America Rising (5 page)

“Our first guest is AnnaLynn Conté, founder and director of SayNo.org, a radical left-wing organization that advocates the overthrow of the government. The organization was in the news lately when it posted a video on its website of a group of armed citizens in Ohio, confronting police who were attempting to evict a woman who hadn’t paid her mortgage. No one was injured in the confrontation, but it has already spawned similar incidents in other cities, and Ms. Conté has taken credit for more than three million homeowners walking away from their financial obligations. Her organization is also claiming pledges from more than five million Americans not to pay any of their bills for the month of July, in what she calls ‘the People’s July Fourth celebration.’ Others call it an assault on the American way of life. Welcome to
In the Know,
Ms. Conté.”

AnnaLynn Conté smiled sweetly. “Thank you, Chuck. I’m glad to be here. You don’t mind if I call you Chuck, do you?”

Charles Wheatley grimaced and tried to look like he didn’t want to wrap his fingers around her throat.

She spoke quickly, giving him no chance to interrupt. “Just to correct a couple of misstatements. As of yesterday we actually had
seven
million pledges. And
I
am not calling it ‘the People’s’ anything; it’s called ‘The New Declaration of Independence.’ As for the incident in Ohio, we don’t advise anyone to walk away from their mortgages; we lay out all the options and advise them to do what’s best in their particular situation. For some people that might mean a short sale, renegotiating terms with their bank or even continuing to make their payments. For others it might mean giving the keys back to the lender. But one thing we do advise everyone is not to do anything unless the bank can produce a legitimate note, real legal proof that it actually owns their house.”

“Isn’t that the height of irresponsibility?” Wheatley hammered back. “Rewarding people for not living up to their obligations. For taking out loans they couldn’t afford, for living beyond their means.”

“You mean like irresponsibly giving out loans to people they knew couldn’t afford them and pocketing thousands of dollars in fees for each one? Like slicing and dicing those loans into little pieces, repackaging them, getting corrupt ratings companies to sign off on them as Grade A investments and pocketing hundreds of millions of dollars more in profits? Like then betting against the garbage they just sold and pocketing hundreds of millions of dollars of more profit? Then finally, when they crashed the world economy and ruined the financial future of millions of Americans, taking billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money and, instead of lending that money back, used it to do the same things that got us into this mess in the first place. And to pay themselves multimillion-dollar bonuses, and buy senators and congressmen and even a president like Las Vegas hookers to make sure there’s nothing to prevent them from doing it all over again, a year, two years, ten years down the road. You mean that kind of irresponsibility?”

“That’s not the kind of irresponsibility I mean,” Wheatley barked. “I mean the irresponsibility of people buying new cars and big-screen TVs and taking fancy vacations, and now they’re crying for someone to bail them out.”

“I don’t think I like the implications of what you’re saying, Chuck. The productivity of the American worker is the highest in the world. We work longer hours with fewer vacations, fewer benefits, fewer protections than workers in any first-world country you’d care to name. Yet over the past forty years the wages of the average working man and woman have been stagnant, while at the same time salaries for people at the top have increased hundreds of times over. They’re spending more on birthday parties than most Americans make in a year; buying second, third and fourth homes; living in luxury most of us can’t even imagine. But for all our work and all our hours and all our productivity, when the average American wants a slice of the pie that he and she helped create—maybe a newer car, a bigger TV, a nicer vacation—all of a sudden we’re greedy and irresponsible? I don’t think so.”

Wheatley bore down. “You still haven’t answered my question. Is it or is it not irresponsible to encourage people to walk away from their mortgages or refuse to fulfill their debts when they have the ability to pay?”

“It is not. Not at all. As you know, it’s a common practice in business. Companies do it all the time. It’s called ‘strategic default.’ Didn’t Morgan Stanley give five office buildings in San Francisco back to the lender because they were only worth half of what they paid for them? Surely you’re not saying Morgan Stanley didn’t have the ability to pay. So why shouldn’t people have the same rights as corporations? After all, the Supreme Court has ruled that corporations have the same rights as people.”

“But the Supreme Court said nothing about violence, about armed men attacking police officers trying to enforce the law.”

“If you’re referring to the incident in Ohio involving Julie Teichner, as you already pointed out, no one was attacked, no one was injured and the situation was resolved peacefully. And let’s look at this thing called ‘the law.’ It’s not the Word of God engraved on stone tablets and handed down from the heavens. It’s a hash of elements cobbled together by men—many of them corrupt, duplicitous, working only in their own self-interest. ‘The law’ could allow people like Julie Teichner to declare bankruptcy and maybe keep their homes. But that law was changed to make it more difficult. ‘The law’ could allow judges to force banks to renegotiate mortgages for people like Julie, but that law was killed because the banks didn’t like it. ‘The law’ could allow the government to provide real financial assistance to people under water on their mortgages, but, as you know, it doesn’t. So let’s not get too self-righteous about ‘the law.’”

It was only the thick layer of pancake makeup that kept Wheatley’s face from glowing a vivid crimson.

“But the violence! What about the—”

“There was no violence, Chuck. Remember? But if George Washington and Thomas Jefferson believed that violence, or at least the threat of violence, was never, ever justified, we’d all be eating spotted dick instead of hamburgers and playing soccer instead of baseball.”

“That’s dangerous talk, Ms. Conté.” Wheatley’s voice was ominous.

AnnaLynn Conté said simply, “Yes, it is.”

“And here’s more dangerous talk. This is quoting from your website. ‘There are only two things that matter in this country today: money and power. The people who hold both believe that you should have neither. Show them they’re wrong by signing the New Declaration of Independence. For one month, beginning July 4
^th
, we will pay no bills, no fees, no taxes, not one penny to corporations or the government. We do have money and we do have power. And if we use them we can make America work again.’ That sounds like you’re advocating class warfare, Ms. Conté.”

