It is absolutely confounding how liberals have repeatedly fallen for this president. He has thrived off of vague pronouncements and innuendo, only making concrete political promises on issues with overwhelming popular support, at which point he generally manufactures some semblance of fight before rolling over dead in quick order. How many years of this before the Michael Moores of the world get it? The problem is not that the president’s hands are tied by an overzealous Republican establishment; rather, he is confined to a contrived role in a rigged political act designed to mimic representative democracy. The script goes like this: he postures as the people’s president, while the opposition scolds him as being a liberal elitist. Then, they bicker about all things innocuous, while carrying on unabated with the core business of shredding the constitution, stifling dissent, and maintaining the Empire. Obama’s new vaguely populist rhetoric and seemingly forceful tone is all a bad rerun. The Washington Post declared this to be the emergence of “Obama 2.0,” , but they got it wrong. It’s all the same Hope and Change Pony Show.

With each year of Obama’s successful duping of the liberal establishment, the center-point of accepted political opinion gets driven further to the right. In this address, he bills his two greatest accomplishments as getting Bin Laden and saving GM: an extrajudicial murder and a bailout conditioned with wage and benefit reductions for future employees. He blithely touted his circumvention of international law and due process in the bin Laden killing. Meanwhile, he goes on to trumpet his saber rattling vis-à-vis Iran, and his illegal use of drones in Pakistan and Yemen, while speaking of an “ironclad – and I mean Ironclad” relationship to the contemptible regime in Israel. It is quite disconcerting to know that respected “liberal” commentators could characterize a speech as “populist” despite all of this dastardly retrograde rhetoric.

The praise did not stop with Michael Moore. David Corn from the once respectable Mother Jones had this to say: “Obama is pitching a patriotic, quasi-populist progressivism (while conceding the need for deficit reduction and government cost-efficiencies).:  Either he doesn’t quite get the concept of “quasi” or we can count him in the ranks of the duped. In his coverage on Twitter he said: “Progressives can get too bogged down in critique. Obama showed how to criticize while reaching higher.” While it is difficult to discern from a 140-letter tweet, the thrust of this statement seems to be that far-reaching critiques are not acceptable. His reasoning goes that ideologues are archaic and inherently divisive. Anyone who breaks with the theme of unity is a party pooper. In taking this line, the president and his supporters conflate reasoned dissent with the knee-jerk rejectionist posture of the outrageous Republican establishment. Those that demand “too much” of the president are viewed with equal contempt by the increasingly base liberal establishment.

What these candy-ass liberals fail to understand is that we cannot be united with a 1% whose recklessness and avidity knows no bounds. The super-rich have unequivocally demonstrated that their interests lie elsewhere. They have spent decades lobbying for deregulation and trade “liberalization” that has allowed them to displace millions of American jobs while reducing the quality of millions of others. Meanwhile, they preyed on working Americans with their sub-prime and Adjustable Rate Mortgages, and then shook the whole house of cards by repackaging those lousy investments into fancy financial instruments, thus provoking a recession that is ongoing for most of the 99% of us. The Occupy Movement grew out of rage against these monsters, not out of any desire to move in with them. A responsive and thoughtful president would be railing against them, not tidily talking about a “togetherness” that the 1% has incessantly rejected.

Nonetheless, liberals will argue that the president adequately addressed inequality with his token references to economic fairness and his advocacy of a Buffet Tax. The latter proposal is quite clearly a ploy on his part, as he knows the Republican congress would never seriously consider it. He gets to posture as a liberal without ever having to actually enact a progressive measure, per the norm. If he really had any desire to equalize the tax code, he could have done it during his first two years, when he had a strong party majority in both houses of Congress. Meanwhile, if he had the determination, he could ram through such legislation in the current climate of populist upheaval, despite the current Congress of stooges and charlatans. However, it would be extremely naïve to expect the president to suddenly cease being the servile sort that he is.

One could reasonably argue that the proposal to establish a “Financial Crimes Unit” amounts to a progressive initiative that is praiseworthy. Indeed, one cannot imagine a Republican president bothering with such a measure. However, Obama is merely building on what has been a very minimal response to the financial crisis thus far. The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform bill barely began to scratch the surface: its primary purpose so far being that it provides government with alternative avenues to taxpayer bailouts should banks face liquidity issues in the future. The more far-reaching and prescient reforms, such as resurrection of Glass-Steagall and breaking up the monolithic corporate banks, have not been serious policy considerations by this administration.

That makes two progressive-leaning proposals, delivered in the president’s typically vague form, all set for future abandonment. Meanwhile, you can add his support for fracking and “school choice” to the list of regressive positions in this State of the Union. On the former issue, he calls for an ambitious increase in the refinement of natural gas. Despite widespread documentation of the hazards  posed to drinking water and the preponderance of disease in and around gas fields, Obama decided to tell the nation:

The development of natural gas will create jobs and power trucks and factories that are cleaner and cheaper, proving that we don’t have to choose between our environment and our economy.

On “school choice,” a moniker for school privatization via charters or vouchers, he elicits inspiration from his home-state’s treasured political icon: “I believe what Republican Abraham Lincoln believed: That Government should do for people only what they cannot do better by themselves, and no more. That’s why my education reform offers more competition, and more control for schools and States.” Here, he is merely repeating talking points directly from corporate lobbyists that have used school choice as cover for their efforts to attack public schools, break up teachers unions, and to maliciously profit from the newly burgeoning education “industry.” Obama does suggest willingness to “stop teaching to the test,” though this is probably more of his vacuous pandering to common progressive causes.  He might make a half-hearted effort at some aesthetic change, but will do nothing to stave off the ongoing looting of the public schools. With Arne Duncan, the old Chicago Charter School champion, still serving as Secretary of Education, it is tough to imagine any diversion from the current privatization thrust.

The only rational conclusion from this year’s speech is that this is, indeed, the same old Obama. This is the same unrepentant militarist that was elected in 2008, the same prosecutor of illegal wars in Pakistan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen; the same authoritarian that signed the NDAA, thus codifying his immoral and unconstitutional detention powers; the same murderer of American civilians: the president who has dutifully played his role as supervisor of this descendant and morally decaying power. As this has yet to become a full-fledged dictatorship, the president must appeal to his subjects’ finer sensibilities on occasion. In this, he excels. Even after three years of the same old dog and pony show, he is still proving adept at duping the diffident liberal mainstream.

That would be the same Tom Corbett who had said he was “personally disappointed” in Joe Paterno for not doing more to alert authorities in the Jerry Sandusky case, while acknowledging that Paterno did nothing illegal and followed university rules for conduct.

That would be the same Tom Corbett who, as attorney general, assigned only one investigator to the case in 2009, while devoting almost innumerable personnel and financial resources to prosecute high-profile cases that could help lead him to the governor’s office.

That would be the same Tom Corbett who had the authority to order the arrest of Jerry Sandusky as soon as the claims were made, but who allowed the investigation to drag two years.

That would be the same Tom Corbett who stepped up the investigation only in the third year, after he was elected governor.

That would be the same Tom Corbett who accepted about $200,000 in campaign donations from trustees of Sandusky’s Second Mile foundation and then danced around questions of why, as governor, he authorized a $3 million grant to the Second Mile.

That would be the same Tom Corbett, who as an ex-officio member of the Penn State Board of Trustees, with the power to increase or decrease state appropriations to the university, big-footed his presence to demand that the Trustees do something to Joe Paterno.

Now, let’s look at the Board of Trustees. On January 22, the day that Joe Paterno died from lung cancer, the Board issued a honey-dripped PR-laden written commemoration.

That, of course, would be the same Board that, influenced by the harpies of the media and a horde of the public who knew everything about everything, except people and football, had wanted to terminate Joe Paterno’s contract after his teams had losing seasons in 2003 and 2004. He was too old, they said. He was getting senile, they claimed. His coaching strategy was too conservative, they cried with the shrill cry of a wounded hyena. But an 11-1 season in 2005 quieted their panic. And so they stewed, knowing that a football coach, educator, philanthropist, and humanitarian had a greater reputation than all of them combined.

That would be the same Board that violated every expectation of due process, listened to the other sanctimonious hypocrites who were quick to condemn someone without knowing the facts, and by a cowardly and impersonal phone call violated four levels of the chain of command and fired Joe Paterno hours after he had announced his retirement. It was their pathetic way to make people believe they, not the most recognizable person in Penn State history, were in control. The reality, of course, is they botched the firing in a feeble attempt to protect themselves, not Penn State and, certainly, not the rights of a tenured full professor, who had given 61 years of service to the university.

That, of course, would be the same Board that should have known for at least six months, and probably longer, of a grand jury investigation into Jerry Sandusky’s conduct, but apparently had no crisis management plan to deal with what would become the greatest scandal in its 156-year history.

That, of course, would be the same Board that had operated in a culture of secrecy that regularly violated the state’s Sunshine law and enjoyed its status as receiving state tax moneys while not having to be under the glare of the public right-to-know law.

That, of course, would be the same board that includes the CEOs of U.S. Steel, Merck, and a major division of the Bank of New York Mellon; and an assortment of senior executives from insurance, investment, and education. Even a retired assistant managing editor of The New York Times is on the Board. And, yet, this Gang of 32, which should have known better, bumbled, stumbled, and proved that malfeasance and incompetence is what it should be best known for. For the most part, they acted like undergraduates struggling to earn a grade of “C” in a course in human relations, having already decided they didn’t need the course in business communications.

Now, let’s turn to the new president. The Board forced the resignation of a respected 17-year president for not doing enough to investigate the Sandusky allegations. By most accounts, the new president, formerly the provost and executive vice-president, is a decent person with a good academic reputation. But, is it credible that if the No. 1 person should have known more and done more, how could the No. 2 person be ignorant of the allegations. Nevertheless, the Board sent the newly-minted president out on nothing less than a belated PR field trip to calm the rising storm against the Board for its incompetence and insensitivity in firing Joe Paterno. At three meetings with hundreds of alumni, the new president, facing alumni wrath, did little to alleviate their anger. But, he promised the university would do something—he didn’t know what—he didn’t know how or when—to honor Joe Paterno.

Of course, since the Board was so inept, secret, and hypocritical in its own actions, it had no idea what it was going to do. The Board statement the day of Joe Paterno’s death merely stated the university “plans to honor him,” and is considering “appropriate ways.”

The greatest honor will not come from the Board, the administration, or even the Legislature, many of whom sought the media spotlight to pander to certain voters by condemning the coach. At the statue by Beaver Stadium, thousands of students, staff, faculty, and community residents are coming to pay their respects. Hundreds had met him, for he was one of the more accessible persons in the community, often walking home alone from practices and games; his phone number was in the book; his home was in a quiet residential area not a mansion on a hill reserved for the wealthy. Most of the mourners had never met him, but they all knew him.

On Tuesday, about 27,000 people from all over the United States stood in line up to three hours to walk past the body of Joe Paterno, guarded by past and present scholar-athletes. NFL super-stars and football fans, academics and those who never went to college, all were there to honor the man who was an outstanding quarterback and cornerback who earned an English literature degree from Brown University, one of the more prestigious in the country; a man who later created the “Great Experiment” to develop and promote a winning football program that would make education and citizenship more important than sports, and would make “success with honor” more than words.

Within ten minutes, mourners grabbed the first 10,000 tickets for a Thursday memorial at the Bryce Jordan Center. The center capacity for the memorial is 12,000.

Sue Paterno need not have worried when she quietly asked some mourners to keep her husband warm. When journalism turns into history, it will be written that Joe Paterno had done more than was expected, in every part of his life. The people, not the governor or the trustees who will quickly be forgotten in the cold, will keep Joe Paterno warm.

Inevitably, after peeling past the pre-programmed slogans Ron Paulistas bring with them, you will discover a person – generally white and overwhelmingly male – looking for some alternative to mainstream politics. Ever susceptible to slick marketing campaigns thanks to a solid diet of American television, these zealots have bought it hook line and sinker in a typical conspiratorial fashion. The lynchpin is the Federal Reserve, a seemingly mysterious institution, which in the world of Ron Paul politics stands in as a more acceptable substitute for the variety of other conspiracy theories floating through far-right America including the Bilderbergs, the rich as secret lizard people and the Masons.

Yet, the idea that Ron Paul offers a kind of alternative to mainstream politics falls apart quite easily upon inspection. There are three primary reasons for this – two relate to Paul himself and the other is a function of mainstream politics more generally. In the end, it is more accurate to say that Ron Paul is mainstream politics unmasked, a raw version of what both Democrats and Republicans desire to become if left to their own devices.

Key to this is seeing Ron Paul economics for what they are. Forget the Fed. Leave aside all the slogans about “living within our means” and “punishing generations with debt” for a moment. Ron Paul is the most pro-corporate politician in the Presidential race. His economic policies would further unleash multinational corporations and the 1% who own them onto American society – with absolutely no restraints. Paul is virulently anti-union in part because unions give workers a collective identity in order to regulate worksites. He opposes government regulation on employers since he connects their activity to his notion of “liberty.” And he has repeatedly associated taxation, even taxation of the corporate world, as an affront to freedom.

Taken together, Ron Paul’s notion of economic liberty is an only slightly disguised version of the hyper-neoliberal ideas that have been circulating since the 1980s. What is different now is that the circulation is taking place in the aftermath of an economic crisis that has unmasked the bankruptcy of the very idea Paul is promoting – capitalist economics. Although Paul presents his economic proposals as alternative non-mainstream notions, they fit perfectly inside the rise of the multinational corporations and the deep enrichment of the 1%. Albert Einstein offered the best bit of advice on how to deal with folks like Ron Paul when he said “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” Giving corporate America a free hand to rampage through our economy, our communities and our environment is more of the same.

Ron Paul supporters mix this pro-corporate economic package with a fairly typical set of reactionary social policies. He has opposed any legislation in support of gay marriage on the Federal level and was neutral on the “don’t ask don’t tell” seeing the problem as less one of discrimination and more of “seeing people as part of groups.” Paul’s positions on race are even murkier due to his frequent open associations with white supremacists and the general acceptance of his ideas amongst this repugnant community. But his most explicit reactionary position is reserved for gender, more specifically the issue of sexual harassment. Here, Paul claims that anything less than penetration does not qualify as sexual harassment – words don’t matter. Females who file sexual harassment suits are, according to Paul, oppressing others. They should, instead, just exercise their right to choose a different job. Misogynist victim blaming at its worst.

The final reason that Ron Paul is not an alternative is the very reason that links him to mainstream politics. Just like Obama, Romney and Gingrich, he offers no concrete plans to address the problems that most affect people’s everyday lives. He doesn’t have a serious plan for housing. He would, just as his counterparts, continue the failed capitalist housing policies, probably adding some rhetorical flair about the liberty and freedom built into the feelings of anxiety most Americans feel when it comes to housing. His education policy is similarly irresponsible. Paul chooses to devolve education decisions onto state and local government while giving private enterprises a strong hand in further commodifying education in America. And on health care, his policies are merely a pumped up version of the pro-market policies of his Democratic and Republican counterparts.

Although Paul’s foreign policy position is trumpeted as being far off from his Republican counterparts, it contains many mainstream elements. Paul himself is always quick to indicate that his “non-interventionist” position does not mean that he wishes to radically transform the US military. He constantly issues the call for a “strong national defense” which translates into a well-funded military. As he stated directly in a recent interview, “My Plan to Restore America does not cut one penny of defense.”

Unfortunately, Liberals and even some Greens have taken the anti-war bait and Ron Paul has been able to make coalitions with otherwise ideological opponents such as Dennis Kucinich and Ralph Nader. This has given Paul some cred among anti-war types while creating confusion between having a position against military intervention and being anti-militarist.

While the “Ron Paul as alternative” charade rolls along, candidates carrying ideas clearly outside of the mainstream struggle to carve out some media attention. One is from my own organization, the Socialist Party USA – Stewart Alexander. Alexander is running campaign for President on a platform filled with radical ideas that would address many of the problems raised by the 2008 economic crisis. He has some new medicine for an old illness.

On economics, the Alexander/Mendoza campaign recognizes the destructive role of the 1%. Creating a progressive tax structure that captures the wealth at the top of society, designing a banking system that works like a highly regulated public utility and addressing the unemployment crisis by viewing a job as a human right means transforming an economic system that has failed the 99%. Similar proposals to open the education to all, to preserve our precious natural resources and to fund a worker owned and managed cooperative sector are clearly different than the re-hashed blather being served up by mainstream politicians.

Economic democracy is also connected to personal freedom. The Alexander/Mendoza campaign is one of the few that recognizes just how corporate power prevents Americans from fully exercising their civil rights. Corporations are not people and people need a voice – a voice that will be unchained as a result of electoral reform, the breaking up of media monopolies and the campaign’s support of people’s right to self-determination whether it be through marriage, adoption or alternative family structures.

Finally, Stewart Alexander is offering a radically different approach to the military. He is a passionate anti-militarist. Both he and his running mate, the ex-Marine, Alex Mendoza know the wasteful destruction that the US military has created. The pair call for a closing of all foreign bases, an end to security state measures and, unlike Ron Paul, an immediate 50% reduction in the military budget. They understand that anti-militarism is about more than opposing intervention – it is about re-thinking how our country relates to the rest of the world.

So, as the Presidential campaign heats up, it is important to see past the media spin – especially when the spinning is done in order to create false alternatives. The Obama campaign will certainly begin its own campaign to present their candidate as offering solutions beyond the mainstream. Such claims will be every bit as shallow as the notion that Ron Paul offers some new set of ideas worthy of the mantle of being alternative. There are some alternatives out there and their voices need to be heard. One of them will be running red, on the ticket of the Socialist Party USA and carrying with him the hope of moving past the miserable future created for us by capitalism.

