Rebuild the Dream (30 page)

The future of the 99% movement will be determined in part by the next stage of activity in the Outside Game quadrant. I see three main areas of urgent focus. Those of us who are committed to the 99% movement must do the following:

• Systematically involve the five main “casualty groups” of this economic crisis.

• Continue broadening the protest and community-building tactics beyond the encampments.

• Embody and promote alternative economic models (“American Dream 2.0”).

A movement strong enough to achieve economic renewal must be both deep and broad. The 99% therefore must find ways to reach out to new constituencies, engage with sympathetic audiences, and convert skeptics. The movement today can still get attention, but it
is not large or powerful enough to force decision-makers to make real changes.

For the next round of growth, the 99% should look to those whom I call the new “economic casualty” groups—those who got the short end of the stick in the Great Recession.

By definition, every new economic crisis results in new economic casualties. These are people who were doing fine prior to the crisis. They generally had homes, jobs, reasonably secure futures, and big dreams for themselves or their kids. Suddenly, they found themselves in a very different situation. But because they are newly impoverished, they do not have preexisting champions, advocacy organizations, policy solutions, or political movements with which they identify. They are doubly disadvantaged because they have lost their economic place, and they lack political voice. At the same time, their ranks are filled with the leaders of tomorrow who have fresh energy, skills, social capital, and a direct stake in a new direction for the economy.

These newly impoverished or newly anxious constituencies, in addition to the millions of historically low-income and disadvantaged people in America, make up the main base of potential recruits into the 99% cause.

The 2008 collapse created at least five such casualty groups.

Although the so-called Millennials (born after 1980) are already represented within the core of Occupy's ignition layer, it is nonetheless
worth reviewing why young people should be ongoing targets of special outreach and engagement. They represent the first postwar generation of Americans in danger of faring much worse economically than their parents did. They have tremendous energy for change—and a big, objective need for change. The injustice of their situation is growing increasingly palpable and obvious to them: it does not seem to matter whether they finish high school, finish college, or drop out. They are too likely to end up back at home, sleeping on their parents' couches, anyway. Some of these young people have done well at some of the nation's top schools but still find themselves, upon graduation, struggling just to find unpaid internships. In some of our larger cities, they comprise a whole class of unpaid workers who are increasingly despairing of their ability to even get their foot on a rung of the paid ladder inside the organizations in which they are volunteering and temping.

For those who have been trapped in failing schools, or who have been sucked into America's massive and ravenous incarceration industry, the prospects are worse. The unemployment rate for African American and Latino men in some of our urban areas is above 50 percent—a national catastrophe that has gone unaddressed by both the Bush and Obama administrations. All of these young people deserve better, especially given how much vital work is going undone or poorly done in our country. This generation should and could be fully employed through public-private partnerships to rebuild our infrastructure, repower the country with clean energy, train the next generation, and care for the aging population.

Young people are always at the forefront of important social change movements, especially when they have a direct stake in the outcome. Because millions of young people had a direct stake in ending Jim Crow and the Vietnam War, youth in the 1960s
emerged as a tremendous force for positive change. Today's new generation—made up of millions of unemployed and underemployed, ecologically aware, and socially conscious young people—has a direct stake in changing the economic and ecological direction of the country. They know no one is coming to help them. Washington is not figuring this out on their behalf. They should remain the central and growing core of the 99%.

There is a subset of this rising generation that is especially skilled and deserving: our young veterans, coming home from wars to few jobs and little hope. Their plight is particularly sad and ironic. When they were fighting on a military battleground, and as long as giant war profiteers such as Halliburton could get a piece of the monetary action, our young men and women in uniform had support. But once they arrive at their hometown airport, they often feel like they have been dumped into an economic battleground with little or no help at all. The Obama administration has done more for them than previous administrations, but much more is needed.

Many of them have served four, five, or six tours of duty. They return to their old neighborhoods with catastrophic psychological and physical damage, much of it unprecedented. Medical care can save the bodies of young people who were hurt on the battlefield; psychological care may help heal their trauma. But it will take a powerful political movement to make sure that they get those things and that America's economy can provide them with a decent shot at a good life.

Let's not forget, few children from the top 1% serve in the military. The young people coming home are from the middle-,
working-, and disadvantaged classes. They are the children of the 99%. It is also important to remember that today's veterans are now made up of both genders, all sexual orientations, and every color and nationality. They look like America, and they feel acutely America's pain. They should be central to the push for economic progress.

If our country is lucky, these returning veterans, including our wounded warriors, will be engaged in a whole lot of nation-building, right here at home.

Another major constituency is made up of America's homeowners who, as hardworking taxpayers, bailed out America's banks. But America's banks won't return the favor and cut them a break when families cry out for alternatives to foreclosure or for the chance to renegotiate underwater mortgages. This injustice has enraged the nation.

