There Is A Long Way To Go, But. . .

Things are moving in the right direction. Despite the evictions of protesters from public spaces across Canada, Linda McQuaig writes that the Occupy Movement has managed to "change the public discourse, putting inequality front and centre — something activists and writers, myself included, have failed to accomplish despite decades of trying."

Even members of the elite are switching sides. Last week a retired Philadelphia police chief was arrested "at a New York protest where he told the cops they were just 'workers for the 1 per cent.'” And former prime minister Paul Martin -- who slashed social spending when he was finance minister two decades ago -- has come on board:

The fact is (the Occupiers) have touched a chord with Canadians and, I’m sure, with Americans,” said Martin. “Look, there’s something fundamentally wrong here . . . For the last hundred years, certainly in North America, every generation has felt it’s going to have a better life than their parents. For the first time, that’s not there.”

It's a little late for Martin to come to the table. But, like the retired police chief, he's there. Their presence does not mean that the battle has been won. As Murray Dobbin warned his readers last week, the people who make the decisions in Ottawa, Washington, New York and Toronto are still in charge:

Those decisions involve power and as the occupiers are discovering anew, that power is entrenched, protected and ruthless, and it will not be denied easily what it has accumulated over the decades.

Like Franklin Roosevelt, Martin and the police chief will be called traitors to their class. But McQuaig writes that the Occupiers deserve our admiration:

Wow. After only two months, the Occupy movement — without backing from billionaires or governments — seems to have moved us into a new era. Not bad for a leaderless group that sleeps in tents and doesn’t even use microphones.

This is a dark time. But it is not a time without hope.

This entry is cross posted at The Moderate Voice.

Who Do You Serve?

As Toronto police cleared St. James Park this morning, one of the few remaining protesters yelled at an officer, "Excuse me! Who do you serve? That's the basic question behind the Occupy Movement. And every elected official needs to answer that question -- in the context of what the figures tell us.

Jeffrey Simpson writes that, in the United States -- where the Occupy Movement began -- the non partisan Congressional Budget Office has offered a pretty clear picture of what has happened:

The CBO looked at the years 1979 to 2007. It found that, whereas average household income after inflation grew by 62 per cent, the top 1 per cent of the population had enjoyed income growth of 275 per cent. The bottom 20-per-cent’s after-tax income had grown 18 per cent. Said the CBO: “As a result of uneven income growth, the distribution of after-tax household income in the United States was substantially more unequal in 2007 than in 1979.”

Unfortunately, no politician in the present presidential race is talking about income redistribution. And, in Canada, that phrase would never cross the lips of any member of the Harper government. They will tout the number of jobs created; but they will say nary a word about the quality of those jobs or about the income they generate. The reason is simple. That information indicates that the country is marching backwards.

Even more importantly, it's interesting to compare the government's priorities to the priorities of Canada's citizens. In a recent survey

the share concerned about poverty/income inequality was 30 per cent, behind health care (of course) at 47 per cent, unemployment/jobs at 39 per cent and taxes at 37 per cent. That ranking showed an increase in concern about poverty/income inequality, since it now ranks well above crime, immigration, environment and climate change.

But most Canadians -- as indicated by the last election results -- don't vote. Until they do, things will get worse. And the police will continue to serve their present masters.

Spreading The Gospel

Rick Salutin writes this morning that the real question facing the Occupy movement is not "Should I go, or should I stay?" The real question is, "Join us or join them?" The second question is the right one. The relevant lesson, Salutin writes, comes from Spain:

The 15-M movement began there last May 15. It wasn’t an occupation. It was a protest held in Puerta del Sol square over the economic crisis that became an overnight occupation. Then it was dismantled by authorities, then it turned into a see-saw conflict over whether they would stay or go. A month later, when they finally went, it was by choice. One veteran of 15-M (there are no leaders) said: “It was a strategic move that led to the survival of the movement.” Almost happenstantially they had evolved another preference: to fan out into districts of the city (and elsewhere in Spain) and conduct regular meetings with local residents. These then forwarded proposals to a weekly “assembly” held in the square.

While the public may focus on what is happening in the parks, the real battle has always been political. It has always been about generating support for progressive policies instead of the tired -- and obviously failed -- bromides  of the last thirty years. The solution lies in elections.

Paul Krugman, in today's New York Times, comes to the same conclusion. Instead of wringing their hands about the imminent failure of the Congressional Supercommittee, he writes, Americans should rejoice:

The gulf between our two major political parties is so wide. Republicans and Democrats don’t just have different priorities; they live in different intellectual and moral universes.

There can be no compromise when the gap between the parties is so wide:

Eventually, one side or the other of that divide will get the kind of popular mandate it needs to resolve our long-run budget issues. Until then, attempts to strike a Grand Bargain are fundamentally destructive. If the supercommittee fails, as expected, it will be time to celebrate.

