Tina Dupuy on the Stephanie Miller Show (2011/12/09) by karlfrisch
On December 10, 2011,
in Video,
by Tina Dupuy
On December 6, 2011,
in Column,
by Tina Dupuy
A perfect summary of the Grand Old Party’s relationship with the U.S. Constitution comes from Texas Governor Rick Perry at Mike Huckabee’s candidate forum on Fox News last Saturday. Governor Perry claimed as president he could overturn a law passed by Congress by executive order (he can’t), and then to show his bona fides on the subject he pulled out a copy of the Constitution from his breast pocket – displaying it proudly to the national audience.
Of course, he held his prop upside down.
And said, “It’s all right here.”
Indeed.
Republicans love to worship the Constitution as scripture. Perry keeps his next to his heart. They also love to talk about adding some Even Newer Testaments to this sacred document. They’re strict constructionists believing in the original intent but they’d prefer to see it improved drastically. Translation: It’s so perfect they’d like to see it changed.
Saturday, candidates talked about amending the Constitution to outlaw abortion, keep marriage heterosexual, term limit the Supreme Court and take away citizenship from children born to illegal immigrants.
English author Samuel Johnson famously said patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. For Republicans, talking about amending the Constitution is the first defense against having actual policy discussions. The 112th Congress has grinded to an all out halt by GOP obstructionism and instead of having an authentic plan to help the country that elected them, they opted to vote in (among other symbolic bills) a Balance Budget Amendment. This of course, like the majority of the bills the House will pass this year, will never become law.
This is bureaucratic busy work. A great display of government waste Republicans love to spend their time on the federal payroll talking about.
In order to amend the Constitution you have to get two-thirds majority in both Houses and then it has to be approved by three-fourths of state legislatures. Meaning: You have to build a broad consensus to change the founding document of our nation.
Republicans are not consensus builders – they’re talking point pounders. They’re re-branders. They’re more likely to ram through laws on the fly like Ohio Governor John Kasich’s union busting law which was months later overturned by voters – than super majority-sized popular things like taxing the rich. The middle-class will see a tax hike this year due to the payroll tax expiring. It appears Republicans are going to allow this to happen in order to protect the wealthiest Americans from paying more of their easier-earned cash to the federal government. Those who are being squeezed? Tax hike! Those who are squeezing? Lowest tax rate in two generations. Not a popular stance – but Republicans are taking it.
A Constitutional amendment demands wide support, something Republicans don’t bother themselves with.
Face it: they will never amend the Constitution even though it’s their favorite go-to non-starter.
However, a group that’s all about consensus building – at least at their meetings I’ve sat in on across the nation – is the Occupy movement. And their list of grievances includes money in politics and corporate personhood.
To Occupiers, corporations are like robots in every sci-fi movie ever made: they’re created by man, having taken on human traits (or in this case legal rights) and are turning on their makers … to eventually destroy the world. The Occupiers don’t see one party or another as an answer. They’re not like the tea party who are just a voting bloc for conservatives. They see both parties as being hostages to corporate money and complicit in the extreme economic inequality in the country.
How do they plan to tackle this? By calling for an amendment to end corporate personhood – to in effect overturn Citizens United. You’ll hear whispers of this among activists as a way to solve the problems that have prompted nearly 5,000 Americans to be arrested for nonviolent civil disobedience all across the country. Some polls show that over two-thirds of Americans would like to see the Constitution amended to overturn that decision.
The problem is we’re very used to this empty go-no-where non-solution of a Constitutional amendment from Republicans who know theirs will never happen; in that way Republicans have already preempted any earnest campaigns for an amendment.
I’ve brought this up to Occupiers and they are undeterred. They tell me they are, after all, the 99 percent, and there’s power in those numbers. They replied with what I’ve heard them say before: “We’re not going fast. We’re going far.”
On November 30, 2011,
in Video,
by Tina Dupuy
On November 29, 2011,
in Column,
by Tina Dupuy
“The media,” as it’s referred to, is not a monolith. We don’t just have one channel, one paper or one site with one nefarious dude pulling levers. “The media” consists of books, newspapers, magazines, television, billboards, radio, blogs, vlogs, ebooks, webcasts, podcasts and movies etc. The media is a vast and (kind of) diverse way of communicating information.
Let’s talk news. And where the majority of Americans – as in over 50 percent (by most estimates) – still get their news – from their local nightly news show. Any discussion about how unaware Americans are when it comes to news needs to have its finger pointed at the proper culprit: Your local broadcast.
Yes, everyone hates Congress but loves their Congressman. Everyone thinks “the media” is biased, wrong and awful – but tunes in to their local anchor with admiration and trust. A pox on them all, except our guy…
Last week a PublicMind FDU poll went viral with the line, “Fox News [viewers] are five-points more likely than those who watch no news at all, to incorrectly say it’s the U.S. that is bailing out European countries.” The under-reported story (buried lede as we call it in “the media”) was of those polled 67 percent said they watched their local news. And that could explain why 36 percent said they didn’t know who was bailing out Europe and only 30 percent gave the correct answer (Germany).
