2012: Year of Indigenous Resistance in Mexico
This article by Kent Peterson is re-posted from ZNet. Editor’s Note: This posting is in honor of the January 1, 1994 Zapatista uprising.
Once again, the international press – and a good deal of the Mexican one – missed the real story coming out of the Mayan heartland. Zoomed in on the completion of the ancient Mayan calendar and the media-hyped, predicted end of the world December 21, the corporate show boys did not notice or grasp the significance of the silent mobilization that occurred on the afternoon of the 21st in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas.
In an almost step-by-step replay of their New Years’ Day 1994 uprising, tens of thousands of masked and uniformed members of the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) marched in military formation into five Chiapas towns.
A big difference between this year’s action and the one nearly 19 years ago is that the Mayan Zapatistas of 2012 did not carry guns or utter words. And according to Proceso magazine, their numbers this year- estimated between 30,000 and 50,000 people- were many-fold greater than the several thousand fighters who launched the 1994 revolt on the day that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) went into effect.
The emblematic Zapatista spokesperson Subcomandante Marcos, who mysteriously vanished from the public limelight during the past four years, delivered a brief but ironic message issued by the EZLN’s Clandestine Revolutionary Indigenous Committee-General Command that declared in part, “Did you hear? This is the sound of your world being torn down, and of ours resurging…”
In one swift move, the Zapatista’s reappearance laid to rest widespread rumors of Marcos’ and the movement’s demise.
“Thousands of young men and women who represent the new cadres of the EZLN paraded,” wrote Proceso writers Jose Gil Olmos and Isain Mandujano. “They were born or grew up after 1994 when the insurgent group burst on the political scene in the days that Carlos Salinas Gortari was announcing the entrance of Mexico to the First World…”
The Zapatistas’ “Mayan Apocalypse” march also fell on the eve of another important date-the 15th anniversary of the Acteal massacre in Chiapas, when 45 Mayan men, women and children were slaughtered by paramilitaries originally organized and coordinated by the Mexican armed forces as part of a counterinsurgency plan.
The EZLN’s public reemergence could be interpreted as a message to new President Enrique Pena Nieto and his PRI party to not attempt a repeat of an earlier PRI administration’s counterinsurgency scheme, and to comply with the 1996 San Andres accords, an agreement recognizing the rights of Mexico’s indigenous peoples which was reached between the government and Zapatistas but never respected by the former.
The Zapatista mobilization is far from the exception in 21st century Mexico. From north to south and from east to west, many of Mexico’s estimated 15 million indigenous people have spent a milestone year immersed in a thousand battles to recover ancestral homelands, organize community-based security and justice systems, face down foreign mining and energy companies and, like the Zapatistas’ Good Government Councils in Chiapas, carve out autonomous zones of political power.
In the process they’re showing the world alternative paths in implementing community security and justice institutions, furthering grassroots participation in governance and striking the proper balance between economic development and environmental protection.
In the states of Michoacan and Guerrero, more and more indigenous communities are taking security matters into their hands. Besieged by organized crime, the Purepecha community of Urapicho, Michoacan, followed the lead this fall of their neighbors in Cheran by posting armed guards and erecting barricades at the entrance to the small town.
Similar actions were soon reported in neighboring Guerrero state, where indigenous communities in the municipality of Olinala reclaimed their security. The latest citizen uprisings dovetail in many ways with the community policing and justice movement that first arose in Guerrero in the mid-1990s following the Zapatista revolt to the south.
Unlike law enforcement and justice systems devised in state capitals, Mexico City and foreign nations, the community police/justice model hails from the bottom up and is rooted in indigenous customs. Typically, the lightly-armed police officers are locals who are selected through community recommendation and consensus. Alternative justice is often meted out through community service and victim restitution as opposed to incarceration.
At last month’s 17th anniversary ceremony for the Coordinating Council of Regional Authorities (CRAC), the leadership body of Guerrero’s community police, at least 23 new communities announced they were enlisting in the movement.
The pledges bring to more than 100 indigenous communities in 13 municipalities of the Costa Chica and La Montana zones of Guerrero participating in community policing. Upwards of 1,200 community police officers joined with supporters from Cheran, Olinala and Mexican social movements like the Other Campaign at the gathering. Speakers linked the movement to fights for cultural survival, economic justice, self-determination and autonomy, and protection of Mother Earth from mining and other forms resource exploitation.
“For us, justice implies the possibility of having health, education and the strengthening of our cultures..,” Felicitas Martinez Solano, CRAC councilor, was quoted in La Jornada.
Defending communities and the earth
Opposition to new mining operations by Canadian and other foreign capitalists is at the forefront of many indigenous struggles across Mexico. In November, for instance, 5,000 indigenous residents of Zautla, Puebla, demanded the closure of the Chinese-run JDC Minerals mine, contending the facility will contaminate springs, crops and soil, as well as harm human health. “No to the mine, yes to life!” chanted the protesters.
In northern Mexico’s Sierra Tarahumara country, the indigenous Raramuri people are increasingly active in defending their lands from illegal loggers, tourism developers and other encroachers.
Earlier this year, Raramuri litigants won a major victory in Mexico’s Supreme Court when the justices ruled that indigenous residents had a constitutional right to participate in the Copper Canyon Trust Fund, an organization spearheading tourism development in the Sierra Tarahumara of Chihuahua state.
The high court’s members also noted that relevant national law is similar to the International Labor Organization’s Convention No.169, which protects the rights of indigenous communities and tribal peoples. Mexico is among 22 nations that have ratified the international agreement. The United States is not one of them.
However, the issue of genuine indigenous participation in decisions affecting their homeland is far from resolved.
In a September letter to Chihuahua Governor Cesar Duarte, three Raramuri leaders from the communities of Huetosachi, Bacajipare anjd Mogotovo explained why they were boycotting a government-sponsored meeting. Maria Monarca Lazaro and the other Raramuri spokespersons asserted that recent tourism projects in the Copper Canyon region had brought land speculation, increased drug and alcohol abuse, marginalization of traditional crafts sellers, and water shortages, among other negative impacts.
The letter demanded a temporary halt to tourism, logging and resource extraction projects; the resolution or expedition of Raramuri land claims in the courts; and the release of pertinent information about development plans so Raramuri leaders could adequately discuss the issues with community members.
“We want the decisions we take to be respected,” the letter concluded. “Our way of life tells us that decisions can’t be made on their own; we have to take our people into account.”
Resistance in the NAFTA region
The surge in Mexican indigenous activism comes at a time of mounting resistance by the aboriginal peoples of the other NAFTA member nations. In the U.S, indigenous communities are battling against the KeystoneXL Pipeline, proposed new uranium mines and coal-fired power plants. In Canada, meanwhile, a national uprising called Idle No More, named after a poem by former American Indian Movement leader John Trudell, is taking hold against government attempts to curtail treaty concessions, exploit lands and assimilate First Nation’s peoples into the melting pot of Canadian capitalism.
Like earlier periods in history, the lands of indigenous peoples in Mexico, Canada and throughout the hemisphere are the coveted prize of outsiders profiting from economic booms elsewhere. Only this time they are doing it under a free trade regime that allows capital to move much easier across borders.
In a statement that echoes sentiments of indigenous activists in Mexico and across the Americas, Idle No More calls on “all people to join a revolution which honors and fulfills Indigenous sovereignty, which protects the land and water.” The new movement concludes:
“Colonization continues through attacks to Indigenous rights and damage to the land and water. We must repair these violations, live the spirit and intent of the treaty relationship, work toward justice in action, and protect Mother Earth.”
Demanding a serious hearing of long-standing grievances of Canadian First Nations, Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence declared a hunger strike this month in the national capital of Ottawa until a meeting was held with Prime Minister Stephen Harper, whose conservative government has promoted the recent spike in Canadian mining investment in Mexico and Latin America, an expansion which has often been accompanied by controversy and violence.
