Weekly Dissident (2008)
The Weekly Dissident was a progressive newsletter published by a fellow Kent State student. I directed these columns toward the Kent activist community. The first column explains the international scope of economic regulatory practices that led to the 2008-09 collapse. The second column is my personal account of the police brutality that occurred at the 2008 Republican National Convention.
The last rites of neoliberalism
Find the original article: http://weeklydissident.wordpress.com/2008/11/10/the-last-rites-of-neoliberalism/
After thirty years of torturing the working class and ensuring the financial stability of only the super-rich, neoliberalism is dead. Now it’s being dressed for burial.
“Free markets!” was the rallying cry of neoliberalism and the Washington consensus that followed it for the past three decades. That cry still echoes in the bare pantries of families struggling with high food prices. It still echoes through foreclosed homes. And it still echoes with people who have lost or are close to losing their jobs.
But that cry is fading away as more and more of the financial sector is nationalized and underwritten by the government.
Within three hours Oct. 3, the $700 billion bailout bill passed the House, received final approval from Speaker Nancy Pelosi and was signed into law by President Bush. The bailout enables the government to buy bad debt from troubled financial institutions to free them to offer credit to other – perhaps more reliable – debtors. The government claims that this plan could let banks provide business and consumer loans, spurring the overall economy.
The financial journal Barron’s has another take on it. “Bank capital will likely remain scarce,” it writes, “businesses will find it tougher to get financing at the same time that demand for their wares fades, and consumers are coming under the twin pressures of rising unemployment and falling wages, just as their net worths are declining and their ability to borrow is being crimped.”
The bailout is not intended to help consumers or workers losing their jobs. Its true target is the rich.
Of the representatives who voted against the Sept. 29 bailout bill and switched to support the Oct. 3 bill, the New York Times reported, “several cited [as the deciding factor] a provision added by the Senate increasing the amount of savings insured by the federal government to $250,000 an account from $100,000.”
Nowhere in the bailout is any provision to halt home foreclosures, put a moritorium on mortgage payments, cut healthcare costs or anything else that would help the working class.
Also missing is a plan to prevent future economic crises, presuming the country gets out of this one. Free markets caused this crisis. Without regulation, banks lent willy-nilly, enlarging profits – that is, until the housing bubble burst. Then, the web of bought and sold debt started to come apart, and some institutions folded while others were shaken.
Nobel Prize-winning economist and first-generation neoliberal Milton Friedman theorized that a market free of government regulation will ultimately make the best decisions for average people, who, in turn, buy products and make the economy run.
Friedman’s ideas only make sense when the products are tangible. For instance, a car buyer is likely to purchase the safest, most fuel-efficient, most reliable car for his or her money, and car manufacturers will adjust to accommodate these needs – or risk going out of business. But it’s different with non-material products, such as mortgages.
The primary cause of the financial crisis is the bursting of the housing bubble and the rise in interest on adjustable-rate mortgages that accompanied it. In the case of mortgages, Friedman’s principles are flawed. The buyer is likely to look first for the lowest interest rate, then the best loan terms, including the possibility of adjustment. This has meant that homeowners have accepted loan terms that don’t suit them – and now they’re struggling.
The mortgage companies had a responsibility not to dangle loans with enticing rates and terms in front of subprime borrowers on a bet that home prices would continue to rise.
It was a gamble, and the financial sector lost its shirt. The U.S. government, having made such a gamble possible through its neoliberal policies of deregulation, has agreed to help cover for the mistake but has offered no help to the American working class. The government, however, cannot cover up the fact that the system is fundamentally flawed, and change must come before more ordinary people are hurt.
Let us pray we who do not own any means of production, we workers, overcome this crisis despite this lack of help. Let us survive the high food prices, the housing crisis and the collapsing job market. And most important of all, let us find a more just way to organize the world.
The funeral is over. Now, we must dig the grave.
Continuing to fight
Find the original article: http://weeklydissident.wordpress.com/2008/11/10/continuing-the-fight/
The Kent State Anti-War Committee hosted a forum about police repression at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn. on Nov. 6. This is the text of the testimony given by Allen Hines, one of the five Kent activists who participated in the RNC protests.
Police brutality and intimidation ran rampant all over St. Paul, Minn., during the first week of September. When activists – tired of government policies of conquest at any cost – took to the streets in protest at this year’s Republican National Convention, the police jumped into action to preserve the status quo.
Their actions clarified the real meaning of the police motto “protect and serve” – that they will protect the state from internal unrest and serve only the interests of the ruling class.
First of all, I want to explain the circumstances surrounding my going to St. Paul because they explain my mindset at the time.
