, along with community members, can discuss how we can win against Con Ed. We must think, plan, and execute a strategy to defeat Con Ed. We do not have even a second to lose. Management is working its ass off to defeat you. How hard are you willing to think and work to win?

[...] Should we occupy Con Ed HQ, should we march through the streets of Manhattan shutting them down or occupy Brooklyn Bridge? Should we ask the people of NYC to not pay their bills while workers are locked out?... Bring your ideas to the table!

The Right Wing's Prescription for Women

Planned Parenthood has been a target of the right wing for years. The current congress has gone to great lengths to demonize the private non-profit agency which provides millions of women, poor and otherwise, with health services including contraception and abortion. For all the insistence on the part of the rightwingers that the issue is preventing government-funding of abortion, the facts show that this is a smokescreen. There's a pie-chart floating around that clearly shows that abortions represent a small portion of Planned Parenthood's services. Given the legal hostility from many Republican and Democratic congresspeople in recent years, Planned Parenthood has worked very hard to follow the letter of the law and isolate the federal funding it gets from those abortion services. But it's futile to present either of these facts to the foes of Planned Parenthood, because the truth is that abortion is only the tip of the iceberg of their objections.

The rightwingers claim they are waging a battle based on moral and religious opposition to abortion based on the "sanctity of life." But what is actually quite clear is that these right wingers are actually waging a battle against something much bigger. And this is revealed by the current controversy over the initial Obama administration insistence that healthcare reform means that religious employers must include access to contraception in the insurance plans they offer to non-clerical employees like the teaching and medical professionals who work for churches and hospitals run by religious institutions. While it seems tragically likely that the Obama administration will concede this argument, the current controversy forces the right wing to admit that contraception itself is their actual problem, even knowing that contraception is a proven abortion preventative. Yes, that's right, the right wing does not want women to have access to the means to control their own bodies.

The right wing wants to defund Planned Parenthood not out of concern for some moral abstraction, but because it wants to preserve the dependency of women, especially poor and working-class women. The Sarah Palins and Michel Bachmanns of the far-right fringe notwithstanding, independent women who are not dependent on men are societal threat to the way the far right wants the world to look. And more fundamentally working-class women who rely on the affordability that government-funded healthcare provides are to them simply expendable.

The recent flap over the Susan G. Komen Foundation for the Cure's shameful temporary plan to withdraw financial support of Planned Parenthood is illustrative. The Komen Foundation is less an institution concerned with women's health than a money-making scheme, a front for fake concern about the inadequate funding of women's healthcare. Forget how an organization allegedly concerned about women's health could sponsor pink buckets of the Colonel's greasy chicken, how could an organization allegedly concerned about women's health, full of smart people who know every last detail of those financial distribution pie-charts, claim that pulling the plug on poor women getting breast screenings could have anything to do with abortion at all? Who actually believes that? Only right wing ideologues with an agenda, that's who.

Here's the truth: This is yet another front on the class war being waged by the privileged classes on regular people. They don't want to pay for abortion, for contraception, for breast screenings, because they don't want to fucking pay for anyone's healthcare at all. Well, except their own.

Funny, it always comes down to the same problem....and the same solution.

Without Comment: 1% vs. 99%

"MATT LAUER: When you said that we already have a leader who divides us with the bitter politics of envy, I’m curious about the word ‘envy.’ Did you suggest that anyone who questions the policies and practices of Wall Street and financial institutions, anyone who has questions about the distribution of wealth and power in this country, is envious? Is it about jealousy, or fairness?
MITT ROMNEY: You know, I think it’s about envy. I think it’s about class warfare. When you have a president encouraging the idea of dividing America based on the 99 percent versus one percent — and those people who have been most successful will be in the one percent — you have opened up a whole new wave of approach in this country which is entirely inconsistent with the concept of one nation under God. The American people, I believe in the final analysis, will reject it.
LAUER: Yeah but envy? Are there no fair questions about the distribution of wealth without it being seen as ‘envy,’ though?
ROMNEY: I think it’s fine to talk about those things in quiet rooms and discussions about tax policy and the like. But the president has made it part of his campaign rally. Everywhere he goes we hear him talking about millionaires and billionaires and executives and Wall Street. It’s a very envy-oriented, attack-oriented approach and I think it will fail."

— from a televised Today Show interview with Republican frontrunner Mitt Romney this morning.

"I personally don’t want to have anything to do with people lobbying or running for office right now, nor do I want to focus all of my time winning small policy changes, and I don’t think that’s the role of Occupy Wall Street. But I sure as hell hope the people whose terrain that is do go and do it. I hope that they can recognize that what’s happening now is the creation of a climate where it’s possible for them to push left and win more. I’m not going to be happy with all the compromises those people have to make, and I don’t think we’re going to survive on reforms alone, but we need that too. If we want a real, meaningful social transformation, we need to win things along the way, because that’s how we provides people the foundations on top of which they can continue to struggle for the long haul, and it’s how we grow to become a critical mass that can ultimately make a fundamental break with this system.

