One 77-year-old’s search for the truth: 9/11, election fraud, illegal wars, Wall Street criminality, a stolen nuke, the neocon wars, control of the U.S. government by global corporations, the unjustified assault on Social Security, media complicity, and the "Great Recession" about to become the second Great Depression. "The most important truths are hidden from us by the powerful few who strive to steal the American dream by keeping We the People in the dark."
Before Eliot Spitzer’s infamous resignation as governor of New
York in March 2008, he was one of our fiercest champions against Wall
Street corruption, in a state that had some of the toughest legislation
for controlling the banks. It may not be a coincidence that the
revelation of his indiscretions with a high-priced call girl came less
than a month after he published a bold editorial in the Washington Post
titled “Predatory Lenders’ Partner in Crime:
How the Bush Administration Stopped the States from Stepping in to Help
Consumers.” The editorial exposed the collusion between the Treasury,
the Federal Reserve and Wall Street in deregulating the banks in the
guise of regulating them, by taking regulatory power away from the
states. It was an issue of the federal government versus the states,
with the Feds representing the banks and the states representing
consumers.
Five years later, Spitzer has set out to take some of that local
regulatory power back, in his run for New York City comptroller. Mounting
the attack against him, however, are not just Wall Street banks but
women’s groups opposed to this apparent endorsement of the exploitation
of women. On August 17th, the New York Post endorsed
Spitzer’s opponent and ran a scathing cover story attempting to
embarrass Spitzer based on the single issue of his personal life.
Lynn Parramore, who considers herself a feminist, countered in an August 8th
Huffington Post article that it is likely to be in the best interests
of the very women who are opposing him to forgive and move on. His
stand for women’s reproductive rights and other feminist issues is
actually quite strong, and his role as Wall Street watchdog protected
women from predatory financial practices. As New York Attorney General,
he was known as the “Sheriff of Wall Street.” He is one of the few
people with not only the insight and experience to expose Wall Street
corruption but the courage to go after the perpetrators.
Targeted for Take-down
The February 2008 Washington Post article that preceded Spitzer’s
political travails was written when the state attorneys general were
being preempted by the Federal Reserve as watchdogs of the banks.
Critics called it a case of the fox guarding the hen house. Spitzer wrote:
Several years ago, state attorneys general and others
involved in consumer protection began to notice a marked increase in a
range of predatory lending practices by mortgage lenders. . . . These
and other practices, we noticed, were having a devastating effect on
home buyers. In addition, the widespread nature of these practices, if
left unchecked, threatened our financial markets.
Even though predatory lending was becoming a national problem, the
Bush administration looked the other way and did nothing to protect
American homeowners. In fact, the government chose instead to align
itself with the banks that were victimizing consumers. . . . [A]s New
York attorney general, I joined with colleagues in the other 49 states
in attempting to fill the void left by the federal government. . . .
Not only did the Bush administration do nothing to protect consumers,
it embarked on an aggressive and unprecedented campaign to prevent
states from protecting their residents from the very problems to which
the federal government was turning a blind eye. . . . The administration
accomplished this feat through an obscure federal agency called the
Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). . . . In 2003, during
the height of the predatory lending crisis, the OCC invoked a clause
from the 1863 National Bank Act to issue formal opinions preempting all
state predatory lending laws, thereby rendering them inoperative. The
OCC also promulgated new rules that prevented states from enforcing any
of their own consumer protection laws against national banks. The
federal government’s actions were so egregious and so unprecedented that
all 50 state attorneys general, and all 50 state banking
superintendents, actively fought the new rules. But the unanimous
opposition of the 50 states did not deter, or even slow, the Bush
administration in its goal of protecting the banks. In fact, when my
office opened an investigation of possible discrimination in mortgage
lending by a number of banks, the OCC filed a federal lawsuit to stop
the investigation.
Less than a month after publishing this editorial, Spitzer had been exposed, disgraced, and was out of office. Greg Palast pointed
to the fact that Spitzer was the single politician standing in the way
of a $200 billion windfall from the Federal Reserve, guaranteeing the
toxic mortgage-backed securities of the same banking predators that were
responsible for the subprime debacle. While the Federal Reserve was
trying to bail them out, Spitzer was trying to regulate them, bringing
suit on behalf of consumers.3 But he was quickly silenced,
and any state attorneys general who might get similar ideas in the
future would be blocked by the federal “oversight” then being imposed on
state regulation.
A Rooster to Guard the Hen House
In a July 2013 article titled “Why Eliot Spitzer’s Return Terrifies Big Finance,”
Thomas Ferguson, Professor of Political Science at the University of
Massachusetts and a senior fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, wrote of
Spitzer’s bid for comptroller:
Suddenly, the Masters of the Universe were staring at their worst nightmare: the prospect of a comeback by the
only major politician in the U.S. whose deeds — and not simply words
—prove that he does not think corporate titans are too big to jail.
Who, when the Justice Department, Congress, and the Securities
and Exchange Commission all defaulted in the wake of a tidal wave of
financial frauds, creatively used New York State’s Martin Act to go
where they wouldn’t and subpoena emails and corporate records of the
malefactors of great wealth, winning convictions and big settlements.
Who in 2005, as New York State Attorney General, actually sued
AIG instead of thinking up ways to hand it billions of dollars of
taxpayers’ money. . . .
And who in 2013 with business as usual once again the order of the
day, is promising to review how the Comptroller’s Office, which
controls New York City’s vast pension funds, does business with Wall
Street and corporate America.
