Tweet
Recently, the jobs crisis in America prompted New York mayor Michael Bloomberg to predict that riots will come if jobs are not created soon.
“We have a lot of kids graduating college, can’t find jobs,” Bloomberg said on his weekly radio show. “That’s what happened in Cairo. That’s what happened in Madrid. You don’t want those kinds of riots here.”
“The damage to a generation that can’t find jobs will go on for many, many years,” he added.
As for a nation with multimedia diversions—not to mention a stubborn, widespread belief that the American Dream of upward mobility still will come to all who want it— I have maintained that it will take a great deal for riots to come to this country once again. I certainly would not want to see violence fall upon anyone in any community.
At the same time, as a student of history I understand that things do happen. In the 1960s, communities of color reached a tipping point. Call them riots, civil disturbances or urban rebellions, they often arose from acts of police brutality. But ultimately, they came to reflect frustration over poverty and inequality, a lack of economic opportunity, no jobs, bad schools and a shortage of housing.
And it was also a time of heightened political awareness and political activism, with the civil rights, antiwar and Black Power movements in full force. Meanwhile, J. Edgar Hoover and the police made their best effort to neutralize these protest movements, even if it meant assassinating their leaders.
Now, I’m sure that some commentators at the time dismissed the riots as acts of vandalism and mayhem on the part of “those” lawless people, meaning black folks, who just don’t know how to behave.
And yet, while blacks, Latinos and other historically marginalized groups have always known pain, whether back in the day or under the current recession, today we are witnessing something fundamentally different. Today, the thumbscrews are being applied to America’s poor, working class and middle class, as a collective. And you can’t help but believe that the torturers are engaged in a perverse experiment to see how much they can get away with.
If the U.S. has not reached a tipping point of sorts, you can’t help but think it will come soon. Some 6.9 million jobs have been lost since the trap door came aloose on the nation’s flawed economic system in 2007. Add to that the jobs needed to keep up with population growth and America has a jobs deficit of 11 million jobs.
A jobs crisis exists side-by-side with a staggering rate of poverty unmatched in over half a century. One in six Americans lives in poverty—46.2 million people, or 15.1 percent—a third of them children. The Latino poverty rate is 26 percent, with 27 percent for blacks. The U.S. is experiencing a lost decade, and beyond the numbers there exists a profound psychological toll that defies any degree of quantifying.
It is one thing to say that half of all Americans earn less than less than $26,000, and only 1 percent earn over $250,000. You can also point out that in the land of opportunity, the nation with the highest inequality in the industrialized world, 400 people have more wealth than half the entire country combined.
But it is an entirely different proposition to ask why, and how to stop it.
Simply put, America’s political governance system has been purchased by the nation’s top 1 percent, and they are getting their money’s worth. Corporate money has taken over the government, and the government is unable, no, unwilling to take care of the needs of its people, sans the 1 percent who possess their sales receipt in hand.
American politics is legalized bribery and corruption. With the social welfare system peeling away for austerity’s sake, American capitalism, unfettered, is reverting back to its natural state of exploitation—allowing a few winners, mostly losers, and a lot of cold-bloodedness and cold-heartedness to go around.
The party controlling Congress is a Koch Brothers-led sideshow of extremism, lunacy, instability and racial paranoia. And the party in the White House is led by a man who means well on his best days, but has placed far too much faith in Ivy League white dudes. He has sought friendship with those who plan his demise— and that of the nation’s economy for political gain— as he legitimizes and embraces their pathological ideas. Half-measures and Clintonian triangulation have appeared misplaced and wholly inadequate, falling far short of the bold promises of hope and change in the 2008 election.
Right now, the president is on the right track in his populist efforts at pushback against the GOP, including a proposal to end the Bush tax cuts and tax the wealthy more, or at least as much as the rest of us.
Ultimately, public pressure will turn all of this around, as it always does. What we learned is that elections are not enough, and politics is not a spectator sport. The people must demand what they want from their elected officials, and change the terms of the public debate. Mass protest, not President Obama, will do the job of saving us from American capitalism.
A movement called Occupy Wall Street has decided to take a cue from the Arab Spring, and engage in nonviolent mass occupation to fight the greed and corruption of the top 1 percent and restore democracy in America. The movement, which plans to camp out on Wall Street for a few months, is not getting as much attention as it should. Hopefully that will change. We could use a little class warfare right now. It is always good to know where things stand.
4 Comments
Recommended and Tweeted.
thanks for sharing David
We do have to protest and we even have to report on the protests as well because corporate sponsored media is going to mention as little as they can get away with.
But really, David, I don’t think that the change we need will happen until the 87% of us who earn less than $100,000 a year run for office as Independent and kick the majority of the plutocrats out of Congress. Begging them to change or even rudely demanding it is not going to move them off square 1.
It does call the publics attention to the issue so protests are necessary and do serve a purpose, but they are not the end game. The end game is to kick most of the plutocrats out of Congress
and to totally dismantle the multilevel marketing scheme that is simultaneously called Wall Street and the U.S. Economy. It needs to be rebuilt from the group up so that it more reflective of liberty and justice for all instead of merely excessive wealth for a few.
“There you go again.”
–Ronald Reagan
While Reagan was smilingly dismissive of Jimmy Carter’s accurate criticism of his views towards Social Security, I’m using his quote as a bit of shock value to bring attention to the fact, as I see it, that your belief that the plutocracy can be defeated at the ballot box is misguided at best and damaging at worst. For:
“Those who vote decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything.”
–Joseph Stalin
THAT is the real situation we face, creeping Stalinism in who can vote and who counts them. Stalin would have LOVED electronic voting machines where there is no accountability whatsoever, and they are all over the place right now.
Of course, protests are not the end game, but neither is the vote. Those 400 people David Love mentioned, their families and paid minions will not give up power just because a bunch of Liz Berrys run for office as independents. They will give up power only when it is wrested from them by a greater power.
“Power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”
–Mao
The fanatical and genocidal maniac was right about that. The plutocracy won’t give up until, at the minimum, they are afraid that they will be killed if they don’t. And they won’t believe that possibility until it becomes a real one. That won’t become real until protests are so massive and disruptive to their wealth-earning that they are forced to respond, and when the people they rely on to suppress the protests–the police, the Army–refuse to do so.
That possibility is a probability. There are reports that a couple of hundred New York cops already called in with the Blue Flu in support of the Occupy Wall Street movement, and why should they not? That’s the real reason Bloomberg said what he did; he sees where this can lead, and he’s a plutocrat. He’s scared. He should be.
David Love is right. We could use a little class warfare right now. In fact, we could use more than a little. We have to, or we will all, black and white, Latino and Asian, straight and gay, be reduced to serfdom for generations.
Sorry, David, this post was meant to be in reply to Liz Berry, not you.
Great post, David. While I think you still have too much faith in Obama’s motives, and that his current populism is just a cynical campaign tactic, the rest is spot on.
Especially the bit about 400 people controlling over half the wealth and most of the governmental power. This is a situation that is simply intolerable. It must be, and I think will be, changed. It’s really up to them whether that change be peaceful or otherwise, but they won’t make the right choice unless they believe, as Bloomberg does, that it may be otherwise.