Occupy Wall Street & The Inevitable Fall of Capitalism

I Wrote this piece in May just after the #GeneralStrike  on #MayDay that brought 10s of thousands of people into the streets of lower manhattan in an outcry against all forms social, political, and economic exploitation and repression of working class people all over the country and world. With the passing of the #S17 Anniversary demonstrations and the subsequent police repression, I have been reflecting alot on the beauty of the movement in acting as a social awakening for millions of Americans fed up with economic disparity.

Abstract

The emergence of Occupy Wall Street is the product of a tradition of local organizing for social justice, an umbrella of social and economic grievances that have been unified by the idea of a 24/7 protest, and the historical inevitability of capitalism’s demise as the result of the self-destructive tendency that is inherent to the underlying profit motive that drives capitalism. The Occupy Movement is a historical global social awakening that began within the financial capital of the world, but its roots are drawn to years of growing discontent with increasing stratification of wealth, speculative profiteering, and rigged economic system that favors the rich and limits social mobility for the poor. In it’s essence the Occupy Movement has illustrated to the world that democracy and capitalism cannot co-exist.

I. Introduction

Less than a year ago, a small group of political campers in New York’s financial district slowly drew worldwide attention, while sparking a global uprising that has shaken the wealthiest percentile of the world to it’s core. The official story is that a leftist publication issued a call to camp out on Wall Street, and a variety of activists answered the call; After rampant police misconduct was captured on tape, numbers swelled and the cause drew a worldwide following (Van Gelder, pp. 2). Yet underneath the official stories are many layers of community organizing, socio-economic issues, and systematic deficiencies that led to this apparently sudden explosion of populist resistance to the inequality that exists all over the world. The movement has emerged as the legitimate representation and spirit of all global social revolutions throughout history. It’s expression in the 21st century is reflective of the (post) industrial world where it has thrived; acting in fulfillment of the marxist concept of global proletarian revolution.

II. Organizing

Most accounts of Occupy’s organizing origins are traced to the Spanish Indignados who slept overnight in plazas across the country or the Egyptian Revolutionaries who set up camp in Tahrir Square (Van Gelder, pp.17), but as a result of the global consequences of the movement, millions have forgotten to pay credence to the decades of underground organizing by New Yorkers who experience the stratification of capitalism on a daily basis in a city of projects and corporate headquarters, where monthly apartment rent ranges from $150 to over $5000 (Citizens,).

In the summer before Occupy, New Yorker’s created a two-week long camp known as “Bloombergville,” in order to protest city-wide budget cuts. Bloombergville had limited success and publicity, but it set the stage for Occupying New York City. But before Bloombergville, several major social movements acted as precursors for the occupation. Primarily the Anti-War Movement and the Anti-Police Brutality movement. in the years leading up to Occupy, hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers had been taking to the streets regularly and with the occasional spurt of high frequency. With George Bush’s invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, and the NYPD killings of Amadou Diallo and Sean Bell; Massive demonstrations and coalitions mobilized and familiarized many New Yorkers who would later become Occupiers into the social justice struggle.

 Historically, the city has been a focal point of dissent, but what made New York perfect for the original occupation was the amount of corporate functionaries that have made New York home at the expense of many low-income New Yorker’s homes. local issues of constant budget cuts, privatization, police brutality, and  gentrification fueled massive outpouring of New Yorkers in support of the park when it was initially threatened with a “cleaning” (Van Gelder, pp. 32). It is crucial to note the roll of the New York public in supporting the mass actions of Occupy Wall Street, as urban workers and students in stratified cities across the U.S. were key in the succeful civil disobediences and subsequent spreading of the movement.

III. An Avalanche of Social and Economic Grievances

It was the fall of 2005 when Hurricane Katrina struck, but it still seems like yesterday that the world was watching for days as crowds of low-income, predominantly black, New Orleanians were left to starve in the Superdome. In the aftermath, neoliberal politicians and monied business interests swooped in and privatized the public school system while destroying entirely the public housing system. In place of these social services, grandoise schemes for luxury hotels, condos, and even casinos were thrown into the picture as a masquerade for a “smaller, safer city” (Klein, pp. 7). The issues in New Orleans are far from isolated, and in fact are just a small part of the social and economic plight of Americans which fomented into Occupy Wall Street.
The struggle of Americans in the twenty-first century is primarily against the systematic consequences of a neoliberal capitalist system. This struggle entails urban decay, a lack of affordable housing options/foreclosures, a lack of universal access to healthcare, rural and inner-city poverty, a crumbling public education system, rising costs of higher education/giant amounts of student debt, corporate dominated food supply, increasing stratification of wealth, austerity measures to social services/safety nets, privatizations, gentrification, environmental degradation, and a variety of other issues that are parralleled globally. In this context, conditions for a social revolution are ripe; the expression of a social movement within the modern police state coupled with the lack of common public space resulted in this new form of encampment protest.

IV. A Rotten System

When a 26 year-old Tunisian vendor Mohammed Bouazizi set himself on fire to protest the police extortion of his wares to the extent that he could not feed his family, it was not an isolated incident (OR Books, pp. 5). It was the result of a decaying global capitalist system that encourages police repression, and tolerates widespread poverty. It was the single most defiant action of our time against the legacy of the Chicago Boys and Milton Friedman in perpetuating disaster capitalism throughout the world (Klein, pp. 158) While capitalism has led to many of the economic crises in America and globally, it has been the failure of the the corporate political system that really projected the Occupy Movement as an alternative to current system.
In it’s early stages, Occupy camps across the nation became sites where an umbrella of social grievances were aired 24/7. Experiments of grassroots democracy and collective handling of resources like the kitchen and library provided for a glimpse of the new world within the old. After years of bank bailouts, school closures in New York, and with an election year coming up; Occupy seized the perfect moment to condemn a broken system.
In particular, the General Assembly embodied the spirit of grassroots, non-hierarchial, collectivist, direct democracy. The General Assembly is a collective gathering of the public on the steps of Zuccotti Park where decisions would be made through consensus based decisions. Proposals were modified so all in the group agree with the proposal, furthermore a progressive stack that gives an advantage to traditionally under-represented groups and a system that allowed people to signal their feelings without speaking helped created an open atmosphere (OR Books, pp. 25-30). The adaptation of the “people’s mic” technique of call-and-repeat in order amplify people’s voices and unify them added to the consensus building process and feeling of unity between participants (Ibid, pp. 25-26).
The success of the General Assembly highlighted the anachronistic and bankrupt nature of the bourgeois democratic system that the U.S. functions by. It provided a living critique of corporate lobbying, the citizen’s united court ruling, and elite monied interests in congress and the white house. At the same time, the General assembly provided a more democratic alternative to entire political structure through mass popular support.
On the global economic front for democracy, similar developments have been occurring in Latin America in the past decade embodied in the horizontalism movement of worker collectives taking over shuttered factories. Beginning with neighborhood assemblies that arose out of the IMF sponsored freeze on small personal bank accounts in Argentina during an economic crises,  workers began organizing and taking over shuttered factories like Zanon and defending them in battles (Sitrin, pp. 19). These factory takeovers resulted in cooperative democratic workplaces where all workers ran the factories together without any sort of hierarchy, and were in response to the failure of governments and businesses in creating jobs, not to mention ones with living wages and pensions (Ibid, pp. 46).  The worker cooperatives provided for an alternative to the top down structure that people have come to accept in the capitalist workplace; by taking control of the factories themselves, workers were not only owning their own labor but creating a more efficient and democratic system that drew state repression as it challenged the top down bureaucratic management of capitalism.
Aside from the grassroots popular alternatives to the current system, the principle forerunner to the Occupy movement and its 99% theme was the inequality of wealth. With over 80% of congress being part of the 1%, and the 1% controlling over 40% of the total wealth; a dire situation had been created in America. As a result of a neo-colonial corporate system, people’s frustrations with the system found release in a unique social movement that was able to miraculously thrive within in the belly of the financial beast