In Mexico, indigenous activists frequently continue to be the target of violence and repression. Among the latest suspected victims is Celodonio Monroy Prudencio, Nahua defender of the Manatlan Biosphere Reserve from illegal loggers in the borderlands of Jalisco and Colima states.
The director of indigenous affairs for the municipality of Cuatitlan in Jalisco, Monroy was taken away from his home last October 23 by a group of heavily-armed men dressed in military-style uniforms, according to his wife Blanca Estela, who reportedly witnessed the forced disappearance. “We don’t know anything, (officials) don’t know anything, and when I ask them they say they don’t know…,” she later told La Jornada’s Jalisco edition.
Despite the ongoing and historic repression directed against them, Mexico’s indigenous communities push forward in defense of their lands, their cultures and their ecosystems.
The year 2012 reminded the world of the relevance of the slogan that was popularized after that New Year’s Day nearly two decades ago when the Zapatista National Liberation Army burst into history: “Never a Mexico without Us!”
2012 Censored news stories in the US
This video story is re-posted from Project Censored.
Project Censored director Mickey Huff was recently interviewed for the show Inside Story on Al Jazeera English. He discussed the ongoing problems of censorship and under reporting in the US as well as highlighted some of the past years most significant stories published in Censored 2013: Dispatches From the Media Revolution. Greg Mitchell of The Nation magazine was also a guest on the program.
MLive eulogizes another War Criminal: Norman Schwarzkopf
On Friday, MLive wrote a short article about the passing of Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf.
The brief eulogy was mostly about a 1995 visit to Grand Rapids by Schwarzkopf, where he criticized then President Clinton on his Bosnian policy.
The MLive story then states, “But those misgivings did not stop “Stormin Norman” from calling for “100 percent” support for the American troops in harm’s way.” Such a statement is meant to elicit the belief that Schwarzkopf always had the best interests of US troops in mind. This is a nice sentiment, but it has nothing to do with reality.
Norman Schwarzkopf was born into a military family. His father was in the military and involved in the first CIA coup in Iran in 1953 (see Stephen Kinzer’s All the Shah’s Men).
Schwarzkopf had a military career, but was not know to the American public until the US war in the Persian Gulf, known by its military designation as Desert Storm.
Schwarzkopf was in charge of major military operations during the US invasion of Kuwait and then Iraq. This war was supposed to be about defending the sovereign nation of Kuwait, even though Kuwait is a monarchy, but it was primarily about oil and US hegemony in the Middle East. The timing of such an invasion is important to note, since it took place right around the time that the Soviet Union was collapsing, making it the first real post Cold War intervention.
Like in most wars, the US was using a new generation of weapons, weapons that we all learned a great deal about from the US news media particularly the new 24 news network, CNN.
One outcome of the use of such weapons was a very low US troop casualty rate, which we were told about repeatedly during the 6 weeks the war lasted. What we didn’t hear a great deal about in US news coverage, was the brutality done to Iraqi soldiers and civilians.
Iraqi troops were no match for the US military arsenal, especially since the US used a massive aerial assault early on that pretty much devastated the Iraqi Defense Forces.
Knowing they were outmatch, the Iraqi military began to retreat and surrender, but this did not deter the US military’s intent to send a strong message to the rest of the world about what happens when you defy the US.
On February 13 a US bomb killed 1,500 civilians in a Baghdad bomb shelter, and two days later President Bush urged the Iraqi people to overthrow Saddam Hussein. On February 21 Soviet diplomats announced that Iraq had agreed to withdraw unconditionally from Kuwait. The US gave them two days to do so before starting the ground attack. On February 26 as Iraqi troops tried to retreat or surrender along the Basra road, thousands were slaughtered during the “turkey shoot” on the “highway of death.” Two days later Iraq and the US agreed on a cease-fire; but two days after that, thousands of Iraqi soldiers were killed in another battle that did not kill a single American.
Some of those Iraqi soldiers were killed, not by bullets, but because they were buried alive in the sand. The US military put snowplows on tanks and push thousands of pounds of sand on top of Iraqi soldiers who were in ditches. This was reported in the US, but months later, like this New York Times article.
At the time some of us in Grand Rapids had been reading independent news and found out about the death of Iraqi soldiers from being buried alive in the sand. When then President George Bush came to Grand Rapids to celebrate July 4, 1991, we laid down in front of the very tanks that were used to bury Iraqi soldiers alive in the sand, since those tanks were part of a July 4 parade in downtown Grand Rapids.
Iraqi civilians were also targeted by the US military. Besides some of the largest bunker buster bombs that hit bomb shelters, the US also targeted the following:
Hospitals, health clinics, schools and kindergartens were bombed, education eradicated so totally that the stores for educational materials, in buildings separate from the schools (usually in a central distribution point some miles away) were also bombed. Agriculture in all forms was deliberately targeted. Chicken farms bombed, flocks of sheep and goats, broadly half of all buffalo were killed, dairy farms obliterated. Crops, food processing factories reduced to rubble.
The US military also bombed the countries water filtration plants, as has been well documented by Thomas Nagy. In addition, the US used depleted uranium in the weapons, which continues to irradiate Iraq and the region, the people, flora and fauna -and will continue to do so for four and a half billion years.
All of these actions described here by the US military are violations of international law and constitute war crimes. Such war crimes were well documented by a team of legal experts, led by Ramsey Clark.
Thus thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians were killed during Operation Desert Storm, most of it led by Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf. Such crimes were omitted from the MLive eulogy of Schwarzkopf, readers were instead told about his visit as a motivational speaker at a 1995 business conference in Grand Rapids. Now that is truth in journalism.
Labor and Reproductive Rights should be fought for together
This article by Linda Gordon is re-posted from ZNet.
On December 11 Michigan passed two right-to-work laws, one for public and one for private employees. As even our president said, they mean right to work for lower wages. These laws do not make workers free to reject joining a union; they already have that right. They abolish the requirement that those who don’t join a union pay the equivalent of union dues, a requirement designed to prevent “free riders” – workers who benefit from union contracts without paying their fair share. Three days later the same lame-duck legislature passed the most extreme anti-abortion laws in the nation. These laws define as abortion even the removal of a “fetus that has died as a result of natural causes, accidental trauma, or a criminal assault on the pregnant woman.” The laws prohibit any private or public insurance from covering abortion; charge physicians performing abortion with the responsibility of seeing that any piece of human tissue receive the burial due to a deceased person; put the burden on the physician to prove that the abortion patient was not coerced. Perhaps worst, the laws place many arbitrary requirements on clinics, none of them health related, and would force most of the state’s women’s clinics to close.
This coincidence of anti-labor and anti-abortion legislation is not a coincidence. They are part of the same right-wing agenda. If progressives are to build successful resistance to that agenda, our own agenda needs to include both labor and reproductive rights.
But unions and other supporters of labor have ignored reproductive rights. Some of this hands-off position came from deference to Catholics, but if that was once reasonable, it no longer is. Over 95 percent of Catholics use contraception in defiance of the church’s teaching and plenty of Catholics have abortions. Another reason for ignoring reproductive rights was the traditional maleness of unions, also no longer the case.
But the worst problem has been defining reproductive rights as a “women’s issue” and a feminist demand, which evokes the old labor and Left view that feminism is a movement of elites. That’s wrong too: if you ask women not about the label “feminism,” but about the issues that make up a feminist program – such as equal pay, equal job opportunity, affordable day care, shared housework, an end to violence against women, and reproductive rights – it turns out that working-class and poor women are the most feminist.
In fact, the Republican “war on women” is not just targeting women, any more than the war on labor is targeting only men. All middle- and working-class people, and especially the poor, benefit from a strong labor movement -it’s our best bulwark against a race to the wage bottom. In parallel, being able to control how many children to have and when to have them is something men as well as women need. Access to birth control has become a necessity of modern life, and this is the opinion of the majority of Americans of all groups, including African Americans, Latino Americans, and Muslim Americans.