Yves Smith, writing on her blog Naked Capitalism on July 25th, expanded on this threat.
She noted that private equity [PE] investment managers had persuaded
their clients that their limited partnership agreements [LPAs] were a
form of “trade secret,” and that nobody was looking closely at whether
PE firms were complying with the fee and expense provisions of their
agreements:
Public pension fund investors have almost universally
acceded to the demands of PE firms to exempt the LPAs and cash flow
reports from state FOIA laws, which keeps the eyes of the press and the
public off the documents.
the New York City Comptroller has access to this critical information. Hence the freakout at the prospect that Spitzer might get the job.
Hence also the $1.5 million ad campaign against Spitzer brought by a coalition of business leaders, labor unions and women’s groups.
Do we want an elected official who has broken the law and
who has participated in sustaining an industry that we all know has a
long history of exploiting women and girls?
The speaker lumped Spitzer with Anthony Weiner, who is running for
mayor after sending out sexually explicit tweets, and Vito Lopez, who is
running for City Council after resigning from the Assembly over sexual
harassment allegations. She asked whether these men would address the
issues that matter to women, “or are they just going to see us as
objects?”
Sexual exploitation is an issue that matters to women, but the best
way to save women from the sort of desperation that leads to
exploitation is to keep them out of ruinous debt. Wall Street fraud,
corruption and abuse have caused millions of homeowners to lose their
homes and have tipped cities toward bankruptcy; and Spitzer is one of
the brave few who has exposed and attempted to prosecute those predatory
practices. As comptroller, he could make more information available to
the public concerning the companies in which public pension funds are
invested, look out for exploitive fees, insist on plain English
reporting of derivatives exposure, and take steps to ensure that nurses
and teachers are not being financially exploited. He can monitor
contracts and business dealings and help protect the city from the kinds
of rip-off schemes that deplete city funds for education,
infrastructure, and the social safety nets that women, particularly,
rely on.
In a December 2011 article in Slate titled “We Own Wall Street,”
Spitzer argued that bad corporate behavior could be stopped by a
political movement uniting shareholders, pension funds and mutual funds –
the actual owners of the corporations – who could then take coordinated
action to demand transparency and accountability.
This is the sort of creative thinking that will be needed if we the
people are to take back our power from Wall Street and the
corporatocracy. We need a mass movement, coordinated action, and leaders
who can organize it; and Eliot Spitzer is one of the few people in a
position to play that role who have the experience, vision and courage
to carry it through.
Why Has NY Planned Parenthood & NOW Denounced Spitzer for NYC Comptroller?
Lynn Parramore: Despite his strong record on women's rights and reining in Wall Street, feminist organizations denounce Spitzer due to their close ties to Wall Street - August 19, 13
All over the world, May 1st is celebrated as
International Workers Day. Yesterday, May Day also marked the
reemergence of the Occupy movement, with events in cities all over
America. AlterNet's reporters were in the field -- here are their
dispatches from New York and the Bay Area.
Midtown NYC, morning
-- Sarah Jaffe
Midtown is a great place for chanting; your voice echoes off the tall
buildings and you can hear it blocks away. Even better for marching
bands, bells and whistles. There may not actually be 99 pickets, but
midtown Manhattan is clogged with them in the morning, and they're
inside the heads of the people on the street--I walk past a couple
discussing our "cruel," unequal society as I hurry from picket to
picket.
I made it to Bryant Park a few
minutes after eight in a haze of rain, and found a crowd of around a
hundred huddled under their umbrellas or the ones at tables in the park.
The Rude Mechanical Orchestra were clustered around their instruments
but not playing, and Occupiers chatted with one another.
My first picket stop was at the New
York Times building, where the United Auto Workers (UAW) were picketing
under a lovely awning in support of the National Organization of Legal
Services Workers, (UAW Local 2320). The lawyers and legal support staff
of Legal Services NYC provide free legal aid to New York's low-income
folks who need support--they help fight evictions, support the
unemployed, work on benefits for the disabled, and more. And they're
facing cutbacks from their board, who want them to give back part of
their healthcare benefits--not to mention cuts to the services they
provide. "We make next to nothing," a legal services worker told me,
pointing out that her benefits allow her to do a low-paid service job
and take care of herself and her family. Meanwhile, none of the cuts
have hit management. Their target for the day's picket was Michael
Young, the vice chair of the Board of Directors at Legal Services NYC,
who has been the point person in negotiating with the union.
As we stood talking, the Rude
Mechanical Orchestra and a small march rolled in, playing "Which Side
Are You On?" and thrilling the workers, who didn't seem terribly
connected at first to the larger May Day celebrations. The picket line
turned into a dance party, and the band played along with chants of "Hey
hey rich boy, my job is not your toy" and "We're legal services for the
poor, fired up won't take no more."
From Twitter, colleagues Allison
Kilkenny, John Knefel and I heard reports of arrests at the Bank of
America tower, which was surrounded by barricades when we arrived but
quiet at the moment, so I moved on to News Corp headquarters--where the
ticker outside the building warned "Occupy plans to shut down city
today, gathering at Bryant Park". It made a lovely backdrop for the
lively picket line, featuring several members of OWS's Direct Action
working group as well as banners and activists from Picture the
Homeless, SEIU, VOCAL-NY (includingWayne Starks, who I spoke with on Tax Day), and other local groups.