V. Conclusion

Occupy Wall Street was a rare breakthrough of human expression and resistance to a broken repressive social order. Its wildfire spread was due to the perfect conditions derived from one of the worst global economic recessions . Yet to understand what led to the movements sudden explosion, it is important to recognize the decades of local organizing, the increasing social and economic poverty and stratification, and the anti-democratic political bureaucracy that exists all over the globe. The central grievance of Occupy Wall Street came out of frustration with the bank bailouts, and the idea of an increasingly unequal society. But it is also a movement connected to history in that it is similar to all past historical insurrections and revolutions against repressive government and economic conditions. Yet what was different between the occupy movement, and the revolution that brought democracy to Haiti or socialism to the Soviet Union, was the reality that Occupy was a phenomenon that spread through largely developed countries and thrived in urban areas.
Occupy represented part of the gradual fulfillment of the marxist prophecy that only a revolution by workers in the industrial and post-industrial world will be able to truly bring down capitalism. During the American Autumn, it seemed like that was precisely so. Day-after-day, actions were occuring in the city that disrupted business as usual, and forced bankers and the 1% to see the consequences of their actions on a daily basis. When people look back at the Occupy movement as a part of history, they will see it’s significance in uniting social justice movements within the belly of the beast, and targetting instruments of the global capitalist system using popular support in a way never before accomplished in American history. Through the brutal police repression and complex economic critiques put forward by the movement, it became apparent that democracy cannot exist in corporate capitalism, and that in fact corporatism destroys democracy.
Popular resistance and support built by years of layoffs, outsourcing, foreclosures, austerity measures, war profiteering, and decaying infrastructure. Popular support that is growing and based of a myriad of loosely connected issues that critique the entire social and economic system down to it’s core. The Occupy experience was akin to the 1905 uprising in Russia in that it provided a living memory of a revolt against the system that paved the road for future liberation. How the occupy movement will be written into history all depends on the what future actions are taken to fulfill its legacy.

              References

Klein, Naomi. (2007). The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Picador/Pan Books. ISBN: 9780312427993.

Sitrin, Marina. (2006). Horizontalism: Voices of Popular Power in Argentina. AK Press. ISBN: 9781904859581.

Van Gelder, Sarah. (2011). This Changes Every Thing: Occupy Wall Street and the 99% Movement. Yes! Magazine. Berret Koehler Publishers, Inc. San Franscisco. ISBN: 978160994587.

Writers for the 99%. (2011). Occupying Wall Street: The Inside Story of an Action that Changed America. OR Books. ISBN: 9781935928683.

 

Reflections on Homelessness: I

There are a million reasons behind the constant epidemic of homelessness in New York City, but in the end the reality is that it is the result of capitalism. Growing up in the city, it’s easy to become numb to the crisis because it is such an omnipresent crisis, people have learned to block it from their mind. Yet there is homelessness everywhere in the city. It is mothers, daughters, children, the mentally ill, the chemically addicted, the unemployed, the foreclosed on, the elderly, the young, and every race. As a revolutionary, one of my dreams is too see the day when everyone man and woman has a home to call their own. As a outreach worker and case manager, this is a daily struggle that twists my stomach and bangs on my chest: Capitalism doesn’t care about the human right of housing.
In 2009, New York City Housing Authority stopped issuing Section 8 vouchers to the homeless. Then in 2010, Bloomberg announced the end of the Advantage Subsidy that had helped the homeless get apartments. Thousands of clients were told that they were no longer welcome in their new homes, and that they would be again living out on the cold corners and dirty train stations. Many would not return to the shelter system for lack of faith, but many more would not return because of the broken nature of the shelter system. Thanks to the work of dedicated social workers there are some new and improving shelters that are positive in ending homelessness, in particular BRC Safe Haven and Moving Homes. However, there are many more shelters often under DHS control that resemble as one resident called it “concentration camps.” Stories from Bedford-Atlantic Men’s Shelter in an armory in Bedford Stuyvesant Brooklyn are consistently that there people use narcotics constantly and openly, and from other shelters there are stories of rapes, robberies and unsafe environments. There is currently only one shelter where families can stay altogether, and the situation is grim. Funding is cut every year, as rents are rising in the city, the system is currently being overload. Many clients in street outreach cannot often be serviced.
Yet Bloomberg has encouraged the shelter option in a climate of astronomically rising rents, little affordable housing, and rampant underfunding. As a result, some clients in Ward’s island for example, end up going their whole lives in the shelter. Other systematic limitations aside from the lack of permanent housing is the issue that shelters kick residents out early in the morning and force them to come back late at night with very little to do in between, clients often get into trouble. Some case workers complain that the homeless are shelter resistant and refuse services and that they don’t know what’s good for them because they’re all mentally ill and chemically addicted people. I think that while there are some cases of this, all of these are symptoms of the effect of the capitalist system. Many case workers struggle with dealing with

Presentation on the Crisis in Affordable Housing Facing New York

The following is a presentation I have created to educate students, community members, and social workers on the issues facing Low-income New Yorkers seeking affordable housing, it’s validity in combatting homelessness, and the long fight that we have ahead.