The great majority of abortion decisions are made jointly by the men and women responsible for the pregnancy. The great majority of abortion decisions rest on economic considerations: we can’t afford a child, or another child; we can’t survive on one income; child care is too expensive for us; it would be better to finish high school, or college, or graduate school first; it’s too soon after the previous birth; I can no longer rely on my mother or sister or grandmother for help.
In other words, anti-abortion laws amount to class legislation, even if not all their proponents realize that. As in the past, during the century when abortion was made illegal, the well-to-do always found ways to obtain abortions through paying private physicians or traveling to countries more realistic about sex and the economy. It’s working-class and middle-class people and the young who depend on the clinics that the Michigan law will close. One-quarter of all poor women who get birth control get it at one of these family planning clinics and for many, they are the first entry point into any adult health care. At most clinics, initial visits are free and fees for further services depend on income – for the poor, typically $20. The majority of clinics provide women with postpartum and prenatal care, well-baby care, immunizations, and physical exams. More than 40 percent provide primary health care and many also provide genetic screening, mammograms, infertility counseling and mental health care. These clinics are usually the only source of reproductive health care for the most marginalized groups: drug abusers, prison inmates, the disabled and the homeless. And they often serve men as well as women, providing HIV testing and referrals, safe sex instruction, and prostate and testicular cancer screening.
Other abortion decisions are made by teenagers who don’t have access to contraception, or whose partners pressure them into sex and won’t use condoms, or who think that using contraception makes them “sluts.” These are the women who are least well prepared to be parents at the time.
The best way to reduce abortions is of course to make contraception easily accessible and free. (Although most anti-abortion advocates also oppose these measures.) But accidents happen; contraception is not flawless. And neither are people. Sex is an unruly force. That’s why, as all teenagers know, abstinence education doesn’t work.
But there’s an immediate political consideration too: however misnamed, the “war on women” angered and mobilized women across class lines. The Republican attacks elicited an outpouring of money and support for Planned Parenthood; when the Komen breast-cancer foundation tried to cut off support for Planned Parenthood, it was forced to take back its threat within days. This resistance represents a growing awareness of the dangers of the right-wing agenda. Pro-choice people tend to be progressive on many other issues too, including domestic spending and foreign policy. But not all understand fully how destroying labor unions pushes everyone’s standard of living downward.
Here in Wisconsin the massive uprising against the Scott Walker/ALEC agenda in 2011 was probably majority female. Then in his victorious election campaign, Walker appealed explicitly to his base of white men, talking up hunting, guns, and projecting a combative, aggressive image, while the anti-Walker campaign noticeably neglected raising any of the “women’s issues.” Instead, the anti-Walker forces should have prioritized the connections between his anti-union and anti-women’s rights agenda. Union forces simply can’t afford to write off “women’s issues” as outside their concern. Building an alliance between feminist groups and the labor movement should be a high priority.
New Media We Recommend
Below is a list of new materials that we have read/watched in recent weeks. The comments are not a “review” of the material, instead sort of an endorsement of ideas and investigations that can provide solid analysis and even inspiration in the struggle for change. All these items are available at The Bloom Collective, so check them out and stimulate your mind.
Accompanying: Pathways to Social Change, by Staughton and Alice Lynd – Long time activists and insurgent historians, Staughton and Alice Lynd give us another gem. Building on their own experiences of doing anti-racist work, union organizing, prison solidarity and anti-war activism, the authors present to us the idea of accompanying. Accompanying is another way of describing solidarity, but it is more relational in nature and operates on the premise of being present with others in the struggle. This is a term that we used when I worked in Latin America, where we would accompany people who were receiving death threats from government or paramilitary groups. The authors talk about their experiences of accompaniment in the 60s civil rights years and while doing prison solidarity. However, the longest chapter, and the one that best describes accompaniment, is the chapter on slain Salvadoran bishop Oscar Romero. A powerful and inspiring book about how we are present with each other in the struggle for justice.
We are Many: Reflections on Movement Strategies, From Occupation to Liberation, edited by Kate Khatib, Margaret Killjoy and Mike McGuire – Of all the anthologies on since the Occupy Movement rose up in the fall of 2011, this collection of essays are by far the most dynamic and comprehensive. There are numerous personal testimonies from those who have been part of occupy experiments across the country, but what makes this collection of writings so powerful is both the critical assessment it provides of Occupy and lessons learned from the insurgent movement(s) in the US over the past year. Some authors provide brilliant analysis of what went wrong and what grassroots groups/movements still need to come to terms with when these kinds of revolutionary manifestations occur. Other contributors provide fabulous toolkits on everything from how to deal with cops, the importance of research and the value of autonomy. A wonderful collection that should be read widely and shared enthusiastically.
Colonialism, by Mia Ramnath – This is the fifth in a series of zines we have looked at from the Institute for Anarchist Studies. Mia Ramnath, author of the book Decolonizing Anarchism, provides us with a wonderful essay that articulates the essence of what colonialism is a historical context and looks at how traditional colonialism has evolved since WWII. Ramnath makes it clear that the US engages in colonialism through direct military occupation, the use of proxy forces and global economic institutions like the IMF and World Bank. In addition, this intelligently delicious zine talks about resistance movements abroad and in the US as essentially decolonizing movements that reclaim space that has been taken over by colonizing forces. This is what makes the zine so powerful, in that it expands our notion of colonialism as something beyond history. Highly recommended.
8: The Mormon Proposition (DVD) – This documentary exposes the Mormon Church’s historic involvement in the promotion and passage of California’s Proposition 8 and the religion’s ongoing campaign against gay rights. The film takes place in California and Utah as Mormons, following their prophet’s call to action, wage spiritual warfare with money and misinformation against gay citizens, doing everything they can to deny them of marriage and the rights that come with it. An important contribution for understanding the some of the anti-LGBTQ forces in the US.
Dangerous Rush to Legislate on Surveillance and Mental Health? An Interview with Dean Spade
This interview is re-posted from ZNet.
With cliffs, abysses and deadlines on every front, the New Year’s shaping up to be a dangerous place for justice. Consider the pressure to do “something” on gun violence. Spurred by the horrific slaughter in Newtown, President Barack Obama has tasked his administration to get serious about legislation before the end of next month. “This time, the words need to lead to action,” he said.
But what action? On gun control, a battle royal is shaping up. On mental illness, action may come more easily, but it may be just the wrong sort.
We still don’t know if the gunman in Connecticut suffered from mental illness but the killer of four firefighters in Webster New York was clearly disturbed. (In the note he left, he pledged to burn down the neighborhood and “do what I like doing best, killing people.”) The moment invites politicians and pundits who are jockeying for limelight (and scared of the NRA) to call for increased mental health screening and treatment, even of the mandatory sort.
PBS broadcast a piece this week about California’s “Laura’s Law” which provides court-ordered outpatient treatment for the seriously mentally ill. It was passed in 2002 but generally shunned since for civil liberties reasons. Nationwide, forty-three other states have laws permitting some form of involuntary outpatient commitment and as PBS reported, the recent killings “have raised once again the issue of forcing the mentally ill into treatment.”
Author activist Dean Spade, a professor of law at the University of Seattle, says that incidents like the Virginia Tech and Newtown shootings are often followed by calls for increased surveillance and involuntary treatment of people with mental illness.
“This is not surprising—for decades we have been told that locking more people up and building more walls and metal detectors and installing more cops and cameras will make us safer, so we are used to that response,” said Spade this week.
The problem is, it does not work, and instead the people who are targeted are not those who are actually most dangerous, but those who are already considered “suspicious” in culture that’s racist, xenophobic and anti-immigrant.
