On “Being Reasonable”

    Our fight to secure a decent contract from the Strand Bookstore has reached a crucial point. The most recent offer put forward by the ownership contains improvements in the terms it offers current members relative to the truly hostile “final offer” we rejected in April. In several conversations with fellow Strand workers I've detected a desire to dispense with all the contentiousness and accept an offer that doesn't ask egregious concessions from current members. There exists an attitude, which is expressed nearly any time the topic of labor unions is brought up, that it is all well and good to resist attacks on your standard of living, but that the fight should never extend into purely principled ideological territory or even to attempting to secure significant gains from the employer. Thus, many people would rather give a little something up than seem greedy. There is a generalized fear that asking for too much will somehow leave one accepting nothing, and few wish to take this perceived risk for the purpose of benefiting some as of yet nonexistent coworker.

     

    There are two things I would hope everyone keeps in mind as they decide how they will vote this week. One is that the two-tier system is as much an attack on the current employees as it is on those who will come in the future. The second is that the “reasonable” thing to do is to continue fighting, not to accept the unsatisfactory if not terrible offer we are now faced with.

    At one of the informational meetings held last week it was expressed that we (relatively) long standing employees deserve a better deal as a reward for our loyalty to the company. If you think about what a two-tier system really means, however, it becomes clear that the impetus behind it is the complete opposite of one that seeks to reward anyone but the company's owners. If they wanted to reward the longstanding employees they could increase longevity payments without establishing a ceiling over the benefits of all employees who come in the future. Instead they're giving almost nothing to their current employees and setting the stage for a situation where there is a certain level of resentment among newer employees, who if they stay long enough to become union, will not be likely to engage in the type of fight we have been to protect the benefits and pay of their more senior co-workers.

    Though working class people always seem to wish to “be reasonable” the company has no such compulsion. No matter how profitable they are, they can always be more so by lowering their labor costs. Their asking us to cast our future coworkers off into a second tier is essentially a way of expressing that we are overpaid and that the second tier will represent a more healthy level of labor costs for them. Rest assured that they will wait with bated breath for us to move on, and may find ways of compelling us to do so. The next negotiation will be an exercise in trying to force us to move closer to the lower tier. Through a combination of attrition and further aggressive negotiating the company hopes to return to a single, lower tier as soon as possible.

     

    Two months ago we were faced with a “final offer” that asked for concessions from every employee and for a more pronounced two tiers. We resolved to stand united against this offer and to go beyond the act of voting. We engaged the press, picketed the store, kept each other informed and showed that we could force the company to move in our direction. By accepting the current flawed proposal, we would be forgetting a lesson we only recently learned and giving into irrational fear. That would be completely unreasonable.

Lessons for Labor from the Bad-Old-Days

     Labor unions have been in steady decline in the United States for decades now. They currently represent only about seven percent of private sector workers, where once (the late 1950s) that rate was near thirty percent. There are numerous reasons for this decline; changes in technology have meant that the same work can be done by fewer workers and that some jobs have simply ceased to exist. Capital, of course, has never let up in its fight to weaken and eliminate unions, with their potential ability to cut into its profits and lessen its freedom to determine working conditions and terms of employment. Another factor in labor's decline is its own slide into complacency and despair in what has seemed for some time an inevitable result of the world-wide shift to more precarious conditions for the working class. Recent attacks on organized labor from the American political class seem aimed at completely eviscerating the legal basis on which labor had gained power and stability in the twentieth century. Coming on the heels of decades of relentless anti-union and pro-business propaganda and the elimination and off-shoring of traditionally union jobs, these attempts to ban collective bargaining in the public sector with legislation like Wisconsin Governor Walker's “Budget Repair Bill” and the private sector through “right to work” laws currently being proposed in Ohio, Indiana and New Hampshire seem to have the potential if successful to deal an effective death blow to organized labor.

      What these laws seek to reverse in essence is a law passed during the height of the Great Depression called the Wagner Act. The Wagner Act transformed unions in American Society from organizations with no legal right to do what they were created to do, to legally sanctioned institutions meant to be nearly equal partners with capital in determining working conditions, pay and benefits. The Wagner Act guaranteed that when the majority of workers in a particular work place voted in favor of union representation that an election must be held to ratify the union of the employees' choice as the sole agent to bargain collectively on their behalf. It also barred intimidation of union activists and supporters by agents of the company and made it illegal for companies to hire “replacement workers” or scabs during a strike. It established the National Labor Relations board to act as arbiter between union workers and their employers when an impasse such as a strike or lockout was reached. It also established the legality of the “closed shop” where all workers in a given workplace which has chosen union representation are automatically members of the union, which can deduct dues automatically from their pay. It is important to understand how these changes fundamentally altered the role of unions; they greatly strengthened them as actors in the economy and society. Surprisingly, though I would argue that they eventually created a situation where the aforementioned complacency and despair were able to begin to corrode organized labor's more essential source of strength, the solidarity and militancy of their rank-and-file membership.