We had wanted the U.S. Department of the Interior to stop the government-approved slaughter of wild horses and burros in the southwest, but were disappointed that the cattle industry used its money and influence to shelter politicians from Americans who asked for compassion and understanding of  breeds that roamed freely long before the nation’s “Manifest Destiny.”

We wanted to see the federal government protect wolves, foxes, and coyotes, none of whom attack humans, have no food or commercial value, but are major players in environmental balance. But, we knew that the hunting industry would prevail since they see these canines only as competition.

We wanted to see the Pennsylvania legislature stand up for what is right and courageously end the cruelty of pigeon shoots. But, a pack of cowards left Pennsylvania as the only state where pigeon shoots, with their illegal gambling, are actively held.

For what seems to be decades, we have written against racism and bigotry. But many politicians still believe that gays deserve few, if any, rights; that all Muslims are enemy terrorists; and publicly lie that Voter ID is a way to protect the integrity of the electoral process, while knowing it would disenfranchise thousands of poor and minority citizens.

We will continue to write about the destruction of the environment and of ways people are trying to save it. Environmental concern is greater than a decade ago, but so is the ignorant prattling of those who believe global warming is a hoax, and mistakenly believe that the benefits of natural gas fracking, with well-paying jobs in a depressed economy, far outweigh the environmental, health, and safety problems they cause.Ee will continue to write against government corruption, bailouts, tax advantages for the rich and their corporations, governmental waste, and corporate greed. They will continue to exist because millionaire legislators will continue to protect those who contribute to political campaigns. Nevertheless, we will continue to speak out against politicians who have sacrificed the lower- and middle-classes in order to protect the one percent.

We will continue to write about the effects of laying off long-time employees and of outsourcing jobs to “maximize profits.” Until Americans realize that “cheaper” doesn’t necessarily mean “better,” we’ll continue to explain why exploitation knows no geographical boundaries.

The working class successfully launched major counter-attacks against seemingly-entrenched anti-labor politicians in Wisconsin, Ohio, and other states. But these battles will be as long and as bitter as the politicians who deny the rights of workers. We will continue to speak out for worker rights, better working conditions, and benefits at least equal to their managers. We don’t expect anything to change in 2012, but we are still hopeful that a minority of business owners who already respect the worker will influence the rest.

There are still those who believe education is best served by programs manacled by teaching-to-the-test mentality, and are more than willing to sacrifice quality for numbers. We will continue to write about problems in the nation’s educational system, especially the failure to encourage intellectual curiosity and respect for the tenets of academic integrity.

Against great opposition, the President and Congress passed sweeping health care reform. But, certain members of Congress, all of whom have better health care than most Americans, have proclaimed they will dismantle the program they derisively call “Obamacare.”

During this new year, we will still be writing about the unemployed, the homeless, those without adequate health coverage—and against the political lunatics who continue to deny Americans the basics of human life, essentials that most civilized countries already give their citizens.

We had written forcefully against the previous president and vice-president when they strapped on their six-shooters and sent the nation into war in a country that posed no threat to us, while failing to adequately attack a country that housed the core of the al-Qaeda movement. We wrote about the Administration’s failure to provide adequate protection for the soldiers they sent into war or adequate and sustained mental and medical care when they returned home. The War in Iraq is now over, but the war in Afghanistan continues. The reminder of these wars will last as long as there are hospitals and cemeteries.

We had written dozens of stories against the Bush–Cheney Administration’s belief in the use of torture and why it thought it was necessary to shred parts of the Constitution. We had hoped that a new president, a professor of Constitutional law, would stop the attack upon our freedoms and rights. But the PATRIOT Act was extended, and new legislation was enacted that reduces the rights and freedoms of all citizens. At all levels of government, Constitutional violations still exist, and a new year won’t change our determination to bring to light these violations wherever and whenever they occur.

The hope we and this nation had for change we could believe in, and which we still hope will not die, has been minced by the reality of petty politics, with the “Party of No” and its raucous Teabagger mutation blocking social change for America’s improvement. We can hope that the man we elected will realize that compromise works only when the opposition isn’t entrenched in a never-ending priority not of improving the country, but of keeping him from a second term. Perhaps now, three years after his inauguration, President Obama will disregard the disloyal opposition and unleash the fire and truth we saw in the year before his election, and will speak out even more forcefully for the principles we believed when we, as a nation, gave him the largest vote total of any president in history.

We really want to be able to write columns about Americans who take care of each other, about leaders who concentrate upon fixing the social problems. But we know that’s only an ethereal ideal.  So, we’ll just have to hope that the waters of social justice wear down, however slowly, the jagged rocks of haughty resistance.

One Law for Lion and Ox is Oppression.

— William Blake

Where is the place of understanding?  Where is wisdom to be found?

— The  Book of Job

Info coming at us at the speed of light—gigabytes per nano-sec—and our horse-and-buggy bio-chem brains struggle with ancient grammars, syntaxes and texts!  Even our metaphors are now wretchedly overwrought: Not, “how to connect the dots,” but how to perceive, measure, record and duck the shot-gunned info-pellets rushing at our faces!  No wonder the world has gone gaga—not Lady!—for predictions!  “The world is too much with us,” so maybe those Mayan calendrical types knew a thing or two.  Maybe Nostradamus.  Maybe Cayce.  Somebody must know something!

Last decade, in September, ‘07, I posted a piece called “Can the Left and Right Unite?”  That was long before President “Hopey-Changey” had risen on his rhetorical pinions just long enough to foist on the gullible–one of the best bait-and-switch” acts in U.S. political history.  It was a year before the Lehman Brothers “Great Recession” began; before TARP; before Europe’s implosion; before Tahrir Square; before the B.P. and Fukushima disasters; before the Tea Party and Occupy Movements; before Bin Laden’s and Saddam’s and Kim’s and Gaddafi’s demise, and Representative Giffords’ near-demise; before the Supreme Court sanctified corporate, financial, electoral control; before the National Defense Authorization Act, etc.!

Four years ago, the chief divisions in the country had to do with prosecuting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—and most Americans were united in thinking “terrorists” the enemy, but not sure how to get them.  Nobody had declared the American homeland a “battlefield” in the War on Terror—with all the ominous implications of such a designation.

Now, the war in Afghanistan slogs on, and the shadow of our wars in Mesopotamia will haunt us through the ages.  The possibility of war with Iran is a warmonger’s wet-dream now—and the sheets are gross and soggy.  Now, perhaps, it can begin to be said and heard: It was Bushwhackian, Rumsfeldian, Cheney-Reese and Powellesque, Pearle and Wolfowitz idiocy to attack Iraq; and our heedless diversion and waste of resources has helped to bankrupt us financially and morally.  We’ve continued to hammer, frack and bomb our egg of a planet and now we’re dancing on a thin eggshell—and we’re mostly tap-dancing alone, not waltzing with a willing partner.

Not impressed by Obama’s card-shark, Mac-the-Knife routine, I sat out the last presidential election and urged others to purposively—not apathetically–do so, too.  But that was then.

As of now, there is only one candicate for whom I’d seriously consider voting.

The main reasons are: (1) He’s the only one who talks about our over-extended “Empire.”  He actually uses that word!  (2) He’s the most anti-war.  He talks about employing diplomacy a lot more and military force a lot less.  Give brains a chance!  (3) He is the only candidate who wants to abolish the Fed—and offers sound reasons for doing so.  (4) He presents well-reasoned arguments, not “9-9-9” style gibberish.  (5) He has argued his beliefts carefully and consistently for decades.  (6) His personal life has been a model of good citizenship and family values.

I’m talking about Ron Paul, of course, and I can hear the clamor of my “progressive” (formerly, “liberal”) friends wondering if I, too, have lost my prayer beads.  So, here’s my take: If we lived in a truly “free” society, where the masses had access to the skinny about how the System works, the high and growing levels of corruption and decadence in every branch of our government—federal, state, local—and if we had an educated working class, making the best-informed tactical and strategic moves to advance common values, able to work their way through the morass of media-corporate-government hype and propaganda… I’d say, Hold off, final victory will be ours!

But nothing today smells remotely like that!  This is not Sweden, Iceland, Switzerland, nor is it Never-Neverland where people don’t grow old and sick and tired and die.  We are a globe-straddling Empire, imposing our lifestyle and disposing of our opponents with engineered coups and revolutions, and our modus operandi is more akin to Tony Soprano’s than to the amorphous “good guys” we esteem ourselves. Surveiling and managing the planet, in ways that are often nasty and devious, we are well along the usual trajectory of past “super-powers”: expansion, over-expansion, attacks abroad and crumbling infrastructure within, and, finally, kaput, nada, nada y nada! 

We’ve always been an Empire—check out latter correspondence between Jefferson and Adams. … Our nastiest business, our Civil War, had a lot more to do with managing the newly acquired Western territories—agrarian or industrial motif?—than with freeing slaves.  (Do we really think recently arrived Irish immigrants wanted nothing more than to get drafted into “Mr. Lincoln’s War”?  Check out the New York City draft riots for a quick refresher!)

We like to tell ourselves we’re the kind of people who only go to war for noble reasons, but the fact is… we’ve been the most successful conquerors in human history and we’ve stirred up hornet’s nests everywhere.  We have been the “Now” people, barely looking back, whose forward motion has been propelled by carrots dangled by illusionists.

When the present moment is as slippery as this one, people are apt to take solace in nostalgia for simpler times or in  fantasizing a better tomorrow.  (When miscreants like Newt Gingrich are taken seriously as “historians,” you know we’ve got serious problems about learning from our past!)  About “tomorrow”–we’re a species condemned to hope.  Hope and Imagination are always “leaps of faith,” but they work better when they are informed.

Eighteenth-century “Romantic” poet Blake was on the cusp of England’s Industrial Revolution—and he didn’t like the smell of things!  A visionary from childhood, seeing angels in trees, he thought anyone could be a prophet… so long as they carefully examined life whirling around them and life within.  “Truth can never be told so as to be understood, and not be believ’d,” he wrote.  Two hundred years later, our crystal balls are murky and all our messengers are suspect.

As we spin out of whirligig 2011 into the free-fall gravity of 2012, about information-overload, we may cry out with Job, “Where is the place of understanding?  Where is wisdom to be found?”

The U.S. has done some terrible things in this world and some would say we’ve been in a kind of karmic blow-back since 2001.  We collectively grieve, rightly so, at the horror of a woman losing her parents and three children in a Christmas-day blaze in Connecticut.  How senseless, tragic and bizarre!  Can a loving God permit such horrors on Christmas day?  To understand the kind of tragedy that has befallen Iraqis since our invasion and continuing occupation, one would have to multiply the Stamford horror about 1 million times over the past eight years!

Not because he has done evil, but simply to test and prove his faith and goodness, Job’s children and grandchildren are killed, his cattle killed, and he is cursed with boils.  And his wife asks, “Dost thou still retain thy integrity?  Curse God and die.”  She is empathetic; she sees her husband’s searing wounds and advises him to choose the oblivion of death instead.  Job tells her to stop talking foolishness; he will suffer much more, if need be.  And…, he does.  And before it all ends with a show of force and a little more info—straight from the Whirlwind’s mouth!—about how things really work, Job tells his three comforters (really, intellectual tormentors), “Till I die, I will not remove my integrity from me.”

“Integrity” is the key word in this extraordinary, pre-Grecian drama.  And if we are going to get through our next pivotal year intact — and, very likely, re-constituted — it is essential that we understand that concept the way it was meant back then.  It is similar to our word “integer” or single unit, and its meaning has a Taoistic, Asian flavoring rather than our looser, modern sense of “general honesty” or “decency”—difficult and noble as those virtues are.  Rather, the sense here is of “wholeness.”  Job can no sooner remove his identity than he can remove his skin.  His integrity is all-of-a-piece with whom he is—his identity, his being.

Now for Blake: the ox has his “integrity” being an ox, and the lion his just being him.  Both are powerful with legit claims on the world to sustain them as they are and wish to be.  You wouldn’t want to pull a wagon with two lions and you wouldn’t want to take down a wildebeast with a couple of oxen.  Each has its place, each does its thing; and if the lion can lie down with the lamb, he can also lie down with the ox.

Everywhere one looks in the world today one sees tension and divisions, strife, a lack of clarity, and a constant resort to the dialogue of guns, knives and bombs.  Did we fight the Cold War only to inherit a world gone mad, dividing along ancient fault-lines—Sunni/Shiite, Jewish/Muslim, Christian/Muslim–and along new ones of class?  Half of all Americans are at 200% or less of the poverty level for a family of four.  To put it another way, fifty percent of us are not “getting by” or just barely getting by, and most of those who are “better off” are scared as hell.  And people who are scared are easily manipulated—especially when doused with fear of foreign threats.  (Just ask Goebbels!)

Amidst the maya of illusions and delusions, we stumble along in our made-up world.  We can only see through a glass darkly, and the glass is a fifty-inch wide-screen HDTV with surround sound—and 3-D is coming!  Amidst the maya, we lose precision in our language, our discourse, our thinking, our literature, our relations with each other, with the powerful and with the downtrodden.  Professor Gingrich, commenting on Herman Caine’s alleged sexual abuses, remarks that he is “sorry for he and his famly.”  That’s it!  I’m outta hea’!   Here’s a guy who brags about being an “historian” and the two dozen books he’s written, and he doesn’t know the objective case of pronouns?

I don’t put much stock in American elections anymore.  (Maybe we need “international observers”… but who do we trust?)  The best one can hope for is what Ed Sullivan would call, “a really good shew.”  We put far too much faith in the figurehead of our president when our history since Kennedy should have shown us that even a top banana can be easily peeled—exploded in the public square, and then re-packaged as an aberrance, anomoly, a myth.  So now we’re stuck with this: Even an election victory that championed populist values of both the Left and the Right would be hemmed in by thousands of special interests and lobbysists, not to mention billions of contrapuntal bucks!

That’s what we’re up against… and any New Populist campaign must recognize those electronic realities.  Nevertheless, such a campaign would mean a voice raised and heeded.  It would mean a resurgence of resistance to the Neoliberal agenda of war and exploitation that both Left and Right can now oppose.

The best reason for the lion and the ox to collaborate is, ironically, to maintain their integrity!  Because the Corporate State is rapidly robbing all of us of cherished core values like “live and let live,” a “helping hand,” “all in the same boat” and the “individualism” essential to thinking and acting without duress.  The media mish-mash of sounds and images adds to the kaleidoscopic confusion, and no one seems to have remembered to unwind a string as we approach the Minotaur’s lair.

The real enemy of Occupiers and Tea-partiers is not the other guy, but the faraway robotic types guiding the predator drones above our global rafters.  How do you make sense of it all when you’re beaten down and scared of losing your home, your job, your health, your family?

For years I was for a woman’s right to choose… and I still am.  But, when I heard Paul speak of his experience as a young doctor, going into one hospital room where an aborted fetus had been unceremoniously discarded and walking down the hall into another where every effort was being made to save a mother and her life-endangered baby… I saw his opposition from another point of view, and felt the sincerity of that point of view.  Now, to counter-argue, one might say that to prevent the need for abortions better sex education should be available.  And that adoptions should be encouraged, etc.

Better sex education… and better every kind of education!  Had we not fallen so notoriously behind in our test scores, we might not be in the mess we’re in now.  Had we paid attention to the infrastructure of education, bridges, public utilities, transportation and communication, the Arts, we’d be able to get through this next hell of a year standing together, with a lot more equanimity.

“Opposition is true Friendship,” Blake wrote.

The “separation of Church and State” that Americans cherish was never meant to be a separation of morals and the State.  Yet, it is our moral core, our “integrity,” that has been lost amidst the funhouse mirrors of commercialism, consumerism, militarism, ethnocentrism, more and more and more.

In this winter of our discontent, the war clouds gather and austerity miseries grind the souls of those who have no homes, or broken homes.  We’re in a poisoned mine shaft and the canaries are singing. … Can we interpret their varied notes in time?

The next day, the self-immolation was confirmed as a suicide: Lise Bonnafous had died from the third-degree burns that covered 95% of her body. So ended the life of this 44-year-old teacher who had been working for ten years at the Jean-Moulin Lycée at Béziers, one of the largest in the Languedoc-Roussillon region.

In a carefully worded statement the 280 teachers at the lycée declared: “This symbolic act has left us reeling and has caused us all much heart-searching (‘nous interroge tous’). This gesture is a call to solidarity for the entire staff and bears witness to the difficulty we have in accomplishing our mission.”

Teaching at the lycée was suspended as staff and students attempted to come to terms with this gruesome event. The teaching staff declared a strike of indefinite duration until responsibility for the tragedy could be established. The French teaching union SNES called for a “debate” concerning the tragedy and pressed the ministry of education for “an improvement in the general conditions of work for teachers, which have become considerably more demanding in the last few years”. Another union, SNALC, said that the suicide points to “an immense malaise in the entire profession”. The unions organised a “white march” (“marche blanche”) in Béziers on 18 October and a further march in Montpellier the following day.

Officials were quick to portray the suicide as the isolated act of a mentally unstable teacher. The French minister of education, Luc Chatel, referred to her “psychologically fragile state” and said that she had been receiving “pedagogical and medical treatment”. However, this claim is denied by colleagues: “Luc Chatel is lying, she was not being treated medically nor was she fragile, but she was conscientious, competent, she loved her work, and she had courage,” said a colleague, a certain F. Peru. Other colleagues pointed out that teachers generally have been reduced to a “fragile” state because of a steady deterioration in their conditions of work.

In any case, this was no ordinary suicide: rather, a symbolic act of self-immolation with all the horrifying impact on those involved, especially the eye witnesses. But even if one may deplore this self-inflicted violence and the trauma it has caused, one cannot ignore the context in which such an extreme act was carried out. Indeed, some of her colleagues regard her as a hero, and admire her for paying the supreme sacrifice in order to draw attention to the problems within the French education system. Morale among French teachers is after all low, as teachers are contending with a number of problems simultaneously, including government cuts, “reforms” (widely suspected as money-saving ploys) and increasingly disruptive behaviour on the part of students.