“We have a long history in the US of giving people involuntary medical treatment and using mental institutions to lock up people who are “different” or threatening to social norms,” says Spade. What will actually make us all safer is more accessible, voluntary mental health care. About one in four adults suffers from a diagnosable mental illness, according to the National Institute of Mental Health, but millions of those who report needing mental health services don’t receive care because of its cost or its negative stigma.
“So many people who could use mental health care do not reach out for it because they are afraid that they will be locked up involuntarily if they reach out to a provider,” says Spade.
At his press conference announcing the task force to reduce gun violence, President Obama said “We’re gonna need to work on making access to mental health care at least as easy as access to a gun.”
Yet, exactly as the shootings debate is playing out, funding for mental health services are teetering on the fiscal brink. Obama and Speaker John Boehner are considering long-term cuts to Medicaid, which underwrites services for more than 60 percent of people in the public mental health system, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. And that’s on top of state cuts amounting to some $5 billion from public mental health spending in the past four years, even as ten percent more people have sought services.
It takes us back to the same old story: we’d all be healthier under a free national health care system not subject to the Congressional football match. Meanwhile, we’re likely to see action for action’s sake, and that’s served us—especially some of us—very poorly.
I had a chance to talk recently with Spade, about “trickle up, rather than “trickle-down” justice. Trans activist and founder of the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, Spade is the author of “Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics and the Limits of Law.” An edited transcript is below. The video is posted in two parts, here and here.
PART ONE: The Most Imprisoning Society in the World:
Laura Flanders: Let’s start with Sylvia Rivera, The Sylvia Rivera Law Project which you founded ten years ago was named after a very special person, but not someone who is well known. Can you tell us a little bit about Sylvia?
Dean Spade: Yes, Sylvia Rivera was a trans women of color activist who was extremely active in the 60s and 70s. She was one of the people at the Stonewall rebellion. Some people credit her with being the first person to throw something at the cops. So she’s kind of a historical figure of great import for that reason. But for the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, the reason she is so important to us is throughout the course of the mainstreaming of the gay and lesbians rights movement in the 70s, 80s, 90s and today, she was a voice saying that we cannot keep marginalizing people of color and poor people.
She stood up against the way that trans people were kind of kicked out of the movement and the way that the “gay and lesbians rights” frame came to center white people, people with wealth, people who met traditional norms; gay and lesbian identities that look as much as possible just like straight couple identities, and she died in 2002 the year that I started the project. We do our work with her as one of our key inspirations for what it means to build racial and economic justice and our struggle for trans resistance.
And what is a poverty law center? What does that mean?
[A poverty law center] means that one of the main things we do is we provide free legal help to poor people who are facing a bunch of different issues. In the context of our work, trans and gender nonconforming people experience really specific, difficult conditions inside the systems where poor people are concentrated.
Homeless shelters, juvenile facilities (like foster care group homes), jails and prisons: all these places are gender segregated: men’s, women’s, girls and boys. They are places of extreme violence for gender outsiders and also for a lot of trans people there’s a lot of exclusion.
Our clients can’t get placed in drug treatment, can’t get placed into a shelter because they are going to be placed incorrectly and they’re going to face a lot of violence. So, we’re looking at the specific, really intense conditions of violence and poverty that trans communities are facing and we are providing free legal assistance, from things like deportation proceedings to welfare hearings.
How has the economic crisis of the last few years affected the people you work with?
The economic crisis has had huge impacts on our clients. Already the people we work with are criminalized, highly poor and homeless, but cuts to existing programs and benefit systems (really going back to the 90s) have made a major impact on people’s abilities to get basic needs met; to get housing… And of course the drastic growth in criminalization and immigration enforcement means that more and more of our clients are locked up in various prisons.
[For a trans person] what is the trajectory from maybe having a low-wage job to finding themselves criminalized or locked up?
Most trans people can’t even get low-wage jobs because there is just really widespread discrimination. People are like “We don’t want to hire someone like that to work in our store…”
Most people are pushed into criminalized economies. A lot of trans people are in the sex worker economy because that’s one of the only places where trans people are allowed to work. That, of course, leads to high levels of criminalization. [Also] there’s a stereotype…that trans women of color are all sex workers.
Tons of our clients are people who whether or not they are engaged in anything illegal are being profiled and policed. There are several sort of routes to criminalization. Also, it’s a crime to be a poor person in the United States. In New York City you can see this every day: sleeping outside is a crime that can get you locked up; sitting on the sidewalk if the cops think you’re poor or homeless can be a crime. Just getting by and being poor can mean going to jail.
Are trans people more likely to be homeless?
Yes. Trans people are more likely to end up homeless. One of the reasons is, it is so unsafe in the existing shelter systems. One of the pieces of work of the Sylvia Rivera Law Project over the last ten years is focused on the treatment of trans women in the department of homeless services here in New York City and this work has kind of ricocheted around the country with a lot of groups concerned with similar issues. In general, in homeless shelters, trans woman are denied access to women’s shelters. So the option is go into the men’s shelter and be the only woman there and face enormous likelihood of sexual assault. Or, stay street homeless because you are trying to figure out what’s the safest thing. If you don’t go into the shelter system in most cities you can’t qualify for other forms of low-income housing.
The problems around job discrimination produce the likelihood of homelessness and poverty, and then there’s the fact that the minimal services we have don’t accommodate trans people.
What about family care? We hear about a lot of people staying much longer than normal with their families, their birth families or going home when they can’t find a job in this economy.
Unfortunately most trans people experience a lot of family alienation because of our identities. There are always counter stories (there’s a lot of hope in that area and I think that there are some changes happening), but it’s a pretty typical experience not having family support if you’re trans, which can contribute to poverty having a deeper impact because there’s not a safety net there.
So we’ve established that you’re dealing with people who are some of the most vulnerable, the most vilified, the most criminalized in our society. You come out with an analysis that isn’t just about them or even about them, it’s about our society. What have you learned, in broad strokes, from this work that has surprised you?
I think the biggest take-away from the work I have done from the Sylvia Rivera Law Project for the last ten years is the significance of different forms of criminalization in the lives of poor people, and the way that that criminalization is highly racialized and highly gendered.
[It’s racialized and gendered] in terms of who gets arrested and what the police think looks unusual [and in terms of] which neighborhoods [police] spend time patrolling …[also] who’s doing the work, or surviving in ways that are going to give them too much contact with the police. And what actually happens in America’s prisons.
We are the most imprisoning nation in the world. We have five percent of the world’s population and twenty-five percent of the world’s prisoners. And the people in our prisons are primarily people of color and poor people imprisoned for crimes related to poverty.
Inside those prisons there is outrageous racial and gender violence, in all of them: the women’s prisons and men’s prisons… All of that picture, plus the additional picture of how much our immigration system has grown and (especially within the last ten years). We are deporting more people than we’ve ever deported, our immigration prisons have also grown by about four-fold; [they] are privatized and run at a profit. When you look at all of that, [the prison system itself turns out to be] one of the biggest sources of violence in the lives of Americans in my opinion.
What does it have to do with our model of change? Often our stories of change in this country have been, well, if you could just criminalize certain kinds of behavior—things like discrimination or violence against women or hate crimes—that will improve society. Will it? What do you think about hate crimes and the legislation that has tried to criminalize discrimination?
One of the really interesting contests inside trans communities and more broadly in queer and trans politics is whether or not hate crime laws actually work. Whether or not they are a good way to try to deal with violence against queer and trans people. And a lot of us are saying that this strategy doesn’t really work. It definitely doesn’t prevent violence against us.
Nobody has ever argued that when people are thinking who to beat up or kill tonight they look through some book and say, “oh, there’s a higher penalty if I do it for this than that.” That’s not how violence works. There is no argument that it prevents our deaths or beatings, but what it does do is it enhances the punishing power of the system that is actually the main perpetrator of violence against us.
In the lives of SRLP clients the most common perpetrator of violence is the police, corrections officers or immigrations officers. What does it mean to add power to that system?
