Occupy Wall Street: Why So Many Demands for Demands

Published on Tuesday, October 4, 2011 by The Nation

Occupy Wall Street: Why So Many Demands for Demands?

by Betsy Reed

Everybody has a piece of advice for the protesters at Occupy Wall Street. They should put their clothes on. They should stop raising their fists. They should fact-check their handwritten signs. They should appoint leaders who can give pithy quotes to reporters. They should get with an electoral program. Nicholas Kristof even offered to help them out with a neat list of demands, in case those holding signs saying “We Are the 99%” just needed to have the unfairness of the carried interest rule explained to them.

Indeed, their failure to present demands is the most frequently heard criticism of the OWS protesters, not just in the mainstream press but from veteran leftists as well. What do these wan, angry young people want, anyway?

If you spend an hour or two down at Liberty Plaza, as I did with my 8-year-old daughter this past weekend, it’s clear enough. She got the point, at least: especially from the signs that read, “You should teach your kids to share,” and, “Give my mom her money back!! A single working mom…not fair!”

It’s not that the demands being suggested by OWS’s volunteer policy advisors in the blogosphere are not worthy ideas. At a time when we desperately need to rein in financial speculation and change the incentives on Wall Street, a financial transactions tax is a terrific policy proposal. Dean Baker has been talking about it for years. The thing is, we on the left don’t have a scarcity of policy ideas. We are positively bursting with them. Create a housing trust fund! A national infrastructure bank! And, yes, sure, eliminate the carried interest loophole so fat cats don’t get a bigger tax break than working people. (Some even have more radical ideas, which are quite sensible too.) But at best, we get a polite hearing for these ideas, which then fade away or are hopelessly watered down. We simply lack the power to put them into practice.

And in the recent past, even the most smoothly organized, expertly messaged mass demonstrations have not made a whit of difference in this regard. Consider the last big march on Wall Street this past May 12. The coalition behind it was admirably diverse, including unions like the teachers and SEIU’s 1199, as well as local community organizations such as Citizen Action NY, Coalition for the Homeless and Community Voices Heard. The “May 12 Coalition,” which turned out thousands of protesters on the appointed day, presented the Bloomberg administration with a proposal that exhibited great thoughtfulness in its rigor and detail, asking banks like JPMorgan, Bank of America, and Morgan Stanley to take a 20 percent cut in their contracts to handle functions like child support disbursements or income tax remittances for the city. This would have saved $120 million, part of $1.5 billion that could have been extracted from the banking sector to prevent the city from having to slash education and social services, according to the coalition.

The May 12 marchers were many things the OWS protesters are not. They were orderly; they truly represented ordinary New Yorkers. They were concrete: they had a plan. But needless to say, the Bloomberg administration did not immediately recognize their plan’s superior logic and fairness and adopt it as a new template. In fact, it received no attention in the wake of the march. It was such a nonstarter that the city didn’t even bother to respond to it. And the media snoozed.

Or consider another very well thought-out mass action in the age of Obama: the “One Nation Working Together for Jobs, Justice and Education” mobilization, which brought throngs of protesters to Washington, DC, on October 2, 2010. Garnering a turnout organizers estimated at 175,000, the march won endorsements from 400 groups, including all the major national unions, the NAACP, environmental organizations, gay groups and progressive religious forces. Organizers were explicit that their goal was to fire up the liberal base and showcase the diversity of the progressive movement. They also came brandishing a plethora of proposals. Wade Henderson, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, told the Washington Post, “The truth is there is a lot of focus on the march itself, but a march without a plan of action … is simply a one-day event. What this is about is using this march as a launching pad for policy change.” Shortly thereafter, of course, would come the devastating midterm elections, and President Obama’s cave on the Bush tax cut extension. In terms of media impact, One Nation was almost entirely eclipsed by both Glenn Beck’s rage fest a month prior and Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert’s jokey “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear” later the same month.

Of course, we need policy ideas. And the progressive groups that have staged previous rallies—like the ones that are sponsoring the “American Dream Movement” spearheaded by Van Jones, convening in Washington, DC, at this moment—are the crucial building blocks of the coalitions necessary to make long-term campaigns around real policy proposals work.

But sometimes, you also need a spark. “Occupy Wall Street,” as an idea and an action, is a stroke of brilliance. It’s not poll-tested or focus-grouped, but it expresses perfectly the outrage that is the appropriate response to the maddening political situation we find ourselves in today. It succeeds as symbolic politics: taking back the square is just what we need to do. And it’s wonderful that unions and community groups that have been working in the trenches will be linking arms with the denizens of OWS this Wednesday.

Maybe this will go nowhere too. The odds are against it, after all. But what do we have to lose? We have to try something new.

Copyright © 2011 The Nation

Betsy Reed digests the news about women and men, policy and politics for The Nation.

Occupy Boston: Day One

by Mark Provost / October 3rd, 2011

The $64 trillion dollar question, “When will Americans hit the streets like people in other countries?” has been answered. Over the last several days, occupations have spread from Wall St., and erupted in more than 50 cities across America. The “99 percent” are rising to voice their grievances against an economic and political system which has disenfranchised them for too long. We share painful stories and common concerns, and want profound changes to how this country is governed—and for whom it is governed.¹

I drove from New Hampshire Friday afternoon and arrived in Beantown to kickoff Occupy Boston. Dewey Square, the site of the occupation in the heart of the financial district, was easy to find thanks to police and media helicopters hovering overhead. But rush hour traffic and Boston’s circuitous one-way streets channeled me far from the site, to an expensive garage.

I asked a well-dressed young man exiting work for directions to the park. He didn’t know the location, and I didn’t tell him why I was going (fearing he may intentionally misdirect me). Unfortunately, my cover was blown when ‘Brian’ asked a coworker for the whereabouts. Brian pointed me in the direction of South Station and offered his opinion, “I work for an investment bank. I am a capitalist… but I don’t agree with American-style capitalism.” Without pause, he refined his thoughts, “I am a socialist.” I was running late, so I simply nodded. He repeated this heresy, and wished me luck.

Earlier Friday, a huge demonstration organized by ‘Right the City’ protested in front of Bank of America, demanding a moratorium on foreclosures and continued their march to Dewey Square.² Most of protestors went home, but some stayed to help launch Occupy Boston. I met the acquaintance of three young men from Stoneham, one of whom just lost his job as an eyeglass technician. Luckily his friend, a marine biologist with $60,000 in student debt, just landed a job. “We switched places” they realized, and gave each other a high five. Gatherers mostly engaged in small groups without direction, waiting for something to happen.

The confusion subsided and we got down to business. The group began to communicate using the famed ‘people’s microphone’. When someone calls for a ‘mic check’, the whole group repeats their message in short sentences.³ We organized into seven separate teams: tactical, direct action, legal aid, food & medical, media, local outreach, and creative artists. Soon, Dewey Square was a rain-soaked and muddy experiment in direct democracy.