As they marched, the crowd repeated
the crimes of Rupert Murdoch and News Corp--not only "Murdoch spies," a
reference to the phone hacking scandal in the UK, but "News Corp called
for closing HIV food pantries, housing for people with AIDS."
From News Corp, I moved on to
Chase, where a small but determined band was chanting "Save our homes,
modify loans!" outside the branch on 47th and Madison, but no one had
made it to the main headquarters, location of many an Occupy event, yet.
I saw a march rounding the corner as I headed the other way, trying to
catch a march that had left News Corp for the headquarters of the
Paulson Group, one of the world's largest hedge funds, but instead I
crossed paths with a small march flying an anarchist flag, singing
"Ain't no power like the power of the people because the power of the
people don't stop."
The marchers were young, mostly
white, but the one arrest came when a young black man, whose name, I was
told, was Gregory Walker, was slammed against a glass window and thrown
to the ground--I didn't see what happened to cause his arrest, but I
did watch him loaded into a police van and the crowd spontaneously broke
into "Solidarity Forever."
Back at Bryant Park, the scene
had picked up and the feeling was more Liberty Square than grim
determination. A woman mic-checked to offer belly dance lessons, and I
chatted with Betsy Fagin at the Library, back in action. Screenprinters
had the next table over from the Library, and were churning out prints
of a Guy Fawkes mask decorated with spring leaves. I caught up with Pam
Brown and Suzanne Collado of the Occupy Student Debt campaign, who had
been at their own picket outside of NYU, protesting student debt and the
university's expansion plan (financed, of course, with students'
money).
The park is also serving as a
staging location for marches--I spoke with organizers pulling together
an immigrant worker justice march, departing at 11 to his Praesidian
Capital, Wells Fargo, the Capital Grille, Chipotle and Beth Israel, in
support of workers trying to organize, Wells's support for
anti-immigrant legislation through ALEC, wage theft and discrimination,
the Coalition of Immokalee Workers' Fair Food Campaign, and laundry workers who clean hospital sheets, respectively.
On the way out, I spoke with
Jerry, who told me about the Summer Disobedience school that will be
held every Saturday in Bryant Park, training activists in pickets,
marches, street theater, and much more.
Wildcat Strike -- NYC
-- Anna Lekas Miller
The Wildcat Strike --
designed to bring together non-unionized, or unionized workers whose
unions had not approved the strike -- was one of the unpermitted actions
of May Day. Protestors and strikers came at the risk of their own
arrests and the authorities had the right to "do whatever they want."
I arrived at Sara Roosevelt Park half an hour early--there were
already fifty or sixty police huddled on the corner of 2nd Avenue and
East Houston. At that point, there were maybe ten protestors.
"I feel like they're the ones that should be protesting and we should
be the cops," I joked to one of the few other protestors in the park.
"I know. I wish we could pull out our batons and tell them that they're blocking the sidewalk," he replied.
A few minutes later, fellow protestors and marches streamed in from
Brooklyn, fresh from having walked across the Williamsburg Bridge. To my
surprise, the police began to subside, merely observing the
demonstrators as they played music, held signs and chanted.
Though the crowd was mostly young and though not exclusively white,
far from racially diverse, their occupations -- and reasons for showing
solidarity at the wildcat march in particular -- were vastly different.
"I am a not union metal worker, working a pretty low range for my
skill set," said Rachel, a young woman holding a foil flag as an
artistic allude to metal workers. "I'm here to represent those who are
actually in labor who don't want to be part of a permitted
anti-capitalist march and stand in solidarity with my fellow workers who
might be afraid or can't afford to be here."
Gregory, a doctoral student and graduate teaching assistant at SUNY
Stony Brook College also came to use the wildcat strike as an
opportunity to express himself in protest.
"I'm a union member, I'm a public employee of the state--and as a
public employee, we are legally not allowed to strike. The wildcat
strike provides a space for those of us who can't strike for whatever
reason to still express ourselves in protest."
Gregory went on to talk about how his role as an instructor, and a
member of the Graduate Student Employees Union (GSEU) made him align
himself more with student strikers than other instructors. As students
face state budget cuts, and increasing tuition and debt, he sees his
role as an instructor as part of the larger struggle around education
rather than precarious labor.
"I make $15,000 a year -- I should be striking for myself, but actually I'm striking for my students."
After a fairly civil twenty minutes of chatting, singing, live music
and navigating the march -- a march began. The first young man that
tried to even so much as leave Sara Roosevelt Park was immediately
tackled to the ground and arrested by the NYPD. After digesting the
chaos, demonstrators decided to run en masse to the south end of the
park, many jumping over the railings to avoid the police and began
marching south towards Chinatown.
The police followed, a ridiculous-looking parade of 30 riot cops on
mopeds following strikers on foot on the sidewalk and on bicycles in the
streets. Throughout the crowded, but peaceful march, vans and other
arrest vehicles began to follow the mopeds, indicating imminent arrests.
Ironically, the extreme police presence was blocking traffic and
inconveniencing the flow of the city far more than the strikers.
Once the march reached Houston and Lafayette -- almost a complete
square from where it began -- the cops donned their riot gear and took
out their batons. Protestors were kettled onto the sidewalks, spilling
off of them and threatened if even so much as a foot was in the street.
One nicely dressed man, without provoking anyone, was arrested and
thrown to the ground.
After being halted by the police, the march continued up Broadway --
ever racing riot cops to resist being surrounded, the march continued
and ended at Washington Square Park.
Free University: Madison Square Park, noon-3pm.