Part of the way we see it is that the system has been desiring growth very intensely for at least the last 40 years and that growth has been motivated by profit (prisons are privatized, etc.) So, the real reason that the system wants to pass hate crimes laws is not because it is going to save our lives, but because the system wants to grow in any direction. We’ve really been looking carefully at whether or not that strategy has any benefit for preventing violence.
When you look over the ten years of the Sylvia Rivera Law Project—and congratulations on your ten years—what do you see? There is certainly more visibility, there’s more inclusion, there’s more “tolerance” [of trans people.] What else?
I guess I would say that in the last ten years you see more gay and lesbian organizations put “T” in their mission statements. There’s some more visibility in the media of certain kinds of stories about trans people, yet the actual conditions on the ground for trans people are worsening with the growing criminalization and immigration and the growing wealth divide in the United States, which the Occupy Movement has made very visible.
That’s one of the questions I am asking in the book: how come certain kinds of visible inclusion practices don’t result in material gains? I think you could ask that more broadly looking at the last 40 or 50 years in the United States. There has been so much work to declare us more equal in law, to say that racism and ablism and sexism are illegal, and yet you see the actual conditions of racialized violence and of the growing apparatus of criminalization worsen. You’ve seen the wealth gap worsen, you’ve seen women still experiencing an enormous wage gap; you’ve seen the attacks on reproductive health worsen. You’ve got to ask what is it about legal inclusion or legal equality frameworks that don’t deliver the goods on the ground?
So what is it?
I think part of what I think I’m learning from my own experience in trans resistance and other movements is that those promises of legal equality that allow state apparatuses of violence to grow in our names don’t actually deliver what we need. To actually get what we need [we need to understand] that grassroots struggle has been whatever has won anything material in terms of material change in the U.S.
I think the question is how can we turn our attention away from just getting our names on hate crimes law or our names on antidiscrimination laws that aren’t going to deliver the goods, and towards actually building meaningful strategies for dismantling criminal and imprisonment regimes, for getting rid of these violent border regimes that we have and for actually addressing poverty.
PART TWO: “TRICKLE UP SOCIAL JUSTICE”
How did you get involved in all of this? How did you grow up?
I grew up in central Virginia with a single mom and then later with some foster parents. I grew up as a poor person. I think that that had a lot of impact on my understanding of the world, and also with a single parent and seeing the sexism my mom experienced as a low-wage worker trying to get by in the welfare system. I think I was heavily politicized by the mid-90s welfare reform, which really helped me understand the stakes of some important policies that I really cared about. I was also really politicized by feminist and queer movements in that same time period. I think that led me to sort of formulate the politics that said, how can we have racial and economic justice be the center of queer-trans resistance, instead of an afterthought or something that is entirely left behind.
Do you have success stories you want to share? I know you are involved heavily with fights to stop the building of a new youth prison in Seattle and similarly involved with the Stop and Frisk campaigns in New York…
I think some of the most exciting strategies I see around the country are strategies to stop the expansion of criminalization and immigration enforcement. That looks like a lot of different things on the ground. It looks like people in local places like what we are doing in Seattle, trying to stop to stop the building of new prisons and jails –that’s huge. The system keeps expanding, it keeps sucking more people into it and hurting them while they’re there and not solving any of our problems.
Also, there’s a major national movement to stop what Obama has called “secure communities,” the framework increasing the participation between immigration enforcement and criminalization.
It’s also seen, obviously, in SB 1070, the famous controversial “show me your papers” law in Arizona. That whole trend towards criminalizing immigration and forcing more and more immigrants to live under worsening conditions is being fought back at so many levels. Also, the campaigns against stop and frisk here in New York City that have been very publicized. All of these are efforts to look at what is making this system keep devouring our communities; how do we dismantle brick by brick these really harmful machines that are leading these communities into these prisons, and how do we actually build what we need to be safe?
There are two things that I want to quickly lift up from your book, related to the way you use language. You don’t talk about discrimination; you talk about “life-shortening.” I’d like to ask you about that choice and you talk about an “imprisoning” society and people being “criminalized.” In most texts you read about people engaging in criminal behavior or “criminality” existing in certain communities. Talk about those choices and the thinking behind them.
The reason that I talk about harm and violence facing communities in terms of “life-shortening” (or sometimes I talk about the “distribution of life chances”) is because I am trying to get us to think in a material way on the ground about why some people’s lives are affected by lack of healthcare, lack of adequate nutrition, being exposed to more pollutants… The kind of material, harmful conditions that face us, which our communities are trying to resist.
I’m trying to talk about that because I want to move away from a conversation that’s solely about whether we can get the law to say good things about us. The government has declared that it’s not okay to beat up trans people; we have the federal Matthew Shepard/James Byrd Hate Crimes Law and people see it as a big stance against violence. [But it won’t prevent the violence that we’re talking about.
[Instead, I’d like us to be talking about] all the actual, material conditions that are shortening our lives, that are happening all the time and are being exploited and increased by austerity measures—and other moves from that same government that declares that our deaths are a problem.
I think part of what the book is trying to do is shift us away from asking what does the law say about us to what are legal structures doing to us and how do we actually resolve those material conditions?
In other words, emphasize the active verbs around criminalizing and imprisoning??
Yes. We live in a country where 24 hours a day you can watch Law and Order on T.V. There’s a lot of propaganda around criminality that tells us that there are these dangerous bad people, serial killers, serial rapists, who’ve got this criminal behavior problem.
In reality or criminal justice system works very differently. The reality is that all of us break laws all of the time, but that only certain people and certain communities are heavily policed and pushed into prisons (usually for very low-level crimes related to poverty.)
When we move away from thinking about individual criminals and bad people (which is the fiction that justifies the system) and look instead at these giant nets that are cast over (primarily) people of color and poor people in communities so as to bring more and more people into these private prison systems, where prison guard unions and prison corporations are seeking to influence politicians to pass more criminalizing laws (that will fill the beds and make more money…)
It’s a very different way of thinking about what criminality is, what crime is and what we would actually do to try and have a safer country.
Does it change your perspective on change making? And how social justice increases in society? We are often led to believe that if you let some people forward the rest will follow, but you suggest that it’s the other way around.
One of the ideas that I care a lot about is an idea that I call “trickle up social justice” as opposed to “trickle down.” One of the ways of thinking about social change is, let’s get one of the few most charismatic people, the people that look the most like what society already thinks are good people, and have a few really spectacular cases and maybe some New York Times articles about them and people will think that we are good and like us and perhaps we’ll make an advance for everyone.
It turns out that doesn’t really work…
It turns out if you solve the problem for the people who are the least vulnerable of the vulnerable, usually you end up mobilizing ideas that actually further the stigma of those who are considered outside or not good enough.
The idea of trickle-up social justice is that we should ethically start with those who are facing the worst conditions, those who are most losing their lives, those people in prison and immigration facilities and experiencing poverty and homelessness. We should start by figuring out how to solve the problems for them and inevitably that will solve the problems for everyone. It doesn’t work in reverse. That’s part of the idea. It’s a critique of the gay and lesbian rights strategy of choosing a few really charismatic, white couples and having that be the image of what an anti-homophobic framework is. That hasn’t really worked out for people on the bottom.
Dean Spade, Thank you.
Thank you!
Dean Spade is the co founder of the Sylvia Rivera Law Project and the author of “Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics and the Limits of Law.”
Where’s the outrage when Democrats vote to continue government spying?
The US Senate on Friday voted to reauthorize the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, a spying bill that critics say violates the Fourth Amendment and gives vast, unchecked surveillance authority to the government.
The move extends powers of the National Security Agency to conduct surveillance of Americans’ international emails and phone calls.
The FISA Amendments Act Reauthorization Act (H.R. 5949), passed on a 73-23 vote with 73% (30) of Democratic Senators voting in favor of greater government monitoring of and spying on US citizens.
Amongst the 30 Democratic Senators that voted for extending and expanding the Bush government spying policy were Michigan Senators Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow.
