Saturday, March 31, 2012
Friday, March 30, 2012
When Bankers Rule the World
This article, by David Korten, was posted at YesMagazine.org on March 29, 2012.
The devastation created by Wall Street’s failure affirms three truths that are the foundation on which millions of people are at work building a New Economy:
Financial commentators routinely use terms like wealth, capital, resources, and assets when referring to phantom wealth financial assets, which makes them sound like something real and substantial—whether or not they are backed by anything of real value. Similarly, they identify folks engaged in market speculation and manipulation as investors, thus glossing over the distinction between those who game the system to expropriate wealth and those who contribute to its creation.
The same confusion plays out in the use of financial indicators, particularly stock price indices, to evaluate economic performance. The daily rise and fall of stock prices tells us only how fast the current stock bubble is inflating or deflating and thus how Wall Street speculators are doing relative to the rest of us.
Once we are conditioned to embrace measures of Wall Street success as measures of our own well-being, we are easily recruited as foot soldiers in Wall Street’s relentless campaign to advance policies that support its control of money and thus its hold on nearly every aspect of our lives.
Fortunately, with the help of Occupy Wall Street, Americans are waking up to an important truth. It is a very, very bad idea to yield control of the issuance and allocation of credit (money) to Wall Street banks run by con artists who operate beyond the reach of public accountability and who Greg Smith tells us in his New York Times op-ed view the rest of us as simple-minded marks ripe for the exploiting.
Once working people were unable to make ends meet with current income, Wall Street lured them into making up the difference by taking on credit card and mortgage debt they had no means to repay. They were soon borrowing to pay not only for current consumption, but as well to pay the interest on prior unpaid debt.
This is the classic downward spiral of debt slavery that assures an ever-growing divide between the power and luxury of a creditor class and the powerless desperation of a debtor class.
Although dismissed by Wall Street players as small, quaint, provincial, and inefficient, this locally rooted financial system created the credit that financed our victory in World War II, the Main Street economies that unleashed America’s entrepreneurial talents, the investments that made us the world leader in manufacturing and technology, and the family-wage jobs that built the American middle class. It is a proven model with important lessons relevant for current efforts to restore financial integrity and build an economy that serves all Americans.
Two recent reports from the New Economy Working Group—How to Liberate America from Wall Street Rule and Jobs: A Main Street Fix for Wall Street’s Failure—draw on these lessons to outline a practical program to shift power from Wall Street to Main Street, focus economic policy on real wealth creation, create a true ownership society, unleash Main Street’s entrepreneurial potential, bring ourselves into balance with the biosphere, meet the needs of all, and strengthen democracy in the process.
For far too long, we have allowed Wall Street to play us as marks in a confidence scam of audacious proportion. Then we wonder at our seeming powerlessness to deal with job loss, depressed wages, mortgage foreclosures, political corruption and the plight of our children as they graduate into debt bondage.
Let us be clear. We will no longer play the sucker for Wall Street con artists and we will no longer tolerate public bailouts to save failed Wall Street banks.
Henceforth, when a Wall Street financial institution fails to maintain adequate equity reserves to withstand a major financial shock or is found guilty of systematic violation of the law and/or defrauding the public, we must demand that federal authorities take it over and break it up into strictly regulated, community-accountable, cooperative member-owned financial services institutions.
Occupy Wall Street has focused national and global attention on the source of the problem. Now it’s time for action to bust the Wall Street banking trusts, replace the current Wall Street banking system with a Main Street banking system, and take back America from rule by Wall Street bankers.
David Korten (livingeconomiesforum.org) is the author of Agenda for a New Economy, The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community, and the international best seller When Corporations Rule the World. He is board chair of YES! Magazine, co-chair of the New Economy Working Group, and a founding board member of the Business Alliance for Local Living
Economies.
Wall Street’s World of Illusion
Why has the public for so long tolerated Wall Street’s reckless abuses of power and accepted the resulting devastation? The answer lies in a cultural trance induced by deceptive language and misleading indicators backed by flawed economic theory and accounting sleight-of-hand. To shatter the trance we need to recognize that the deception that Wall Street promotes through its well-funded PR machine rests on three false premises.- We best fulfill our individual moral obligation to society by maximizing our personal financial gain.
- Money is wealth and making money increases the wealth of the society.
- Making money is the proper purpose of the individual enterprise and is the proper measure of prosperity and economic performance.
The devastation created by Wall Street’s failure affirms three truths that are the foundation on which millions of people are at work building a New Economy:
- Our individual and collective well-being depends on acting with concern for the well-being of others. We all do better when we look out for one another.
- Money is not wealth. It is just numbers. Sacrificing the health and happiness of billions of people to grow numbers on computer hard drives to improve one’s score on the Forbes Magazine list of the world’s richest people is immoral. Managing a society’s economy to facilitate this immoral competition at the expense of people and nature is an act of collective insanity.
- The proper purpose of the economy and the enterprises that comprise it is to provide good jobs and quality goods and services beneficial to the health and happiness of people, community and nature. A modest financial profit is essential to a firm’s viability, but is not its proper purpose.
Ends/Means Confusion
Real wealth includes healthful food; fertile land; pure water; clean air; caring relationships; healthy, happy children; quality education and health care; fulfilling opportunities for service; peace; and time for meditation and spiritual reflection. These are among the many forms of real wealth to which we properly expect a sound economy to contribute.
It is a very, very bad idea to yield control of the issuance and
allocation of credit (money) to Wall Street banks run by con artists who
operate beyond the reach of public accountability.
Wall Street has so corrupted our language, however, that it is difficult even to express the crucial distinction between money (a facilitator of economic activity), and real wealth (the purpose of economic activity).
Wall Street has so corrupted our language, however, that it is difficult even to express the crucial distinction between money (a facilitator of economic activity), and real wealth (the purpose of economic activity).
Financial commentators routinely use terms like wealth, capital, resources, and assets when referring to phantom wealth financial assets, which makes them sound like something real and substantial—whether or not they are backed by anything of real value. Similarly, they identify folks engaged in market speculation and manipulation as investors, thus glossing over the distinction between those who game the system to expropriate wealth and those who contribute to its creation.
The same confusion plays out in the use of financial indicators, particularly stock price indices, to evaluate economic performance. The daily rise and fall of stock prices tells us only how fast the current stock bubble is inflating or deflating and thus how Wall Street speculators are doing relative to the rest of us.
Once we are conditioned to embrace measures of Wall Street success as measures of our own well-being, we are easily recruited as foot soldiers in Wall Street’s relentless campaign to advance policies that support its control of money and thus its hold on nearly every aspect of our lives.
Modern Enslavement
In a modern society in which our access to most essential of life from food and water to shelter and health care depends on money, control of money is the ultimate instrument of social control.
Fortunately, with the help of Occupy Wall Street, Americans are waking up to an important truth. It is a very, very bad idea to yield control of the issuance and allocation of credit (money) to Wall Street banks run by con artists who operate beyond the reach of public accountability and who Greg Smith tells us in his New York Times op-ed view the rest of us as simple-minded marks ripe for the exploiting.
Before Wall Street dismantled it, America had a system of transparent
well-regulated community-based, locally-owned, Main Street financial
institutions empowered to put local savings to work investing in
building real community wealth.
By going along with its deceptions, we the people empowered Wall
Street to convert America from a middle class society of entrepreneurs,
investors, and skilled workers into a nation of debt slaves. Buying into
Wall Street lies and illusions, Americans have been lured into
accepting, even aggressively promoting, “tax relief” for the very rich
and the “regulatory relief” and “free trade” agreements for corporations
that allowed Wall Street to suppress wages and benefits for working
people through union busting, automation, and outsourcing jobs to
foreign sweatshops.Once working people were unable to make ends meet with current income, Wall Street lured them into making up the difference by taking on credit card and mortgage debt they had no means to repay. They were soon borrowing to pay not only for current consumption, but as well to pay the interest on prior unpaid debt.
This is the classic downward spiral of debt slavery that assures an ever-growing divide between the power and luxury of a creditor class and the powerless desperation of a debtor class.
Bust the Trusts, Liberate America
Before Wall Street dismantled it, America had a system of transparent, well-regulated, community-based, locally owned, Main Street financial institutions empowered to put local savings to work investing in building real community wealth through the creation and allocation of credit to finance local home buyers and entrepreneurs.
Although dismissed by Wall Street players as small, quaint, provincial, and inefficient, this locally rooted financial system created the credit that financed our victory in World War II, the Main Street economies that unleashed America’s entrepreneurial talents, the investments that made us the world leader in manufacturing and technology, and the family-wage jobs that built the American middle class. It is a proven model with important lessons relevant for current efforts to restore financial integrity and build an economy that serves all Americans.
Two recent reports from the New Economy Working Group—How to Liberate America from Wall Street Rule and Jobs: A Main Street Fix for Wall Street’s Failure—draw on these lessons to outline a practical program to shift power from Wall Street to Main Street, focus economic policy on real wealth creation, create a true ownership society, unleash Main Street’s entrepreneurial potential, bring ourselves into balance with the biosphere, meet the needs of all, and strengthen democracy in the process.
For far too long, we have allowed Wall Street to play us as marks in a confidence scam of audacious proportion. Then we wonder at our seeming powerlessness to deal with job loss, depressed wages, mortgage foreclosures, political corruption and the plight of our children as they graduate into debt bondage.
Let us be clear. We will no longer play the sucker for Wall Street con artists and we will no longer tolerate public bailouts to save failed Wall Street banks.
Henceforth, when a Wall Street financial institution fails to maintain adequate equity reserves to withstand a major financial shock or is found guilty of systematic violation of the law and/or defrauding the public, we must demand that federal authorities take it over and break it up into strictly regulated, community-accountable, cooperative member-owned financial services institutions.
Occupy Wall Street has focused national and global attention on the source of the problem. Now it’s time for action to bust the Wall Street banking trusts, replace the current Wall Street banking system with a Main Street banking system, and take back America from rule by Wall Street bankers.
David Korten (livingeconomiesforum.org) is the author of Agenda for a New Economy, The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community, and the international best seller When Corporations Rule the World. He is board chair of YES! Magazine, co-chair of the New Economy Working Group, and a founding board member of the Business Alliance for Local Living
Economies.