      In the century before the great depression, the industrial revolution necessitated that large numbers of the population move from agriculture or craft industry (home based manufacturing requiring great skill on the part of the craftsmen) to wage labor in factories and mills creating goods through mechanized assembly-line methods. Many who took these jobs soon became profoundly disenchanted with the dull nature of the work and the long hours and low pay in dangerous and unpleasant conditions. A natural outgrowth of this dissatisfaction was the formations of protean labor organizations, which tried through work-stoppages and other forms of protest and petition to secure shorter hours and better pay. Much of American society was hostile to these organizations from the outset. Business owners, confident that unions had no legal standing appealed to the judiciary to force them to relent in their efforts. In the courts employers tended to bring conspiracy charges against unions and they generally won. An early example of this tactic was a case brought against an association of shoe-makers in Philadelphia in the 1820s. The reasoning went that it was all well and good for an individual shoemaker to demand better pay, but when he joined with his compatriots to make the same demand he (and all of those involved) became party to a conspiracy with the potential to harm society as a whole by forcing employers to act contrary to the interests they had in their property.

      Subsequent court cases such as Commonwealth V. Hunt, lessened the strength of the conspiracy case against unions, establishing that a prosecutor must prove actions violating a particular law in order to establish the existence of a conspiracy. With conspiracy less likely to hold up in court, the new tool for putting a stop to labor activism was the injunction. An injunction allows a judge to bar a person or group of people from taking a particular action. An common injunction in a labor dispute might be barring striking workers from blocking the road that managers and replacement workers might use to gain access to a workplace. Also, though unions were no longer considered conspiracies, to bar non-union workers from a particular workplace was seen as a violation of their civil rights. Thus, collective bargaining was impossible as long as an employer was willing to use strike-breakers and fire those participating in a strike. Unsurprisingly, they nearly always were.

      Under these conditions, which persisted with little change until the passage of the Wagner Act, labor faced an uphill battle in winning any concessions from capital. The attempts currently being made by conservative politicians to enact “right-to-work” laws and limit or eliminate collective bargaining rights for public employees have the potential to effectively turn the clock back to these pre-Wagner Act Days. I would argue that it is of the utmost importance to resist these attempts. However, with the unresponsive nature of America's government at the present moment, low levels of union membership in the private sector, and seemingly unprecedented hostility to organized labor in much of the population, it may be nearly impossible to prevent the success of much of this anti-union legislation.

      At this grim moment for labor it has become necessary to revive the tactics that allowed labor to maintain an upward momentum for decades, in spite of the significant obstacles it faced. Some of the tactics that brought labor success in its early days began to fade after the passage of the Wagner Act. With government backing for collective bargaining and procedures in place to arbitrate intractable disputes that were accepted by both labor and capital as generally fair and acceptable, a certain routine took hold in labor relations. With closed shops in effect union officials tended to become distant and unresponsive to their membership. Strikes became rarer and rarer for various reasons, and labor saw less of an incentive for organizing the unorganized and gaining the support of the general public. Though the Wagner Act was a crucial victory for labor it also brought about these unintended negative consequences. This general malaise in labors ranks coupled with conservative control of the government and a less stable workforce combined to bring labor to the sad state it finds itself in today.

      Before the Wagner Act dues weren't automatically collected from every employee at a workplace, they were voluntarily paid by workers who understood that the union was attempting to protect them from abuse at the hands of the boss and to bind them together in solidarity. This made the financial position of unions more precarious, but it made for union officials who were responsive to the needs of the rank-and-file. After the United Mine Workers of America negotiated a 10% pay increase for coal miners in Pennsylvania in 1901, but failed to get the coal companies to recognize the union, the companies began to increase the size of carts which the miners were paid a per-ton amount for filling. (A “miner's ton” at this time was generally close to 3,000 lbs, and a miner was paid sixty cents for each “ton” brought to the surface). The union officials has agreed not to make any more demands for a year, but the membership, incensed at the dishonesty of the companies, took it upon themselves to call strikes at individual mines without official union backing. Many simultaneously stopped paying their dues to the union. A year later the union called an industry-wide strike. In the period between the union's threat of a strike and its outset, dues began pouring back in. When the strike went into effect at least 140,000 people stopped work. The immensity of this is more impressive when you consider that it was perfectly legal for the companies to escort anyone who wanted to continue working to the mine surrounded by national guardsmen armed with machine guns. If the strike wasn't successful, many who were active could expect to find themselves on a black-list that would prevent them from finding work anywhere in the region. This type of solidarity seems to have faded in organized labor today, but without the protections enjoyed by unions in the past it may soon become absolutely necessary in opposing further attacks by capital.

      Another important way that unions found success in a hostile environment was by winning public support for their cause. It may have been legal for employers to use strong arm tactics to prevent unionization and break strikes, but when it became too obvious that they were doing so it could hurt their business when potential customers felt that labor's demands were reasonable and that companies were being abusive in resisting them. The Industrial Workers of the World, an early industrial union, was constantly attacked in the press, but were successful in winning the Lawrence Textile Strike of 1911 because the public was horrified at the striker's treatment by police (who shot and killed a young, unarmed female striker), and the suffering of the strikers' children (most of whom would have worked in the mills with their parents). Underlying this public support was a rising class consciousness in the population as a whole that has largely faded today. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries most who weren't actually union members began to feel that they had more in common with the workers than the bosses. They generally felt that the demands of workers were entirely reasonable given the immense wealth and power of the industrial capitalists of the day. Conversely, where many unions today seem content to remain static, representing workers in whatever industry they've gained a foothold, the earlier industrial unions saw it as their goal to organize as many workers as possible. They were well aware that this could only increase their power in bargaining for better conditions and pay.

