"Occupying America: We Shall Overcome",
by Rev. Paul J. Bern
One
of the most exhaustive, comprehensive books about the “Occupy
Wall St.” and “We Are The 99%” Movements written so far, as well as why they are still relevant today (Black Lives Matter, Bernie Sanders, the Yellow Vests in France, etc.).
Pro-Occupy; anti-government; very dissident. Watch the author's video at http://youtu.be/Z20l9ohORN4
Excerpt of chapter five, which forecasted the downfall of the Euro back in 2012, a process that has since gotten underway....
Overall,
conditions are decidedly negative at a time financial markets are
whistling past the graveyard. Expect reality to eventually outstrip
hope. Continued wrongheaded policies assures train wreck
unpleasantness and grief. For ordinary people, it means greater
misery. Stronger economies will sink with weaker ones. In fact, world
economies are now so interlinked that a shock in one spreads
everywhere in short order, including among the strongest. It's coming
but no one knows when. Today's economic fragility is a global event.
Eurozone,
UK and US banks are broke but still operating, thanks to never ending
loans from the Fed. However, any time they spend money or lend
reserves, inflation is adversely affected. Now it's a matter of
inflate or die. Decades of accumulated government debt approaches
saturation. It's coming in a few years at most, possibly as soon as a
few months. At issue is at-risk and unpayable government debt and
zero interest rates benefiting bankers. As a result, expect greater
crisis down the road. Since the early
1960's, financial excess assured crisis conditions too great to
contain. It's been building for over 50 years. We are at the stage
now that risk is growing exponentially, as central banks and
governments aggressively intervene in markets, causing major
distortions.
From
inception, the Euro was doomed to fail. We just don't know when it
will actually occur. It's been slowly disintegrating for years. Its
demise will damage global economies in ways that may be nearly
incalculable, not to mention inconceivable. Economic and financial
dislocation is at hand. Delaying the inevitable only works so long.
Reality eventually triumphs. Europe and America are sinking. Judgment
day awaits. It could be 2012 or as late as 2016, but no later (2016
will be the year when China's economy surpasses America's if current
growth rates remain the same). When disintegration arrives, expect
harder than ever hard times. Ordinary people will be hurt most.
Bankers and 1%'ers have stashed trillions in tax havens. Friendly
governments infiltrated with 1%'ers do nothing to retrieve the money
or help troubled households survive. Welcome to “Battleground
America”, a class war of the have-it-all's versus the
have-nothing's that could degenerate into a civil cold war, the likes
of which has not been seen before. It's all downhill from here unless
global protesters stay committed long-term against conditions too
unacceptable to tolerate. That's the wild card world elites fear, and
with good reason. It's because ordinary people can change the world.
It's the only way beneficial social change ever comes!
People
everywhere are coming to the same conclusion. A mass deduction is
being formulated by the many disenfranchised, dispossessed and
disillusioned American workers, the sum of which is that the 99% has
been getting the shaft for entirely too long at the hands of the
elitists who have enslaved us all by forcing us to work for bare
subsistence wages while putting basic necessities and human rights
such as access to health care and higher education financially out of
reach. There are all kinds of ways that are legal and nonviolent
methods to fight back against the rigged political and economic
systems that stand in the way of our freedom. One such instance is
detailed in the Web posting below.
Bank
of America Gets Pad Locked After Homeowner Forecloses On It
Written
by Kelly Heffernan-Tabor, CBS News,
Jun 5, 2011
“Collier
County, Florida -- Have you heard the one about a homeowner
foreclosing on a bank? Well, it has happened in Florida and involves
a North Carolina based bank. Instead of Bank of America foreclosing
on some Florida homeowner, the homeowners had sheriff's deputies
foreclose on the bank. It started five months ago when Bank of
America filed foreclosure papers on the home of a couple, who didn't
owe a dime on their home. The couple said they paid cash for the
house.
“The
case went to court and the homeowners were able to prove they didn't
owe Bank of America anything on the house. In fact, it was proven
that the couple never even had a mortgage bill to pay. A Collier
County Judge agreed and after the hearing, Bank of America was
ordered by the court to pay the legal fees of the homeowners. The
Judge said the bank wrongfully tried to foreclose on their house.