Thursday, March 29, 2012
OB General Assembly to Meet Saturday
How Our Money Is Being Spent
From the National Priorities Project:
In the chart above, education, transportation, foreign relations, energy & the environment ALL received less than 3 cents out of every dollar in 2011. Compare that to our military budget (27 cents) and our health care costs (21 cents)....
On April 17, 2012, your 2011 federal income tax return is due to the IRS. Where did the federal government spend your income taxes during fiscal year 2011?
Federal income tax revenues totaled around $1.13 trillion in fiscal 2011, and this chart shows exactly where the federal government spent each one of those dollars.
In the chart above, education, transportation, foreign relations, energy & the environment ALL received less than 3 cents out of every dollar in 2011. Compare that to our military budget (27 cents) and our health care costs (21 cents)....
On April 17, 2012, your 2011 federal income tax return is due to the IRS. Where did the federal government spend your income taxes during fiscal year 2011?
Federal income tax revenues totaled around $1.13 trillion in fiscal 2011, and this chart shows exactly where the federal government spent each one of those dollars.
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
Monday, March 26, 2012
Sunday, March 25, 2012
Saturday, March 24, 2012
The Story of Broke
The United States isn't broke; we're the richest country on the planet and a country in which the richest among us are doing exceptionally well. But the truth is, our economy is broken, producing more pollution, greenhouse gasses and garbage than any other country. In these and so many other ways, it just isn't working. But rather than invest in something better, we continue to keep this "dinosaur economy" on life support with hundreds of billions of dollars of our tax money. The Story of Broke calls for a shift in government spending toward investments in clean, green solutions—renewable energy, safer chemicals and materials, zero waste and more—that can deliver jobs AND a healthier environment. It's time to rebuild the American Dream; but this time, let's build it better.
Note: If for some reason you can't see the viewer above, click here to watch the video.
Friday, March 23, 2012
What's Worse than Paying Taxes?
This article by Paul Buchheit was first published at NationofChange.
The other day I helped my son with his taxes. He was doing them for the first time, after spending a year with his new college degree looking for a job and managing his student loan account. We found out that he would be paying more in federal taxes than a hedge fund manager who made $5 billion. We calculated that he wouldn't be getting a state refund, because Illinois raised the state tax rate from 3% to 5% in 2011. He would have to pay the full 5% state tax. The top 20 corporations in Illinois paid 2.2% from 2008 to 2010, when the corporate rate was 7.3%.
Having ruined my son's day with this information, I made myself feel even worse by digging deeper into the details of tax avoidance by the wealthy. To get into the 1% club, it takes about $400,000 in salary. Members of the club can make up to 10,000 times MORE than this and pay ZERO taxes because they don't call their income 'income' like we do. They call it "carried interest," which means they can defer taxes almost indefinitely.
Then I went back a few years, to the 1970s, when soon-to-be-in-power Republicans became convinced that lowering taxes on the rich would generate more revenue. It didn't work. Federal revenues are currently at their lowest level in 60 years. The average federal tax rate has gone way down for the richest 1%. Yet remarkably it's gone UP for everyone in the 40th to 95th percentiles of taxpayers, which includes most of the rest of us.
How do wealthy individuals respond? They pout, and avoid taxes even further with clever strategies, such as hiring "full service tax evasion advisers" to help them elude the Internal Revenue Service.
It got worse when I compared my son's taxes to those of corporations. In the 1950s, for every dollar of payroll tax paid by workers, corporations paid three dollars. Now they pay 16 cents.
From 2008 to 2010, the top 100 U.S. corporations paid only 12.2% of their income in taxes, and thirty of them paid nothing at all.
At the state level, a study of 265 large companies revealed that an average of 3% was paid in state taxes, less than half the average state tax rate of 6.2%. The 265 companies avoided a total of $42.7 billion in state corporate income taxes over the three years.
How do corporations respond? They pout, and complain about the corporate tax rate in the U.S., even though the percentage actually paid is very low relative to other OECD countries. Then they look for tax havens. Citizens for Tax Justice reports that the 280 most profitable U.S. corporations sheltered half their profits from taxes between 2008 and 2010.
The rest of us pay a variety of taxes that can consume over 40% of our incomes, such as state and local taxes, payroll taxes, property taxes, sales taxes, and excise taxes. These taxes are regressive and steadily rising. In my hometown of Chicago, the city with the highest sales tax in the country, where the state tax rate was recently increased by 66% and property taxes went up $300 per homeowner, and where 2012 state education spending was cut by a greater percentage than in any other state, a tax break of $85 million per year was given to a company (CME) that has a profit margin higher than any of the top 100 companies in the nation.
When my son's in a better mood I'll tell him about all this. I'll try to convince him that despite all the unfairness, paying taxes is still the best way for many of us to show our patriotism. The more benefits one has received from society, the more he or she should return to our country to keep it productive and well-maintained.
Worse than paying taxes, I'll tell him, is NOT paying taxes. Tax avoiders are cheating millions of people who have contributed to America's productivity over the years and would like to share in some of the resulting benefits.
And then I'll advise him not to stand too close when I start my own taxes.
The other day I helped my son with his taxes. He was doing them for the first time, after spending a year with his new college degree looking for a job and managing his student loan account. We found out that he would be paying more in federal taxes than a hedge fund manager who made $5 billion. We calculated that he wouldn't be getting a state refund, because Illinois raised the state tax rate from 3% to 5% in 2011. He would have to pay the full 5% state tax. The top 20 corporations in Illinois paid 2.2% from 2008 to 2010, when the corporate rate was 7.3%.
Having ruined my son's day with this information, I made myself feel even worse by digging deeper into the details of tax avoidance by the wealthy. To get into the 1% club, it takes about $400,000 in salary. Members of the club can make up to 10,000 times MORE than this and pay ZERO taxes because they don't call their income 'income' like we do. They call it "carried interest," which means they can defer taxes almost indefinitely.
Then I went back a few years, to the 1970s, when soon-to-be-in-power Republicans became convinced that lowering taxes on the rich would generate more revenue. It didn't work. Federal revenues are currently at their lowest level in 60 years. The average federal tax rate has gone way down for the richest 1%. Yet remarkably it's gone UP for everyone in the 40th to 95th percentiles of taxpayers, which includes most of the rest of us.
How do wealthy individuals respond? They pout, and avoid taxes even further with clever strategies, such as hiring "full service tax evasion advisers" to help them elude the Internal Revenue Service.
It got worse when I compared my son's taxes to those of corporations. In the 1950s, for every dollar of payroll tax paid by workers, corporations paid three dollars. Now they pay 16 cents.
From 2008 to 2010, the top 100 U.S. corporations paid only 12.2% of their income in taxes, and thirty of them paid nothing at all.
At the state level, a study of 265 large companies revealed that an average of 3% was paid in state taxes, less than half the average state tax rate of 6.2%. The 265 companies avoided a total of $42.7 billion in state corporate income taxes over the three years.
How do corporations respond? They pout, and complain about the corporate tax rate in the U.S., even though the percentage actually paid is very low relative to other OECD countries. Then they look for tax havens. Citizens for Tax Justice reports that the 280 most profitable U.S. corporations sheltered half their profits from taxes between 2008 and 2010.
The rest of us pay a variety of taxes that can consume over 40% of our incomes, such as state and local taxes, payroll taxes, property taxes, sales taxes, and excise taxes. These taxes are regressive and steadily rising. In my hometown of Chicago, the city with the highest sales tax in the country, where the state tax rate was recently increased by 66% and property taxes went up $300 per homeowner, and where 2012 state education spending was cut by a greater percentage than in any other state, a tax break of $85 million per year was given to a company (CME) that has a profit margin higher than any of the top 100 companies in the nation.
When my son's in a better mood I'll tell him about all this. I'll try to convince him that despite all the unfairness, paying taxes is still the best way for many of us to show our patriotism. The more benefits one has received from society, the more he or she should return to our country to keep it productive and well-maintained.
Worse than paying taxes, I'll tell him, is NOT paying taxes. Tax avoiders are cheating millions of people who have contributed to America's productivity over the years and would like to share in some of the resulting benefits.
And then I'll advise him not to stand too close when I start my own taxes.
Thursday, March 22, 2012
Government Set to Strangle Protests with Threats of Jail
Note: If for some reason you can't see the viewer above, click here to watch the video.
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Brookings Airwaves Welcome "Democracy Now!"
According to the program's website:
"For true democracy to work, people need easy access to independent, diverse sources of news and information.But the last two decades have seen unprecedented corporate media consolidation. The U.S. media was already fairly homogeneous in the early 1980s: some fifty media conglomerates dominated all media outlets, including television, radio, newspapers, magazines, music, publishing and film. In the year 2000, just six corporations dominated the U.S. media. In addition, corporate media outlets in the U.S. are legally responsible to their shareholders to maximize profits. Democracy Now! is funded entirely through contributions from listeners, viewers, and foundations. [It does] not accept advertisers, corporate underwriting, or government funding. This allows [the program] to maintain its independence."
South Dakota Ranks 49th of 50, Receives "F" in State Integrity Study
Mount Rushmore honors the founding principles of American democracy. But the state in which the iconic monument is located lacks some basic components of democratic governance.
South Dakota has neither comprehensive state ethics laws nor an ethics commission to oversee state officials and bureaucrats. And it comes up short in requiring public officials to disclose financial details.
These deficiencies place this state of 824,000 residents at the absolute bottom of the rankings in the State Integrity Investigation. South Dakota earns a grade of F and numeric score of 50, ranking it 49th among America’s 50 states.
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
A New Declaration
This post by Derrick Jensen originally appeared on February 1, 2012, on The Occupied Wall Street Journal.
We hold these truths to be self-evident:
That the real, physical world is the source of our own lives, and the lives of others. A weakened planet is less capable of supporting life, human or otherwise.
Thus the health of the real world is primary, more important than any social or economic system, because all social or economic systems are dependent upon a living planet.
It is self-evident that to value a social system that harms the planet’s capacity to support life over life itself is to be out of touch with physical reality.
That any way of life based on the use of nonrenewable resources is by definition not sustainable.
That any way of life based on the hyper-exploitation of renewable resources is by definition not sustainable: if, for example, fewer salmon return every year, eventually there will be none. This means that for a way of life to be sustainable, it must not harm native communities: native prairies, native forests, native fisheries, and so on.