The Attack on Affordable Housing in New York City

Revitalizing Medicaid: The Dream of Universal Health Care In America

I. Abstract
         
    With passage of the compromised Affordable Care Act after a long congressional battle has trumpeted the expansion of the medicaid program in order to cover millions of un/under-insured Americans who lack access to healthcare. Yet, Medicaid is in a crisis of cost-cutting managed plans, long waiting rooms, little access to Primary Care Physicians or Specialists, and a funding shortfall which has caused the current disaster. As a result, Medicaid is at the crossroads of becoming the universal healthcare system America desperately needs, or an ineffective broken system that fails to live up to its promise of affordable quality care for low-income Americans. Medicaid has the ability to be a comprehensive national single-payer healthcare system, which about a third of the population desperately need in the face of rising HMO premiums, expensive procedures, and pharmaceutical prescriptions. Medicaid is the only existing program which actively combats the negative consequences of America’s profit-based healthcare system.

II. Introduction: The Struggle for a Better Medicaid

 With over 50 million Americans uninsured, and 67 million covered by Medicaid; nearly one-third of American people are facing an unprecedented healthcare crisis (MACPAC, 2011, The Evolution, pp.1). According to this figure, roughly one-sixth of the population can’t qualify for medicaid due to issues raised by eligibility enrollment. Another sixth of the population has received coverage, but institutionalized federal funding shortfalls have jeopardized the ability of the program to provide care for low-income Americans who can’t afford the high cost of private insurance premiums. Furthermore, much of the recent work on medicaid and medicare programs have taken the theme of retreat into center stage. Much of the recent legislation has been focused on semantics of past medicaid bills, rather than the much needed expansion of the program (U.S., 2010, pp.1-2).

    Medicaid is a Federal-funded State administered program that is now largely contracted by the state to HMOs like MetroPlus and HealthFirst in New York City. Medicaid does not involve a monthly premium, but often has a small co-payment for treatments. Medicaid generally covers emergency transportation, doctor/clinic visits, and a few other basic services (Ask, 2009.) The Affordable Care Act was initially designed to provide universal health care to Americans, but after relentless attacks, in the end the compromise became expanded medicaid coverage for those individuals who are below 133% of the poverty line (around 15,000) (Galewitz, 2010). It is of the utmost importance that medicaid is expanded as a program, given a new influx of funding, and restructured to serve a massive influx of uninsured low-income people often with serious health grievances. With austerity measures cutting social programs across the world; It is crucial that medicaid is restructured to be a well-funded permanent program that has the ability to provide all American citizens with universal coverage of the highest quality

I. The Social Problem: Providing Healthcare for Low-Income Americans

    Medicaid has always been seen as the insurance of last resort, rather than a decent affordable healthcare option that it is supposed to represent. But in the early 2000’s, the state of medicaid’s decay as the result of the prevalence of neoliberal ideology in the political establishment had become blatantly apparent. Recent social program-slashing budgets are unfortunately only the most recent development (Winters, 2011).
           Deamonte Driver was a young boy living in Maryland in a low-income household. When he started complaining about a toothache, his mother started looking for a dentist; yet none would accept his medicaid coverage in the area. In the end he was forced to go to a hospital where he was merely given painkillers and sent home. An eighty dollar tooth removal was all he needed, but instead the bacteria from the toothache spread to his brain and Deamonte died despite late efforts after the situation drew national attention. (Committee, 2008.)
           Esmin Green was a Brooklyn woman with a health issue that needed immediate treatment. She sat down in the Public Kings County Hospital waiting room, and waited for hours and hours as just another forgotten low-income patient in an underfunded/staffed public hospital. When she got up, it wasn’t because the nurse had called her name. She would collapse and died in that waiting room, and left there. After some time, a staff member prodded her with his foot (Walden, 2008).
           Medicaid is the last line of defence between death and poverty. But medicaid is at a crossroads of becoming a decent affordable national public health system, or a decrepit decayed system where clients can’t find specialists and die waiting in the long lines for service (Ibid, 2008). At the same time, for nearly a third of the population this is the only option for any sort of medical care (MACPAC, 2011). America faces a  triple crisis of rising costs and profits in the healthcare industry, Millions of uncovered and undercovered Americans with health issues, and a Medicaid system at a crossroads of direction.
    As mentioned earlier, roughly one sixth of the population is currently uncovered. After decades of war against social programs, socialistic ideals, and the emergence of neoliberalism; single-payer healthcare has received increasing support from citizens, yet resistance from pharmaceuticals as the political institution. As a result fifty million Americans have become in danger of being exposed to medical system that has driven costs up as a result of the incentive for high profit margins in hospitals. Basic medical procedures cost thousands and thousands of dollars, which low-income families cannot afford. At the same time, monthly premiums are often too expensive for low-income families whom many do not make enough to cover the high cost of groceries, laundry, and other basics.
    As a result, a crisis has emerged that has demonstrated the flawed logic of capitalist economics when applied to human rights. Obamacare has done nothing to reign in the high costs of healthcare; and medicaid isn’t competitive enough with private insurance. Other issues in medicaid include the difficulty of qualifying and completing an enrollment sometimes make many long visits to the medicaid enroller. Furthermore, strict income limits make it easy for people to lose their eligibility. There have been complaints of poor doctors, a lack of coverage for needed medications or treatments in certain cases, and most of all a lack of quality of treatment and facilities in comparison with that received under private insurance. This inequity has created two distinct social classes within the healthcare system. Questions remain as to how Obamacare will be implemented, especially under the piecing-apart attacks it is receiving from congressional republicans who seek to “block-grant” medicaid in the same fashion as welfare reform which turned to AFDC into TANF and cut funding to the program by half through the veil of state’s rights (Winters, 2011). Critics are already arguing that the current Affordable Care Act expansion will force already overworked medicaid doctors to give poor care as the result of increased numbers without an increase in the allocation of doctors and matching funding; Only New York and several other northeastern states with better public healthcare infrastructure will be prepared as the result of a lack of development of public healthcare infrastructure in the south and midwest (Roy, 2001).

    IA. A Culture & History of Healthcare Profiteering
   
    Healthcare in the United States has had a long history of profiteering as the result of the strength of the healthcare lobby and industry. Both pharmaceuticals and private practice practitioners, who make extremely large profits off of the current system of private for-profit healthcare, have a vested interest in preventing low-cost healthcare options that cut their profit margins and clientele. As a result, Pharmaceuticals and private practitioners have been extremely active in impeding the expansion of medicaid and preventing the construction of a universal healthcare system. In combination with years of anti-communist rhetoric, which attacked public control of healthcare; a mentality that American healthcare’s high quality care for the wealthy and low-quality care for the poor was perfect the way it is developed in the mind of the American public

    IB. Healthcare Deprivation: The American Way or Capitalist Economics?