And in the meantime, our role as Occupy Wall Street should be to dream bigger than that. I think it’s our job to look far ahead, to assert vision, to create alternatives and to intervene in the political and economic processes that govern people’s lives....

I think there is more possibility right now than I could have ever imagined. I think in the not-so-distant future, we can win a lot of things that actually improve people’s lives, we can continue to change the political landscape, and we can grow into a mass movement with the strength to propose another kind of world and also fight for it. I think we’re only in the beginning of that, and I think there is a ton of potential. And I also see that kind of possibility in the long term. I think we can win a truly free society. I think it’s totally possible to have a political and economic system that we have a genuine say in, that we democratically control, that we participate in, that is equitable and liberating, where we have autonomy for ourselves and our communities and our families, but are also in solidarity with one another. I think it’s possible, and necessary. That’s kind of the amazing thing about this moment and this movement, I guess. Right now, sitting here, I can’t even imagine the limits of possibility."

— Occupy Wall Street activist Yotam Marom interviewed by Naomi Klein

Keep Occupying!

The #OWS movement is off the front page headlines...for the moment. The Occupy Wall Street encampment in New York City and those across the country have been mostly trashed and uprooted by a coordinated national campaign of violent repression...for the moment. But this is not over. And I'm not just saying that.

The movement is alive, and deepening all the time. There has been a sea change in political consciousness, and that continues filtering out across the roots and branches of society. As The Occupied Wall Street Journal says, "The Beginning Is Near." Protests and direct actions continue in NYC and nationally, building support for the notion of direct democracy. The words "Power to the People" have returned to life.

The movement of consciousness springing to life is not just the same old, same old. It's not just the shop-worn cliches and trite stereotypes and stale abstract ideas: it's the drive for human collective liberation returned to life, tidily encapsulated in the simple notion of the 99%.

One of the blogs I read is The Wild Hunt, a blog about the Neo-Pagan community that helps me to stay in touch with some of the ideas that have informed my own journey. Consider the editorial just published by its mainstay Jason Pitzl-Waters, "Occupying Everything" that concludes: "There have been those who’ve spent a lot of time pointing out that the Occupy movement has feet of clay, or has lost the moral high ground due to one incident or another, but I think such arguments miss the point. This isn’t about the good behavior of every Occupier, its about what needs to happen now. We need a shift in our priorities, we need the dramatic excesses of our current capitalistic system to be reigned in, and we need justice. I think modern Pagans have much to offer the Occupy movement, and that this movement has much to teach us in return. We are, after all, part of the 99% too. I know that there will be Pagans who disagree, who’ve written off the Occupy movement in one fashion or another, but I can no longer sit on the sidelines and pretend to have no opinion. For me, the Occupy movement is the movement I was waiting for during the anti-globalization protests of the 1990s, a true continuation of the work sparked by social justice pioneers like Dorothy Day, Gandhi, King, and Jane Addams. Now is the time for Pagans of a like mind to envision what our social justice looks like, to craft a theological and historical framework for a future where we have a voice, because that future is happening now. I guess what I’m saying is that we need to Occupy Paganism, and in turn, Occupy everything."

Pitzl-Waters understands, in a profoundly spiritual way, how the Occupy movement has resonated across society with a call for a world in which together we take back what is ours and then collectively share out of love, mutual respect, and responsibility.

I was at a meeting of Occupy Sunset Park, the organization that has sprung to life in my own Brooklyn neighborhood. A fellow emerging activist was saying how she felt the movement was reclaiming the notion of what is public, where parks and institutions are places that welcome and serve the communities in which they are located rather than act as fenced-off monuments to somebody's money.

I attended a terrific forum by the group Kasama which counts among its adherents one of the members of the Occupied Wall Street Journal editorial collective. Kasama is a profoundly radical communist organization but one that has approached the Occupy movement with creativity and respect. While I'm not sure they would use the word, I think they understand what a spiritual revolution OWS is engendering in peoples' consciousness. One Kasama leader described exactly how I feel: that for decades those of us who early in life awakened to consciousness as people yearning for social justice and human liberation — as revolutionaries — felt defeated; that the best we could hope for were lesser evils and retreating into living politically moral but isolated lives. And how the Occupy movement has changed everything, giving us back the hope and energy of what is possible.

We've experienced devastating one-sided class warfare for decades now, and finally the battle has been joined. People are opening their eyes and seeing. It's different now, from here on out.



For sure this has been recognized by the other side. The 1% understands what a threat looks like. The violent repression, the media manipulation, the attempts to subvert the movement, these have shocked people into paying attention to what's happening. But don't be fooled by the lack of headlines now. As the movement roots down into communities like mine we know there are plenty of obstacles in our path. But we also know what we can do, together.

#Occupy together; Spring is coming! Power to the people!

Photographs by me from the #OWS rally in New York City's Foley Square a couple days after the Zuccotti Park eviction

Today: Liberate Oakland!