-- Sarah Seltzer
The sun came out over Madison Square Park as the OWS Free University
kicked off. Forgive the pun, but the class war was definitely in
session. Professors and experts gathered groups around htem throughout
the benches and pathways of this park as midtowners walking by stopped
to look. There was a lesson on "horizontal pedagogy,"--or how to teach
without hierarchy--talks by noted leftist thinkers Chris Hedges and
Francis Fox Piven, a discussion about native/indigenous resistance and
another about gender constructs, and most pertinently, a student debt
teach-in. One guy was even leading a class on "ancient political
philosophy" and I thought about the Athenian forum.
This action was meant to--and did--accomplish two goals. First, it
recaptured the "public square" aspect of Zuccotti Park occupation and
other encampments, that sense of people radically coming together and
talking to each other about major, transformative ideas without
boundaries or rules. Secondly, it demonstrated by example a principle of
communal, free, shared and sharing education without tuition or fees, a
rejoinder to the rising tuition costs at institutions across the
country.
As the "class" sessions came to an end under the sunshine,
demonstrators talked in clusters, took pictures and gathered around the
park's central fountain. And then the sound of chants, whistles, and
guitars began to float over the park.
Protesters rushed over to Broadway to see the advancing "guitarmy"
march--a musical, un-permitted, wild walk down from Bryant Park led by
Tom Morello, its members spilling out onto the sidewalks and the center
of Broadway flanked by the NYPD. Cheers and the sound of musical
instruments ensued as the march continued on its way down towards the
afternoon's destination: Union Square.
Global Justice
-- Alex Kane
The hundreds upon hundreds of protesters streaming into Union Square
on May Day were greeted by an elaborate paper “maypole.” There was no
need for explanation, as the top of the “maypole” read, “All our
grievances are connected”—another way of saying “We are the 99%.”
Walk a couple hundred feet in the park, and there's an Occupy Wall
Street group that fervently believes that maxim: the Occupy Wall Street
(OWS) Global Justice Working Group. A contingent of about 30 people
affiliated with the working group had gathered before the union-heavy
permitted march from Union Square to Wall Street. The reason? To
“declare our commitment to resist and to end wars at home and abroad,”
in the working group’s own words.
The names Iran, Palestine, Egypt and more were written on the
activists' placards. They joined thousands of demonstrators for a march
that capped off a day full of actions highlighting economic inequality,
police brutality, immigrant rights and more. In the streets, NY-based
Palestine solidarity activist Dave Lippman provided the guitar strumming
while others sang songs. “When you shop and when you dine,” they sang,
“stand up for Palestine”—a plea for boycotts of Israeli products.
Activists from the Global Justice Working Group are full of knowledge
and experience about struggles from Bahrain to Egypt to Palestine. It
includes organizers involved with Code Pink, the War Resisters League,
Adalah-NY and more--key groups that work on peace and justice issues in
the city. And they want to bring their knowledge to the broader world of
Occupy Wall Street activism. The march, and songs about struggles here
and abroad, were one way of doing that.
“Very often in OWS you get people who don’t know what’s going on
across the water,” explained Udi Pladott, an activist and former soldier
in the Israeli army. “We’re trying to inject global issues into
Occupy.” Towards that goal, the working group has sponsored events on
Bahrain and held a teach-in on the global tear-gas industry.
“We want to make connections between the war on the poor here and
wars abroad,” said Nancy Kricorian, an organizer with Code Pink.
Conversations with working group participants made clear what those
connections are: a system that rewards militarism with profits while
demanding austerity for the poor.
Apart from Bahrain and Palestine, the specter of a war with Iran, and
organizing to stop that possibility, was very much on the minds of OWS
Global Justice Working Group participants. A number of signs at the
march read “No to sanctions. No to war. No to state repression.” I spoke
with Manijeh Nasrabadi, a PhD student at New York University and an
organizer with Havaar, an Iranian group that now works with the Global
Justice Working Group, for more on this subject.
“There are people in Iran organizing against the same things. They
have a government pushing neoliberal policies,” she explained. Nasrabadi
also criticized the tendency of some on the left to reflexively back
Iran’s leaders since they are in opposition to the West, even as the
regime violently cracked down on dissent. “There is a third way: global
solidarity,” that isn’t morally compromised, Nasrabadi said.
I then asked Nasrabadi what the connection was between Iran, the US and the Occupy movement. Answers abound to that question.
But she had a simple answer that helps explain the importance of the
Global Justice Working Group: “If bombs fall, it would derail thinking
about class.”
Tom Morello and the Guitarmy/Union Square/
-- Julianne Escobedo Shepherd
Under unexpectedly sunny skies, thousands converged upon Union
Square yesterday afternoon, their numbers growing as the Tom
Morello-led “Guitarmy,” flanked by their acoustic axes, marched in from
Bryant Park. One of the only spots with a city permit, the Square was
the destination for the day’s live music, but it also served as a
safe space for those protesters unwilling or unable to risk arrest.
As such: the undocumented faction came out in droves, and it became a
symbolic place where unions and Occupy joined forces with immigrant’s
rights movements. People carried signs reading, “Amnesty Para Todos,”
“Trabajando y Educación Para Todos,” “Stop the Raids” and,
most crucially, “No a la guerra, ni a la militarización de la
frontera.” It’s important not to forget the bigger picture: the border
debates are an extension of our country’s war-obsession, and solve
no problems.
