¶ The Paragraph

The day after she got out of jail, Martese Chism gave an interview to Mike Malloy on his nightly radio talk show.¹ On Saturday, October 22nd, Chism, and her fellow registered nurse, Jan Rodolfo, were manning the first aid tent at Occupy Chicago in Grant Park, when police came to clear the occupation.²

[A]t 11 o’clock white shirt Chicago police officers came up and told us that there’s an ordinance that says you have to leave the park at 11 p.m., and if you do not leave or move your tent, you will be arrested. And then they were like “Are you sure you don’t want to move your tent, or do you want us to move your tent?” And we told the officers we believe that Chicago occupiers have a right to protest, a right to assemble and freedom of speech, and we believe that this ordinance is violating that right. And as long as the protesters are here, we will be here. … [F]inally at 1 o’clock they put this big light, like a ball park light, and put it on the tent. And then they moved in on us. And so all the protesters surrounded the tent to prevent them from taking the tent down, and to prevent them from arresting us. So they surrounded the protesters and us, and then maybe like an hour later they moved in. They arrested the back people first and then they went to the right side, the front. And then once they arrested everybody, … they took the tent down and we were just standing there, and there was people watching us get arrested. We were the last two to get arrested.

Chism then spent 23 hours in a cold jail cell, from which jailers had taken the mattress.³

Malloy asked Chism, who is black, about her grandmother, who helped with the Freedom Summer project in 1965. During Freedom Summer, young people, many of them white, went to Mississippi to urge black adults to register to vote.⁴ Some of the young people ran schools for black children, teaching them active citizenship.⁵ These activities threatened the Jim Crow racial caste system, which had been operating in that state for 90 years.⁶ And some of Jim Crow’s enforcers murdered some of those Freedom Summer workers, Chism’s grandmother likely among them.^{7 8 9}

My grandmother, her name was Birdia Keglar. And in the 1960’s … she marched with Dr. King, and made the effort trying to get the black people in Mississippi to register to vote. So in January 1966, when I was five years old, she went to Jackson, Mississippi, to give testimony there – with a group, this was like three cars. She went to Jackson, Mississippi, to Senator Robert Kennedy’s hearing to give a testimony on them being denied their right to vote. And on her way back, she was pulled over and it was maybe six people, but her and another woman, they were murdered … And at the time — I mean cause they let us know that you could die, but to keep the dream alive and keep moving forward. And so at six years old, that’s when I made up my mind that when everybody else was crying at the funeral, as a child I didn’t cry. I said, “I will continue your dream, continue your fight.” And so I went on to college, and did everything. And until now, it looks like the things that the civil rights people fought for, that the American dream is in trouble. And I feel that it’s my time, the nurses’ time to fight to save this dream … And on her way back in that car, you know when they tell the story … My grandmother dealt with a lot of college kids, white college kids, coming down there to help them. She would hide them in her home, and I was too young to remember. So when I see these kids, it brings back memory … when she did it. And that’s why I’m like, they’re standing up for their rights, this is not the first time young kids have stood up for other people’s rights. … [A]nd our nurses union, we believe that’s the right thing to do so we’re standing with them.

Chism said she would go back to Grant Park:

… As long as they’re out there, we’re going to be out there with them.

Malloy asked, “Is there anything you need listeners of this program to do — just support the movement I guess.”

… They need to call their legislature. Because, what our union is trying to do, is to get Congress to tax Wall Street. Because we believe that this economic crisis, it was caused by Wall Street. And so we’re trying to get Congress to pass a financial transaction tax. … [T]he only way we can heal Main Street, we have to deal with Wall Street. And I know it’s not going to be an easy fight, because I can see what the president is going through now. But if people put the pressure, like they did with the civil rights movement. And even with freeing the slaves, it’s the people. So the people need to start moving. Join the nurses, doing the Occupy Wall Street. And we have a movement to move Washington into the people’s direction.

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Between the Arab Spring uprising in Egypt, and its successor Occupy uprising in America, President Obama has had different reactions.¹ On January 28th, right after police cracked-down on Egyptian protesters to clear Tahrir Square in Cairo, President Obama made strong remarks:^{2 3}

As the situation continues to unfold, our first concern is preventing injury or loss of life. So I want to be very clear in calling upon the Egyptian authorities to refrain from any violence against peaceful protesters.

The people of Egypt have rights that are universal. That includes the right to peaceful assembly and association, the right to free speech, and the ability to determine their own destiny. These are human rights. And the United States will stand up for them everywhere.

…

But we’ve always been clear that there must be reform: political, social, and economic reforms that meet the aspirations of the Egyptian people. In the absence of these reforms, grievances have built up over time. …

Violence will not address the grievances of the Egyptian people. And suppressing ideas never succeeds in making them go away. What’s needed right now are concrete steps that advance the rights of the Egyptian people: a meaningful dialogue between the government and its citizens, and a path of political change that leads to a future of greater freedom and greater opportunity and justice for the Egyptian people.

On Tuesday last week, right after police cracked-down on Occupy Wall Street protesters to clear Zuccotti Park in New York City, President Obama made no remarks on the event.⁴ But his press secretary did answer a question about the president’s reaction:⁵

[T]he President’s position is that obviously every municipality has to make its own decisions about how to handle these issues, and we would hope and want, as these decisions are made, that it balances between a long tradition of freedom of assembly and freedom of speech in this country and obviously of demonstrating and protesting, and also the very important need to maintain law and order and health and safety standards, which was obviously a concern in this case.

