The Silenced Majority: Stories of Uprisings, Occupations, Resistance, and Hope (41 page)

Feingold opposed Obama’s Wall Street reform bill, saying it was too weak, and supported the state attorneys general, like New York’s Eric Schneiderman and another of the new campaign co-chairs, California’s Kamala Harris, who, at first, opposed the proposed settlement with the five largest banks over allegations of mortgage-service fraud and “robo-signing.” Feingold’s reaction to the $25 billion settlement that the White House pushed through? “We were among the few that refused to do a little dance after this announcement . . . whenever it ends up being Wall Street, somehow there’s always a clunker in there.”

As I interviewed Feingold, just hours after he was named one of the thirty-five Obama campaign co-chairs, I asked him if he was an odd choice for the position. Feingold responded: “How about a co-chair that’s proud of him for bringing us health care for the first time in seventy years? How about a co-chair who thinks that he has actually done a good thing with the economy and helped with the stimulus package, and we’ve had twenty-two months of positive job growth? How about a co-chair for a president that has the best reputation overseas of any president in memory, that has reversed the awful damage of the Bush administration, who in places like Cairo and in India and Indonesia has reached out to the rest of the world. Believe me, on balance, there’s no question. And finally, how about a co-chair of a president who I believe will help us appoint justices who will overturn Citizens United?”

Until then, as the Obama campaign “dances with the devil” of super PACs, perhaps campaign co-chair Russ Feingold will help us follow the money.

May 10, 2012

Coal, Foreclosures, and Bank of America’s “Extraordinary Event”

Shareholder meetings can be routine, unless you are Bank of America, in which case they may be declared an “extraordinary event.” That is what the city of Charlotte, North Carolina, called the bank’s shareholder meeting this week. Bank of America is currently the second-largest bank in the U.S. (after JPMorgan Chase), claiming more than $2 trillion in assets. It also is the “too big to fail” poster child of Occupy Wall Street, a speculative banking monstrosity that profits from, among other things, the ongoing foreclosure crisis and the exploitation of dirty coal.

North Carolina, which went for Barack Obama in 2008, is a swing state in this year’s presidential election. Current polls indicate the Tar Heel State is a tossup. To boost its chances there, the Democratic Party has chosen Charlotte to host this summer’s Democratic National Convention. In preparation, the Charlotte City Council passed an amendment to the city code allowing the city manager to declare so-called extraordinary events. The ordinance is clearly structured to grant police extra powers to detain, search, and arrest people who are within the arbitrarily defined “extraordinary event” zone. The ordinance reads, in part, “It shall be unlawful for any person . . . to willfully or intentionally possess, carry, control, or have immediate access to any of the following” and then lists a page of items, including scarves, backpacks, duffel bags, satchels, and coolers.

Wednesday’s protest outside the Bank of America headquarters, with hundreds marching, was peaceful and spirited. The colorful array of creative signs was complemented by activists inside the meeting, who, as shareholders, were entitled to address the gathering. George Goehl of National People’s Action, who was inside, told CNN about Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan’s reaction: “Dozens of us were able to speak, but Moynihan mostly dodged, deflected and denied. He looked visibly uncomfortable the entire time.”

Many activists expressed outrage at the bank’s role in the subprime mortgage industry and the foreclosure crisis it helped spawn. As part of a federal settlement over widespread mortgage fraud, Bank of America agreed to hand over $11.8 billion. Just two days before the protest, the bank announced it was contacting the first 5,000 of 200,000 mortgage customers who are eligible for a loan modification, with a potential decrease in their mortgage principal of up to 30 percent.

Last week, Rainforest Action Network members climbed 100 feet to suspend a banner on Charlotte’s Bank of America Stadium, where President Obama is scheduled to make his nomination acceptance speech on September 6. The banner read “Bank of America” with the word “America” crossed out and replaced with “Coal.” RAN is part of a broad coalition fighting the destructive practice of mountaintop removal. RAN Executive Director Rebecca Tarbotton told me:

Bank of America is the lead financier of mountaintop-removal mining, which is a practice of mining which is really the worst of the worst mining that we see anywhere, essentially blowing the tops off of mountains in Appalachia, destroying people’s homes, polluting their water supplies. And that’s even before it gets into the coal plants, where it’s burnt and creates air pollution in inner-city areas and all around our country. . . . [It’s] the canary in the coal mine for our reliance on fossil fuels.

The broad coalition in and out of the shareholder meeting demonstrates a key development in Occupy Wall Street’s spring revival, and also foreshadows possible confrontations with the Obama re-election campaign this fall.

President Obama clearly responds to pressure. Look at the issue of marriage equality. In 1996, while campaigning for state senator in Illinois, Obama wrote that he supported same-sex marriage. While campaigning in 2008, then U.S. Sen. Obama stated, “I believe that marriage is the union between a man and a woman.” This week, he told ABC News, “It is important for me to affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married.”

Given the political climate, it certainly is brave for Obama to endorse marriage equality, especially just hours after the voters of North Carolina voted in favor of a state constitutional amendment that bans same-sex marriage. But he was once a community organizer, and no doubt recalls the words of Frederick Douglass: “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did, and it never will.” The LGBT community was organized and vocal, and the president’s position moved.

Those gathered inside and outside the Bank of America shareholder meeting this week—homeowners fighting foreclosure, environmentalists, Occupy Wall Street activists—will take note of the president’s change. They are sure to continue their struggles, right through the Democratic National Convention, making it truly an “extraordinary event.”

July 20, 2011

Rupert Murdoch Doesn’t Eat Humble Pie

“People say that Australia has given two people to the world,” Julian Assange told me in London recently, “Rupert Murdoch and me.” Assange, the founder of the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks, was humbly dismissing my introduction of him, to a crowd of 1,800 at East London’s Troxy theater, in which I suggested he had published perhaps more than anyone in the world. He said Murdoch took that publishing prize.