In the 2011 budget, 16,000 lycée posts are scheduled to disappear out of a total of 850,000 teachers. The increased class size (40 or more) is making effective teaching more difficult and also adding to the marking load for each teacher. The cuts are perceived as all the more perverse because they do not correspond to a decrease in the number of students.

Teachers feel abandoned and misunderstood, that they are not being listened to. They say that recent “reforms” have been introduced without their views being taken sufficiently into account. One symptom of this is that the one-year teacher-training course, in which students taught half-time and spent the rest of the time in training – has been abolished: from now on young teachers will be forced to face the classroom for the first time with almost no preparation. Instead, the trainees are obliged to attend a few “training sessions” throughout the year. Exactly what is taught in these sessions has emerged in a report about one such session held in Bordeaux on 3 December last year. Trainees were lectured on their rights and duties as civil servants – but were not given any actual training on classroom teaching. Instead, they “benefited” from a talk in which two army officers tried to persuade trainees to steer their students towards a career in the army!¹  “If my soldiers were to begin to think, not one of them would remain in the army,” said Frederick the Great. Towards what career is the French government trying steer its students, if not a military one?

Disruptive behaviour in the classroom is another concern, pointing to problems within society at large. Sometimes this leads to assaults on teachers, which are on the increase. The FNEC FP-FO teaching union links the increase in violence and incivility to the suppression of teaching posts and CPEs (a team of administrators responsible for disciplinary matters): more than 60,000 positions abolished since 2007. If the recent changes have a negative effect on student behaviour or performance, the cuts will have turned out to be a false economy.

The attempt to instil martial virtues is not the only example of insensitivity on the part of the educational authorities. Bad feeling has also been caused by the increase in bonuses paid to the rectors of education academies (the regional bodies responsible for implementing national education policy) at a time when less money is being allocated for teaching. In fact bonuses are a normal part of the benefits package of France’s top civil servants. In this case, however, the bonuses were doubly outrageous: first, they were being awarded to proviseurs in proportion to the number of posts or institutions they were able to abolish; second, for 2011 the bonus had been increased from 19,000 to 22,000 euros – money that could have been used to help pay the somewhat meagre salary of teachers. The issue of bonuses was highlighted when a retired lycée director, Michel Ascher, an officer in the order of “Palmes Académiques”, handed back his decoration in protest. In an open letter dated 22 December 2010 he publicly lambasted the French educational system as being concerned exclusively with money. Other holders of the same distinction quickly followed suit.

A sign that teaching resources are being stretched is that the rules governing the conditions under which teachers are supposed to work are being flouted. Several teachers have been assigned classes in schools from 35 to as many as 66 kilometres apart, even though the rules clearly state that the teacher may be asked to teach only in the same town or in a neighbouring one. This immediately creates extra work in terms of commuting and multiplication of meetings with staff and parents. Of course, a teacher has the right – after a months-long appeal process – to refuse these extra demands, but at a price. The proviseurs (lycée directors) wield a lot of power. They can put pressure on you to teach another subject instead of paying someone else who is qualified to do it; they can assign you to larger classes if you exercise your right to refuse to work more than two supplementary hours; or they can simply order you to teach those extra hours.

Other “reforms” are in the pipeline. A proposed new law would change the way lycées are inspected. Instead of the current independent inspectorate, the task of inspecting would fall to the directorate of the lycée itself. Apart from the fact that the work schedules of proviseurs and vice-proviseurs are already stretched, the proposal almost guarantees that the process will be carried out in a perfunctory way at best. At worst, favouritism, or the suspicion of favouritism, is an obvious danger, not to mention conflict of interest and lack of impartiality. Such a measure merely reinforces the suspicion among teachers that the so-called “reforms” are a thin disguise for money-saving ploys.

On suspects too that Sarkozy is playing to popular discontent with civil servants, the category to which lycée teachers belong. French bureaucracy is cumbersome and expensive, and civil servants are often seen as lazy, overpaid and over-protected. Anything that would bring their pay and conditions into line with the private sector is seen by many as a good thing. However, while it is true that some civil servants are well paid, this is not the case with most lycée teachers. Teachers face the added problem of a restrictive work schedule: whereas most workers can take time off then they please, teachers are obliged to turn up for the classes and cannot change their schedule. The stereotype of feather-bedded bureaucrats does not apply to teachers.

Secondly, Sarkozy wants to go one better than the private sector: in an effort to cut down on absenteeism, it is being proposed that civil servants forfeit one day’s pay for each period of sick leave. Apart from the measure’s obvious unfairness in criminalizing illness, it could have the reverse effect to the one intended: workers who are genuinely sick the first day could well decide to take a second or even a third day off in addition, even if they are not sick, just to get their “money’s worth”.

France is generally viewed as a “worker-friendly” country where employees receive generous social benefits and can be sacked only with difficulty. The reality, however, is that unhappiness at the workplace is a major problem in France. (It was probably a factor behind the recent strikes against pension reforms.) Renault was hit by a spate of workplace suicides a few years ago. France Telecom lost a staggering 58 of its employees to suicide within three years. In a grim premonition of the Lise Bonnafous case, one worker killed himself by setting himself on fire. Another “model” in the Bonnafous case could have been street vendor’s suicide that sparked off the revolution in Tunisia.

Both Renault and France Telecom were facing difficulties at the time the suicides occurred, and low morale would have been an issue even under the best management. In the specific case of France Telecom, it has been alleged that there was a policy of attempting to reduce staff without resorting to redundancies.[8] The suspicion must be that, precisely because redundancy is such a laborious and expensive process in France, in certain cases employers are resorting to ruthless tactics to slim down their workforce: making life hell for their employees in the hope that they will leave – unless, that is, they commit suicide first.

In the case of the French education system, however, the likely culprit is incompetence and lack of imagination rather than ruthless pursuit of profit. However you view the causes, Lise Bonnafous’s is by no means the first suicide among teachers: recent cases include a school director in July, two teachers in June, and in August a young trainee who had been dismissed. According to a study by Inserm (a public research institute) dating from 2002, the suicide rate among teachers in the national education system is unusually high, at 39 per 100,000 per year.

French teachers are hoping their educational system will not become another France Telecom.

1. “Des militaires pour former les profs stagiaires”, www.rue89.com/2010/12/15/des-militaires-pour-former-les-profs-stagiaires-180932, based on an eye-witness account given to a representative of the SNES of Lot-et-a-Garonne

The Gospel of Tacking on of Student Fees that Often Have Nothing to Do With Academics

What I refer to as the “corporate climate” is the transition of the modern university from its academic mission to its financial mission. In large state universities that have cash cow athletic programs, almost none of the funds these athletic departments generate go to the general student body or academic programs, and often students are still saddled with fees that often have nothing to do with academic instruction. When I was in graduate school, my institution charged fees for recreation (use of its recreational facilities), transportation fees (parking permits and shuttle bus rides), and technology fees (computers and networks). While I was a student, I never used the fitness center, never used the bus system (I had a bicycle), and while I did use the university’s computers and networks, the technology fee was primarily in place to pay for software upgrades that were unnecessary. One of the aspects of the computer technology business is to always sell upgrades to the consumer when the consumer is already comfortable and efficient with the current version of a software program. The need to push what are essentially useless upgrades is what keeps the likes of Microsoft and Apple in business. Universities have jumped on this bandwagon by swearing allegiance to Blackboard which has a virtual monopoly on classroom management software and Microsoft, whose array of office products is required for nearly every computer terminal supported by the university computer system.

Falling Diverse Interaction Outside of the Classroom

Gone in today’s university experience is the nexus of rich student interaction where diverse students often congregate and exchange ideas over a burger: the campus dining hall. The campus dining hall has largely been replaced by high end dining chains that often cater to wealthy students. This has been a blessing for universities because they can lease out their academic buildings to the highest bidder. Independent local dining establishments or coffee houses often have to struggle to acquire a student clientele against corporate chains that have an inside track to a student customer base, thanks in large part to universities looking to cash in by leasing space to corporate dining establishments who can afford the high lease rates.

The University as the foundation of “moral values” such as “integrity” or “character”

This is largely an antiquated notion as the university has largely outgrown its monastic past. The number of arrests of college athletes and coaches, the number of students arrested for underage drinking year after year, the number of campus rapes all point to a systemic breakdown in values in the American university. It is laughable that universities are still in the business of promoting moral values, especially when they actively promote wage inequalities within their own ranks. As an institution of capital, the university sees no problem today in relying upon cheap labor, in the form of adjuncts and graduate assistants, for student instruction. I can recall as a graduate assistant making nearly a fourth of my salary as a full time worker in the private sector while having considerably more responsibilities: the primary of which was to shape the next generation of minds. This was while I was also completing my own course of studies and neglecting job prospects that I would have otherwise engaged. It is morally repugnant for universities to rely upon underpaying their adjunct and graduate instructors while also raising tuition and fees on the very employees who are charged with teaching undergraduates.

The moral outrage at Penn State is more than justified but I think the situation requires that the public look more closely, more intensely, at the inner lives of universities and the economic disparities they perpetuate. That administrators who profited while these abuses occurred should speak mightily about how as a corporatized entity, the university has sought the same status of corporations in trying to shield its questionable practices and abuses from the public eye.

At first glance there appears to be no inherent connection between a college education and social justice. Universities are organized around different areas of study, many of which have nothing to do with social movements. While sociology and political science departments might offer courses in gender inequities and/or transnational global movements, math and science do not. Other departments—like business and marketing—might actually resist or ignore such social/political issues. While some schools do cater to issues of justice, democracy, and political transformation, this is neither common nor obligatory. College is about education rather than radical social change.

This is not to ignore the rich history of campus activism: the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Students for a Democratic Society, and the whole anti-Vietnam war era; the Latin American solidarity work and the Campus Outreach Opportunity League of the 1980s; the United Students Against Sweatshops that began in 1997; the Campus Antiwar Network and the New SDS of the mid-2000s; California’s state-wide protests against cuts to education in 2009 and 2010; and the current call to Occupy College.

I wholeheartedly endorse these actions and believe that the college campus can and should be a site of political contestation. But there is also the issue of how individual students approach their education. Is college about earning a higher pay check (usually at the expense of someone else) or about making the world a better place for everyone? These two goals are not mutually exclusive, but the first is no doubt the status quo of contemporary America.¹ But it does not have to be like this; you do not have to reduce your college education to a future (and unguaranteed) paycheck. You are free to reappropriate—that is, occupy—your education in order to learn about, participate in, and organize movements for social justice. Just as the Occupy Movement is reclaiming and transforming the democratic nature of this country, so too can you reclaim and transform the nature of your education.

At the most basic level, a college education improves your ability to read, write, speak, research, and analyze. Once these skills of self-empowerment are learned, they are not forgotten and can be used whenever and however you wish. These skills are also necessary for creating more effective social movements. Reading complex social analyses, writing narratives and journalistic accounts, speaking in public and to the media, researching important political information, and analyzing everything from poverty rates to presidential discourse are necessary practices of every social movement. Approaching your college education in this way improves your ability to bring about fundamental social change.

At a more complex level, a college education can provide in-depth knowledge about specific topics pertinent to social change. Such topics might include but are not limited to: the history of American imperialism; systemic inequalities of capitalism; the racial disparities in the criminal justice system; the relationship between mental illness and homelessness; the different causes and challenges of urban and rural poverty; alternative healthcare practices; environmental science and issues of climate change; sustainability and globalization; nutrition, obesity, and the politics of the corporate food industry; the pros and cons of humanitarian aid; international diplomacy, conflict resolution, and the possibilities of peace; the social/political significance of literature, film, theater, and the arts; the biographies of Emma Goldman, Gandhi, and Dr. King; philosophies of government and theories of dissent; the social construction of race, gender, and sexuality; language and political consciousness; and even the communicative strategies of Greenpeace, ACT-UP, and the Zapatistas. The purpose is to develop a body of knowledge that resists and overturns rather than accepts and perpetuates modern day oppressions and inequalities. This may not be the formal mission statement of the average college, but there is nothing holding you back from constructing a program of study that helps you change the world.

The social life of college is also an opportunity for developing your capacity for social change. Most students are in their late-teens and early twenties and moving away from home for the first time. You are on your own with minimal supervision. This is a time of freedom, exploration, and experimentation. You have the chance to meet new friends of different backgrounds, persuasions, and orientations, which enriches your inner mind and worldly experience. You have opportunities to attend on-campus meetings, public talks, and film screenings, which increase your knowledge about political, intellectual, and artistic controversies. And you engage in late night dorm room discussions about numerous topics and issues, which expose you to new relationships and modes of interaction. The overall experience is nothing less than a laboratory for personal growth, social development, and political practice.

This approach to college is a far cry from the standard “college equals a future pay check.” Such a reductive and instrumental approach is understandable since everyone wants to live a financially comfortable life. But that reduction is neither inherent nor essential. Instead, it’s a product of neoliberalism, which is a “new laissez faire economic system” based on the deregulation of free markets and the privatization of wealth. Neoliberalism subordinates government control to the interests of private profit. The government—rather than regulating the market—becomes an extension of market activity with the sole purpose of increasing capitalist competition. Neoliberalism provides tax breaks for the rich, reduces spending on social programs and welfare, expands corporate control, and eradicates labor rights, environmental protections, drug and food regulations, and even national law. The basic purpose is to allow private interests to own and control every aspect of the human, social, and natural world. Things like food, water, farmland, forests, healthcare, prisons, militaries, political processes, mass media, and, in this case, education, are targets of neoliberal control.²

Neoliberalism helps explain many of America’s social ills. More than 46 million Americans live in poverty. Nearly 50 million have no healthcare insurance. Somewhere between 24 and 26 million are either unemployed or underemployed. More than one-million homes were foreclosed in 2010 while approximately 3.5 million people are homeless. And this country’s total student loan debt is over one-trillion dollars with the overall college tuition inflation increasing by more than 115% since the mid-1980s.³ But yet banks get billion dollar bailouts, CEOs get million dollar bonuses, multinational corporations pay lower tax rates than working class citizens, and Barack Obama, the president of hope and change, has already received more than $15 million in campaign contributions from the financial and banking industries.

We should also look at the strange correlation between America’s educational advancement and its increased economic inequality. The percentage of high school graduates attending college rose from 42 percent in 1970 to 70 percent in 2009.⁴ The economic worth of a college degree also increased during this time period. In 1980 the weekly salary of college graduates was 40 percent higher than that of high school graduates. By 1997 that gap had risen to 73 percent.⁵ These trends could be seen as a progressive shift toward a more educated and prosperous society. But economic inequality actually increased over these years. In 1979, the top 1 percent of Americans owned 20.5 percent of the nation’s wealth while the bottom 99 percent owned 79.5 percent.⁶ By 2007, the top 1 percent increased its share to 34.6 percent while the bottom 99 percent declined to 65.4 percent. In 1980, the pay ratio between the average American CEO and the average American worker was 40 to 1. As of 2009, the ratio was 263 to 1, which is actually lower than recent years due to the economic recession.⁷ The ratio peaked in 2000 when it was 500 to 1. These statistics demonstrate that higher education helps the individual move upward at the expense of other individuals—i.e., college contributes to both upward mobility and wider social stratification. The smarter we get, the more unequal we become. Such private rather than collective gain is part and parcel of America’s current socio-economic juncture.

This situation no doubt affects one’s approach to college education. I have been teaching college students for almost fourteen years and it is obvious to me that students implicitly (and even explicitly) know that they are targets of private enterprise. They intuitively understand that they are seen as consumers rather than as students. Students then internalize this discourse and decide that they, too, want something in return: they want a degree and future pay check in exchange for their time and money. The logic of economic transaction thus trumps the experience and value of an education. Not everyone adheres to this logic. But it is increasingly common.

This scenario is upsetting, but not hopeless. You—the students—can reclaim your educational experience as an opportunity to change not just the problems of education, but the problems of society. Enroll in particular college programs, sign up for politically-minded courses, befriend willing and helpful professors, meet like-minded peers, join and/or start campus organizations, and coordinate campaigns for social justice. The point is to place social change rather than private profit at the center of your education. This is obviously a privileged position. Not everyone can afford to approach their education in this way. Many people cannot even afford to attend college, period. But this is the very problem that needs to be challenged. Occupying your education can help you change such problems and lay groundwork for creating a better world. Education should not be a privilege or even a right. It should be a way of life, and that life should be a political force for the common good. Occupy your education.

1. Here is a brief list of authors who have addressed similar issues over the years: Henry Giroux, Stanley Aronowitz, bell hooks, Peter McLaren, and Paulo Freire.
2. For further elaboration, see David Harvey’s A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford University Press, 2005).
3. For sources on student debt and college tuition, see the following: Gordon H. Wadsworth, “Skyrocketing College Costs,” InflationData.com (October 19, 2011); Marcus Baram, “Not Just Wall Street: Protesters Should Target Colleges Over Student Debt, Tuition Increases,” Huffington Post (November 11, 2011); and Dennis Cauchon, “Student Loans Outstanding Will Exceed $1 Trillion this Year,” USA Today (October 25, 2011).
4. Bureau of Labor Statistics. “College Enrollment and Work Activity of 2009 High School Graduates.” April 27, 2010.
5. Author Levine. “The Remaking of the American University.” Innovative Higher Education, 25(4) (Summer, 2001): 253-267.
6. G. William Domhoff. “Wealth, Income, and Power.” September 2005 (updated July 2010).
7. Sarah Anderson, et al. “Executive Excess 2010: CEO Compensation and the Great Recession.” The Institute for Policy Studies.