That the real world is interdependent, such that harm done to rivers harms those humans and nonhumans whose lives depend on these rivers, harms forests and prairies and wetlands surrounding these rivers, harms the oceans into which these rivers flow. Harm done to mountains harms the rivers flowing through them. Harm done to oceans harms everyone directly or indirectly connected to them.
That you cannot argue with physics. If you burn carbon-based fuels, this carbon will go into the air, and have effects in the real world.
That creating and releasing poisons into the world will poison humans and nonhumans.
That no one, no matter how rich or powerful, should be allowed to create poisons for which there is no antidote.
That no one, no matter how rich or powerful, should be allowed to create messes that cannot be cleaned up.
That no one, no matter how rich or powerful, should be allowed to destroy places humans or nonhumans need to survive.
That no one, no matter how rich or powerful, should be allowed to drive human cultures or nonhuman species extinct.
That reality trumps all belief systems: what you believe is not nearly so important as what is real.
That on a finite planet you cannot have an economy based on or requiring growth. At least you cannot have one and expect to either have a planet or a future.
That the current way of life is not sustainable, and will collapse. The only real questions are what will be left of the world after that collapse, and how bad things will be for the humans and nonhumans who come after. We hold it as self-evident that we should do all that we can to make sure that as much of the real, physical world remains intact until the collapse of the current system, and that humans and nonhumans should be as prepared as possible for this collapse.
That the health of local economies are more important than the health of a global economy.
That a global economy should not be allowed to harm local economies or land bases.
That corporations are not living beings. They are certainly not human beings.
That corporations do not in any real sense exist. They are legal fictions. Limited liability corporations are institutions created explicitly to separate humans from the effects of their actions—making them, by definition, inhuman and inhumane. To the degree that we desire to live in a human and humane world—and, really, to the degree that we wish to survive—limited liability corporations need to be eliminated.
That the health of human and nonhuman communities is more important than the profits of corporations.
We hold it as self-evident, as the Declaration of Independence states, “That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends [Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness], it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it. . . .” Further, we hold it as self-evident that it would be more precise to say that it is not the Right of the People, nor even their responsibility, but instead something more like breathing—something that if we fail to do we die.
If we as a People fail to rid our communities of destructive institutions, those institutions will destroy our communities. And if we in our communities cannot provide meaningful and nondestructive ways for people to gain food, clothing, and shelter then we must recognize it’s not just specific destructive institutions but the entire economic system that is pushing the natural world past breaking points. Capitalism is killing the planet. Industrial civilization is killing the planet.
Once we’ve recognized the destructiveness of [predatory] capitalism and industrial civilization—both of which are based on systematically converting a living planet into dead commodities—we’ve no choice, unless we wish to sign our own and our children’s death warrants, but to fight for all we’re worth and in every way we can to overturn it.
 |
Photo: www.bethanybond.com
|
We hold these truths to be self-evident:
That the real, physical world is the source of our own lives, and the lives of others. A weakened planet is less capable of supporting life, human or otherwise.
Thus the health of the real world is primary, more important than any social or economic system, because all social or economic systems are dependent upon a living planet.
It is self-evident that to value a social system that harms the planet’s capacity to support life over life itself is to be out of touch with physical reality.
That any way of life based on the use of nonrenewable resources is by definition not sustainable.
That any way of life based on the hyper-exploitation of renewable resources is by definition not sustainable: if, for example, fewer salmon return every year, eventually there will be none. This means that for a way of life to be sustainable, it must not harm native communities: native prairies, native forests, native fisheries, and so on.
That the real world is interdependent, such that harm done to rivers harms those humans and nonhumans whose lives depend on these rivers, harms forests and prairies and wetlands surrounding these rivers, harms the oceans into which these rivers flow. Harm done to mountains harms the rivers flowing through them. Harm done to oceans harms everyone directly or indirectly connected to them.
That you cannot argue with physics. If you burn carbon-based fuels, this carbon will go into the air, and have effects in the real world.
That creating and releasing poisons into the world will poison humans and nonhumans.
That no one, no matter how rich or powerful, should be allowed to create poisons for which there is no antidote.
That no one, no matter how rich or powerful, should be allowed to create messes that cannot be cleaned up.
That no one, no matter how rich or powerful, should be allowed to destroy places humans or nonhumans need to survive.
That no one, no matter how rich or powerful, should be allowed to drive human cultures or nonhuman species extinct.
That reality trumps all belief systems: what you believe is not nearly so important as what is real.
That on a finite planet you cannot have an economy based on or requiring growth. At least you cannot have one and expect to either have a planet or a future.
That the current way of life is not sustainable, and will collapse. The only real questions are what will be left of the world after that collapse, and how bad things will be for the humans and nonhumans who come after. We hold it as self-evident that we should do all that we can to make sure that as much of the real, physical world remains intact until the collapse of the current system, and that humans and nonhumans should be as prepared as possible for this collapse.
That the health of local economies are more important than the health of a global economy.
That a global economy should not be allowed to harm local economies or land bases.
That corporations are not living beings. They are certainly not human beings.
That corporations do not in any real sense exist. They are legal fictions. Limited liability corporations are institutions created explicitly to separate humans from the effects of their actions—making them, by definition, inhuman and inhumane. To the degree that we desire to live in a human and humane world—and, really, to the degree that we wish to survive—limited liability corporations need to be eliminated.
That the health of human and nonhuman communities is more important than the profits of corporations.
We hold it as self-evident, as the Declaration of Independence states, “That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends [Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness], it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it. . . .” Further, we hold it as self-evident that it would be more precise to say that it is not the Right of the People, nor even their responsibility, but instead something more like breathing—something that if we fail to do we die.
If we as a People fail to rid our communities of destructive institutions, those institutions will destroy our communities. And if we in our communities cannot provide meaningful and nondestructive ways for people to gain food, clothing, and shelter then we must recognize it’s not just specific destructive institutions but the entire economic system that is pushing the natural world past breaking points. Capitalism is killing the planet. Industrial civilization is killing the planet.
Once we’ve recognized the destructiveness of [predatory] capitalism and industrial civilization—both of which are based on systematically converting a living planet into dead commodities—we’ve no choice, unless we wish to sign our own and our children’s death warrants, but to fight for all we’re worth and in every way we can to overturn it.
Monday, March 19, 2012
SDSU to Host Conference on Tribal Responses to Keystone Pipeline
Tribal people from North and South Dakota will share their views on the proposed Keystone Pipeline project at the annual American Indian Histories and Cultures Conference at South Dakota State University, March 28.
“Homeland and Heartland: Tribal Responses to the Keystone Pipeline Project” will feature Tim Mentz Sr., tribal consultant from Standing Rock; Russell Eagle Bear, historic preservation officer at Rosebud; Charmaine White Face, founder of the environmental group Defenders of the Black Hills; and Ben Rhodd, an archeologist and member of the Potawatomi Tribe.
The conference begins at 9 a.m. with White Face presenting on the environmental impact of Keystone; 10 a.m. features Mentz on the historic impact; at 11 a.m. Rhodd, will address the cultural impact; at 1 p.m. Eagle Bear will speak again on the historic impact. At 2 p.m. all speakers will participate in a panel discussion.
Panel moderator Charles Woodard of the SDSU English Department calls the conference “an especially good opportunity for the SDSU and area community to hear tribal perspectives on an issue which is crucially important to us all.”
The conference is free to the public and will be held at the University Student Union, Volstorff Ballroom. No registration required. Paid parking is available on the east parking lot of the Student Union.
The SDSU American Indian Studies Program, the South Dakota Humanities Council, the SDSU American Indian Education and Cultural Center and the English Department sponsor the conference.
For more information on the conference, contact Doris Giago at 605-688-6236 or doris.giago@sdstate.edu.
Sunday, March 18, 2012
Report from OB Planning Retreat, 3/17/2012
Nine OB members attended the planning retreat. The group enjoyed beverages and food prepared by Harsha Mistry, who reported that “Occupy Mango Tree” was a happy success. This report on the retreat, submitted by Phyllis Cole-Dai, is based on notes taken by Mary Schaefer. Thanks for your work, Mary. It isn’t easy to take notes for three hours!
Important announcements:
· Our next Assembly will be at 10:30 a.m. to noon, on Saturday, March 31, at the Library. It will focus on training and planning for the petition drive to refer HB1234 to statewide ballot. Any remaining time will be devoted to 2012 tactical planning.
· Our April Assembly schedule: We will not meet on April 7 due to the holiday. We will meet on April 21 (usual time and place).
· On Wednesday, March 28: all-day conference at SDSU called “Heartland and Homeland: Tribal Resistance to the Keystone Pipeline.” It will be held from 9 am to 3 pm in the Union.
· Please offer feedback to the proposals and suggestions found in this report.
Meeting Report:
Identification of Cultural Values. We identified a number of cultural values prevalent in the Brookings area that Occupy Brookings can also generally affirm. Recognition of these shared values can help us shape effective tactics. These values include: dignity of human beings/individuals, neighborliness (and concern for the neighbor), importance of “the local” (local business, local control, local foods, etc.), respect for the land, respect for work, economic opportunity, democracy, freedom, justice, science-based information and decision-making, and teachings of faith (e.g., “stewardship,” in the best sense). We need to inform the public about how these shared values are under attack by corporatism, a government controlled by the wealthy, etc.
Re-evaluation of OB Initiatives. We would like to propose:
(1) that the initiative currently called “Creative Support of Local Benevolent and Public-Spirited Organizations” be changed to “Creative Support of the Commons” (i.e., public institutions and services, such as public schools, public libraries, post office, first-responder services, national parks, natural resources, etc.). This would shift the existing focus away from community service organizations. We believe that those organizations already have a lot of support in the community, while “the commons” is generally taken for granted, and the disturbing national trend toward privatization of the commons is neither well known nor understood here.
(2) that a new initiative be added: “Creative Support of the Environment.”
Tactical Planning for Each Initiative. We made a start on this but still have much work to do. In summary, this is what we can suggest so far:
(1) “Creative Support of Public Education.” In 2012, we will be primarily concerned in this initiative with (a) helping to fight HB1234, (b) advocating for the easing of college student debt, and (c) educating the public about the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and its role in undermining public education, among other things. We also need to debate whether or not OB will support the penny sales tax.
