Moving on to Gangs and Drugs in Chicago

21 September 2012

It's been about a year since my last post. Frankly, I lost interest. I think the world lost its best near-term chance for needed financial reforms. The gap between rich and poor grows ever wider. And does so, it seems, ever faster.

Daniel Burnham's 1906 Plan for Chicago

But I've not been idle. Spent much of the last six months lining up ducks for a Chicago-based project: a plan to free Chicago from gangs and drugs sponsored by the Chicago Civic Media project. See if you agree with the logic of this article I've written.
It will take a while to gain traction - no respose to it so far from Chicago media to whom its been submitted - but in time it could transform Chicago's media land much as Daniel Burnham transformed Chicago lakefront about hundred years ago.

"I won't believe corporations are people until Texas executes one."

Is she the OWS genius
who first had this insight?

 The Dayton version

This delectable slogan goes to the heart of the cocomanie notion that corporations are people. Corporate personhood (and artificial personhood) is how lawyers refer to this idea. [Move to Amend is looking to reverse the 2010 U. S. Supreme Court ruling that corporations are people, from the standpoint that corporations, like people, have a right to free speech.]

The immortality of corporations - that fact that Texas will never execute one - has a lot to do with the gap between the 99% and the 1% that informs OWS. This Support Corporate Personhood Facebook page supports C.P.P on the ground that "corporations are groups of people". In this Wall Street Journal op ed piece, former General Electric Jack Welsh goes all out in support of this idea.

Moneywise, being immortal is a terrific thing. Whereas the much of the net worth of mortals is subject to estate taxes at death, corporate net worth goes untouched because corporations never die (though they're dissolved when they fail financially). So let's bounce around the Internet a bit to pick up a few things about corporate personhood.

Wikipedia nicely covers the pros and cons of corporate personhood in this useful entry. This short piece at How Stuff Works sums up the debate over corporate personhood that began at between Hamilton and Jefferson in the 1780's at the time of the framing of the Constitution.

Opposing the business-friendly Hamilton, Jefferson predicted (foresaw?) that corporations, if granted the legal status of personhood as eventually did happen after the Civil War in 1868 with the passing of the 14th amendment, would gain influence far surpassing that of mortal voters. OWS is reviving this debate today. So Is progressive activist and radio talk show host Thom Hartman.

Jefferson despised the very idea.

Supreme Court Justice
Stephen Field: tool
of the railroads
in the 1870's?

On the anti-corporation side of this debate, Reclaim Democracy has lots of information, including proposed amendments to the Constitution that would deny corporations the status of personhood. Here's Occupy Together's interactive map listing dozens of OWS meetup groups that oppose corporate personhood.

I stumbled on some interesting history. This piece by Ryan Grim and Mike Sachs at Huff Post describes the efforts of Supreme Court Justice Stephen Field in the 1870's as instrumental to establishing in American law the notion of corporate personhood.  They see Justice Field as a tool of the powerful railroad lobby. On the other hand, Wikipedia's entry on Justice Field makes little mention of Field's ties to the railroads. It sees him as a colorful if violent man who pioneered legislation strengthening the legal concept of due process. Wikipedia observes that "During his time on the Supreme Court of California, Field had a special coat made with pockets large enough to hold two pistols so that he could shoot at his various enemies through the pockets.^[5] " Wikipedia's entry on the key Supreme Court ruling on corporate personhood - its 1886 railroad-friendly ruling re Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad - mentions Field only as a Associate Justice of the Court that made this ruling.

In making the case for Field's contributions to the idea of corporate personhood, Grim and Sachs refer to Jack Beatty's The Age of Betrayal: The Triumph of Money in America, 1865-1900. Looks like a great book.

In January 2010, the Supreme Court issued a ruling on the status of corporate personhood that was its most important since its 1886 ruling. The Court ruled against Citizens United, a (surprisingly) "conservative non-profit organization"(Wikipedia) that opposes corporate personhood. The Citizens United site features five women, including Ann Coulter and Michele Bachmann. For more information on the Supreme Court ruling against Citizens United, see this site at the Chicago Kent College of Law. Wikipedia info is here. At the conservative Heritage Foundation site, Hans von Spakovsky writes here that 2010 Supreme Court  ruling against Citizens United was a victory for free speech.