But the overall spirit at Union Square was one of joy and
enthusiasm and united strength. A large stage was set up to accommodate
the performers and speakers and the message was clear: through
art, activism can glean both power and relief. At around 4 PM, the
show started with the beloved Tom Morello, aka the Nightwatchman,
aka guitarist in Rage Against the Machine (which we recently learned is Paul Ryan’s favorite band, and who we hope will act on the knowledge by writing a song about him).
Because of the abundance of artists and speakers on the line-up, each
act only got to perform two songs, and Morello used his time most
effectively. Playing after a speaker announced, “We’re here to announce
that another world is not only possible, but on her way,” Morello
brought his around 20-person Guitarmy onstage to a fired-up crowd ready
to party for justice. He kicked off his set with a singalong of his song
“World Wide Rebel Songs,” which pays homage to union classics, and got
thousands of protesters singing the chorus (and freaking out when he
played the harmonica, because the proles, apparently, love a harmonica).
Then he noted that, were Woody Guthrie alive, he’d be 100, and that
if he were still with us, he’d be headlining the event. Morello’s next
song? “This Land is Your Land,” which resulted in another joyous
singalong and pogo session. His parting words: “Take it easy, but take
it.” Morello’s performance was followed by a speech by Emily Park, who
announced herself as an undocumented student at CUNY. “DREAMers like me
are the future of later,” she said, and advocated the New York DREAM Act
that’s currently underway at the state level. Then Joyce Lyon, of the
Domestic Workers union, reminded us that, “The thousands of you standing
here are the engines that make the economy run,” whether documented or
not.
Their speech was followed by a performance by an awesome
multinational Latin jazz band representing Local 802, the musician’s
union, during which the drummer protested the elimination of 31
multicultural categories at the Grammys. (Including the award for best
Latin jazz album and best Native American album, among others.) The band
was followed by performances by rap trio Das Racist (full disclosure:
the group is this reporter’s family), noise-pop musician Dan Deacon, and
rapper Immortal Technique, all of whom celebrated the energy and
presence of the thousands in the crowd. And while the focus was
certainly on the arts, the most salient point of the rally was made by a
speaker later in the day, who reminded us that the Supreme Court is on
the cusp of legalizing Arizona’s immigration law, SB 1070, and that it
was up to us to stand against similar racist laws like it. “This is not
an immigration issue,” she said. “This is a people issue.” The crowd was
penned in by barricades, guarded by ever-more police as the protest
geared up to march downtown, but her message was more powerful than the
city’s ominous message. Immigration is a people issue, and this was a
joyous, inspiring peoples’ protest.
Marching from Union Square After the Rally: 5:30 pm
-- Sarah Seltzer
Artists for Occupy and immigrant rights groups kicked off the long
march from Union Square to Wall Street down Broadway. Despite the
barricades and unnecessarily huge numbers of cops on both sides of the
street, marchers headed downtown undaunted. Among their numbers were
groups like the Teamsters, the Transit Workers Union, and student and
community organizations.
Groups let out chants like "we are students, not statistics!" the
very May Day-appropriate "black, Latin, Asian, white! Workers of the
world unite!" As we entered the shopping district they playfully shouted
"out of the shops, and into the streets!" But there was a more mellow
feeling than at marches past. One woman cheering for the protesters
pointed up at the newly-blue sky and grinned as if to say, "see? even
the weather's on your side!" Marchers ran into friends, hugged each
other and chatted. The solidarity all the unions and their official
signage showed for immigrants was remarkable--groups that once seemed to
have been divided by the one percent were making a huge effort to stand
up for each other. And the atmosphere was one of festive righteous
anger: one protester walked by a Jesus costume carrying a massive cross,
and another in a Captain American costume waved at us to applause from a
window above.
As the very vanguard of the march, led by taxicabs festooned in
banners, crossed Houston Street a huge cry went up and echoed back,
turning Broadway into a canyon of noise for block after block after
block.
"This is some serious shit," an onlooker said, shaking his head with a
smile, at the throngs weaving back all the way to Union Square.
Occupied Lower Manhattan, evening
--Sarah Jaffe
The financial district was occupied all evening--occupied by the
NYPD, who were out in riot gear, brandishing batons, lining up on side
streets and marching two by two down to rallying points for tired but
fired-up occupiers from the final march.
As the march--with crowd estimates of 30,000 or so--wound down,
hundreds or even thousands wound up in the space at 55 Water Street,
where they held a People's Assembly as night fell. The crowd was
peaceful, but the space closed at 10 and so of course the NYPD moved in,
calling for dispersal and threatening arrests. City Councilmembers
Ydanis Rodriguez and Jumaane Williams were on hand with several members
of the clergy, observing and gathering evidence. The two councilmembers
are part of a lawsuit filed this week against the NYPD.
I followed a breakout march up side streets, and while at first it
was disorganized, a crew of experienced Occupiers, including many from
the Plus Brigades (a newer working group that specifically works on
clowning and other positive reactions in order to defuse tense
situations with police) took lead of the march, walking arm in arm,
dancing, and singing. The tension faded from the air as they marched,
for a while, without police interference, singing "This is what
democracy looks like."
When we came to Wall Street, though, we ran into a barricade--it
seems that the worst thing Occupiers can do is attempt to set foot on
the actual street their movement is named for. The march turned up
William and then down Pine, and as the crew paused to debate where to go
next, reports of police violence down on Pearl Street--where we'd just
been--came in over Twitter from reporters John and Molly Knefel and Ryan
Devereaux. We sat on the steps of a JP Morgan Chase building on Pine,
and as some discussed tactics and plans for the rest of the night,
stragglers came up William, visibly shaken by what they'd seen. "Police
were just grabbing people, throwing them to the ground," one marcher
said.