Did you know that Iceland is having a revolution as a direct result of the economic meltdown centered in the U.S. housing market? How about Syria being sanctioned by the Arab League? Vladamir Putin has gotten himself back on the ballot in Russia?
And it’s not just the “reading off BBC headlines” news the local news misses – it’s the actual local news: Investigative news in the public interest. News about the economy, politics and local issues.
Your local news opts to put a camera in the face of a crime victim and be a staple of “fear porn” rather than ever tackle difficult segments holding the school board/city council/mayor/state legislature/governor accountable for anything.
Why can I assume without sitting down and watching a week of your local newscast that they’re more than likely gleefully doing a recap of what happened on Dancing With the Stars/American Idol/Survivor tonight? Because your local broadcast news is more than likely ratings driven. And because of the last couple of decades of ratings driven local news our Edward R. Murrows have all become Harvey Levins.
Why are Americans not even rising to the level of ill informed and topping out at totally clueless? Because as Homo sapiens, we are effectively distracted by shiny objects and Kardashians. Plus our monkey brains got a chance to evolve this long by being on hyper-alert for danger, so we eat up any story telling us about “the hidden dangers lurking in our homes!” So of course we tune-in as told and in that way reward our local yokels for their reportage. And local yokels as Homo sapiens … also like rewards. It’s a vicious circle.
But, now as there are Americans Occupying public spaces demanding economic justice and other Americans being baffled as to why that is: it’s become clear some of the problem is our local news broadcasts.
It is completely unacceptable for a 30-minute telecast with 10 minutes of commercials and two minutes of teasers to have any minutes for a Bieber. Nothing ever involving a Real Housewife is really news. Curb the fear porn. Plus it’s absolutely journalistic malfeasance to give airtime to any alleged psychic … even when they’re an octopus.
We have to change this. We have to demand that our local news isn’t just meteorologists in skimpy (think: shiny) cocktail dresses. We have to demand real news – the less sexy kind – the kind where the white-collar criminals break into our homes with the swipe of a pen. We have to ban celebrity gossip from the 18-minutes of need-to-know information we consume each night.
And the only way to change it is from the consumer up.
Tell your local station if you want to find out about Brangelina you’ll go anywhere other than your local news broadcast. Tell them you want to know about authentic issues involving our complex global community – or just NOT “a report” what’s airing on television next week. Either way will be an improvement.
On November 21, 2011,
in Articles,
by Tina Dupuy
Nov 21 2011, 4:22 PM ET
Women may be the 51%, but the Occupy camps and General Assemblies look as gender-imbalanced as Congress
“I’m called ‘that white bitch who gets everything she wants’ at the GA’s,” says Elise Whitaker, 21, adopting a bit of a defiant posture. She’s been at Occupy LA since the second week of the encampment. A now former-assistant director for indie films, Whitaker is good looking in a vaguely familiar, probably-an-actor kind of way. She looks like just the type who moves to Los Angeles every day to “follow their dreams,” but she’s sleeping in a tent at City Hall. She tells me she has figured out what she wants to do with her life: activism. This is it for her. She loves this stuff.
It’s early November and helicopters are hovering over our heads as the Los Angeles Police Department arrests a guy who is thought to have attempted to light a woman’s hair on fire at the camp. He was kicked out and has been causing problems ever since. Nearly 20 police officers are gathered at the corner of the park. This interrupts my conversation with Whitaker and delays her next interview with a YouTube channel called Inside Out News.
During the very first week of the Occupation in LA I noticed that the gender breakdown in its General Assembly (GA) and various committee meetings was roughly the same as the within the U.S. Congress. In other words, about one-fifth of those who were participating in the (small d) democratic part of this Occupy encampment were women. It was the same with the people who slept in the camp.
This is pretty consistent throughout the movement in general.
Thus far I’ve visited eight Occupations in the U.S. and Canada, four on the West coast and four on the East: Toronto, New York City, Baltimore, DC, Los Angeles, San Francisco, the University of California at Berkeley and Oakland.
The only GA that had anywhere near gender parity was the largest one there’s been yet — the GA on the day of the general strike at U.C. Berkeley. The largest GAs will only turn out 500 people max; Zuccotti Park is a tiny granite slab in lower Manhattan and can’t fit many more than that. But the Mario Savio Steps at Sproul Hall at Berkeley held more than 4,000 students and activists — and half of them appeared to be female. (Go Bears!)
This is not an expose of the Occupy movement’s outlook toward women or to suggest attitudes within it are radically different from those found elsewhere. I was also screamed at and called “bitch” at Occupy LA, but frankly I’m called worse in my fan mail on a daily basis. Yet as this movement has been in the media at a near constant rate for now two months, the story telling about it has not evolved. There’s either the agenda “journalism” whose practitioners show up to paint the protesters as violent or stupid or its equally useless counterpart, a virtual livestream of reporting on every detail, no matter how trivial. Everything else is crime reporting: How many arrests? Who’s pepper sprayed? Who’s died? No wonder we still hear the question: “What do they want?”
