POLICE SELFIES

On Monday President Barack Obama called for $75 million to equip 50,000 protestors across the nation with body cameras intended to track their interactions with police officers. Using the multiple simultaneous camera angle sources, as well as other high tech gadgetry and training that the three-year $263 million spending package will provide for, protestors will now be able to recreate any recorded event in virtual three dimensional space, similar to the popular Google Map “Street View” feature.

No – not really. The cops get the cameras.

Obama is proposing a three-year, $263 million spending package to increase use of body-worn cameras, expand training for law enforcement and add more resources for police department reform. The package includes $75 million to help pay for 50,000 of the small, lapel-mounted cameras to record police on the job, with state and local governments paying half the cost. AP Article

How bizarre it seems to “record police on the job” by having them wear cameras that will only show what they are facing and not themselves. I suppose if you are at a protest that is surrounded by police then individual officers could inadvertently film each other in action, but if the interaction is between a single police officer and an individual, it is highly unlikely that the officer will get any face time.

I became aware of this proposal reading an article titled “President Obama Is Doing the One Thing That Will Prevent More Fergusons.” What constitutes “more Fergusons” here? Will this “one thing” prevent more shootings of black youths? Will this “one thing” prevent more protests in response to the shooting of black youths? Will this “one thing” prevent more stories of injustice from being heard? The headline does not consider any other option that might put the decision making power into the hands of the people rather than the police (and those that control them). Recording the interaction between a police officer and an individual does nothing to change the existing power dynamic, it is still ultimately up to the officer to decide whether or not to use force. And as we have seen over and over, recording (documenting) abuse of power, while important in and of itself, does not necessarily ensure accountability.

The issue here is not the cameras themselves, as I point to in my opening, it is access and control (as well as the allocation of public resources). Who will have access to the footage that will be collected by officers wearing body cameras? Who will decide how the recordings can and will be used? Who decides where the officers are deployed and what gets recorded? Will this policy amount to yet another fishing expedition in communities that are already profiled by the police? Along similar lines, should your attendance at a political demonstration be taken as your consent to be recorded by the police? In New York City there was something called the Handschu agreement set up to regulate police behavior with regard to political activity. Beyond taking legal action after the police have chosen to disregard the specifics of such agreements, what recourse is there? Who will police the police?

I attended an event last week that involved several artists performing work inspired by George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Afterward the audience participated in a discussion with the artists. Surveillance was a major topic of discussion. The use of body cameras by police was brought up by someone who spoke of the importance of the act of witnessing in connection with justice. One audience member responded to this by declaring that surveillance was not intrinsically good or bad as long as we were aware of it. This reminded me of the common refrain if you haven’t done anything wrong then you have nothing to worry about. I wrote a recent post about how people seldom realize what freedoms they actually have and do not have until they attempt to exercise them. I said something to the group about how the information that is collected may seem inconsequential until you decide to run for public office and quickly find yourself discredited through a false narrative based around some small bit of that collected data. Many simply responded by laughingly exclaiming that they would not be running for President anytime soon. But there is more to it than this. Individuals & activist groups are commonly discredited through this process, their potential effectiveness neutralized. Entire segments of the population are demonized through smear campaigns anchored on some small piece of “evidence” taken out of context or even outright staged so as to validate the narrative. We see this same type of logic playing out in the courts as well, where victims of crimes are discredited in order to derail prosecution of the assailant.

I have seen a number of folks questioning the meaning and the use of the terms “looting” and “riot,” perhaps looking to redefine the narrative. I’ve referenced the term “looter” in earlier posts – from my post DAYANIŞMA / SOLIDARITY

Diren Gezi is Gezi Resistance. Taksim (Taksim Gezi Parkı) is the park that is being occupied in Istanbul, Turkey. Not to be confused with Tayyip (Recep Tayyip Erdoğan), who is the Turkish Prime Minister. Tayyip Istifa! is a chant for him to resign. Çapuling is chapulling. If you are unfamiliar with the word chapulling, that is because it is a new word. Tayyip (remember him?) has taken to calling the demonstrators ayyaş (alcoholics) and çapulcu (looters). Rather than defend against this, the demonstrators chose instead to reappropriate the term çapulcu. The urban dictionary defines the term as “to resist force, demand justice, seek one’s rights.” The term “looters” shouldn’t be unfamiliar to us here in the US. We have heard it and other similar terminology used time and again to dismiss the legitimate concerns of people in need and those that rise up against social and economic injustice. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina the US news media was rife with stories casting desperate victims of Katrina as marauding bands of “looters.”

And from MAN UP

In my previous post I noted how the term “looters” and other similar terms have been used time and again to dismiss the legitimate concerns of people in need, to vilify those that rise up against social and economic injustice. Those who struggle against oppression must be cast as a malevolent force in order to make a defensive response seem reasonable. If they can be successfully cast as a threat, then their oppression appears warranted - the narrative presents this action not as a choice but as a necessary defensive response. When faced with the dualistic framework of fight or flight, there really is only one acceptable option encoded into our (USA) culture - to stand your ground. The mass incarceration of young black males fits into the “self-defense” narrative as a strategy to keep blacks off the streets and off the voter rolls. But it is an offensive strategy as well, generating enormous profit through prison development and maintenance, while supplying cheap labor (less than a dollar an hour) to participating corporations. Are these young men being sold into slavery?