And then the police arrived, bearing batons and riot cuffs. They
cleared the steps mostly without incident, though as has come to be
usual there was tension and a faceoff for a while before most of the
crowd dispersed back down Pine--where a line of police reinforced a line
of barricades once again, keeping the crowd from getting anywhere near
Wall Street.
Many of the Occupiers wound up where Occupy began, back in Zuccotti
Park, where only one side was barricaded off and about 100 people were
sitting, chatting in small groups, discussing, once again, what would
come next--for the evening, for the movement, for everyone involved. A
week of action is planned for later in May, and Brooklyn College is
holding a rally today, May 2nd, to build on momentum from May Day.
Oakland/Bay Area:
-- Joshua Holland
The Bay Area celebrated May Day with a series of strikes and protests
throughout the day, as 19 local labor unions joined thousands of
Occupiers and immigrant rights activists.
The Inlandboatmen's Union staged a half-day strike, shutting down
ferry service from Sausalito to San Francisco. The ferry workers are in a
dispute with management over health-care costs, and have been working
without a contract for over a year. Early in the morning, they were
joined by Occupy protesters in a picket line at the Larkspur Ferry
Terminal. Bus and bridge workers had promised to honor the picket.
About 200 people participated in a peaceful but boisterous
immigrants' rights march in San Francisco's Mission District in the
morning. Several separate demonstrations wound their way through
downtown Oakland, trailed by a heavy police presence. At one point, tear
gas was deployed to disperse a crowd, according to protesters who were
on the scene.
In the afternoon, a large contingent of Occupy San Francisco
activists -- as many as 1,500 -- marched from the Financial District to
set up residence in a vacant building from which they had been evicted
weeks earlier. The building, formerly a shelter, is owned by the
Archdiocese of San Francisco.
Police staged around the corner during the afternoon, but at around
4:30, approximately 200 officers clad in riot gear moved in, erecting
barricades around the building. A tense standoff ensued, during which
time a man on the roof of the building threw several objects -- a brick
and some metal pipes -- at police, striking and injuring another
protester, who was taken away by ambulance. A San Francisco police
spokesman later said that the man had been apprehended and charged with
aggravated assault.
After several hours facing down protesters, police again pulled back,
and as of press time, protesters had flooded back into the building en
masse.
The largest action of the day took place in Oakland during the
evening, as an estimated 3,000 people took to the streets around City
Hall. The protest was largely uneventful until after nightfall when, in a
scene that has come to be all-too-familiar, Oakland police ended up
dispersing occupiers with tear gas and "flash-bang" grenades. As of
press time, arrests were ongoing.
Sarah Jaffe is an associate editor at AlterNet, a rabblerouser and frequent Twitterer. You can follow her at @seasonothebitch.Sarah
Seltzer is an associate editor at AlterNet and a freelance writer based
in New York City. Her work has been published at the Nation, the
Christian Science Monitor, Jezebel and the Washington Post. Follow her
on Twitter at @fellowette and find her work at sarahmseltzer.com. Julianne
Escobedo Shepherd is an associate editor at AlterNet and a
Brooklyn-based freelance writer and editor. Formerly the executive
editor of The FADER, her work has appeared in VIBE, SPIN, New York Times
and various other magazines and websites. Alex Kane is AlterNet's New York-based World editor, and a staff reporter for Mondoweiss. Follow him on Twitter @alexbkane. Joshua Holland is an editor and senior writer at AlterNet. He is the author of The
15 Biggest Lies About the Economy: And Everything else the Right
Doesn't Want You to Know About Taxes, Jobs and Corporate America. Drop him an email or follow him on Twitter.
Naomi Wolf is arrested during the Occupy Wall Street protest in New York. Photograph: Mike Shane
Last night I was arrested in my home town, outside an event to which I had been invited, for standing lawfully on the sidewalk in an evening gown.
Let me explain; my partner and I were attending an event for the Huffington Post, for which I often write: Game Changers 2011, in a venue space on Hudson Street. As we entered the space, we saw that about 200 Occupy Wall Street protesters were peacefully assembled and were chanting. They wanted to address Governor Andrew Cuomo, who was going to be arriving at the event. They were using a technique that has become known as "the human mic" – by which the crowd laboriously repeats every word the speaker says – since they had been told that using real megaphones was illegal.
In my book Give Me Liberty, a blueprint for how to open up a closing civil society, I have a chapter on permits – which is a crucial subject to understand for anyone involved in protest in the US. In 70s America, protest used to be very effective, but in subsequent decades municipalities have sneakily created a web of "overpermiticisation" – requirements that were designed to stifle freedom of assembly and the right to petition government for redress of grievances, both of which are part of our first amendment. One of these made-up permit requirements, which are not transparent or accountable, is the megaphone restriction.
So I informed the group on Hudson Street that they had a first amendment right to use a megaphone and that the National Lawyers' Guild should appeal the issue if they got arrested. And I repeated the words of the first amendment, which the crowd repeated.
Then my partner suggested that I ask the group for their list of demands. Since we would be inside, we thought it would be helpful to take their list into the event and if I had a chance to talk with the governor I could pass the list on. That is how a democracy works, right? The people have the right to address their representatives.