So for Egypt, a call for the government to address the people’s grievances; for America, no such call. For Egypt, a clear statement for the human rights of assembly and free speech; for America, a hope to “balance” those rights. For Egypt, a call for police to keep from violence; for America, as the log of police violence lengthens, silence.^{6 7}

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“Welcome to the Plutonomy Machine,” began a 2005 report by three Citigroup analysts to their investor clients.¹ The report called the United States a “plutonomy” — an “economy powered by the wealthy,” where “there is no such animal as ‘the U.S. Consumer’ …”

There are rich consumers, few in number, but disproportionate in the gigantic slice of income and consumption they take. There are the rest, the ‘non-rich’, the multitudinous many, but only accounting for surprisingly small bites of the national pie.

And the report called today’s plutonomy the “Managerial Aristocracy,” and set its place in history:

The Managerial Aristocracy, like in the Gilded Age, the Roaring Twenties, and the thriving nineties, needs to commandeer a vast chunk of that rising profit share, either through capital income, or simply paying itself a lot.

The report backed its theory with the 2001 Federal Reserve Consumer Finance Survey, which showed the top 1% in income having more than the bottom 40%, and the top 1% in net worth having more than the bottom 80%. The analysts forecast that the plutonomy would strengthen, but that it would likely some day face a backlash from labor and society. Their forecast came true on the first count. The plutonomy did indeed strengthen, until the Bush Crash in 2008, with the top 1% in both categories stretching their shares.² And after the crash, which was largely caused by Wall Street bank scams, the plutocracy (plutonomy’s cousin) revived the global financial system by pumping trillions of dollars into big banks, and blocking all but a little prosecution and regulation of the culprits.^{3 4 5} Those actions, and inactions, put the plutonomy back on its feet, and with the GDP and the stock indexes up, government statisticians declared the Great Recession to be over.^{6 7} But for the non-rich, the jobless rate stays high, the poverty rate climbs, college student debt deepens, and the home mortgage foreclosure wave rolls on.^{8 9 10 11} And now the Citigroup analysts’ forecast seems to be coming true on the second count. The day of backlash has come with the Occupy Wall Street action becoming the Occupy Movement, which strives to end the rule of the 1% richest, and make a society where the government and economy works mainly for the 99%.^{12 13} In other words, the Occupy Movement strives to end the plutocracy and the plutonomy. The Citigroup analysts’ report said:

Could the plutonomies die because the [American] dream is dead, because enough of society does not believe they can participate? The answer is of course yes. … There are signs around the world that society is unhappy with plutonomy … But as yet, there seems little political fight being born out on this battleground.

Now the political fight has been born, and the next Citigroup report to investors may begin with “Welcome to the Plutonomy Backlash.”

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From the start, people have likened the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, also known as “the stimulus”, to the New Deal’s famous public works program, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) started in 1935.^{1 2 3} Over its eight years, the WPA hired eight million people to work on 1.4 million projects, many of which built roads, bridges, sewers, airports, parks, reservoirs and electric transmission — infrastructure that has lasted decades, some to this day. While the Recovery Act did not hire workers directly, its funding, loans and loan guarantees saved or created jobs for three million people.⁴ Many of those people worked and are still working on the 45,000 projects that the Recovery Act classifies as infrastructure, transportation or energy/environment.⁵
One of the bigger of those projects, the Ivanpah Mojave Desert solar plant, will stand among the world’s largest, putting out 400 megawatts of electricity. Another big power project, the Caithness Shepherds Flat Wind Farm in Oregon, will stand as the world’s largest wind farm, putting out 845 megawatts. Some of the bigger transportation building projects are the Moynihan Station Amtrak train hall in New York City, the Innerbelt Bridge in Cleveland and the Caldecott Tunnel in Oakland. And one of the biggest of the Recovery Act’s electric vehicle battery projects, the new Johnson Controls advanced battery plant in Holland, Michigan, makes complete lithium-ion battery systems for hybrid and electric vehicles.
Since its start in February 2009, the Recovery Act has completed about 21,000 of the 45,000 infrastructure-type projects, while the rest will continue to course through the domestic economy for another few years. While the Recovery Act’s running time won’t last as long, the public good from the infrastructure it builds may well last as long as that of the WPA.

Cleveland Shoreway in 1939 – built by the WPA (Ohio Federal Writers’ Project)

Cleveland Innerbelt Bridge – to be built with Recovery Act funding
(Old bridge to be replaced is ghosted-out in foreground.) (ODOT)

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Political winds seem to be blowing against U.S. teachers. Republican state governments accuse teachers of having lavish benefits, and pass laws to tear-up their contracts and destroy their unions.¹ A public school district superintendent refuses to bargain, fires the entire teaching staff, and the Obama Administration applauds.^{2 3 4} These same policy-makers take standardized testing of students, now used, with questionable reliability, to rate schools, and push it to rate — and fire — teachers.^{5 6 7 8} All of these actions seem to come from a notion that there are a great many bad teachers that should be fired and lazy teachers that could be threatened into working harder. But who has seen many of these bad and lazy teachers? Among my 50 or so public school teachers from kindergarten through twelfth grade, all but one did a passable job or better. The one who didn’t was just old and too unaware to rein in her wild ninth-graders, and soon retired. Nevertheless, let’s count her as failing, giving us one-in-fifty, 2% of teachers that could not do the job. That hardly makes a great many. Now think back on all of your teachers, K through 12. Leaving aside whether you liked a teacher, what percent really did not do a passable job?

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