Our strength swelled to over 1,000 people.⁴ Ages ranged from 7 to 77, men and women, middle class and homeless, gay and straight, bisexual and transgender, anti-war activists and Marine Corps veterans, African Americans and immigrants, Arab and Jewish, Asians and Latinos, unemployed and overworked, working class and Ivy-League educated. We are committed to an innovative, democratic process which is a testament of our vision. The late Howard Zinn believed that the hallmark of a successful social movement is its ability to cultivate both democratic means and democratic objectives. One reinforces the other.

This is a leaderless movement without a central ideology. We are bound only by the understanding that we are part of the 99% of Americans getting shafted by the top 1%.

After we built our encampment and ate a hot meal, roughly 400 occupants hit the streets at 11:00 PM and declared our galvanizing message: “We are the 99 percent! We are the 99 percent! You are the 99 percent!” Countless cars honked in support, loaded Bostonians and passers-by cheered (and a couple jeers), some joined the march, while others grabbed smartphones and cameras to record the rebirth of America in the city that started it all more than 200 years ago. The 99% movement has been ignored and derided in the mainstream press—yet the overwhelming response from the people of Boston is revitalizing. If you join the movement, you will not be stigmatized. On the contrary, your dedication will be praised, honored, and thanked by fellow citizens. One by one, we will break the silence which has devoured this country.

Owing to the gravitational pull of truth-telling, the march returned to camp larger than when it departed. Suddenly, Dewey Park emptied as hundreds of us charged across State Street towards the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.⁵ We chanted “We are the 99%, You are the 99%” (pointing to the phalanx of police officers lining the front of the building) and “F*** the Fed!” The roar echoed from the thick glass walls and stone ground. It was tense, but officers remained disciplined while demonstrators played music, sang, and danced.

Unlike other cities like New York and San Francisco, the BPD has made no attempt to corral us, has not tried to block or channel our marches, has not tried to disperse us, and has entered the encampment once due to a medical emergency. So far, hats off to the BPD. If they respect our right to protest, it makes it easier for us to protect their right to collectively bargain.

By 1:00 AM, it was pouring rain and I told my new friend Murph that I would drive him home to Watertown in exchange for his help finding my vehicle. I returned to New Hampshire, caught five hours of sleep, filled my car with supplies, and headed back to the occupation.

So far, the media has largely ignored the 99 percent movement. A nationwide uprising focused on addressing extreme economic and political inequality is just not newsworthy. Journalists claim that we lack coherence, and ask in a quixotic tone, “Why are they protesting?” Have they not read their own articles or watched their own television reports. Each one of us knows why we are here, and we want to listen to everyone’s ideas. We are a multitude—and we are occupying Boston for a multitude of reasons.⁶

The more relevant question is: Will you join us and contribute to the awakening?⁷

My interpretation of the previous two days as a participant and journalist in Occupy Boston does not reflect the views of other members of the “99 percent” movement, or Occupy Boston as a whole.

1. We are the 99 Percent; Occupy Together. [↩]
2. Bank of America protest. [↩]
3. People’s Microphone at the General Assembly. [↩]
4. 1,000 people. [↩]
5. Charging the Boston Federal Reserve Bank. [↩]
6. Why Do You Occupy? [↩]
7. Occupy Boston; Occupy Together. [↩]

Mark Provost is an activist and freelance writer in Manchester, NH. He can be reached at: gregsplacenh@gmail.com. Read other articles by Mark.

This article was posted on Monday, October 3rd, 2011 at 8:02am and is filed under Activism, Classism, Democracy, Police, Propaganda, Solidarity.

“Occupy Wall Street” Reading List: "Letter from a Birmingham Jail [King, Jr.]"

Letter from a Birmingham Jail. 1963. Martin Luther King, Jr., argues for the validity of taking direct action in the street, not just waiting for courts to catch up.

AFRICAN STUDIES CENTER - UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
"Letter from a Birmingham Jail [King, Jr.]"

16 April 1963
My Dear Fellow Clergymen:
While confined here in the Birmingham city jail, I came across your recent statement calling my present activities "unwise and untimely." Seldom do I pause to answer criticism of my work and ideas. If I sought to answer all the criticisms that cross my desk, my secretaries would have little time for anything other than such correspondence in the course of the day, and I would have no time for constructive work. But since I feel that you are men of genuine good will and that your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I want to try to answer your statement in what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms.

I think I should indicate why I am here in Birmingham, since you have been influenced by the view which argues against "outsiders coming in." I have the honor of serving as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization operating in every southern state, with headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. We have some eighty five affiliated organizations across the South, and one of them is the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights. Frequently we share staff, educational and financial resources with our affiliates. Several months ago the affiliate here in Birmingham asked us to be on call to engage in a nonviolent direct action program if such were deemed necessary. We readily consented, and when the hour came we lived up to our promise. So I, along with several members of my staff, am here because I was invited here. I am here because I have organizational ties here.

But more basically, I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the prophets of the eighth century B.C. left their villages and carried their "thus saith the Lord" far beyond the boundaries of their home towns, and just as the Apostle Paul left his village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to the far corners of the Greco Roman world, so am I compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my own home town. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid.

Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.

You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham. But your statement, I am sorry to say, fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations. I am sure that none of you would want to rest content with the superficial kind of social analysis that deals merely with effects and does not grapple with underlying causes. It is unfortunate that demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham, but it is even more unfortunate that the city's white power structure left the Negro community with no alternative.

In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist; negotiation; self purification; and direct action. We have gone through all these steps in Birmingham. There can be no gainsaying the fact that racial injustice engulfs this community. Birmingham is probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States. Its ugly record of brutality is widely known. Negroes have experienced grossly unjust treatment in the courts. There have been more unsolved bombings of Negro homes and churches in Birmingham than in any other city in the nation. These are the hard, brutal facts of the case. On the basis of these conditions, Negro leaders sought to negotiate with the city fathers. But the latter consistently refused to engage in good faith negotiation.

Then, last September, came the opportunity to talk with leaders of Birmingham's economic community. In the course of the negotiations, certain promises were made by the merchants--for example, to remove the stores' humiliating racial signs. On the basis of these promises, the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth and the leaders of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights agreed to a moratorium on all demonstrations. As the weeks and months went by, we realized that we were the victims of a broken promise. A few signs, briefly removed, returned; the others remained. As in so many past experiences, our hopes had been blasted, and the shadow of deep disappointment settled upon us. We had no alternative except to prepare for direct action, whereby we would present our very bodies as a means of laying our case before the conscience of the local and the national community. Mindful of the difficulties involved, we decided to undertake a process of self purification. We began a series of workshops on nonviolence, and we repeatedly asked ourselves: "Are you able to accept blows without retaliating?" "Are you able to endure the ordeal of jail?" We decided to schedule our direct action program for the Easter season, realizing that except for Christmas, this is the main shopping period of the year. Knowing that a strong economic-withdrawal program would be the by product of direct action, we felt that this would be the best time to bring pressure to bear on the merchants for the needed change.