“So,
how did it end?... After more than 5 months of the judge's ruling,
the bank still hadn't paid the legal fees, and the homeowner's
attorney did exactly what the bank tried to do to the homeowners. He
seized the bank's assets. "They've ignored our calls, ignored
our letters, legally this is the next step to get my clients
compensated," attorney Todd Allen told CBS. Sheriff's deputies,
movers, and the couple's attorney went to the bank and foreclosed on
it. The attorney gave instructions to remove desks, computers,
copiers, filing cabinets and any cash in the teller's drawers. After
about an hour of being locked out of the bank, the bank manager
handed the attorney a check for the legal fees....”
In
the wake of Occupy Wall Street's successes, it's time for some more
serious, organized direct action around the issue of debt. When
I talk to people about what we could do that would really compel
Congress and Wall Street to meet our demands or really alter the
current system, we inevitably start discussing what non-cooperation
with our own oppression would look like. What does it mean to stop
cooperating with the banks? What we inevitably end up describing is
some variation of a debt strike, simply ending our own participation
in a system that exploits us. Are debt
strikes, then, the next logical step in the fight against Big
Finance's domination of the 99 percent? Debt
really does tie the 99 percent together, it's everyone's least common
denominator, mathematically speaking. Everyone who is under the 99
percentile saw a major debt increase in the 2000's. You can talk
about the richest 1 percent making too much money, but part of what
they're making is derived from our debts. Their wealth is a claim on
the future income of the remaining 99%, and it is an indicator of a
predatory economic system that exists solely to serve the top 1%.
That debt was for many years a substitute
for wages in the pockets of many Americans. As incomes stagnated or
even shrank, credit cards and home equity filled the gap—until the
housing bubble popped, leaving millions underwater on their
mortgages, owing more than their homes were worth, and unable to get
more credit cards or even make the minimum payments on the ones they
had. In short, everybody found themselves caught in a trap.
Many have
noted that what happened in 2007 and 2008, when the banks were handed
billions in bailouts and secret ultra-low-interest loans, was
essentially a capital strike. Finance essentially said that if they
didn't get bailed out, they'd shut down the system — stop lending,
jam up the works, and make life miserable for everyone. Yet those
same banks, once bailed out, have flatly refused to do the same for a
nation of borrowers thrown into crisis by their actions. Their
argument seems simple — the borrowers knew what they were doing,
it's their obligation to pay. Most borrowers agree, and struggle to
make payments on credit cards with 20 percent interest rates,
usurious student loans for educations that didn't help them find
jobs, on homes that have plunged in value thanks to predatory
lending, and on cars and trucks that often wear out before the owner
can finish paying off the auto loan, keeping the “customer”
locked into a never-ending string of upside-down auto loans. If
someone wants to take an interrelation of violent extortion, sheer
power and total domination, and then turn it into something moral,
and most of all, make it seem like the victims are to blame, you turn
it into a relation of debt.
There
is power in numbers, and that's where the idea of an organized debt
strike comes in. One person can be hounded, harassed, and scared into
submission, but when enough of them work together, could the banks be
pressed into backing down? I firmly believe that homeowners who are
stuck with mortgages greater than the value of their homes should
band together and refuse to pay their mortgages until the banks agree
to negotiate. A kind of collective bargaining for homeowners whose
wealth was wiped out by the financial crisis, those who cannot pay
their bills, and those who can (for now) but still would benefit by
spending that money elsewhere, would be an effective tool for us to
use to retake control of our country and its government away from the
New World Order elites. This would
immediately cause a crisis for the banks, meaning they couldn't
afford to ignore the issue and would then be forced to negotiate with
homeowners.
There
should be debt forgiveness, but these guys – the student loan
profiteers – should eat it, not the government and taxpayers. The
banks should pay because they destroyed the economy, they sucked
18-year-olds into predatory loans they are stuck with for life,
accumulated well-meaning wage earners with mortgages they couldn't
repay, and credit card debt whose interest accrues faster than the
principal can be repaid, especially if you lose your job. Mother
Jones magazine notes in a late 2011 issue that banks have already
written off some $90 billion in credit card debt since 2008. Aside
from the fact, of course, that we wound up with an $8 trillion
housing bubble from just those sorts of bad loans, there is in the US
one type of debt that cannot be discharged in bankruptcy, that
follows you for life and that has the full power of the US government
behind its collection. I'm speaking, of
course, of student loans.