While the 1% has trillions of dollars — more wealth than the bottom 90%! — the 99% struggles to get by with massive debt, high unemployment, mounting foreclosures, costly and deadly wars, declining social services, threats against Social Security, relentless bills, regressive taxation, crumbling infrastructure, rising tuition, crowded classrooms, predatory banks, an anemic democracy, and chronic anxiety. This level of gross inequality is patently unfair and must be remedied.

Wall Street is everywhere. Where are you?

In San Francisco, there is a bakery called Arizmendi, named after the founder of the Mondragón cooperative movement in the Basque region of Spain. It is a worker-owned collective, so instead of the profit being sucked out by someone of the 1% who doesn’t work there, the workers are paid well, have good benefits, treat themselves kindly, money is reinvested in the business, food is donated to shelters, and the workers make their own collective decisions, while producing high-quality vegetarian food, so there is no exploitation and no sense of alienation. Arizmendi is an anomaly, but it doesn’t have to be.

While average real wages are essentially flat and top marginal tax rates for people and corporations way down over the past couple of generations, there have been increases in hours worked, worker productivity, corporate profits, CEO salaries, financial speculation, the stock market, millionaires and billionaires, international free trade agreements, foreign investment, outsourcing, military spending, U.S. foreign military bases, imprisonment, debt, tuition, health care
costs, rent, homelessness, depression, and anxiety.

So, although the causes and demands of the Occupy Movement seem to vary, they all cluster around a core principle: support the need of the 99%, not the greed of the 1%.

Especially in this richest country in the world:

If we had economic policies for the 99%, we wouldn’t have poverty, deprivation, and many of the social problems associated with poverty and deprivation.

If we had tax policies for the 99%, we would have steeply progressive taxation, as we did in the 1950s, to create a fairer, more stable, middle-class society without the extremes of obscene wealth and obscene poverty. Further, we would tax destructive activities the most, while lessening or eliminating taxes on necessities and productive goods and services. It is simply unjust that GE, ExxonMobil, Chevron, Boeing, Bank of America, Verizon, Citi, Goldman Sachs, FedEx, and about two-thirds of corporations paid less federal taxes — zero! — than any individual taxpayer in recent years.

If we had jobs policies for the 99%, we wouldn’t have unemployment, there wouldn’t be involuntary underemployment, and we’d have many more meaningful jobs with living wages and safe working conditions. There is always much work to be done and many people who want to work, yet jobs are often scarce.

If we had housing policies for the 99%, we wouldn’t have homelessness, unaffordable housing, and inadequate housing, while the elite have mansions and multiple houses. As with food, water, clothing, and other necessities of life, housing is a human right (UNHR, Art. 25), yet we treat it as just another commodity sold for profit.

If we had property policies for the 99%, we wouldn’t have absentee ownership. Additionally, we would break up monopolies and oligopolies, disallow corporations that are too big to fail, revoke corporate personhood, and better devise and regulate corporate charters, while encouraging employee ownership, cooperatives, collectives, and communes. We would also have various lending libraries, not just for books, but also for tools, toys, and many other items that are either used
temporarily or infrequently.

If we had healthcare policies for the 99%, we wouldn’t have 50 million Americans without health insurance, millions more underinsured, high monthly premiums, high co-payments, overpriced procedures and medicines, overcrowded emergency rooms, and people going bankrupt due to huge medical expenses. We would have high-quality universal single-payer healthcare.

If we had education policies for the 99%, we’d have free public education from preschool through graduate school for all who qualify and we would pay teachers more than stock brokers. Student loans would be less necessary, but would accrue at lower interest rates and could be repaid with various forms of community service. Further, education wouldn’t simply be geared toward tests, but would be oriented toward basic skills as well as critical thinking, problem solving, creative expression, sustainability, social movements and societal improvement,
people’s history, educational holism, and a whole range of relevant people’s education that focuses on the needs and interests of the 99%.

If we had energy policies for the 99%, we wouldn’t have oil and coal companies making hundreds of billions in profits, while polluting the world and increasing global warming, or tax-subsidized, uninsurable nuclear plants that threaten health and safety, but would instead support an array of decentralized safe and renewable energies, including solar, wind, wave, tidal, geothermal, hydrogen, biomass, hydroelectric, and others. We would also focus much more on conservation and efficiency.

If we had environmental policies for the 99%, we would clean up the plethora of Superfund sites, get dangerous chemicals out of foods and toys, minimize chemicals in our society, eliminate carcinogenic products, discourage carbon and methane emissions that increase global warming, raise efficiency standards for vehicles, appliances, and electronics, protect our air and water, restore forests and wetlands, encourage local, organic, and vegetarian eating (LOVE), institute the
Precautionary Principle, and ensure environmental justice.

If we had transportation policies for the 99%, we would support and subsidize many forms of public transportation and expand it, including high speed rail, as well as facilitating bicycle use, electric car sharing, and walkability.

If we had trade policies for the 99%, we wouldn’t have so-called free trade agreements that facilitate the investments and capital transfers of multi-billion dollar transnational corporations, but instead would have fair trade agreements that mutually benefit workers, producers, consumers, and the environment. We would also substantially reform the IMF, World Bank, and WTO.

If we had legal policies for the 99%, we wouldn’t imprison people for non-violent offenses, would expand local and specialized courts, mediation, collaborative justice, alternative sentencing, restitution, community service, and would seek social policies, including all of the above, to prevent crime more than punish it. Legalizing, or at least decriminalizing, marijuana and hemp would be an important step as would strengthening and enforcing laws against corporate and environmental crimes.

If we had entitlement programs for the 99%, we would be preserving, strengthening, and expanding the very successful Social Security and Medicare, removing contribution caps for high income earners, with the 1% paying their fair share.

If we had investment policies for the 99%, there would be a tax on speculative investments, as the U.S. once had (perhaps 1%), and further disincentives for speculating in food, water, housing, healthcare, education, energy, and other necessities of life.

If we had banking policies for the 99%, there would be high capital reserve requirements, disincentives for banks to speculate, and incentives to lend money in local communities for local needs. States and other jurisdictions would have their own banks. There would be preferential treatment for non-profit credit unions.

If we had agricultural policies for the 99%, we would support small farmers, farmers’ markets, organic agriculture, and industrial hemp, instead of giant agri-business, the chemical industry, the livestock industry, the sugar industry, the corn ethanol industry, the cotton industry, and the tobacco industry.

If we had food policies for the 99%, we wouldn’t have hunger, crappy school lunches, and genetically engineered food. We also wouldn’t have fast food and processed food products that are cheaper than real foods and chemicalized produce that is cheaper than organic fruits and vegetables. Dangerous chemicals shouldn’t be sprayed on our farms and animals shouldn’t be tortured and killed to produce unhealthy food for profit. Healthy, compassionate, environmentally-sustainable food should be the norm, but it’s apparently not as profitable for the 1%. We would change that.

If we had electoral policies for the 99%, we would have one-person-one-vote instead of one-dollar-one-vote with the millions and millions of people’s voices much more influential than the thousands of highly-paid corporate lobbyists. Further, we would reduce barriers to voting and for third parties, while incorporating democratizing schemes, such as ranked choice, instant run off, none of the above, and proportional representation.

If we had foreign policies for the 99%, we wouldn’t be fighting oil wars costing trillions of dollars and way too many lives, maintaining a thousand foreign military bases, supporting foreign militaries and dictatorships, but instead would be supporting democracies, democratic movements, and sustainable development around the world. Helping to clean up the world’s water, for example, would cost a fraction of the bloated U.S. military budget, yet would provide much more hope to
hundreds of millions of people around the world, while providing substantially better national security for all. Likewise with building schools, hospitals, and clinics.

While this declaration is not comprehensive, it is a good start, though it needs you.

Like modern day Marie Antoinettes, the 1% tell us to go shopping and eat cake, while they continue to privatize massive profits and socialize exorbitant costs. We the 99% no longer want their bread and cake crumbs; now we have our sights set on the bakery. Our society can be modeled after Arizmendi Bakery with its democratic and participatory structure, which is a microcosm of how the 99% can become the 100%, how we can control our destiny and live more secure, fair, and meaningful lives.

If we had social policies for the 99%, we would support need not greed, people before profits and corporations, and we would get money out of politics, reclaim our democracy, reduce racism and sexism as well as other oppressive social divisions, and promote social justice with every policy and program from the local to the global and from the personal to the political.

I support the need of the 99%, not the greed of the 1%. Which side are you on?

If one believes in peace, then it seems the proper thing is to revere the warriors for peace. Yet those are the people who are disparaged by the media, whose movements are brutalized by state police. The warriors who head off to far-flung lands that pose no threat to Europe, the United States, or Canada — why should they be lauded? The warring soldiers of today are — by and large — indoctrinated killers, not protectors of peace or high principles.

People “volunteer” for the grist for the soldiery today. Iraq, Haiti, Libya, Afghanistan, Pakistan … have nothing to do with defence; it is all about warring and killing. The multitude of killings, the war crimes, and the destruction of the aforementioned countries provides ample evidence of this.

Iraq, Haiti, Libya, and Afghanistan, Pakistan found (and find) themselves victimized by the military weaponry of the West. Fighting in close quarters is eschewed for fighting from a great distance via planes, ships at sea, bombs, and drones high in the sky. Such push-button soldiery has little to do with bravery.

Furthermore, if fighters should be remembered for their supposed “heroism” (and I do not deny that some acts of heroism occur), then they should also be remembered — and reviled — for commission of war crimes, massacres, and other wicked deeds; and they should incur whatever punishment is deserved.

Is there a day of remembrance for the Somali teenager — Shidane Arone — brutally murdered by members of Canada’s “elite” Canadian Airborne Regiment? (Graphic photo)

Whose freedom have all these soldiers for past wars really been fighting for? Is it the freedom of the 99% or the 1%? Whose cause does mind-numbing patriotism serve? The 99% or the 1%? Are the 1% putting their sons and daughters on the frontlines? All these wars have been fought over the years and what has the result been? A greater and greater concentration of wealth in the hands of the wealthy few. Is such a societal outcome really worth fighting for?

When schools commemorate Remembrance Day, what are they really commemorating? Is it not an inculcation of warrior sentiment into the younger generation? I found myself having Chinese students being exposed to the Canadian tradition of commemorating their warriors.

Fine, that is what happens in Canada, but I have to be honest with students. I am opposed to the nonsense of celebrating warring and warriors. I made that known to my students.

I presented my Chinese students with the words of one of their own, Lin Yutang. The renowned writer Lin said, “[Chinese] hate war, and always will hate war. Good people never fight in China. For ‘good iron is not made into nails, and good men are not made soldiers.’”

I am adamantly opposed to indoctrination or inculcation of any sort. I always encourage my students to doubt what I say, especially when it runs counter to that told to them in wider society. I urge them to ask questions, research, and form their own conclusions. I encourage them to challenge whatever views I (or anyone else) may present. I inform them that if I wish to be a critical thinker, then I must yield to superior facts, logic, or morals.

If educators encourage critical thinking, then they must be open to the most divergent views, not just those that cluster around so-called conventional representations.

Who should society and its education system laud and commemorate: the gun-toting soldiers or the fighters for peace?

An example: During a meeting of environmentalists about shaping the public conversation on our most pressing ecological crises, folks were wrestling with how to present an honest analysis in accessible language — how to talk about the bad news and the need for radical responses, without turning people off. During the discussion about the effects of climate change, Wright offered a simple suggestion for a slogan: “No more water, the fire next time.”

Those words from a black spiritual, made famous by James Baldwin’s borrowing for his 1963 book The Fire Next Time, are usually invoked metaphorically. Wright was suggesting that we might want to consider the phrase literally. After a summer of drought and forest fires in Texas where I live, Wright’s comment reminded me that climate disruption isn’t part of some science-fiction future, but is unfolding around us in ways that are both complex and hard to predict, but devastating simple: We’re in deep trouble, ecologically and culturally, as we try to face up to unprecedented planetary problems in a society in denial.

Wright is one of our most astute observers of these troubles. His willingness to face these issues, and his ability to grasp the interplay of complex systems, is no surprise to readers of his book The Death of Ramon Gonzalez: The Modern Agricultural Dilemma, first published in 1990 and revised for a 2005 edition. Looking at one region in Mexico, Wright explains how political and economic power, combined with the arrogance of experts who believe they have all the answers, have radically changed people, communities, and land — mostly for the worse.

Though Wright speaks bluntly about these grim realities, he hasn’t given up trying to change the trajectory of a society that so often denies or minimizes the threat. A retired professor of environmental studies at California State University, Sacramento, Wright is the chair of the board of The Land Institute, which is committed to the research and organizing necessary for a truly sustainable agriculture. His writing also focuses on those issues — he is co-author of To Inherit the Earth: The Landless Movement in the Struggle for a New Brazil (with Wendy Wolford) and Nature’s Matrix: Linking Agriculture, Conservation, and Food Sovereignty (with Ivette Perfecto and John Vandermeer).

Because Wright has a knack for presenting complex ideas in plain language, I asked him to respond to some crucial questions about how to understand our predicament and options. Can we face reality honestly without feeling overwhelmed? Wright suggests we can.

Robert Jensen: Your invocation of “the fire next time,” with its Biblical roots, suggests a moral warning and the potential catastrophe if we are not up to the moral task. Before we get to questions of politics and science, what do you think is the right moral framework for understanding the ecological crises?

Angus Wright: There certainly is a moral question, but I think we in the environmental movement have wasted a lot of time dealing with it at the wrong level. I get frustrated with the deep tendency of so many Americans to be more worried about the task of saving their souls rather than solving the problem. I am not as interested in the purity of intention or personal practice as I am concerned about correctly identifying the nature of problems and getting to work in an organized way to solve them.

The emphasis, for example, on whether individuals are hypocritical when their personal consumption is out of sync with their political/ecological views has been a diversion. It undermines effective organization and helps to maintain the myth that it is personal rather than collective action that really matters. When we think we are saving ourselves, we tend to become self-righteous in ways that separate us from the other people we need to work with in order to effect societal change. The important moral question is social, not individual. How do we collectively figure out ways to live that don’t require that we destroy the planet’s capacity to sustain life?

RJ: What are the two or three most important things we need to understand about humans, psychologically and politically, if we are to avoid that destruction?

AW: Humans are capable of immense creativity and sacrifice, which has been demonstrated in crisis situations such as wars, famines, migrations, and in the building and defense of homes and communities. In my work, I have been frequently reminded of the incredible sacrifices Mexican immigrants make to earn a little money to send back to their families over years, sacrifices that have both an individual and a community aspect. Many of us know how hard and how creatively our parents and ancestors worked to provide us with the lives we now take for granted. Of course, such effort can have negative as well as positive aspects — for example, the creation of the majority European culture of the Americas at the expense of Native Americans and Africans. People are also capable of stunning complacency, greed, and divisiveness.

The secret we seek is what inspires humans to act positively and creatively in the face of huge challenges. As humanity faces the environmental crisis, this is its greatest challenge: How do we elicit the kind of collective and individual action and creativity that will be needed? I think previous experience implies that it cannot be fear alone, nor opportunity alone, nor persuasion alone, nor organization alone, but a blend of these elements, with much else. We have been able to lump these things together successfully in the past in something called patriotism — a powerful force for good and ill — and now we need something like a planetary patriotism. But no planetary patriotism can be built without acknowledging and dealing with the major things that divide us as well as the challenge that must unite us. Putting on a happy face won’t cut it.

RJ: If we have a considerable body of knowledge concerning the seriousness of the ecological crises and we have the capacity to respond to threats, what are the key impediments to change? Is the problem in the political leadership of recent decades? The economic system? Something we can’t yet identify?

AW: One problem is an economic system that impels each company within it to pursue growth — each company must seek new investment funds by demonstrating greater growth potential than its competitors. Another problem is a political system that is so heavily corrupted by corporate cash, exacerbated by the absurd legal fiction that a corporation is a person with constitutional rights to free speech. Without those problems, we could have the kind of largely publicly funded campaigns adopted by other countries. I also think that for all its virtues, the constitutional checks and balances built into our system have brought us to gridlock — we really might want to consider the advantages of a parliamentary system in which the executive branch is headed by the leader of the majority party, as in England and many other parliamentary democracies.

We have to be enlightened enough to take aggressive and expensive actions primarily for the benefit of our children and grandchildren. While individuals and families have been able to do this throughout history, it has proven very difficult for whole societies to do so. All these barriers are so daunting that we become overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of it all. Here we face fundamental philosophical and psychological problems at both the individual and collective levels.

RJ: You said the solutions aren’t going to be individual. But how do you evaluate the efforts of people who focus on their everyday lives? That can range from being diligent about recycling, to buying “green,” to biking to work, to planting a vegetable garden. If we don’t naively believe those things can solve all our problems, are they worth doing?

AW: Our most important problems can only be solved by collective action — new policies and laws taken by government. That requires that we act, above all, as citizens. I have watched over the past 40 years as nearly every important institution in our society has gradually shifted to encouraging us to see ourselves as individuals and consumers as opposed to group participants and citizens. We are all aware of this in advertising, but it has also become a powerful trend in education and in government itself. We are encouraged to believe that we can bring the changes we need by exercising our “consumer vote” in the marketplace more effectively than by exercising our citizenship — not just in voting, but also in public debate, in participating in political parties, in the exercise of our professional judgment, in educating our children, in participation in labor unions and professional associations, in speaking out in our communities. Our “vote” through marketplace purchases can only bring about very limited change, and by thinking of ourselves more as consumers than as citizens we diminish our very dignity as human beings. We become a mouth that eats rather than a voice that speaks.