Once again we have “liberal” Democrats voting for something that is anti-democratic and repressive. What seems to be different about these laws passing now under the Obama administration, than under the Bush years, is the lack of outrage against our collective rights being under attack.
During the Bush years people were up in arms about government spying, the Patriot Act, war and silencing free speech. The same things continue under Obama, but show me organized opposition.
All these liberals have been saying for the past two presidential elections that we need to vote for Democrats because it would be so bad if Republicans controlled the White House and the Congress. Well, the Democrats control both and it isn’t pretty. What is worse is that instead of taking responsibility for voting for Democrats that are just as repressive as Republicans and represent the interests of the 1%, liberals will just respond to their candidates voting for government spying with the comment, “well, it would be worse under a Republican administration.”
Action Alert: Pressure Snyder to Veto anti-reproductive rights bills
We have received information from several groups in West Michigan and across the state that are working to pressure Governor Snyder to veto the various bills that are now before him that, if signed into law, would be a serious blow to reproductive rights in Michigan.
Governor Snyder received HB 5711 yesterday and SB 1293 and SB 1294 will be on his desk soon. Snyder has 14 days to either sign or veto HB 5711 (deadline is January 10th). He can also take no action, in which case the bill is dead, which is what is referred to as a pocket veto.
While some groups tried to work with the Governor’s office on this legislation to address some of the worst aspects of the bill, groups such as the Progressive Women’s Alliance believe that HB 5711 (S-3), “remains a terrible bill that shames women and their doctors.”
We asked the President of NOW GR, Dani Vilella, to respond to the bills that are now waiting for Snyder to either sign or veto. Vilella said:
“While there have been changes to HB5711 since its introduction in June, those changes do not go far enough. HB5711 along with SB 1293 & 1294, which ban abortion coverage in public and private insurance plans without a separate rider, do not protect women. They do not help to end the need for abortion, or reduce the unintended pregnancy rates in Michigan. They are punitive, plain and simple. They seek to restrict women’s right to make choices for their own bodies, health and lives.”
“NOW GR urges the Governor to veto these bills and asks the people of Michigan to reiterate this message by calling or emailing the Governor’s office as soon as possible.”
Along with NOW GR, Planned Parenthood, the Progressive Women’s Alliance and the ACLU of Michigan are all calling on people to contact the Governor’s office as soon as possible and demand that he veto these anti-choice and anti-reproductive rights bills.
Action Alert
Contact Governor Snyder and demand he veto HB 5711, SB 1293 & SB 1294
Call: 517.373.3400
E-mail: rick.snyder@michigan.gov
Or go online to https://somgovweb.state.mi.us/GovRelations/ShareOpinion.aspx
GOP and Feinstein Join to Fulfill Obama’s Demand for Renewed Warrantless Eavesdropping
This article by Glen Greenwald is re-posted from Common Dreams.
To this day, many people identify mid-2008 as the time they realized what type of politician Barack Obama actually is. Six months before, when seeking the Democratic nomination, then-Sen. Obama unambiguously vowed that he would filibuster “any bill” that retroactively immunized the telecom industry for having participated in the illegal Bush NSA warrantless eavesdropping program.
But in July 2008, once he had secured the nomination, a bill came before the Senate that did exactly that – the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 – and Obama not only failed to filibuster as promised, but far worse, he voted against the filibuster brought by other Senators, and then voted in favor of enacting the bill itself. That blatant, unblinking violation of his own clear promise – actively supporting a bill he had sworn months earlier he would block from a vote – caused a serious rift even in the middle of an election year between Obama and his own supporters.
Critically, the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 did much more than shield lawbreaking telecoms from all forms of legal accountability. Jointly written by Dick Cheney and then-Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Jay Rockefeller, it also legalized vast new, sweeping and almost certainly unconstitutional forms of warrantless government eavesdropping.
In doing so, the new 2008 law gutted the 30-year-old FISA statute that had been enacted to prevent the decades of severe spying abuses discovered by the mid-1970s Church Committee: by simply barring the government from eavesdropping on the communications of Americans without first obtaining a warrant from a court. Worst of all, the 2008 law legalized most of what Democrats had spent years pretending was such a scandal: the NSA warrantless eavesdropping program secretly implemented by George Bush after the 9/11 attack. In other words, the warrantless eavesdropping “scandal” that led to a Pulitzer Prize for the New York Times reporters who revealed it ended not with investigations or prosecutions for those who illegally spied on Americans, but with the Congressional GOP joining with key Democrats (including Obama) to legalize most of what Bush and Cheney had done. Ever since, the Obama DOJ has invoked secrecy and standing doctrines to prevent any courts from ruling on whether the warrantless eavesdropping powers granted by the 2008 law violate the Constitution.
The 2008 FISA law provided that it would expire in four years unless renewed. Yesterday, the Senate debated its renewal. Several Senators – Democrats Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden of Oregon along with Kentucky GOP Senator Rand Paul – each attempted to attach amendments to the law simply to provide some modest amounts of transparency and oversight to ensure that the government’s warrantless eavesdropping powers were constrained and checked from abuse.
Just consider how modest these amendments were. Along with Democratic Sen. Mark Udall of Colorado, Sen. Wyden has spent two years warning Americans that the government’s eavesdropping powers are being interpreted (by secret court decisions and the Executive Branch) far more broadly than they would ever suspect, and that, as a result, these eavesdropping powers are being applied far more invasively and extensively than is commonly understood.
As a result, Wyden yesterday had two amendments: one that would simply require the NSA to give a general estimate of how many Americans are having their communications intercepted under this law (information the NSA has steadfastly refused to provide), and another which would state that the NSA is barred from eavesdropping on Americans on US soil without a warrant. Merkley’s amendment would compel the public release of secret judicial rulings from the FISA court which purport to interpret the scope of the eavesdropping law on the ground that “secret law is inconsistent with democratic governance”; the Obama administration has refused to release a single such opinion even though the court, “on at least one occasion”, found that the government was violating the Fourth Amendment in how it was using the law to eavesdrop on Americans.
But the Obama White House opposed all amendments, demanding a “clean” renewal of the law without any oversight or transparency reforms. Earlier this month, the GOP-led House complied by passing a reform-free version of the law’s renewal, and sent the bill Obama wanted to the Senate, where it was debated yesterday afternoon.
The Democratic Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Dianne Feinstein, took the lead in attacking Wyden, Merkley, Udall and Paul with the most foul Cheneyite accusations, and demanded renewal of the FISA law without any reforms. And then predictably, in virtually identical 37-54 votes, Feinstein and her conservative-Democratic comrades joined with virtually the entire GOP caucus (except for three Senators: Paul, Mike Lee and Dean Heller) to reject each one of the proposed amendments and thus give Obama exactly what he demanded: reform-free renewal of the law (while a few Democratic Senators have displayed genuine, sustained commitment to these issues, most Democrats who voted against FISA renewal yesterday did so symbolically and half-heartedly, knowing and not caring that they would lose as evidenced by the lack of an attempted filibuster).
In other words, Obama successfully relied on Senate Republicans (the ones his supporters depict as the Root of All Evil) along with a dozen of the most militaristic Democrats to ensure that he can continue to eavesdrop on Americans without any warrants, transparency or real oversight. That’s the standard coalition that has spent the last four years extending Bush/Cheney theories, eroding core liberties and entrenching endless militarism: Obama + the GOP caucus + Feinstein-type Democrats. As Michelle Richardson, the ACLU’s legislative counsel, put it to the Huffington Post: “I bet [Bush] is laughing his ass off.”