I need time to get a handle on this Citizens United ruling. But I gotta run. This post was supposed to take 20 minutes, not three hours!

OccupyWallStreet: Why are the New York Times and Mayor Bloomberg Dissing OWS? In a Word: Fear.

All we have to fear is fear itself (none here).

[Sep 28, updated through Oct 2.] Let's begin with a paragraph from the front page of today's New York Times: "As Scorn for Vote Grows, Protests Surge around the Globe":

MADRID — Hundreds of thousands of disillusioned Indians cheer a rural activist on a hunger strike. Israel reels before the largest street demonstrations in its history. Enraged young people in Spain and Greece take over public squares across their countries.

It's gone global. New York Times front page .

OK, so it's happening, all of it triggered by the immolation last December of Mohammed Bouazizi, the Tunisian street fruit vendor whom history will one day remember as the Rosa Parks of the Arab Spring of 2011. As a fine CBS 60 Minutes segment showed last February, it was Bouazizi's death (and life) that triggered the Arab Spring. And now, the Arab Spring is a Global Spring, as Peter Coy foresaw in his BloombergBusinessweek cover story of last February. 


But. Wonder of wonders. Even as the Times covers the Arab Spring in its global aspect, it belittles the occurrence of this phenomenon in its own back yard. Times coverage to date has consisted of dismissive stories like this and this, "Gunning for Wall Street with Faulty Aim" (9/23), by Gina Bellafonte, whose interviews with a few occupiers convince her that the "cause [of the occupation] . . . in specific terms, was virtually impossible to decipher."

Photo accompanying the 9/27 Times OWS story

Ms. Bellafonte might have chosen her interview subjects with more care. Or she might have Googled OccupyWallStreet, which would have led her to the OWS motto: "One Citizen. One dollar. One Vote." And this motto, when you think of it, is actually a constructive version of the negative "Scorn for the Vote" that the Times chose for its headline today. So what's going on here? Why would the Times, as America's newspaper of record downplay and even disparage the local instance of the global story it frontpages as a pure news story? Is the paper beholden to Wall Street? Is it trying to protect New York from riots like those that hit London last August? The latter possibility certainly concerns New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg: 

"You have a lot of kids graduating college, can't find jobs. That's what happened in Cairo. That's what happened in Madrid. You don't want those kinds of riots here."

Hosni Mubarak didn't want riots either. But he got them, as Peter Coy's story makes clear, because Egypt's ruling classes had created a nation where young people had no future. Mayor Bloomberg's riot-averse assertion is clearly informed by Coy's BloombergBusinessWeek story of last February, and Bloomberg, as founder of the Bloomberg financial news juggernaut that owns the magazine for which Coy writes, had certainly read it. Yet Bloomberg's assertion is problematic because it prohibits public protest while acknowledging the underlying fact of youth joblessness. Bloomberg concedes that young people have cause to be demonstrating. And he sees that OWS is part of a global phenomenon. The man is both defiant and afraid. Just so, the New York Times. Example: this 9/29 Times OWS story is told not from the perspective of occupiers, but from that of police. See the (bored) cop in the photo above. This Times bias can verified in the paper itself. Visit the Times' City Room section and, as of 10/1, you'll see far more OWS coverage in its Crime and Public Safety category than its Government and Politics category. 


The paper, like the Mayor, is afraid. 

9/30: OSJ in the NYT: the hippie image

Not surprisingly, as the OWS gains credibility and force, the Times' negative attitude towards OWS shows signs of shifting. Granted, its front-page Sep 30 story foregrounds OWS' "hippie" aspect. Yet it also shows a little respect to the OWS "demonstrators". Here's a quote: "Not all of them can articulate exactly why they are here or what they want. Yet there is a conviction rippling through them that however the global economy works, it does not work for them." What's more, the Times' online edition has this video of occupiers: more articulate by far than those quoted by Ms Bellafonte.