Because of the time sensitivity around HB1234, we will spend most of our time planning tactics in this area. They will fall into two phases: (a) the petition drive, and (b) (if the petition drive succeeds), the referendum phase. Related to (a), we need to do the following:
· Stay tuned in to news from the Brookings school board as to how to be supportive.
· Train for passing petitions and plan how to gain the most signatures possible (this will be the focus of our next Assembly). We have already requested a petition package.
Related to (b), the referendum phase:
· It is rumored that bonuses in the Brookings school district may be shared by all employees. If this turns out to be true, we should do some sort of public commendation of the school district.
· We should try try to provide a platform for public student feedback (this would need to be done during the school year, probably, though the referendum phase won’t have started by then). Florence Moller will approach Pam Merchant for suggestions about how we might do this. It’s important that the students speak for themselves and not be coached by adults.
· Ditto for the teachers. Phyllis Cole-Dai will approach Donna DeKraai for suggestions. Maybe we can ask teachers who are retiring earlier to offer public statements about why they’re doing so.
(2) “Creative Support of Local Business.” We need to advocate for more fairness to local businesses—we didn’t have time to discuss tactics. Carl Kline brought up the issue of unfair assessment on local business owners of the cost of building a street to be used by Bel Brands. Phyllis Cole-Dai reported how Harsha Mistry experienced obstacles to opening a small business and some suggestions Harsha had for local business advocacy.
(3) “Creative Support of Local Financial Institutions.” We didn’t have time to discuss tactics. But we know that we want to encourage the public to resist the big banks (and also “payday loan” businesses), research local banks to see how “local” they actually are, and investigate local credit unions for their viability.
(4) “Creative Support of the Environment.” We didn’t have much time to discuss tactics, but we agreed to focus on opposition to the Keystone Pipeline, research into Syngenta and its use of the weedkiller Atrazine, and resistance to Monsanto. We will begin with research (Carl Kline has already done a lot) and also try to speak with possible allies against the Keystone Pipeline during the upcoming American Indian conference noted at the top of this report. Tom Behrend will check into possible labor union involvement in resistance to both Keystone and HB1234. Update: Phyllis Cole-Dai’s husband, Jihong Cole-Dai, has suggested a way that we might immediately pursue some research on Antrazine. Details later.
(5) “Creative Support of the Commons.” Again, we didn’t have much time to discuss tactics, but in summary: (a) Some major changes to the United States Postal Service (leading toward privatization) will be taking effect in July. Luanne Napton will check with the Brookings postmaster to see what, if anything, OB can do to help educate the public regarding this move toward privatization and help show support for the USPS as a vital part of the commons. (b) There is also a national trend toward privatizing public libraries. The Brookings Public Library Board will meet at 4:30 p.m. on April 12, and OB is on the agenda. We want to ask what our library’s situation is and ask what OB can do to show support for it, as a proactive defense against privatization. A one-day occupation of the library, for example, could be a fun way to expose these issues to the public. Carl Kline and Phyllis Cole-Dai will prepare some background information about the library privatization trend. (c) We want to work against Citizens United.
Allies. We need to identify allies with whom to work in as many of these areas as possible.
Nonviolence Training. The group was unanimous in its desire for nonviolence training. Carl Kline will start giving one “tip” at each Assembly and helping us practice. More “in-depth” training may be done in the future.
New Law Makes Some Forms of Public Protest Illegal; Dubbed "Anti-Occupy"
With the stroke of a pen, President Obama signed bill HR 347 into law earlier this month. With that move, Obama made it a felony to express freedom of speech in America. The Federal Restricted Buildings and Grounds Improvement Act that effortlessly passed the House and the Senate is a law that most Americans don't know about but could put them behind bars for up to 10 years. The law states it is a prosecutable offense to without lawful authority enter a building or grounds of a special event of national significance or enter a building or grounds where the President or other person protected by the Secret Service is or will be temporarily visiting. In this video journalist David Seaman talks about how, along with the NDAA, HR 347 is detrimental to the First Amendment.
Note: If for some reason you can't see the viewer above, click here to watch the video.
Saturday, March 17, 2012
Friday, March 16, 2012
Recovery for the 1%, Recession for the Rest
This article by Christopher Petrella was first published at NationofChange.
Recovery [ri-kuhv-uh-ree], noun: term used by the 1% to characterize the 99%’s enduring recession.
Sometime last November I listened to a lecture given by economist Richard Wolff. During the Q&A portion of his presentation Dr. Wolff responded to a question posed by a crestfallen college student concerning the duration of the great recession. Dr. Wolff graciously acknowledged the student’s unease and then responded by reframing her original inquiry. He gently offered the following provocation: “We must not ask whether we will surface from this crisis, for we surely will, but rather on whose terms will we emerge?”
The most recent Employment Situation Summary issued by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) last week underscores the worries expressed presciently by Dr. Wolff more than six months ago. The BLS noted that although the United States added 227,000 jobs last month, the average weekly wage only increased by 0.1%. How could this be? Well, nearly 160,000 of the newly created jobs were categorized by the BLS as "low-wage," paying no more than 200% of the poverty income rate for an individual (up to $21,000 annually). Further, part-time work (without medical insurance or a pension) increased to a record 28 million jobs during February and now accounts for roughly 20% of total employment.
Planning an economic recovery on a principle that birthed the recession is simply inane. Historically, one of the most problematic features of a neoliberal economy has been the sharp rise in precarious employment, as employers have unwaveringly pursued strategies that “flexibilize” work and destabilize the very concept of job security. Precarious labor in this sense refers to forms of work typically marked by temporary contracts, limited or no social benefits and statutory guarantees, high degrees of job insecurity, low job tenure, sub-standard wages, and high risks of occupational injury and disease. From a workers’ perspective, precarious employment is unpredictable and ultimately subject to the caprice of 1%. Further, such forms of labor transfer social risks from employers (and the state) to individual workers and their families – to those who can least absorb them.
In 2006, the year for which the most recent data are available, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that the number of “contingent” workers who labor as independent contractors, temporary workers, subcontracted or leased workers, and part-time workers stood at approximately 31% of the total workforce. The GAO also reported that the absolute number of workers in these categories increased by three million (to 42.6 million workers) between 1995 and 2005 while their percentage of the total workforce remained stable. This means that contingent work continued to grow steadily along-side the rest of the economy even in times of so- called economic prosperity.
And finally, a publication entitled “Striking it Richer” released a few weeks ago by U.C. Berkeley Professor of Economics, Emmanuel Saez, confirms many of our most deeply held anxieties concerning the nature and scope of our alleged recovery. Saez finds that “from 2009 to 2010, average real income per family grew by 2.3% but the gains were very uneven. Top 1% incomes grew by 11.6% while bottom 99% incomes grew only by 0.2%. Hence, the top 1% captured 93% of the income gains in the first year of recovery.” He concludes by noting that “the labor market has been creating much more inequality over the last thirty years, with the very top earners capturing a large fraction of macroeconomic productivity gains. A number of factors may help explain this increase in inequality, not only underlying technological changes but also the retreat of institutions developed during the New Deal and World War II – such as progressive tax policies, powerful unions, corporate provision of health and retirement benefits, and changing social norms regarding pay inequality.”
Taken together, these three publications offer an unassailable critique of our commonsense notions of recovery. Above all else, one thing is painfully clear: Economic recoveries are all but certain; economic justice is not.
Recovery [ri-kuhv-uh-ree], noun: term used by the 1% to characterize the 99%’s enduring recession.
Sometime last November I listened to a lecture given by economist Richard Wolff. During the Q&A portion of his presentation Dr. Wolff responded to a question posed by a crestfallen college student concerning the duration of the great recession. Dr. Wolff graciously acknowledged the student’s unease and then responded by reframing her original inquiry. He gently offered the following provocation: “We must not ask whether we will surface from this crisis, for we surely will, but rather on whose terms will we emerge?”
The most recent Employment Situation Summary issued by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) last week underscores the worries expressed presciently by Dr. Wolff more than six months ago. The BLS noted that although the United States added 227,000 jobs last month, the average weekly wage only increased by 0.1%. How could this be? Well, nearly 160,000 of the newly created jobs were categorized by the BLS as "low-wage," paying no more than 200% of the poverty income rate for an individual (up to $21,000 annually). Further, part-time work (without medical insurance or a pension) increased to a record 28 million jobs during February and now accounts for roughly 20% of total employment.
Planning an economic recovery on a principle that birthed the recession is simply inane. Historically, one of the most problematic features of a neoliberal economy has been the sharp rise in precarious employment, as employers have unwaveringly pursued strategies that “flexibilize” work and destabilize the very concept of job security. Precarious labor in this sense refers to forms of work typically marked by temporary contracts, limited or no social benefits and statutory guarantees, high degrees of job insecurity, low job tenure, sub-standard wages, and high risks of occupational injury and disease. From a workers’ perspective, precarious employment is unpredictable and ultimately subject to the caprice of 1%. Further, such forms of labor transfer social risks from employers (and the state) to individual workers and their families – to those who can least absorb them.
In 2006, the year for which the most recent data are available, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that the number of “contingent” workers who labor as independent contractors, temporary workers, subcontracted or leased workers, and part-time workers stood at approximately 31% of the total workforce. The GAO also reported that the absolute number of workers in these categories increased by three million (to 42.6 million workers) between 1995 and 2005 while their percentage of the total workforce remained stable. This means that contingent work continued to grow steadily along-side the rest of the economy even in times of so- called economic prosperity.
And finally, a publication entitled “Striking it Richer” released a few weeks ago by U.C. Berkeley Professor of Economics, Emmanuel Saez, confirms many of our most deeply held anxieties concerning the nature and scope of our alleged recovery. Saez finds that “from 2009 to 2010, average real income per family grew by 2.3% but the gains were very uneven. Top 1% incomes grew by 11.6% while bottom 99% incomes grew only by 0.2%. Hence, the top 1% captured 93% of the income gains in the first year of recovery.” He concludes by noting that “the labor market has been creating much more inequality over the last thirty years, with the very top earners capturing a large fraction of macroeconomic productivity gains. A number of factors may help explain this increase in inequality, not only underlying technological changes but also the retreat of institutions developed during the New Deal and World War II – such as progressive tax policies, powerful unions, corporate provision of health and retirement benefits, and changing social norms regarding pay inequality.”