Occupy Oakland, part of the Occupy Together/Occupy Wall Street/#OWS movement, in the aftermath of last week's outrageous repression, has taken the unprecedented step of organizing a General Strike for today in Oakland. I can't predict at this distance what will happen, but I've seen reports that labor activists — that means working people like you and me — are taking this very seriously and that a number of one-day wildcat protest strikes are likely. So much for a bunch of privileged spoiled hippies, eh?

See the inspired collection of organizing materials at Occupy Oakland's website. If I worked in Oakland I know I sure wouldn't be heading in to the office. If successful, and I define that as having a noticeable effect on the city and the news, this could be one of the most significant actions of the Occupy Together movement so far, and in fact one of the most significant actions of mass protest in years.

Some official chants for the strike action:
“Strike, Occupy, Shut it Down! Oakland is the People’s Town”
“Every Hour, Every Day! The occupation is here to stay!”
“Occupy Everything! Liberate Oakland”
“Politicians & Bankers, Liars & Thieves, We’re taking it back! We’re not saying please!”
“No more cops, we don’t need ‘em! All we want is total freedom”

Kasama has provided a post for reports of the day's action as they come in. #OWS puts the strike in the context of a month of global action.

It's all about sticking together. Shut down the 1%...even for a day! Occupy Everywhere!

The Brute Force of the AMERICAN State Reveals Itself

'In Oakland, officials initially supported the protests, with Mayor Jean Quan saying that sometimes “democracy is messy.”' — AP News release. Mayor Quan is a liberal Democrat.

"An Iraq war veteran has a fractured skull and brain swelling after allegedly being hit by a police projectile. Scott Olsen is in a "critical condition" in Highland hospital in Oakland, a hospital spokesman confirmed...."I'm just absolutely devastated that someone who did two tours of Iraq and came home safely is now lying in a US hospital because of the domestic police force," [his friend Adele] Carpenter said." — Guardian UK article reporting on the violent police attack on the peaceful Occupy Oakland encampment ordered by Mayor Quan's administration. The police used teargas, flash grenades, and rubber bullets.

"Scott is one of an increasing number of war veterans who are participating in America’s growing Occupy movement. Said Keith Shannon, who deployed with Scott to Iraq, “Scott was marching with the 99% because he felt corporations and banks had too much control over our government, and that they weren’t being held accountable for their role in the economic downturn, which caused so many people to lose their jobs and their homes.” — Iraq Veterans Against the War

'Let's be clear: Occupy Together has ended the whole sensibility of 9/11, the reverence for cop-heros of the two towers, the bullshit of "America stands together," the fog of Tea Party radicalism, the giddy illusion of "Change we can believe in" -- it's all over, and something else has started.' — Mike Ely, Kasama

"We Are All Scott Olsen." — #OWS

Everything You Need to Know About Republicans (2)

At last night's disturbing Republican presidential debate in Las Vegas, in which candidates competed to display more heartlessness to the American people, more racism toward immigrants, and more stupidity on international issues:

Anderson Cooper: "Herman Cain, two weeks ago you said 'Don't blame the big banks, don't blame Wall Street, if you don't have a job or you're not rich, blame yourself.'... Do you still say that?" (Cheers from crowd)

Herman Cain: "Yes I do say that." (Wild cheering ovation from crowd)

There's a clip on Huffpo that I won't embed here because it has a commercial.

#OWS Occupy Wall Street in Danger

From OWS:

"EMERGENCY #OWS EVICTION DEFENSE:
Prevent the forcible closure of Occupy Wall Street

Tell Bloomberg: Don't Foreclose the Occupation.
NEED MASS TURN-OUT, SHOW UP NO LATER THAN 6 A.M.

This is an emergency situation. Please take a minute to read this, and please take action and spread the word far and wide.

Occupy Wall Street is gaining momentum, with occupation actions now happening in cities across the world.

But last night Mayor Bloomberg and the NYPD notified Occupy Wall Street participants about plans to “clean the park”—the site of the Wall Street protests—tomorrow starting at 7am. "Cleaning" was used as a pretext to shut down “Bloombergville” a few months back, and to shut down peaceful occupations elsewhere.

Bloomberg says that the park will be open for public usage following the cleaning, but with a notable caveat: Occupy Wall Street participants must follow the “rules”.

NYPD Police Commissioner Ray Kelly has said that they will move in to clear us and we will not be allowed to take sleeping bags, tarps, personal items or gear back into the park.

This is it—this is their attempt to shut down #OWS for good.
PLEASE TAKE ACTION

1) Call 311 (or +1 (212) NEW-YORK if you're out of town) and tell Bloomberg to support our right to assemble and to not interfere with #OWS.

2) Come to #OWS TONIGHT AT MIDNIGHT to defend the occupation from eviction.

For those of you who plan to help us hold our ground—which we hope will be all of you—make sure you understand the possible consequences. Be prepared to not get much sleep. Be prepared for possible arrest. Make sure your items are together and ready to go (or already out of the park.) We are pursuing all possible strategies; this is a message of solidarity.

Click here to learn nonviolent tactics for holding ground.