The salt in the wound is that there have been widespread reports of fraud and abuse by the banks as they rush to foreclose on struggling families. There are endless cases of errors by robosigning machines, lost paperwork, and instances of timely payments simply being lost by the banks.

By some estimates, the African American community lost about 80 percent of its total wealth when the housing bubble burst. If that is true, then every gain since Dr. King was alive has been wiped out in recent years. Why? African Americans disproportionately use their homes as the cornerstone of their wealth-building strategy; they tend not to be sophisticated traders on the stock market. When the housing market collapsed, it threw a disproportionate number of African Americans out of doors. Those who
stayed indoors lost a disproportionate amount of their wealth, as much as 80 percent, compared to 20 percent for white Americans across the board.

Banking institutions have taken a very uncompromising posture with regard to people whose mortgages are underwater. And they continue to bilk homeowners, even as they report record profits for themselves.

A movement to rescue America's homes from the big banks' avarice and abuse could unite the impoverished foreclosure victims with struggling, middle-class homeowners. The pain of this casualty group could be elevated as an election issue—and it could create a basis for a larger cohort to vote and protest strategically.

Then there are the long-term unemployed, who have résumés and work experience, but who have been laid off and can't find work. Many of these people are in their prime working years, in their forties and fifties, but they may never work again in America. They should be teaching younger workers how to reach the heights of professional excellence; instead they are sitting on their couches across the country watching television and getting more and more depressed.

This is a constituency that has tremendous power as a set of potential messengers on the economy. They should be in the golden phase of long careers; many are respected community members. Their plight is an ominous sign for those who still have work, even those young enough to have only recently begun to think about retirement. As a constituency, they also have a tremendous amount of free time, and many long to be involved in something meaningful. Given an opportunity to fight the injustices that led to
their situation, they would fight valiantly. During the Great Depression, concerned citizens organized “unemployed councils” that were a source of energy and ideas for the New Deal Coalition. The time to revisit that strategy is now.

The last constituency, one that is already emerging as a powerhouse, is the group that the media likes to call “public employees.” I take exception to this label; personally, I cannot recall ever having met a “public employee” in my life. On the other hand, I do recall meeting firefighters, teachers, nurses, postal workers, police officers, librarians, and other esteemed professionals. These are the people whom we, as children, were taught to respect and admire. They were the backbone of our neighborhoods; they were the pillars of our communities. And to this day, they still are.

And yet, to avoid raising taxes on the richest people ever born, the political elite are perfectly happy to throw these everyday heroes and heroines out of work, in massive numbers. In the coming years, 1 million of them across the country are at risk of losing their jobs—a devastating blow to our human infrastructure, beyond al Qaeda's wildest dreams. If the only bad thing happening in America was that we were losing 1 million heroes and heroines, that fact alone would be sufficient to declare a national economic emergency.

Republican Party policy makers' vicious attacks on the public sector have a particularly negative impact on people of color and women of all colors. African Americans and women are more likely to be found in public sector jobs. In 2010, nearly one in five employed blacks worked for the government compared to 14.6 percent of whites and 11 percent of Hispanics. Likewise, women make up 57 percent of the public sector workforce overall, bearing the brunt of the steady losses of jobs in that sector and the political
attack by Republicans. Since the recovery began, and due to cuts demanded by Republican-controlled governments, women lost two-thirds of the 284,000 public sector jobs that disappeared, mostly in education and local government.

There is a particular irony in seeing our political leaders abandoning these heroes in a time of national crisis. In a time of personal crisis, whom do the politicians call? Just like the rest of us, they summon the police, the ambulance, the firefighters, and other first responders. Those true public servants risk their lives and run to our rescue every day. They have never abandoned America in a crisis. But at the first sign of financial trouble, the political elites want America to abandon them. Never.

The vilification of America's everyday heroes is one of the sickest and most offensive strategies of those committed to an economy that serves only the top 1% percent. Fortunately, America's best are fighting back. In states like Wisconsin and Ohio, where Tea Party governors have made attacks on “public employees” a cornerstone of their political strategies, the blowback has been fearsome. The 99% movement should take every step to recruit into its ranks the educated, motivated, and well-trained leaders of America's embattled public sector. They have the moral authority, material interest, public standing, and social networks to lead the charge and help win the fight.

THOSE FIVE CASUALTY GROUPS
alone add up to tens of millions of people and could represent, if properly organized, the core of an unstoppable movement to reinvent the American Dream and
revitalize America's economy. It is a tall order to cohere a massive group of unorganized people, especially the victims of the foreclosure crisis or the newly unemployed. New techniques and tactics will have to be developed and discovered.