But what’s most remarkable here is not so much what happened but how it happened. When Obama voted in 2008 to massively increase the government’s warrantless eavesdropping powers, I so vividly recall his supporters insisting that he was only doing this because he wanted to win the election, and then would get into power and fix these abuses by reversing them. Yes, there were actually large numbers of people who believed this. And they were encouraged to believe this by Obama himself, who, in explaining his 2008 vote, said things like this:
“I know that the FISA bill that passed the House is far from perfect. I wouldn’t have drafted the legislation like this, and it does not resolve all of the concerns that we have about President Bush’s abuse of executive power. . . .
I do so [vote for the FISA bill] with the firm intention – once I’m sworn in as president – to have my Attorney General conduct a comprehensive review of all our surveillance programs, and to make further recommendations on any steps needed to preserve civil liberties and to prevent executive branch abuse in the future.”
Needless to say, none of that ever happened. Now, the warrantless eavesdropping bill that Obama insisted was plagued by numerous imperfections is one that he is demanding be renewed without a single change. Last week, Marcy Wheeler documented the huge gap between (a) what Obama vowed he would do when he voted for this law in 2008 versus (b) what he has actually done in power (they’re opposites).
Indeed, when it came time last year to vote on renewal of the Patriot Act – remember how Democrats used to pretend during the Bush years to find the Patriot Act so alarming? – the Obama administration also demanded its renewal without a single reform. When a handful of Senators led by Rand Paul nonetheless proposed modest amendments to eliminate some of the documented abuses of the Patriot Act, Democratic majority leader Harry Reid did his best Dick Cheney impression by accusing these disobedient lawmakers of risking a Terrorist attack by delaying renewal:
“When the clock strikes midnight tomorrow, we will be giving terrorists the opportunity to plot against our country undetected. The senator from Kentucky is threatening to take away the best tools we have for stopping them.
“We all remember the tragic Fort Hood shootings less than two years ago. Radicalized American terrorists bought guns and used them to kill 13 civilians [by “civilians”, Reid means: members of the US military]. It is hard to imagine why the senator would want to hold up the Patriot Act for a misguided amendment that would make American less safe.”
In other words: if you even try to debate the Patriot Act or add any amendments to it, then you are helping the Terrorists: classic Dick Cheney. (Democratic Sen. Udall defended Paul from Reid’s disgusting attack: “This is not a Patriot Act. Patriots stand up for the Constitution. Patriots stand up for freedom and liberty that’s embodied in the Constitution. And I think true patriots, when they’re public servants, public servants stand up and do what’s right, even if it’s unpopular”).
Yesterday, I watched as Dianne Feinstein went well beyond Harry Reid’s disgusting Cheneyite display. Feinstein is one of the Senate’s richest plutocrats, whose husband, Richard Blum, has coincidentally been quite enriched by military and other government contracts during her Senate career. During this time, Feinstein has acted as the most faithful servant in the Senate of the National Security State’s unchecked, authoritarian power.
Yesterday, Feinstein stood up on the Senate floor and began by heaping praise on her GOP comrade, Sen. Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, for leading his caucus to join her in renewing the FISA act without any reforms. She then unleashed a vile attack on her Democratic colleagues – Wyden, Merkley, and Udall, along with Paul – in which she repeatedly accused them of trying to make the nation vulnerable to a Terrorist attack.
Feinstein insisted that one could support their amendments only if “you believe that no one is going to attack us”. She warned that their amendments would cause “another 9/11”. She rambled about Najibullah Zazi and his attempt to detonate a bomb on the New York City subway: as though a warrant requirement, let alone disclosure requirements for the eavesdropping program, would have prevented his detection. Having learned so well from Rudy Giuliani (and Harry Reid), she basically just screamed “Terrorist!” and “9/11” over and over until her time ran out, and then proudly sat down as though she had mounted rational arguments against the transparency and oversight amendments advocated by Wyden, Merkley, Udall and Paul.
Even more notably, Feinstein repeatedly argued that requiring even basic disclosure about the eavesdropping program – such as telling Americans how many of them are targeted by it – would, as she put it, “destroy the program”. But if “the program” is being conducted properly and lawfully, why would that kind of transparency kill the program? As the ACLU’s Richardson noted: “That Sen. Feinstein says public oversight will lead to the end of the program says a lot about the info that’s being hidden.” In response to her warnings that basic oversight and transparency would destroy the program, Mother Jones’ Adam Serwer similarly asked: “Why, if it’s all on the up and up?”
All of this was accomplished with the core Bush/Cheney tactic used over and over: they purposely waited until days before the law is set to expire to vote on its renewal, then told anyone who wants reforms that there is no time to consider them, and that anyone who attempted debate would cause the law to expire and risk a Terrorist attack. Over and over yesterday, Feinstein stressed that only “four days remained” before the law expires and that any attempts even to debate the law, let alone amend it, would leave the nation vulnerable.
It’s hard to put into words just how extreme was Feinstein’s day-long fear-mongering tirade. “I’ve never seen a Congressional member argue so strongly against Executive Branch oversight as Sen. Feinstein did today re the FISA law,” said Micah Zenko of the Council on Foreign Relations. Referring to Feinstein’s alternating denials and justifications for warrantless eavesdropping on Americans, the ACLU’s Jameel Jaffer observed: “This FISA debate reminds of the torture debate circa 2004: We don’t torture! And anyway, we have to torture, we don’t have any choice.”
Jaffer added that Feinstein’s strident denials that secret warrantless eavesdropping poses any dangers “almost makes you nostalgic for Ashcroft’s ‘phantoms of lost liberty’ speech” – referring to the infamous 2001 decree from Bush’s Attorney General:
“To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists for they erode our unity and diminish our resolve. They give ammunition to America’s enemies and pause to America’s friends.”
That is exactly the foul message which Dianne Feinstein, doing the bidding of the Obama White House, spewed at her liberal Senate colleagues (and a tiny handful of Republicans) for the crime of wanting to bring some marginal transparency and oversight to the warrantless eavesdropping powers with which Obama vested himself when voting in 2008 for that FISA law. As it turns out, Yale Law Professor Jack Balkin had it exactly right in mid-2008 when explaining – in the face of lots of progressive confusion and even anger – why Obama decided to support a FISA bill that vested the executive with massive unchecked eavesdroppoing power: namely, Obama “plans to be the executive”, so “from Obama’s perspective, what’s not to like?”
Just four or five years ago, objections to warrantless eavesdropping were a prime grievance of Democrats against Bush. The controversies that arose from it were protracted, intense, and often ugly. Progressives loved to depict themselves as stalwartly opposing right-wing radicalism in defense of Our Values and the Constitution.
Fast forward to 2012 and all of that, literally, has changed. Now it’s a Democratic President demanding reform-free renewal of his warrantless eavesdropping powers. He joins with the Republican Party to codify them. A beloved Democratic Senator from a solidly blue state leads the fear-mongering campaign and Terrorist-enabling slurs against anyone who opposes it. And it now all happens with virtually no media attention or controversy because the two parties collaborate so harmoniously to make it happen. And thus does a core guarantee of the founding – the search warrant requirement of the Fourth Amendment – blissfully disappear into nothingness.
Here we find yet again a defining attribute of the Obama legacy: the transformation of what was until recently a symbol of right-wing radicalism – warrantless eavesdropping – into meekly accepted bipartisan consensus. But it’s not just the policies that are so transformed but the mentality and rhetoric that accompanies them: anyone who stands in the way of the US Government’s demands for unaccountable, secret power is helping the Terrorists. “The administration has decided the program should be classified”, decreed Feinstein, and that is that.
In 2005, the Bush White House invoked the “very bad guy” defense to assure us that we need not worry about the administration’s secret warrantless eavesdropping program; as a Bush White House spokesman put it:
“This is a limited program. This is not about monitoring phone calls designed to arrange Little League practice or what to bring to a potluck dinner. These are designed to monitor calls from very bad people to very bad people who have a history of blowing up commuter trains, weddings and churches.”
In 1968, Nixon Attorney General John Mitchell similarly told the public in the face of rising concerns over government eavesdropping powers that “any citizen of this United States who is not involved in some illegal activity has nothing to fear whatsoever.” That is the noble tradition, which the Obama White House, Dianne Feinstein and their GOP partners are continuing now.