This movement is complex — how the members define themselves, how important the tents are (or are not) and what they’re doing is still being worked out in marathon meetings and through endless committee votes. This process of identity-formation is made only more complicated by police raids, and by the tear gas and pepper spray that have greeted protest in some cities. Occupiers all viscerally sense the problem: extreme economic inequality. They all cite a lack of fairness — a lack of opportunity. They also agree that the status quo is failing.
But when it comes to women, Occupy is really a microcosm of the greater culture at large. This should give comfort to those who find Occupy’s dynamics puzzling — and greatly embarrass those in the movement who see themselves as revolutionaries. America’s gender conflict fault-lines are making a familiar reappearance inside Occupy, with results both predictable and novel.
I’m not the only one to notice the Occupy gender gap. This issue is talked about at GAs, I’m told, a lot. Nearly every night at Occupy LA, the question comes up: “What can we do to get more women out here?”
Of course there are women out there — and they are in the line of fire. Brandy Sippel, three-months pregnant, was clipped by a car during a protest with Occupy D.C. The driver sent three others to the hospital that night and was released by police. At a press conference the next day, the Metropolitan Police Department implied she and the other victims were “drunk diving” on cars. Another pregnant woman was pepper sprayed by police at Occupy Seattle. The police said pepper spray wasn’t harmful or they wouldn’t be using it. Susie Cagle, a journalist covering Occupy Oakland, says that when she was arrested during a raid by police, there were a higher percentage of women arrested on the roster than who were normally at the camp.
For an absurd contrast to these facts, last week a year-old Maybelline ad campaign for “Baby Lips” lip gloss resurfaced online. In a display of tone-deafness as to what it would take to make women protest, it shows models taking to the streets demanding softer lips, confronting cops with kisses and parading around with a banner reading “no more basic lip balm!” over the Brooklyn Bridge. Liberal bloggers immediately dubbed it L’Oreal’s attempt to co-opt Occupy, until the upload date on YouTube was noted. To me it was more like an ironic half-right foreshadowing; the majority of the Occupy protesters are not the target market for lip gloss.
There have been a couple of alleged rapes reported in encampments. One was in Occupy Baltimore during the first week of their encampment. Police said the victim’s claim lacked credibility and dismissed it. Another was at Occupy Philadelphia and is still being investigated by police. One protester was arrested in New York for rape. There’s this volatile mix of those waiting to pounce on anything to discredit Occupy and an open public space where female protesters are sleeping that absolutely anyone can wander into. There have been no reports of men being raped at Occupations.
Sadly, many responses have been much like the ones in the wake of correspondent Lara Logan’s sexual assault in Tahrir Square while covering their revolution: Yes, it’s tragic and awful, but you know you’re vulnerable so why are you out there?
Why are they out there? Why sleep in tents and risk being confronted by police only to be slighted by fellow revolutionaries at the same time? It’s simple: these women believe the country is broken and they see the Occupy movement as a the solution.
What is Occupy’s solution to its gender disparity problem? Occupy LA has a code of conduct and a zero tolerance policy for any violence or assault. Of course, it also lacks the ability to keep people out of the public space the camp is in. Occupy D.C., a more stable camp because it has not been raided, is able to work out intricate documents like a Declaration of Occupation (leaked last week), has set up a women’s tent. At first the idea was resisted because the men felt that inequality meant special treatment for one gender and equality meant equal treatment. Then the group consensus came around. Women needed a safe place. Some women have said its purpose is for “group menstruation.” (Shades of The Red Tent.) “There’s a legitimate reason and then there are fucking hippies,” said one male Occupier who’s proud of the new development. But it’s really an effort by the women there to make women feel more at ease at McPherson Square. Men there also have agreed to self-police other men and remind them sexist language makes women uncomfortable. Will that bring the numbers of female Occupiers up? Like everything else with Occupy, it’s all too soon to tell.
Back in LA, Whitaker tells me about a movie she worked on, Zombie Apocalypse: Redemption. She also played several background roles in it. “It’s good, have you seen it?” I tell her I regret having missed it. After our interview, I see her on Countdown with Keith Olbermann talking about an attempt to occupy Bank of America Plaza in downtown LA, which is owned by Brookfield Office Properties, the owners of Zuccotti Park in Manhattan. It brought to mind something she said to me before I left. Her moniker “that white bitch who gets everything she wants” struck me as demeaning and belittling — yet she sees as a challenge and almost a compliment.
She smiled coyly and informed me, “You know they’re right … I do get everything I want.”
The original piece is The Atlantic is here.