    Yet the U.S. is now one of the only industrialized countries in the world with a large chunk the population that is deprived of healthcare. While public opinion has been part of sustaining this; the burden of the blame falls upon an economic system that promote high costs and high profit margins. Insurance companies function for shareholders, and thus in the past would not cover people with pre-existing conditions or family histories of disease because they were searching for higher profit margins. When critics talk about the Affordable Care Act being unable to reign in high costs; it is because of the act’s inability to do away with the pharmaceutical and health insurance companies altogether, and replace them with public functionaries. Instead the act will make 16 million people eligible in 2014, those who fall within the 133% of the poverty line, which still leaves millions uncovered and fails to match the incoming wave of patients with adequate funding (Galewitz, 2010).

Yet in the 1960s when medicaid was created as part of Johnson’s “War on Poverty,” it had become acknowledged that having no access to healthcare for low-income Americans would only add fuel to the fodder of the civil rights movement and later the Vietnam War. But as the result of the war’s drain on ‘Great Society’ funding and bureaucracy; The system from the beginning was faced with a high demand and low budget.

But behind this meaningful defunding of medicaid come not only the cultural notion that                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

American’s do not accept socialist handouts comes a deeper fundamentally economic reason for depriving low-income Americans of access to healthcare, and more importantly quality healthcare. The idea of profit sustains just about every private industry, and while medicaid provides a public option for many means-tested Americans, it exists within a private industry that is seeking to protect it’s high profits in the face of the reality of its consequences. Primarily the lack of access to quality healthcare by millions.
    As a result, even medicaid’s dollars are being privatized through “managed” care, which allows insurance companies to have a share of the government dollar. With healthcare being run as a business questions arise over the profitability of death, diseases, high premiums and co-pays, medications which prolong rather than cure, and denying expensive treatments on the basis of cost to the insurance company (Galewitz, 2010).

II. Medicaid’s Objective, Premises, Expectations, and Population

    Medicaid’s objective purpose is to provide healthcare for low-income Americans who cannot afford any other form of healthcare. This mission has encompassed an increasing amount of Americans who are largely out-of-work, seniors, students, immigrants, and working people with complicated health issues. Yet the expectations remain foggy; Dental care for example is only required for patients under 21 (Ask, 2012). At the same time, certain states have not prioritized developing their medicaid program in the same way as others. The contradictory premises of a single-payer health care program within a for-profit umbrella system is the result of the special populations that are targeted by the program; however it brings to mind the importance of what the real objectives of the program are.

IIA. Overt Objective: Healthcare System for the Poor

 

The supposed objective of Medicaid is too provide a means-tested application-based

program that targets a large and diverse low-income population across both rural and urban settings. It is meant to be basic emergency coverage, and nothing more. It is the last line of defence for needy children and families against procedures that often cost tens of thousands of dollars. But with a permanent funding shortfall, the program has seemingly been designed to represent the worst aspects of an overloaded public system.

IIB. Covert Objective: Political Battle to Block Universal Public Healthcare

    Medicaid from its inception seemed to be designed to be an ineffective program. Instead of adequately funding the program to provide for enough quality Primary Care Physicians and entice specialists into serving Medicaid patients; much of the program’s funds were instead directed towards the Vietnam War. As a result a precedent for operating on a low budget was set for the program. Furthermore, bureaucracy and a high demand for the program resulted in many cases of poor quality treatments (like the kind Deamonte Driver recieved) being administered. Politicians on the right would then use these failures as a warning against a public universal healthcare system.

III. The Effect of Medicaid: The Bare Minimum for the those who have the Bare Minimum

    The primary result of Medicaid is that millions of Americans who would otherwise be unable to afford treatment for conditions are covered. However the unintended effects of this are that these millions often don’t receive comparable care to their privately-covered counterparts. So while Medicaid represents the framework of a thorough healthcare system; in practice it is unable to follow through as the result of material resource constraints. The effect is that while one sixth of the population relies on it many, including those who are uninsured, percieve the program as barely better than nothing.

    IIIA. Intended Effect: Framework for a Humanitarian Healthcare System

    While for some anti-social program politicians the initial goal was to effect the Social Security Act in a way that Medicaid would be critically underfunded and forced to fold, as was the case with many politicians who opposed the Affordable Care Act, this was not the case for all. Those individuals and social movements which fought for healthcare reform represented millions of American’s who were unable to be treated for the most basic healthcare and need treatment.

IIIB. Unintended Effect: Overburdened and in Danger of Flatlining the Poor

    By slashing medicaid funding, the effect of medicaid has materialized as long lines, poor access to one’s Primary Care Provider, Specialists, Medical malpractice, and a decaying or inadequate public hospitals and clinics. As the growth of Managed Care programs has spread, so have many issues with coverage of expensive medical necessities. For example, HealthCare USA refused to pay for a brace for a patient after hours of waiting and driving to find a specialist all the way across the state (Galewitz, 2010). The failures of Private insurance companies using federal medicaid dollars has been caused by their need to function for profit in a segment of healthcare that must operate in a non-profit single-payer fashion funded by higher taxation on those who make above $250,000 a year in order to function as it should.

IV. Alternative Policies:
   

IVA. Universal Public Healthcare for All

    The ideal alternative to Medicaid is to provide a public option to healthcare free of charge no matter what income you recieve. Residents and Citizens could purchase a publicly subsidized and operated plan that covers dental and medical emergencies and complications with little cost to patient. This single-payer program could be funded through cuts to military as troops continue to leave Iraq, higher taxation of alcohol and tobacco, but primarily raising income taxes on those who make more than $250,000 a year while creating several tax brackets for the segments of this bracket who earn over $500,000 or $1 million. A Universal Healthcare system would pay specialists at comparable rates to private insurance companies, as opposed to the low pay-outs of medicaid (Roy, 2011).
    More importantly, Rather than being purposed towards serving purely low-income populations; A Universal Healthcare System would be purposed towards providing such an excellent low-cost healthcare that private insurance companies would on their own be rendered anachronistic.

    IVB. Revitalizing, Restructuring, and Expanding Medicaid as the “Public Option”
   
    Universal Healthcare outside of the Medicaid program seems years away for Americans after the battle over the Affordable Healthcare Act ended in the compromise of medicaid expansion. Yet the very expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Healthcare Act indicates the possibility of achieving universal healthcare through the program. Yet Medicaid has really only been reformed once; in 1997 when Congress created the Child Health Insurance Program (CHIP) in order to deal with the exobrbitant demand for infant and adolescent care by low-income parents. Since 1997, which has been responsible for covering 8 million children since its inception (CHIP Statistic, 2011).
    The success of CHIP in covering low-income children illustrates what is possible when it comes to Medicaid reform. Through restructuring, providing extra matching funds, and renovating Medicaid’s Childcare; over 8 million more children were covered. The same strategy can be applied to reinventing medicaid. By enlisting more primary care physicians and paying them better, lines will be cut at overcrowded clinics (Roy, 2011). By having state-of-the-art equipment on site in low-income communities; the timely referal process can be cut down as well. Many issues in the Medicaid program can be solved with the proper resources and dedication, yet as long as the program functions through the bureaucracy and shortfalls, Medicaid’s issues will continue to be sidelined.
   

