Occupy Oakland Revisited

Occupy Oakland Revisited

It is a problem with me that I sometimes “connect the dots” between events inaccurately.  It is also true that sometimes I connect the dots between events, sometimes seemingly unrelated, totally accurately.

For example, as I have stated before, when Ronald Reagan began his “get government off the backs of business”, my brain whipped through all sorts of memories of the 1930’s such as those involving labor disputes and bank regulations being imposed on banks and mortgage houses.  My immediate thought after hearing Reagan was, “And who is going to get business off the backs of the people”?  I had connected those dots with total accuracy, as it turns out.

Well, in the middle of the night last night I began connecting more recent dots and came up with a disgusting conclusion.  Rather than giving the conclusion first, I’m going to explain the dots so the readers to this can draw their own conclusions as to whether mine is accurate or not.

This past August in our rather small city (by Los Angeles standards) of San Luis Obispo (SLO), CA there was a mail-in ballot measure to get rid of binding arbitration for the police and fire unions.  The people of SLO had voted in binding arbitration some 11 years ago, so it required a vote by the people to get rid of it.  Eleven years ago the proposal was on a regular ballot, so the unions had people on street corners with signs leading up to the election, and all over the city on the day of the election.  Also, 11 years ago the City Council was very supportive of its employees, and their unions. Time marches on.  Four of the five the City Council candidates this time around assured the unions that they would still be supportive, but shortly after being sworn in, three of them changed completely.  One City Councilman never supported the unions, so only one kept his word to the unions. 

By having a mail-in ballot over the month of August, there was no way the unions could mount a “street corner” campaign.  The unions did their best through TV and radio ads, plus all the other usual campaign methods such as direct mail.  The local paper, The Tribune, a McClatchy paper, was very anti-binding arbitration.  This was easily explained because their advertising is dependent on Chamber of Commerce approval, which was obviously not in evidence during the campaign.

At one point in this campaign, I was asked to fill in for the one City Council man who did not pull his support to the unions to be on a local radio show talk program.  I agreed, and one of the City Councilmen who did not support the unions was to be on at the same time.  For those of you who are not acquainted with my background, I have been involved in politics for 30 years.  The Councilman immediately began by stating that we could not be emotional about this issue; it was strictly numbers and numbers only that we had to deal with.  A standard Republican trick, by the way, is to confuse the issue with numbers no one can remember.  He used a couple of other ploys, like attempting to change the framing of the issue, and several others, all of which I was experienced at recognizing and countering.

Obviously the Councilman had been well coached by the local conservatives, even though we had no documentation that it was the Chamber of Commerce, we could see the pattern emerging.  And the unions lost the vote.  When the vote was tallied, the same conservative  Councilman proclaimed that, “Eleven years ago, the unions won the battle.  Today we won the war”!  

Since this was a local issue, I didn’t see any relation to the #OWS in New York at all.  But I had plenty of time yesterday to think about the fact that when the movement first started, the police officers were not in the least violent, and some would tell the protesters if they weren’t on duty, they would be there with them.  It wasn’t until the upper echelons of the police, in the white shirts, got on the scene and began making trouble.  There was the video of Anthony Bologna pepper spraying the isolated young women, and walking down the street indiscriminately pepper spraying mostly women, although one of his officers had to dodge the results of his itchy trigger finger.  Soon thereafter, Mayor Bloomberg began issuing orders to the police to arrest protesters, clear out the park, become aggressive.  Why did he do that?  It certainly wasn’t because the protesters were doing anything differently than they had been.  Those of us far away observing began to recognize that the protesters were making the 1% very nervous, and the 1% were putting pressure on Bloomberg to “do something”. 

The same scenario was happening all over the country.  Protests that had been peaceful now were turning violent, and the police were being blamed everywhere.  These were the same police that people were fighting for the police unions to keep their collective bargaining rights just months ago.   

What about this scenario?  Take an event that starts off with a peaceful protest, and with only the intent of bringing attention to the inordinate influence that money has on our political system.  We are the 99%, which is making the 1% with the money and the power very nervous.  The problem for the 1% then becomes how to turn this movement somehow to their advantage.  It would be very much to their advantage if they can destroy the public employee unions because it is only the public employee unions collectively that have the financial power to oppose Freedom Works and the entire Koch Machine.  How better to give the police a really bad name than to order them to arrest protesters for violating suddenly imposed curfews, clean out the parks the protesters were able to occupy legally and peacefully the day before, etc. 