Occupy Wall Street is committed to keeping the park clean and safe—we even have a Sanitation Working Group whose purpose this is. We are organizing major cleaning operations today and will do so regularly.

If Bloomberg truly cares about sanitation here he should support the installation of portopans and dumpsters. #OWS allies have been working to secure these things to support our efforts.

We know where the real dirt is: on Wall Street. Billionaire Bloomberg is beholden to bankers.

We won't allow Bloomberg and the NYPD to foreclose our occupation. This is an occupation, not a permitted picnic."

This morning on the radio (WNYC no less) the pro-Bloomberg media cheerfully reported that Bloomberg visited the encampment and said they would be allowed to stay if they temporarily vacated the plaza for cleaning. Of course the radio didn't say that the city's intention was to end the encampment by establishing "rules" denying the right of people to lie down in the park after they "cleaned" it. For the record, when I've been to the plaza it was cluttered and full of people but it didn't smell, there was no filth, and no evidence of the lack of sanitation facilities (which for crying out loud, New York should have in its public spaces anyway). Let this be crystal clear: Bloomberg and his media enablers are liars on the side of the 1%.

UPDATE: The overnight protest effort seems to have at least postponed the eviction. Some inspiring details in this Gawker account.

The peasants are revolting...

'Heather Amato, 35, a psychologist who lives near the protest area, said she felt disturbed by some of the conduct of the protesters. She said she had to shield her toddler from the sight of women at the park dancing topless. “It’s been three weeks now,” Ms. Amato said. “Enough is enough.”' — New York Times, October 7

As the Occupy Wall Street movement gains momentum, spreading across the country to dozens of local Occupy protests, marches, sit-ins and encampments, the establishment, to use a word spawned by the 1960s protests, has begun to look down on the movement with some consternation and confusion. Besides the hatchet job quoted above about how Occupy Wall Street is nothing but dirty, smelly, rude hippies with no respect for property, there was an extraordinarily condescending OpEd piece by the Times's resident old-line conservative, David Brooks:

"If there is a core theme to the Occupy Wall Street movement, it is that the virtuous 99 percent of society is being cheated by the richest and greediest 1 percent. This is a theme that allows the people in the 99 percent to think very highly of themselves. All their problems are caused by the nefarious elite....The Occupy Wall Street movement may look radical, but its members’ ideas are less radical than those you might hear at your average Rotary Club." Of course, Brooks is a die-hard defender of the 1%.

A two-pronged attack on Occupy Wall Street is unfolding: it's an attack by the class that has the most to lose from these protests that hint at the incredible potential suggested by the awakening of those who have thus far been the victims of class war waged against them. The attack will be a classic good-cop bad-cop act.

The first prong of the attack, the "good cop" is as Kasama warns: "Here is the deal: The smell of sulfur is upon the land. Satan himself is coming now… Of course we don’t believe in Satan. It is a metaphor. What I mean is this: The real and difficult struggle within this movement and for this movement is now starting. The media is turning on the machinery. The unions officials will now come as “supporters” but broker for the liberal establishment. “Advisers” will show up. People (who are pliant and acceptable) will now be declared leaders and spokespeople in the media. Demands will be announced or promoted or demanded that correspond to the program of the Democratic Party…. and much more." This will be the strategy of the liberal establishment to co-opt and blunt the Occupy Wall Street movement...to feign sympathy for its ends while trying to channel its energy away from radical potential.

The second prong will be the "bad cop," as those forces who will do anything to defend their privilege and power attempt sway public opinion against the Occupy movement, and then when they believe the movement to be weak, they will unleash whatever forces of repression are necessary to sweep up the remnants.

On the internet front, check out two widely circulated graphics from the teabaggers trying to demean the Occupy movement. The first attempts to paint the movement as idiot hypocrites for being consumers as if to oppose Wall Street we should all walk around in burlap sacks. The second attempts to paint them as anti-patriotic criminals looking for government handouts. For those with strong stomachs, check out the Think Progress video contrasting how the right-wing media coddled the Teaparty and attack the Occupy movement. I could only watch half of it. Link here. And read Gawker's evisceration of the thoroughly tragic attempt by the right-wing to paint the protesters as freeloaders and get suffering working-class Americans to identify with the cause of their suffering, "We are the 53%." To quote Gawker editor Richard Lawson: "these people have been glamoured by vampires, have bared their necks and welcome the pain as a gift. It's so deep and so bedrock in national mentality that the only salve seems, honestly, to be some sort of genuine revolution. I kind of feel like a French person in 1788. I wish these people knew they had allies behind them."

We don't know what will happen. The Occupy movement may grow and bloom, or it may succumb temporarily to winter. I do know that it's impressed the hell out of me personally, and the people involved in it are very, very smart, and becoming very very very wise by their own actions. The time is overripe for this kind of movement. If there's one thing that I hope people in the Occupy Movement understand, and I suspect many of them do, it's that the so-called 1%, whatever that true number is, do not need to understand or be educated, or learn anything: they are doing what they are doing because it is in their self=interest to do so. The rich want to stay rich. The powerful want to keep power. Appealing to the better natures of those with power has its limitations, especially when they understand the logic of the movement even if not everybody in that movement has drawn the same conclusions through to the end.