   

References

Ask Medicare. (2009). Medicaid Getting Started, An Overview of Medicaid. CMS Publication No. 11409. <http://permanent.access.gpo.gov/gpo3799/11409.pdf&gt;.

Commision on Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access. (2011). Report to Congress: Federal CHIP Financing (MacBasics). U.S.Government Printing Office. <http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/GPO-MACPAC-MACBasics-CHIP-2011-09/pdf/GPO-MACPAC-MACBasics-CHIP-2011-09.pdf>

Commision on Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access. (2011). Report to Congress: The Evolution of Managed Care in Medicaid. U.S.Government Printing Office.

Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. (2008). One year later Medicaid’s response to systemic problems by the death of Deamonte Driver : Hearing Before the Subcommittee on Domestic Policy of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, House of Representative. U.S. Government Printing Office. <http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CHRG-110hhrg49775/pdf/CHRG-110hhrg49775.pdf>.

CMS. (2012). Chip Statistical Enrollment. Center for Medicaid Services. http://www.cms.gov/NationalCHIPPolicy/downloads/CHIPEverEnrolledYearGraph.pdf

Galewitz, P. (2010). As Medicaid Managed Care Programs Grow; So Do Issues. USA Today. http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/health/2010-11-12-medicaid12_CV_N.htm

U.S. Congress (2010). An Act to Extend Certain Expiring Provisions of the Medicare and Medicaid Programs, and for Other Purposes. U.S Government Printing Office. <http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/PLAW-111publ309/pdf/PLAW-111publ309.pdf&gt;.

Klein, E. (2011). Medicaid’s Problems and Health-Care Reform. Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/medicaids-problems-and-health-care-reform/2011/05/19/AGzsckYH_blog.html

Roy, A. (2011). New Study: Obamacare’s Medicaid Expansion will Exacerbate Doctor Shortfall.  Forbes. <http://www.forbes.com/sites/aroy/2011/03/17/new-study-obamacares-medicaid-expansion-will-exacerbate-doctor-shortages/>

Walden, R. (2008). Her Name Was Esmin Green. Women’s Health News. . <http://womenshealthnews.wordpress.com/2008/07/04/her-name-was-esmin-green/&gt;.

Winters, M. S. (2011). In Federal Budget Battle, Social Programs Pay the Price. National Catholic Reporter. <http://ncronline.org/news/federal-budget-battle-social-programs-pay-price>.

Short Video about housing on Avenue C & D

Extremely important video Discussing urban decay of housing in the Lower East Side admist gentrification. The lack of repairs are due to the multi-billion dollar shortfall of federal funds that NYCHA is currently dealing with, which has resulted in serious maintenance issues

Nicholas, Urban Poverty in America, and Social Justice in Our Cities

The Following Research Paper was drafted in Response to a New York Times Article by N. Whitaker titled “First Born, Fast Grown: The Manful Life of Nicholas,” which discusses urban poverty in Southside Chicago, and the Citizen’s Committee’s “Keeping Track of New York City’s Children” which details poverty, health, housing, welfare, employment, crime, and other New York City statistics and their effect on the youth. 

The New York Times Article can be found here, and is a pre-requisite before reading the text below.

The Citizen’s Committee text can be found here, and is not necessary to the text below, however it is also recommended.

Abstract:

The life of Nicholas growing up in Southside Chicago in an impoverished single-mother home is just one story out of the hundreds of millions of Americans throughout history who suffer from human rights abuses as a direct result of the inequality and stratification of society created by capitalist economics. Urban, Poor & Working-class, and especially minority-populated neighborhoods in New York paint a picture of condensed socio-economic oppression and exploitation comparable to the undeveloped world. The struggle of Nicholas’s family to survive in the Chicago inner-city is all too common across America as a result of the inability of the capitalist system to provide the necessary social services that the poor and working class need to live. Through organizing and providing communities with essential social services, employment resources, and better housing; we can turn marginalized low-income areas into thriving working class communities with a brighter future for our children.

Introduction

For a little over a century, Poverty in marginalized urban areas has existed as a epidemic that has become accepted as the result of an economic system that designs classes so that there can be no other way but downward mobility; This is illustrated by the constantly increasing demand for food stamp benefits in New York in the past decade as youth are coming of age in poverty, and are demanding food stamps in higher numbers than ever before (Citizens, pp. 79). The institutionalization of poverty has led to biological, social, and psychological damage to low-income communities. The capitalist economic system designs working class and minority populated urban areas to have a lack of access to proper educational, health, and employment opportunities, whether it is Southside Chicago or Mott Haven in the Bronx (Citizens, pp. 32). Accelerated by belief in trickle-down ideology, eligibility-based welfare reform, and cuts to public employment, Medicaid, and housing (Carter, p.1); We have seen the lives of poor and working class families like Nicholas’s face dire abject poverty as only the shell of a safety net has been left. Drastic cuts have left millions who need assistance out of luck, as the new corporate welfare Clinton-Gingrich system that replaced the socialistic New Deal one is based on keeping people who need assistance off the rolls (Ibid, p.2).  What’s worse is that banks like JP Morgan and are profiting off of Nicholas’s misery (Wright, 2011).

Unemployment is now nearly at 10%, Under-employment at 20%. (Gallup, Figure 1, 2.), and amongst minority communities in New York the figures are even higher (Citizens, Fig. 44, pp. 67). Yet at the same time the federal government has cut taxes for the richest 10% (Jimenez, 115). The city announced in the past few years an end to new Section 8 vouchers which give working New Yorkers Access to affordable housing. Then the Advantage Subsidy was discontinued as well, which was essentially the only sort of program to help homeless people get housing (New Destiny, p.1) Furthermore ‘at-will’ employment makes firing employees without just cause easy, and thus exploitation of the desperate even easier.

This is the result of capitalism’s race to the bottom. We saw this clearly in ’95 with AT&T’s downsizing layoffs that led to an increase in stock value of 10%. (Karen Ho, Liquidated, p.1-5) Afterwords many companies like Enron and Bank of America then followed suit. With outsourcing often ending up in raising wages, forcing companies to then move to the next market (Chan, Pt. 4-13.), a savage system has been set up where breaking people’s backs in turn means great profit.