While watching a livestream of the protests in Ferguson the night the grand jury decision was announced I could clearly hear a voice repeatedly announcing that if you were in the street it was unlawful assembly and you would be subject to arrest. Then the voice would simply say loudly “Do it NOW!” Is this a matter of legal rights or solely a matter of compliance? Let me be specific here – are these people in the street (if they are actually in the street) doing something illegal? Or are they being threatened with arrest solely because they refuse to obey an order that has no legal basis? It got me thinking about how the law can be used as a validation of injustice. An example: when the Chicago Teachers Union went on strike Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel cited a law that he claimed the teachers were in violation of. Doing a bit of research I discovered that this law was passed the previous year, likely for the express purpose of preemptively criminalizing the action so as to cast the teachers in a negative light. This kind of legislative suppression of democracy has been happening all over the country with ever increasing frequency. This isn’t a new idea of course, the laws governing free speech and assembly have been effectively rewritten through all sorts of local, state and federal legislation. From the Patriot Act and NDAA, to H.R. 347 – the “Criminalizing Protest” law. Local restrictions abound on exactly where and how many people can assemble through permit processes that clearly conflict with First Amendment protections. The wholesale privatization of public space further blurs the line between assembly and trespass, casting those who are simply exercising their rights as “law breakers.” As with surveillance, the issue here is not necessarily what you have done wrong, rather it is that anything you do can be made wrong for the purpose of your control. 

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 the law.

– Martin Luther King, Jr.

But what if the law has been written specifically to remove any opposition to the injustice, if your imprisonment (or indefinite detention) is the actual objective? When those in power have free reign to ram through laws criminalizing any action they deem threatening to their authority – do we still call it democracy?

As I am writing this I read that a New York grand jury has cleared NYPD officer Daniel Panteleo in the death of Eric Garner, this despite the officer’s use of a chokehold prohibited by NYPD policy, seen in a video recording of Garner’s death captured by bystanders.
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Excellent report on Democracy Now concerning Ferguson and the proposed $263 million spending package.

The Police in America Are Becoming Illegitimate by Matt Taibbi

Seen It All Before: 10 Predictions About Police Body Cameras by Robinson Meyer

VOTE EVERY DAY

As to be expected, there is a lot of post election speculation as to how and why the Obama campaign emerged victorious. While the variety of explanations are as numerous as the reports themselves, there is one uniformly consistent thread that was cited before and after the election - voter turnout. On one side of the proverbial aisle are those who forecast another close election with a razor thin margin of victory, on the other are those that point to pre-election polls that seem to have predicted the final results with surprising accuracy. The emphasis on voter turnout comes out of the close election scenario: when the electorate is evenly split, the deciding factor may well be how many people show up versus how many stay home. Voter turnout may seem like a given in terms of deciding an election (any election), but the overemphasis on it in this particular case feels artificial to me, as if it is being used to draw attention away from some other perspective. I recently wrote a post questioning the 50/50 electoral polarization myth that has become such a staple of our political discussions. Voter turnout can be a factor when one party has a clear majority, but even if the minority party turns out every last one of their voters, they may still be in the minority.

The appeal to fear of a changing electorate was overwhelmingly strident throughout this electoral cycle. Republicans’ brazen attacks on African American, Latino, LGBT, and Women’s rights inspired a surge at the polls that could not be stopped even through rampant voter suppression. But the extremity of these attacks simultaneously allowed Democrats to adopt a protective stance, rather than one advocating to expand the rights in question. The fear cuts both ways it seems, insuring that those less enthusiastic about Obama’s record don’t take the risk of voting for someone more in line with their concerns. The Obama Administration is happy to accept your support whether or not you agree with their agenda - just keep it to yourself. But perhaps the changing electorate is more than the Democrats bargained for. What if those so passionately mobilized to vote by the attacks on their rights refuse to back down? What if they move beyond this protective stance to mobilize for the expansion of those rights? What if they shift en masse from a strategy of simply making demands on those in power to one of development and mobilization of their own alternatives, and start using those alternatives to withdraw their consent from the status quo? What if they are no longer satisfied with voting every four (two, four, six) years? What if they choose instead to vote every day?

A freshly re-elected president brought to tears in a moment of connection with the young volunteers so integral to his campaign; it was certainly not something I had seen before, and I found myself surprisingly moved by the spectacle. It appeared intimate, and personal, and the president’s words were remarkably humble. After I watched it I thought about how this address might be different from others that the president has made. Watching him enter and exit the scene I wondered if there would be any opportunity for these “smarter,” “better organized” and “more effective” volunteers to share their hopes and dreams for the country, to participate in an actual dialogue with their president? A little more than a week later I read a short article titled, “Obama campaign asks: What do we do next?” The link in the article delivered me to an Obama for America survey. Was this the medium for dialogue? Perhaps this document could be a starting point for the volunteers to input their ideas beyond the election cycle? As I read through the three pages it was apparent that the reference point for the questions was mostly limited to the campaign and future campaigns. There were a few questions that allowed for short “write in” answers and several at the end requested a sentence or two, but by and large the questions focused more on “how can we campaign better” than “What do we do next?”