“Absolutely. The rich and powerful, the folks at the top of the pyramid, have waged class war against the rest of us for decades. We’re just saying it’s time to wage class war back.”

“That’s outrageous!”

“Is it? It’s peaceful, non-violent civil disobedience, in the tradition of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King. We’re just saying that by refusing to make payments for one month to corporations and a government that consistently work against the interests of the vast majority of Americans, we can force them to take our interests seriously. We’re calling it, to borrow a phrase conservatives seem to love so much, ‘Starve the Beasts.’”

“And you think you’ll get away with that?”

“Oh, we’ll get away with it. If they retaliate—in any way—we’ll withhold payments for a second month. . . and a third and a fourth. We’ll see how long they can go on without our money, how long they think we have no power.”

“Why, why”—Charles Wheatley was practically sputtering—”that could collapse our entire economic system!”

AnnaLynn Conté suddenly felt suffused with an eerie, Zen-like calm. She paused, savoring the moment, rolling it around in her mind like a sip of fine Bordeaux, then gave the answer that made mouths go dry in corporate boardrooms, executive suites and government offices around the country.

“Exactly.”

* * *

No one at city hall paid undue attention to the permit application filed by something called The Collective to hold a demonstration in West Palm Beach’s Waterfront Park, except perhaps for a few staffers’ snickers over its grandiloquent title: “A Rally for Economic and Social Justice.”

Originally a source of cheap housing for those who toiled to comfort the comfortable across the waterway in Palm Beach, over the years West Palm evolved into a solidly middle-class town with a pronounced blueish collar, known chiefly for its bad water, gang violence and corrupt politicians.

Demonstrations, for justice or anything else, were the sole purview of a handful of homeless activists who enjoyed rubbing their clients’ misery in the faces of those who were only a missed paycheck or two away from joining them on the street. “The Collective,” the clerks in the city’s Community Events department assumed, was just another group of these sad sacks. If they’d have bothered to check, not that there was any reason they should have, they would have discovered the demonstration coincided with the final day of a week-long convention of the Financial Services Association, this year held at an opulent resort on what Palm Beach’s wealthy denizens call “the Island.”

The Collective’s application asked for permission to run a sound system and amplifiers for acoustic guitars, to pass out fliers and bottled water. In the field inquiring about where the demonstration might be promoted or advertised, someone had scribbled “Internet.” That was all. Inexplicably scheduled for a mid-week afternoon, the city estimated it would draw seventy-five, a hundred people max, and detailed a couple of cops to occasionally cruise by. Then they promptly forgot all about it.

The first inkling authorities had that perhaps they had miscalculated was a series of morning traffic reports on local radio and TV stations indicating an unusually heavy flow on I-95, backing up at all West Palm Beach off-ramps. In the month since the permit application was filed a couple of the city’s younger staffers mentioned to their superiors that word of the demonstration was all over the ‘Net—”gone viral,” was the phrase they used—but their concerns were waved away.

Then the calls started coming in. Blocked intersections, fender benders, double and triple parking. Cops on morning commute patrol were quickly marooned in an ocean of stalled vehicles. The city’s entire downtown was in gridlock. People abandoned their cars in the street, got out and began hoofing the blocks, half-mile, mile and more to the demonstration site. In a town where the only acceptable form of walking is taking a few steps to your car, the streets and sidewalks of West Palm Beach resembled Manhattan at the peak of rush hour. Police dispatch and local emergency phone lines were overwhelmed.

“Traffic’s backed up on 95 at all West Palm exits.”

“I’ve been sitting here half an hour and haven’t moved an inch.”

“There are cars and people
everywhere!”

“Sidewalks are jammed; people are running through the street.”

“We need some uniforms out here. Now! And tell them to walk; there’s nothing moving in any direction for as far as I can see.”

“The entire city is shut down.”

“Where are all these people heading?”

“What the fuck is going
on
here?!”

The growing throng converged on West Palm’s Waterfront Park, a pleasant grassy expanse with a small pavilion facing the Intracoastal, within sight of Flagler Memorial Bridge. The organizers watched first with pride, then awe, then terror as a seemingly endless sea of bodies overwhelmed the park and pavilion and then filled surrounding streets and sidewalks. This was not the handful of fringe players The Collective had been expecting but a crowd that was solidly middle class, blue and white collar, with little sympathy for masked anarchists and professional protestors. The dozen or so members of The Collective wanted nothing to do with this new kind of demonstrator; they ducked their heads and fled, leaving their equipment and water and fliers behind.

As time dragged on without direction or encouragement, the crowd’s euphoria in its numbers, its shared purpose began to wane. The day grew hotter. Tempers grew shorter. Nerves frayed. The inevitable jostling and trodding feet and sharp elbows became an irritant, then an affront. One man pushed another, a woman snapped at her mate, a bored teenager tried to steal cigarettes from a shop. The immense crowd’s patience and good will was rapidly draining away.

Police sirens wailed. The mood grew edgier. Rumors spread like ripples on a pond. Police were massing on the Palm Beach side of the Intracoastal and would begin to sweep the area. Blocks would be cordoned off and everyone in them would be arrested. Helicopters would drop tear gas and flash-bang grenades. The National Guard was on its way.

The crowd’s mood was ugly now. More sirens wailed. Shopkeepers closed and locked their doors and drew their hurricane shutters. A young man stood in the center of the pavilion, speaking quietly to the people around him. They listened intently. More people crowded around him. He spoke louder to reach them. There was nothing distinctive about him, except perhaps his indistinctiveness. He was slight but not skinny, neither short nor tall, with a coffee-shaded complexion that could have been black or Hispanic or Caribbean. Or not.