We went inside, chatted with our friends, but needed to leave before the governor had arrived. I decided I would present their list to his office in the morning and write about the response. On our exit, I saw that the protesters had been cordoned off by a now-massive phalanx of NYPD cops and pinned against the far side of the street – far away from the event they sought to address.
I went up and asked them why. They replied that they had been informed that the Huffington Post event had a permit that forbade them to use the sidewalk. I knew from my investigative reporting on NYC permits that this was impossible: a private entity cannot lease the public sidewalks; even film crews must allow pedestrian traffic. I asked the police for clarification – no response.
I went over to the sidewalk at issue and identified myself as a NYC citizen and a reporter, and asked to see the permit in question or to locate the source on the police or event side that claimed it forbade citizen access to a public sidewalk. Finally a tall man, who seemed to be with the event, confessed that while it did have a permit, the permit did allow for protest so long as we did not block pedestrian passage.
I thanked him, returned to the protesters, and said: "The permit allows us to walk on the other side of the street if we don't block access. I am now going to walk on the public sidewalk and not block it. It is legal to do so. Please join me if you wish." My partner and I then returned to the event-side sidewalk and began to walk peacefully arm in arm, while about 30 or 40 people walked with us in single file, not blocking access.
Then a phalanx of perhaps 40 white-shirted senior officers descended out of seemingly nowhere and, with a megaphone (which was supposedly illegal for citizens to use), one said: "You are unlawfully creating a disruption. You are ordered to disperse." I approached him peacefully, slowly, gently and respectfully and said: "I am confused. I was told that the permit in question allows us to walk if we don't block pedestrian access and as you see we are complying with the permit."
He gave me a look of pure hate. "Are you going to back down?" he shouted. I stood, immobilised, for a moment. "Are you getting out of my way?" I did not even make a conscious decision not to "fall back" – I simply couldn't even will myself to do so, because I knew that he was not giving a lawful order and that if I stepped aside it would be not because of the law, which I was following, but as a capitulation to sheer force. In that moment's hesitation, he said, "OK," gestured, and my partner and I were surrounded by about 20 officers who pulled our hands behind our backs and cuffed us with plastic handcuffs.
We were taken in a van to the seventh precinct – the scary part about that is that the protesters and lawyers marched to the first precinct, which handles Hudson Street, but in the van the police got the message to avoid them by rerouting me. I understood later that the protesters were lied to about our whereabouts, which seemed to me to be a trickle-down of the Bush-era detention practice of unaccountable detentions.
The officers who had us in custody were very courteous, and several expressed sympathy for the movements' aims. Nonetheless, my partner and I had our possessions taken from us, our ID copied, and we were placed in separate cells for about half an hour. It was clear that by then the police knew there was scrutiny of this arrest so they handled us with great courtesy, but my phone was taken and for half an hour I was in a faeces- or blood-smeared cell, thinking at that moment the only thing that separates civil societies from barbaric states is the rule of law – that finds the prisoner, and holds the arresting officers and courts accountable.
Another scary outcome I discovered is that, when the protesters marched to the first precinct, the whole of Erickson Street was cordoned off – "frozen" they were told, "by Homeland Security". Obviously if DHS now has powers to simply take over a New York City street because of an arrest for peaceable conduct by a middle-aged writer in an evening gown, we have entered a stage of the closing of America, which is a serious departure from our days as a free republic in which municipalities are governed by police forces.
The police are now telling my supporters that the permit in question gave the event managers "control of the sidewalks". I have asked to see the permit but still haven't been provided with it – if such a category now exists, I have never heard of it; that, too, is a serious blow to an open civil society. What did I take away? Just that, unfortunately, my partner and I became exhibit A in a process that I have been warning Americans about since 2007: first they come for the "other" – the "terrorist", the brown person, the Muslim, the outsider; then they come for you – while you are standing on a sidewalk in evening dress, obeying the law.
On the eve of New York Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo’s budget announcement, the New York Times published a lengthy editorial headlined “Within Our Means,” demanding that all New Yorkers tighten their belts in order to close the state budget gap.
The budget presented by Cuomo on Tuesday includes drastic across-the-board austerity measures, cutting billions of dollars in local school funding and Medicaid appropriations, while proposing to lay off some 10,000 state workers.
This is all to the good, as far as the Times is concerned, but only as a first installment. Cuomo and the state legislature, the editorial declares, “will have to make very difficult decisions about how to close a $10 billion budget deficit—which state offices to shutter, which services and aid to cut, which employees to lay off and which taxes to raise. There are no easy fixes left.”
Noting that half of the state’s operating budget goes to education and health care—the areas hardest hit by Cuomo’s budget ax—the Times affirms indifferently, “So, the state’s most vulnerable citizens—the poor, the sick, the elderly and schoolchildren—will inevitably bear the largest burden.”
The newspaper assures its readers, however, that there is plenty of “room to cut,” arguing that the deficit is largely a function of the state government’s “profligacy and its eagerness to reward unions and other special interests.” To illustrate its point, it cites the provision of “optional benefits” such as dental coverage to such “special interest” groups as the children of families subsisting on less than $15,000 a year.
There is no room for sentimentality about such things, the Times makes clear. “We need to live within our means,” the editorial states, while expressing the hope that ways can be found “to cut spending equitably.”
To demonstrate its commitment to equity, the newspaper makes a few concrete proposals. “The best place to look for savings is in programs for the elderly and the disabled,” it writes. It suggests that the state “restrict allowed home visits,” leaving those unable to leave their apartments to die on their own.