      At this crucial moment for the labor movement, all who are sympathetic to labor's cause and whose personal quality of life will be affected by its success or failure should re-dedicate themselves to the core principles that have enabled it to profoundly improve the lives of the vast majority of Americans; solidarity with your co-workers and with all working people, the willingness to fight back with direct action when pushed to make concessions (whether by the employer or a demoralized union hierarchy), and a sense of pride in your work and in organizing to stand up for the dignity of that work, and in the end the dignity of all who work for a living.

Radical Networking

A massive set of protests has been planned for November 17^th in New York City. It remains to be seen whether they will evidence strong, continuing support for the Occupy movement. In recent weeks it seems that those who wish for the failure of the movement have been taking the proverbial gloves off, with more harsh police tactics in evidence as several cities (St. Louis, Burlington, Salt Lake City, Portland and others) have attempted to evict Occupy encampments from public spaces. The intense antagonism toward the movement is the inevitable result of its success in mobilizing massive numbers of people around progressive causes and capturing the media spotlight that was so reluctant to shine on it in the beginning. If the forces of reaction are successful in driving the movement out of the public squares, it will still have done much to energize the left in America and should leave it in a stronger position to win battles on policy and shift the nation's consciousness in a progressive direction.

The reason for this is an aspect of OWS that seems obvious, but hasn't been discussed much in the media. Occupy Wall Street has become (perhaps unintentionally) the best vehicle for what I'd call “radical networking” (you can call it movement-building if you really want to avoid the business school connotations of the former). OWS, with its lack of demands (actually, the important thing is that it has many) and its sharing of decision making between individuals and between multiple nodes of activity brings together causes that might have seemed distinct in the past, and allows them to coalesce into an umbrella movement that's greater than the sum of its parts.

I'll give you an example from my own experience. A few weeks ago, wanting to do more than march in general support of OWS, I joined one of its many autonomous “working groups” who meet outside of Zuccotti Park and attempt to use the same horizontal decision making process that the General Assembly does to come to agreement about issues that fall under the purview of their particular group's focus. I am a union shop steward at my workplace and feel strongly that organized labor is a powerful and positive social force that can be credited with much of the progress that occurred in American social relations in the twentieth century. I hoped that organized labor might be able to bring to bear some of its institutional resources in service of the Occupy cause, and that Occupy's freshness and energy might play some part in re-vitalizing the state of organized labor. Days before I signed up for the Labor Outreach Committee, my union (The United Auto Workers) officially endorsed Occupy Wall Street. When New York City's Mayor Mike Bloomberg had tried to clear Zuccotti Park on the pretext of a cleaning of the area, members of my union, both rank-and-file and paid officials of the international went to the park in the wee hours of morning to stand down the NYPD. I was exceedingly proud.

The OWS Labor Outreach Committee is dedicated to getting more rank-and-file union workers involved with the Occupy movement and using the momentum of OWS to aid organized labor in its varied battles. Occupy supporters, some union members and some simply sympathetic to the struggles of working class people, have joined picket lines in support of locked-out Teamsters at the Sotheby's auction house and demonstrations for Communications and Electrical workers fighting to get a decent contract out of Verizon. It seemed that my hopes had been realized when a week ago the New York Times ran a story under the headline, “Occupy Movement Inspires Unions to Embrace Bold Tactics.” Labor has been on the retreat for decades. It has lost members to outsourcing as well as to legislative attacks. At the same time it has lost the sympathy of many who would benefit from its power as they accept fear-mongering pro-business propaganda as gospel. (I'll be surprised if I don't get at least one hateful comment after revealing that I am one of those scary 'union thugs') With Occupy Wall Street entering the picture it seems like there is finally a chance that the momentum will be in the other direction.

Because OWS isn't solely focused on one issue it can marshal the energies, talents and enthusiasm of all its supporters in service of all of the more narrow progressive causes that others have fought for for years. Since OWS has focused on issues of economic inequality and class power it has avoided the single-issue tunnel vision that has hamstrung the left for decades. Since the ascendancy of the post-1960's right-wing in America, the left has generally seemed willing to give much ground on the broad issue of economic justice and has instead focused on an array of secondary problems. Without the recognition that all of these problems relate directly to the way in which economic power is distributed in society, the left allowed itself to become balkanized into multiple, often mutually hostile groups dedicated to their own pet issue or brand of identity politics. Occupy Wall Street seems to me to be ushering in a new era of radical networking, welcoming all of those who fight against one or another of the ill-effects of economic injustice, the corporate power that thrives on it and the political corruption bred by it. It facilitates their ability to act in a concert with each other. Each specific cause gives purpose and focus to the movement as a whole, and the movement as a whole lends power to each of its parts. Unions who lend their support will gain allies in their workplace struggles, while they lend support to those opposing Hydraulic Fracturing in the Marcellus Shale, who will fight against unfair foreclosures and the corporate “reform” of the public school system. I think that this is a great thing, and hope that the Occupy Movement can maintain its momentum. If you're near NYC, come out Thursday and be a part of it.