We had an election in May. Canadians voted for more of the same -- except the majority of Canadians chose to stay home on election day.  If things are going to change, progressives have to do more than occupy the public square. Like old fashioned evangelists, they are going to have to use that square to spread the gospel  -- and toss the moneychangers out of the temple.

The Heat Is On

Even though he gives Toronto's Occupy Protesters credit for being civil, Peter Worthington has no sympathy for them:

Although the campers (to give them a polite description) have been served with eviction notices, they've been given a reprieve until at least Saturday, thanks to injunctions and Charter of Rights hearings and the mumbo-jumbo of lawyers and the sober considerations of the judge.

No matter. For all practical purposes the month-long long protest and park sleep-in is over. Patience has run out.

On the other side of the argument, Toronto law professor David Schneiderman argues that the protesters have a right to stay put. There is an important principle at stake:

At what point did the exercise of constitutional rights become intolerable? The city has simply issued an ultimatum without seemingly taking into further account the protesters’ objectives and their preferred means of expression. This is not a carefully calibrated assessment of the protesters’ rights and the city’s obligation to preserve public property but an outright ban.

And, yesterday, in response to a question from Nycole Turmel -- has the government listened to the message behind the protests? -- Stephen Harper proclaimed that the NDP's focus on the Occupy protests merely proves that they are "unfit to govern."

Mr. Harper likes to think he supports the Arab Spring. However, he forgets that the movement started as a protest against scarcity -- scarcity of jobs and resources. He and Mr. Worthington live on another planet. Unfortunately, it is not the planet most of us occupy. That's why they are unmoved when the heat is on.

They Get It

The reaction is starting to set in. The Occupy Protesters have been evicted from their camps in London and Halifax. Mayor Rob Ford has told the people in St. James Park it's time to go. John Gardiner, who calls himself "an old hippie," writes that the civic officials who are evicting the protesters don't get it:

They don’t understand why people are willing to endure the squalor and the cold to try to change the system. And that’s because for most older middle-class people, life has been good. They don’t understand what there is to complain about.

They are the powers that be. Back in the 1960's, they were called "The Establishment:"

Back in the 1960s, the Establishment was just getting its footing, just starting to entrench itself in our societies. Today, it’s everything and everywhere.

It’s what sets the price of oil. It’s what starts wars where poor people fight it out. It’s what causes big banks to collapse so the little people can pick up the pieces. It’s so powerful that governments bow to it and bail it out when it gets itself into trouble. It’s the Establishment, plain and simple.

The protesters, Gardiner writes, are 21st century hippies:

Its members are people who can see the future and who want to change it. Just like the hippies, who were like the canary in the coal mine. When they died – and die they did – we should have seen the so-called writing on the wall. We should have known there was poison in the air. But we didn’t get it. And the results are all around us.

There were those -- the Establishment -- who called the hippies naive. There were hippies -- like Jerry Rubin -- who went to Wall Street and became part of the Establishment. And, most of us -- because we had to pay the bills -- accepted that the world had always been a cruel and unforgiving place.

And, in the meantime, the world became more cruel and more unforgiving. Gardiner, I'm afraid, has got it right:

I’m convinced that a thousand years into the future – if we can stagger that far forward – our current era will be known only for its barbarism, both economic and physical. It’s a time of great darkness, regardless of the apparent gains in technology.

Like the hippies of another time, the Occupy Protesters are simply trying to make the world a better place. They get it.

Life Gets Tough

Paul Krugman writes that the Masters of Wall Street are beginning to whine: "The modern lords of finance look at the protesters and ask, 'Don’t they understand what we’ve done for the U.S. economy?'" They really do not understand why people are in the streets, because they see themselves as indispensible. What's good for finance is good for the United States. It's an example of Adam Smith's invisible hand at work. But

the financialization of America wasn’t dictated by the invisible hand of the market. What caused the financial industry to grow much faster than the rest of the economy starting around 1980 was a series of deliberate policy choices, in particular a process of deregulation that continued right up to the eve of the 2008 crisis.

The world has been turned upside down. Favouring the wealthy was supposed to make everybody rich:

Somehow, however, that wonderfulness failed to trickle down to the rest of the nation — and that was true even before the crisis. Median family income, adjusted for inflation, grew only about a fifth as much between 1980 and 2007 as it did in the generation following World War II, even though the postwar economy was marked both by strict financial regulation and by much higher tax rates on the wealthy than anything currently under political discussion. 

And now ordinary folks have stopped believing the hype. Not only that -- they're angry. And those who have done so well  don't understand why the people in the streets simply won't go home. As Krugman writes,

until a few weeks ago it seemed as if Wall Street had effectively bribed and bullied our political system into forgetting about that whole drawing lavish paychecks while destroying the world economy thing. Then, all of a sudden, some people insisted on bringing the subject up again.