Taken together, these three publications offer an unassailable critique of our commonsense notions of recovery. Above all else, one thing is painfully clear: Economic recoveries are all but certain; economic justice is not.
Thursday, March 15, 2012
How to Create a Dilemma
This post by George Lakey was originally published by WagingNonviolence.org on March 13, 2012. If for some reason you can't see the viewer below, click here to watch the video that accompanies the article.
Because tactics are much on the minds of activists in Occupy these days—and many other movements—I’ll devote my column occasionally to that aspect of strategy.
I’m using the military definition of tactics: actions or maneuvers that are intended to produce an advantage in a struggle with an opponent. A given nonviolent method may or may not be a tactic, depending on its objective. A group picketing a bank, for instance, may be there just to express a point of view—a lot of protests are exactly that—and the bank can safely shrug its marble shoulders and go on with business. But a labor union may use the same method when picketing a factory to decrease the chances of replacement workers going inside. In that case, picketing is truly a tactic, a method of action intended to produce an advantage in a struggle with an opponent.
Today, I’d like to talk about a particular form of action whose objective is to put the opponent into a dilemma where, whichever choice is made by the opponent, the campaigners gain an advantage. I invented the concept for my 1973 book, Strategy for a Living Revolution—though other people have implied that they invented it, too!
A recent example of a dilemma demonstration was in the neighborhood-based direct action campaign to prevent the 1 percent (including a billionaire from Chicago) from picking the pockets of Philadelphia’s 99 percent through casino gambling. The campaign was started by young friends of mine against the advice of Philly “old heads” who said the casinos were “a done deal.” In his account of the campaign, researcher William Lawrence tells us that, of the two casinos designated by the state of Pennsylvania to operate in Philadelphia, the campaign stopped one of them and forced the other to shrink to a third of its intended size.
Among their many imaginative tactics, Casino-Free Philadelphia used a dilemma demonstration they called “citizens’ document search.” The state had set up a gambling regulatory commission that collected planning information and operated in secrecy. The campaigners demanded that the files be made available to the public, and said that if the commission refused the campaigners would be forced to enter the commission’s offices and liberate the information that the public had a right to know.
The commission was put in a dilemma. If it revealed the documents, the campaigners won: the information contained would damn the commission. If it did not reveal the documents but instead called the police to arrest the activists engaged in the document search, the campaigners also won: an obscure bureaucratic agency would be spotlighted for its probable conspiracy against the public interest. (This mini-campaign was called “Operation Transparency,” inspired by the Canadian model invented by Philippe Duhamel and reported by Hannah Jones and William Lawrence.)
To underscore their point and attract even more media interest, the campaigners went to Pennsylvania’s State Capitol ahead of time and, using rags, buckets and water, washed the windows of the building where the commission’s offices were located—all “to promote transparency.”
When the activists came back to the Capitol a week later to do the document search, the commission chose to arrest them. But the campaign grew amidst widespread mass media coverage, and the commission ended up embarrassedly releasing some of its records anyway!
In this way, the dilemma demonstration empowers activists because it provides an advantage either way the opponent responds. The civil rights sit-inners go into a luncheonette and demand a cup of coffee. If they get the cup of coffee, great—another discriminatory practice falls! If they get arrested or beaten up instead, the activists still gain an advantage. The violence that underlies racism is exposed and the movement grows.
The secret in designing a dilemma is that the campaigners need to create an advantage for themselves no matter what happens. It wouldn’t work if the demonstrators couldn’t create an advantage either way—if the sit-inners, for example, regarded getting the coffee (or being beaten and jailed) as a defeat. Like a good playwright, the tactical artist uses imagination to create choices that are fine for the campaign but bad for the opponent.
One reason that Gandhi became the preeminent leader of India’s independence struggle was because he knew this art, and his people loved twisting the tail of the British lion. Take, for example, the collecting of salt by millions of Indians in 1930, as researcher Aden Tedla describes in this short account. The campaign used a variety of tactics, but the central role played by making salt as an act of civil disobedience had to do with its being a dilemma demonstration. The British could have refused to arrest people for making the often-inedible substance, but that would mean giving up their highly lucrative salt monopoly. Still, the Indian National Congress would have been delighted if the British had made that choice. Instead, the empire chose repression, which was also fine with the Indians because it shredded the legitimacy of the British and hastened their departure.
When, in 1967, A Quaker Action Group (AQAG) sailed the Phoenix ketch to North Vietnam with medical supplies in defiance of U.S. law, it created a dilemma for the U.S. government. The ship’s route from Hong Kong to Haiphong took it directly through the U.S. Seventh Fleet; it would be easy for the Navy to stop the boat and arrest the crew. The government could’ve also followed through on its threat to prosecute me and the other officers of AQAG, seize our bank account, padlock our office. On the other hand, that would mean stopping Quakers from doing our ancestral duty of humanitarian aid to the victims of war, and the government was already watching significant demographics shifting away from supporting the war. We were prepared for either response of the government; it, again, was a dilemma demonstration.
The dilemma so challenged the government that consultations among the State Department, Treasury and the Pentagon couldn’t resolve the issue; finally the White House decided to allow the Phoenix to sail unharmed to Haiphong harbor and unload its medicines for civilians suffering under U.S. bombs. Our story made the nightly news on television and was all over the press. The peace movement grew.
Sometimes, however, activists will try to take a shortcut known as “provocation.” In tactical terms, provocation is vastly inferior to the dilemma demonstration because, simply, the public is not that stupid. Most people can see that the activists don’t really want whatever this disruptive thing is that aims at a repressive response—stopping traffic, for example; the activists just want a police attack. Most people (including otherwise potential allies) will shrug their shoulders and say, “If they want it, the activists should get it.”
What gives a dilemma demonstration its power is the dramatic clarity in the fact that the activists really want to expose the documents, make the salt, deliver the medicines or drink the coffee.
The downside, however—and every tactic has its downside—is that a dilemma demonstration takes imagination to create. A rule among my friends in the Casino-Free Philadelphia campaign was never to organize a march or a rally. They made that agreement to force themselves to become creative and to invent new tactics. And, in four years of campaigning, they never did hold a march or a rally. There is so much else one can do.
Because tactics are much on the minds of activists in Occupy these days—and many other movements—I’ll devote my column occasionally to that aspect of strategy.
I’m using the military definition of tactics: actions or maneuvers that are intended to produce an advantage in a struggle with an opponent. A given nonviolent method may or may not be a tactic, depending on its objective. A group picketing a bank, for instance, may be there just to express a point of view—a lot of protests are exactly that—and the bank can safely shrug its marble shoulders and go on with business. But a labor union may use the same method when picketing a factory to decrease the chances of replacement workers going inside. In that case, picketing is truly a tactic, a method of action intended to produce an advantage in a struggle with an opponent.
Today, I’d like to talk about a particular form of action whose objective is to put the opponent into a dilemma where, whichever choice is made by the opponent, the campaigners gain an advantage. I invented the concept for my 1973 book, Strategy for a Living Revolution—though other people have implied that they invented it, too!
A recent example of a dilemma demonstration was in the neighborhood-based direct action campaign to prevent the 1 percent (including a billionaire from Chicago) from picking the pockets of Philadelphia’s 99 percent through casino gambling. The campaign was started by young friends of mine against the advice of Philly “old heads” who said the casinos were “a done deal.” In his account of the campaign, researcher William Lawrence tells us that, of the two casinos designated by the state of Pennsylvania to operate in Philadelphia, the campaign stopped one of them and forced the other to shrink to a third of its intended size.
Among their many imaginative tactics, Casino-Free Philadelphia used a dilemma demonstration they called “citizens’ document search.” The state had set up a gambling regulatory commission that collected planning information and operated in secrecy. The campaigners demanded that the files be made available to the public, and said that if the commission refused the campaigners would be forced to enter the commission’s offices and liberate the information that the public had a right to know.
The commission was put in a dilemma. If it revealed the documents, the campaigners won: the information contained would damn the commission. If it did not reveal the documents but instead called the police to arrest the activists engaged in the document search, the campaigners also won: an obscure bureaucratic agency would be spotlighted for its probable conspiracy against the public interest. (This mini-campaign was called “Operation Transparency,” inspired by the Canadian model invented by Philippe Duhamel and reported by Hannah Jones and William Lawrence.)
To underscore their point and attract even more media interest, the campaigners went to Pennsylvania’s State Capitol ahead of time and, using rags, buckets and water, washed the windows of the building where the commission’s offices were located—all “to promote transparency.”
When the activists came back to the Capitol a week later to do the document search, the commission chose to arrest them. But the campaign grew amidst widespread mass media coverage, and the commission ended up embarrassedly releasing some of its records anyway!
In this way, the dilemma demonstration empowers activists because it provides an advantage either way the opponent responds. The civil rights sit-inners go into a luncheonette and demand a cup of coffee. If they get the cup of coffee, great—another discriminatory practice falls! If they get arrested or beaten up instead, the activists still gain an advantage. The violence that underlies racism is exposed and the movement grows.
The secret in designing a dilemma is that the campaigners need to create an advantage for themselves no matter what happens. It wouldn’t work if the demonstrators couldn’t create an advantage either way—if the sit-inners, for example, regarded getting the coffee (or being beaten and jailed) as a defeat. Like a good playwright, the tactical artist uses imagination to create choices that are fine for the campaign but bad for the opponent.
One reason that Gandhi became the preeminent leader of India’s independence struggle was because he knew this art, and his people loved twisting the tail of the British lion. Take, for example, the collecting of salt by millions of Indians in 1930, as researcher Aden Tedla describes in this short account. The campaign used a variety of tactics, but the central role played by making salt as an act of civil disobedience had to do with its being a dilemma demonstration. The British could have refused to arrest people for making the often-inedible substance, but that would mean giving up their highly lucrative salt monopoly. Still, the Indian National Congress would have been delighted if the British had made that choice. Instead, the empire chose repression, which was also fine with the Indians because it shredded the legitimacy of the British and hastened their departure.