Those of us who want — who need — change or economic and social justice: it is for us to take. These things are, by virtue of our absolute majority and humanity, our right. No begging is necessary.

(The graphic, of course, is Mel Brooks and Harvey Korman in "The History of the World, Part 1." If you've seen it you'll know why it's here!)

This Is What Democracy Looks Like!

"Rise Up – We Are the 99%"
Artwork from a one-day guerrilla art exhibit for Occupy Wall Street called "No Comment" held in the now empty former J.P. Morgan building in downtown New York City.


"Another World Is Possible. On a Quiet Morning, I Can Hear Her Breathing"
Sign on the sacred space altar at one corner of the Occupy Wall Street encampment in New York City.


"Power to the People!!" Sign near the drum circle at the Occupy Wall Street encampment today.

"No list of demands. We are speaking to each other, and listening. This occupation is first about participation. - Tens of thousands of New Yorkers streamed into Foley Square on Wednesday — labor unions rolled out, students walked out. The occupation of Wall Street grew to resemble the city we live in. What race, age, religion, occupation did we represent? None of them. All of them...This is our movement. It is our narrative too. The exhausted political machines and their PR slicks are already seeking leaders to elevate, messages to claim talking points to move on. They, more than anyone, will attempt to seize and shape that movement. But how can they run out in front of something that is in front of them? They cannot.... We aren't going anywhere. We just got here." — editorial note from the second edition of Occupy Wall Street's broadsheet "The Occupied Wall Street Journal"

More art from the "No Comment" guerrilla art show:


"Think outside this box - Fuck Nationalism!" graffiti on an American flag.


"Wake Up - Unite - Organize - Rise - Forgive - Evolve"


Wall stencil. Not sure what it means, but a striking image.

"This Is What Democracy Looks Like"
"They Got Bailed Out, We Got Sold Out"
"All Day, All Week, Occupy Wall Street"
— chants from the Occupy Wall Street protest

(All photos by me; click on the images to see them larger. All credit to the original artists)

Change the Rules!

"Don't Be Afraid to Call It a Revolution"

I spent part of the afternoon at the Occupy Wall Street encampment in downtown Manhattan today. It's a few hundred people gathered in a small paved park roughly midway between Wall Street and the World Trade Center site. I found the gathering truly inspiring. It seems to get its energy from the overwhelming presence of young people, but it's drawn plenty of the not-so-young; while it seemed to be majority white it was by no means exclusively so. Having watched three years of so-called Tea Party protests on the news it was utterly refreshing to see — even on signs challenging President Obama — a complete and total absence of the dogwhistle racism foundational to the teabaggers' modus operandi. Here was real protest about economic issues (as well as social justice ones). Significantly I saw many trade union activists identifying themselves as such.


I've read hype describing Occupy Wall Street as an attempt to bring the spirit of Egypt's Tahrir Square to the United States; and while this movement is much smaller than that, I thought there was a kernel of truth in that. The energy at the encampment is busy and exuberant: some people were playing music together, others grouped together energetically discussing the issues. The encampment seems alive with consciousness and awareness. The signs are clever and inspiring: "Feel It Trickle Down?" "Arise and Seize the Day." Significantly just yesterday 700 Occupy Wall Street protesters were arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge as the city's repressive forces displayed their no tolerance for disruption of traffic. Despite that act of repression the spirit of the Occupiers seemed completely undaunted.



I suspect the weather will shortly curtail the momentum of the Occupy movement, though a solidarity march this Wednesday is scheduled to bring the encampment the support of unionized workers and groups like the Working Families Party. Hopefully the spirit of this exciting movement can be kindled throughout the winter and bring us a real American Spring next year. It thrills me that young people are proclaiming "Don't Be Afraid to Call it a Revolution." Could people be starting to finally wake up?



I thought this protester dressed as the Hindu goddess Mother Kali was brilliant: Change Is Coming, indeed. I like how she's managed to so succinctly unite spiritual and political consciousness in one playful statement.

Occupy Wall Street has issued a declaration, crafted by a consensus gathering at the encampment. You can read the full text at Dangerous Minds. It was also published in their "The Occupied Wall Street Journal" broadsheet, just printed and being passed out for free at the encampment. In part it begins, "As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right..."

All photos by me. Click on them to see them larger.

Work Makes You Free!

Above each of their labor camps the German Nazis installed a sign that read "Arbeit Macht Frei," or "Work Makes You Free." The Nazis believed that certain people were good only for slave labor, and the concentration camps that were not designed as extermination camps were a source for super low-cost labor for German industry, where no regulations and no unions would interfere with eeking out every last drop of productive energy for corporate profit. As everyone knows, the Nazis believed that non "Aryans" like Jews and Roma (so-called Gypsies) were inferiors, parasites on the society of actual German citizenry. Of course "Work Makes You Free" was also a lie. There was no exit intended from the labor camps.

