The national minimum wage in the United States currently sits at $7.50/hr. Why are we allowing ourselves to be paid an hourly wage which places us below the poverty line?
We have we put ourselves in a position where we are now indentured servants to our employers. Ignorance of our rights as men and women has stripped us of all collective political power and left us with dictatorial workplaces and pseudo-democracy within our federal government. Fear of deeper inescapable poverty has kept us complacent and demoralized to the point that we know our wages are unacceptable, but fear of rocking the boat is too crippling.
A lot of talk has been going around the pundit world about “job creation.” Presidential candidates promise us that they are the right man or the right woman to create jobs in America, as if we are to disregard all that we know of basic civics and believe that a president has the power to just create jobs out of thin air. They prey on our need to survive and feed our families, and manipulate our emotions to further their career or national agenda through doublespeak and blatant lies. All while the poor continue to sink deeper and deeper into unspeakable poverty. Have these politicians ever experienced true poverty? To be certain, they all boast coming from “modest means,” but have any of them had to choose between food and gas for the workweek? Have they felt the shame of working 40+ hours per week and having a mere $20 left to live on after bills?
It’s time for us to start demanding a living wage in this country. Too many generations of people have lived, worked, and died under the yoke of poverty. Every single one of those generations were the working class that built the middle class, in the dream of one day joining it. Too many of those people died penniless with nothing to show for the great skyscrapers and industries they built with their own hands. Were these men and women the “takers,” as politicians would have us believe? Were their cries out in strike for fair wages and safe working conditions really as the far right would have us believe: a burden on the “job creators”? It is time we see things for what they are and always have been, a system of workers building a decadent nest for those who do less work. It is time we stand up and demand a fair and livable wage in the name of all those who struggled before us.
What exactly does a livable wage look like? The answer to that is simple. If you work 30 hours a week, you should not be under the poverty line. This means an average household should make around $32,000 per year in return for their work. That translates into a national minimum wage of $16 per hour. This of course will make me an enemy of nearly every businessman and employer. They will take one look at that figure and scream about how it’s far too high, about how they could never afford to pay such wages in the current economy, while completely disregarding the fact that wages have not grown alongside the economy for the past 30 years. As a result of wage stagnation, we now are left with no choice but to demand our back wage raises. If paying your employers what they are worth completely demolishes your bottom line, then your company is fundamentally unsound to begin with. It is not the worker’s responsibility to take a financial hit for bad decisions by upper management or ownership.
All of us see the kind of money our employers rake in each year. We may not say anything, but we secretly fume at the comparison between that number and our paychecks. We perform backbreaking and sometimes highly dangerous jobs for table scraps only to turn right around and spend the only money we have left in the very stores that pay us so little in the first place. We all know we are better than that. We all feel the strap tightening around our necks, but we let the mass media circus and gluttonous politicians lead us to believe that we should, as Herman Cain said, “blame ourselves” if we are poor. If we really want to address poverty in this country, wage equality has to take center stage of the argument. There is no single greater obstacle facing the working class than our wages.
The time for discussion is over. We have talked about this for nearly 100 years. The time is now for direct action against politicians who use poverty as a campaign tool and do nothing for the people. The time is now to stand up as the workers of the world and shout: we are not the ”takers,” we are the “builders” and we can build whatever kind of world we want with our own two hands, just as our grandfathers did.
A decade of war has brought terrible pain and suffering to countless families across the country. It ruined the lives of hundreds of thousands of young men and women, some 18 and fresh out of high school. According to the Iraq Body Count Project, a US/UK independent group, approximately 108,076 innocent Iraqi civilians have lost their lives. Countless civilians have also been indefinitely detained without charge and subject to torture. The total number of American servicemen who have lost their lives is approximately 4,404, and 31,827 have been wounded in action.
Since the announcement by President Obama in October of this year declaring a December 2011 withdrawal of all U.S. military forces, troops have slowly been coming home. By December 2011, all combat troops will have left Iraq. What does this mean for US involvement in the nation we destroyed and presented into the open hands of various terrorist organizations?
The term ‘Private Security Contractor’ or ’Defense Contractor’ is used in almost every appropriate instance when referring to Iraq and Afghanistan. This is what politicians call Blackwater and other such agencies hired to do what the overstretched, underfunded US military simply cannot handle. Blackwater is one of the most frightening things to come out of the entire Iraq war: a modernized private army in the hundreds of thousands, based near the United States capitol, with countless U.S. senators and congressmen in its back pocket.