One survey question asked “What issues would you be interested in volunteering or organizing around in the future?” Among the 24 options there was only one issue that expressed a specific viewpoint in the way that it was stated: “Avoiding the fiscal cliff.” When the Bush tax cuts were originally supposed to sunset in 2010, the Republicans played their tried and true “tax and spend liberal” card to flip the switch and claim that allowing the tax cuts to expire was in fact Obama raising taxes. A clear majority of the country was not in favor of extending the tax cuts for the wealthy, but Bush & Co. were crafty enough to design the tax cuts as a reduction of rates across the board. The tax cuts for the lower tax brackets were a pittance next to the windfall for the 1%, but tethering the two together allowed Republicans to push the idea that Obama would be “raising taxes” on everyone. The ball was already rolling on the so called “fiscal cliff” prior to the election, setting it up as a showdown, an impending crisis just beyond the horizon. Once again the Republicans are playing that same card, attempting to run the table. My understanding is that even after we go over the “cliff” Congress could pass legislation retroactive to January 1 (extending the cuts for the “middle class”), but the narrative would be significantly different. With the cuts officially expired, the Republicans would have to defend higher taxes on the “middle class.” Sounds like a pretty good move strategically, so why then is Obama for America promoting the “fiscal cliff” narrative?

I’m hearing a lot of talk about the Obama ground game and the effective use of collected information - this tremendous marketing campaign seems to have paid off, but what have we learned? Are we being sold a president the same way we are sold a pair of sneakers or a box of cereal? Are we being invited to participate in our democracy when we answer the polls and surveys? Is this collected information useful in addressing the challenges we face or is it just a mechanism for securing our vote, and through that vote our deference to authority? I read an article that mentioned grassroots movements in conjunction with supporting the administration’s agenda, but this top down approach (the agenda being set by the president) seems contrary to the very nature of grassroots organizing. In yet another post election piece I read this:

Following re-election, the president wasted no time taking advantage of the organization's massive base. Obama spoke to 30,000 supporters on a conference call last Tuesday about the fiscal cliff, rallying the troops as he began negotiations with congressional leaders to find a deficit-reduction package.

"Our work can't stop now," he said, according to audio of the call. "We're going to need you guys to stay active. We need you to stick with us and stay on this and I'm pledging to do a better job even than we did in the first term in making sure you guys stay involved, that you guys know exactly what we're doing, that we're giving you guys clear directions and talking points in terms of how we keep mobilizing across the country."

We don’t need a marketing campaign to keep us engaged, keep us busy, keep us quiet. Can the OFA network, or perhaps another network altogether, be used instead to ask our people how they think we should address the challenges we face? Perhaps as a means to submit proposals, compile ideas, develop solutions to these challenges? Elevation of ideas from the bottom up is what grassroots is all about - the community participates, not as de facto liberal lobbyists and cheerleaders, but in the actual process of policy development and decision making. When it comes to the “fiscal cliff” Obama is asking us to make Republicans concede to his demands, not to make him concede to ours. With few specifics being offered we are expected to support an agenda that we have had no part in creating. I can recall talking to Bush supporters in 2004 about their “$300 tax rebate” when they brought it up as a reason to re-(s)elect Bush, and asking them if their city and state taxes went up to balance the loss of federal revenue. Isn’t bush getting your vote for nothing if the same amount of income is extracted from you one way or the other? How do you feel about getting duped like that? Will our states and cities be made to compensate for Obama’s proposed federal spending cuts? What and how much will we be asked to sacrifice in order to keep “our” tax cut and make the 1% pay their “fair share”? When you get to the end of the survey there’s a button labeled “submit.”

Is this entire campaign an empty distraction? Mobilizing Americans, not to stop federal fracking legislation, not to repeal NDAA indefinite detention, not to press for climate change ACTION in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, but to tell stories to their congressional representative about what they could do with that 2,000 bucks (for a “typical” middle class family of four). I've written before about how electoral politics is used to distract us from pursuing any kind of direct democratic action: as a siphon of limited time and organizing energy, but also as a restraint to keep us in line. Is this new perpetual Obama campaign just another method of instilling a false sense of purpose in the volunteers? On Black Friday I saw a report on the news where a young man interviewed outside the local Walmart talked about the sense of camaraderie he found waiting in line - it was like they all had a common cause...

I recently worked on a video for a David Weinberger talk titled “The Networking of Knowledge and Storytelling.” The producer on the project and I had a discussion at our initial meeting about the formation and evolution of ideas, sketching tiny diagrams to represent the flow of information. Person A says “Apple,” person B says “Orange.” Weinberger presented a model of networked knowledge stemming from linked ideas, ideas often in contention. “We know now in networks, not as individuals.” It reminded me of concepts that I was becoming familiar with through involvement with Occupy Wall Street. I had been learning about consensus and was beginning to understand how an idea that was evolved through a small group, a working group or an affinity group, might avoid the defensive trappings of ideas proposed by individuals. An individual might spark the process in the group, but it seemed to me that most ideas had a kind of life of their own that preceded their initial proposal. It struck me that this process was a method to free “our” ideas from ownership, to let them exist independent of individual ego and belief, to invite and encourage modification of the ideas through alternative perspectives. Of course, the form of horizontal direct democracy that OWS is evolving is quite different than what we see practiced in our government.