Two days later, the Milly Dowler phone hacking story exploded, and Murdoch would close one of the largest newspapers in the world, his
News of the World
, within a week.

On Tuesday, Murdoch claimed before the British House of Commons Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport that it was his “most humble day.” But what does it mean for a man with no humility to suffer his most humble day? The principal takeaway from the committee hearing must be, simply, that Rupert Murdoch is not responsible for the criminal activities under investigation, from police bribery to phone hacking. When asked if he was ultimately responsible, his answer was simple: “No.” Who was? “The people I trusted to run it and maybe the people they trusted.”

The monosyllabic denials stood in stark juxtaposition to his rhetorically nimble son, James Murdoch. Frequently reminding the committee that he was not present at
News of the World
during the dark days of hacking and bribing, James used more words to say essentially the same thing: I know nothing.

The performance, for now, seems to have worked. No, the buck doesn’t stop with Rupert Murdoch, but the money sure rolls in nicely. News Corp.’s stock price inched up throughout the day. The Murdochs’ apparent success in the hearing might be attributed to the stone-faced lawyer sitting directly behind James throughout: News Corp. Executive Vice President Joel Klein.

Klein is a new addition to the executive stable at Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, hired, according to a News Corp. press release, as “a senior adviser to Mr. Murdoch on a wide range of initiatives, including developing business strategies for the emerging educational marketplace.” Klein formerly was deputy White House counsel to President Bill Clinton. More lately, and more likely germane to his hiring by Murdoch, was Klein’s tenure as chancellor of New York City schools, the largest school system in the U.S., serving more than 1.1 million students in more than 1,600 schools. Klein, under Mayor Michael Bloomberg, undertook controversial restructuring of the school system. My colleague at the
Democracy Now!
news hour, Juan Gonzalez, who is a columnist at the New York
Daily News
(the main competitor to Murdoch’s
New York Post
), consistently documented Klein’s failures as chancellor, reporting on “countless parents and teachers who long ago grew weary of his autocratic and disrespectful style.” Klein’s attempt to shutter nineteen schools in some of the city’s poorest neighborhoods was reversed by the New York State Supreme Court. Claims of improved performance on standardized tests made under Klein’s direction were shown to be based on inflated scores.

Less than two weeks after his hire was announced, News Corp. bought a privately held company, Wireless Generation. Murdoch said of the $360 million purchase, “When it comes to K through 12 education, we see a $500 billion sector in the U.S. alone.”

Which is why one of the leading education tweeters, Leonie Haimson, a New York public-school parent and executive director of Class Size Matters, is concerned. She told me: “With all the allegations about phone hacking, etc., we really have concerns about the privacy of New York state students. And secondly, we don’t want to open up the public coffers wide for the Murdoch companies to make money off of our kids.”

New York City public schools have already granted the company a $2.7 million contract, and the New York State Education Department is close to granting Wireless Generation a $27 million no-bid contract.

News Corp. has announced the formation of a Management and Standards Committee that will answer directly to Klein. Klein, who sits on the News Corp. board of directors, will report to fellow board member and former fellow Justice Department attorney Viet Dinh. Dinh was assistant attorney general under George W. Bush and a principal author of the USA Patriot Act, the law that, among other things, prompted an unprecedented expansion of government eavesdropping. According to recent Securities and Exchange Commission filings, Dinh and other directors lined up on July 3 to sell off stock options, with Dinh netting about $25,000, just as the scandal broke.

News Corp. is far from a news corpse, though the term is sadly relevant, with the initial exposé of
News of the World
’s grotesque hacking of murder victim Milly Dowler’s voice mail, giving false hope to her family that she was alive. The FBI is now investigating whether Murdoch papers tried to profit from hacking into the voice mails of victims of the 9/11 attacks. U.S. journalists must now dig into News Corp.’s operations here, to expose not only potential criminality, but also the threat to democracy posed by unbridled media conglomerates like the Murdoch empire.

Undoing the Coups, from Haiti to Honduras

September 23, 2009

President Zelaya and the Audacity of Action

Manuel Zelaya, the democratically elected president of Honduras, is back in his country after being deposed in a military coup June 28. Zelaya appeared there unexpectedly Monday morning, announcing his presence in Tegucigalpa, the capital, from within the Brazilian Embassy, where he has taken refuge. Hondurans immediately began flocking to the embassy to show their support. Zelaya’s bold move occurs during a critical week, with world leaders gathering for the annual United Nations General Assembly, followed by the G-20 meeting of leaders and finance ministers in Pittsburgh. The Obama administration may be forced, finally, to join world opinion in decisively opposing the coup.

How Zelaya got into Honduras is still unclear. He told the press Monday, “I had to travel for 15 hours, sometimes walking, other times marching in different areas in the middle of the night.” One source inside the Brazilian Embassy said he may have hidden in the trunk of a car, successfully bypassing up to twenty police checkpoints.

Around dawn Tuesday, supporters who defied the government-imposed curfew outside the Brazilian Embassy were violently dispersed with tear gas and water cannons. Electricity, phone, and water service to the embassy have been shut down, and the Honduran military has reportedly set up a truck with loudspeakers there, blasting the Honduran national anthem. On Monday, the Organization of American States (OAS) reiterated its call “for the immediate signing of the San José Agreement,” the accord negotiated by Costa Rican President Óscar Arias calling for Zelaya’s return as president, with members of the coup regime included in the government, and amnesty for anyone involved in the coup. Zelaya has agreed to the terms, but installed coup President Roberto Micheletti has rejected them.