Remember, it is not the police who suddenly come up with these ideas.  IT IS THE POLITICAL ESTABLISHMENT!! This is dirty politics in action. They are using the police for their own nefarious ends, and thanks to the corporate media, they are getting away with it.  Imagine how people will respond to cutting collective bargaining for those “jack-booted thugs” now?  The image of the police is being smeared all over the country.  Perhaps in the big cities the police have become militarized and may be out of control, but on Main Street America, the police are still our friends, and relatives.  They are the ones who respond on Main Street when some elderly lady living alone hears someone trying to get in her back door, and she is frightened.  They respond and assure her that they have called Animal Control who will be there shortly to trap the raccoon and take it away.  They are the ones who track through feces and vomit to get to a mentally ill homeless person who is threatening anyone who is near, calms the person down, and takes him or her to the appropriate center for a cleaning up and treatment.

If the police continue to be denigrated, responsible people will choose another career. When salaries and pensions are cut to the extreme in the interests of balancing budgets, our police forces will be filled with people who are less educated and not well trained, and will still be understaffed.  When, which it will, crime rises to a point where the local police are not in control, and it becomes obvious that more police are needed, we have private companies ready, willing and eager to take on that role.  Blackwater, Inc. – Your friendly neighborhood public safety corporation.

Remember the G-8 summit in Seattle years ago when a group of “protesters” came in suddenly, all dressed alike, and totally disrupted the heretofore peaceful demonstrations by attacking the police.  It is not inconceivable to me that there aren’t shills in police units around the country now, such as the one in Oakland who lobbed the flashbang device into the small group surrounding the fallen Iraq veteran, deliberately trying for whatever reason to create trouble.

You think this is all paranoia?  What about Ohio, where the Republican Governor, Robert Kasich, gave himself the authority to dissolve city and county governments which are not functioning as he wants them to, and he can appoint one person to manage that city or county to his liking?  Do you think he wouldn’t hesitate to fire all of the police and hire a private corporation?  Dream on!  The only reason he hasn’t done it so far, is he probably recognizes that he can’t get away with it. Yet.

What to do about all of this?  Do not allow yourself to be diverted by the corporations to supposed malfeasance by the police.  Sure there are members of any police department who are irresponsible in their actions, but the majority, like everyone else, just wants to do a good job.  When they are ordered by the politicians to clear out a park, they are not given the reason why.  It is not up to the on line officers to question authority, but to carry out the orders from ‘on high’.  There are good reasons for this, but we don’t need to go into them here.  Keep focused on the 1% which is destroying this country by its obvious greedy power grab.  When I refer to the Koch Machine, this is my short hand for the entire Wall Street/Bank/Mortgage/Koch Brothers cabal.

Keep focused on what the majority of the public sector employees do for you, and support their reasonable union positions.  Make this support of unions known, and at this time in particular the public sector unions.  If your company or agency has a union, support it, go to the meetings and make your wishes known for responsible union actions.  The stronger the unions are in this country, the stronger the country.

Make sure you know the positions of those for whom you vote.  Look at their past records to determine if they can be trusted to deliver on what they say.  Find good candidates to run for office.  Being in office is a learning curve.  Start small on a local Board or Commission and work your way up. One doesn’t need a lot of background in say accounting to be in office.   Good common sense and a profound sense of justice are required.

Go to your nearest Occupy Wall Street protest.  If you see someone who is about to throw something at the police, sit or lie down.  This pinpoints for the police the perpetrator who will be the only one left standing, and gets you out of the way.

But be vigilant.  Go or speak where you can and where you are needed.  Stand up for justice.

OccupyOakland

Occupy Oakland

No one has the right to throw rocks, bottle or paint at a police officer.  This is true for at least a couple of reasons.  The first and foremost is that according to the 1985 U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Tennessee v. Garner (471 U.S. 1), when rocks, etc., are thrown, the police can notch up their response in their own defense.  Throwing rocks is a stupid thing to do.  Sometimes it is done to deliberately try to incite a violent response by the police.  Which is a stupid thing to do.  

What I find distressing is the automatic bashing of the police by the media in these confrontations.  Having been in public office, I know that it is politicians on City Councils or County Boards of Supervisors (in California) who establish the atmosphere in which the police or deputies function.  One of the reasons I ran for County Supervisor was that the Board at that time was totally dysfunctional.  They bickered and sniped at each other during the meetings, much to the embarrassment of both staff and the public, and they treated staff with a total lack of respect.  The morale on all levels of our county government was at an extremely low level.  Our locally elected sheriff was known as Barbeque George.  Not exactly a role model for the rest of the Department. 