That said, I am all for making the changes at the individual level that can help to create a culture of frugality, help us realize that we don’t really need the great quantity of junk our civilization produces, help us understand that we can make major social changes while actually improving our lives. Most of us want sociability and conviviality more than we want consumer goods. We can set a good example for others by showing that we can live more happily by consuming less. All of this can also help us live within a discipline of conscious choice rather than of allowing advertising to manipulate us.

RJ: In my experience, academics tend to focus on narrow questions they think they can answer. You seem to gravitate toward big questions that defy definitive conclusions. I wonder if that’s because of your training and teaching — you’re a historian who taught environmental studies. We might say that the object of your inquiry has been everything that happened before today, and the interconnectedness of everything happening today. What lessons have you learned about intellectual life from your career?

AW: When Wes Jackson (president of The Land Institute) recruited me to help him create an environmental studies program at Cal State-Sacramento, I was the all-purpose humanities and social science person in a small core faculty. I learned all I could from Wes about biology and genetics, and from other colleagues about oil and mineral depletion, nuclear power, city and regional planning, environmental law. It was a wonderful kind of second graduate school experience that lasted through an entire career.

I had always been attracted academically to what might be called the “pan-disciplines” such as geography, anthropology, and history, disciplines that can reasonably take on almost any topic in human affairs. Salina, our small Kansas city, was known nationally for having one of the best public libraries of its size, and I spent a lot of time camped out in its stacks. My parents — intensely intellectual people who were too poor to go to college — assumed that any reasonable and moral person would be interested in nearly everything, and they hadn’t been beaten into submission by professors to think differently. They were good models who were eager for knowledge of all kinds. They were looking for clear words and straightforward thinking, and they assumed that good thinking led to social responsibility and political action, to which they were dedicated.

RJ: Thinking about that need for clarity, one last question. As an environmentalist, you can’t ignore the stark reality of the data about our ecological crises. As a historian, you can’t ignore the record of human successes and failures. When you weigh all that up, what advice do you have for how we should face the future? Many people find it hard to face the changes that are likely coming, which I once heard you describe as “dramatic and potentially highly unpleasant.” Are we facing “the fire next time”? Is there a way out of the trap we’ve set for ourselves?

AW: I don’t know if there is a way out, but we have to try. My own expectations are pessimistic because I don’t see enough people having sufficient awareness, understanding, and determination to bring about the major changes we need.

And of course, contradicting what I just said, we don’t really have to try. We only really have to try if we want to maintain our self-respect. If we want to stumble forward drunk while whistling in the dark, we could choose that. I maintain a certain faith that many people are going to make the right choices, and we can hope that is enough. I think Gramsci had it right when he said that he lived with “pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.” And you have to take that seriously from a guy who wrote while in prison for his political beliefs.

Rise like Lions after slumber/In unvanquishable number/Shake your chains to earth like dew/Which sleep had fallen on you/Ye are the many—they the few.

– Percy Shelley

The Occupy Movement, now in myriad cities across the country and, indeed, the globe, is too big to ignore. Many thousands of people, frustrated with the current status quo but hopeful for another, have made their disgruntlement palpable by turning parks, streets, and capitols into a choir of complaint—complaint complimented, however, by a contrapuntal harmony of hope and aspiration. Although the catchy slogan “we are the 99 percent” is not literally correct—it would be more accurate to use the unfortunately cumbersome slogan “we are the 99.9 percent”—it does make clear a simple fact: inequality has exploded in this country and people no longer believe that the coterie of elites who possess much of the wealth earned it fairly or have used it to benefit the rest of the population.¹ Not surprisingly, the growth of the Occupy Movement has caused a concomitant critical reaction, mostly among media members who favor the status quo, plus or minus a few adjustments. This is a predictable pattern. A movement, either political or intellectual, begins and is ignored; it grows and is criticized; finally, it becomes appropriated by the mainstream, and many contend that they were a part of the movement from its inception. (A pattern followed by the civil rights movement, for example.) Although it is not clear if the Occupy Movement will progress to the third stage (and many within the movement would prefer, to one degree or another, that it does not² ), it is clear that it has progressed to the second.

In this article, I would like to briefly respond to a few of the most popular criticisms, criticisms that have almost become platitudes. The criticisms that I will respond to are not drawn from the extreme right (mostly dismissing the movement as a swath of unemployed parasites); but rather, from the mainstream center or left of center. This is useful, I think, because some of the criticisms are probably held or at least sympathetically considered by the populace, a populace that has consistently received a distorted portrait of the world and of the Occupy Movement. I should also note, as a caveat, that I do not—and do not presume to—speak for the Occupy movement. Opinions about the desires of the Occupy Movement are a result of discussions with members of Occupy Tallahassee and of reading and watching interviews. I do not feign to have any special insight into the heart of a diffuse movement.

The most common criticism of the Occupy Movement that I hear and encounter in the media is that it is composed of radical and ignorant people who fancifully believe that the government can be used as kind of magical wish fulfilling machine. Or as Fred Siegel, from the New Republic, put it “… these epigones seem to think of government as a black box: You put your wishes in at one end and a smoothly running government bureaucracy fulfills those wishes at the other end.”³ His evidence is that many in the Occupy Movement desire to live in a country with single-payer universal healthcare, free college education, and are meanwhile ignorant of the minutia of the “298 pages of explication” of the Volcker rule. The protestors, therefore, are oblivious to the labyrinthine complexity of bureaucracies, and to the dangers of the debt, substituting socialist fantasy for hard-headed, fiscally sound, realism. According to Siegel, protests should focus more on the machinations of the government than on the treacheries of Wall Street. An editorial at the Economist,⁴ generally agrees, noting that the protests are aiming for the wrong target because the economic woes of the world have “less to do with the rise of the emerging world than with state interference.” (The idea that protestors want some kind of parochial nationalism and fear globalization is utterly without merit, a point to which I return.)

Siegel’s “government as a black box” argument is fairly common and utterly without merit. Let’s start with the second half of his argument and work backward. He argues that many in the Occupy movement are ignorant of the voluminous details of the Volcker rule and its exceptions. True enough. And many mainstream authors on foreign policy have never read all of the declassified NSC documents that are available. In the case of foreign policy writers, the NSC documents are actually very important. For the Occupy Movement, the exceptions and exceptions to exceptions of the Volcker rule are relatively trivial. Most understand that the provisions of the Glass-Steagall Act were repealed by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, and that the subsequent breakdown of the separation between investment and commercial banking has had deleterious effects on the economy. That is important. If Siegel’s argument is that the 298 page explication of exceptions et cetera indicates how cumbersome government bureaucracies can be, that is also well-known among the Occupy Tallahassee members that I have spoken to, some of whom are intimately involved in the legislative process.

Siegel’s other adduced evidence is that the Occupy movement wants “free education” and “free healthcare,” as if the government can just hand such things out without going broke. This is made clear, later, when he argues that the Occupiers are “oblivious” to our national debt. But precisely the opposite is true. As Siegel should know, two of the chief contributors to our deficits are our horribly inefficient and expensive health care system and our bloated military budget. Most in the Occupy movement would like to carve a significant amount of fat from the military budget; and, as Siegel himself asserted, most also desire single-payer universal health coverage. What Siegel apparently doesn’t know is that according to sound economic analysis by Dean Baker and others, if our health care costs were in line with the rest of the world’s, our deficits would be significantly mitigated.⁵ ,⁶ ,⁷ Finally, it is hardly utopian to believe that a country should have a decent, publically funded education system that runs through college. Nor is it a colossal strain on the budget, especially if properly funded through a reasonable tax system. Many intelligent commentators, including Noam Chomsky, believe that the exorbitant cost of college in the United States has less to do with economic issues than with issues of population control.⁸ ,⁹

Siegel and the Economist both argue that the Occupy Movement is confused about its target. It should be targeting the government, not Wall Street. First, in Tallahassee, we have been “occupying” the Capitol building, so we are “aimed” at the right institution. And second, the argument, although not entirely erroneous (the government’s subservience to financial interests is lamentable), and consistent with standard propaganda, misses a very important point: the government can, and is the only institution that can, provide a check on the power of corporations, a check that is absolutely necessary. Most in the Occupy movement aren’t thrilled about this pragmatic compromise. But, the question for any serious political thinker has to be, “what are the practical consequences of an action?” Reducing the size and power of the government may or may not be a future desideratum; but, as our system currently exists, reducing the size of government means increasing the power of corporations, corporations that are almost entirely impervious to public input (save for public purchasing) and therefore “tyrannical” in the classical liberal sense of the word. Given this state of affairs, it seems wise to protest the corporations, especially the financial corporations that were directly responsible for the economic collapse.

Finally, the Economist paints the Occupy movement as an insular group, a group that, although not as “mindless” and parochial as the Seattle protestors, is still confused and frightened by “the emerging world.” In other words, the Occupy movement is filled with people who fear “global integration.” This is standard propaganda that was perfected during the NAFTA debates. So, if one were against NAFTA, a radically unfree trade agreement,¹⁰ one was against globalization, regardless of whether or not one was in favor of increasing connections across the globe. Many are against unfair, investor rights’ agreements that force laborers to compete against each other while sedulously blocking competition amongst professionals. But the Occupy Movement is probably the most globally interconnected protest movement ever. Last week, Asmaa Mahfouz and Ahmed Maher, both famous for their courageous stands against the Mubarak regime, came to New York and spoke to the OWS protestors. Signs across the globe declare unity with protest movements in countries far away. The Occupy Movement is not afraid of “global integration,” it is afraid of corrupt, corporate integration. And it is only parochial if one considers humans, as opposed to corporations, irrelevant.

I do not know what the Occupy Movement will accomplish or where its future lies. I do know that it is exciting to witness the aspirations and frustrations of thousands of people finally rise in a conflagration of protest against a corrupt system that is consistently becoming more unjust and more detached from the average citizen. If nothing else, the movement has vivified the souls of thousands, perhaps millions, of people and has contributed to a growing sense of unity among disparate peoples from around the globe.

1. Glenn Greenwald (October 25, 2011). Immunity and Impunity in Elite America: How the Legal System was Deep-Sixed and Occupy Wall Street Swept the Land. TomDispatch.com.
2. That is, if being “appropriated” means sacrificing the substance of the movement to the interests the current system.
3. Fred Siegel (October 19, 2011). Occupy Wall Street and the Return of the McGovernites. New Republic.
4. Capitalism and its Critics: Rage Against the Machine. Economist.
5. Dean Baker (October 31, 2008). The Deficit and Health Care Costs. San Diego Union-Tribune.
6. Health Care Budget Calculator. Center for Economic and Policy Research.
7. Congressional Budget Office (June, 2009). The Long-Term Budget Outlook.
8. Noam Chomsky (August 9, 2011). Public Education Under Massive Corporate Assault—What’s Next? Guernica Magazine.
9. This video contains a condensed synopsis.
10. Dean Baker (2006). The conservative Nanny State.

The eviction had been pending since the end of last week when the Occupiers had gotten notice from the city. I’d camped there one night and been returning fairly regularly from the first day on, but just as early Christians could only put off doing the housework in anticipation of the return of the Savior for so long, I took nearly a week off from the Revolution to catch up on my own housework and tasks.  It’s not an odd comparison, nor am I being cheeky or sarcastic to describe what has been going on now for over a month a “revolution.”  There is a distinctly millenarian character to the Occupy movement and the gatherings of people in small spaces are reminiscent, if only to me, of the Christians gathering on rooftops to await the return of Jesus.

The problem here is we aren’t exactly clear what the occupiers are awaiting. As they build their barricades, it’s clear they’re defending territory, but why they’ve taken it, and the purpose to which they’ve turned it isn’t altogether clear beyond this: the desire to build a utopia, a village, where the homeless can eat and be treated humanely; where people can gather and share experiences, meals, and a struggle for a small, temporarily liberated space; where new forms of organization can be discussed, agreed upon by a mass of strangers and then implemented until the next assembly when results can be considered and decisions reconsidered; a place free of the repressive forces of the state, especially the police, especially in this dark time of life in a national security state; a place where not only could another possible world be discussed, as in the string of social forums over the past decade, but where it could actually be practiced, if only for a moment.

This was all clear to me as I stood before the entrance of Oscar Grant Plaza, soon to be transformed again into Frank Ogawa Plaza. Over the entrance hung the banner that had been there for probably a week: “Oakland Commune.” But it was no time to sadly reflect on the brief millennial flash of hope illuminating this dark time, because someone was calling people to the north side of the plaza.

There, people were gathered discussing whether or not to have a meeting. One woman cried, “Mike check” and the people responded “Mike check!” She did that three times, which is the way to call attention and implement the people’s microphone. “Everyone here tonight” she cried out, and the people repeated, “Everyone Here Tonight,” “Is committed to nonviolent resistance, right?” and a few people repeated her words, while a gaggle of anarchists in black hoodies, black scarves covering their faces, and black flags in their hands, dissented. Then a young African American man spoke. “Is everybody here ready to get their asses whooped by the pigs?” A few people shouted affirmatively. He asked it again and then again before someone else began calling on the gathering of twenty-five or so of us. The young African American came down from the steps and sat on a bench. He addressed those of us nearby.

Reason I’m asking that is ‘cause these barricades. They be inviting the cops to whoop our asses. So if you don’t want your asses whooped, you best take them down. And I know how them pigs can be. They beat my little brother so bad last year that his left hand still shakes like this.

He demonstrated with a shaking left hand.

His hand shake so bad he has to write with his right hand — and he’s left handed. These pigs ain’t nothing to mess with.

That’s when we heard the first siren and the lights of headlights and spotlights flared and reflected off the windows of the tall buildings of downtown Oakland.

“They’re coming!” someone yelled from near Broadway on the south side of the plaza. People came running down the alley back to the plaza and we all came around to the entrance of the plaza to see they’d blocked off Broadway. Lines of police marched toward us like giant ants and then looking down Broadway I noticed they were coming from the opposite direction, too. They were also approaching from up 14th Street. In fact, they were converging from every direction on the Oscar Grant Plaza with its flimsy barricades from behind which the occupiers watched their approach.

Marcy and I crossed the street to get behind the police line and avoided getting in their pincer maneuver.  The spotlights went up as helicopters circled overhead and a policeman announced over a megaphone that they would be moving in to arrest people who were illegally camped in the plaza. The lines inched forward and then suddenly there was an explosion and an enormous cloud of smoke went up and  drifted slowly across the street toward us. It was tear gas and we began running away from it, choking and gagging, a group of twenty or thirty people who were taping or photographing the police action. We went a block away then half a dozen of us circled back and returned to the plaza.

When we got back to 14th Street, the police were already at work, demolishing the little village. They threw the tents and tarps and everything from the kitchen onto the sidewalk as police on motorcycles rode up and down the street to keep us away from the plaza and onto the sidewalk of the other side of the street.  Marcy and I eventually made our way down to the northwest corner of the plaza where we recorded the line of police moving like army ants over the tents that disappeared under their boots. Then they marched the arrested occupiers, bound with white plastic handcuffs, to the waiting vans. The whole process took perhaps half an hour, at most forty-five minutes, to complete.  We taped the demonstrators passing. Another woman beside us asked demonstrators their names as the police walked them to the vans. One youth yelled, “My name is the People! We are the f—ing 99%!”

Standing beside us all this time on the corner was an African American man in his early thirties. He mentioned a couple of times that his “Ten by twelve by seventy-eight” was in there, pointing to the plaza. “My tent,” he said, shaking his head. I asked him if I could interview him. He agreed.

His name was Maurice Porter and he was homeless.

This is a place where everyone comes together and we (homeless) actually feel like someone. It’s like they take from the poor and give to the rich. Me, I’m on SSI. We haven’t got a cost of living [increase] in three years. But who’s getting the money?

The rich folks,” he said, then motioning to the line of police behind us, “and these guys here. And how much money do you think they’re paying for this, to take us out of our comfort zone, [these police from] Vacaville, Fremont, Hayward. But what do they do for the homeless? Did anyone come from the city to donate anything while we were in there? No one. We had donations from all the business around here donating, but no one from the city gave anything.”

I asked Maurice what life was like for him in the “Oakland Commune” and he laughed. “It was peaceful. There was a lot of harmony. We were united.” Was it a “commune?” He laughed again, “yes, it was. It was a commune. Exactly. I came here seven days ago exactly and there were people from other cities, and other states who sat with us and broke bread with us and it felt real good. Real good. And now… this is a very sad moment.”

Maurice’s story wasn’t unusual. In fact, it was all too normal in this moment, in this city, in this nation. He could have been telling my own story if just a few things had been different in my life: He’d been homeless for four months after living in a transitional home. His unsigned money orders for his bills were in his car, and his car had been stolen. Then he’d had a run-in with a vicious dog… Before all that he’d been a full time student at Merritt College in Community Social Services. “I’ll get back to school. I’ll get back as soon as I can get on my feet. But this is what disrupts youngster’s lives,” he said, pointing to the line of the police and waving his arm at the plaza, “they grab them, they incarcerate them, they get them in the system, then they’re f___ed. I learned that a long time ago: they lock you in, then you’re locked. And when they approach you, the first thing they ask is ‘are you on probation or on parole,’ instead of ‘what’s your name, sir.’ I mean, that’s how they address you out here. But you know what?” Here he points to the police, “they’re just a paycheck away from the same thing. A while back they were talking of cutting police pay. Can you imagine how they felt then? But [now] they want to f__ with the homeless, and they weren’t that far from it. From a low paying security job. But they want to f__ with the homeless. They want to break you, break you, break you – instead of helping the homeless. We’re the 99%. I guess they’re with the 1%. We’ll leave it at that.”