Then it occurred to us that Birmingham's mayoral election was coming up in March, and we speedily decided to postpone action until after election day. When we discovered that the Commissioner of Public Safety, Eugene "Bull" Connor, had piled up enough votes to be in the run off, we decided again to postpone action until the day after the run off so that the demonstrations could not be used to cloud the issues. Like many others, we waited to see Mr. Connor defeated, and to this end we endured postponement after postponement. Having aided in this community need, we felt that our direct action program could be delayed no longer.

You may well ask: "Why direct action? Why sit ins, marches and so forth? Isn't negotiation a better path?" You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word "tension." I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood. The purpose of our direct action program is to create a situation so crisis packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation. I therefore concur with you in your call for negotiation. Too long has our beloved Southland been bogged down in a tragic effort to live in monologue rather than dialogue.

One of the basic points in your statement is that the action that I and my associates have taken in Birmingham is untimely. Some have asked: "Why didn't you give the new city administration time to act?" The only answer that I can give to this query is that the new Birmingham administration must be prodded about as much as the outgoing one, before it will act. We are sadly mistaken if we feel that the election of Albert Boutwell as mayor will bring the millennium to Birmingham. While Mr. Boutwell is a much more gentle person than Mr. Connor, they are both segregationists, dedicated to maintenance of the status quo. I have hope that Mr. Boutwell will be reasonable enough to see the futility of massive resistance to desegregation. But he will not see this without pressure from devotees of civil rights. My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain in civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure. Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to be more immoral than individuals.

We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct action campaign that was "well timed" in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant "Never." We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that "justice too long delayed is justice denied."

We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we still creep at horse and buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five year old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness"--then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience. You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court's decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws. One may well ask: "How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?" The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that "an unjust law is no law at all."

Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority. Segregation, to use the terminology of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, substitutes an "I it" relationship for an "I thou" relationship and ends up relegating persons to the status of things. Hence segregation is not only politically, economically and sociologically unsound, it is morally wrong and sinful. Paul Tillich has said that sin is separation. Is not segregation an existential expression of man's tragic separation, his awful estrangement, his terrible sinfulness? Thus it is that I can urge men to obey the 1954 decision of the Supreme Court, for it is morally right; and I can urge them to disobey segregation ordinances, for they are morally wrong.

Let us consider a more concrete example of just and unjust laws. An unjust law is a code that a numerical or power majority group compels a minority group to obey but does not make binding on itself. This is difference made legal. By the same token, a just law is a code that a majority compels a minority to follow and that it is willing to follow itself. This is sameness made legal. Let me give another explanation. A law is unjust if it is inflicted on a minority that, as a result of being denied the right to vote, had no part in enacting or devising the law. Who can say that the legislature of Alabama which set up that state's segregation laws was democratically elected? Throughout Alabama all sorts of devious methods are used to prevent Negroes from becoming registered voters, and there are some counties in which, even though Negroes constitute a majority of the population, not a single Negro is registered. Can any law enacted under such circumstances be considered democratically structured?

Sometimes a law is just on its face and unjust in its application. For instance, I have been arrested on a charge of parading without a permit. Now, there is nothing wrong in having an ordinance which requires a permit for a parade. But such an ordinance becomes unjust when it is used to maintain segregation and to deny citizens the First-Amendment privilege of peaceful assembly and protest.

I hope you are able to see the distinction I am trying to point out. In no sense do I advocate evading or defying the law, as would the rabid segregationist. That would lead to anarchy. One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.

Of course, there is nothing new about this kind of civil disobedience. It was evidenced sublimely in the refusal of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego to obey the laws of Nebuchadnezzar, on the ground that a higher moral law was at stake. It was practiced superbly by the early Christians, who were willing to face hungry lions and the excruciating pain of chopping blocks rather than submit to certain unjust laws of the Roman Empire. To a degree, academic freedom is a reality today because Socrates practiced civil disobedience. In our own nation, the Boston Tea Party represented a massive act of civil disobedience.

We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was "legal" and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was "illegal." It was "illegal" to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler's Germany. Even so, I am sure that, had I lived in Germany at the time, I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers. If today I lived in a Communist country where certain principles dear to the Christian faith are suppressed, I would openly advocate disobeying that country's antireligious laws.

I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.

In your statement you assert that our actions, even though peaceful, must be condemned because they precipitate violence. But is this a logical assertion? Isn't this like condemning a robbed man because his possession of money precipitated the evil act of robbery? Isn't this like condemning Socrates because his unswerving commitment to truth and his philosophical inquiries precipitated the act by the misguided populace in which they made him drink hemlock? Isn't this like condemning Jesus because his unique God consciousness and never ceasing devotion to God's will precipitated the evil act of crucifixion? We must come to see that, as the federal courts have consistently affirmed, it is wrong to urge an individual to cease his efforts to gain his basic constitutional rights because the quest may precipitate violence. Society must protect the robbed and punish the robber. I had also hoped that the white moderate would reject the myth concerning time in relation to the struggle for freedom. I have just received a letter from a white brother in Texas. He writes: "All Christians know that the colored people will receive equal rights eventually, but it is possible that you are in too great a religious hurry. It has taken Christianity almost two thousand years to accomplish what it has. The teachings of Christ take time to come to earth." Such an attitude stems from a tragic misconception of time, from the strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively. More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity.

You speak of our activity in Birmingham as extreme. At first I was rather disappointed that fellow clergymen would see my nonviolent efforts as those of an extremist. I began thinking about the fact that I stand in the middle of two opposing forces in the Negro community. One is a force of complacency, made up in part of Negroes who, as a result of long years of oppression, are so drained of self respect and a sense of "somebodiness" that they have adjusted to segregation; and in part of a few middle-class Negroes who, because of a degree of academic and economic security and because in some ways they profit by segregation, have become insensitive to the problems of the masses. The other force is one of bitterness and hatred, and it comes perilously close to advocating violence. It is expressed in the various black nationalist groups that are springing up across the nation, the largest and best known being Elijah Muhammad's Muslim movement. Nourished by the Negro's frustration over the continued existence of racial discrimination, this movement is made up of people who have lost faith in America, who have absolutely repudiated Christianity, and who have concluded that the white man is an incorrigible "devil."

I have tried to stand between these two forces, saying that we need emulate neither the "do nothingism" of the complacent nor the hatred and despair of the black nationalist. For there is the more excellent way of love and nonviolent protest. I am grateful to God that, through the influence of the Negro church, the way of nonviolence became an integral part of our struggle. If this philosophy had not emerged, by now many streets of the South would, I am convinced, be flowing with blood. And I am further convinced that if our white brothers dismiss as "rabble rousers" and "outside agitators" those of us who employ nonviolent direct action, and if they refuse to support our nonviolent efforts, millions of Negroes will, out of frustration and despair, seek solace and security in black nationalist ideologies--a development that would inevitably lead to a frightening racial nightmare.

Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself, and that is what has happened to the American Negro. Something within has reminded him of his birthright of freedom, and something without has reminded him that it can be gained. Consciously or unconsciously, he has been caught up by the Zeitgeist, and with his black brothers of Africa and his brown and yellow brothers of Asia, South America and the Caribbean, the United States Negro is moving with a sense of great urgency toward the promised land of racial justice. If one recognizes this vital urge that has engulfed the Negro community, one should readily understand why public demonstrations are taking place. The Negro has many pent up resentments and latent frustrations, and he must release them. So let him march; let him make prayer pilgrimages to the city hall; let him go on freedom rides -and try to understand why he must do so. If his repressed emotions are not released in nonviolent ways, they will seek expression through violence; this is not a threat but a fact of history. So I have not said to my people: "Get rid of your discontent." Rather, I have tried to say that this normal and healthy discontent can be channeled into the creative outlet of nonviolent direct action. And now this approach is being termed extremist. But though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist, as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label. Was not Jesus an extremist for love: "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you." Was not Amos an extremist for justice: "Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever flowing stream." Was not Paul an extremist for the Christian gospel: "I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus." Was not Martin Luther an extremist: "Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God." And John Bunyan: "I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience." And Abraham Lincoln: "This nation cannot survive half slave and half free." And Thomas Jefferson: "We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal . . ." So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice? In that dramatic scene on Calvary's hill three men were crucified. We must never forget that all three were crucified for the same crime--the crime of extremism. Two were extremists for immorality, and thus fell below their environment. The other, Jesus Christ, was an extremist for love, truth and goodness, and thereby rose above his environment. Perhaps the South, the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.

I had hoped that the white moderate would see this need. Perhaps I was too optimistic; perhaps I expected too much. I suppose I should have realized that few members of the oppressor race can understand the deep groans and passionate yearnings of the oppressed race, and still fewer have the vision to see that injustice must be rooted out by strong, persistent and determined action. I am thankful, however, that some of our white brothers in the South have grasped the meaning of this social revolution and committed themselves to it. They are still all too few in quantity, but they are big in quality. Some -such as Ralph McGill, Lillian Smith, Harry Golden, James McBride Dabbs, Ann Braden and Sarah Patton Boyle--have written about our struggle in eloquent and prophetic terms. Others have marched with us down nameless streets of the South. They have languished in filthy, roach infested jails, suffering the abuse and brutality of policemen who view them as "dirty nigger-lovers." Unlike so many of their moderate brothers and sisters, they have recognized the urgency of the moment and sensed the need for powerful "action" antidotes to combat the disease of segregation. Let me take note of my other major disappointment. I have been so greatly disappointed with the white church and its leadership. Of course, there are some notable exceptions. I am not unmindful of the fact that each of you has taken some significant stands on this issue. I commend you, Reverend Stallings, for your Christian stand on this past Sunday, in welcoming Negroes to your worship service on a nonsegregated basis. I commend the Catholic leaders of this state for integrating Spring Hill College several years ago.

But despite these notable exceptions, I must honestly reiterate that I have been disappointed with the church. I do not say this as one of those negative critics who can always find something wrong with the church. I say this as a minister of the gospel, who loves the church; who was nurtured in its bosom; who has been sustained by its spiritual blessings and who will remain true to it as long as the cord of life shall lengthen.

When I was suddenly catapulted into the leadership of the bus protest in Montgomery, Alabama, a few years ago, I felt we would be supported by the white church. I felt that the white ministers, priests and rabbis of the South would be among our strongest allies. Instead, some have been outright opponents, refusing to understand the freedom movement and misrepresenting its leaders; all too many others have been more cautious than courageous and have remained silent behind the anesthetizing security of stained glass windows.

In spite of my shattered dreams, I came to Birmingham with the hope that the white religious leadership of this community would see the justice of our cause and, with deep moral concern, would serve as the channel through which our just grievances could reach the power structure. I had hoped that each of you would understand. But again I have been disappointed.

I have heard numerous southern religious leaders admonish their worshipers to comply with a desegregation decision because it is the law, but I have longed to hear white ministers declare: "Follow this decree because integration is morally right and because the Negro is your brother." In the midst of blatant injustices inflicted upon the Negro, I have watched white churchmen stand on the sideline and mouth pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities. In the midst of a mighty struggle to rid our nation of racial and economic injustice, I have heard many ministers say: "Those are social issues, with which the gospel has no real concern." And I have watched many churches commit themselves to a completely other worldly religion which makes a strange, un-Biblical distinction between body and soul, between the sacred and the secular.

I have traveled the length and breadth of Alabama, Mississippi and all the other southern states. On sweltering summer days and crisp autumn mornings I have looked at the South's beautiful churches with their lofty spires pointing heavenward. I have beheld the impressive outlines of her massive religious education buildings. Over and over I have found myself asking: "What kind of people worship here? Who is their God? Where were their voices when the lips of Governor Barnett dripped with words of interposition and nullification? Where were they when Governor Wallace gave a clarion call for defiance and hatred? Where were their voices of support when bruised and weary Negro men and women decided to rise from the dark dungeons of complacency to the bright hills of creative protest?"

Yes, these questions are still in my mind. In deep disappointment I have wept over the laxity of the church. But be assured that my tears have been tears of love. There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love. Yes, I love the church. How could I do otherwise? I am in the rather unique position of being the son, the grandson and the great grandson of preachers. Yes, I see the church as the body of Christ. But, oh! How we have blemished and scarred that body through social neglect and through fear of being nonconformists.

There was a time when the church was very powerful--in the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society. Whenever the early Christians entered a town, the people in power became disturbed and immediately sought to convict the Christians for being "disturbers of the peace" and "outside agitators."' But the Christians pressed on, in the conviction that they were "a colony of heaven," called to obey God rather than man. Small in number, they were big in commitment. They were too God-intoxicated to be "astronomically intimidated." By their effort and example they brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contests. Things are different now. So often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an archdefender of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church's silent--and often even vocal--sanction of things as they are.

But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If today's church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century. Every day I meet young people whose disappointment with the church has turned into outright disgust.