BlackWater is legally recognized under its corporate name, Xe Services LLC. (A fact that was true when I started this article, however the company changed its name as of 12/12/11 to Academi.) The company was started by Eric Prince, a former Navy Seal who worked as a White House Intern under George H. W. Bush, and Al Clark, also a former Navy Seal. BW is headquartered on a 7,000-acre private base in Arlington, Virginia. The company reportedly had approximately 100,000 private security officers in Iraq at the height of the Iraq war. The chance to continue a military-style career while making a substantially higher salary was attractive to many servicemen exiting the military. BW forces are made up of former Marines, Army, Navy and Airforce as well as many retired/veteran police. Years of training in the United States military, all funded by tax payer dollars, are now seen by BlackWater as the virtual geyser of expertise they needed and used to create a gigantic private army. BW stands outside the jurisdiction of the military and does not take orders from them. This has been a great frustration for the plantiffs in cases brought against Xe Services LLC.
The company has also began a venture into the videogame industry. The newly released Blackwater game for XBOX 360/Kinect was developed by Zombie Studios. In this first-person shooter the player assumes the role of a Blackwater mercenary carring out various ‘missions’ around the globe. While I have no doubt this game is terrible beyond belief, it does show the extent to which the company will go to promote its interests.
During the course of the Iraq war, the Bush administration and the U.S. State Department awarded Blackwater a 5-year, $1 billion dollar contract. Since that time, President Obama has awarded Blackwater an additional $250-million-dollar contract for security work in Iraq and Afghanistan. This work usually takes the form of protecting high-risk diplomatic targets. At times, Blackwater has received criticism for using force indiscriminately against Iraqi citizens. The most famous instance of this was in February of 2005, when Blackwater forces fired 70 rounds into a car that failed to come to a stop near a blockade in Bagdad. The driver was killed. The security contractors made no effort to identify the man or investigate the situation before leaving the scene. Conflicting reports were given and the case is still being investigated by the State Department. If this had been an act committed by the military, there would be a proper investigation into the event. The fact that Blackwater is a private company operating inside a war zone makes investigations next to impossible, as they would be delegated out to the local authorities. However, these either do not exist or are powerless given the situation.
This is the route the United States has deemed our best way out of Iraq. Not a full withdrawal, but rather the privatization of war. How better cut the eyesore of spending on the Iraq war than to contract it out to a loosely-regulated corporation? Blackwater contracts are considered ‘defense spending,’ which effectively hides all the figures within the labyrinth of ‘Classified’ information.
In the time since I began this article, the day of the U.S. withdrawal has finally come. This morning as I worked, I listened to many heartfelt and extremely Christian speeches. The spectacle of the American war machine has never shined brighter. I couldnt help but wonder what those troops out there in the audience and those back home where thinking listening to that. I think of all the soldiers in 2003 leaving a country experiencing an economic surplus, only to return to rejected VA bills and a foreclosed childhood home. All the men learning to walk again in military hospitals after an IED blast. Or the men and women emotionally scarred by the things they have seen in the field. What good is a ceremony or a parade to these soldiers? What good is a nation’s gratitude for allowing us to put them in harm’s way over lies and deceit? When we congratulate and thank them for ‘serving their country,’ what should we actually be saying? Our leaders need to be pressured to make public addresses in which every soldier, living or dead, is apologized to for being put in harm’s way through pseudo-patriotism and lies.
The war in Iraq has been used in past elections as a wedge to rangle independent and undecided voters. There is really no reason to expect this year to be any different. For all we hoped Obama might be in 2007 and 2008, what we got was a run-of-the-mill politician. He has furthered the war in Afghanistan and increased American drone attacks across the globe. The President promised to end the war in his first term, and by any logical account of the facts, he has failed to do that. It has become abundantly clear that the war will never truly be finished until the people stand up and demand it. Not until every single remnant of the American military and corporations are out of Iraq will this war finally be done.
Imagine an alternate version of the United States where all citizens have access to a National Health Service in return for federal tax against their income. A United States where the common worker has the same influence in Washington as the mega-wealthy. Where a person’s wage reflects the cost of living, and everyone has equal access to good housing and schools. Imagine a nation that lives up to its claims of Christian founding by taking care of the poor and spreading peace throughout the world. It’s the world that Occupy Wall Street, Occupy Together and Occupies throughout the world want to leave in their wake. It’s also the world we might have had if Franklin Delano Roosevelt had lived to see his vision fully realized.