It adds proposals to carry out mass layoffs of teachers and state employees, while freezing their salaries, cutting their pensions and increasing their health care contributions. “Freezes are a painful fact of life across the private sector these days,” the newspaper notes.
Cautioning against taking the idea of equity too far, the Times warns, “With the economy still struggling this is not the time to impose major new taxes.”
This editorial gives voice to the firmly held views of a ruling elite in New York City which, in terms of its corruption, defense of social inequality and political reaction, is a match for Hosni Mubarak and his cronies in Cairo. Only outright sociopaths could make the case that in New York, of all places, the prime area to look for money to close the deficit gap is the meager assistance provided to the disabled and the homebound elderly.
This city’s mayor is Michael Bloomberg, a man whose personal fortune exceeds $18 billion. He and his fellow billionaire New Yorkers—men like David Koch, John Paulson, Ronald Perelman, Carl Icahn, Stephen Schwarzman, Rupert Murdoch—could personally cover the state deficit ten times over and still rank among the super-rich.
They bestride a city that is the most unequal in the country and among the most unequal in the world. According to one recent study, if New York City were a country it would rank 15th from the bottom in terms of income equality among 134 nations, roughly on a par with Honduras. To talk about “cutting spending equitably” in this environment is not just farcical, it is criminal. [emphasis added]
The state’s budget crisis is not the result of “profligacy”—no one who has been inside a New York City public high school, a public housing development or a state-run medical facility could utter the word with a straight face. Rather, like the yawning chasm between wealth and poverty, it is the product of the systematic plundering of society by a layer of social parasites and financial swindlers, many of whom should be the subject of criminal investigation and prosecution.
This layer, which is now braying for the fiscal crisis to be taken out of the hides of school kids, the poor and the disabled, monopolizes the wealth of society on a scale unheard of in modern history.
New York City’s top 1 percent consists of those making $645,000 or more in annual income. (The Times’ executive editor, Bill Keller, fits comfortably in this category). According to a recent study by the Fiscal Policy Institute (FPI), this layer has seen its share of total income in the city rise from 12 percent in 1980 to 44 percent in 2007, the last year for which data is available.
This top 1 percent consists of about 34,500 households, comprised of 90,000 of New York City’s richest. Their average household income amounts to $3.7 million a year. As the FPI study points out, ten times as many city residents—900,000—are living in deep poverty, defined as half of the absurdly low federal poverty line for a family of four, which translates into $10,500. This annual income, upon which more than 10 percent of New York’s population subsists, is roughly the equivalent of the $10,137 which the average household in the top one percent rakes in every single day of the year.
The average income of the top one percent has more than doubled since 2002 alone, rising by 119 percent. Meanwhile, over the past two decades, the median hourly wage in New York City has fallen by nearly 9 percent, while the share of total income earned by those on the bottom half of the economic ladder—50 percent of the population—has been cut in half, from 15.8 percent in 1990 to 7.9 percent today.
The top one percent runs the city, with Bloomberg, one of their own, at the helm. This elite rests on a wider layer of millionaires, which, according to a survey produced last summer, consists of some 667,000 people. No doubt they include not a few of the higher-paid columnists and editorial writers at the Times. According to the FPI study, the number of millionaires in New York City rose by 18 percent in 2009 over the previous year, a staggering rise that can be explained only by the massive amount of money poured into Wall Street in the wake of the September 2008 financial meltdown.
It is worth recalling that at the time of the bank bailout, the Times editorial board wasn’t talking about living “within our means.” Instead, it was demanding that the government make available hundreds of billions of dollars to cover the bad bets of the major financial institutions and protect the fortunes of their biggest investors.
“It is painfully clear that the financial system will not rebound on its own from the excessive lending and borrowing of the Bush years and the credit collapse in their wake,” the Times editorialized at the time. “The one-bailout-at-a-time approach hasn’t worked. And modest steps are no longer an option.”
Thus, the same newspaper that proclaimed there could be no “modest steps” in bailing out the banks now insists there can be “no easy fixes,” i.e., that the working people must pay the cost.
The Times editorial sums up the outlook of the liberal Democratic Party establishment, including the Obama administration, and reflects the wealth-besotted social layer for which it speaks—a layer that looks on the working class with contempt and hatred.
The drastic cutbacks now being introduced, coming on top of the sharp decline in living standards for the majority of the population, near-record unemployment and historic levels of social inequality, will inevitably ignite a social firestorm.
New York City will see social struggles on a scale now being witnessed in Egypt. Millions of workers will fight to defend their jobs, their living standards, their children’s education and their basic social rights against the rapacity of New York’s billionaire pharaohs. [emphasis added]
This struggle must be prepared through the creation of popular action committees in the neighborhoods and in the workplaces to resist school closures, mass layoffs and social cutbacks. Genuine resistance can be organized only if it is independent of the trade union apparatus, which is an integral part of the entire corrupt political setup, assisting in the implementation of the policies of Bloomberg, Cuomo and Obama.
The answer to the cynical demand that we live “within our means” by driving millions more into poverty lies in the fight to recover the “means” that have been robbed from society by the Wall Street plunderers.
What is needed is a socialist program, including the expropriation of the major banks, finance houses and corporations and the placing of their resources under public ownership and the democratic control of the working class. Together with a policy of taxation that places the burden of the economic crisis upon the wealthy parasites who created it, such measures will free up resources to provide jobs for the unemployed, raise living standards, and provide the funding needed to assure decent health care, quality education and a secure retirement for all.