Advice From an Ally That OWS Should Ignore

I have been increasingly interested and involved in the Occupy Wall Street movement that sprung up in New York about a month ago and in a short time began to spread to the far corners of the United States and the world. I haven't been able to properly “Occupy” Zucotti park as I work full time, but I have made it to most of the larger actions; the march halfway across the Brooklyn bridge (followed by the paddy wagon ride to One Police Plaza), the huge labor solidarity march the following week and the convergence on Times Square this past weekend. It seems that the usual dismissive criticisms and back-handed compliments from supposed allies have failed to overshadow tangible victories, like the one that occurred last Friday when thousands converged in the dawn hours to prevent the police from emptying the park. With each victory the movement draws more sympathizers into the fold, but simultaneously rankles the very powerful interests and institutions that are threatened by this type of nascent mass-movement. I'm surprised and heartened by the movement's success. In the end, however, if either tangible reforms or revolutionary change are going to be affected by the Occupy movement it is important that we not only preach to the liberal left/ choir, but win enough converts to our general point of view to either pressure the political establishment to enact legislative change, or circumvent the existing structures and organize around some other socioeconomic structure. So far, I fear that what the Occupy movement has achieved so far is unifying and activating the roughly half of the nation's population that shares a generally progressive view. And this is important in itself. What of the other half? Those who have a profoundly different view of what constitutes “justice” or “fairness”. The ones who shout at us as we march down the streets of Manhattan to “Stop protesting, and get off your asses!”

When I saw a piece by George Lakoff in Truthout this week (http://www.truth-out.org/how-frame-yourself-framing-memo-occupy-wall-street/1319031142), billed as his advice to Occupy Wall Street on how to present itself to the world at large, I was interested. I was familiar his ideas about how political ideas exist within cognitive frames. He describes how the political world views of most individuals are not based on rational inquiry but on an emotional response based on a cognitive framework. The framework is a set of arbitrary moral judgments. Lakoff's work in this field has always seemed generally valid to me. The left sees individuals as irrevocably part of a larger society. The right sees the individual as autonomous and ultimately responsible for his own actions. The left sees a need for nurturing and collective decision making, while the right looks only for the individual's right to act freely, responsibly and in self-interest. In identifying these important root differences in point of view I feel that Lakoff has been particularly astute. I've always been frustrated by the fact that no amount of economic statistics on income inequality or social mobility can cut through the typical conservative's ironclad belief that it is the individual's personal responsibility to find work, to the extent that if there were five jobs available to the twenty six million un- and underemployed in America, it would be the individual's responsibility to be one of the five most educated, hard-working and diligent applicants, and if they weren't, there would be no right to complain or petition government to help them in their situation. Lakoff in his short essay proposes to have some insight into how we can circumvent the conservative framework and become a more truly mass-movement. In my opinion though, he seems to ignore the basis of his own ideas when formulating his advice.

Lakoff goes on to claim that what the Occupy movement needs to do in order to win hearts and minds is to cram its own goals and principles into a superficially conservative framework and then expect conservatives to be bamboozled into agreeing. It seems to me that this is doomed to failure and shouldn't be seriously considered by anyone involved. He claims that Occupy Wall street should declare itself a “moral” movement and go on to explain to its detractors that it is society's moral duty to nurture the individual. He himself, however, has already clearly explained why this is next to impossible. A conservative's morality is based on a framework where free-will decisions are either punished with destitution or rewarded with wealth. For the society to “nurture” the individual in hope of insuring her success is doomed to failure and at any rate, rife with moral hazard. I would like to propose a different tack in trying to reach out to those who don't already agree with the general left-leaning point of view of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Simply by coming into existence, Occupy Wall Street has begun to challenge the overall conservative ideological framework, not by attempting to work within it, but by loudly and clearly presenting the opposite framework. It has shown with the thousands that have shown up at Liberty Square and marched and rallied for more specific causes (Labor rights, a legally-enforced living wage, foreclosure relief and affordable housing, environmental concerns about hydro-fracking and the nuclear industry) that the conservative framework's deficiencies left-unchallenged have produced suffering in the 99% that will no longer be met with apathy. It has always seemed to me not that the vast majority of Americans are conservative in their world view, but that those who are are louder, more consistent and supported by most of the powerful institutions of the media. Now, with the Internet technology as a world-straddling megaphone and a multiple physical spaces delineated as breeding grounds for activism, consciousness-raising and civil disobedience, our side just might have the power to push back and win a significant number of converts. I fear that following Mr. Lakoff's advice would simply dampen this energy and if anything, reinforce conservative's belief that their framework is so superior to ours that we must adopt it even as we try to fight it.

#NOV 17: A Narrative Account

In the morning hours yesterday, November 17th, hundreds of Occupy Wall Street protesters gathered by "the red cube", a sculpture that sits in a cement plaza across from Zuccotti Park/Liberty Plaza. They marched to Wall Street proper, and proceeded to block pedestrian traffic leading into the stock exchange. Around 100 of them were arrested at this action, including a retired Philadelphia Police Captain and a young girl, who according to some friends of mine who participated was no older than twelve. A two person counter-protest was in evidence. One man held a sign reading, "Occupy a desk". The second held one with the highly original "get a job" in black marker. The Protest failed to stop the opening bell at the stock exchange as it had hoped to do, but was the first large protest that the movement has succeeded in holding on Wall Street itself, as opposed to the surrounding financial district neighborhood. Other events were planned throughout the day.