The Second Bill of Rights or (‘FDR’S Second Bill of Rights’) is a topic that most everyone in the Occupy movement has probably discussed at one time or another, and if not, you should be. Nearly every demand written on any sign in any Occupy encampment can be traced to the rights proposed in 1944. Regardless of the many faults critics find in him, FDR’s New Deal created the middle class and through programs such as the CCC built the infrastructure as we know it today. The Second Bill of Rights is FDR’s unfinished masterpiece. This was to be the underpinning of the entire New Deal, the very foundation that would allow that system of support programs to go unspoiled by Republican meddling. The New Deal was under fire from the very beginning; almost as soon as many of it’s programs were enacted, forces of opposition set out to dismantle what they referred to as ‘socialism’ in America. In the State of the Union address in January of 1944, FDR stated:
“In our day certain economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all—regardless of station, race, or creed.”
The proposal included:
The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;
The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;
The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;
The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;
The right of every family to a decent home;
The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;
The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;
The right to a good education.
He goes on to say:
”It is our duty now to begin to lay the plans and determine the strategy for the winning of a lasting peace and the establishment of an American standard of living higher than ever before known. We cannot be content, no matter how high that general standard of living may be, if some fraction of our people—whether it be one-third or one-fifth or one-tenth—is ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-housed, and insecure.
FDR died on April 12th 1945, and except for Social Security, no other portion of the proposal was ever enacted.
This is just one more instance in human history where someone stood up, stated the truth and met his end before getting to see it through. The problem is as it has always been: that they need us, the people, to pick up the fight and keep going after they fall. Martin Luther King, Jr. needed us, the people, to keep up the fight to end poverty in America. Gandhi needed us to keep up the fight against injustice, instead of waiting for the next charismatic leader to come around. We have to do it for ourselves. It can’t be handed to us.
So now with the Occupy movement, we have all began to stand up again. This time for ourselves, in a truly leaderless movement. From an army of ants we have created a fist. What will we do with it? Will we let the immense momentum of the Arab Spring and Occupy pass us by and fizzle out? Or will we unite under a common theme which encompasses all our frustrations into a single demand?
In the spirit of Occupy, I say we occupy the Second Bill of Rights. This is what’s been right on the tip of our tongue that we couldn’t put it into words. When a person has a right to a home, their home may not be foreclosed. When a person has a right to a living wage, companies may not pay workers below the poverty line while reaping windfall profits. When a person has a right to healthcare, they cannot be cast out into the street for failure to pay. When we consolidate our demands in to a million-strong outcry for a Second Bill of Rights, we cannot go unheard.
Since its inception just over 12 weeks ago, The Occupy Wall Street/Occupy Together movement has been a polyphony of voices calling for a democratic reawakening, a rectification of economic injustices perpetrated by the banking and healthcare industries, and an end to the special access corporations enjoy in our electoral process. We use this polyphony to our advantage, refusing to organize behind a single leader, refusing to believe that we need such a leader to help us articulate our own unique concerns and grievances. But I believe there is a place where all the grievances, concerns, and frustrations intersect, and I believe that intersection is fundamentally moral in nature.
It’s moral because it’s wrong to tell someone without health insurance that medical treatment is an impossibility, unless they can come up with the cash. Moral because 100 million Americans are living in poverty, or near poverty, and the top 1% are doing better than ever. Moral because some prosper while families are evicted from their homes. There are children in America living in deep poverty, while elites celebrate excess itself with yet another Great Gatsby-themed party. Why don’t they feel ashamed?
In a 2006 interview, writer David Foster Wallace observed: “America, as everybody knows, is a country of many contradictions, and a big contradiction for a long time has been between a very aggressive form of capitalism and consumerism against what might be called a kind of moral or civic impulse. For many years everybody knew that business was business and people needed to make money, but people were also a little embarrassed or ashamed of that.”
Sometime in the 1980s or 1990s, this civic impulse gave way to a culture that celebrated greed and conspicuous wealth. It was against this cultural backdrop that the Great Recession was brought down upon the heads of the American people, courtesy of the criminals on Wall Street. The government’s decision to bail out the financial institutions with taxpayer money only reinforced the belief on their part that some institutions are too big to fail. In these peoples’ heads, greed is still good.