A new sheriff was elected who clamped down on being drunk on the job, and sexual harassment was zero tolerance.  Another new Supervisor was elected when I was, and we determined before being sworn in that the nastiness at the Board would stop.  The first six months or so were pretty difficult, but then one of the longer term Supes came in to see me with the comment that he thought the new way was a lot healthier!  From then on it became much easier.  The public responded, mostly, to our new atmosphere, although after I became Chair I had to ask a deputy to escort a non-compliant gentleman out of the chambers.  I only had to do it once.  The new atmosphere permeated the entire government bureaucracy, and by the time I left, it had become routine.  I also have to give credit to the then CAO who instituted several good programs for staff, as well. 

My point in telling this is that when police respond as they did in Oakland in an unprofessional manner generally they are either terribly understaffed because of budget constraints, or there is an atmosphere in Oakland which negatively permeates Oakland government, including the police department.  As a result of being terribly understaffed, Oakland called for reinforcements from other agencies, but these agencies have different protocols from Oakland and each other, which is simply the nature of things.  Each agency has its own rhythm which makes working together a problem. 

I am not going to attempt to second guess what happened in Oakland.  My “agenda” here is to point out that automatically bashing the police is one-dimensional thinking.  They may have been instructed to use force.  Then I can hear people say that they shouldn’t obey those instructions.  OK.  Most people, whatever their occupation, are survivors.  In short, they have families, mortgages, credit card debt, whatever, and they need the job.  Also, in the heat of a confrontation, each officer cannot decide on his or her own what order to obey because they do not know what has happened outside their own vicinity.  Nor can an officer, in the heat of a confrontation, differentiate between protesters as to which are violent and which are non-violent.  There simply isn’t time to interrogate each individual to determine intent! 

Which brings me to my next point.  When one is in a crowd of protesters attempting to be non-violent, and one sees someone else preparing to throw something at the police, stop them!  It may take two or three people to stop the throwing, but it must happen.  The protesters themselves must take some responsibility for each other’s behavior.  It certainly has happened before in other protests in years past where “outsiders” were brought in to create a disturbance to smear the reputations of those who were there intending to be non-violent.

I totally support the non-violent Occupy Wall Street movement.  And I totally support the police who are attempting under some difficult times to protect the protesters, the public, and themselves.  I hear a lot of talk about what do the protesters want.  I can’t speak for all of the #OWS movement, but what I want in our country is a just society, or to put it more succinctly – justice.  Most of the protesters and the police I know want the same thing as the rest of us. 

“Let justice roll like a river, washing oppression away”.   Amos 5:24

It is Republican Representative John Barrosso from Wyoming in the blog below -- not Barbarossa.  Must have been a Freudian Slip.

True Facts vs Truthiness

I woke up this morning, slowly as usual.  Morning is not my favorite time of day, and as the old cliché goes, I would like it more if it started later.  But up I arose, found my coffee, and pulled up our Tivo’d Morning Joe.

And there, in front of God and everybody, was a Republican stating that Joe Biden was fear-mongering because he made the statement that if police departments are cut, crime would go up.  Excuse me?  That is no more fear-mongering than my saying that if one lives in California, one will experience earthquakes.  It is a statement of fact.  You don’t want crime?  Don’t cut law enforcement.  You don’t want to live through a major earthquake?  Don’t live in California. 

You don’t believe me?  Take a look at Camden, New Jersey, or Oakland, California, or any other city or county that has had to make drastic cuts to law enforcement.  Do the research.  Significantly cutting law enforcement causes crime to go up. 

It is this constant drumbeat against reason that really gets my blood boiling.  How are we as a country to continue as a democracy if stupid statements such as this are made without any evidence to back them up?  Which brings me to what at first I thought of as a side issue, but perhaps not.  And that is using the term “true facts”.  So, there is such a thing as “false facts”?  What this does is weaken the word fact, or truth.

Steven Colbert has a word for “false facts”.  Truthiness.  That is what that Republican representative from somewhere – Barbarossa – was using.  The truthiness that cutting law enforcement would not cause a rise in the crime rate.  It sounds good, but is absolutely not a “true fact”.

Politics and Religion

This afternoon I will be on a local talk radio show discussing politics and religion.  This has been a subject that I have been interested in ever since a long ago Bill Moyers special on The Bible and the Constitution. 