On November 16, 2011,
in Articles,
by Tina Dupuy
Nov 16 2011, 2:09 PM ET
After their tents were pulled by the university, UC Berkeley students turn the school’s celebration of a ’60s icon into massive Occupy meeting
Mario Savio was a UC Berkeley student in the ’60s and a key member of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement. He’s become an activist icon; Mario Savio Youth Activist awards are given out by his memorial fund. By the ’90s, the steps of Sproul Hall on the UC Berkeley campus where he gave his now famous “put your bodies upon the gears” speech were renamed the Mario Savio Steps. It was there last Wednesday that police raided an hours-old Occupy Cal protest and pounded student activists with batons. Yes, the chancellor of the university that celebrates Savio in its brochures, Robert J. Birgeneau, waited mere minutes before setting in motion a response that saw students beaten on the very steps bearing Savio’s name … just for setting up tents.
As the massive Occupy crackdown unfolded nationally, students facing yet another tuition hike — in a UC system that has seen its tuition triple in 10 years — took note and took to organizing.
In less than a week the campus had a general strike. Tuesday most classes were cancelled. And it just so happened to be the day the annual event Mario Savio memorial at Sproul Hall was going to take place. Which in turn led to the largest General Assembly (GA) in the history of the Occupy movement.
An amazing coincidence. One of those historical ironies that should make the school administration cringe indefinitely.
Some 4,000 (if you were to be really conservative) participated in a massive direct democracy meeting, now commonly referred to as the GA. The sea of students was tutored in the now identifiable consensus hand signs used by the movement. The facilitators laid out the ground rules: They were going to vote on whether or not to bring back the tents and set up an Occupation on campus. Yes, it was against the rules. Would they all (80 percent anyway) agree this was the right course of action? The GA attendees broke up into groups of 20 to discuss. That’s right: 4,000 people broke up into groups of 20 with at least three helicopters hovering just above to discuss the merits of the action. And then the facilitators clarified: just because you vote “yes” doesn’t mean you’re obligated to sleep there.
This came the day of Zuccotti Park being cleared by NYPD at the request of Mayor Micheal Bloomberg. In Oakland, embattled Mayor Jean Quan let it slip that there was a coordinated effort with 18 cities to clear Occupy movements in their cities. Occupy Oakland was raided for a second time this week. But police arresting and in some cases brutalizing Occupiers hasn’t made them go away. It’s made others more interested in the movement and made their struggle more sympathetic. Occupy Oakland made a march into UC Berkeley to support Occupy Cal. “I saw a revolt sign,” one protester remarked. “And I said ‘Oh shit, Occupy Oakland is here.’”
Oakland as a city and as an Occupation have their own very unique, very Oakland problems: One is their city government, two is their police and three is with the distrust of one and two. Oakland was the only city in America to have had a solidarity riot for Rodney King in Los Angeles. It’s a tough town. Oakland fell during the crack epidemic three decades ago and has never been able to fully pick itself back up. Of all the cities in America with an Occupation, the message of economic justice for the 99 percent should have been welcomed there. It wasn’t. At the end of October, the mayor went on vacation while over a dozen different police agencies accompanied the Oakland Police Department and moved in on the camp in front of the mayor’s office at city hall. The melee ended with multiple protestors injured, including a former Marine, Scott Olsen, whose skull was fractured after he was hit with a tear gas canister. Oakland has been a focus of the Occupy Movement ever since. It’s members came to Cal in a show of solidarity with the students.
In the largest GA history has ever seen (larger by at least 3,500 than similar meetings in New York) the group consensus was that they would, in fact, bring tents and set up an occupation on the Mario Savio Steps.
Berkeley professor Robert Reich, who was already slated to speak at the memorial tribute, offered the massive crowd these words: “Moral outrage is the beginning. The days of apathy are over, folks. And once it has begun it cannot be stopped and it will not be stopped.”
After he left the microphone, half a dozen tents slowly paraded through the crowd and up the Mario Savio steps to rest at the top. The PA system played the first song of a promised dance party. The first tune? Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive.”
Of course.
The original piece is here.
On November 15, 2011,
in Column,
by Tina Dupuy
You know what’s never been said? “We should have MORE Republican primary debates.” Why? Because there are (by my count) 734,589 debates this election cycle and not enough hours in the day (spent working harder for less money) to watch eight Republican candidates stand around agreeing with each other for two hours every night.
And that’s really the thing – they all agree with each other. They want to kill regulations by dubbing them “job killers.” They want to kill jobs by calling job killers “job creators.” They want poor people to feel good about giving the wealthy their stuff and the wealthy to feel at ease about poor people NOT taking their stuff. And they want to cut government jobs to create other alleged jobs (wink, wink). And they want to stand up for the sanctity of life and the virtue of executions. They want government out of your life unless your womb is functioning. Then government is the only way to regulate it!
Oh and they all just hate Obamacare. They hate their party’s previous idea for health care reform because it’s tainted by anti-Republican Obama cooties. Yes, socialist, only-maybe-born-here cooties! And cootie vaccinations have been linked to mental retardation, which is both an explanation AND a warning.
The housing crisis? They blame Fannie and Freddie…but not the “banks.” They believe marriage is between and man and a corporation. They love business and their favorite size is small to go with their small towns. They have Nixon’s Environmental Protection Agency in their crosshairs. Yes, they have an affinity for pollution because it smells like New New Neo-Con. Smog is just the Lord’s way of telling us our engines are running!