I wasn't in attendance. It wasn't because I overslept, but because coincidentally, I was to appear for my arraignment on charges of disorderly conduct in the second degree, the result of my arrest on the Brooklyn Bridge just over a month ago while participating in an OWS led march. When I saw a couple of NYPD helicopters hovering over the financial district as I stood outside the courthouse at 100 Center St. at 8:30 a.m, I knew why they were there


Inside I checked in with a representative of the National Lawyers Guild, which is providing legal representation to those involved in the OWS protests free of charge. I went to the court room and waited with about twenty others who had been arrested with me for the lawyers representing us individually to arrive. The hearings were short. We were all offered something called an A.C.D. (Adjournment in Consideration of Dismissal) in which the charge is essentially dropped if you promise not to be arrested for six months. Accepting the ACD means that you do not plead either guilty or innocent, but that you promise to "stay out of trouble" and if you do, the record is sealed and it is as if you were never charged. Most who were arraigned before me accepted the ACD. I chose to go to trial. I did this for a couple of reasons. The ACD seems to me a tacit admission of guilt, sort of like someone charged with a civil offense offering a monetary out-of-court settlement in order to avoid pleading one way or the other. Second, I know that I will much want to participate in other OWS actions, as long as there are any going on, and considering the response of the police to the recent protests, it would feel dishonest to 'promise' that I wouldn't be arrested. I would certainly try not to in any case, but it seems that certain otherwise non-criminal activities are likely to get you arrested if you're with a group of people holding the wrong signs.



Though I understand that what I did could easily be construed as a violation, walking on a car path in New York City under any other circumstances wouldn't elicit a sideways glance from the cops. I won't go into much detail here, but the police essentially led us onto the car path then hemmed us in front and back and arrested every last one of us. Many were taken to jail in commandeered city buses. There was a much larger march across the Brooklyn Bridge last night (which I'll talk about later) which resulted in few arrests (none on the bridge itself). The only difference between the two situations lay in the actions taken by the police. It seems apparent to me that the earlier march ended up the way it did because a certain third term billionaire Mayor ordered his G. Gordon Liddy looking Police Commissioner to intimidate some "hippies" enough to discourage them from embarrassing the people of quality he rubs elbows with and who have made him the twelfth richest man in America. The fact that last night's march went so much differently bodes well in my mind, both for OWS and for my case in particular.


If you're concerned that I'm taking risks for something of doubtful real value, I thank you for your concern. However even if I am found guilty, Disorderly Conduct isn't a felony. It's a misdemeanor and I wouldn't be required to mention it on a job application. The maximum penalty would be a $500 fine, which I wouldn't be happy about, but wouldn't exactly ruin my life either. I'd be worse off if I had to spend a month without a roommate to share rent with or go to the emergency room for a night (even with my wonderful health insurance in effect). I was given a trial date. The lawyer appointed to me by the NLG gave me his card and told me he'd be in touch.


After returning to Flatbush and having some pancakes with my roommate. I went straight to Facebook to hunt down some photos or accounts of the earlier action. It looked like there had been pretty significant turnout. Then, still in my courtroom attire I headed back to the Q train Manhattan bound and to Foley Square where I intended to join a few other people in celebrating OWS' two-month birthday and showing the world that the recent eviction of the encampment at Zuccotti Park would not be the end of the movement. That, as some signs carried by marchers since have read, 'you cannot evict an idea whose time has come'.


As I stepped off the train at Brooklyn Bridge station the police presence was staggering. There were at least five cops on the platform. I walked out of the station and north toward Foley Square as dusk was beginning to fall. The rally was massive. The papers today have seemed to focus on the more rowdy action at Wall Street earlier with its greater number of arrests, and those that have mentioned the evening's march have been buried on the back pages or have significantly downplayed the numbers. Foley Square (which covers a few square blocks) was completely filled. Riot cops and metal barricades kept the crowd from spilling onto Centre Street, but the sidewalk on the far side was also completely filled with marchers. A while after I had arrived a group of thousands who had marched down from an earlier action at Union Square joined us, adding to the already gigantic crowd. I knew some friends from work were there and I found them by walking towards some blue United Auto Workers signs I saw floating in the crowd.This event had a permit, and thus there was sound amplification. There were some speakers and a hip hop act and then we began to slowly march south toward the Brooklyn Bridge. When we reached the Northeast corner of City Hall Park Chambers Street to our right was blocked off by police on horseback. At this time the whole march stopped moving. Police buses with lights flashing approached from the south. For a moment I thought we were being "kettled". Later I learned that a group of about 100 had sat down in the roadway at the foot of the bridge and been arrested, their numbers including one City Council member. Apparently because this was going on were were told by the police to walk west on Chambers Street and then around the park, which would force us to walk a few extra blocks and approach the Bridge from the south. We complied and as we walked along the outskirts of City Hall park the crowd thinned, but as we approached the crosswalk leading onto the Brooklyn Bridge pedestrian path we again joined a crowd of thousands and began slowly walking onto the bridge. As we did the sea of people extended as far as the eye could see toward Brooklyn on the bridge's span. A few yards onto the bridge I saw a familiar head of gray hair on a man holding a familiar briefcase. It was the lawyer appointed to me earlier, taking part in the march himself, briefcase in hand. We exchanged greetings and continued.