As we walked away and tried to circle back around to our car to go home, I thought of the first night of the occupation. It had been raining and the concrete of the amphitheater where the first general assembly of the occupation was being held was still wet. Speakers were coming up to the microphone, but they weren’t the usual suspects with their political rhetoric or star-status, brought in for speeches to “entertain” or educate the faithful. These were people from the community, like the young African American from 105th Avenue and International who talked about what it was like to grow up in the ghetto, suffer hunger, buy a hamburger at McDonalds but “not be good enough to get a job there.”  “I go to Laney [College] and they tell me I’m too stupid [to succeed].” The statistics are available and widely known, of 80% unemployment among black youth in East Oakland, but it’s another thing to hear the story from the victim himself.

Suddenly, that night in the crowd I saw someone I knew. Ordinarily, in a political demonstration. a majority of the faces would be familiar: here I was relieved to see few familiar faces since that told me that a whole new force of people had joined the movement, had, in fact, created a new movement. I walked over to Michael, and said hi. He invited me to sit down.

Michael is an ex-student of mine from Berkeley City College. He’d taken an English class with me a couple of semesters back and now he was on a “field trip” in an English class at Laney College. He was going to have to write a paper about this experience so he asked if he could interview me. I agreed and when he asked what I thought about what was happening this is what I told him.

Remember at the beginning of the semester I told the class that if anyone was there to get an education, they were in the wrong place? I mentioned there was a library around the corner where they could get an education, and there were plenty of coffee shops in Berkeley where they could discuss what they learned from books in the library. But this, Michael, this is the real classroom. This is where education really takes place.

And I told him about the young man from 105th Avenue and International. That young man had become my teacher this night.

Now on Franklin, as we walked back to our car with another ex-student I ran into during the police attack. I decided that’s why they couldn’t let Frank Ogawa Plaza be turned into the Oakland Commune on Oscar Grant Plaza: we would begin to educate each other. I would begin to hear Maurice’s story and identify with it, and even empathize with it. It would then become “our” story. And then “I” would become “We,” and then it would be all over for the 1%.

I got a call from a friend this morning after I returned home and had a chance to take a nap. My friend had been to Frank Ogawa Plaza later in the morning and he described it as “leveled.”  “It’s all gone,” he told me. “And maybe, just maybe, the police saved the occupiers from themselves,” he added.  I asked him how.

Well, the occupiers were saved from trying to figure out the next step. After all, where does this movement go from here? If their objective is only to occupy a space, well, that can only be temporary anyway.

Over the past month I’d mused on that same dilemma I felt this movement faces. If the point of Occupying is only to occupy, what happens when you no longer occupy? Eventually, whether it be from necessity driven by need, or inclement weather, or, in this and an increasing number of cases, by police, you have to forfeit a space. Does that then mean your movement has lost, has ended? Will the Occupy movement be able to transcend locale, a chosen space, and take up a vocation? I could think of a very good one, listening to the young man from 105th Avenue, Maurice, and considering what my two ex-students are facing when they’ll be forced to go on to four-year colleges and take on student loans and enter a life of involuntary servitude: We need to have an ongoing people’s assembly, a multiversity where we can get a real education in the important things of life: learning from each other’s lives and experiences, deepening our empathy, building solidarity and the “harmony and unity” about which Maurice spoke.  It’s time for the occupiers to realize their role as teachers and students and build a movement where they can get, and give, a real education. Maybe this isn’t The Revolution. Maybe OWS and Occupy Oakland and all the other occupations are just the classrooms where we can begin to practice for that final moment when, and if, we’re finally able to shift power back to us, the 99%.

The economy would only be the better for it, as was shown by the G.I. Bill, which provided virtually-free higher education for returning veterans, along with low-interest loans for housing and business.  The G.I. Bill had a sevenfold return.  It was one of the best investments Congress ever made.

There are arguments against a complete student debt write-off, including that it would reward private universities that are already charging too much, and it would unfairly exclude other forms of debt from relief.  But the point here is that it could be done, and it (or some similar form of consumer “jubilee”) would represent a significant stimulus to the economy.

Toxic Student Debt: The Next “Black Swan”?

The Occupy Wall Street movement is heavily populated with students.  Many without jobs, they are groaning under the impossible load of student debts that have been excluded from the usual consumer protections.  A whole generation of young people has been seduced into debt peonage by the promise of better jobs if they invest in higher education, only to find that the jobs are not there when they graduate.  If they default on their loans, lenders can now jack up interest rates and fees, garnish wages, and destroy credit ratings; and the debts can no longer be discharged in bankruptcy.

Total U.S. student debt has risen to $1 trillion—more than U.S. credit card debt.  Defaults are rising as well.  According to Department of Education data, 8.8 percent of recipients of federal student loans defaulted in FY 2010, up from 7 percent the previous year.  With an anemic recovery from a severe recession and a difficult job market, the situation is expected to get worse.  The threat of massive student loan defaults requiring another taxpayer bailout has been called a systemic risk as serious as the bank failures that brought the U.S. economy to the brink of collapse in 2008.  To prevent another disaster like the one caused by the toxic debts on the books of Wall Street banks, we need to defuse the student debt bomb before it blows.  But how?

The Federal Reserve could do it in the same way it defused the credit crisis of 2008: by aiming its fire hose of very-low-interest credit in the direction of the struggling student population.  Since September 2008, the Fed has made trillions of dollars available to financial institutions at a fraction of 1% interest; and in audits since then, we’ve seen that the Fed is capable of coming up with any amount of money required or desired.  To the Fed it is all just accounting entries, available with the stroke of a computer key.

The Fed is not allowed to lend to individuals directly, but it can buy Treasury securities; and with the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act (SAFRA) of March 2010, the Treasury is now formally in the business of student lending.  The Fed can also buy asset-backed securities, including securitized student debt; and there is talk of another round of quantitative easing aimed at just that sort of asset.

After QE3: The Market Wants More

When the Federal Reserve’s expected “QE3” turned into the tepid and ineffectual “Operation Twist,” the stock market reacted by plummeting.  To appease investors, Chairman Ben Bernanke then assured them that the Fed was “ready to do more.”  How much more and in what way wasn’t specified; but Alan Blinder, former Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, suggested some possibilities.  He wrote in the Wall Street Journal on September 28th:

To maintain the size of its balance sheet, the Fed has been reinvesting the proceeds in Treasurys. But starting “now” (the Fed’s word), and continuing indefinitely, those proceeds will be reinvested in agency bonds and MBS instead. . . . A future round of quantitative easing (QE4?) that concentrates on private-sector securities like MBS, rather than on Treasurys, is now imaginable. . . . Indeed, if we indulge ourselves in a bit of blue-sky thinking, we can even imagine the Fed doing QEs in corporate bonds, syndicated loans, consumer receivables and so forth.

Syndicated consumer loans include asset-backed securities (ABS) of the sort purchased by the Fed through its Term Asset-backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF) created in November 2008.  According to the Fed’s website, “Eligible collateral initially included U.S. dollar-denominated ABS that . . . are backed by student loans, auto loans, credit card loans, and loans guaranteed by the Small Business Administration (SBA) . . . .”

Buying securities backed by bundles of student loans thus falls within the Fed’s purview.  Quantitative easing is a tool reserved for economic crises, and toxic student debt appears to be the next “black swan” on the horizon.

Buying up a trillion dollars in student loans could be a nice stimulus package for the economy. The money supply is estimated to have shrunk by about $3 trillion since the 2008 collapse of the “shadow” banking system (an array of  non-bank financial institutions including investment banks, hedge funds, money market funds, SIVs, conduits, and monoline insurers).  In July 2010, the  New York Fed posted a staff report on its website titled “Shadow Banking,” showing that the shadow banking system had contracted by $4 trillion since its peak in March 2008, when it was valued at about $20 trillion—actually larger than the traditional banking system, which was then only about $12 trillion.  By July 2010, the shadow system was down to about $16 trillion and the traditional system was up to about $13 trillion, leaving a $3 trillion gap to be filled.  Adding back a trillion dollars in student aid could go a long way toward curing this shortfall.

Debt Relief as Economic Stimulus

What could such a stimulus do for the economy?  Consider the G.I. Bill, which provided free technical training and educational support, along with government-subsidized loans and unemployment benefits, for nearly 16 million returning servicemen.  Economists have determined that for every 1944 dollar invested, the country received approximately $7 in return, through increased economic productivity, consumer spending, and tax revenues. The G.I. Bill not only made higher education accessible to all, but it created a nation of homeowners, new technology, new products, and new companies, with the Veterans Administration guaranteeing an estimated 53,000 business loans.

Eliminating, reducing or deferring student loan debt would free up the budgets of millions of students, allowing them to spend more on goods and services, increasing demand and creating jobs.  More jobs would mean more taxes for the government, and a more educated and skilled work force would mean higher paying jobs in higher tax brackets.

What the economy sorely needs today is purchasing power.  Without customers to buy their products, businesses cannot expand and cannot hire.  And to get the needed purchasing power, consumers need more money in their pockets.  Getting it there by quantitative easing has been branded dangerously inflationary, but with a $3 trillion hole in the money supply, we need an injection of new money today.  As long as the money is spent on goods and services rather than on financial money-making-money schemes, the result will not be inflationary.  Retailers will just put in more orders for goods, causing producers to produce more and to hire more workers to do it.  Supply will rise along with demand, keeping prices stable.  Overall prices will not increase until the country hits full employment, which is far from where we are today.

Another Alternative: Interest-free Student Loans

Many countries offer free tuition for higher education, including Argentina, Brazil, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Norway, Scotland, and Sweden.  Another program that has proven to be very fair and workable is a program of interest-free student loans.  The government of New Zealand now offers 0% loans to New Zealand students, with repayment to be made from their income after they graduate.  For the past twenty years, the Australian government has also successfully funded students by giving out what are in effect interest-free loans.

The loans in the Australian Higher Education Loan Programme (or HELP) do not bear interest, but the government gets back more than it lends, because the principal is indexed to the Consumer Price Index (CPI), which goes up every year.  The indexation rate was 2.8% in 2006 and 3.4% in 2007.  To avoid this increase, borrowers can make voluntary repayments, for which they also get a 10% reduction in the principal.  Thus if a person voluntarily repays $1000, the debt is reduced by $1100.  The loans are “contingent loans,” repaid only if and when the borrower’s income reaches a certain level.  If the borrower dies, any compulsory repayment must be paid from his estate, but the remainder of the debt is canceled at death.

Following the Australian model, the Federal Reserve could buy up $1 trillion in U.S. student debt, waive the interest, and collect on the principal only when the borrowers’ incomes reach a certain level.  In the meantime, the loan money would circulate in the economy, stimulating economic activity.

Even assuming a 10% default rate, the Fed would get back $900 billion on its $1 trillion advance.  The $100 billion difference is only one-seventh the bailout money authorized by Congress to rescue Wall Street banks, and it would stimulate the economy more than the bailout money, which just shored up the balance sheets of insolvent Wall Street banks—banks that then declined to return the favor by lending to Main Street.  If the Fed’s investment generated anything close to the returns from the G.I. Bill, its $100 billion outlay could produce a several-hundred-billion dollar return.

To prevent abuse of the system, colleges should be required to stay within certain well-defined parameters for providing affordable, high quality education; and students should meet well-defined standards as well.

Properly monitored, a federal investment in higher education can be a win-win-win, good for the economy, good for the government, and good for the people.  A generous student loan program will create jobs, increase tax revenues, and give young people a fair shot at the American dream, a dream that has become a mirage for 99% of the population.

This is particularly bothersome because one of the primary grievances of the protestors is the cost of higher education, and the larger role of indebtedness in informing the present precariousness of young people. Education debt, even more than housing debt, plays a repugnant role in this society, insofar as it preys on the young and ambitious, ultimately leaving citizens shackled to the financial industry for the bulk of their adult lives. Before anyone is capable of making sound fiscal decisions in life, they find themselves five-figures in the red, just for doing what they grew up believing to be the “right thing.”

When British students rallied against fee increases last year, professors were present alongside. The same goes for several waves of protests dealing with fees and the precariousness of youth in France, dating back to the CPE protests of 2006. These alliances between students and faculty were integral to the growth and widespread popularity of these movements. Meanwhile, the student-professor alliance has historically explained the affordability of higher education throughout Western Europe.

In the United States, we see no such alliance. Professors will offer themselves as speakers at rallies or teach-ins, maintaining a top-down relationship with students, but will rarely support as brothers-in-arms. This stems from a social authoritarianism in this culture, where the opinions of the credentialed are taken more seriously than the “commoner.” As someone who has experienced living on both sides of the Atlantic, I can say that Americans have a problem trusting your average person. Rather than judging someone based on the merit of their argument, the American tends to ignore the argument and judge based on ceremonial merit (such as whether the person has a PhD or not.) As such, professors have generally only been involved as credibility lending figureheads in American social movements.

I am happy that Dr. West has participated in this protest, but wish that it wasn’t such a breaking story. He possesses no more intrinsic value than the other 99%, and should be busily organizing his colleagues at Princeton to join along on next visit. The same goes for Chomsky and his colleagues at MIT. If this vigorously anti-totalitarian movement is to thrive, we need the academic egos to dissipate and the academic masses to bring numbers to the protests.

For this to occur, they will have to identify their support as a moral imperative rather than mere intellectual exercise. By allowing the present system of higher education to continue without their condemnation, professors become complicit in the overarching moral crisis this country is facing. Since the beginning of the 80s, American wages have been stagnant, while the average cost of a college education has risen over 4-fold (adjusted for inflation). Meanwhile, we have seen nary a peep of moral outrage from faculty.  By excluding Americans of modest means from the enrichment of the university experience, this country is hampering the human potential of millions of young people. By not providing quality higher education to all Americans for free (or a nominal fee), we remain a second-rate society.

Academics are ostensibly progressive in nature: you would expect such of open, intelligent minds. However, they have proven particularly meek in the United States. There are several reasonable explanations for this. For one, we have a climate of repression and anti-intellectualism that is simply not known throughout Western Europe. The recent experiences of Ward Churchill and Norman Finkelstein are evidence enough of this. Furthermore, large American research institutions tend to be located in small “campus towns” rather than inside major urban hubs, thus dislocating professors from the bulk of the industrial workforce. This design has served to de-radicalize labor through the last century, and also explains the lack of involvement of professors in the ongoing protests (though there are a few notable universities on Manhattan).  Moreover, many professors enjoy tenure and six-figure salaries, thus outpacing their Western European counterparts. This serves to supplement their geographic isolation from labor with added socioeconomic distance.

Nonetheless, this professorial passivity must end: not solely for the aforementioned moral reasons, but also because professors have an important stake in this political moment. As austerity measures have placed an increasing pinch on the higher education system, knowledge is treated as more of a commodity than a social good. Universities are forced to run more like businesses than loci of the grands discours. This commodification of knowledge has resulted in the increasing social alienation of professors. Tight university systems, intent on cutting costs and increasing class sizes, will increasingly see professors as expendable. You compound this with the growing authoritarianism in post 9-11 America and professors will increasingly feel pressured to conform or produce favorable results (a la the University of Chicago Economics Department).

Lastly, professors possess great power to change the financial racket that poses as higher education in this country. They are the mode of production for that industry.  A national professor’s strike committed to the long-haul will force states to close their budget shortfalls through progressive tax measures or sane monetary policy. The latter is just one way to address systemic pre-tax injustices in our economic system: spend money into existence rather than charging the people interest by lending into existence. Either way, forced with a non-compliant faculty at their flagships school, states will have to learn to get innovative, if that is possible with the class of charlatans that governs from both political parties.

Professors largely supported Barack Obama in the 2008 election.  As with most other progressives in this country, they fell into the passivity of hope. At this juncture, we need them to muster the courage for action. It is their moral imperative, and also in their own interest. In order to defend the integrity of the academic profession, the vision of education as a social good and a right to all regardless of class, professors need to join the 99%. When is it going to happen?

Except those actually there. In fact, the ones out there this past month, for all the cacophony and their occasional sloppiness and disparate messages, seem to make the most sense to me. After all, while it is true that the cowboy capitalism of the past 40 years has wrenched the last slivers of democracy from the clenched teeth of the masses, it is also true that, in toto, we are in a far bigger, global crisis than we admit, and no single name or explanation gets it, in my opinion.

Not too far from where I live, an ozone hole was found above the Arctic, a place with already ever diminishing ice during the year, which, in turn, dulls the reflective nature of the Earth’s surface, making it absorb more heat which raises water temperatures, which causes ever more ice to melt near the Poles, which causes ocean levels to rise and apparently further heats up the planet. Now, while exactly what causes all that continues to have some doubters, I’ll step up and just say that I buy the industrialization and human causes are making things worse explanation, which seems possessed of the greatest “common sense”. This then has a connection to the ever increasing (and consciously manipulated) demand for fossil fuels and the crazily insatiable consumption patterns of the West and those increasingly growing second placers, the Third World.

Capitalism too, obviously plays a big role in this, but a newer kind of capitalism which, though it produces no steel or durable goods which requires maintenance of huge standing armies in order to guarantee access to oil and other resources we need more and more of. This, in turn, requires lying to everyone saying we need to be killing huge amounts of people “over there” in undeclared, unconstitutional wars so we can insure our “freedom” (to buy cheap stuff?) over here. And those men and women doing the fighting will return home injured, to few jobs, little care, loads of domestic problems, and an array of incompetent and clueless politicians who drone on endlessly but as far as I can see are saying nothing of any consequence at all.

To top it all off, while regular wages have been stagnant for the better part of 30 years, USAmericans are no less productive, and yet that the richest 1% own 35% of all the wealth. And, if one expands that number a bit to include richest 5%, we are now talking about an unimaginably large percentage of the total wealth of the US in the hands of basically a few families and their hangers on. This is 1970s El Savadoran proportions of wealth inequality and oligarchy. But there’s more: mercenaries now make up an important part of the US military actions around the world, killing with impunity and becoming an unprosecutable, independent force. Students graduating college today face Promethean levels of debt peonage if they are lucky, finding few jobs which pay significantly more than those same jobs would have a generation ago. Bridges are falling apart, roads stink, schools don’t have enough money for books or desks, teachers are demonized and fired, and the daily grind of staying afloat is tiring more and more people into despair.