When the president tells us that his first job is “to keep the American people safe,” he is fortifying his patriarchal role, inviting us to breathe a collective sigh of relief that we have someone in the White House watching out for us. Certainly there is comfort in trusting that our leaders know what to do and how to do it, but how does the president’s role as decider - protector - leader fit into the community organizing model that he seems to favor? There is comfort in having direction and feeling a sense of purpose, but folks need never define these things for themselves if they are consistently provided for them. Is it ultimately more empowering to take control and lead the way, or to allow people the freedom to choose their own path? And what do we lose when we supplant the collective potential of many people with the perspective of a single individual? The representative democracy practiced in the US need not inhibit community empowerment so long as representatives are selected by the community to represent the ideas of the community, but where there is forceful repression of alternative forms of democracy, there will likely be “leaders” who are no longer representative.

When Obama says “we’re all in this together,” does this togetherness involve us organizing/mobilizing with and for each other or only in support of the president’s agenda? The close election scenario, the polarized electorate, the “fiscal cliff,” whatever it is called - it is a contest, a conflict, a crisis marketed to the masses. Another distraction in a long series of ever more urgent events, signaling our minds to shut down our creative potential and focus on securing our survival. There may be actual consequences if action is not taken immediately (what kind of crisis would it be without dire consequences after all?), but this does not change the fact that it is a fabrication, an abstraction that we have created and that we consent to. We should not limit ourselves solely to the options that are placed before us, Democrat or Republican, taxes and/or spending cuts, jobs or environment, unions or budget shortfalls, energy independence or climate change action... This process is self perpetuating in that the original challenge is replaced by a conflict, requiring us to make a “choice” rather than seek a creative solution (or multiple solutions). Is it even possible within the present construct for the President to ask us for ideas and assistance without compromising his status as a “leader”? Whatever the answer, we must recognize that the limits of the presidency, the Congress, the government do not need to be our limits as well. Thank you for voting. Thank you for exercising your power. It’s yours - you can do it every day.

SNAKE OIL SALESMEN

Monday morning, back to work. The day before the election, a week after the storm. So many still in darkness. Challenging times like these can be opportunities to reflect on the decisions we have made and the path before us. I sincerely hope that we do not miss this opportunity in a rush back to the comfort of our normal routine.

Health Care, Education, Energy, Environment, Jobs... During the 2008 election cycle I produced two campaign videos to draw attention to the essential differences between Kucinich policy positions and the obligatory bullet points found on each of the other democratic primary candidates respective websites. For example, when Dennis Kucinich talked about “universal health care,” he was talking about a not-for-profit single payer system: Medicare for all - House Resolution 676. Barack Obama and media covering the primary used the term “universal health care” interchangeably with the newly minted “affordable health care,” obscuring the definition of the term “universal” and making it next to impossible to have a conversation about the relative differences of the policies. Later in the primary (long after Kucinich had been vanquished from the debate), we learned that this was a special enforceable mandate free kind of affordable. The five points were spelled out phonetically in the videos to poke fun at their over use and mis-use, to mock the arrogance of a political system that time and again presents these same bullet points as a bottled panacea to cure all that ails us. They treat us like children, too ignorant to understand the finer points of our own suffering. As is often the case with real children, we are rarely consulted and included in these adult discussions of our fate. We are relegated to the status of “swing state” campaign stop backdrop, selected as a scripted validation of whatever political point needs to be made.

In 2012 this already deficient five point perennial campaign platform has been narrowed even further, all other issues funneled through one single point - jobs. Health care in the USA continues to exist primarily as a benefit of a “good job,” rather than as a function of the common good. The power of this incentive (coupled with the scarcity of “good jobs”) keeps many tethered to jobs (and treatment on the job) they would otherwise reject. Education “reform” is predicated on the idea of lifting young people out of poverty by enabling them to compete for these “good jobs.” Absent from this argument is any discussion of how education enriches and empowers our youth (and our society) through creative and critical thought, regardless of economic outcomes. It has been suggested that a college education may be as key to attaining the highly specialized jobs of the 21st Century as secondary education was in the 20th century. Between this and the retraining of workers to keep up with technological progress, how much life will we actually spend learning to live? Most outrageous, in light of the recent storm, is how the issues of energy and environment have been consumed whole by this focus on jobs. Democrats and Republicans (and a complacent media) conveniently limit any discussion to the relative economics and job potential of their respective “plans.” Environmental, health and safety concerns have all been labeled “job killing.” In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, some economists are even talking about a potential bump to the economy in particular sectors...

About a week ago I watched a news program that brought together Mike Caputo, Vice President of The United Mine Workers of America and Tyson Slocum, director of the Public Citizen Energy Program. Mr. Caputo spoke in depth about the 70,000 - 100,000 dollar jobs with excellent health care and benefits, as well as the families and the economies of entire communities that depend on these jobs. Mr. Slocum pointed out that, despite wide acceptance of the science of climate change, the politics and economics of energy policy dominates the discussion specifically because the US is the largest fossil fuel producer on the planet. I enjoy watching this show because of the host’s ability to bring people together in constructive dialogue, but here there didn’t seem to be time to go much deeper than presenting two sides of the argument. One thing that really struck me was when Caputo mentioned that the jobs that wind farms create are minuscule compared to coal mining. I haven’t fact checked this claim myself, but I thought about how he might actually be making a sustainability argument for coal jobs, after all coal needs to be mined continuously as it is used. Wind power? Not so much. But isn’t that part of the point? Is the labor intensive nature of mining actually an asset? If in fact we are maintaining an industry that is detrimental not only to the planet (and all life on it), but also to the long term health and safety of those involved in it, can’t we find other (perhaps better?) ways to address the issue of job security for these workers? Can we do this in a way that is mindful of the dignity and self worth that is engendered through work? I faced some of these feelings myself when the economy crashed and I couldn’t find work. It can be challenging and frightening facing the prospect that the work you have spent most of your life doing may simply no longer be necessary. All of this got me thinking about the underlying hopes and fears of all involved, wondering what could be accomplished if our politicians were not consistently framing the argument as a battle between environmentalists and those directly affected in terms of their livelihood. Everyone involved and affected must be included in the discussion, and after Hurricane Sandy there will likely be many more in the United States who will have reason to participate in this discussion. And what of the millions affected by Sandy and multiple storms this season outside the US? They must be involved in this discussion as well. This isn’t about government bureaucrats making decisions that adversely affect the lives of citizens (as it is commonly spun); this is, at its heart, about a 1% that profits from the desperation of those who are made to prioritize their immediate survival over their survival a year, ten years, 50 years from now…