Perhaps I have once again been too optimistic. Is organized religion too inextricably bound to the status quo to save our nation and the world? Perhaps I must turn my faith to the inner spiritual church, the church within the church, as the true ekklesia and the hope of the world. But again I am thankful to God that some noble souls from the ranks of organized religion have broken loose from the paralyzing chains of conformity and joined us as active partners in the struggle for freedom. They have left their secure congregations and walked the streets of Albany, Georgia, with us. They have gone down the highways of the South on tortuous rides for freedom. Yes, they have gone to jail with us. Some have been dismissed from their churches, have lost the support of their bishops and fellow ministers. But they have acted in the faith that right defeated is stronger than evil triumphant. Their witness has been the spiritual salt that has preserved the true meaning of the gospel in these troubled times. They have carved a tunnel of hope through the dark mountain of disappointment. I hope the church as a whole will meet the challenge of this decisive hour. But even if the church does not come to the aid of justice, I have no despair about the future. I have no fear about the outcome of our struggle in Birmingham, even if our motives are at present misunderstood. We will reach the goal of freedom in Birmingham and all over the nation, because the goal of America is freedom. Abused and scorned though we may be, our destiny is tied up with America's destiny. Before the pilgrims landed at Plymouth, we were here. Before the pen of Jefferson etched the majestic words of the Declaration of Independence across the pages of history, we were here. For more than two centuries our forebears labored in this country without wages; they made cotton king; they built the homes of their masters while suffering gross injustice and shameful humiliation -and yet out of a bottomless vitality they continued to thrive and develop. If the inexpressible cruelties of slavery could not stop us, the opposition we now face will surely fail. We will win our freedom because the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of God are embodied in our echoing demands. Before closing I feel impelled to mention one other point in your statement that has troubled me profoundly. You warmly commended the Birmingham police force for keeping "order" and "preventing violence." I doubt that you would have so warmly commended the police force if you had seen its dogs sinking their teeth into unarmed, nonviolent Negroes. I doubt that you would so quickly commend the policemen if you were to observe their ugly and inhumane treatment of Negroes here in the city jail; if you were to watch them push and curse old Negro women and young Negro girls; if you were to see them slap and kick old Negro men and young boys; if you were to observe them, as they did on two occasions, refuse to give us food because we wanted to sing our grace together. I cannot join you in your praise of the Birmingham police department.

It is true that the police have exercised a degree of discipline in handling the demonstrators. In this sense they have conducted themselves rather "nonviolently" in public. But for what purpose? To preserve the evil system of segregation. Over the past few years I have consistently preached that nonviolence demands that the means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek. I have tried to make clear that it is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends. But now I must affirm that it is just as wrong, or perhaps even more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends. Perhaps Mr. Connor and his policemen have been rather nonviolent in public, as was Chief Pritchett in Albany, Georgia, but they have used the moral means of nonviolence to maintain the immoral end of racial injustice. As T. S. Eliot has said: "The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason."

I wish you had commended the Negro sit inners and demonstrators of Birmingham for their sublime courage, their willingness to suffer and their amazing discipline in the midst of great provocation. One day the South will recognize its real heroes. They will be the James Merediths, with the noble sense of purpose that enables them to face jeering and hostile mobs, and with the agonizing loneliness that characterizes the life of the pioneer. They will be old, oppressed, battered Negro women, symbolized in a seventy two year old woman in Montgomery, Alabama, who rose up with a sense of dignity and with her people decided not to ride segregated buses, and who responded with ungrammatical profundity to one who inquired about her weariness: "My feets is tired, but my soul is at rest." They will be the young high school and college students, the young ministers of the gospel and a host of their elders, courageously and nonviolently sitting in at lunch counters and willingly going to jail for conscience' sake. One day the South will know that when these disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters, they were in reality standing up for what is best in the American dream and for the most sacred values in our Judaeo Christian heritage, thereby bringing our nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in their formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

Never before have I written so long a letter. I'm afraid it is much too long to take your precious time. I can assure you that it would have been much shorter if I had been writing from a comfortable desk, but what else can one do when he is alone in a narrow jail cell, other than write long letters, think long thoughts and pray long prayers?

If I have said anything in this letter that overstates the truth and indicates an unreasonable impatience, I beg you to forgive me. If I have said anything that understates the truth and indicates my having a patience that allows me to settle for anything less than brotherhood, I beg God to forgive me.

I hope this letter finds you strong in the faith. I also hope that circumstances will soon make it possible for me to meet each of you, not as an integrationist or a civil-rights leader but as a fellow clergyman and a Christian brother. Let us all hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away and the deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear drenched communities, and in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty.

Yours for the cause of Peace and Brotherhood, Martin Luther King, Jr.
Published in:
King, Martin Luther Jr.

Page Editor: Ali B. Ali-Dinar, Ph.D.

Democratic Finance v. Banking Fraud in Early America

Democratic Finance v. Banking Fraud in Early America

Monday, 03/7/2011 - 10:03 am by William Hogeland | 9 Comments

Ordinary 18th-century Americans fought for fair access to small-scale credit and usable currencies. Big finance fought back.

Calling modern banking “a widespread fraud,” Rob Burns wants to push the finance industry out of everyday lending. A candidate for Congress in the fourth district of Illinois, Burns proposes using federally insured savings as a public fund for mortgages, student loans, consumer credit, business bridge loans — the kind of borrowing engaged in by ordinary Americans, not entrepreneurs. On a different finance reform front, the technology pioneer and culture critic Douglas Rushkoff has been exploring complementary currencies. Rushkoff envisions new monetary units, exchanged via handheld devices, helping to break what he calls “the money monopoly.”

Far-reaching ideas for getting money, currency, and credit to flow more democratically through the American economy would probably draw all-purpose condemnations like “socialism!” from the rightists led by Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann. Liberal high finance experts too might find such proposals dangerously chaotic. But regardless of practicalities and politics, it’s useful to recognize that ideas like Burns’ and Rushkoff’s have deep roots in the American founding period. The Tea Party has done such a successful job of associating anti-government, free-market politics with essential American values — and historians have been so eager to ignore the economic activism of ordinary, founding-era Americans in favor of assessing and re-assessing the elite founders’ republican philosophies — that it can be startling to confront the democratic theories about popular finance that prevailed in 18th-century America.

And “theories” is the right word. People of the founding period put forth their economic ideas in resolutions, petitions, and actions. In an earlier post in this series, I discussed traditional rioting in the context of struggles between American debtors and creditors. Long before the Stamp Act riots of Revolutionary fame, crowd action — rowdy, creepy, theatrical, sometimes violent — played an important role in American social life. Crowds dismissed by the upscale as “the mob” called their movements “regulations.” From the North Carolina Regulation of the 1760’s to Shays’ Rebellion of the 1780’s and beyond, American debtors, barred from fair representation in politics, engaged in obstruction, boycott, court closing, jury nullification, building teardown, and physical intimidation. They wanted their legislatures to restrain the power of wealth.

Just like Rushkoff and Burns today, 18th-century popular regulators focused on small-scale credit and readily negotiable currencies. Scarcities of cash gave merchants a monopoly on gold and silver coin, enabling them to dominate small farmers, artisans, and laborers through loan shark-style lending terms: debtors, in constant danger of foreclosure, could effectively become merchants’ laborers. Hoping to elude the money monopoly’s clutches, people looked to their colonial governments to create “land banks,” where small operators could take small loans on reasonable terms. Spent by holders on purchases, land bank notes found their way into circulation, becoming a kind of currency that at times came even into the hands of the landless.

Another thing governments could do: issue paper currency. Government notes represented amounts in metal; their value depended on people’s belief that they’d be worth roughly what was printed on them. A commonplace of American history has it that early paper currencies depreciated disastrously, but the reality is far more varied. New England had difficulty making paper finance work, but Pennsylvania successfully alleviated economic crunches using both land banks and its own paper. The trick to encouraging confidence and controlling depreciation was to issue limited amounts of the paper and then to retire it through scheduled taxes, payable in the notes themselves. Depreciation did occur, as it does today. But popular finance activists saw mild depreciation as a natural and democratic effect, benefiting debtors.