As we marched many below honked their horns or gave the thumbs up in support. When we passed the Verizon building that sits just north of the bridge on the Manhattan side we noticed that a huge '99%' was being projected onto the side of it from somewhere below. The projection went on to list many of the cities with occupations and to state, 'We are winning' and 'this is the beginning of the beginning'. Inspired, many marchers stopped and cheered, chanting along and yelling when their hometown or a city they felt a particular connection to was mentioned (I did so for Philly and Scranton, by the way)


My friends and I didn't continue to the Brooklyn side, but turned around about half way since we'd heard that there would be a General Assembly at Zuccotti park soon. We walked back toward Manhattan against the flow of the march, along with a few others who had already reached and were returning from the Brooklyn side where, we were later told, a marching band was playing and the mood was festive. As we walked again past City Hall Park a middle aged woman with two young children at her side approached me and asked with a Spanish accent, "Can we take a picture?" I held my hand out assuming that as a tourist she wanted a picture in NY with her children. She looked confused. "You want to take a picture of me?" I asked. She asked if I spoke Spanish,"A little" I responded and she pointed to the UAW sign I was carrying and asked in Spanish, "What is that?" in my mangled Spanish I answered, "Its a union, for workers who make automobiles". She nodded and took my picture, then said,"Good luck to you." I don't know why she was interested or sympathetic, she must have known about or had just witnessed the march.


We passed through the police checkpoint in the barricade that now surrounds all of Zuccotti Park. The police made us remove the cardboard tubing from our UAW signs, as any kind of stick is now prohibited by Brookfield rules. Inside a short General Assembly was held. Midway through a crowd of a couple hundred marchers began to arrive, the last of those returning from the bridge. Everyone cheered and many of them joined us in the park. After the G.A. a man with short cropped gray hair and a matching mustache was telling us how proud he was of OWS, and admonishing us not to repeat what he felt were the mistakes of the anti-Vietnam war protests in the sixties, which he said he'd taken part in. When asked where he was from he replied, "The poorest city in the United States. We didn't know we were the poorest city until we read it in the newspaper."
"Where's that?" Someone asked.
He replied, "Reading, Pennsylvania". Grinning I told him I was also from PA and we shook hands and talked. Noticing the UAW sign he told me that he had been a member of the union when he worked at Saturn for the duration of its existence as a company. He told us that is was a good place to work that was run differently than most large companies. He felt that Saturn had gone under because they had to compete with other companies that "weren't such good places to work". He was surprised to learn that we were UAW in our jobs as book store clerks. Later he told us that he had been a steel worker in PA in the 1970's and that when he'd gone to work in the mill he saw that the workers there, in his words, "were just getting mangled and hurt left and right. They were all eastern European guys and they were getting injured all the time, so I decided I was going to get active in this union (the Steelworkers)." I told him I was a shop steward, albeit at a much cushier job, but he shook my hand again and said, "All workers ought to have a union." We talked a little longer in the chilly park and I headed home.


Now when I see the hateful comments of those not sympathetic to the movement on Occupywallst.org and related Facebook pages, I think of him. Lately the barrage has gotten much more intense. Living in one of the most liberal cities anywhere the level of conservative stupidity I have to deal with on a face-to-face level is thankfully pretty low. However, in the world of the internet the reactionaries seem to have amped up their effort to make us feel outnumbered. Maybe they've realized that this isn't some sort of hipster fad and that we're not going to give up easily or get bored and go home. The typical stereotype that they apply to an OWS supporter has now gone from "hippies" and "lazy bums" to "diseased animals" and "rapists", "drug addicts" and "criminals". (No doubt in large part because the biased news reports they thoughtlessly accept have taken to blaming Occupations for any crime that occurs in their vicinity. These are all words I have seen used, specifically.) Well, the man from Reading,PA I met isn't any of these things. This is a man who has worked from the time he graduated high school in dirty, hot, dangerous and noisy jobs so that he could support his wife and daughter (Who now works at Villanova University) and who became a union activist not because he wanted "more than he deserved" as conservatives would characterize it, but because he cared about the safety and well being of his fellow human beings (even and especially those who were immigrants). He'd been politically active for decades in support of causes that only "hippies" are supposed to care about (Anti-War, Anti-nuclear and now OWS) I'd imagine the only drugs he ever abused were Yuengling and maybe a little liquor. All of these right wingers should know his story and try using their smug, twisted logic to explain why nothing he believes is valid.


So anyway, that's my account of the events of November 17th, 2011. If you get a different picture from the NY Post, CNN or the New York Times, ask yourself why that might be and if you have an idea then you might understand what OWS is trying to change.

Thoughts on Occupy Wall Street.