Romney claims he will win the election if he wins Ohio. When I read articles about Romney family holdings in a company that manufactures voting machines, it is hard not to hear his claim as back story to validate another stolen election. Key to stealing an election is the appearance of a close race, and that is just what the pundits are spinning about Ohio. When Romney and Obama got into a pissing match over who loves coal more in the second CPD debate, they were talking to “coal voters” throughout south eastern Ohio and West Virginia. Notably their focus was on the coal industry itself rather than the welfare of these workers and their families. Is this really about jobs, or is it a cynical manipulation of the fears of these men and women? Are they making a case for the prosperity of these workers or are they relying on the fear of a lost job to drive these workers into the voting booth? And if this is the case, how does this relate to policies that keep these families dependent enough to submit to this manipulation? During the match, neither candidate addressed the mining disasters that have made the headlines recently, and how the corporations responsible in those cases get fined, rather than shut down. Not surprisingly neither of them addressed acid rain, mountain top removal, or climate change either. The singular focus on jobs dominates the discussion, wiping away all other concerns. Month after month of “opinion polls” pushing this single word to the top of the pile, conditioning us to accept that only the most pressing, most desperate, of concerns need be addressed. Everything else is extravagance, a burden we can’t afford to even talk about. So says the austerity model.

Matthew Fox writes in his book The Reinvention of Work:

Under the pressure of the world economic crunch that is creating a worldwide depression, the grave danger looms that we will seek only jobs–jobs at any price–and ignore the deeper questions of work such as how, why, and for whom we do our work.

So, if all of these issues are being funneled through this single point, what happens when we remove jobs from the equation? Just for kicks, what happens with climate change if all coal miners the world over were to suddenly find themselves independently wealthy? What if all the tax payer money we spend subsidizing the mythical “clean coal” was spent instead to provide a cushion for miners to decide what they want to do without it being a question of economic survival for their families and their towns? And I’m not talking about a bridge loan here, or a program to retrain these workers, or a mandatory resume writing seminar to get your unemployment check. I’m talking about dignity, and respect, and a well deserved reward for years of hard work. What if health care was independent of your job so you could make career choices based on what you want to do rather than what type of benefit package you can get? What if we dealt with child poverty (which is of course family poverty, community poverty, etc.) before we sent children to school, rather than as the ultimate objective of education, so that our youth could instead focus on how best to contribute their unique genius to our society? When our politicians speak of “winning the future” through education fueled innovation, what kind of message are we sending to our youth? Are we at all concerned about their freedom to build the life, the world, they desire? Or are we just priming them to take their role in saving the existing system from collapse? What is the impact on innovation when an entire generation of young people seek MBAs based on the ratio of return for their education dollar? And finally, what impact would removing this singular focus on jobs from the equation have on our elections? If your boss sends you a memo “encouraging” you to vote for a particular candidate, is it ok for you to send  a reply “encouraging” your boss to mind their own business? Which issues rise to the top of your list when the issue of jobs is removed? How many of them are issues of economics? What would it take for you to prioritize the ones that are not?   

One percent power players love to use the term “redistribution of wealth” to attack those seeking economic justice, but they never use this term to refer to the enormous direct and indirect government subsidies (tax breaks, tax credits, loans, incentives, deals, etc.) their own corporations receive. Occupy Wall Street chants, “Banks got bailed out - we got sold out!” This is a somewhat different response from the Wall Street vs. Main Street narrative I heard over and over after the crash. The idea of taxing Wall Street a small percentage on transactions, in order to generate funds to offset the damage done to Main Street is clearly a downward spiral. Getting a kickback from the guy who is robbing you will not get back the home or the job you lost. And he can always gouge you more (put you into debt) to pay off your cut... It’s important to recognize that the bailout is a redistribution of wealth, from the tax payers to the wealthy. It is the same redistribution of wealth that happens when public resources and services are privatized, directing our tax dollars into the bank accounts of private corporations, rather than back into the hands of our citizens. The OWS chant doesn’t ask for a corporate handout (is that an oxymoron?) or a government bailout for the people. The People’s Bailout, the Rolling Jubillee, comes from the people directly. I remember Bush senior talking about “a thousand points of light” and thinking what an asshole. But that was a time when those thousand points responded (when they actually did respond) more out of sympathy, pity, charity. The thousands of points of light I witness in Occupy are coming from empathy. Many in the movement have experienced or are experiencing the same suffering that they are responding to directly, and progressively more and more folks throughout the country are having similar personal experiences that move them to take action. The “safety net” is no longer keeping them safe and in its place they are seeking to build communities of trust and mutual aid. Within these communities they can be who they want to be and do the work they want to do. The adversity they face is simultaneously an opportunity for greater solidarity, for deeper connection. Occupy Sandy is a wonderful example of this dynamic.

From Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin’s book Your Money or Your Life:

And they call this making a living? Think about it. How many people have you seen who are more alive at the end of the work day than they were at the beginning? Do we come home from our “making a living” activity with more life? Do we bound through the door, refreshed and energized, ready for a great evening with the family? Where’s all the life we supposedly made at work? For many of us, isn’t the truth closer to “making a dying”? Aren’t we killing ourselves–our health, our relationships, our sense of joy and wonder–for our jobs? We are sacrificing our lives for money–but it’s happening so slowly that we barely notice. Graying temples and thickening middles along with dubious signs of progress like a corner office, a private secretary or tenure are the only landmarks of the passage of time. Eventually we may have all the comforts and even luxuries we could ever want, but inertia itself keeps us locked into the nine-to-five pattern. After all, if we didn’t work, what would we do with our time? The dreams we had of finding meaning and fulfillment through our jobs have faded into the reality of professional politics, burnout, boredom and intense competition.

My political advisor astutely suggested that I look into what is being done in other countries to address the dignity of coal workers AND the continued existence of life on this planet. Due to the storm I have not been able to research this point, but I will certainly look into it and post my findings when I have my phone and internet back up and running. This post is dedicated to him on his birthday.
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Still haven’t gotten around to the research above, but came across a related article today that I really enjoyed - read it here 

Binders full of women - a debate stage full of men.

Today I am reading Romney’s “binders full of women” quote everywhere. While the issue brought up is clearly more substantive than Big Bird, does it really surprise anyone? I read article after article leading up to last night’s debate bemoaning the president not bringing up women in the first debate, and prioritizing the importance for both candidates to play specifically to women voters in the second. Well it would seem that Romney fulfilled expectations putting his foot firmly in his mouth last night saying, “We’re going to have to have employers in the new economy, in the economy I’m going to bring to play, that are going to be so anxious to get good workers they’re going to be anxious to hire women.” I imagine Ryan might say that Romney was “obviously inarticulate” in making this point, if he himself was capable of recognizing the problem with it. Perhaps Mitt is simply trying to say that employers are going to be anxious to hire good workers and women are good workers, but the statement comes off sounding like it says that employers are going to be “so anxious to get good workers” that they will even hire women.

So Obama gets points for Lilly Ledbetter, defending Planned Parenthood, and he has two daughters he wants to make sure “have the same opportunities that anybody’s sons have.” He sounds like he cares. And maybe he is being sincere, but watching two women (who are running for the same office) being manhandled and arrested by a bunch of burly officers outside the debate gives me pause. The Obama campaign is not simply complicit here, it is the Democrats and Republicans acting in concert through the false flag of the Commission on Presidential Debates that have excluded these women’s voices from the debates. The “Nonpartisan” Candidate Selection Criteria For 2012 General Election Debate Participation, Adopted on October 20, 2011, sets forth three specific “nonpartisan” criteria for selecting candidates to participate in the 2012 general election presidential debates: (1) constitutional eligibility, (2) ballot access, and (3) electoral support. Though I personally believe both the second and third criteria need redress, the candidacy of Jill Stein and Cheri Honkala actually meets criteria one and two. The third criteria, however, is a self-validating circle of nonsense:

INDICATORS OF ELECTORAL SUPPORT

The CPD's third criterion requires that the candidate have a level of support of at least 15% (fifteen percent) of the national electorate as determined by five selected national public opinion polling organizations, using the average of those organizations' most recent publicly-reported results at the time of the determination. 

"Electoral support” is simply not the same thing as “indicators of electoral support," in the same way that “votes” are not “opinion polls.” Under these criteria, a candidate needs to have enough support to be selected to debate to get enough support to be selected to debate... nonsense. A debate is at its heart about finding out where the candidates stand on the issues that matter to us; and five selected national polling organizations, the CPD, and the two parties that run it should not be allowed to determine which voices we get to hear and which get to go to jail for showing and speaking up.

One other thing stands out to me about the debate and it’s critique: I’m seeing some very talented people that I respect taking Romney to task for his comment, “Government does not create jobs. Government does not create jobs.” But why not also take Obama to task for saying, “I think a lot of this campaign, maybe over the last four years, has been devoted to this notion that I think government creates jobs, that that somehow is the answer. That’s not what I believe.” I wrote a bit in an earlier post about mobilizing the American people to support legislation that they actually want, rather than simply adopting Republican talking points in some kind of hopeless crusade to out Republican the Republicans. When Obama declares “I believe that the free enterprise system is the greatest engine of prosperity the world’s ever known. I believe in self-reliance and individual initiative and risk takers being rewarded,” and tempers this with his fair shot, fair share, play by the same rules refrain; is he offering us the necessary vision to move beyond this win/lose competitive paradigm, or is he simply strengthening it? With the concepts of independence and competition so central to our core identity as Americans, is it even possible to address “fairness” without it being viewed as an affront to those very same ideas? If you insist on fairness aren’t you just making excuses for your own lack of success? Perhaps you are just too lazy, or unwilling (to work harder), or maybe you’re just not smart (educated) enough. Are we truly “free” if we cannot freely choose not to participate in this game?
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Mark Halperin at Time Magazine posted the leaked Memorandum of Understanding between the Obama and Romney campaigns Monday, a 21 page legal document delineating the rules governing 2012 presidential and vice presidential debates. I read it this morning. And then I made a cup of coffee to try to wake myself back up. It did of course contain specifics regarding who gets to debate, the topics that will be “debated,” and the format of the debate (as I wrote in an earlier post); of the many restrictions here are a few that set off some bells for me:

1. (d) The parties agree that they will not (1) issue any challenges for additional debates, (2) appear at any other debate or adversarial forums except as agreed to by the parties, or (3) accept any television or radio air time offers that involve a debate format or otherwise involve the simultaneous appearance of more than one candidate.

So not only does the agreement restrict who can debate, but it also restricts the two candidates to only debating one another, and only in these CPD sanctioned debates.

3. Participants
If one or more candidates from the campaigns other than the two (2) signatories are invited to participate pursuant to those Selection Criteria, those candidates shall be included in the debates, if those candidates accept the terms of this agreement.

This effectively says IF you meet the criteria to be invited to debate that you still have to agree to the terms of the agreement (that your party had no hand in writing) IF you want to be included in the debate.

5. (e) The candidates may not ask each other direct questions during any of the four debates.

Ah well - rules are made to be broken.

7. Additional Rules Applicable to the October 16 Debate...

Too much here to re-type, but here is my summary: Audience members submit their questions to the moderator prior to the start of the debate. Moderator approves all questions to be posed and “eliminates” any questions she (and she alone) deems “inappropriate.” If any audience member poses a question or makes a statement that is in any material way different than the question that they submitted for review, they get cut off by the moderator and the Commission can cut off their microphone. All audience members describe themselves as likely voters. The audience is selected by Gallup Organization, but the campaigns have the final say on the “methodology” used for selection.

9. (a) (viii) All members of the debate audience will be instructed by the moderator before the debate goes on the air and by the moderator after the debate goes on the air not to applaud, speak, or otherwise participate in the debate by any means other than silent observation, except as provided by the agreed upon rules of the October 16 town hall debate. The moderator shall also state that, should an audience member fail to comply with this requirement, he or she will be will be subject to removal from the audience and from the facility. 

10. (a) ... Each campaign shall be entitled to receive directly from the Commission one-third of the available tickets (excluding those allocated to the participating audience in the October 16 debate), with the remaining one-third going to the Comission.

Basically, what we have here is some sort of facsimile of democracy in action, with all of the inconvenient randomness, diversity, and unscripted participation stripped out. And you are more than likely not invited.
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An additional note: beyond the specifics relating to distribution of tickets, section 10. (c) of the memorandum specifies seating arrangements, in order to “insure that supporters of each candidate do not sit in a block and are interspersed with supporters for the other candidate and interspersed with tickets distributed by the Commission.” Notable here is that there is no specific allotment for supporters of a different candidate entirely, or neither candidate, or those who have simply not decided (it is a debate after all). Perhaps folks in these categories can sit anywhere they like? If not, they could always sit outside in the street, or better yet, in a jail cell...

MIC CHECK!!!

WHO WON THE DEBATE?

I am fully aware of how electoral politics is used to distract us from pursuing any kind of direct democratic action: as a siphon of limited time and organizing energy, but also as a restraint to keep us in line. If organizing a social justice movement (political campaign) without the stated objective of influencing electoral politics is ineffectual (as those in power brand it), then why bother? Just stick to voting every couple of years. Reading my blog, it may not surprise you when I write that the win/lose construct is one of the most effective tools to discourage us from participating in shared dialogue. That said, I feel like there is an opportunity for us to move forward here by simply recognizing the missing point.

Try this - when thinking about what was said at the debate, apply this filter: every single attack Romney made on Obama at the debate was for something that Republicans had requested, initiated, or modeled prior to Obama picking it up and moving it forward. Does this alter your perception of the debate?

A little background. There was a lot of media attention and speculation when Supreme Court Justice Roberts presented his “dissenting” opinion concerning the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act mandate. Left leaning media hailed it as a victory for Obama, citing dissension within the court between Roberts and Scalia. Strangely I did not find, and still don’t find, anyone writing about how saving the legislation would be a boon to the Romney campaign. The logic here is simple - “Obamacare” is the single most important issue specific avenue of attack that the Romney campaign has in its arsenal. Other values based issues have been used again and again in Republican campaigns, but this issue is specifically a product of the Obama Administration, often described as Obama’s “signature legislation.” Removing this issue from the table would have been disastrous for Romney, having spent so much of his campaign focused on “repealing Obamacare.”  Roberts’ re-contextualization of the mandate as a “tax” was widely panned as a stretching of the law, but it did do one thing perfectly: it defined a specific difference between Obama’s healthcare legislation and Romney’s Massachusetts healthcare legislation. Romney’s was a mandate, but Obama’s was a TAX. And Republicans love taxes.