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Improvised popular currencies existed, too, complementary in Rushkoff’s sense. A craft commodity like whiskey — not a mere instrument of barter but always exchangeable for gold somewhere down the line — held value well.

Merchant lenders, however, wanted to be paid in coin. They wanted the gold that, they believed, held perfect value in imperial trade and which ordinary people could rarely come up with. The people countered by pressuring governments to make paper currencies legal tender, forcing merchants to accept paper at face value for payments and principal — a kind of government program to prevent foreclosure and debt peonage. Lenders forced to take payments worth less, against gold, than when loans were made disdained paper currencies as confiscatory, rotten, mobbish, and vile, “the curse of pulp.”

Lenders may actually have contributed to financial crises by recoiling so violently from any hint of depreciation. Yet their philosophy had a certain consistency. American merchants were already calling the English government tyrannical for violating ancient rights to security in property. Now merchants feared that American governments, vulnerable to what they saw as another kind of tyranny, that of the mob, would take property in another way, through legal tender legislation and state enforced devaluation. The debtor class, for its part, had little interest in what merchants defined as the big picture.

So even as the country moved toward climactic conflict with England, a great social battle raged between American merchants and American working people over credit and currency. We’ve been distracted from that battle’s significance by historians’ relentless focus on merchants’ frustration over Parliament’s trade acts. Those acts included currency laws, which restricted paper emissions in the colonies: sometimes American merchants too had advocated issuing paper. But merchants came to hate paper’s democratizing, socially equalizing tendencies in American society. By the time American elites began relying on ordinary people for help in opposing England — especially on the people’s facility with organized protest! — working Americans’ desire for economic, social, and political equality was driving the merchants’ anxiety to a nearly hysterical pitch.

Our current financial crisis reflects those deep-seated American economic disagreements, wired into events and philosophies that gave birth to our country, were never resolved during that period, and glossed over in certified stories of our origins for more than two centuries. Many people today, of various political persuasions, will want to dismiss thinking like Rushkoff’s and Burns’, which goes far beyond finance reform and asks fundamental questions about how, and for whose benefit, we want credit and money to work in American society. To our little known 18th-century ancestors, the founding activists for democratic finance, those questions would be among the most important we could be asking.

William Hogeland is the author of the narrative histories Declaration and The Whiskey Rebellion and a collection of essays, Inventing American History. He has spoken on unexpected connections between history and politics at the National Archives, the Kansas City Public Library, and various corporate and organization events. He blogs at http://www.williamhogeland.com.

Foreclosing the Foreclosers, Early-American Style

Foreclosing the Foreclosers, Early-American Style

Foreclosing the Foreclosers, Early-American Style
Monday, 02/28/2011 - 4:46 pm
by William Hogeland

Memo to Tea Party: The major social battle raging during the time of the American Revolution was over the proper uses of money and credit. Not getting government out of the economy.

“I got debts that no honest man can pay … ”

~~Bruce Springsteen, “Atlantic City”

O. Max Gardner III, a patrician lawyer in Shelby, North Carolina, has started a movement for resisting home mortgage foreclosures.

In what Reuters describes as “legal jiu jitsu,” Gardner teaches techniques for using a bank’s lumbering hugeness to enable people to stay in their homes long after banks want them gone. He’s not alone. A foreclosure resistance movement has gained national traction in the past year. The Times has reported on local sheriffs’ refusals to evict, and in an especially pointed act of guerilla theater, Patrick Rodgers of Philadelphia recently turned the tables on Wells Fargo by starting a foreclosure against the bank’s local mortgage office. According to ABC News, the bank had not paid Rodgers a court-ordered judgment it sustained in the process of failing to respond to his demand under the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act (RESPA) for information about his mortgage. Rodgers thought his foreclosure gesture would at least get the bank’s attention.

The foreclosure resistance movement understandably disconcerts those who are concerned above all about fulfilling legal contracts and taking what the Tea Party-connected right calls “personal responsibility” for the inability to make mortgage payments. Yet the resistance has strong precedents in the same founding-era America to which the Tea Party constantly appeals. Conflicts not between American colonists and the British government but between small-scale American debtors and big-time American creditors illuminate struggles that continue today.

It can be hard to envision an early America seething with conflict between ordinary, hardworking Americans, stifled in their efforts to get ahead, and the rich, predatory Americans who stifled them. Prevailing historical fantasies of pre-Revolutionary America conjure a modestly thriving yeomanry, along with craftsmen, small businesspeople, and merchants participating together in a representative civics. In this fantasy, income and wealth disparities look minor and manageable; slavery and women’s subjugation are terrible deviations from an ethos of liberty shared more or less democratically by free Americans of all types. The main problem for everyone is the restrictive influence of the British elements in government. The rosy narrative has it that a revolution dedicated to freedom of trade and thought and the proposition that all men are created equal will launch this society on a grand progress, embattled but irresistible, toward a democracy that includes everybody.

Of course many historians have added troubling nuance to that picture; some have debunked it entirely. Certain history students, possibly over-interpreting the work of Howard Zinn, routinely reduce famous American founders to self-interested hypocrites. Yet across the political spectrum, fuzziness about founding-era economics, credit and monetary policy persists. The fuzziness helps today’s populist right cast nativism and unfettered markets as essentially American.

The possibly startling fact is that the major social battle raging before, during, and after the American Revolution was over the proper uses of money and credit in American life. For ordinary people of the period, these were hardly abstractions. The only real money in 18th-century America was metal — silver and gold coin from England, Spain, and Mexico — and for long, terrible periods, money was rarely seen by ordinary people. Small farmers and artisans, wanting to survive and improve their lot, had to borrow. Merchants, gaining access to metal through imperial trading networks, used their money to make money, becoming lenders. Well before the Revolution, Americans defined themselves in practical terms either as “debtors” — poor and working people in small-scale enterprise — or “creditors” — well-heeled merchants growing their money by lending it.

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Workings of the debtor-creditor relationship will sound unpleasantly familiar. Merchants had the money supply conveniently sewn up. Small farmers and artisans had to post the land and shops they hoped to develop as collateral for the credit they needed. Merchants might set interest rates as high as twelve percent — per month. Default, often predictable at the loan’s outset, subjected borrowers to foreclosures, which in bad times were epidemic. Families became indigent while their land, tools, and homes were snapped up at bargain prices, often by the merchants themselves, who speculated in land as well, and were building immense parcels. The rich got richer.

Is it any wonder that ordinary people viewed this disastrous economic predicament not as some incidental fallout from vigorous free-market competition, but as an egregious, systemic injustice with political, moral, even spiritual implications? They were being held back, exploited, and even ruined by a monopoly on money and credit. And unlike today’s populist right, founding-era Americans did not imagine that government’s simply leaving markets alone would create new and exciting opportunities for them. They believed their governments should make laws to restrain the overwhelming power of the creditors’ metal and protect those who labored and produced goods from those who planned dynasties of descendants living in luxurious idleness.