That said, the Old Gray Lady is still covering OWS, old-media style, as a local physical demonstration [not an occupation] in Zucotti Park in lower Manhattan. But we live in a new media age. Public space is virtual, not just physical. Designed to use both kinds of space, OWS is getting major media coverage, national news coverage and global news coverage (Google News counts some 200 new stories daily). OWS is also generating hundreds of social networking sites and is triggering support demonstrations in 30 American cities alone. Time is running out on the Times' head-in-the-sand approach. Here's a sample of who's leaving the Time's in the dust:

• 10/2 Time Magazine "Occupy Wall Street: 700 arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge" As of 10:00am, the Times gives only a CityRoom account of this major development. As 10:30am it's the lead story at Drudge, which links to this Reuters account. Brilliant sign held by a demonstrator: "I won't believe a corporation is a person until Texas hangs one." Photo on the right is the photo of the year. 
• 10/1 ABC News: "Occupy Wall Street" Protests Spread Across Country". How true is this? Just Google your own city. Every place I Googled comes up with something:

• OccupyWashington
• OccupyChicago 
• OccupyLosAngeles
• Occuply Seattle
• Occupy Miami
• Occupy Dallas
• Occupy St. Louis
• Occupy New Haven
• Occupy Madison (WI)
• OccupyBoston
• 9/30 "OccupationWallStreet only growing stronger", James Downie, Washington Post, 
• 9/30 NYC Transit Union joins OccupyWallStreet, Matt Sledge, Huff Post NewYork. The Times appears not even to have mentioned this fact as of 10/1.
• 9/26 Thoughtful coverage in Richard Adams's "US Politics Live blog" in the Guardian (England). 
• 9/26 Reuters. More thoughtful commentary. This time by Anthony DeRosa: "Don't dismiss the Wall Street Occupation"
  
• 9/25 long video of interview with Chris Hedges, sees OWS as "where the hope of America lies." Hedges is wordy here (he writes better than he speaks) and I have to roll somewhat with his flat-out rejection of our consumerist society, but he sure makes me think.
• Ongoing coverage in the local New York Indypendent
• Shout out to #occupywallstreet from Inagist (GreenPeace) with useful Twitter Updates 
• 9/22. Background story Fiscal Times "Has America Lost the Future? Ask a College Grad" 

figures show that employment among young adults is now at a dismal 55.3 percent, down from 67.3 percent in 2000 and the lowest since World War II. Nearly 1 in 5 of these young adults is at risk of living in poverty.

• 9/ 21. Amy Goodman (Democracy Now) in the Manchester Guardian on "Why Occupy Wall Street Makes Sense"".  
• 9/16. Free Republic "Radical Rage: Marxist Mob Plans to Occupy Wall Street"
• 8/21. Good background story: Joel Bakan, "The Kids are Not Alright
• 3/11. Time Magazine "Twilight of the Elites"  Pretty perceptive. How online social networking is forcing society to rebuild itself from the bottom up.

More to come. I think the Times will now start shifting to catch-up mode. With dispatch.

OccupyWallStreet: American Tahrir Square?

September 17.  The New York Times writes that 1,000 people today converged on Wall Street. [9/19 ABC News and The Guardian of England put the number at 5,000.] The corporate-critical publication Adbusters, which spearheaded this action, had called for 20,000 people to occupy Wall Street not for a day but for a period of months, emulating the occupation of Cairo's Tahrir Square that forced the ouster last February of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

"Ragingly ignorant anti-capitalists"?

How credible is OccupyWallStreet? What do occupiers want? What impact might they have if they follow through on their pledge of a two-month occupation? And who are they: "ragingly ignorant anti-capitalists", as a TownHall commentator Erika Johnsen writes, or angry youth "united in the spirit of the Tahrir Square revolutionaries", as MarketWatch's Paul Farrell asserts?

Since last February I've been following worldwide explosion of youth unrest that began with the Arab Spring in Tunisia and Egypt. I took my cue from Peter Coy's prescient Youth Unemployment Time Bomb cover story in BloombergBusinessweek (2/2/11). Coy documents the spread of youth joblessness and disaffection "from  Cairo to London to Brooklyn" and attributes it to "failure—not just of young people to find a place in society, but of society itself to harness the energy, intelligence, and enthusiasm of the next generation." Coy's piece is proof positive that a corporate publication can give eloquent voice to the concerns of young people. A must-read.

9/17 - New York's finest protect Wall Street's Bull

In today's post I do two things. I review initial media coverage of OccupyWallStreet as a gauge of the movement's credibility as reflected in mainstream media. This credibility was minimal at the outset, at least by comparison with media coverage previous major demonstrations like the 1963 civic rights demonstration or the 1995 million man march. Until its dismissive account late today, even the local the New York Times had been silent on this protest. So had the local Wall Street Journal.