A common thread is emerging in all this, though in several themes: first, elections and electoral politics are not working, and so at the very least, money needs to be taken out of the equation, giving average citizens as equal access to their political representatives as corporations and the rich possess now. Second, global, corporate capitalism is what has brought the world’s economy to this terrible state, and it needs to be reined in severely, or dismantled, and replaced. Third, the wealthiest of the country have been receiving an ever greater share of the riches and influence on economic, political, and social policies and this has to end. As Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandies once said, “We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.” This disparity can only be attenuated through restoration of the progressive taxation rates of the past, and a commitment to maintain them for the future. And fourth, the monies taken by government through taxation should be spent on social needs such as health care and education, rather than a bloated, imperial military, or bailouts for the already wealthy class. There’s also within all of that, the recognition that issues of class need to be addressed as never before, and that the fate of our planet as well as our democracy may be at stake if we don’t.

It’s a big mess out there and nobody is going to tell me that only one solution will fix it all. So leave those kids out there on Wall St. alone. Let them work out their demands, let them vent their anger, and allow the process of democracy to play out. Things are messy and they are tired of all of it and, if we are lucky, they will be the ones to cushion the fall. This American Fall.

The work was advising a joint venture, errands like gauging risk and return, or squeezing ministerial face for a competitive edge. Life went on throughout the Congo war, and so did commerce. The trick is to find a niche on the ragged edges of the war. If you live in a place where capital markets are ropy, war torn countries are not a bad place to salt your long-term capital away. Some Israelis were in on the joint venture: Israelis don’t mind war, when the other side is helpless, and in this war almost everyone was helpless. A farmer’s rusty panga could be an overwhelming force. The Mai Mai used spears to great effect. Molars and penises served as weapons, for cannibalism and rape.

The war still smolders today, in Kivu, Ituri, and Katanga. It causes us no disquiet. But what if we got greedy for peace? What if peace changed from a heartwarming word to a remorseless objective like efficiency or profit? What if we demanded more and more?

Well, it’s happening, and it makes our rulers nervous. In the Wikileaks cable dump, American diplomats reticently quote a novel term, the right to peace. Officials from Spain and Russia invoke it. The UN Secretary General is heard to say it. The conjunction of two freighted terms sounds like heartwarming blather, but from the mouths of shrewd statesmen, it’s of import. Even the most aristocratic Hotchkiss/Harvard meathead will begin to think that something is afoot.

For our war machine and its government, peace is always trouble. In the run up to World War I our government sent a presidential candidate, Eugene V. Debs,  to jail. His crime was opposing conscription. Socialist Charles Schenk was convicted of espionage. Schenk got a look at the Constitution, and pointed out that conscription looks a lot like unconstitutional involuntary servitude. Back then our antisemitism was for Jews, not Arabs, and we sent a few Jews up for twenty years. It seems they threw some leaflets out a window. In English and, insidiously, Yiddish, the alien anarchists denounced our invasion of Russia. They called for an end to arms production.

In 1940, Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Smith Act to silence commie putschists and their nonaggression, and in the traditional patriotic frenzy that invariably cascades into backwoods slapstick, Mississippi took the concept and ran with it, crafting its own national security law. They convicted some Jehovah’s Witnesses of questioning the point of war. In this case, though, peace might not have been what tore it. In what was probably the crucial atrocity, the Dixie heretics also linked the origins of our Pledge of Allegiance to the convent-school rites of French Papists.  In Mississippi, that’s a clear and present danger.

This embarrassing arc of American history still bends toward idiocy, with every provincial rent-a-cop and stewardess a homeland security hero. Arabic lettering on a t-shirt gets you kicked off a plane and questioned (though nowadays Yiddish is mostly OK.) The nation teems with deputized authorities demanding fatuous reverence to our proletarian cannon fodder and their hopeless anti-terror snipe hunts.

It’s not quite classic Orwell: to patriotic Americans, war may not be peace, but peace is insidious war. The government charged a Vietnam War protester with sedition for grabbing the leg of the recruit who stepped on him. It seems the mere word peace can be seditious. “Make love for peace… We’re trying to sell peace, like a product, you know.” John Lennon’s mischievous wordplay triggered a federal investigation — and eventually, a traditional American lone nut came along and solved the nation’s problem.

The war on peace is heating up again. Led by Patrick Fitzgerald, hero of the wet-squib Scooter Libby trial, federal agents infiltrated peace groups, and squads of paramilitary commandos raided their homes.  The pretext was an edict criminalizing support for terror, an ingenious Ermächtigungsgestz that could put Jimmy Carter away. The guilty peaceniks were foiled by state-of-art security innovations: from their elite squadron of burly termagants to the FBI deployed fake lesbians as agents provocateur.

To observe the 2011 United Nations International Day of Peace, the US scheduled the launch of a Minuteman III ICBM. True to American traditions of hearty redneck defiance, we were to spend the day of global ceasefire plinking at the Marshall Islands, our backyard tin can target. But word got out, and with a week to go the government postponed the launch, spoiling some unsung Air Force Strangelove’s fun.

Peace was all right in the old days. Back then it was exclusively the bailiwick of states, a stateman’s concern that was above their subjects’ pay grade. The League of Nations’ remit was the peace of the world. The members were states, monolithic black boxes interacting for the peoples sealed inside. The scope of their covenant was international law and treaty. To safeguard peace, the covenant provided for dispute resolution: by arbitration, by a new International Court of Justice, or by unanimous decision of the Great War’s victors in Council. The League bound its member states into a defensive alliance. The League’s covenant mandated disarmament and arms control.

The covenant looked inside states for one purpose only. Its disarmament provisions were based on a shrewd appraisal of the danger of war profiteering: “The Members of the League agree that the manufacture by private enterprise of munitions and implements of war is open to grave objections.”

Objectionable or not, war profiteering is the prerogative of America’s ruling class, and so Prescott Bush and Averell Harriman built us a top-quality enemy to fight. The two bankers were discreet stewards for Germany’s munitions, mining, and slaving interests.  Bush’s Nazi clients blew the League to smithereens.

The war made the allies nostalgic for peace. Perhaps they even idealized peace a bit, for they imagined it without misery. In June 1941, fourteen allies set out The Saint James Agreement, declaring:

the only true basis of enduring peace is the willing co-operation of free peoples in a world in which, relieved of the menace of aggression, all may enjoy economic and social security; and that it is their intention to work together, and with other free peoples, both in war and peace to this end.

The US had not yet joined the war and did not have occasion to sign on. But that summer, in The Atlantic Charter, Roosevelt and Churchill pledged to “lighten for peace-loving peoples the crushing burden of armaments.” The peace they promised to all men in all lands would let them “live out their lives in freedom from fear and want,” and it specifically included improved labor standards, economic advancement and social security. You could tell the commies had them running scared.

The United Nations first came on the scene not as an institution but as a group of belligerents. The Washington Declaration was their war cry. In the Washington Declaration the United Nations threw ‘human rights’ into the mix, more as a bonus of victory than of peace. Enumerated rights were then just a gleam in the eyes of Roosevelt’s Brains Trust, but rights were soon to take on a life of their own and complicate peace.

The Moscow Declaration of 1943 looked ahead to the end of war, to arms control and an international organization. The unnamed organization would keep the peace “with the least diversion of the world’s human and economic resources for armaments.” That principle carried through to the Dumbarton Oaks proposals defining the United Nations. Swords were to give way to ploughshares.  It was official. The Dumbarton Oaks Conference institutionalized well-being as part of peace.

The UN Charter was shot through with peace, as a purpose and a principle, but the institutional arrangements for pacific settlement of disputes left societies and associations out of it, focusing on states. Civil society was allowed a look in only on economic and social matters.

Peace waxed and waned. By 1984, the US had renewed its arms race. America planned to stud Europe with nuclear missiles. Europe reacted with mass protests for a nuclear freeze. The United Nations General Assembly weighed in with Resolution 39/11. Its Declaration on the Right of Peoples to Peace made explicit use of pervasive nuclear fears. The onus of peace-building was to fall on state policies and international dispute resolution, but the impetus had come from below. President Reagan blamed Soviet agents but he came to embrace arms reduction.

War returned to Europe and we bombed it to a frenzy in the Balkans, trying to help. The horn of Africa got out of hand too. America swaggered into the Somalia saloon to break it up and came back out through the window ass-up. This wasn’t what we had in mind at all.

Pacifists concluded that peace was too important to be left to the authorities. The Hague Agenda proposed the New Diplomacy, a collaborative process for citizens, pressure groups, and states. To put human and ecological needs ahead of national sovereignty and borders, they would “wrest peace-making away from the exclusive control of politicians and military establishments.”  The New Diplomacy dovetailed with the old pinko tradition of internationalism from below, which aimed to weaken states by linking different peoples across borders.

In 2000 the General Assembly adopted the Programme of Action on a Culture of Peace.  As the UN members redefined it, peace is not merely the absence of conflict. It’s a process, a treadmill of dialogue and conflict resolution. Fractious masses get involved. No more master strokes of deft diplomacy, no more parceling out nations on scraps of paper, fifty-fifty, ninety-ten — the Great Men of Yalta were dead, and the world they left us was bursting at the seams. The genial shipboard tea or walk in the woods was now to be supplanted by a bewildering welter of responsibilities, some defined in treaty law, some not. Tolerance. Solidarity. Cooperation. Pluralism. Cultural diversity. Dialogue. Understanding.

It could have been terribly cumbersome but the Supreme Court installed George Bush, scion of war profiteers and secret agents, the Saudis stuck a thumb in America’s eye, and that took care of the Culture of Peace.

The peaceniks saw it coming. They were ready. The world let the first illegal war slide: America milked universal sympathy to get a Security Council resolution authorizing nothing, and waved it like a banner as they marched off to war in Afghanistan. Worked like a charm, thanks to Americans’ blissful ignorance of the supreme law of the land. No one here knows what UN Charter Chapter VII says.  It never came up.

But when America tried that again, with Iraq, the world dug in its heels with the largest coordinated mass protest in history. February 15th, 2003 saw public assemblies in 794 localities worldwide.¹

In America a lot of militarist energy went into mocking pacifists as mournful chubbies holding candles, begging pardon for things they had no hand in. Jingoes derided as affectations their gentle demeanor and the compassionate sidelong inclination of their heads. America’s home-front warriors poked at their Achille’s heel: their inner peace was ineffectual here, in the land of war and death. But the new pacifists are hard-nosed guerreros wielding the disruptive potential of law and institutions against the American rogue state. Their brand of peace would drop a wrench into the works of our national meat grinder, impoverishing death merchants, dispossessing kleptocrats, and bringing murderous authorities to book. They set guns against butter in a battle to the death.

The UN set out to make peace an endless chore of states. To do it they went back to their Atlantic Charter roots. The UN Human Rights Commission got into the peace business with Resolution 2002/71. Peace was vital for human rights, they declared. War was a competing claim on resources that states need to improve living conditions, as required by social and economic rights. The Commission tied peace to development, subordinating guns to butter.

Making war and social justice an either/or choice helped consolidate dissent in the US. Now a common ideal brought the peace movement together with the more rambunctious sorts who besieged the WTO or spiked trees. Labor groups took up the antiwar cause. The peace movement gained troublemaking know-how, clever means of escalating pressure. United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ) coalesced, clogging the streets of Washington in 2003, falling in with 3 million people worldwide in 2004, and sparking protests in 750 US cities in March 2005.² Without losing focus they opposed trade pacts, Israeli genocide, and the boot we keep on dark-skinned peoples’ necks. Now there was something for everyone in peace. The October 2011 protests explicitly link our Afghan war to current economic deprivation.

Peace as social justice means the outrage never ends. Peace as not-war had kept pacifists reactive, their impetus dependent on imminent rumors of war. Antiwar energy flags when wars stop, or as they drag on. In America, party loyalty undercuts opposition to the wars your party starts or inherits. Political opposition to the Iraq war was tamped down once it had served its purpose as a Democratic party cause célèbre.

The work of linking peace with social justice brought the movement in America in line with the rest of the world. In America, a comprehensive view of law and human rights was confined to two distinct elements of society: governing elites and native peoples. By contrast, outside the US, peace and social justice movements had long fought for all the same things. Their governments do not shout down the UN or the ICC, so their societies could see human rights entwining with humanitarian law. For the rest of the world, questions of war and peace naturally involve rights: civil and political, economic, social and cultural. The European Social Forum spilled a million antiwar demonstrators into the streets in their usual overwhelming variety. The Jakarta Peace Consensus planned a people’s war-crimes tribunal to combat malefactors including neo-liberalism, corporate looters, the WTO and the World Bank.

It was not unheard of in America to link injustice and war. Martin Luther King’s 1967 speech, “A Time to Break Silence,” did just that, defining war as an enemy of the poor and rejecting the distinction between rights as a cause and peace. But then the Memphis police disbanded King’s security detail, a traditional American lone nut came along, and we heard nothing more of that for a long time.

Now, with peace propounded as a human right, legal experts worked to present peace and justice standards to the General Assembly. In 2006 a Spanish human-rights coalition met to write The Luarca Declaration on the Right to Peace.  The document left primary responsibility for peace with the UN and its member states, but it stepped back from war, as King did, to consider the desperation or predation that drives it, and linked war to the economic order. It defined human security in material terms as “instruments, means, and resources.” To permit mass participation it reaffirmed a right to truthful information. Since the most effective curb on war is populations dragging their feet, the Luarca Declaration asserted individual and collective rights of disobedience, objection, and denunciation.

The Luarca declaration spurred a hundred conferences and seminars in fifty cities worldwide. Local and regional governments signed on, along with universities and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs). The ferment spawned Right to Peace declarations in Bilbao, Barcelona, La Plata, Yaounde, Bangkok, Johannesburg, Sarajevo, Alexandria, and Havana.

In June 2010 the UN Human Rights Council formally requested a draft declaration from The International Congress on the Human Right to Peace. Four experts drafted the Santiago Declaration as a UN General Assembly Resolution.

When founding mother Virginia Gildersleeve wrote the soaring preamble of the UN Charter, the self-evident poesy of it left peace undefined. The Right to Peace movement now defined peace as the sum of all the specific requirements of UN charter documents and treaties. Since each UN body justified its mission as a means to the end of peace, it was easy to trace the legal authority back to the UN. UN members created the Human Rights Commission because rights and freedoms are requisite for peace. They created the World Health Organization and UNESCO because health and development are requisite for peace. They created the International Labor Organization because peace takes social justice. They created the Food and Agriculture Organization because hunger threatens peace. It’s all there in black and white in the constitutions of the UN agencies, adopted by the world by acclamation.

Peace then encompasses all state duties set out in the UN Charter, the International Bill of Human Rights, and evolving humanitarian law. Any lapse of the state through overreach or neglect violates the people’s right to peace, even absent war. Peace is a continuous series of popular demands, an unending test for the state, a regimen that saps the energy for war. Under this conception of the right to peace, the simple two-finger gesture holds our government to the detailed, objective standards of the civilized world. In a word or a sign, peace confronts our state with its manifold failure.

The Right to Peace provides a unifying framework for the growing body of treaty law that subordinates the state to its people. It has much in common with another effort at synthesis, a doctrine promoted by the UN Secretariat called Responsibility to Protect. But Responsibility to Protect is focused on averting the most serious crimes. By contrast, peace is a continuum. There is no threshold for minor failings. The Right to Peace means each state must always do its best. Oppression, exclusion, and impoverishment all compromise peace.

Peace so defined is a right for people and a duty of states. The Santiago Declaration sets out specific implications of the right to peace. Several of the declaration’s clauses mean trouble for our exceptional American state.

Article 2: People have a right to education that embeds peace in their culture, and helps them resolve conflicts. This provision is a straight forward affirmation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights Article 26 (2). The disruptive impact of this demand is fairly clear.

This is the land of Columbine and Virginia Tech, where massacre is practically an intramural sport. Competence in peacemaking would be something of a wrench here too, where conflict resolution is the purview of jack-booted school police who reprove their errant charges with handcuffs and Tasers, and of the paramilitary commandos who besieged a school in the war on tasteless bathroom pranks. When the yellow school bus lets them out under the protective wing of the No Passing sign, our men in blue shoot them dead. Yet it’s not all strictness and discipline. For tiny tots there are exciting helicopter visits from the National Guard for sanitized war play (we don’t make them play at pulping their little Pakistani pen pals from drones, not until they’re older.)

Extracurricular brutality aside, peace as a subject of inquiry is suspect here. The International Baccalaureate (IB) is a standardized course of study for the children of the international technocratic elite. It covers science, math, and the humanities. Despite its suspicious foreign provenance, the IB’s comprehensive rigor won the endorsement of the rock-ribbed jingoes of George W. Bush’s Education Department. The IB is an optional curriculum for No Child Left Behind. Today US schools conduct more than 1,300 IB programs, more than any other country. But the coursework includes subversive matter such as human rights and peace. In Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Utah, and even in the shadow of the imperial capital, Fairfax County, Virginia, the IB has come under attack.

The IB is not Judeo-Christian enough for Pennsylvania youth. Or it’s anti-American. Or Marxist. So say a slate of school board crackpots pledged to defend American values against their pupils’ desire to get into a decent college.  In the Republican gentile-Chełm of Fairfax, Virginia, the IB stands accused of encouraging “disarmament, socialism and moral relativism, while attempting to undermine Christian religious values and national sovereignty.” Peace and conflict studies were a particular sticking point, though experimental science also rankled. The Fairfax cosmopolites smelled international conspiracy in the IB’s fancy foreign books. In a woebegone town in Minnesota, parents fear the IB will suborn all the above-average children to atheism and one-world government.