Which brings us to the clip below from right-wing Iowa Republican congressman Steve King below.



A few choice excerpts: "John Smith said, clear back then in the 1600s, No work, no eat. And that's part of the New Testament... We can't have a nation of slackers... and borrow money to pay the welfare of people who won't work."

What a horrifying and fascinating speech: utterly revealing about the mindset of the Republicans and their "tea party" fascists. He seems to be implying that the unemployment crisis is somehow voluntary, due to laziness. This is absolute dog whistle racist code speech. Which he even tries to justify with a Bible quote, for crissake. Who exactly is he talking about? This is standard white Republican code for the masses of blacks and hispanics who, with their insidious plots like ACORN, they imagine, actually caused the economic crisis.

You can see that he doesn't really believe that unemployment is a real problem, and that in some fundamental way he opposes social programs like unemployment compensation and foodstamps. This is what the Republicans mean when they talk about "job-killing regulations": they mean the regulation to pay a living wage and the regulation to care for the citizenry when the economy is in crisis. They believe that if all the "slackers" would get off their asses and work for less than minimum wage, the job crisis would be over.

Hmm. What did they have back in the 1600s that we don't have today? Perhaps there's a wise solution there? Serfdom? Indentured servitude? SLAVERY? Let's take America back...to 1650! The politics of Republicans like King may not be short steps from the institution of Nazi-style repression and labor camps, but it is indeed short steps away from the ideological justification for them.

Tip on Steve King thanks to Joe.My.God. "Arbeit Macht Frei" sign at Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin, photo by me.

Happy Alienation Day!

I was reading Facebook and browsing the internet this morning when I noticed something. Many people were saying great things about today's holiday, Labor Day (what I like to call "fake" Labor Day since everybody knows real labor day is May 1). People were telling stories about their factory-worker parents or grandparents, or talking about the labor battles of the past that gave us this day off along with the forty-hour work week and minimum wage. But you could tell that to most of these people "labor" and "laborers" was something quite outside their vision of themselves. Certainly most of the wonderful and decent people I know are office workers and not factory workers: and it's true most of us do not go home dirtier and sweatier than the subway has made us.

Through some diabolical masterstroke, today's corporate bosses have a huge percentage of this country's workers persuaded that they're not workers, but upwardly mobile career professionals. It's kind of like how sales clerks are today called "sales associates." Associates of what, exactly? While for some working in an office can be a trip up a corporate ladder to reward and responsibility, most people will find themselves eventually reminded that their humanity just doesn't qualify them for continued employment as some mysterious corporate id somewhere reorganizes or reprioritizes them out of a job. Sorry!

It's absolutely alienation in the service of an illusion: if you sit there long enough acting enthusiastic enough and never saying "no," maybe you'll get plucked out of your cubicle, pushed into a corner office, and sent on your road to fortune and retirement. You've made it, baby! Well, as long as you do what you're told and make more money for somebody else than you get to keep for yourself.

Your company might call you an "associate," or even a "manager," or any number of clever titles chosen to provide you with imitation dignity as a substitute for anything you can take to the bank. Oh by the way, we need you to work overtime, the finite hours of your life aren't as important as getting this project done, are they? Thanks! But the company knows who you are: you're just an expendable body.

The company I freelance for is currently eliminating one department — a unionized one, no less. It's being split up and outsourced, half to a non-union shop in the south, and half overseas. The union who is so badly representing these soon to be ex-workers seems to have been caught in a deadly partnership web with management. Appeasement strikes again. Sorry, it's the economy!

I understand that a person has to make the most of working for a living. Being pissed off all the time is no way to spend your days. I don't blame today's "employees" for being optimistic about their chances. Surely the chickens in a coop dare not dwell on the hens that occasionally disappear without driving themselves mad with anxiety. A couple winters ago I visited a wonderful small farm upstate. We stood in a low barn, smelling the rich smells of hay and manure. There was a wonderful, affectionate steer. The farmers introduced us to this magnificent bulky creature. Our hosts laughed warmly, standing around this creature as they discussed how he'd be slaughtered for steaks the next year. The steer mooed, happy in its stall, occasionally searching with its great warm tongue for a taste of people passing by. The steer had a better life than many, I'm sure, outside a factory farm, cared for by people and not machines. And I'm sure he was very delicious. Cause he was, in the end, a steer, raised for his many pounds of meat.

Here's a truly horrifying quote from Matthew Vadum, some kind of wingnut teabagger policy hack: "Why are left-wing activist groups so keen on registering the poor to vote? Because they know the poor can be counted on to vote themselves more benefits by electing redistributionist politicians. Welfare recipients are particularly open to demagoguery and bribery. Registering them to vote is like handing out burglary tools to criminals. It is profoundly antisocial and un-American to empower the nonproductive segments of the population to destroy the country -- which is precisely why Barack Obama zealously supports registering welfare recipients to vote. Encouraging those who burden society to participate in elections isn't about helping the poor. It's about helping the poor to help themselves to others' money. It's about raw so-called social justice. It's about moving America ever farther away from the small-government ideals of the Founding Fathers." Setting aside, for the moment, the unspoken racist dogwhistling in this comment, it's clear that the corporate bosses and their friends on the right wing are more than ever self-aware of their class destiny and privilege. If there is a problem with the class war in this country is that it is so one-sided: the vast majority of working people are standing on the sidelines thinking that this is all happening to somebody else. Caution: rude awakenings ahead.