And they hate the bailouts and pretend George W. Bush didn’t do it (or anything else).
At a recent Republican event I attended in DC there was a booth set up where you could put on a Reagan mask and have your picture taken. If that’s not a metaphor for the record number of Republican candidates in the record number of primary debates – I don’t know what is.
Reagan? Totally awesome in every way. Mention that he raised taxes WHILE still tripling the debt and gave millions of illegal immigrants amnesty and there is a Rick Perry-sized blank stare coming your way.
Tax cuts! Oh are they ever for tax cuts. Taxes should always go down unless they’re flat. And flat taxes, those are on the way up!
They don’t believe in climate change or evolution – just punitive hurricanes and social Darwinism.
And they love guns. Everyone should be armed because everyone who loves guns (they assume) loves them because they LOVE guns.
The Second is the best when it comes to Amendments. They like the First okay unless it’s protesters who don’t pay them a speaking fee…or the press. Oh that media…they only have 564,345 chances to get their message across to the voters without the filter of the mainstream media. The injustice of it all!
And, yes, they want to waterboard prisoners – as if it’s not evident by the sheer NUMBER of debates – they are all very pro-torture.
“Oh but Tina, you don’t have to watch them all. You have a choice.”
No, no I don’t. I cover politics. I have to watch 383 hours a week of Republican debates for the next year because I never developed any usable skills. This is my penance for failing to make it as a paleontologist (first problem is I never tried). So now, I don’t have a choice. I’m stuck with my fate.
The point is: It’s too late for me. Save yourself.
On November 12, 2011,
in Video,
by Tina Dupuy
On November 11, 2011,
in Articles,
by Tina Dupuy
We’re in a coffee shop near McPherson Square, the location of Occupy DC, and Michael Patterson, 21, and I are having hot cocoa on a cold November night. He’s wearing an Iraq Veterans Against the War sweatshirt and baggy shorts. It’s freezing outside. “I’m from Alaska,” he offers as an explanation. He’s been sleeping in a tent in D.C. for over a month now. I’ve traveled to five Occupations in two countries. In every demonstration (including the one in Canada) I’ve found a vet to talk to:
In Zuccotti Park, Army Specialist Jerry Bordeleau, 24, was sitting next to a table of IWW (Industrial Workers of the World) literature. On his sweater were two buttons: an Iraq Campaign metal and one from the IWW. He served two tours in Iraq and now says he’s unemployed and can’t find work for over $10 an hour. And he can’t live on $10 an hour. When I asked him why he’s at Occupy Wall Street he says, “I went and fought for capitalism and that’s why I’m now a Marxist.”
At Occupy Baltimore, I met 21-year-old Justin Carson, who tells me he served in the Army National Guard in Iraq from 2009 until this February. His nickname is Crazy Craze. He says he has PTSD and is bipolar but won’t “do pharmaceuticals.” Then he told me I should look into the Illuminati since I’m writing an article.
It was a surprise to meet Iraq war vets at these protests. There are only, after all, around a million Americans who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan in what was once dubbed the War on Terror.
Their presence became national news when Iraq vet and former Marine Scott Olsen’s skull was fractured by a non-lethal round fired by police in Oakland in late-October. A week later in New York, around 30 vets held a solidarity march from Zuccotti Park to the Stock Exchange. They had a rally at the park afterward where Bordeleau spoke. “This is the first major movement for social change we’ve seen in this country since the ’70s,” he said to me.
At Occupy DC, a painting of Scott Olsen in uniform is draped on the side of a tent. He’s become a symbol of the Occupation Movement — he fought overseas only to be injured when exercising his “freedom” of peaceful assembly at home. His name has become a shorthand to talk about why so many vets are at Occupy Wall Street.
“There’s a reason Scott Olsen got shot in the head,” says Patterson, looking down at his chain-restaurant hot cocoa. “Because he was out front.”
Patterson still sports a military haircut and a bit of the Army swagger. He also has a touch of that telling hyper-awareness war vets sometimes display; he’s a little twitchy, a little intense. He tells me he has PTSD and has been self-medicating with weed. He says it helps. What’s also helped is being a part of this protest movement. “This is the only peaceful solution,” he says. “If this movement doesn’t work, our country is not going to make it … We’re just not going to make it.”
Patterson became an interrogator in Iraq straight out of high school. His mother had to sign his enlistment papers. He turned 18 in Basic. “We’re an industrialized nation who’s a third world country. The super wealthy elite pretty much control our democratic process and everyone here is pretty much fighting for scraps and that’s not right,” he says.
I ask him what was the switch for him and when. He explained that it was WikiLeaks. It was the footage of the Apache helicopter gunning down Iraqis released by WikiLeaks in April of 2010. Up to that point he had been interrogating Iraqis and using what he describes as psychological torture. He was 10 years old when the World Trade Center was hit. He wanted to fight terrorism in Iraq. He bought into the whole thing, he tells me. He had been looking forward to signing up ever since the 5th grade and then, suddenly, last November, he found himself watching a video of his fellow soldiers gunning down Iraqis on the street and it all changed for him.