Last Saturday, I was arrested with approximately 700 other people as were were surrounded by New York City Police roughly mid-way across the car path of the Brooklyn Bridge. We were taking part in a march organized by Occupy Wall Street, which has been encamped in Zucotti Park for about three weeks now. I've been cautiously intrigued by the action since I'd seen it mentioned on some lefty website or another in early September. I had participated in the last six months or so in protests and rallies in the New York area organized by Uncut NYC, the Reverend Billy and various mainstream labor unions. I have to admit, my experiences with protest in the past have tended to be less than inspiring. The turnout was generally small. During the past spring I stood outside a Bank of America branch in mid-town chanting “B.O.A, Must Pay!” with a few dozen others. The bank and its patrons went about their business. After an hour or so, we left. No one in the press covered it as far as I know. When the occupation was in its first days the extremely sparse news coverage I found succeeded in convincing me that this was just another abortive attempt put forward by a noble but tiny minority. In the following weeks I have been happily proven wrong.

At this point, no one can deny that Occupy Wall St. has gained more attention, both from those who agree with it and those who despise it, than any protest action in recent American history. Many critics ask, “What's the point? What are they protesting?” Others, like Andrew Ross Sorkin and the entire staff of the New York Times engage in knee-jerk ad -hominem attacks, tarring the protesters as hippies, who of course would realize how utterly silly they were being if only they had to work like everyone else. Many on the left have essentially hidden behind these arguments, claiming not necessarily that they share the sentiment, but that they worry that if the movement doesn't seem serious and organized it won't be able to accomplish the good things it surely hopes to. At this point I won't be the first to make this argument, but I'm not bothered by the lack of a specific demand or narrower target. To pigeonhole the movement into this small bore thinking would be the death of it. The movement does have an open document online, with a set of demands, or what I think would be better described as a Shadow Platform, the platform of the 99%, the platform a genuine left political party might put forward were it not as hopelessly bought-and-paid-for as the current two “acceptable” parties are (I won't name them, I don't feel like gagging at the moment). To me though, simply embracing this “platform” and calling for its implementation would be to miss the point.

Before getting to what I find most promising about Occupy Wall St. please indulge me by allowing me to share some autobiographical information. I was born in November of 1979. A few months later Ronald Reagan was inaugurated. My adolescent and teenage years took place during the boom years of the 1990s when even as a high schooler I got really, really tired of hearing about rock-star CEOs and how America needed a President who “knew how to run a business.” I always found it funny that the most nationalistic, histrionic patriots were the ones comfortable equating their country with Kinkos or Ore Ida. The accepted, almost uncontested narrative in the media, the arts and society in general was, for the first twenty years of my life, that free markets are perfect, government is inept and inefficient and all the problems of the world would be solved if only some crafty entrepreneur could profit from solving them. The way for bands to be “edgy” was to claim that they were proud to have “sold-out” and that everyone was “just jealous of their success.” Being political made you tiresome. People didn't entertain the possibility that it was more than some retro, punk rock fad. It was after all, the End of History.

With the circus of the Bush administration in effect from 2000 on there were some encouraging rumblings. Of course, 9/11 was supposed to have restarted history, now with a monolithic Islamic threat to replace the discredited Communist one. During this time the Daily Show and Colbert Report became liberal pranksters, calling the media and political class out on their many hypocrisies and stupidities. It was reassuring to me to realize that enough other people saw the absurdity enough to laugh at it, an on a large enough scale for these programs to become resounding successes. Before the 04 elections, people who I'd never heard talk about politics began saying things like, “That guy's fucking crazy. Who the hell could vote for such an idiot.” Well, enough did that for the first time he (probably) actually won. Again, as the world financial system collapsed under the weight of the fraudulent instruments dreamed up by investment bankers to trade in the debt peonage they'd imposed on ninety percent of the population for thirty years it seemed like a corner had been turned. Newsweek even informed us that “We Are All Socialists Now.” Then came...The Tea Party.

What I am getting at, other than a little venting is that during my lifetime, the wealthy and powerful and the government they own have always, without any significant exception been able to buy, co-opt or discredit anything that even looked like it threatened them. Anyone in possession of even the most rudimentary bullshit detector should have seen that it wasn't a coincidence that the media whether supposedly “liberal” or “conservative” would never step out of a narrowly defined acceptability and that this “acceptability” wasn't based on what was acceptable to a majority of people, but to the people with the most economic weight to throw around. Any voice that spoke this truth during my lifetime has been relegated to the margins and ignored. Or, if gaining any prominence seemed to be neutralized in terms of inspiring any tangible action beyond a very small group of politically aware people. Even those who agreed with the dissenters were too comfortable or too disheartened to do any dissenting of their own.