But that old saying, "Workers of the World Unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains," you know that's talking about you, right? Take a day off. You earned it!

Neville Chamberlain Announces Bipartisan Deal on Peace

Here's the video footage of the quote I posted the other day. Below, German Chancellor Adolf Hitler modestly notes his commitment to compromise.


Oh wait, is that the right photo? No matter, same difference. And this shameful appeasement of teabagger extremists will have the same result on preserving the economy of American working people as Neville Chamberlain's appeasement had on peace. Have you ever seen jowls McConnell smile like that before?

Fascinatingly, only half of the Democratic members of the House voted for this travesty today: the bill belongs to the President and his new Republican allies.

Today in Corporate Outrage... A Special Edition of News from the Malabar Front

So here's what I noticed, when I had, um, a little time on my hands. Two toilet paper rolls, purchased a couple months apart. Same brand...that would be Scott Tissue. (Creepily, I've also just noticed the headline on the Scott brands site is "Bring home some new family values." Fucking social conservatism catchwords from paper designed to clean your butt, ugh.) Anyway, in our economic-crisis-ridden world where the pundits and economists swear inflation isn't a problem — not a problem enough to add a Cost-of-Living-Increase to social security benefits anyway — you can plainly see that the cheap bastards at Scott, known as an economy brand, have shortened their roll of toilet tissue by about half an inch. Now, depending on how you, um, use this product, you're probably not going to miss that half an inch. But somebody's paying a lot of attention to what that savings has gone to...wiping out Scott's falling rate of profit.

Scott's parent company is Kimberly Clark. Speaking of not missing half an inch, Kimberly Clark's CEO Thomas J. Falk made approximately $9 million dollars last year. Poor guy, he didn't get a raise from the previous year either! And speaking of a lot of crap, in the first quarter of 2011 Kimberly Clark did five billion dollars in business, up from last year. On the other hand their actual profits are down. Maybe with all the money they're saving they can buy a billboard in Times Square like Charmin did.

A quote from George Orwell's 1984 is in order:

"As short a time ago as February, the Ministry of Plenty had issued a promise (a 'categorical pledge' were the official words) that there would be no reduction of the chocolate ration during 1984. Actually, as Winston was aware, the chocolate ration was to be reduced from thirty grammes to twenty at the end of the present week. All that was needed was to substitute for the original promise a warning that it would probably be necessary to reduce the ration at some time in April. ...

As though in confirmation of this, a trumpet call floated from the telescreen just above their heads. However, it was not the proclamation of a military victory this time, but merely an announcement from the Ministry of Plenty. ...

It appeared that there had even been demonstrations to thank Big Brother for raising the chocolate ration to twenty grammes a week. And only yesterday, [Winston] reflected, it had been announced that the ration was to be reduced to twenty grammes a week. Was it possible that they could swallow that, after only twenty-four hours? Yes, they swallowed it. Parsons swallowed it easily, with the stupidity of an animal. The eyeless creature at the other table swallowed it fanatically, passionately, with a furious desire to track down, denounce, and vaporize anyone who should suggest that last week the ration had been thirty grammes. Syme, too-in some more complex way, involving doublethink, Syme swallowed it. Was he, then, alone in the possession of a memory?"

Don't worry, there's no inflation! The economy is recovering!

Vampires Are Real

Today fifty "bipartisan" U.S. senators and President Obama himself were all excited because they're reaching a potential solution to the legislative impasses presented by the need to extend the U.S. debt ceiling that will allow the government to meet its bills. And — surprise! — the solution is some variant of the despicable Simpson-Bowles plan that Obama had contracted out to a bunch of right-wing politicians acting as consultants last year. The new potential deal is the work of the hilariously named "Gang of Six" coalition of conservative Republicans and blue-dog Democrats.

While the actual details seem not to have been formally announced, they don't seem quite so hilarious: the so-called compromise seems to actually include across-the-board tax...cuts, including for the super rich, supposedly offset by a rewriting of the tax code to eliminate deductions and loopholes. And the deal includes cutbacks in all the social programs that Obama claimed he would defend: medicare, medicaid, social security, and even the half-assed healthcare reform. The differences between this bipartisan bill in the Senate and the teabagger/Republican bill in the House (that Obama has promised to veto) are only of degree, not principle.

So what does that mean exactly? Well I will tell you.