When, in 1967, A Quaker Action Group (AQAG) sailed the Phoenix ketch to North Vietnam with medical supplies in defiance of U.S. law, it created a dilemma for the U.S. government. The ship’s route from Hong Kong to Haiphong took it directly through the U.S. Seventh Fleet; it would be easy for the Navy to stop the boat and arrest the crew. The government could’ve also followed through on its threat to prosecute me and the other officers of AQAG, seize our bank account, padlock our office. On the other hand, that would mean stopping Quakers from doing our ancestral duty of humanitarian aid to the victims of war, and the government was already watching significant demographics shifting away from supporting the war. We were prepared for either response of the government; it, again, was a dilemma demonstration.
The dilemma so challenged the government that consultations among the State Department, Treasury and the Pentagon couldn’t resolve the issue; finally the White House decided to allow the Phoenix to sail unharmed to Haiphong harbor and unload its medicines for civilians suffering under U.S. bombs. Our story made the nightly news on television and was all over the press. The peace movement grew.
Sometimes, however, activists will try to take a shortcut known as “provocation.” In tactical terms, provocation is vastly inferior to the dilemma demonstration because, simply, the public is not that stupid. Most people can see that the activists don’t really want whatever this disruptive thing is that aims at a repressive response—stopping traffic, for example; the activists just want a police attack. Most people (including otherwise potential allies) will shrug their shoulders and say, “If they want it, the activists should get it.”
What gives a dilemma demonstration its power is the dramatic clarity in the fact that the activists really want to expose the documents, make the salt, deliver the medicines or drink the coffee.
The downside, however—and every tactic has its downside—is that a dilemma demonstration takes imagination to create. A rule among my friends in the Casino-Free Philadelphia campaign was never to organize a march or a rally. They made that agreement to force themselves to become creative and to invent new tactics. And, in four years of campaigning, they never did hold a march or a rally. There is so much else one can do.
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Monday, March 12, 2012
OB to Hold "Planning Retreat" on Saturday
Occupy Mango Tree on Saturday!
Celebrate St. Patrick’s Day this coming Saturday, March 17, at “Occupy Mango Tree,” sponsored by Occupy Brookings as part of our “Buy Local” initiative. Mango Tree, owned and operated by Brookings resident Harsha Mistry, is an award-winning café located on the second floor of the Brookings Public Library. It is typically open the same hours as the library (closing a half-hour earlier). However, during the one-day occupation it will extend its hours from 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
Occupy Mango Tree is a way for us in the community to support this wonderful café, to thank Harsha for how she adds to the rich tapestry of Brookings life, and to highlight once again the significance of locally-owned businesses to our town’s economy. We invite everyone to turn out for this special celebration!
The Mango Tree menu for Saturday’s event will feature caramel rolls in the morning and, in honor of St. Patrick’s Day, Irish selections for lunch, including baked potato soup, soda bread sandwich, cabbage salad, and Irish Cream coffee. The menu typically has not only soups and sandwiches but also fresh baked goods and a variety of drinks, from mochas, cappuccinos and lattes, to loose leaf teas, fresh fruit smoothies and iced drinks. All items are made from scratch every day.
Mango Tree opened in September, 2009. Accessible by stairs or by elevator, it has a cozy environment, complete with comfortable furnishings, Wi-Fi and a board-game table for anyone in the mood for checkers, chess or backgammon. The café is the first business venture for Mistry, who acts as an independent contractor, operating without any funding support from the library, paying rent for the space.
Occupy Brookings has made support of local businesses one of our top priorities. We believe that community-based merchants are essential to the local economy. For each dollar spent at a locally owned restaurant or shop, three or more times that amount typically goes back into the local economy, in contrast to a dollar spent at a chain-owned business.
Local businesses like Mango Tree also help define a "sense of place" for community members. They help make Brookings feel like Brookings. Their owners, like Harsha, are a vital part of who we are, having a vested interest in our community’s life, unlike the chains. Harsha and her husband Vikram have lived here for more than two decades. They’ve raised their children here. They have a vested interest in our community’s life. For so many reasons, businesses like Harsha’s are important to us. But their survival depends on our patronage. We need to honor them by choosing to support them.
Cuts and Consequences: How Budget Cuts Hurt the Economy
This article by Dave Johnson was first published at NationofChange at http://www.nationofchange.org/cuts-and-consequences-how-budget-cuts-hurt-economy-1331475186.
Is smaller government really better for the economy?
Conservatives chant that taxes and government "take money out of the economy" and we need to "cut and grow," meaning if government spending is cut way back the economy will grow as a result. Europe's conservatives are also forcing cuts in the things their governments do for regular people, claiming "austerity" will bring "confidence" that grows their economies.
How is this experiment working out? What are we learning about the effect on the larger economy when government is cut?
What Does Government Do?
Almost everything the government does is because it needs to be done. We need roads, bridges, schools and colleges, dams, courts, police and fire departments, water management, etc. (We can discuss the need for military spending another time.)
These are all needed and contribute to the functioning of the economy. So if government is cut back and doesn’t do something that is needed, then how does it get done? Or does it just not get done?
Either way, the real question we should be asking is what is the effect on the larger economy when our government cuts back on or stops doing needed things? If you save the “government” a bit of money but cost the economy a lot of money, are you saving money? Or are cuts in government really just shifting and even increasing the costs in the larger economy of doing these things?
Who Is Our Government For?
In the United States, our Constitution says that government is supposed to be of, by and for We, the People. The country was established after the colonists rebelled against the aristocracy of England, a few people who had all of the wealth and power and would not let the colonists have a say in how things were run and who would benefit. So they fought the Revolutionary War and established a country where "We, the People" all have an equal say, and to "promote the general welfare." In other words, a country that aspires to be of, by and for the good of all of us.
So cutting back on government means cutting back on We, the People doing things for the good of all of us. It means cutting back on the things we have a say over. It means relinquishing the wealth and power that we hold in common to ... well, just where does our common wealth and power go if our government is cut back?
Medicare, For Example
Republicans say we need to cut back on what the government spends on Medicare. But if you cut Medicare the health problems of elderly people and the larger problem of fast-rising health care costs in the larger economy don’t disappear. In fact, both problems just get worse.
The "Ryan Budget" that Congressional Republicans voted to approve actually converts Medicare into a program that gives seniors a voucher that pays for part of a private medical insurance policy that seniors have to shop for. The Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), in Cost of Medicare Equivalent Insurance Skyrockets under Ryan Plan, took a look at that plan and explains what happens to the cost of health care. Summary: it shifts the costs to us, except each of us ends up paying as much as seven times more than we would save under Medicare. From the CEPR explanation:
Repeat, the Republican plan to cut Medicare would cost the larger economy seven times as much as it cuts government spending.
Social Security, For Example
Conservatives have been trying to cut or gut Social Security for decades. While this might mean government has to pay out less of what is owed to seniors, such cuts would have a negative effect on the larger economy.
Social Security allows working people to retire with at least a minimal income. If this is cut, many could not retire for many more years (if ever), which would increase the unemployment rate because their jobs would not open up. The same is true when the retirement age is increased: fewer job openings. If Social Security is cut, the spending (on cat food) at local grocery stores and other necessities is reduced by the same amount. And the effect on children of retirees is increased if they contribute to make up the difference.
This is why cutting Social Security or raising the retirement age only shifts costs onto the larger economy, dragging it down (and cruelly hurting our elderly).
Cutting Disease Control, For Example
One of the clearest examples of the way government helps us all, rich and poor, is the government's Center for Disease Control (CDC).
One of the jobs of the CDC is to help prevent the spread of infectious diseases. If an epidemic is spreading and killing people it doesn't matter if those people are rich or poor. And if a serious outbreak spreads this can damage the economy as people are too sick to, or decide not to show up for work. So of course cutting back the budget of the CDC could cause damage to the economy in any given year and is certain to cause damage eventually. (The CDC budget was cut back 11 percent last year.)
Budget Cuts Hurt the Economy
The above are only a few examples.
A government budget cut is like a huge tax increase on regular people because it increases what each of us pays for the things government does—or forces us to go without. This is because cuts in government spending don’t actually cut thecostor the need for those things, they just shift those costs onto the larger economy.
But because these shifts attack the economy-of-scale, transparency, integrity and public-good management that government provides, they almost always increase the costs and harms to the larger economy.
As budgets are cut, the costs are increased and shifted to the larger economy.
Austerity in Europe
Several countries in Europe are severely cutting budgets. The result is that the economies in those countries are slowing. Reuters reported in "Euro zone's slump in late 2011 points to recession".
The austerity experiment is making the case: cutting government budgets just shifts costs and hurts the larger economy.
Who Benefits From Cuts?
Governments dance with the ones that brung 'em. Whoever controls government is naturally going to direct government to benefit them – and only them. We-the-People democracies do things for We, the People; plutocracies do things for plutocrats. So when, as now, plutocrats are running government, you will get a government that only does things that benefit plutocrats. And when We, the People were running government, we did things that benefit We, the People -- all of us.
The plutocrats now demanding government budget cuts obviously understand that this will result in slowing economies, but don't care -- they are already fabulously wealthy. What they want is reduced taxes and increased power. They say that cuts will bring growth, in order to persuade people to accept cuts. Blocking governments from providing things that don't directly benefit them and only them is a means to that end. And cutting government cuts government's ability to reign them in.
What We, the People Want
When We, the People are running government we insist that government increases overall prosperity. We demand laws and regulations that bring us good wages, benefits and safe working conditions. We demand good public schools & colleges, parks, safety and opportunities for our smaller businesses to fairly compete. We insist on a clean environment, consumer protections, regulations on business behavior, rules against monopolies and (after learning the hard way) rules that keep banks from taking risks that threaten the economy. And we want controls and limits on the use of wealth and power by the 1%ers.
Plutocrats -- the 1%ers -- of course see all of these protections of regular people as hindering their power and ability to make as much for themselves as they can grab. Plutocrats just don’t see how public parks benefit them. They just don’t see why they should have to pay for public schools. What good do public schools do them, today? Plutocrats don’t see why it should be anyone else's problem if old people don’t have health care -- health care for seniors certainly isn't their problem.
They explain that things for anyone other than themselves and their interests just “wastes money.” Things for regular peopleare not their problem. And when plutocrats run government, it isn't their problem.
The fact is a public park “costs money.” Schools and infrastructure are just more “government spending.” Things like that just "redistribute income" because taxes on the income of plutocrats is used to build that park or school that anyone can use. The basic message of the plutocrat is, "Why should I pay for anything that benefits you?"