There was a lengthy discussion about the rise, decline and rise again of the religious right in America.  It was a fascinating program, and still applicable today.  At one point in the interview Moyers was having a conversation with, to me anyway, an obscure Minister in Jackson, California.  I really can’t remember the Minister’s name.  During the interview the Minister talked about how America would become the Christian nation once again that it had been founded to be.  More on this later.  Moyers asked the Minister what would happen if people didn’t want to be the kind of Christian this Minister was proposing.  I’ll never forget the response.  “Oh, by the time we’re finished, they’ll want to.”  Chills went up my body.  He didn’t define what they would do that by the time they were finished we would all want to be his kind of Christian!

This was in my memory banks when I ran for office.  I am a committed believer in the separation of church and state.  For one thing, it is in the First Amendment of the Constitution, but also because I was an English major in college.  We not only read and studied the literature of England, but English translations of some mainland European literature, and a whole lot of American literature, particularly that around when our nation began forming itself.  The conclusion I came to was that my own religious faith was no one else’s business, but how I translated that faith into action was very much everyone else’s business.  Consequently in my campaign literature I mentioned that I was a member of the music liturgy at my Catholic parish, and that was that.  However, when it came time to present my positions on the issues, that is where I put my ideas, but not in religious terms.  I figured if people liked where I was coming from they would vote for me.  If they didn’t, they wouldn’t.  I think Elizabeth Warren, who is a US Senate candidate from Massachusetts against Scott Brown, is a good example.  Those of us like me who are political junkies know exactly where she stands on the issues.  I haven’t got a clue whether she has a religious faith, or not, or if she does, what it is.  Which is precisely as it should be. 

There has been a lot of rhetoric lately about the United States being founded as a Christian nation.  Well, the literature of that time proves that it was not.  This is not my opinion, which I am entitled to, but a matter of fact.  The reasons for this are many, but one of the primary reasons was that England and mainland Europe had recently concluded a religious war of 30 years, called, of course, the Thirty Year War, in case someone wants to google that.  Catholics and Protestants were trying to make their respective versions of Christianity the state religions wherever they had a plurality.  Needless to say England and Europe were exhausted.  Our founding fathers had their own fathers and grandfathers involved in that war, and the memory of it made them determined that it should not happen here. I, for one, am deeply grateful to them for that determination. 

Although I am not inclined to vote for Mitt Romney, the constant “chatter” in the media about his Mormonism is completely out of place.  It is extremely un-American, for one thing, because the Constitution clearly states that, “…no religious test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or Public Trust under the United States.”  Article VI, Section 3.  There are, in my opinion, many reasons not to vote for Mitt Romney.  His religion is not one of them. 

If that Minister from Jackson, CA were ever running for office, asking him how he would see to it that everyone would want to believe his version of Christianity would be a very appropriate question. 

Let Justice Roll Like A River

Let Justice Roll Down Like A River

Tomorrow will make the second time in my life that I have joined a protest.  The first was in the 1980’s when Oliver North and the Iran/Contra scandal was ongoing.  North came to a city about an hour and a half from where we live, and a friend talked us into going down to protest.  There were quite a few people there, much to my relief, so the three of us held up a banner that read, “Support the US Constitution”.  We thought that was safe enough.  We hadn’t counted on the fact that this particular city is pretty conservative, which is probably why North had been invited there to speak.  Anyway, we were standing there, all three sporting gray hair, when a kid in a pickup went by and yelled at us, “Get a job, you hippies”.  To which my very proper friend yelled back, “Who bought your pickup?  Your Grandma?”  That was the most exciting thing that happened that day, so I expect the same tomorrow.

OccupySLO is being organized by SLO Grassroots.  For those of you who don’t recognize the SLO, it stands for San Luis Obispo, CA.  SLO City is the government center for the county (SLO Co), so the protest will be held on the courthouse steps.  It is traditional to have protests there, so the location is not an indication of being upset over SLO Co government.

I agreed to go down for many reasons.  One personal one is my long-standing antipathy toward big corporations.  My father worked for an oil company during WWII, and for a time after.  He worked on rigs; not in an office.  After the war, AFL/CIO came into the fields to organize the workers.  We constantly had his fellow workers in our yard, away from my mother and me (my brother was in college by then), but I got some of the drift that it was about union organizing.  The company came to my Dad and asked him to form a company union instead of going with AFL/CIO, so he did as a way to prevent any union arguments and/or violence.  The company union was formed, most of the workers joined and it looked like things would be OK.  As soon as AFL/CIO left with their organizers, and after a few months, the company just up and dissolved the union.  My father was devastated, and he was never quite the same after.