Now, there is Occupy Wall Street. The Tea Party may have been for some an expression of genuine populist outrage, but it was soon distorted and corralled by the aforementioned elite into yet another hate-spewing know-nothing parade of assorted ugly Americans. So far, as someone who has participated in Occupy Wall St., I would say it has avoided a similar fate. If Occupy Wall street maintains its present character there is a good chance that it won't be used or absorbed by Obama 2012, the “Ron Paul Revolution” or for that matter, the Socialist Party USA (sorry guys). Occupy Wall Street is not yet fully formed, and the idea seems to that it can never be. The general consensus among its participants is in support of principles and policies that I think could only improve the state of things were they to be implemented, even on a piecemeal basis. (Reinstating Glass-Stegall, taxing Capital gains as income etc.) Many no doubt will fail to see how this matters if no politician who has a chance of winning office will adopt these policies. In reality, this is a triumph rather than a failure. The only way any politician of any persuasion will adopt a policy is if their corporate pay-masters tell them to. There is no significant exception to this rule If we start with support for a politician and follow with policy suggestions or the expectation that they'll do right by us, we will only be deceived and used. (See Clinton Administration 92-00/Obama Administration 08-12) We have to start with organization and a shift in consciousness, then develop policies and force whoever is in political office or the boardroom to accept that the people will no longer apathetically allow their will to be smugly ignored. (See Abolitionist/Civil Rights/ Labor/Women's Suffrage Movements).

What's inspiring to me about the movement so far is that it genuinely does seem to indicate a broad-based shift in the attitudes of many people in America. People seem to be beginning to understand that their problems are not caused by poor African-Americans on welfare, but by corporations on welfare. They may be realizing that what's really important is the empowerment and standard of living of the majority, not the one-in-a-million chance that they'll be the next filthy rich bastard who doesn't have to pay any taxes. Everyone who is inspired by the persistence of Occupy Wall Street and the many Occupations around the nation that it has inspired can take heart that they are not alone and that together they can only be ignored for so long. In trying to operate using consensus based decision making they are creating a model for how direct democracy might function if money wasn't the all-important factor it is today. In contrast to the times I've lived through so far, it seems that people just might finally be re-discovering the understanding of class and social power that are a necessary precursor the process of positive change described above.

When Andrew Ross Sorkin finally wrote his compulsory disdainful article about Occupy Wall Street, he framed it as a little research he was doing for an unnamed CEO acquaintance, who'd asked him if he should “fear this thing.” It sounds like he already does, he should, and the fact that he does has strengthened my dedication to doing whatever I can to make sure he and his ilk can't continue to flippantly oppress and abuse everyone they've pushed to the bottom with their greed.

Health Care Whimper

In following the 'health care reform debate' that's been raging in the halls of Congress over the past few months, it's occurred to me that, short of the lead-up to the Iraq War, there hasn't been an issue which has illustrated as starkly everything that is wrong and dysfunctional about American society and government. The stated aim of altering the health care system for the benefit of the majority of the nation's citizens has mutated into yet another gigantic package of corporate welfare, with just enough ineffective government dictates to give conservatives a straw-man to flog for decades to come.

The thing that has really annoyed me from day one is that people seem to think it appropriate to talk about reforming the “health care system”. This is odd when we don't have a health care system. We have a health care market. If you have enough money you can purchase some of the best health care in the world, if you don't you can go crawl in a gutter and die. (or go to an overcrowded emergency room, be billed thousands of dollars and not pay) Other advanced, developed nations have health care systems, wherein the society as a whole has decided that health care is a human right, as well as a pragmatic step in maintaining a healthy society, and figured out a way to provide it to everyone, free or at a reasonable cost. There are numerous examples of these health care systems. In Britain the government directly employs doctors, runs hospitals and purchases drugs (the dreaded 'Socialized Medicine'). In Canada, those functions are carried out by private entities, but the government provides comprehensive health insurance to all citizens (Something you might have heard about for a week or so before the insurance companies 'convinced' the politicians it was no good, Single Payer). In some continental European nations people are given tax rebates to pay for coverage from a selection of non-profit health insurance providers. All of these countries ranked higher on an overall health outcomes survey done by the United Nations in 2000 than the U.S, which came in 37th, right between Costa Rica and Slovenia. Well, maybe we don't have a health care system to reform, but thank goodness the populist Democratic Party is in control. They'll certainly get us a health care system.

Well, of course they'd like to, but if they can't get sixty votes, the Republicans might filibuster and all would be lost. So, in order to prevent a potential republican filibuster, the Democrats have used the tactic of preemptively caving to the most extreme demands of the Republicans before they even try to do anything constructive. It's funny, but the last president did a lot of things that the Democrats could have filibustered. They never did though. Of course the operative thing is that the health insurance companies (hereafter to be referred to as 'murderers') have lots of money to give to lobbyists, who give it to people like, Max Baucus and Joe Lieberman, even if they might be in a party that talks a bunch of commie nonsense during the election campaigns. So, before our health care system was ever really honestly discussed it has become pretty much a government demand that you buy insurance from the murderers, who've promised to cut costs a little at some point, or enroll in a tiny government program that's been designed to fail because it (if it doesn't get cut out of the bill completely) will have no bargaining power and will be the option of last resort for people who the murderers decide they can't cover.

Basically our government is controlled by a party of laissez fair capitalists to whom it's more important that the murderers be able to make huge profits than for the American people to be able to afford health care, and a party that claims to care about the latter, until they actually control the government and are up for their share of the murderers' thinly disguised bribery. Apparently, roughly half of the ordinary people in the country are so caught up in jerking off to a fantasy of Ronald Reagan tossing Ayn Rand's salad that they're afraid of such horrors as the government providing them with health care. Well, thanks guys. When this piece of shit legislation is passed and another thirty thousand or so Americans die for lack of medical coverage you can all give yourselves a hand for preserving the wonderful American health care system from socialist attack.