Conspicuous displays of wealth are the norm, especially now that the holiday shopping season is upon us. Case in point: the millions of colorful LED lights brought to OKC by its corporations. What troubles me about these light displays is that they’re so obviously designed to invoke civic pride through something a corporation has done. The city now looks more beautiful, and we have our corporate benefactors to thank. But these lights are also intended to carry forth the image of the particular business sponsoring them, and are realized for what they are within the corporate offices: an unmissable PR opportunity. The corporation’s image is now inextricably (they hope) associated with the warm-and-fuzzy spirit the holidays engender in us all. Since that image is also a projection of the corporation’s power and wealth, I can’t help but symbolically equate holiday light displays with decadent Gatsby-themed parties.
The corporations are stronger than ever, but they still require us to tolerate them. One of the many ways they do this is by impressing us with lights, leading us to associate our pride for our city with the corporation’s hand in beautification of the city. But let’s not let them distract us, and let’s continue to do what Occupy has succeeded in doing so well: keeping the conversation about the moral agenda that underpins the economic grievances of the 99%.
A few hours after television producers set up a replica of Occupy Wall Street for the filming of a new episode of Law and Order Special Victims Unit, the real Occupy Wall Street announced plans to occupy the fake one. At 11:30 p.m. the call to occupy the set went out on Twitter. It’s located at nearby Foley Square and includes a replica of the OWS kitchen and library as well as numerous tarps and tents. “They’ve delivered us this perfectly wrapped Christmas present with a bow on top: They rebuilt our camp,” OWS organizer Jake De Groot told me shortly before the announcement went out. “How could we not go and take it?”
Occupy Wall Street and the Occupy Together movement as a whole have come under major fire from every direction at once. Protestors are marginalized as dirty hippies as millions are spent on anti-Occupy PR campaigns. If you were to spend a day watching cable or network news, you might start to think that this kind of movement had never happened before. It’s as if the entire women’s suffrage movement, union sit-ins, and the civil rights movement never even occurred. Networks seem to be at a loss to find any parallel in modern history. Which has had me thinking a lot about another forgotten political movement in American history, one I feel Occupy has more in common with than any of the above: the 1932 Bonus Army’s occupation of the US Capitol.
United States veterans of World War I were promised a bonus from the federal government for their service. The rules stipulated that a cash bonus would be issued, but not until 1945. By the 1930’s the onslaught of The Great Depression found many of those same veterans on a breadline. With their bank accounts depleted and their children malnourished, many became furious at the idea of waiting another decade to receive what they were owed. This all came to a head in 1932 when 15,000 men, white and black, marched to the United States Capitol. Setting up a giant tent city, the protestors demanded immediate payment of their bonus.
Holding the grounds, they urged the Senate to pass a bill that would meet their demands. The Senate, in all its historical wisdom, opted out of that idea. The important thing to remember about these men and women is that many of them were homeless. Most had no earthy possessions left except what they may have had in their pockets. So they stayed put, encamped even after the Senate went on vacation.
On July 28th 1932, President Herbert Hoover ordered the military, led by General Douglas MacArthur, to break up and remove the encampment. Several tanks commanded by General Patton were used against the protestors. Orders were given to raid the encampment and torch the tents. Fixed bayonets were used against the men and their families, along an early form of tear gas known to be a ‘vomiting agent.’ As they fled with their families across the river, orders were given to pursue. The Bonus Army march was labeled a ‘communist overthrow of the United States,’ hundreds of arrests were made, and many veterans were reported injured. Two men lost their lives during a related police shooting.
Hoover’s presidency had already been in trouble. With an election looming, the Depression had lost him the confidence of the people and the Bonus Army had cost him their trust. This was a major factor in Roosevelt’s landslide victory.
By the time the protestors had organized for a second march, FDR provided them with a camp and food, eventually enrolling them into the newly established Civilian Conservation Corps. Congress would not get around to passing the Adjusted Compensation Payment Act until 1936—a full 4 years after the events in Washington DC, but nine years ahead of 1945 date originally agreed.
The legacy of The Bonus Army is not in what battles they won or lost, but that they stood up in the first place. They were able to change the course of an election simply by making their voices heard and taking the political narrative of the day hostage. The lesson they can teach us is that not only is Occupy not a strange thing to have happen in America, it’s a part of our heritage. We should be listening to the voices calling out to us over a great distances of time, the voice of every man ever sent to any war, just or not. The voice of a million women who lived and died as a peasant. The voice of every child who dreamed of the marvels of the year 2011 or 12, and found peace in the thought that surely by now we would have found a way to take care of the poor and ensure that we all have a decent life. If we want a world without fear of war, disease, or the shackles of money, we can have it. All it ever takes is the will to stand up and get going.
Braving the the cold and police was the easy part. It’s braving our families that present the real challenge.