And remember: unless people had property in excess of certain amounts, they couldn’t vote. Whig elites — the ones who became patriot leaders, lionized today — axiomatically equated the right of representation with property. It took even more property to run for office. Legislatures erected counties to ensure that representation favored the rich and the cities. They placed cash fees on every imaginable transaction, paralyzing working people’s efforts to pursue legal recourse and enriching lawmakers’ friends and families appointed as collectors and administrators. Roads and other infrastructure built at public expense (and by coerced labor taxes) served the merchant interest, not the people’s. Hardly an embryonic American democracy, representative colonial governments were monopolized by forces that small-scale debtors and tenant farmers could only view as a creditor conspiracy to exploit their labor, prevent their participation, and take what stuff they had.

­So they organized in vociferous protest. “Mob” is a loaded term; “crowd” is perhaps more fair, and early American crowd action should be understood as a tactic, in the absence of access to the franchise, for pressuring and even changing government. One of the most famous outbreaks occurred in the 1760’s in North Carolina, when ordinary people briefly had a few champions in the legislature. They forcibly closed courts, tore down corrupt officials’ homes, and finally went to war against the provincial government. Royal Governor William Tryon put that rebellion down — but the King’s appointee was more sympathetic to the people’s plight than upscale American legislators and merchants were.

Crowds could be flamboyantly scary and even violent, but they did not run amok, merely venting. In carefully organized disruptions, people moved en masse into courthouses where debt cases were heard, shutting down a judicial process they considered unjust. They felled huge trees across roads to prevent sheriffs from repossessing homes. They enforced no-buy covenants when foreclosed property went up for auction. They staged daring rescues of prisoners held on debt charges. Serving on juries in debt cases, they refused to convict. Well before the famous Stamp Act riots and other acts of resistance to new British trade laws, American life involved orchestrated crowd actions to prevent financial injustice and push government to act on behalf of ordinary people. After the Revolution, the event known as Shays’ Rebellion became only the most famous of the debtor uprisings that continued the people’s struggle in a new political context.

While emulating Shaysite and other debtor crowd actions today would pose an interesting counter-demonstration to Tea Party efforts, the question this history really raises has to do with what Americans want from their government. Do we really want to roll back “nanny state” protections like RESPA, for example, under which an ordinary citizen like Patrick Rodgers was able to interrogate his bank? RESPA is but one detail in a program — and a power — that our ancestors painfully lacked.

Tea Party history insists ordinary, hard-working Americans of the founding era wanted nothing more than to reduce government and keep it out of economic markets. But what those Americans really wanted can be gleaned from their terminology. The rich called them rioters. The people called themselves regulators.

**Check out our series on the foreclosure crisis, Foreclosure 411.

William Hogeland is the author of the narrative histories Declaration and The Whiskey Rebellion and a collection of essays, Inventing American History. He has spoken on unexpected connections between history and politics at the National Archives, the Kansas City Public Library, and various corporate and organization events. He blogs at http://www.williamhogeland.com.

A Tale of Two Rallies

by Pham Binh / October 2nd, 2011

Spearheaded by the Granny Peace Brigade, 2,000 protestors marched from Liberty Plaza to join an anti-police brutality demonstration called in response to New York Police Department (NYPD) Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna’s world famous pepper spray rampage against peaceful Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protestors the Saturday prior.

The character of the two protests could not be more different.

Liberty Plaza was stuffed with people like a rush hour subway car. I did a couple counts from different vantage points and came up with about 2,000 people both times, well above the normal the 200-300 who march near the stock exchange for the opening and closing bells every day or the 100-200 occupants who have made it their business to stay in the park until something in this country change. People were packed tightly on all four edges of the park, and quite a few protestors were on the sidewalks adjacent to the park, unsure of whether the NYPD would keep us bottled up there or begin arresting us.

Before the Granny Peace Brigade stepped up Broadway toward 1 Police Plaza, the crowd at OWS commemorated past victims of police brutality – Sean Bell, Amadou Diallo, Abner Louima, and many, many others. Soon after, they heard from New York City’s most powerful union, Transit Workers Union (TWU) Local 100, who represent the workers who operate the city’s massive public transit system.

TWU speakers made militant speeches in solidarity with OWS, denounced police brutality, and loudly asserted that people have the right to protest without fear of being attacked. Most of their speakers were black and seemed pleasantly surprised when the mostly white crowd repeated their every word using the “human microphone” tactic that was invented to get around the NYPD’s ban on megaphones. Local 100’s support came after OWS disrupted a Sotheby’s art auction in solidarity with their locked out union workers and marched to a postal workers’ rally against the fake crisis aimed at smashing the postal unions.

It seems solidarity is contagious, and it’s spreading all over the country.

As the march made its way up Broadway, the NYPD lined the street, separating protestors on the sidewalk from passing traffic. They were almost downright polite when they asked marchers to stay on the sidewalk in stark contrast to the heavy-handed tactics they used less than a week ago.

It’s obvious that there is no consistent tactical police policy coming from NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly and billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg. They are playing it by ear day by day, just as the activists are. Like in Egypt, every time they back down and let marches happen it bolsters the confidence of OWS; every time they clamp down, it infuriates people who are barely paying attention and support for OWS grows.

A few elderly women (not the peace grannies) tried to tell people in the crowd to hush up, that this was a “silent march,” but the much younger crowd would have none of it. The most popular chant I heard in my section was “banks got bailed out, we got sold out!”

As the march passed Vesey Street, I realized they intended to march up Broadway and take a right on Chambers Street in order to pass City Hall before reaching 1 Police Plaza. The solid police line next to the march became ever thinner and eventually ceased to exist as they struggled to contain the front of the procession, allowing myself, photographers, and fellow protestors freedom to maneuver. I opted to head directly to the plaza to see what the rally looked like before the two groups merged.

As I approached the Manhattan Municipal Building that stands between City Hall and 1 Police Plaza, I was struck by the NYPD’s absence. Not a cop in sight. The last time I was at a march here was after the murder of Sean Bell in 2006. Back then, the place was locked down with cops standing in tight formation blocking our procession to their headquarters.

I made my way under the building’s arch and came upon a crowd of 50-100 or so of long-time leftists, most of them middle-aged or older, many of them with their children. A couple dozen of them walked in a slow circle chanting in unison somewhat dejectedly against police brutality. I saw veteran socialists Louis Proyect, Sam Farber, Sandy Boyer, and long-time activists in the Professional Staff Congress (PSC), the union of faculty and staff of the city’s public higher education system. It was PSC members who called the rally.

PSC member Penny Lewis gave a great speech while tending to her young daughter. She pointed out the fact that Mayor Bloomberg and right-wing extremist David Koch were the two richest men in the city and that Bloomberg, like his predecessor Rudy Giuliani, consistently used the NYPD to harass, intimidate, hamper, and pen-up any and all protests. The spirit of militant defiance of OWS in the face of the NYPD’s typical tactics was a breath of fresh air for this crowd. I also detected a mood of apprehension since they had no idea how big the OWS feeder march would be.