Few people see a connection between the cuts to social services, the increasingly volatile greed of corporate-profit motives, and America’s inner-city ghettoes. In marginalized areas of America’s cities, like ‘The Lower’ or ‘Mott Haven’ in New York, households under the poverty line make up half of the neighborhood (Citizens, pp. 68). The bio-pyscho-social internalization of this is principle to lives of working and poor people in America. The reality of the environment that Nicholas grew up in is one of few jobs, educational opportunities, decent housing, or even nutritional opportunities. The modern low-income urban neighborhood has been designed by the top one percent to be a pool of cheap labor (and high unemployment) where people live desperately, and thus will accept lower and lower wages; This is evident is the large discrepancy between state and citywide unemployment in New York (Citizens, Fig. 43, pp. 66). Furthermore, because the people who live in these areas are already marginalized; the political establishment refuses to keep promises of maintaining housing infrastructure. This is supported by the presence of rats, rodents, and endless maintenance deficiences in New York apartments, primarily in public housing areas like the Lower East Side, Mott Haven, and Brownsville where sometimes half of all apartments in a neighborhood face these issues (Citizens, Fig. 75, 76, 77, pp.88-89).  Nicholas’ Struggle should be seen as a call for a social-orientated economy in America; one that treats poverty as a human right abuse rather than the norm.

Biological Constraints on NicholasLife for many people in marginalized urban areas of cities like New

York in Chicago has created a biological cycle of repressive factors. Nicholas is eating bologna because working class people and minorities have been subject to generations of stagnant wages, and a constantly rising cost of living (Pollack, 2008). As a result Nicholas is forced to eat cheap bologna, and live in a barren apartment. Working class and poor individuals have seen attacks on rights like food stamps and housing that have have disasterous consequences. JP Morgan’s profiteering from the program, and the fact that the scale gives a decreased amount of credit after the first person (Carter, 2012). Years ago, Cabrini-Green Chicago’s largest project was unjustly bulldozed despite the displacement of hundreds of thousands of poor families, and now Obama is continuing this policy by defunding the HUD, Section 8, and housing complexes all over the country (Clark, 2012).
But the most challenging biological issues pressing Nicholas are the the use of crack by his mother in the often violent community, which undoubtedly effects the family everyday. The family also lacks a steady father figure, which is difficult for multiple boys growing up in a inner-city environment. In New York, low-income neighborhoods are more prone to biological adversities as a result of poor access to nutrition as well as enivornmental adversities like crime and pollution; For example over 10% of New York households have lead contaminated tap water, which lead to learning disabilities in children (Citizens, Fig. 94, pp. 99). low-income communities such as Mott Haven and ‘The Lower,’ face epidemic health issues as a result of proper access to healthcare facilities and health insurance (Citizens, Fig. 310, pp. 228-229). This is complicated by underfunding to medicaid and medicare as a common practice, causing doctors not to accept it’s payout or give less treatment. It is yet to see whether the expansion of medicaid, secured through a long struggle for universal healthcare culminating in Obama’s Affordable Care Act, will have the matching funding needed to support a system that has often been underfunded. Also an issue is that many high-level doctors do not want to take medicaid’s low pay-out. When Deamonte Driver and Esmin Green died it was the result of the failure of healthcare for low-income people in America (Walden, 2008). In order to provide children like Nicholas with necessary medical and counseling services; medicaid needs to not just be expanded but completely restructured to accomodate the needs of a first world industrial country.

Social Problems Effecting Nicholas, His Community, and Family

The Social issues that Nicholas, his community, and family face are all connected to the austerity measures, marginalization of low-income areas, and neoliberal economics that deprive urban communities of the resources necessarily to building thriving working class and low-income neighborhoods. In 1996, a Republican-led congress passed welfare reform

with the assistance of democrats; Reform that abolished New Deal Era Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), and implemented Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) (Hasking, 2006, pp.1). TANF’s first major issue was cutting the welfare roll by requiring work of people who were out of work, or unable to acquire work as the result of a lack of education, training, and other circumstances (Ibid, pp.1). Immediately the most vulnerable segment of the population was choked of assistance it needed, and this doesn’t just effect low-income African-American communities. A
Report to Congress on Native-American TANF use illustrates TANF’s inability to provide a pathway for the unemployed, and combatting poverty (GAO, 2002, pp.2). Secondly, TANF had a time limit; Nicholas and his mother’s struggle against systematically-induced poverty does not have a time limit, and two years of small monthly checks isn’t going to help raise a family in the inner-city. (Jimenez, 2010, pp.30). Thirdly, TANF has been administered in  small block grants to states, which in turn results in the lack of funds to cover even half the people that need the assistance (Ibid, pp. 34-35).
Living in a marginalized urban area, Nicholas and his brothers have grown up accustomed to shootings, narcotic use and trafficking, a underfunded school, decaying urban housing, a lack of employment or employed role-models. A recent recession has accelerated the stratification

of wealth that has resulted in the foreclosed homes, lay-offs, and evictions. Inner-city communities all over America are entrenched below the poverty line. In New York, most of the Bronx has a median income that is just over the poverty line (Citizens, Fig. 35, pp. 62). The economic isolation of the low-income Bronx is definitive in the American use of the Jewish term, “Ghetto,” for the isolated ethnic concentration camp deportation neighborhoods where the Nazis penned minorities and radicals before sending them to their death. In America, the term became popularized as a metaphorical definition of how bad conditions had become in inner-cities as the result of inability of the economic system to provide a better future for marginalized people.

The Pyschological Effects of the Ghetto on Nicholas

Growing up in an urban ghetto, many youth face constant traumatic stress stemming from the frustration of family life, the neighborhood, and the inability to break the cyclical chains of the poverty and urban decay, which surrounds youth in these neighborhoods. The effect of the lack of opportunities and the violence are extremely prevalent on Nicholas’ family; Nicholas’ and his brothers witnessing a shoot-out is an all to common traumatic event in New York when the desperation of intense poverty pours out into the streets. The trauma that these incidents induce upon youth force the children to feel unsafe, stressed, and scarred for the rest of their lives. It can lead to use experimentation with controlled substances which by high school in New York ranges from 5-30% of students (Citizens, Fig. 236, 237, pp. 182-183), also the need to protect oneself has resulted in approximately 10% of New York City students carrying a weapon for protection (Citizens, Fig. 232, pp. 180).

Children in the city become embedded in the street, fearful of each other, defensive, or emotionally hardened as a natural reaction to whatever trauma is most bluntly experienced. Nicholas and his family keep positive through the bonding love of a struggling family, but it’s not always so for many families.