And they are not going away.

Something's Happening Here

And what it is is increasingly clear. The people who were responsible for the financial crisis of 2008 -- and the growing economic inequality of the last thirty years -- are starting to get scared.

Eric Cantor said last week that "mobs" are now dedicated to "the pitting of Americans against Americans." When Elizabeth Warren repeated what used to be a self evident truth  -- that "there is nobody in this country who got rich on his own," George Will accused her of having a "collectivist agenda;" and the pundits at CNBC proclaimed that the Wall Street protesters were "aligned with Lenin."

Americans have seen this before. Franklin Roosevelt had a term for the people who are presently screaming "class warfare." He called them "economic royalists." The first thing Roosevelt did when he came to office was to reorganize the banking system. This time around, the banks got off unscathed. Paul Krugman writes in this morning's New York Times that:

They have paid no price. Their institutions were bailed out by taxpayers, with few strings attached. They continue to benefit from explicit and implicit federal guarantees — basically, they’re still in a game of heads they win, tails taxpayers lose. And they benefit from tax loopholes that in many cases have people with multimillion-dollar incomes paying lower rates than middle-class families.

This special treatment can’t bear close scrutiny — and therefore, as they see it, there must be no close scrutiny. Anyone who points out the obvious, no matter how calmly and moderately, must be demonized and driven from the stage. In fact, the more reasonable and moderate a critic sounds, the more urgently he or she must be demonized, hence the frantic sliming of Elizabeth Warren. 

This time around government looked after the interests of the royalists first. But those royalists have suddenly realized that there are a lot more serfs than lords. And the serfs are insisting that the Masters of Wall Street visit the barber. It's time for a haircut.

Here They Come

The Occupy Wall Street Protests are moving north. Under the banner "Occupy Toronto," protesters are due to take to the streets on October 15th. It's easy to dismiss these folks -- as many have -- as simply lazy kids with nothing better to do. But, as Tom Walkom writes in this morning's Toronto Star, that would not be wise:

While the aims of the Wall Streeters remain distressingly vague, they do seem to be coalescing around a notion that American capitalism is fundamentally unfair — that it benefits only a tiny minority while leaving the rest disadvantaged.

That is a powerful message -- not only for Americans, but for Europeans and for Canadians, too. And history shows that small protests can explode -- particularly if the governing elites are not paying attention:

The Paris revolt of 1968, which briefly united students and parts of the industrial working class, almost brought down the French government. Yet it began with a series of relatively minor complaints about conditions in the country’s universities.

Egypt’s revolt last spring, which resulted in the toppling of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarek, had its genesis in something called the April 6 Movement, a small group of regime critics who until this year had been spectacularly unsuccessful.

In short, history shows that, given the right conditions, tiny protests can suddenly blossom.

At the moment, no one can predict what impact these protests will have. One thing is sure. The tools of democracy have worked hard to protect institutions which are too big to fail, while those who are deemed too small to pay attention to are barely keeping their heads above water.

It would be foolish to dismiss these folks any longer.They may not have money -- but they do have numbers. And those numbers, once mobilized, could make life for those with money very uncomfortable.

This entry is cross posted at The Moderate Voice.

We Need More George Baileys

Robert Kuttner writes, in today's Huffington Post, that the Occupy Wall Street protests are a sign of what is to come:

For three years, we have been wondering, where is the outrage? For a time, it was co-opted by the Tea Parties -- a faux populism, attacking government, financed by billionaires, delivering nothing to the 99 percent of Americans not represented by Wall Street. Now authentic protest directed against the real villains is finally here.

As heartening as the protests are, the villains still rule the roost:

The depth of the continuing recession can be traced back to the failure to radically reform the banks in the spring of 2009. Interest rates today are at record lows, but Wall Street banks still make their money from merger deals, complex securitization packages, and trading for their own accounts, while community banks are too traumatized to make loans to any but blue-chip customers.

Meanwhile, nobody has gone to prison for the systematic frauds that brought down the economy, consumers are getting gouged by new fees that the banks dream up to compensate for their own losses. And the mortgage foreclosure crisis continues to fester and drag down the rest of the economy

Kuttner reminds his readers that the two great reform movements of the 1960's -- ending the Vietnam War  and the Civil Rights Movement -- took a long while to get started and a long while to accomplish their objectives. And, Kuttner writes, there is no guarantee that the protests against a financial establishment which has wrecked the lives of millions will end as well as those earlier movements did:

Bankers have immense power, until public opinion turns decisively against them and democratically-elected leaders decide to lead. These protests were a long time coming; I fear that it will take far longer for the system to deliver the drastic reforms that we need.

George Bailey was an appealing figure. Unfortunately, the Henry F. Potters have been winning for a long time.