A few years ago I worked in the music business. Although I have never been anything close to rich, I had a job — a career even — that paid me more money than I thought I would ever make, at least in my last year there. I worked for that company for sixteen years in the end, after over a decade of what would look to most people like marginal employment elsewhere. I never thought I'd be able to afford to own my place of residence, certainly not in a city like New York. Well strange things happened: my mother was almost killed by medical malpractice. After springing back to life after selling all of her belongings, we had to change from end-of-life planning to planning for the future. It was the height of the housing bubble, and an elderly woman with a microscopic income from a pension and social security, albeit with a lump of cash from selling her belongings, and a middle-aged guy with a terrible credit history but an okay-paying job could get a mortgage and buy a house.

And so we did. The mortgage note was high, but all things considered, it seemed a once-in-a-lifetime chance, and we bought a place big enough for both of us in a working-class Brooklyn neighborhood. It turned out we could afford it, although it wasn't easy. It turns out that the tax benefit to owning your own home is what makes it possible for people like me without money to spare. A whole bunch of money would come back in the beginning of each year, just when it needed to: The interest payments you make on your mortgage turn out to be deductible against your income.

Then, after sixteen years at my job, I got laid off. It was at the beginning of what became the horrible recession that the country (world?) still hasn't climbed out of.

I was out of work for five months, and lucky to get a freelance gig that I still have four years later, at something around half my previous pay. We still have the house, though my savings from the good years are just about gone. I pay the horribly ill-named Freelancers Union exorbitant fees for my own health insurance, and money is tight. (Thank God I got out of the credit card extortion racket and have no other debt.) But at the beginning of each year I'm busted: and that tax benefit is the thin green line that keeps me and my elderly and near-invalid mother housed. Here's what this exciting financial compromise means to me: these bloodsucking vampire politicians will take my home. There is no way that cutting my taxes by the amount being proposed will offset the losses from the elimination of the mortgage interest deductions. None. Unlike the rich people in our government, I don't have a cushion of cash. The economic crisis took all that from me already. It will be impossible to continue to pay the note. And guess what: since this is going to be the case for millions of "middle-class" people just like me, owning a home is no longer going to be feasible for anyone but the super rich. Which means my home will be unsellable.

This is the way the politicians want it.

They're trying their damnedest to come up with a pretty way to take our money for themselves. This is not the undoing of the sixties welfare state or the FDR new deal, this is the beginning of the undoing of every social advance since the late 19th-century confrontation between labor and the robber barons of industry.

Vampires walk the earth. And disturbingly, the vampires who want to replace the current vampire-in-chief are even more bloodthirsty. And half the country is cheering them on. And since when are "gangs," of six or any number, on anybody's side but their own?

Welcome to Zombie Land.

(Graphic is not from the government, but from the guilty-pleasure vampire soap opera "True Blood" on HBO).

Politicians Making Us Sweat

Today was a very hot day in New York City, and I had the day off from work; much needed emotionally though it was a non-paid furlough day: those modern-economy treats dispensed to freelancers during slow hot summers and slow holiday periods. Which is more than frustrating. I certainly never thought in my younger days that paid time off would be as obsolete as subway tokens.

Which makes it all the more frustrating to listen to all the liars lying on the teevee or radio on such an insufferably hot and humid day about this manufactured economic crisis. I'm not that good a psychic: how come nobody else sees that every word out of John Boehner's quivering tear-streaked mouth is a lie? And what is with Obama? His hair sure is gray. I guess all that stuff about defending certain basic principles was filed away in the same drawer with his opposition to wars.

I think what ultimately frustrates me is that it's so clearly a minority of people going through these horrible motions. Even if you buy the questionably democratic logic of the American electoral system, the Republican landslide of 2010 doesn't actually mean that a majority of Americans actually support their absurd positions. Why are they allowed to dictate the narrative on what's wrong with the economy and how to solve it?

If you page through the years of this blog, you'll see some gushingly enthusiastic posts for Obama. To my credit, always with a warning grain of salt, but to my embarrassment, I should have known better than what proved to be all my naive optimism about the capacity of the political system to right its wrongs. At the same time, I guess I'm personally encouraged that as much as what's going on is hard to watch, somewhat demoralizing and actually quite worrisome, I think my re-radicalization is absolutely, even if paradoxically, the fruit of the Obama era.

This last spring saw a wave of revolution sweep a huge swath through the Middle East; most of those revolutions remain unresolved and conflicted by internal and international contradictions. But it seems unlikely that eventually the momentum of resistance will not return to these shores, and maybe all of us who are reduced to the role of impotent spectators watching our future being sold to corporate America and its patrons will remember all the things that a few very smart people once knew. And next time, maybe we'll win.

(Vintage 1960s/70s Black Panther Party poster from the great Emory Douglas, the brilliant house graphic artist of the BPP.)

A Very Simple Explanation

Anyone, Democrat or Republican, who says recipients of government services like Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security should bear a share of "deficit relief" is saying that regular working people and poor people should be, in effect, paying higher taxes. "Giving ground" to this argument is an utter obscenity.

Listen to their words carefully: when politicians say no tax increases, what they mean is no tax increases for rich people or corporations. It's not complicated or hard to understand. It doesn't require a doctorate in economics. There's plenty of money around. They just don't want US to share it.