In order to feed her children, Nicholas’ mother has worked a series of low-paying labor-intensive jobs. The pyschological effect of these jobs never paying enough is this feeling of not being able to achieve success, which leads to an apathetic mentality of giving in to oppression. Already Nicholas is handwashing clothes and cooking dinner; an introduction into the hard life of his mother, and the cycle of life for households in the southside.

The hardships of Nicholas’ childhood can both build character, and way him down with the hopelessness of being unable to realize the life he envisions. One thing is for sure; the life of the inner-city youth dealing with complex issues of concentrated poverty has the possibility of a far more negative effect on the pyschological development of youth, when compared

to those well-to-do suburban environments. As a result of pyschological damage, youth are often marginalized and unprepared for college or careers, and are forced to turn to the streets as the result of an economic system that is stacked against them (Citizens, Fig. 232, pp. 180).

Conclusion: A Better Future for Urban Youth

The Biological, Social, and Pyschological adversities that youth growing up in neighborhoods like Southside Chicago, Mott Haven, and other low-income areas face on daily basis is often overlooked and forgotten as the result of an economic system that naturally has these stratified unequal elements of society. In order to improve the safety, education, housing, and job situation; major employment programs, public works, community outreach, and attention on the economic inequality that exists in our inner-cities is crucial. in order to create a better future for the next generation.
Nicholas’ life represents the biopyschosocial problems of the third world existing all over America. But it doesn’t have to be this way; communities that improved in poverty statistics over the past decades, like the Lower East Side, have demanded stronger community assets and programs (Citizens, Fig. 310, pp.228-229). By organizing communities and providing opportunities and resources; inner-city neighborhoods can become great communities without displacing low-income residents.

References

Carter, Z. (2012). GOP Candidates Back Welfare Model for Food Stamps Housing. Huffington Post. <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/10/romney-santorum-gingrich-welfare_n_1197409.html.&gt;

Chan, A. (2003).  A “Race to the Bottom” Globalisation and China’s Labour Standard. China Perspectives. <http://chinaperspectives.revues.org/259&gt;.

Citizens’ Committee for Children of New York, Inc. (2010). Keeping Track of New   York City’s Children

Clark, A. (2012). . President’s Budget Request Creates Grim Outlook for Low Income Housing. National Low Income Housing Coalition. <http://www.nlihc.org/detail/article.cfm?article_id=8474&id=48&gt;.

Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. U.S. Government Printing Office (2008). One year later Medicaid’s response to systemic problems by the death of Deamonte Driver : Hearing Before the Subcommittee on Domestic Policy of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, House of Representative.<http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CHRG-110hhrg49775/pdf/CHRG-110hhrg49775.pdf&gt;.

Hasking, R. (2006). Work over Welfare: The Inside Story of Welfare Reform.  Brookings Institutional Press. <http://site.ebrary.com/lib/nyulibrary/docDetail.action?docID=10149862&gt;.

Jacobe, D. (2012). Unemployment Increases in Mid-February. Gallup Economy. <http://www.gallup.com/poll/152753/Unemployment-Increases-Mid-February.aspx&gt;.

Jimenez, J. (2010). Social Policy and Social Change: Toward The Creation of Social and Economic Justice.  Sage Publications & California SU.

New Destiny Housing Corporation (2011). Housing Link Advantage NY – Alert <http://www.newdestinyhousing.org/housinglink_online/AdvantageNY.htm&gt;.

Pollack, E. (2008) Epic Policy Center. Stagnant Wages. Rising Inequality. <http://www.epipolicycenter.org/blm-stagnant_wages_and_rising_inequality.pdf&gt;.

United States General Accounting Office (2002). Report to Congressional Requesters: Welfare Reform Tribal TANF Allows Flexibility to Tailor Programs, But Conditions On Reservation Make it Difficult to Move Recipients into jobs. <http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d02768.pdf&gt;.

Walden, R. (2008). Her Name Was Esmin Green.  Women’s Health News. <http://womenshealthnews.wordpress.com/2008/07/04/her-name-was-esmin-green/&gt;.

Wright, G. (2011). Who Really Profits Big From Food Stamps? JP Morgan & Walmart.  Daily Kos.

<http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/12/05/1042552/-Who-really-profits-big-from-food-stamps-JPMorgan-Walmart&gt;.

Read This Book 1: Stuffed And Starved By Raj Patel

         Stuffed and Starved discussed the increasing inequity of nutrition that has accompanied the increasing stratification of wealth all over the world. At what cost to the sustainability of global ecosystems and livelihood of people all over the world, does the American supermarket aisle come at? As well as how do we live with the concept of people being forced to fill their bellies with fast food that leads to obesity, or starve and obtain diabetes from lack of proper nutrition.
When U.S. corporate produce monopolies are able to give poor Ugandans a mere 1/200th of what they make off of its sale; it is no wonder that Africans are starving, and so many American’s can’t afford basic essentials and deal with food stamps, fast food, and persistant hunger. In developing countries like India,  capitalism’s corporatization of agriculture has resulted in people having to sell themselves literally; while in America this practice is generally known as ‘living on minimum wage.’ India also mirrors America’s political tendency towards light skinned people as a reaction to disempowered diverse groups of people who are demanding human rights. But what is most striking the intensity of suicides that occur as people are displaced. All over the world from Mexico to Africa to South Korea; Desperate farmers have taken to the streets in response to neoliberal increases in staple food prices as subsidies as slashed by IMF imperialist directives forced upon third world and developing nation-state leaders.
What makes Stuffed and Starved is critically important is its idea of verbalizing the need for an alternative food distribution system; One built on feeding people, rather than maximizing profit through wasteful means. Discussing the struggles in rural India, and the intense desperation of farmers who are losing their livlihood as factory farming leaves them with no way to live; It’s all to common story all over the globe. Connecting Lee’s suicide, to NAFTA’s effect on Mexican farmers; It becomes clear that globalization from above has displaced, disenfranchised, and made the lives of millions all over the world suicidally desperate.
Yet globalization has merely intensified in recent years; globalization, colonialism, and produce have always been connected. The European Rhodes ideology of ruthless exploitation of resources at any cost for profit has been applied to all agri-business through the use of IMF controls to liberalize all markets to the point where poor farmers can no longer make a living. In order to protect, the concentration of wealth and land in fewer, imperialistic, hands; companies like Chiquita have done everything from squeezing small Jamaican banana farmers to enabling a U.S.-backed coup d’etat of sorts in Guatamala.
Stuffed and Starved does an extremely good job of painting capitalism and the coporate influence on our food supply; At the same time it paints a disasterous picture of what the history and social conditions behind our food supply are. It frames anti-capitalism in a completely refreshing lens than is not often heard.