You and I might argue that this kind of austerity, cutting schools, Medicare, infrastructure, etc. slows the larger economy, hurting the plutocrats, too. But that doesn’t hurt the ones who are already rich, which is the definition of plutocrat. It puts more in their pockets, today, by lowering their taxes. They want out of taxes and they don't want government (We, the People) interfering with their power.
What We, The People Need
Democracies where We, the People make decisions demand things that are good for regular people and their small businesses: pensions, health care, modernized infrastructure, good schools & colleges, child care, regulations on the behavior of giant corporations... This is why strong democracies have proven to be more prosperous for regular people and for longer than other forms of government that leave people on their own against the wealthy and powerful and drive all of the income and wealth to a few at the top. This is why so many regular working people in our country were so much more prosperous in the decades before the plutocratic 1%-favoring policies of Reagan steered us toward plutocracy.
Understand what is going on here. Demands for budget cuts and austerity are really about shifting from democracy to a system where regular people -- the 99% -- are on their own, up against the wealthy and powerful. This is about shifting from a system where regular people can be prosperous together, to a system where a few -- the 1% -- have all the wealth and power.
We, the People need democracy restored. We need to be in charge again, before the economy can really serve us again.
Is smaller government really better for the economy?
Conservatives chant that taxes and government "take money out of the economy" and we need to "cut and grow," meaning if government spending is cut way back the economy will grow as a result. Europe's conservatives are also forcing cuts in the things their governments do for regular people, claiming "austerity" will bring "confidence" that grows their economies.
How is this experiment working out? What are we learning about the effect on the larger economy when government is cut?
What Does Government Do?
Almost everything the government does is because it needs to be done. We need roads, bridges, schools and colleges, dams, courts, police and fire departments, water management, etc. (We can discuss the need for military spending another time.)
These are all needed and contribute to the functioning of the economy. So if government is cut back and doesn’t do something that is needed, then how does it get done? Or does it just not get done?
Either way, the real question we should be asking is what is the effect on the larger economy when our government cuts back on or stops doing needed things? If you save the “government” a bit of money but cost the economy a lot of money, are you saving money? Or are cuts in government really just shifting and even increasing the costs in the larger economy of doing these things?
Who Is Our Government For?
In the United States, our Constitution says that government is supposed to be of, by and for We, the People. The country was established after the colonists rebelled against the aristocracy of England, a few people who had all of the wealth and power and would not let the colonists have a say in how things were run and who would benefit. So they fought the Revolutionary War and established a country where "We, the People" all have an equal say, and to "promote the general welfare." In other words, a country that aspires to be of, by and for the good of all of us.
So cutting back on government means cutting back on We, the People doing things for the good of all of us. It means cutting back on the things we have a say over. It means relinquishing the wealth and power that we hold in common to ... well, just where does our common wealth and power go if our government is cut back?
Medicare, For Example
Republicans say we need to cut back on what the government spends on Medicare. But if you cut Medicare the health problems of elderly people and the larger problem of fast-rising health care costs in the larger economy don’t disappear. In fact, both problems just get worse.
The "Ryan Budget" that Congressional Republicans voted to approve actually converts Medicare into a program that gives seniors a voucher that pays for part of a private medical insurance policy that seniors have to shop for. The Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), in Cost of Medicare Equivalent Insurance Skyrockets under Ryan Plan, took a look at that plan and explains what happens to the cost of health care. Summary: it shifts the costs to us, except each of us ends up paying as much as seven times more than we would save under Medicare. From the CEPR explanation:
[The Republican] plan to revamp Medicare has been described as shifting costs from the government to beneficiaries. A new report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), however, shows that the [Republican] proposal will increase health care costs for seniors by more than seven dollars for every dollar it saves the government, a point missing from much of the debate over the plan.
... In addition to comparing the costs of Medicare to the government under the current system and under the [Republican] plan, the authors also show the effects of raising the age of Medicare eligibility. The paper also demonstrates that while [the Republican plan ] shifts $4.9 trillion in health care costs from the government to Medicare beneficiaries, this number is dwarfed by a $34 trillion increase in overall costs to beneficiaries that is projected ...
Repeat, the Republican plan to cut Medicare would cost the larger economy seven times as much as it cuts government spending.
Social Security, For Example
Conservatives have been trying to cut or gut Social Security for decades. While this might mean government has to pay out less of what is owed to seniors, such cuts would have a negative effect on the larger economy.
Social Security allows working people to retire with at least a minimal income. If this is cut, many could not retire for many more years (if ever), which would increase the unemployment rate because their jobs would not open up. The same is true when the retirement age is increased: fewer job openings. If Social Security is cut, the spending (on cat food) at local grocery stores and other necessities is reduced by the same amount. And the effect on children of retirees is increased if they contribute to make up the difference.
This is why cutting Social Security or raising the retirement age only shifts costs onto the larger economy, dragging it down (and cruelly hurting our elderly).
Cutting Disease Control, For Example
One of the clearest examples of the way government helps us all, rich and poor, is the government's Center for Disease Control (CDC).
One of the jobs of the CDC is to help prevent the spread of infectious diseases. If an epidemic is spreading and killing people it doesn't matter if those people are rich or poor. And if a serious outbreak spreads this can damage the economy as people are too sick to, or decide not to show up for work. So of course cutting back the budget of the CDC could cause damage to the economy in any given year and is certain to cause damage eventually. (The CDC budget was cut back 11 percent last year.)
Budget Cuts Hurt the Economy
The above are only a few examples.
A government budget cut is like a huge tax increase on regular people because it increases what each of us pays for the things government does—or forces us to go without. This is because cuts in government spending don’t actually cut thecostor the need for those things, they just shift those costs onto the larger economy.
But because these shifts attack the economy-of-scale, transparency, integrity and public-good management that government provides, they almost always increase the costs and harms to the larger economy.
- As government health care is cut (or not provided in the first place) each of us must take on those costs on our own, and as demonstrated, pay up to seven times what the same care would/could have cost.
- As infrastructure maintenance and modernization is cut, our economy becomes less competitive, unemployment increases and our wages and spending power fall.
- As spending on education is cut, our costs of educating ourselves and our kids increase. College costs soar. And the overall education level of our people will decrease, making our country less competitive in the world.
- As environmental regulation and enforcement is cut the costs of the resulting health problems and cleanups increase and our quality-of-life will decrease.
- As enforcement of labor laws is cut, our wages and protections fall.
- As etc. is cut, the costs of etc. are shifted to the larger economy, and the total costs of accomplishing etc. actually increase.
As budgets are cut, the costs are increased and shifted to the larger economy.
Austerity in Europe
Several countries in Europe are severely cutting budgets. The result is that the economies in those countries are slowing. Reuters reported in "Euro zone's slump in late 2011 points to recession".
A collapse in household spending, exports and manufacturing sucked the life out of the euro zone's economy in the final months of 2011, the EU said on Tuesday, showing the scope of the downturn that looks set to become a fully fledged recession.
... The European Commission forecasts a recession of the same magnitude this year. That would be the euro zone's second contraction in just three years as the bloc's debt crisis drags on a region that generates around 16 percent of the world's economic output.
[. . .] The battle between austerity and growth was already evident in the fourth quarter. Euro zone government expenditure fell 0.2 percent, while industry contracted 2 percent and imports were down 1.2 percent, making for some of the worst readings since the world was dragged into the 2008/2009 financial crisis.
The austerity experiment is making the case: cutting government budgets just shifts costs and hurts the larger economy.
Who Benefits From Cuts?
Governments dance with the ones that brung 'em. Whoever controls government is naturally going to direct government to benefit them – and only them. We-the-People democracies do things for We, the People; plutocracies do things for plutocrats. So when, as now, plutocrats are running government, you will get a government that only does things that benefit plutocrats. And when We, the People were running government, we did things that benefit We, the People -- all of us.
The plutocrats now demanding government budget cuts obviously understand that this will result in slowing economies, but don't care -- they are already fabulously wealthy. What they want is reduced taxes and increased power. They say that cuts will bring growth, in order to persuade people to accept cuts. Blocking governments from providing things that don't directly benefit them and only them is a means to that end. And cutting government cuts government's ability to reign them in.
What We, the People Want
When We, the People are running government we insist that government increases overall prosperity. We demand laws and regulations that bring us good wages, benefits and safe working conditions. We demand good public schools & colleges, parks, safety and opportunities for our smaller businesses to fairly compete. We insist on a clean environment, consumer protections, regulations on business behavior, rules against monopolies and (after learning the hard way) rules that keep banks from taking risks that threaten the economy. And we want controls and limits on the use of wealth and power by the 1%ers.
Plutocrats -- the 1%ers -- of course see all of these protections of regular people as hindering their power and ability to make as much for themselves as they can grab. Plutocrats just don’t see how public parks benefit them. They just don’t see why they should have to pay for public schools. What good do public schools do them, today? Plutocrats don’t see why it should be anyone else's problem if old people don’t have health care -- health care for seniors certainly isn't their problem.
They explain that things for anyone other than themselves and their interests just “wastes money.” Things for regular peopleare not their problem. And when plutocrats run government, it isn't their problem.
The fact is a public park “costs money.” Schools and infrastructure are just more “government spending.” Things like that just "redistribute income" because taxes on the income of plutocrats is used to build that park or school that anyone can use. The basic message of the plutocrat is, "Why should I pay for anything that benefits you?"
You and I might argue that this kind of austerity, cutting schools, Medicare, infrastructure, etc. slows the larger economy, hurting the plutocrats, too. But that doesn’t hurt the ones who are already rich, which is the definition of plutocrat. It puts more in their pockets, today, by lowering their taxes. They want out of taxes and they don't want government (We, the People) interfering with their power.
What We, The People Need
Democracies where We, the People make decisions demand things that are good for regular people and their small businesses: pensions, health care, modernized infrastructure, good schools & colleges, child care, regulations on the behavior of giant corporations... This is why strong democracies have proven to be more prosperous for regular people and for longer than other forms of government that leave people on their own against the wealthy and powerful and drive all of the income and wealth to a few at the top. This is why so many regular working people in our country were so much more prosperous in the decades before the plutocratic 1%-favoring policies of Reagan steered us toward plutocracy.
Understand what is going on here. Demands for budget cuts and austerity are really about shifting from democracy to a system where regular people -- the 99% -- are on their own, up against the wealthy and powerful. This is about shifting from a system where regular people can be prosperous together, to a system where a few -- the 1% -- have all the wealth and power.