After Paul Ryan gave his speech at the Republican National Convention, there was again an uproar in the press over all the “lies” he told from the stage. But again, I saw no specific critique that pointed out that each of the legislative problems Ryan blamed on the Obama administration was actually dreamt up and put into motion by Ryan and his cohorts. This was a blatantly transparent strategy of toxification. You have an issue that you will undoubtedly use against me in a debate. I preemptively attack you for creating the issue in the first place. My base believes my attack because they do not have any other information to dispute my claim. When it is time to debate, you cannot bring up the issue without immediately being blamed for it - it has been made toxic. Your ace in the hole is now my ace in the hole.

This is the strategy that Romney used throughout Wednesday’s debate. Once this strategy has been put into motion it is practically impossible to defend against. If all of what I witnessed on Wednesday was not simply scripted spectacle, then it would seem that Obama’s campaign is not quite as smart as they are given credit for. It is too late to mount a defense when you finally realize that each of the legislative compromises you made is a trap which will be used to attack you. If you defend yourself by saying “I gave you what you wanted,” they will only label you a weak, whiny liberal. When Romney flipped the switch attacking Obama repeatedly for making cuts to Medicare (under the guise of balancing the budget, reducing the deficit, reigning in spending, ALL Republican talking points) there was simply no defense he could mount. When Romney attacked Obama on Obamacare saying that it was a failure at a federal level while declaring (for the first time) that his own Massachusetts plan was a model for all states to emulate, what could Obama say? But my plan is based on yours? If yours is a success, then SO IS MINE!? How does one draw attention to the essential difference between oneself and one’s opponent when the majority of one’s “successes” come through compromise with them?

So why didn’t the Democrats see this coming? Is this just the ultimate outcome of bi-partisan politics? I don’t have any faith in this President, but I also know that Romney/Ryan could be even more of a nightmare, for the simple fact that their base offers little or no resistance to (and would even celebrate many of) the draconian measures they would certainly codify into law. Even with all of his outrageous expansions on policies initiated during the Bush (and Clinton) years, Obama still has to maintain a public image as benevolent leader that Romney will not. Of course, all bets are off during a lame duck presidency...

There really is only one way (that I can see) to deal with this Republican flip the switch strategy. Mobilize the American people to support legislation that they actually want. Basing new policy on past Republican policy proposals in order to garner Republican support? How’s that workin’ for ya? Yeah, not so much. Perhaps our current “great communicator” president wasn’t up to the task of popularizing a program of renewal with the American people, or perhaps his pragmatism keeps him from launching the kind of ambitious plan that Americans could actually get excited about, or perhaps he is actually just the smiling face of corporate control. Whatever the reason, it is up to us to recognize how these concepts link, and how they yield predictable results - if we don’t want to get swept up in the horse race frenzy that our political system has become.

Who won the debate? Who cares.

P.S. Regarding Big Bird - remember this? Are we really this easy to manipulate?

COKE OR PEPSI?

I’m not going to try and convince you that Obama and Romney are exactly the same. I’m not going to make a case for not voting or voting third party. I don't yet know who I will vote for in November myself. And I like it that way. When is the last time that you remember going into an election cycle looking for the candidates to introduce themselves to you, to communicate their specific positions on issues important to you, to actually listen to you and reflect on what they can do for you as your representative? Do you remember that far back? Do you even remember that at all?

The first CPD sponsored presidential debate of the 2012 election cycle will take place tonight. By my count there are still more than two dozen citizens running for the office of president across the country. How many of those candidates will be allowed to speak in tonight’s debate?

Two.*

Who gets to debate, the topics that will be “debated,” the format of the debate - all decided on and agreed to ahead of time by the Obama and Romney campaigns. So who is this CPD that sponsors the debates? The Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) is a private “non-profit” corporation started by former heads of the Democratic and Republican National Committees in 1987. It replaced the League of Women Voters in 1988 and has been sole sponsor of every presidential debate since that time. The CPD itself currently has seven sponsors including three companies, the largest of which is Anheuser-Busch (that's right Budweiser is sponsoring your democracy). While people mobilize across the country to battle efforts by the right to limit ballot access (a nice way to say steal the vote) , the CPD quietly acts as a limited liability shill (as corporations often do) for the censorship of any dissenting opinion at the presidential debates. It is only through the inclusion of alternative voices that the dialogue can be expanded and that candidates can be kept honest. This limiting of the number of voices at the debate by folks who are already in the debate is clearly a conflict of interest. My “more voices” graphic below includes four alternative voices (among many) that should be part of the debate: (from left to right in no particular order) Rocky Anderson of the Justice Party, Gary Johnson of the Libertarian Party, Jill Stein of the Green Party, and Anonymous. Please feel free to “steal” it and share it EVERYWHERE. Click to enlarge image.

I could go into depth about instant runoff voting (IRV), public financing of elections, voting “no confidence,” but there is one thought that I want to draw attention to above all the others. Representational democracy is about voting for the person that best represents your interests. So regardless of who you choose to vote for in November, I sincerely hope you will remember that it is your choice and not the choice of pollsters, pundits, or the CPD.

Democracy Now! ran a great in depth piece on the CPD today - watch it here

*Democracy Now! is airing a LIVE expanded debate tonight from 8:30 - 11:30 pm ET, pausing after questions to include equal time responses from Jill Stein of the Green Party and Rocky Anderson of the Justice Party - watch it here

Learn more and get involved at opendebates.org
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October 15, 2012 - Mark Halperin at Time Magazine posts leaked Memorandum of Understanding between the Obama and Romney campaigns - read it here