The merger of the two groups was triumphant. The NYPD may have tried to keep the two groups separate by blocking the grannies at the entrance of the Manhattan Municipal Building’s arch, but apparently the NYPD relented. Perhaps Bologna ran out of pepper spray. A huge mass of people chanting, “we, are, the 99%!” made their way into the plaza area and occupied it. The chant dominating the end of the feeder march was new and a bit shocking: “students, and labor, can shut this city down!”

Let’s hope so.

On Saturday, the police allowed hundreds from OWS to march onto the Brooklyn Bridge only to trap them once they reached the middle of the bridge. They arrested many people, possibly hundreds, including a New York Times reporter. Marchers locked arms, forming a human chain in an attempt to make it harder for the cops to divide protestors so they could snatch and grab people as they did last Saturday. It’s amazing how fast people are learning to adapt their tactics.

Of course, the cops will claim the activists were “blocking traffic,” but why let them march onto the bridge to begin with if that was really the concern? Most likely, this is a test to see how OWS reacts and how the public reacts.

OWS struck back by releasing its first official statement outlining the grievances of the 99%. Releasing this concise document with grievances that literally hundreds of millions of Americans share at the height of media attention that the latest round of arrests will attract is nothing short of a brilliant public relations move.

Meanwhile, the OWS movement is coming to a town near you. If not, start an event on your own in your area. The pickets of Woolworth’s department store in solidarity with black and white students who defied segregation at Woolworth’s lunch counters throughout the Jim Crow South in the 50s did not just happen. They were organized. People stopped complaining and started doing something, first in handfuls, then in dozens, then hundreds, and then thousands.

As one OWS speaker put it at Liberty Park, “we’ve been waiting our whole lives for this.”

Now is the time. Now is our time.

Pham Binh is an activist and recent graduate of Hunter College in NYC. His articles have been published at Znet, Asia Times Online, Dissident Voice, and Monthly Review Online. He can be reached at: anita_job@yahoo.com. Read other articles by Pham, or visit Pham's website.

This article was posted on Sunday, October 2nd, 2011 at 8:00am and is filed under Activism, Civil Disobedience, Police, Solidarity, Unions.

Occupy Wall Street: Look deeper, a new democracy is waiting to be born

October 2, 2011 at 10:46:58

Occupy Wall Street: Look deeper, a new democracy is waiting to be born

By Chaz Valenza (about the author)

Look deeper. Underneath the veneer of protests and arrests there is a new democracy waiting to be born.

Yesterday the NYPD gave Occupy Wall Street, and the movement it is birthing, a boost by arresting some 700 protesters on the Brooklyn Bridge, an apparent contradiction that is a manifestation of the paradigm shift now underway.

Over the past 40 years, since 1970 when mortgage-backed securities were first introduced, Wall Street has transmuted from allocating capital for long-term investment into nano-term android speculators and anti-capitalist systemic fraud orchestrators.

Ketchup, her name, addressed the General Assembly by Valerie B. Taylor 9/25/11 Attribution for Use

Over the past 30 years since, since Ronald Reagan was elected president, regulated capitalism has been dismantled. An aristocracy of kleptomaniacs and a politics of corporatocracy subsumed democracy originally created by and for the people.

The American democratic government has been hijacked by the virtual world called "Wall Street," which is, relative to the entire population, a small number of fast-buck artists raping and pillaging people world-wide.

Occupy Wall Street has by choice engaged with the people, not the system.

The corporate mass media, MSM, has given the people the sound bite, the "inside baseball" political analysis and the spin, all devoid of any discussion of issues or important content.

Occupy Wall Street has toppled the media sound bit and replaced it with the HD big picture of reality calling out the overall issues.

The MSM counters by saying the big issues are too big to debate wanting to pick small insignificant fights.

The government has been sold to the highest bidders on a cash for power basis.

Occupy Wall Street's NYC General Assembly has proved an all inclusive democracy can reach consensus and make long term decisions to the benefit of both the stability of the organization and the security of people who participate.

The police and media keep asking for the occupation movement's leaders, both nationally and locally, as the cause spreads to other cities and towns. They are dumbfounded when they discover there are none, just a leaderless democracy of the people.

The establishment decries the movement's refusal to engage in debates where they have predetermined only two possible positions.

Occupy Wall Street educates the newly arrived in a philosophy of consensus building and creative solutions to problems that consider not just two, but three or more possible creative solutions.

Occupy Wall Street is determined to stay as long as necessary to achieve tangible objectives of recognition, substantial growth and future prospects before ending the current protest action.

The pundits, critics and others in opposition to change, all determined to dismiss Occupy Wall Street as inconsequential, continue to express their frustration that the protest is taking so damn long.

Occupy Wall Street has maintained its core principles of non-violence and freedom.

The authorities, currently embodied by the NYPD leadership, continue to rely on physical actions of threats, brutality and incarceration.

Occupy Wall Street has spoken complex truths that have easily resonated with those who are slowing getting the message through an underground circuit of today's word-of-mouth called social media.

The corporate owned media that reaches the majority of Americans continues to obscure the voice of Occupy Wall Street with "understated" coverage. Politicians like Mayor Bloomberg spin lies, like the movement opposes all those making more than $40,000 a year, that seek to divide and dissipate the potent force of vox populi.

Occupy Wall Street's principles and actions, like joining the American Postal Workers Union on their picket line with no assurance of reciprocation, appear illogical.

All politics and government in America today runs on the fuel of money and dances to the tune of the payoff and the quid pro quo.

Occupy Wall Street dances to the tune of the people and will eventually issue the overall community of America, and indirectly the international community of people, dividends in economic security, stability and liberty.

The current paradigm that the Occupy Wall Street movement will "elect" a new leader and the questions of "what will he or she look like?" "who will it be?" "how will they rule?" and, "how much power will they wield?" will soon be on the lips of the current political establishment.

Those steeped in the concept of true democracy as anticipated by Paulo Freire in his "Pedagogy for the Oppressed," already understand that there will be no political leader replacing the current leadership.

Most politicians, currently and historically, have imagined themselves to be power brokers, electorate manipulators, compromisers, know-it-alls, cults of personality, part of a system of money and power, and on one side or the other eliminating the possibility of all other options.

The citizens of a true democracy, as envisioned by the concept of the General Assembly, have no desire for a Fidel Castro, a Valdimir Putin, a Cesar Chavez, an Angela Merkel, an Abby Hoffman or even a Barack Obama.

Politicians, as such, will be expected to perform their duties including truly listening to their constituents, working as facilitators toward creating solutions, and performing the role of representing the people.

Though this paradigm shift has been lost in the stories of the first days of the occupation for empowerment and change in America, it will soon be recognized by more and more citizens as come to understand the long-term process that is this movement.

Take action -- click here to contact your local newspaper or congress people:
I support Occupy Wall Street and I want an end to financial tyranny now!

Click here to see the most recent messages sent to congressional reps and local newspapers

Chaz Valenza is writer and small business owner in New Jersey. He earned his MBA from New York University's Stern School of Business. His current feature film project is "Single Point Failure" an insider's account of how the Reagan Administration (more...)