We, the People need democracy restored. We need to be in charge again, before the economy can really serve us again.
Sunday, March 11, 2012
Saturday, March 10, 2012
Friday, March 9, 2012
Top 1% Enjoyed 93% of Economic Recovery in 2010
In the wake of the financial crisis of 2008 and the recession
that followed, huge numbers of US workers lost their jobs, homes were
lost to foreclosure, and most found themselves in the most precarious
economic shape of their lives. Now, in a new report, evidence shows that
as an economic recovery (slight as it was) appeared on the scene,
nearly all of it went, not to those struggling, but to the very
wealthiest of Americans, many of whom helped lead the economy off the
cliff in the first place.According to a new report, nearly 93% of the economic gains made from 2009 to 2010 went to the wealthiest 1% of Americans. "Top 1% incomes grew by 11.6% while bottom 99% incomes grew only by 0.2%. Hence, the top 1% captured 93% of the income gains in the first year of recovery," reads the report by Emmanuel Saez titled Striking It Richer: The Evolution of Top Incomes in the United States (pdf).
"Such an uneven recovery," writes Saez in the report, "can possibly explain the recent public demonstrations against inequality." And continues by detailing some of the historical context of wealth disparity in the United States, from early part of the 20th century to the present:
The top percentile share declined during WWI, recovered during the 1920s boom, and declined again during the great depression and WWII. This very specific timing, together with the fact that very high incomes account for a disproportionate share of the total decline in inequality, strongly suggests that the shocks incurred by capital owners during 1914 to 1945 (depression and wars) played a key role. Indeed, from 1913 and up to the 1970s, very top incomes were mostly composed of capital income (mostly dividend income) and to a smaller extent business income, the wage income share being very modest. Therefore, the large decline of top incomes observed during the 1914-1960 period is predominantly a capital income phenomenon.
Interestingly, the income composition pattern at the very top has changed considerably over the century. The share of wage and salary income has increased sharply from the 1920s to the present, and especially since the 1970s. Therefore, a significant fraction of the surge in top incomes since 1970 is due to an explosion of top wages and salaries. Indeed, estimates based purely on wages and salaries show that the share of total wages and salaries earned by the top 1 percent wage income earners has jumped from 5.1 percent in 1970 to 12.4 percent in 2007.
A telling chart:
Alexander Eichler, writing at Huffington Post, observes:
Saez's findings suggest that even though the recession dealt a blow to the 1 percent, it did little to push the U.S. off the path it's been on for decades -- that of a vast and growing disparity between the richest and poorest citizens.
Income for most workers has barely risen in the last 30 years, but the top 1 percent of earners have seen their income almost triple in the same amount of time. Economists and other experts say that could be the result of any number of factors, including the decline of labor unions, the explosion in capital gains during the middle part of the aughts, and tax policies put in place in recent years that favor the wealthy.
In his State of the Union address this past January, President Obama called economic fairness "the defining issue of our time," perhaps mindful of the growing number of voters who say they can't even afford basic necessities like food.
The wealth gap has been cited as a major concern for the nationwide Occupy movement, and research has suggested that income inequality might be associated with the kind of underwhelming economic growth the country has experienced for the past two years.
Thursday, March 8, 2012
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
We Need to Fight for "The Commons"
The following overview of "the commons" is by David Bollier, a specialist on the subject. It's excerpted from his 7/15/2011 post, "The Commons: Short and Sweet."
The commons is….
• A social system for the long-term stewardship of resources that preserves shared values and community identity.
• A self-organized system by which communities manage resources (both depletable and replenishable) with minimal or no reliance on the Market or State.
• The wealth that we inherit or create together and must pass on, undiminished or enhanced, to our children. Our collective wealth includes the gifts of nature, civic infrastructure, cultural works and traditions, and knowledge.
• A sector of the economy (and life!) that generates value in ways that are often taken for granted – and often jeopardized by the Market-State.
There is no master inventory of commons because a commons arises whenever a given community decides it wishes to manage a resource in a collective manner, with special regard for equitable access, use and sustainability.
The commons is not a resource. It is a resource plus a defined community and the protocols, values and norms devised by the community to manage its resources. Many resources urgently need to be managed as commons, such as the atmosphere, oceans, genetic knowledge and biodiversity.
There is no commons without commoning – the social practices and norms for managing a resource for collective benefit. Forms of commoning naturally vary from one commons to another because humanity itself is so varied. And so there is no “standard template” for commons; merely “fractal affinities” or shared patterns and principles among commons. The commons must be understood, then, as a verb as much as a noun. A commons must be animated by bottom-up participation, personal responsibility, transparency and self-policing accountability.
One of the great unacknowledged problems of our time is the enclosure of the commons, the expropriation and commercialization of shared resources, usually for private market gain. Enclosure can be seen in the patenting of genes and lifeforms, the use of copyrights to lock up creativity and culture, the privatization of water and land, and attempts to transform the open Internet into a closed, proprietary marketplace, among many other enclosures.
Enclosure is about dispossession. It privatizes and commodifies resources that belong to a community or to everyone, and dismantles a commons-based culture (egalitarian co-production and co-governance) with a market order (money-based producer/consumer relationships and hierarchies). Markets tend to have thin commitments to localities, cultures and ways of life; for any commons, however, these are indispensable.
The classic commons are small-scale and focused on natural resources; an estimated two billion people depend upon commons of forests, fisheries, water, wildlife and other natural resources for their everyday subsistence. But the contemporary struggle of commoners is to find new structures of law, institutional form and social practice that can enable diverse sorts of commons to work at larger scales and to protect their resources from market enclosure.
New commons forms and practices are needed at all levels – local, regional, national and global – and there is a need for new types of federation among commoners and linkages between different tiers of commons. Transnational commons are especially needed to help align governance with ecological realities and serve as a force for reconciliation across political boundaries. Thus to actualize the commons and deter market enclosures, we need innovations in law, public policy, commons-based governance, social practice and culture. All of these will manifest a very different worldview than now prevails in established governance systems, particularly those of the State and Market.
The commons has a lot to do with “human security” in its broadest sense – subsistence, safety, cultural traditions and knowledge, personal identity. One need only think of the international land grab that is now displacing so millions of commoners from their customary commons of forests, fisheries, farming and other natural resources. People are being pushed from land they have used for centuries, so that foreign investors and national governments can buy up their land, sometimes for speculative purposes.
And what happens to these commoners? Deprived of access to their means of subsistence, they become landless refugees. Many are forced into nearby cities to try to make their way as beggars, hustlers and wage-slaves, introducing a whole new set of problems not only for themselves but for the swollen cities that have little room for them. Finally, the displaced commoners lose their cultural identity and way of life, which is not only a great personal loss but also a loss to humanity in terms of the knowledge and way-of-being that enabled people to live in harmony with the land in a particular location.
The commons is….
• A social system for the long-term stewardship of resources that preserves shared values and community identity.
• A self-organized system by which communities manage resources (both depletable and replenishable) with minimal or no reliance on the Market or State.
• The wealth that we inherit or create together and must pass on, undiminished or enhanced, to our children. Our collective wealth includes the gifts of nature, civic infrastructure, cultural works and traditions, and knowledge.
• A sector of the economy (and life!) that generates value in ways that are often taken for granted – and often jeopardized by the Market-State.
There is no master inventory of commons because a commons arises whenever a given community decides it wishes to manage a resource in a collective manner, with special regard for equitable access, use and sustainability.
The commons is not a resource. It is a resource plus a defined community and the protocols, values and norms devised by the community to manage its resources. Many resources urgently need to be managed as commons, such as the atmosphere, oceans, genetic knowledge and biodiversity.
There is no commons without commoning – the social practices and norms for managing a resource for collective benefit. Forms of commoning naturally vary from one commons to another because humanity itself is so varied. And so there is no “standard template” for commons; merely “fractal affinities” or shared patterns and principles among commons. The commons must be understood, then, as a verb as much as a noun. A commons must be animated by bottom-up participation, personal responsibility, transparency and self-policing accountability.
One of the great unacknowledged problems of our time is the enclosure of the commons, the expropriation and commercialization of shared resources, usually for private market gain. Enclosure can be seen in the patenting of genes and lifeforms, the use of copyrights to lock up creativity and culture, the privatization of water and land, and attempts to transform the open Internet into a closed, proprietary marketplace, among many other enclosures.
Enclosure is about dispossession. It privatizes and commodifies resources that belong to a community or to everyone, and dismantles a commons-based culture (egalitarian co-production and co-governance) with a market order (money-based producer/consumer relationships and hierarchies). Markets tend to have thin commitments to localities, cultures and ways of life; for any commons, however, these are indispensable.
The classic commons are small-scale and focused on natural resources; an estimated two billion people depend upon commons of forests, fisheries, water, wildlife and other natural resources for their everyday subsistence. But the contemporary struggle of commoners is to find new structures of law, institutional form and social practice that can enable diverse sorts of commons to work at larger scales and to protect their resources from market enclosure.
New commons forms and practices are needed at all levels – local, regional, national and global – and there is a need for new types of federation among commoners and linkages between different tiers of commons. Transnational commons are especially needed to help align governance with ecological realities and serve as a force for reconciliation across political boundaries. Thus to actualize the commons and deter market enclosures, we need innovations in law, public policy, commons-based governance, social practice and culture. All of these will manifest a very different worldview than now prevails in established governance systems, particularly those of the State and Market.
The commons has a lot to do with “human security” in its broadest sense – subsistence, safety, cultural traditions and knowledge, personal identity. One need only think of the international land grab that is now displacing so millions of commoners from their customary commons of forests, fisheries, farming and other natural resources. People are being pushed from land they have used for centuries, so that foreign investors and national governments can buy up their land, sometimes for speculative purposes.
And what happens to these commoners? Deprived of access to their means of subsistence, they become landless refugees. Many are forced into nearby cities to try to make their way as beggars, hustlers and wage-slaves, introducing a whole new set of problems not only for themselves but for the swollen cities that have little room for them. Finally, the displaced commoners lose their cultural identity and way of life, which is not only a great personal loss but also a loss to humanity in terms of the knowledge and way-of-being that enabled people to live in harmony with the land in a particular location.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)