Many of us who have been a part of, or are sympathetic to, the Occupy Wall Street movement can tell you nothing warms your bones on a cold winter night like a fiery debate about politics and ideas. In previous years even something as simple as bringing up the war in Iraq and Afghanistan earned you nothing but rolled eyes and a dismissive remark. The Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street taught us that we can find each other again and really sit down and discuss what is wrong with the world and how we can go about fixing it. In the beginning it was as simple as finding a park, putting up tents and opening a dialogue for the first time with people you would never possibly have met from all walks of life. With Occupy came the notion that walking up to a stranger and striking up a conversation, political or not, was completely natural. This of course lends itself to a question as we go and visit family and friends over the holidays: have we become spoiled in our parks? Can we walk the line between free speech and not harming the movement by being disrespectful in our families’ homes?
The kitchen table has been depicted for a long time as a place for political discussion. The same table on which hours of worry and desperation are spent balancing bills on a ever-shrinking income, the next night can become a place where family are trying to push their sense of economic dread to the back of their minds just long enough to actually enjoy a few carefree laughs with loved ones. Eventually something gets said, and tempers flare.
The problem going into Christmas is going to be this: do we have the strength and resolve to treat possibly ‘Occupy hostile’ friends and family with the same courtesy we do each other in the park? Is there a way to win the hearts and minds of our aunts and uncles and turn an argument into a recruitment? I think there is.
If your Uncle Robert says something to the effect of:
“Yep, I tell you what…Its these hippies in New York thats ruining the stock market by disruptin’ things.”
Then the appropriate response should be (bite your tongue) , “I hadn’t thought of it like that actually, let me pull up the statistics about that on my phone.”
If he then says “Well that may be, but…what do they even want? Just seems like bunch of jobless whiners to me.”
You should immediately set about googling images of protestors in their demographic, and present their signs to them as the grievances in question. Show them the closest possible mirror image of themselves in the movement, and make them understand that the protestors are not hippies but rather their friends and neighbors who are deciding enough is enough and it’s time to demand our basic human rights. That it’s not the dismantling of American ideals we are after but rather the fulfillment of those promises. The theme of the signs in the movement ask for a variation of a few basic demands. Equality for all, Healthcare for all, Removing money from politics etc.
Try to speak only in facts. Cite sources you know the person will respect as honest. Use logic to appeal to their deeper sense of the world and what’s wrong with it. This is a tactic mass media and special interests use on them all the time, eventually making them believe things like Obama is not a citizen or that Saddam Hussein had ties to Al Qaida. Despicable email chain letters circulate amongst many of our citizens. Older adults are far more likely to still be using email as their main source of social media on the internet. Even if they are on Facebook, chances are there is an email titled “Obama FEMA Camps” sitting in your aunt Mary’s inbox as you read this. Don’t be afraid to explain the nature of such email chain letters. We have to be smart, tactful and considerate of the notion that some people need a little honey to swallow the truth.
Make the person feel you are listening and not just waiting for your turn to speak.
This is a problem in almost every area of our lives and we can not afford to let this continue in our movement. If someone is speaking, make eye contact. Do not use angry hand gestures or try to make jokes that belittle the person’s intelligence. This should be common sense, but oddly we seem to treat each other with these subtle forms of disrespect all the time.
Tell positive and funny stories about the people you have met in your park.
Nearly all of us have made friends we will cherish for a long time to come, directly as a result of working together to build a community of activists which before did not exist. Use that experience and those happy memories to your advantage. Focus on the people you have met and the stories you have shared. Show your friends and family that the reason we hold the line in our parks is for the concept of community we have experienced and the bond that has been created. Explain to them the emotions you feel when you hear about police brutality on our friends in Occupy parks across the world. Counter every negative allegation with a positive anecdote that has meant something to you. For me, some of those memories are the members of the armed forces who have come to Kerr Park to fill our propane tanks, bring food and show their support for what we do.
This is basically what I have planned as my own personal strategy this year. We will see just how well I do with it. I hope some of my fellow occupiers will also take this path and try their best to recruit their families to the cause. Remember, these are your family members. People with which the biological bond is unparalleled in your daily life. They share your DNA. Most people who are hostile to ideas are probably like that simply because they are being defensive about their own lack of knowledge on a given topic. They may have never had anyone treat them with enough respect to have an honest, open discussion without name-calling. If you create from a potential argument a situation where both of you can comfortably learn what the actual facts are, then you are well on your way to strengthening the Occupy movement coming into 2012.