The story so far, as the Times tells it, is that police succeeded in blocking "protesters" (not occupiers) from access to Wall Street. End of story. Occupiers  marginalized. No interest in who they are, where they come from, what they want or whether other Americans might want what they want. The Times is keeping the lid on.

After reviewing media coverage, I look into what occupiers want. A quick preview: on September 6, Paul Farrell said occupiers "want their democracy back: One citizen. One dollar. One vote. Get the corrupting influence of money out of elections." Here's the USDayOfRage Principles Page.

OK. Back to media coverage. Check out these searches for "Occupy Wall Street"at Google (which gives a count of stories) Google News -- Google Video -- Google Blogs -- You Tube  -- and you may see something brewing. Ninety news stories as of the night of September 17, but four times that number four days later. Here is Google Trends. Initial coverage is at ABC News, CBS News, Fox News. CNNMoney and Agencefrancepresse, BloombergBusinessweek and a blog: TNGG (The Next Great Generation). [Reminder: results of these searches are current to moment of your search.]

[update 9/18] I am fascinated by lead story in the New York Times: "Tumult of Arab Spring Prompts Worries in Washington." Wow. Almost as if by magic, the Times in the space of 24 hours has managed to leapfrog over the mini Arab Spring in its own back yard and hop to Washington's global (not local, heaven forfend!) concern with a development whose significance, as I noted here last February, rivals that of the fall of the Berlin Wall or the collapse of communism in 1989.

That said, the Times story confirms  that Washington - the White House - is responding, with a touch of panic, to a degree of popular unrest not seen since the Vietnam and civil rights era of the late 1960's. One senses desperation in Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's patently disingenuous plea that things are happening that "nobody could have imagined and few predicted just a few years ago”.

Nonsense. Journalists and academics, including Robert Fisk of The Independent in England, have for decades been warning about the inevitability of popular uprisings in the Middle East. Clinton's plea recalls President Obama's disingenuous plea that he didn't foresee - couldn't have foreseen - the financial meltdown of 2007-'08. And it recalls that utter failure of American intelligence services to detect either the rise of the Berlin Wall or the collapse of Soviet Communism.

Here's a live feed of the Occupation, taken from the OccupyWallStreet site, will all kinds of corporate sponsors, including Jack Daniel's Kentucky bourbon.

In a subsequent post, I'll give my own two cents on what it will take for the Wall Street Occupation to have constructive impact. For starters, here are six desiderata, most of them fairly obvious. I think.

1. Leave the repair of our broken financial system to the next generation of leaders elected by a repaired electoral system. All of this, of course, will take years. But radical changes can occur in a matter of months if most Americans are behind them.
2. Depolarize political discourse. Win equal support from left, center and right. Not necessarily broad popular support initially - that comes with time - but balanced support from left, center and right. 
3. Win support from credible financial insiders. There are many! One is Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism, which linked me the 9/06 Paul Farrell story quoted above. A good number of financial insiders will support the Wall Street Occupation if its focus is on credible change. (I'd mention politicians as well but name one that will sign on to the Occupation without looking for safety in numbers from their constituents.) Here, from Naked capitalism, are just two of many informed comments that point to what actually links the Occupiers, financial insiders and probably most Americans:
1. The common thread of this week’s events is that national depositors and taxpayers are revolting against the idea that they should bear the risks of international finance and permit an elite class of global bankers such as Mr Adoboli – or the feckless citizens of other countries – to take the rewards.  
1. John Gapper, from a column in the Financial Times on which Yves Smith comments and then invites reader comments, of which the comment below is a sample. 
2. I think the US is absolutely ripe for forcing government action. The inchoate rage is palpable outside of elite circles. All that’s needed is to tap into it and channel it into something effective, garnering as much media attention as possible all the way. And if we don’t tap it and channel it, violent civil disorder is surely not far away.
4. In orientation, be democratic capitalist, not anti-capitalist. Focus on electoral change that makes the system work for the many, not the few: "One citizen. One dollar. One vote." 
5. Get on message and either stay on message or use online communications to generate an evolving messages that people really respond to. "One citizen. One dollar. One vote". Interesting to me, but is this message that Occupiers want? So far I don't see it in media accounts of the Occupation. What's more, this post at the OccupyWallStreet site seems to have backed off from it to embrace larger and as yet undefined messages: messages that are planned to take shape via online crowdsourcing: the use of online media to facilitate large-audience decision-making processes.   