Politics as Usual Doesn’t Work
This article by Kevin Zeese is re-posted from Dissident Voice.
The fiscal cliff is a self-created bi-partisan drama that demonstrates the failure of traditional politics and the need for mobilized resistance and a new independent political movement. The mass media and operatives from the Democratic and Republican parties have raised all sorts of imagined fears to provide cover to unnecessary cuts to health, retirement and social programs, while marginally increasing taxes on the wealthiest. But watch out! This is really only the set-up for the payback to big business interests that bankrolled the 2012 elections.
President Obama is on track to be the first Democratic president to cut Social Security benefits at a time when pensions are disappearing and it is the primary source of income for elderly Americans. Social Security does not add to the deficit as it has a $2.7 trillion surplus, expected to rise to $3.7 trillion according to the Social Security Trustees. Cuts to Medicare and Medicaid are also on the table; no doubt other safety net programs will also be cut.
While Democrats like to blame Speaker Boehner, and he and the Republicans deserve their share of bi-partisan blame, Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi is cheering on the retirement cuts saying they would “strengthen” the program. Pelosi, who keeps her leadership by raising millions from the wealthy, has raised $328 million since becoming leader including $85 million in the 2012, seems out of touch with how retired Americans teeter on the verge of poverty. In fact, while Social Security keeps 21 million out of poverty, the Census Bureau reports that in the last decade there has been a 78% increase in Americans over 60 facing the threat of hunger and one in six seniors live in poverty. The Social Security Administration reports projected poverty rates are quite sensitive to the assumption that benefits are not further reduced. The proposal made by Obama and endorsed by Pelosi (and other leading ‘progressive’ Democrats) as strengthening would noticeably reduce benefits of retirees – a person who retired at 65 in 2000, if they live to 92 will have one month cut annually as a result.
The bi-partisanship of Washington, DC has also taken military cuts off the table. In fact, while the Congress, president and media elite were fretting over the deficit both Houses passed the $633 billon NDAA with super bi-partisan majorities, a vote of 315 to 107 in the House; 81 to 14 in the Senate. The reality is the Pentagon is so over-budgeted that many retired generals and admirals are calling for military cuts. There is a lot of waste in the Pentagon, much of it quite embarrassing in a time of economic collapse and austerity. The reality is when 6 out of 10 discretionary federal dollars are spent on the military and national security, the U.S. will not be able to provide the resources for a new economy or meet the necessities of the people.
When it comes to taxing the wealthy bi-partisanship in DC prevents progressive taxation. President Obama said shortly after his election that he will not compromise on increasing taxes on the top 2%. But, now he has compromised and the tax increase on the wealthy will be only on the top 1%. The increase will at most be to a top rate of 39%, when in the 1940s and 50s the wealthiest paid as much as 92% and in the 60s and 70s paid at a 70% rate. Recent research shows a top tax rate of 83% on the wealthiest would be the optimum for the economy.
But it is not only a progressive income tax that has bi-partisan opposition; it is bi-partisan support for a reduction in corporate tax rates. Along with his offer to cut Social Security payments President Obama proposed fast-track procedures to help Congressional tax writers overhaul the individual and corporate tax code. Fast-track is a way to push controversial and unpopular measures through Congress with no hearings, amendments or lengthy debate.
The goal of cutting corporate taxes and protecting money hidden away overseas has been evident in the work of the Fix the Debt campaign made up of more than 80 CEO’s of America’s most powerful corporations and biggest campaign donors which has raised $60 million to lobby for a debt deal that would reduce corporate taxes and shift costs onto the poor and elderly.
As economist Jack Rasmus writes the fiscal cliff deficit reduction is “a prerequisite for what they really want—a cut in the corporate tax rate, understandings on non-enforcement of the foreign profits tax, and further incentives—all of which Obama (and Romney) promised in the recent elections. Obama is on record during the elections, and well before, in favor of cutting the top corporate tax rate from 35% to 28%–i.e. where it was during the Reagan period.”
In fact, everything being talked about in the choreographed negotiations is items President Obama has shown repeated support for. His deficit commission, Simpson-Bowles called for cuts to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and social programs. The grand bargain Obama offered to Speaker Boehner before the elections included all of these cuts and more, including to veteran health care and retirement, college financial support and food assistance. And, during the campaign Obama said that he agreed with Romney on Social Security.
The bi-partisan deficit cutters are so focused on reducing corporate taxes and helping their donors that they will do great damage to the economy. As 350 economists wrote:
As Great Britain, Ireland, Spain and Greece have shown, inflicting austerity on a weak economy leads to deeper recession, rising unemployment and increasing misery. In a deep recession, deficit reduction is a moving target. If you cut spending and consumer purchasing power in an already depressed economy, unemployment rises and revenues fall — and the goal of a smaller deficit keeps receding like a mirage in a desert. When private purchasing power is depressed by the aftermath of a financial collapse, only public investment can make up the gap.
Not all business leaders put their personal gain ahead of what is best for the country. The American Sustainable Business Council, Business for Shared Prosperity and the Main Street Alliance have called on Congress and the President to close corporate tax haven loopholes costing the U.S. Treasury $100 billion a year and raise corporate tax revenues above today’s historically low levels. They note corporate taxes accounted for less than 8% of federal tax revenues – way down from 32% in 1952.
“With corporate profits at a 50-year high and corporate taxes as a share of the economy at a 50-year low, now is not the time to lock in low corporate taxes,” said Joseph Magid, president of Gryphon Systems, a management consulting company in Wynnewood, PA. “Our country cannot afford to keep giving tax breaks and loopholes to giant corporations at the expense of smaller businesses. Highly profitable U.S. multinationals should pay their fair share.”
Most Americans know how to fix the economy; it is just elected leaders who are blinded by campaign donation corruption who cannot see the obvious. By a super majority of 62% to 30% Americans believe that growing the economy, not reducing the deficit should be the priority. By huge majorities they support taxes on the wealthy, 70% support a plan that raises taxes on the top 2%; 63% oppose taxing investor income at lower rates than worker’s wages; 75% support a plan to create a higher tax bracket for millionaires and 67% find lower taxes on corporations or the rich unacceptable. And, 62% do not want Social Security benefits cut and 79% do not want seniors paying more for health care. But the views of Americans are off the table in our representative democracy.
During the Occupation of Washington, DC at Freedom Plaza we held hearings on the deficit and found that we could create jobs, reduce the wealth divide and control spending by putting in place a progressive tax system with a proven history of working, cutting military spending and investing to getting the economy going. All of this was based on evidence-based solutions supported by majorities of Americans, economists and others. But, empirical evidence is off the table in bi-partisan Washington, DC.
Ours is not the only plan. There are many ways to reduce the deficit, create jobs and get the economy moving. See, e.g. 8 Deficit Reducers That Are More Ethical — And More Effective — Than the “Chained CPI”; Rein in the Rich: How Higher Taxes Could Lift the Economy, Republican and Democratic “Remedies” Ensure More Crises, but Alternatives That Work Are Taboo, Green presidential candidate, Jill Stein, has put forward a Green New Deal and the Economic Policy Institute has put forward Navigating the fiscal obstacle course: Supporting job creation with savings from ending the upper-income Bush-era tax cuts. All of these approaches are more consistent with what the American people want than what Obama, Boehner and Pelosi, are discussing.
The fiscal cliff shows how out of step elected officials in Washington, DC are; how they ignore what the people want and what the evidence says is needed. Their focus on providing their campaign donors with even more wealth at the expense of the economy and the people is evident. The only way we will tax the wealthy and corporations; stop cuts to Social Security, health care and social programs is for Americans to mobilize in revolt. Traditional politics does not work; the people must find a new path – the creation of an independent political movement – to create the transformations needed in the United States.