In their struggle against popular demand, canny nativists have learned to attack the IB in technocratic terms. The Pennsylvania board took issue with the higher indirect costs of the small classes enjoyed by the ambitious minority. IB courses don’t pack their classrooms tight enough, it seems. Utah eccentric Margaret Dayton slashed IB funding out of a hazy sense that it was Not Invented Here (and to be fair, it does slight indigenous local traditions such as polygamy and messianic cults.) The problem is, she says, America is special. It needs special education.

Factional strife in provincial backwaters has confined peace education to more cosmopolitan cultural centers. The philosophical underpinning of peace has become one more class marker to stratify our society. A grounding in rule of law and world-standard governance is most sought after in exclusive private schools and in the segregated districts of the dominant class. The privileged students who learn it are absorbed into the ruling elite, where they can use peace as our government intended, as a weapon to attack other countries and justify our wars. The masses remain largely insulated from subversive ideas about social justice, dignity or development.

As a result, it falls to civil society to inculcate a culture of peace. UFPJ stresses education for its organizing cadres. The International Congress on the Human Right to Peace has drawn religious organizations into a consultation process. Armed with the Right to Peace, these sects can ground the sentimental notion of peace in dispassionate rights and rule of law. The result is a well-established threat to the state, the sort of thing that got the old-time Christians crucified. In Latin America, US clients exterminated bumptious exponents of liberation theology for decades. When the Berlin Wall fell, we let freedom ring with a mass murder of Salvadoran clergy by assassins we trained at Fort Bragg.  Just this year in US satellite Colombia, unknown assailants bagged us six priests. The Week of Peace had just ended when they chopped the last one up.  Inside America, repression is somewhat less straight forward.

Other articles are also problematic. Take Article 3: People must have freedom from fear and want. States must protect you from violence or threat of any kind. You cannot be reduced to desperation. This is pure old-time Americana. Franklin D. Roosevelt said, “For unless there is security here at home there cannot be lasting peace in the world.”

Or take Article 4: Our right to peace entails development, including freedom from unjust debt, and release from the sort of unfair order that leads to poverty and exclusion. We have a right to environmental safety, free from weapons that damage the earth.

Or Article 6: You must be permitted to resist oppression by breach of law or rights. War propaganda is prohibited – no more indoctrination in the glory or necessity of war.

Security, development, and freedom are always just around the corner. Our state is beavering away for peace, we’re told, but we can’t have it yet. The ill-will of a few dozen mad bombers on the other side of the world requires a globe-girdling police state, Soviet-style secret law, automated blanket surveillance, and abject deference to arbitrary authority. Resistance to war and oppression must be punished as a threat to our existence. So freedom from fear is a luxury we can’t afford.

As for freedom from want, don’t even think it. We’re tapped out, having gone deeper into debt to give bankers several trillion. The bankers needed it, you see, they ran their firms into the ground. The bankers took it home, every last trillion, and now you have to pay it back. So social security has to go. Kiss your right to health goodbye. A decent home and living? Maybe someday.

So after paying for the bare necessities of overwhelming, crushing might, a totalitarian police state, and state-sanctioned predatory fraud, there’s no money left for peace. The sheer spendthrift recklessness of putting human security first would ruin this state, which defines itself as anything but peace.

The Santiago Declaration has an answer to that objection. Under Article 7, States must disarm at their people’s demand, and fairly distribute the resources freed for equitable development, poverty reduction, and protection of the vulnerable. States may not delegate their war powers to private institutions.

But don’t the authorities know best? They have secret information. That dodge fails the test of Article 8: You have the right to information, to see war coming and to freely denounce it. States may not manipulate you into backing war. Your peaceful culture must not be suppressed.

When driving us to war in Iraq, the US government relied on suppression of information for a veneer of legitimacy. Its best trick was illegal collusion with its satellite Columbia, which held the UN Presidency at the time. Colombia accepted the IAEA report on Iraqi compliance with disarmament, and immediately turned it over to US officials, who took it home and censored it. US spooks cut out three-quarters of it and came back to pass out bowdlerized pap to an incredulous Security Council. The resulting preparatory fog of war concealed the profiteering that impelled the war and helped Colin Powell’s whoppers pass the laugh test.

To pull this stunt the US government flouted Articles 19 and 20 of the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (CCPR). The CCPR binds our state as treaty law, as we acknowledged when we signed up. It trumps our neo-Soviet secrecy rules. But the CCPR’s sole sanction is shame, and international disgrace was no deterrent to a government bent on war.

So the Santiago Declaration enlists the people to turn over our rogue state’s rocks. As the US went to war in Iraq, whistleblowers and foreign journalists gave the world a glimpse of what our government had to hide. Now independent entities such as Wikileaks help officials maintain their integrity and air the putrefaction of our wars. American activists such as David House risk vindictive prosecution to free our information.

You’d think there ought to be a role here for the authors of Pacem in Terris, with their universal viewpoint, but there is not. Ask the Catholics about cultural suppression. In Vatican doctrine, economic and social rights, the means of life, are as much a part of Catholicism as the right to life. But Catholic institutions and associations in America have been muzzled with respect to those bolshy rights. Perhaps it’s to do with the pyramid of priestly skulls down south. While the Catholic colleges do work of unique value, on UN reform and human rights – real advocacy, not foreign-service Pecksniffery – the laity by and large gets nothing out of human rights but monomaniacal fetus-hugging. The syncretic genius of the universal church makes room for lots of flag worship too. Say what you like about the Catholic Church, they certainly know how to ingratiate themselves with primitive cultures.

Consider Articles 9 and 10: Refugees and emigres must be protected when their human security is threatened. To safeguard their rights, they may participate in public affairs wherever they reside.

These articles would infringe quite drastically on American cultural identity. We love to torture migrants.  It’s the national pastime. It keeps us in touch with our genocidal folkways and helps insulate us from the global South’s dangerous ideas.

Under Article 11, victims have a right to know the truth, and a right to justice, including identification and punishment of those responsible, and redress, compensation and reparation. All their rights must be restored. This comes straight from the Convention on Civil and Political Rights, supreme law of the land.

Except… No. America’s Supreme Court³ fears that judicial redress might inhibit our courageous officials from using their authority. Authority here is understood to encompass murder, torture, and the highest crime, criminal aggression. In today’s America, justice is what our executive chooses to do.

Under Article 12, vulnerable groups must be protected. Vulnerable groups include individuals deprived of their liberty – even the bewildered children and dotards swept up in our terror dragnet. American public discourse distinguishes battlefield mayhem from torture as distinct technical problems. The Right to Peace says violence is violence. That includes even our venial violence to helpless captives – beating their hooded faces, gouging their eyes, slitting their genitals, drowning them, freezing them, pulping their flesh, asphyxiating them, leashing them, forcing them to masturbate, or raping them.

This provision really cramps our style. It fails to respect American culture in all its bestial glory. Our anti-terror gulag is run in precise accord with the exemplary domestic penal practices of the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, which is organized into White Supremacist gangs meting out lethal beatings and rape.

So in each of its aspects, peace rubs our government the wrong way but our ruling class accepts it, as a means to the end of social control. Democratic party placemen tried to channel pacifist ferment for partisan advantage and turn it off for subsequent wars. They were thwarted by the comprehensive demands of the right to peace. Public resentment mounted despite the party’s efforts to silence or deride dissent. Democrats showed they never wanted economic rights with their attacks on social programs. They showed they had no use for civil or political rights when they tightened the grip of the police state. They held the UN Charter in contempt when they tore up their authorizing resolution to topple a sovereign state and render one side defenseless in Libya’s civil war. They came out for state predation and exclusion when they propped up criminal banks that loot wealth worldwide.

When you assert your right to peace, neither party measures up. Voting is a pointless waste of time. The right to peace itself offers much more effective recourse: to disobedience, conscientious objection, denunciation, and non-participation, as set out in Article 5. You have a right to conscientious objection on non-religious UN Charter grounds. You may publicly denounce armaments production or development, and withhold participation. The troops may disobey unlawful orders – and orders without UN authorization are illegal under US law.

Organized groups exercising these rights could paralyze an outlaw state’s war apparat. America’s overwhelming destructive capacity can stand against the world, but not against its people. The requisite repression would bleed this weakened state white. Jihadist terror opened a vein, sapping the nation with a frenzied response of repression, profiteering, and war. As the state lurches toward failure, all opposition becomes a threat. Mounting repression marks a brittle and exhausted state. Consider the state’s torture and degradation of Bradley Manning for allegations that amount to crucial protections of the Santiago Declaration: the human right of disobedience under Article 5(4); and the peoples’ right to information under Article 8(1) and (2). Or take the pressure on Canada to extradite Jeremy Hinzman for exercising his right to conscientious objection under Article 5(3). When presidential candidate Ron Paul objected to US militarism and war, statist media engaged in a concerted campaign to silence him and shunt him aside.

It wouldn’t occur to a provincial like Paul to stand on his rights. Yet taxpayers like Paul who object to the use of their taxes for war would have recourse to Article 5(6): states must provide them with alternatives compatible with peace. Declining to pay taxes to the war machine, that is the A-bomb of peace. Libertarians, like all Americans, are trained to recoil from the UN as an overweening alien authority, but the rules of the so-called New World Order subject states to humans. In America, human rights are strictly diplomatic weapons, used by our state to club disobedient countries. By contrast, the Santiago Declaration uses human rights as intended, to help people resist overreaching states.

War, like peace, takes constant work. The population has to be brutalized every day. The preparatory propaganda for the Iraq war effectively demonized Saddam Hussein with nightmarish tales of torture from captured pilots. This proved to us that Saddam was a cowardly animal. The government knew that when our turn came to be cowardly animals, all loyal Americans would turn on a dime and torment the designated victims. The state maintains our bestiality with human sacrifice by lethal injection. Crowds celebrate each new sacrifice outside the prison, and party activists cheer the death toll in political rallies.

To America’s dominant religious tradition, war is sacred.  The right kind of war fulfills the prophecies of the Book of Revelation, lifting a curse, renewing heaven and earth, annihilating unbelievers, and uniting obedient Christians with their god. This is no outcast cult. Its worshipers include leading legislators, presidential candidates, senior special forces staff, and an Air Force hierarchy that coercively proselytizes cadets. Their final battle’s coming: they’ve poured out the sixth bowl. Their enemy is peace. We are the mirror image of Iran, with vulnerable humanists struggling to appease a hostile blood-and-soil theocracy.

Death and suffering, that’s the critical national resource. The state has harnessed them to generate power. Death and suffering power this state. We’re the wasting assets being depleted. But weak nations and powerless peoples have begun to form a sort of cartel. They want to take control of death, constrict supply and raise its price. The Right to Peace is an OPEC for blood.

1. Bennis, Phyllis, Challenging Empire: How People, Governments, and the UN Defy US Power, Northampton MA, Interlink Publishing Group, 2006, p. 261.
2. Bennis, op. cit., p. 63-67
3. Ashcroft v. al-Kidd, 131 S.Ct. 2074, 2087 (2011) Kennedy, J., concurring

Though schools are meant to promote learning, they are, in fact, one of the most effective tools in destroying the love of the learning. A long and dreary compulsory curriculum, the constant evaluation and the utter loss of freedom do just that. As children enter kindergarten they are anxious to learn and understand the world about them. These same students, a few years later, almost without exception, regard learning and reading as being boring and of no interest to them. The end result is citizens who are not interested in learning the facts that are relevant to important issues. Such people are not capable of taking on an active, meaningful role in a democracy and are inclined to leave issues to the “experts” – the voices presented to them by mainstream media – the very people who serve society’s established interests.

One thing that students do learn from their school experience is that people get what they deserve. Their report cards come with a statement of the class average or the prescribed standard. One half of the students in every class learn that they are below average. This further discourages learning and leads to further poor marks. As the message is repeated year after year, these students fully understand that they are among life’s losers, the underachievers and the undeserving. Upon leaving school, they have been prepared to accept the miserable, low-wage jobs that our society creates. They accept their lowly status in society as their own fault and do not become voices demanding change. The world of business relies on school to produce such workers and to produce them in large numbers.

School also works its magic on those who are successful at school. These students come to understand that schooling is about marks, not learning. They have succeeded in attaining higher marks and earning more advanced degrees. They have heard educators and parents state that without an education they will suffer in life, and that attaining an advanced education is the key to worldly success. The successful students come to believe that they are deserving of a disproportionately large share of society’s goods. School don’t just help create an unjust society composed of the overly rich and the overly poor, school also creates students who see these divisions as natural and just.

Schoolchildren’s lives are dominated by assessment and marking. Everything they produced is graded, and determined to have a certain value in the eyes of the teacher. Students very quickly learn that their own value, and the value of the work they produce, is rooted in the opinion of an external authority. Self-exploration and self-expression are less important than the approval of those with power over them. The graduates of this system have been trained to accept the common wisdom of the day and the values of the powerful. They no longer critically evaluate things on the basis of their inherent goodness or justice.

A fundamental docility is the key to success in school. Students can play pranks and even organize a small protest – perhaps about the quality of the lunches in the cafeteria -  and earn some applause from their elders. But all students know that to succeed they must comply with the many hours of work and the detailed instructions handed down by the teacher. Any student who proclaims that he or she is unwilling to follow the long compulsory program is labeled a problem, and a troublemaker, and will ultimately earn our most crushing label, that of school dropout. Every student knows that a fundamental challenge to the values and procedures of school is futile. And so we have a society populated with adults who know that fundamental challenge to entrenched authority is futile. We have a society in which the majority of people are prepared to accept injustices as something about which they can do nothing, The forces of injustice could not ask for a more pleasing situation.

At school, abstract knowledge and learning is glorified. The world that we can see with our eyes, and touch with our hands, is never regarded as important as the abstract ideas that can be used to manipulate that world. The natural world is understood only insofar as we can exploit it. A study of the world forests, for example, falls under the topic of “natural resources.”  Forests are to be understood insofar as they contribute to the material benefits that humans want to extract from them. So children grow alienated from the natural world and comfortable with the profound ecological damage worked by our industrial society.

The defenders of the public system suggest that school will be changed for the better when progressive forces are in charge of society. Such a development is rationally logical, yet practically impossible. Progressive forces will not come to power so long as regressive schools are turning out the overwhelming majority of citizens. Given our present school system, the forces of injustice can quite happily sit back and relax, knowing that their opposition has been cut off at the knees.

We need an education revolution, and we need it in order for any progressive transformation in our governments to take place. As progressives, we need to establish a broad network of schools with a radically new mode of operation that will turn out a new kind of adult citizen. It will require tremendous commitment and sacrifice and work. The great irony is that it is conservative forces that are championing charter schools when it should be progressive voices that are establishing independent, community-based schools as agents of transformation.

You may say that this cannot be done, that such a project is beyond our resources, that we are powerless to change the fundamentals of the education system. I would just ask you: where did you get that idea?

The school was going to make the Presidential speech available to students, but allow the partisan and/or bigoted parental crowd to shield their probably already-sheltered offspring from anything threatening the pale (as in white, conservative and “good”) worldview that they themselves espouse and do everything in their power to instill in their children.

The image of former President George W. Bush (looking dazed and meek) sitting in a classroom full of kids while the terrorists attacked on 9/11, came to mind. Had that school contacted all their pupils’ parents to make sure it was okay to let Bush into their school for a press op? How would those children and or parents have been treated if they had refused to give their Commander-in-Chief audience?

Do they have a Gitmo for children?

When I first got the notice that children’s middle school was taking precautions regarding President Obama’s speech, I wasn’t surprised. I simply viewed it as another step in the baneful ossification of the Republican electorate. Fox News doesn’t encourage an informed American worldview. Dissenting voices confuse things. Contradictory viewpoints are anathema.

It’s much easier to despise President Obama if you ignore him. It’s much easier say he’s not an American or a Christian if you don’t listen to him speak. It’s much easier to claim he’s a Muslim and a terrorist if you’ve never watched him try to communicate his thoughts.

As long as all you expose yourself or your kids to is the opinions and views expressed by Fox News (or Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck), it’s easy to maintain a conservative worldview because the indoctrination settles over you in layers, day after day, week after week. Eventually the sediment of close-mindedness ossifies and neither you nor your sheltered children have much of a chance of viewing President Obama as anything other than a dangerous interloper who must the enemy.

This kind of rigidity is not conducive to cognitive, much less intellectual development. Intelligence needs to be well-rounded, tested and, if possible, demonstrable. Single, slanted sources (as we now know from the lead up to the Iraq War) are not reliable or trustworthy.

If you don’t like President Obama, that’s your prerogative. I’m not a huge fan myself of late. If you don’t want to watch the address he makes to our children, fine. Ignore it. But don’t demand that your kids go to school or be at school with their eyes half-closed and their minds half open. They should be trusted to decide these things for themselves. We should love them enough to give them a chance.

My kids are too young to have sedimentary worldviews and I don’t want their minds or spirits fossilized before they’ve had a chance to be properly formed—by them—not me.

The problem with the “American conversation” these days is that we are not conversing. Too many people on both sides are simply talking to themselves or talking only amongst themselves.

This is the kind of atmosphere that usually makes it easier to lynch folks. This is the form of tunnel vision that created McCarthyism. This is the stunted thought process Nazi Germany was born of.

Closed minds and hearts may be more American than open minds and hearts these days. But they shouldn’t be. Especially when it comes to our children.

It reminds me of the old Eastern contemplation that asked “What is the sound of one hand clapping?”

Right now the sound of one hand clapping is Fox News.

Right now the sound of one hand clapping is either side of any issue only listening to what it has to say.