Stuffed And Starved Pt. 1

Stuffed And Starved Pt. 2

The Baruch Shoot-Out, and the FDR Police Chase: Imprisoning People on the Ave

The night before last, I woke in the middle of the night to a chopper hovering outside my window. It stayed there for hours, and in the morning we woke to news that like in Bushwick last month; a shooting had occured here in the LES. This comes on the heels of the Murder of Rahmarley Graham and the beating of Jatiek Reed in the Bronx recently, as well as in September; Police chased & forced an Avenue D youth out on the FDR highway where his brains were splattered. Several years ago, a similar event in France sparked a major month-long uprising with immigrant youth. 

The official account that was published by the police through the use of coporate media outlets claims that police approached the suspect; questioned him, he began to fire, police fired back. a youth was hit in his leg and staggered into his apartment where he was arrested. 

But residents of alphabet city, Pitt Street, and Columbia have told other stories of the event. Some residents have said that the shooting was started by the police, or at least that the event was initiated by police who who have a history of harrassing residents of the massive housing complexes in the area. 

Residents of the complex have seen it all, once heroin capital of the world, the projects have become fairly safe; but poverty and the defunding of the projects by NYCHA and the federal government have resulted in time of hardship for baruch residents; like when sewage took control of the ground floors of the buildings several years ago making the complex reek and breed high amounts of mosquitoes. There is little conflict in the project at the moment. Instead much of the violence in recent years has been created by PSA 4 and its extremist targetting of black, latino, homeless, SUD/MH patients, and working class residents of the LES. The incident with Mr. K. Brown being forced onto the highway by trigger-happy police has resulted in high levels of fear and anger with the NYPD. Residents who have experienced shoot-outs before, robberies, jumpings, and other violent activity often arm themselves for self-defence reasons in crime-ridden inner-city neighborhoods. But much of the violence in recent months in the city has been related to aggressive, invasive attacks by police on public housing residents while on vertical patrols. 

One resident of a L.E.S project discussed the story of his sister getting run-over by a DT car, having the incident caught on tape, and the tape being erased by the police before he was able to obtain a copy. Another resident talks about being questions about what they were doing on third street when their ID says they live on eighth. So in other words being five blocks from your apartment could result in spending a night in jail for loitering under current public housing policing tactics. This was the reasoning behind dividing the 40-square block complex on avenue D into three complexes, in order to harrass residents from Riis who were spending time in Baruch and vica-versa. 

After the Brown incident, residents threw bottles at police to express their frustration. But we’re calling on people in the community to organize and take proactive action in disrupting the current policing tactics on the ave which are a form of “shock doctine.” N. Klein describes shock doctrine as using shock in order to paralyze people, and then forcing upon them measures which they would not have accepted otherwise. In reference to the ave, Giuliani-Bloombergists have employed the NYPD in terrorizing communities, in order to give residents the message that they want the out, and that they are not welcome. Without organized response to this all over the city, Commisioner Kelly will continue to use these kind of misreported events to glorify, protect, and expand the totalitarian powers of the NYPD until the point where no one can escape the police state.

Self-Defence before Non-Violence: Solidarity With The Black Bloc

Recently there has been much talk in the movement over #OO’s black bloc tactics while attempting to take over an abandoned building in late January. Many liberals in the movement have argued that #OWS needs to condemn this sort of behavior.

The same people who are arguing “police are the 99%” and “radical transparency” are the well-to-do in the movement. Often the ones with nice homes, who avoided getting beaten or arrested, & who look down upon the poorer elements of the movment.

Now I’m all for working with liberals in a movement. But the reality is that with the level police violence against the movement; it should be clear that they are the enemy, NOT the 99%. Maybe individually and economically some of them are part of the 99%, but as soon as they put on that gun for the state; They become the 1%. That’s how they’ve been able to abuse the movement so successfully. Liberals accept their abuse, and call to the officer’s heart to break order. This kind of naiive behavior endangered many members of the movement, and also is simply unrealistic.

Many of those who argue this way, HAVE NOT DEALT with the NYPD & OPD all their lives. For those of us who understand that the killings of Bell, Reed, and Graham are the system violently oppressing the poor & minority populations. We know that there is a sad trend in the 99% to believe that somehow the police will join us.

The longer this attitude remains. The idea of unconditional non-violence, the movement will lose popular support. Many radical supporters got tired of getting beaten, arrested, pepper sprayed, spit on, molested, and dealt life threatening injuries. Many of us who were subject to this violence, and watched as the liberals WATCH US getting beaten for no reason were radicalized by the mere audacity of the 1% in using the police as their pawns in protecting property at the expense of human life.

Police are not the 1%, the Black Bloc is. The Black Bloc makes the police shake in their boots, while liberals get laughed at. The power of the people is not in getting beat up by police. We are sick & tired of getting beat up by police. The expression of our frustration is natural; in fact the only reason that the Egyptian Revolution gained support was not that they were willing to sit there and say “non-violence” as they were shot at by the state. No! The egyptians believed in black bloc tactics of fighting back when attacked. Honestly us who live in the hood put up with this WITH OR WITHOUT a social movement. What oppressed people need is a way to really resist the police brutality we face on a daily basis. There’s this sad liberal notion that  the police are here to “protect our right to protest.” It’s so fucking hilarious to me, because actually they are the ones who are destroying our right to protest.

Some people like to blame Bloomberg, Some like to blame Obama, and some just blame capitalism. While I blame all three; I know even worse in the dismantling of free speech, press, and assembly has been the NYPD. The NYPD doesn’t exist to solve crime! The NYPD exists as a crowd control mechanism. Bloomberg’s self-proclaimed army of quieting the masses by the long arm of a glock and baton.

Combat liberalism within the movement. Liberals and the police work in conjunction to weaken the the strength of the movement by diverting it to democrats and non-issues, while police intimidation keeps us in fear.

Employment and Housing Greivances

Unemployment is now nearly at 10%, Under-employment at 20%. Amongst minority communities the figures are even higher. The city announced in the past few years an end to new Section 8 vouchers which give working New Yorkers Access to affordable housing. Then the Advantage Subsidy was discontinued as well, which was essentially the only sort of program to help homeless people get housing. Furthermore ‘at-will’ employment makes firing employees without just cause easy, and thus exploitation of the desperate even easier. 

This is the result of capitalism’s race to the bottom. We saw this clearly in ’95 with AT&T’s downsizing layoffs that led to an increase in stock value of 10%. (Karen Ho, Liquidated, p.1-5) Afterwords many companies like Enron and Bank of America then followed suit. With outsourcing often ending up in raising wages, forcing companies to then move to the next market, a savage system has been set up where breaking people’s backs in turn means great profit.