The Apache video, to a civilian, makes war look like a video game, but to Patterson, it was the first time he saw Iraqis as real people. Random people, with children and families who care about them. He tried to get out of the military as a conscientious objector after that. He was told it wouldn’t work because he’s an atheist. “So I just smoked a bunch of pot and got kicked out,” he says. He was officially discharged on June 7th of this year. He went back home to Alaska, where he read about Occupy Wall Street on Reddit.
He then went to D.C. to sleep in a tent a block away from the White House.
Patterson speaks in sound bites. He’s had a conversion and like those who find religion, the awakening has given him fervor. He’s witnessing: “Combat at Arms and Military Intelligence all come to the same conclusion: War is a business!”
He interrogated people who were later put to death in Iraq with no appeals process, he says. It haunts him. He didn’t fulfill his contract so he’s not eligible for the GI Bill. Even if he were, he explains, he still couldn’t afford to go to school without loans. He’d be wracked with debt just like so many other students who are down at their city’s Occupations. “I just want to go to college and teach high school,” he says.
For Patterson, like the other vets I spoke to, the Occupy Movement has provided a way to channel their outrage and their energy. Their involvement has been a plus for the movement, too, because vets are extremely helpful if you are planning a tent city in a park — they can get things done, and they are used to living in tents. It’s worth noting the anti-war movement during Vietnam was given legitimacy after the vets became their voice (John Kerry for example). But the vets themselves take solace in the act of being useful.
Or as Patterson puts it: “I haven’t had one nightmare since I’ve been here.”
Image credit: Tina Dupuy
Original piece is here.
On November 8, 2011,
in Column,
by Tina Dupuy
I asked an Occupier in DC named Rob Wohl, why the movement he’s a part of is resonating with people – why as over 3,000 Americans have been arrested in demonstrations and even journalists and vets have endured tear gas and rubber bullets, the movement is still growing.
His answer? “Because we are analytically correct.”
What does that mean? Apparently, they believe they have the facts on their side. History certainly is. And as author Michael Lewis said when asked about the Occupy Wall Street movement, they also have justice on their side.
New census data released shows we have record high poverty in this country. It’s up to 16 percent or 49.1 million Americans (that’s over five New York Cities). We have the worst wealth inequality in the industrialized world (meaning we’re on par with some third world countries). We have the highest health care costs in the world. And a recent study by the Economic Policy Institute notes, “U.S. productivity grew by 62.5 percent from 1989 to 2010, far more than real hourly wages for both private-sector and state/local government workers, which grew 12 percent in the same period.” Basically Americans are working much (much) harder for much (much) less. Pair that with the fact U.S. businesses are making record profits and that’s why Americans have taken to the pothole-laden streets to protest.
It’s not just about the bank bailout. It’s not just about Wall Street. It’s about the goal of the wealthy to milk their fellow citizens until they’re completely dry. And while regular Americans are condescended to about their proverbial bootstraps, the U.S. government has helped the wealthy at every turn. So it’s no surprise they’ve won. And now that people are brittle and dusty – there are encampments all over the country.
The question isn’t, “Why are there so many people sleeping in parks?” The question is, “Why aren’t there more?
In the wake of this massive protest – right in the middle of the tenure of the lowest rated House in our nation’s history – a group of men and women whose approval rating of 9 percent is hovering just above the margin of error – what do they do? They pass another symbolic (think: busy work) nonbinding resolution to reaffirm “in God we trust” as the national motto.
I could have made that up as satire and I’d get a letter saying I was being too harsh.
Time spent on a bill (of which there are FOUR versions) reaffirming a phrase already on every denomination of money, every courthouse and most public buildings is about as contemptuous as this body of seat-warmers can get.
It’s “let them eat cake” with a little of King George III’s “the colonies will submit” thrown in for flavor.
Yes, the do-less-than-nothing House has passed a whopping 54 bills originating in their chamber in their nearly full year in office. Their counterparts in previous congresses usually author and pass three times that. And if you subtract passing go-no-where bills to defund NPR, Planned Parenthood and other specters like Obama Czars and take into account their days off (next year they’re only set to work 109 days out of the ENTIRE year) – they’ve put in a lot of effort to be ineffective.
Which is what you’d expect from self-hating government workers like the House leadership. They’re illustrating how lazy, stupid and useless government can be – by example.
To sum up: the American people are paying more for less, working more for less and asking more…and Congress is doing (wait for it) LESS.
The Occupiers are right. They are “analytically correct” in their assessment. Their government is failing them. As another Occupier put it, maybe it’s “time to replace Congress with people.”