Before the war, I remember hearing and reading about the labor unrest in California for a really funny reason.  The labor organizer who was targeted for much vilification was someone named Harry Bridges.  I had not seen his name in print before I heard it, so heard it as “Hairy” Bridges.  I can still remember wondering how hairy bridges could affect people’s lives.  After all, I was only about five or six!  And I really remembered as an adult being horrified when I saw pictures of the Hudson River burning.  I ardently supported the environmental legislation that was passed as a result.  Now these corporate radical right-wingers want to do away with those regulations.

Another reason I’m going down is in the 1980’s when I heard Ronald Reagan constantly say that we had to get government off the backs of business, because of my history of corporations relative to unions, the environment, financial  regulations, etc., the thought immediately popped into my head, “Who is going to get corporations off the backs of the people?”

Well – now we know.  Only the 99% acting in concert, and on the streets.  If anyone asks me down there what I really want, the answer is very clear in my mind – for everyone, let justice roll down like a river.

Oh, So Many Things

Oh, So Many Things

There are so many things to write about this week it is hard to choose.  There is Herman Cain, admitting his father had told him not to get into any trouble, so he sat out the civil rights movement when a young man.   Although one of the funniest Cain comments was his assertion that Blacks who vote Democratic have been brainwashed.  Using his logic, those, like himself, who mindlessly support the white, right-wing might be accused of suffering from the Stockholm Syndrome. 

There is the rejection of the Republicans in the House of Representatives to even allow President Obama’s jobs bill to get to the floor for an open and honest debate.  Remember when the Republicans several years ago were accusing the Democrats of not allowing something to come to an “up or down vote”?  

Then we could discuss the protests taking place in New York, Washington, D.C., and some cities on the west coast as well. Some commentators have dismissed them as mobs, or hippies (hadn’t heard that one in a long time), and other negative terms.  I have also heard and read lots of comments that the protesters don’t know what they want.  Since there are so many of them, it is impossible to say what ‘they’ want.  But if I were a tad younger I would be there with them, and I can tell you what makes me really angry about our present political and economic climate.

A monumental lack of justice.

On the justice issue we hear lots of comments about Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment benefits, jobs, greed, and so on.  But the most egregious injustice is the proliferation of private prisons.  The quotes below are from Global Research, 3/10/08, Vicky Pelaez, The Prison Industry in the United States: big business or a new form of slavery.   This information is seldom made public, but occasionally it oozes to the surface.

“Human rights organizations, as well as political and social ones, are condemning what they are calling a new form of inhumane exploitation in the United States, where they say a prison population of up to 2 million – mostly Black and Hispanic – are working for various industries for a pittance.  For the tycoons who have invested in the prison industry, it has been like finding a pot of gold.  They don’t have to worry about strikes or paying unemployment insurance, vacations or comp time.  All of their workers are full-time, and never arrive late or are absent because of family problems; moreover, if they don’t like the pay of .25 cents an hour and refuse to work, they are locked up in isolation cells.

There are approximately 2 million inmates in state, federal and private prisons throughout the country.  According to California Prison Focus, “no other society in human history has imprisoned so many of its own citizens.  …From less than 300,000 inmates in 1972, the jail population grew to 2 million by the year 2000.  In 1990 it was one million.  Ten years ago there were only five private prisons in the country, with a population of 2,000 inmates; now, there are 100 with 62,000 inmates.  It is expected that by the coming decade, the number will hit 360,000, according to reports.”

The proliferation of anti-immigrant laws directly adds to this private prison population, and, in my opinion, is the main objective of these laws.  Feeding on the worst of American xenophobia, legislators who receive large campaign contributions from these private prison corporations like The GEO Group and the Corrections Corporation of  America, are more than happy to pass any laws that will increase the prison population.  The infamous AB 1070 in Arizona was the direct effort to increase the prison population, which could then be contracted out.

These young, and not so young protesters, know there is something terribly wrong in this country.  They may not know precisely what it is or how to fix it, but they are truly on the right track, and I send my good thoughts and blessings their way.  May they stay non-violent.

Dylan Ratigan, GetMoneyOut.com, has a petition he presented to Federal Legislators today with some 144,000 signatures gathered in just nine days.  This petition is quite simple.  Have a constitutional amendment making it illegal to donate money to legislators.  Elections would be publicly funded, and, hallelujah, much shorter, campaign.  Several people have commented to me that it will never pass.  Perhaps not, but it has certainly started a great conversation.  If we can GetMoneyOut of our political process, we might actually get our government back, “of the people, by the people, and for the people.” 

As Pope Paul VI commented, “If you would have peace, work for justice.”  Not a bad banner for the protesters.