I have cerebral palsy, and most of the time I use a power wheelchair to get around. When the chair works, I take care of myself independently. But I was hit by an SUV turning out of a parking lot the second day of the semester. My chair didn’t tip on impact, but the driver kept lurching forward and ultimately knocked me into the street where I was almost hit by another passing car.
The SUV driver later said she hadn’t seen me and thought the scraping noise was the curb. I move in this squat tank, 200 pounds glaring sun off leather and steel, and either it’s all most people see or it and the person it carries are not there at all.
One of the motors on my chair seized up as a result of the accident. When I called my wheelchair repair person, he said he wouldn’t come out to look at it until two days later, meaning I couldn’t leave my apartment without an aide. When the repair person did come out, he diagnosed the motor problem and took the chair for service.
I was still unable to leave my apartment. I spent the next week struggling with the driver and her insurance company, which refused to pay because no police report was filed. My wheelchair repair shop had fixed my chair, they said at the time, but wouldn’t release it until someone paid for the repairs.
Another week passed with no headway, and I called the shop to complain about their ransoming my chair and one representative then told me they were waiting on a part to come in.
When it became clear that my chair was out of commission indefinitely and I was feeling my oppression as a disabled person most acutely, I decided for sure that I would go to the Republican National Convention in my manual chair with members of the anti-war committee. Rather than be penned up in my apartment, the Convention was a way to strike back at a system that prioritized payment from an insurance company over human need.
We who went to the RNC had known a large, well-equipped police presence was likely. The St. Paul Police Department had been soliciting cops from all over Minnesota to militarize the city. The goal was to recruit 3,500 more cops. The department had ordered 234 Tasers before the convention. And we found out later that the GOP had agreed to cover the first $10 million in lawsuits against the police.
But when we got there, we were surprised. Cops had preemptively raided activist organizing spaces. During the convention, they were riding around in vans brandishing semi-automatic weapons. And battalions of hundreds of riot cops swarmed the city.
National Guard troops fired rubber bullets and concussion grenades into peaceful marches. At actions as harmless as a dance party in a park police were pepper-spraying activists indiscriminately.
I, personally, was pepper-sprayed twice – the last from 10 feet away – before being corralled by riot cops. The activists around me were ordered to the ground and handcuffed with zip-ties, but I was not. At that point, I asked if I was under arrest. A female cop who seemed to be high in rank said that I was. I asked for medical care for my skin and eyes which were still burning from the pepper spray. Instead, the cop told me just to let air get to it. In other words, he denied me treatment. Then, the other activists were taken to a nearby parking lot and loaded into a paddy-wagon. I was left on the sidewalk in downtown St. Paul.
I had to flag down a cop by waving my arm and yelling. I asked the cop that came if I was under arrest, and he said I wasn’t. I then asked if he could take me to the police station so I could call for someone to pick me up. He left me to go ask a higher-ranking cop.
When he returned he said he couldn’t help me unless I gave him a phone number. Since I had seen the massive police presence and heard of the arrests of St. Paul activists based on information provided by infiltrators, I was reluctant to provide a number. So the cop left and I was alone again on the sidewalk.
After a while, I decided I had no other choice and I called the cop over again. I told him I would give him a number. I was going to give him the number of our support network in Kent. But before I gave him the number, he said he had something else to do and walked away again.
I sat there alone for a while longer. Then, a passerby named Joey walked up to me and asked if I needed help. Only then did the cops want to pay attention to me. A group of them approached us, told me I was under arrest and told Joey he would be arrested if he continued to help me. Joey was able to negotiate for my release.
We left with a warning that if either of us were seen downtown again we would be arrested. We traveled across the city until we were somewhat confident we were out of danger. We ended up at a gas station. As the cop had recommended, I had let air get to my skin and eyes for at least an hour by this time and they were still burning. So Joey went inside and bought a bottle of antacid, the most effective antidote to pepper spray. I washed myself with it, and it provided some relief
Two Kent activists soon picked us up from the gas station, and we drove to a safe area.
This forum is not about me or any one individual. What the police did to all of us was despicable and wholly unwarranted. The police presence at the Republican National Convention was an exercise in intimidation. Their helmets, shields, batons, pepper spray, tear gas, rubber bullets, concussion grenades, semi-automatic rifles and zip-tie handcuffs were all tools with which they made it known that the state is powerful and will fight to maintain control.
They tried to intimidate me by isolating me from allies. I must admit it worked – for a time. I have been afraid to be by myself. From time to time, I still see the burn the pepper spray left on my arm, though the physical damage healed long ago.
They tried to intimidate others through physical brutality and inhumane treatment inside the jail. I’ve noticed the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder in all of us on this stage.
But I don’t think any of us were intimidated into idleness. We all continue to oppose these ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and we all continue to fight for a more just world.
Thank you.