On November 1, 2011,
in Column,
by Tina Dupuy
You may have heard the Occupy Wall Street protesters are being paid to camp out. I heard it; they’re being funded by a shifty billionaire and that’s why they’re demanding billionaires be taxed more. Seems likely. Also they’re all Communists and ACORN. And whatever you’ve been scared of before – probably that. Sharia Law, maybe? Anti-Semites? Anarchists?
The weirdest dismissal of the encampments that has sprung up across the country is it’s just a bunch of homeless people – who’d be sleeping on the streets anyway. As if homeless people should have no voice in a discussion about economic justice. As if huge groups of homeless people shouldn’t warrant media attention.
I asked a protester in New York, Ashley Anderson, about this very thing: where is their rapid response to deal with all the rumors and accusations? Where is their team of media people? “This here,” he pointed to the crowded GA or General Assembly at Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan a few feet from where we were standing. Every night hundreds participate in a slow all-inclusive assembly to figure out a consensus on what to do next. “This is like a healthy immune system. It can handle it.” He then said if anyone didn’t like what they’re doing, all are welcome to come down and tell them.
I’ve now been to four Occupations in two countries (I had a trip to Canada planned months ago) and the lamest rumor I’ve heard by carefully coifed talking heads is that the protesters are all something: are all Ron Paul fans; or all union; or all liberals; or all white; or all illegals; or all students who don’t want to pay their loans back; or all “the people who always show up to a protest.” Occupy Wall Street and its solidarity encampments are more a lot of everything as opposed to all of anything. That’s why the rumors keep going – those who wish to discredit the movement pick out one person to identify with the movement and then they’re all Neo-New Redux Black Panthers.
At the (very crowded) Zuccotti Park I saw people with children in strollers but no one has accused all Occupiers of being overly fertile. Yet.
The under-reported story to me is how many veterans are at these Occupations. I spoke at length with a Canadian vet who served in Somalia in the ‘90s and is now “pitching in” at Occupy Toronto. In the U.S. I met several vets from Iraq and Afghanistan. They volunteered to fight for a country they now feel has fewer opportunities for them and their families. Vets are the middle-class. It was the vets who created the suburbs and the Baby Boomers after WWII. They are as big of stakeholders in the country as anyone and they’ve been given a rotten deal just like the rest of the 99 percent. Vets have the distinction of being deified by the right-wing on occasion. That’s until it comes to having their benefits cut … then they should blame themselves for not being rich.
Meet the new face of Occupy Wall Street: Scott Olsen, a 24-year-old Marine and Iraq War vet who was shot in the head with a “non-lethal round” during a raid on Occupy Oakland last week. His skull was fractured and it put him in a coma. He has since woken up to being a rallying cry for the movement. I followed a march in Toronto to the U.S. consulate to denounce police brutality in Oakland. I counted two national news trucks and a local reporter there to cover the demonstration. There was even a solidarity march to the U.S. Embassy from Tahrir Square in Egypt.
Olsen’s story is compelling. Not just because he fought in a foreign war and while in his home country, utilizing his first amendment right to peaceful assembly he was fired on by police. His may be the name you know from Occupy Oakland, but like Rosa Parks, he’s part of a bigger story. He’s a symbol for something we’ve managed to not talk about. Which is we’ve had two (sometimes three) wars in this country in the last 10 years and those who’ve fought overseas are coming home to an America with a shockingly high poverty rate. An America with the worst economic inequality in four generations. An America with less for those who work and fight and die.
Which is why they’re camped out and asking the question: “What have we been fighting for?”
On October 26, 2011,
in Video,
by Tina Dupuy
On October 25, 2011,
in Column,
by Tina Dupuy
I spoke with a thirty-something mother of two residing in suburban New Jersey about the Occupy Wall Street movement. She was disgusted by their antics. “Our business failed, our house was foreclosed on, we lost everything and you don’t see us blaming someone else for it!” she exclaimed. “It’s about personal responsibility!”
She lost everything as a result of the economic meltdown and yet still puts it on herself for not having anticipated or planned properly beforehand. I tried to explain that protesting a rigged system isn’t the opposite of personal responsibility. Doing what you can about the cards being stacked against you and 99 percent of your fellow Americans is, personally, responsive. And that is what Occupy Wall Street and their international – viral solidarity demonstrations say they are there to do.
There’s a bastardized quote attributed to John Steinbeck that says socialism never took root in America because we all think we’re just temporarily embarrassed millionaires. The actual quote, which Steinbeck wrote in America and Americans, is more pointed, “I guess the trouble was that we didn’t have any self-admitted proletarians. Everyone was a temporarily embarrassed capitalist.”
We’re not really a culture of delusional dreamers who all believe someday we will be wealthy. There are some, sure. Their escapist fantasy involves a windfall and a secluded island. There are also those who (still) actually become rich. But for the vast majority of Americans – the myth is less we are going to be rich – the myth which led us to the extreme wealth distribution debacle we’re now in – is that we’re all homesteaders.
You don’t have to grow your own food, build your own house or “paint your own wagon” to believe you could if you really wanted to. And really, did in some indirect way.