Gene Sharp

6. Remain steadfastly non-violent. In the tradition of Gandhi, King and of Gene Sharp, whose writings online here have informed Arab Spring occupiers in Egypt and elsewhere. Amazing guy. 

It will be interesting to see what happens when Wall Street comes to work tomorrow. What Joe Kernan or  Becky Quick or Jim Cramer or Art Cashin be saying on CNBC. And how Bloomberg Financial will be covering it. Also be interesting to see if the old gray lady at the New York Times wakes up and changes her tune.

Wall Street since the Credit Crisis

In a word, they got away with it. How the other half, or the other one per cent, is living now. In New York Magazine, a provocative series of articles by John Hellemen (Wall Street "Triumphant"), John Gapper (Wall Street "Anxious") and Felix Salmon ("Oblivious" at Davos).

Arab World since the Feb 11 Departure of Mubarak

Good stuff about the Arab Spring:

• The Guardian 5/21/11, Ahdaf Soueif, "Our Revolt is not Obama's: Barack Obama says he wants change in the Arab world yet insults us with the same old bad policies". A short piece, yet surpassingly powerful, about Obama's subversion of the Arab world's quest for economic opportunity even as he professes support for it. U.S. It has wonderful paragraphs like this one:   

The blame is not all with America. We had a regime that was susceptible, that became actively complicit; assiduously finding ways to serve US and Israeli interests – and ruin us. But: we got rid of it. Peaceably, with grace and within the law. We Got Rid of It.

Ahdaf Soueif (pictured right) is an Egyptian short story writer, novelist and political and cultural commentator. More Soueif pieces at the Guardian.

• New York Times 2/17/11 Egyptians Say Military Discourages an Open Economy
• Bloomberg BusinessWeek: transcript of the Feb 17 Charlie Rose Talks to Shady El Ghazaly Harb
• Video of the Feb 17 Charlie Rose interview with El Ghazaly Harb
• Terrific and frequently updated Wikipedia page on the 2010–2011 Middle East and North Africa protests.
• Look for and listen to superb information about the Arab Awakening on Worldview, hosted by Jerome McDonnell on Chicago Public Radio. This foreign affairs program for my money is the best foreign affairs program anywhere, in any medium. Here are links to a few recent Worldview interviews on the Arab World, spiced with a few articles, with attribution, from other solid sources:
• Algeria
• Egypt
• Iran
• Israel
• Libya 
• Libya "Libya in the Balance', Nicolas Pelham, Middle East Report, 3/15/2011.
• Morocco Links to articles on Morocco at MIddle East Report
• Oman
• Palestine
• Sudan
• Syria "Is Syria the Next Domino?" Ribal Al-Assad, Director of the Organization for Democracy and Freedom in Syria. (Project Syndicate)
• Tunesia
• Yemen Links to articles on Yemen at MIddle East Report

Here is some background material on the changing situation in the Middle East (I completely overlook Libya; haven't had time to select good links):

• Dr. Avigdor Haselkorn 2/21, The Middle East's False Dawn of Democracy
• New York Times 2/21, U.S. Blocks Security Censure of Israeli Settlements  
• Robert Fisk in The independent, 3/5/11,  The Tunisian whose jihad was for the people, not God
• The Independent 3/7/11 Saudis Mobilise Thousands of Troops to Quell Growing Revolt
• 3/11 Foreign Affairs Links to "Articles on the Middle East Crisis".
• Nouriel Roubini, The Economic Consequences of of the Arab Revolt," Project Syndicate, 3/14/11
• Thoimas Friedman, "Hoping for Arab Mandelas", New York Times, 3/27/11

And here some stories about the impact of Egypt on the USA

• Matt Stoller in "The Liquidation of Society Versus the Global Labor Revival" (posted at Naked Capitalism) sees the Arab world protests as doing what labor strikes used to do in the U.S. - and as inspiring (state employees at least) in Madison, WI and Providence, RI. He uses this striking Doug Henwood graph to account for why U.S. wages have kept "getting cut" since 1947: 

More to come!