We’re a society full of pioneers, pilgrims and immigrants. We were a religious freedom sanctuary from England and then penal colony for England – insulted, neglected and over-taxed by the empire. This led us to tell the King of England off then engage the most powerful army in the world at the time for our independence. And we succeeded at it. Then people from all over the world flocked here to find refuge and opportunity. It’s led Americans to have a bit of bravado about who we are as a people. We think of ourselves as rugged individualists. Because it takes courage and determination to leave your country and forge a new life in this one – and most of us are descended from those people.
It’s not so much that we think our destiny is to be rich – it’s that we believe our destiny is ours. We make our fortunes or we don’t make our fortunes. We block out of our minds that roads aren’t a naturally occurring phenomena; that buildings take legions of workers to erect or that energy comes from somewhere. We think we do it all and when we fail – it’s our fault.
So when things don’t go our way, we don’t blame outside factors. When we fail we don’t see that the game is fixed. We tug at our bootstraps and feel anguish at our own deficiencies.
The reason why Occupy Wall Street is resonating still with Americans is because there are those who’ve been living with shame for what they see as not being self-sufficient…enough. They’re not “embarrassed capitalists” they’re mortified homesteaders. They’ve been laid off, they’ve lost their homes, their retirement is gone – they feel personally humiliated that (according to their personal creed) they didn’t do the right thing and maybe could have avoided this defeat.
Occupy Wall Street is letting people who’ve been in the shadows know that they’re not alone and they didn’t cause this. It’s something Americans at their core don’t usually believe. It’s actually a tough sell. But the movement is growing so apparently there are some converts.
Americans in general, and the downtrodden specifically, are figuring out they’re not alone. They’re, in fact, The 99 Percent.
On October 18, 2011,
in Column,
by Tina Dupuy
Pirates, at least the traditional image we have in our minds (the ones with the parrots on their shoulders and wooden legs from the 1700s), were in reality rapists, thieves and murderers. They were violent outlaws; terrorists of the Caribbean colonies. Some of them were hired as mercenaries called privateers, but they were still pirates even with a note from the King. They pillaged, slaughtered and plundered for a couple hundred years.
And a couple hundred years after that? Well, now pirates are a multi-billion dollar Disney franchise.
The point is: there’s hope for Wall Street. Yes, Bankaneers – as I’ve decided all profiteers from the economic collapse should be called – should stop lamenting that they’re misunderstood. They are not. They’re greedy, shortsighted and smitten with their own power. We get it. Instead, they should just embrace the villain role full on. And maybe they too can inspire a theme park ride someday. (Perhaps a roller coaster where only one out of every hundred gets a lap bar. Just an idea.)
Follow Bank of America’s lead: Bank of America has been criticized (fairly) for not paying any (not one cent) of federal income tax in 2010. This was after they took federal bailout money, during a year where they reported a $10 billion profit and WHILE they were foreclosing on American’s homes. But BofA didn’t just stop there. They just recently announced an additional fee for their customers to access their own money: a $5 a month charge to use a debit card. Which still isn’t “CGI level villainy” just yet. So, in September this year, the giant – too big to fail – mega-bank announced it was cutting 30,000 mid-level jobs to save $5 billion in costs.
Funny how all corporations are now the euphemistic “job creators,” even after they proved to be (over and over again) job-cutters. Yes, the swashbuckling job-cutters! Arrr!
The lesson here is go all out. Don’t try to make anyone like you. Don’t try to deflect scorn – raise fees AND kill jobs. Go ahead – you think Black Beard held back?
Also, the whining is just atrocious. David Moore, CEO of Moore Holdings wrote an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal last week where he reported a homeless man heckled him after the author had just given him a dollar. This anecdotal evidence is all the proof this cheap guy in an expensive suit needed to conclude: Obama has done this to him.
“I do not recall another president in my lifetime whose negative drumbeat about large segments of the population has been so relentless,” he wrote.
Apparently Moore can’t recall anything before the Obama administration, when dissent was equated with treason. “With us or against us.” Also it’s quaint (in a boy-in-a-bubble way) that he thinks CEOs and his Wall Street pals are a “large segment.” Muslims and gays are both larger groups than the top 1 percent and unless Moore is three years old, there’s been a negative drumbeat against them in his lifetime…even by a president.
The sniveling is not going to get the Bankaneers romanticized. There’s nothing sexy about being a privileged creep and trying to make yourself out as a victim. Dignity is much sexier. This is no way to get a theme restaurant modeled after you!
So buck up, Bankaneers! What you’ve done to your country is immoral, egregious and unethical – regardless of whether or not it’s legal. There are privateers in pirate movies too. They’re doing the same stuff as the criminals. “Just doing my job” is not a good excuse when you’re responsible for millions of others losing theirs.
There’s no such thing as gilded rage. Embrace the disdain. If money is good for anything – you can at least shove it in your ears to drown out all the jeering.
It’ll be a sub-plot to the sequel: “Bankaneers of the Wall Street: The Curse of the Volcker Rule.”