The student
debt bubble is officially over $1 trillion as of 2012, largely
consisting of loans made to teenagers under the premise that
education will help them earn enough money to pay off their loans.
Yet the job market is terrible (and nearly twice as terrible for
young people as it is for everyone else) and meanwhile cuts to public
education, both ideologically motivated, from conservatives, and
because of state budget crises caused by the economic crisis the
banks created, have made that education much more expensive. The
student loan bubble may not burst with a bang, but it is slowly
suffocating us. The problem is that student debt is literally debt
you carry for life. It has no statute of limitations, cannot be
discharged under bankruptcy and the government can literally deduct
it from your Social Security check.
As
credit card and housing debt become unbearable, there’s a point at
which they get written down. That point is currently too high, not
only for credit cards, housing and transportation, but especially for
student loans. Because of poor legal choices we’ve made, student
loans stay forever, they are virtually impossible to discharge under
hardship, they generate an avalanche of fees when they go bad, and
creditors can get to anything, including Social Security, to get it
repaid. Meanwhile, we have a Great Depression-like event that is
throwing college graduates into a labor market that is far too weak.
And defaults are up anyway. According to a
Wall Street Journal report in August 2011, 11.2 percent of student
loans were more than 90 days past due — and if it kept rising,
could pass credit card debt, which is at 12.2 percent but is on a
decline. Obama's new plan to help students with their loans will
provide some relief, but only for current students. Those who have
already graduated — the majority of the student loan bubble — are
ineligible. Thanks a lot, Mr. President.
Occupy Wall
Street has proven that a sizable number of Americans are in a mood to
do things for themselves rather than waiting for government action.
So a student debt strike might actually be the most powerful
statement to make, as there are literally no other options for those
stuck with the burden — many of whom form the backbone of the
occupations around the country. I think the people who would be the
first to strike would be the people who have already defaulted. Once
your credit is already tanked, the idea of giving it another hit
doesn't seem nearly as threatening. In many ways, the combination of
online/offline activism is the hallmark of the Occupy Wall Street
movement, organized with the help of hacker groups like Anonymous and
promoted through citizen media like live-streams, camera phone videos
and Twitter, but solidly grounded in real-world action.
American
homeowners who are stuck in a negative equity situation with their
homes and their mortgages are finding ways to fight back against the
rigged capitalist profit-driven economic system that has them locked
into what amounts to legalized loan sharking. For example,
delinquent borrowers facing foreclosure
are learning that they can stay in their homes for years, as long as
they're willing to put up a fight. Among the tactics: Challenging the
bank's actions, waiting to file paperwork right up until the
deadline, requesting the lender dig up original paperwork or, in some
extreme cases, declaring bankruptcy. Nationwide, the average time it
takes to process a foreclosure – from the first missed payment to
the final foreclosure auction – has climbed to 674 days from 253
days just four years ago. And while some borrowers are looking for
ways to make good with lenders and get their homes back, many aren't
paying a dime. Nearly 40% of homeowners in default as of the end of
2011 have not made a payment in at least two years. Keep up the good
work, everyone!
Many
of these homeowners are staying in their homes based on a
technicality. There is rarely any dispute over whether or not they
have stopped paying their mortgage. They're not in technical default.
They're in default because they're not paying. That's because
American homeowners have gotten wise to what the banks and other
mortgage lenders have been doing, and they are collectively realizing
that two can play that same game. Ironically enough, the banks have
given delinquent borrowers some of the ammunition they need to delay
the foreclosure process. For example, during the "robo-signing"
scandal in 2010, it was revealed that bank employees signed paperwork
attesting to facts they had no personal knowledge of. The lender's
paperwork included many different papers signed by the same employee.
The problem was that the signatures didn't match. In such instances
the courts dismiss the lender's case against the borrower, although
it can be re-filed. Because of this, borrowers are now routinely
challenging that paperwork. Those who are doing so will remain in
their homes for some time to come, while not making any payments.
Sometimes just asking the bank to produce the paperwork that shows it
is the legal holder of the mortgage note can stall or even stop a
repossession. Since mortgages are often transferred electronically,
the official paperwork often gets misplaced. In
some of the more extreme cases, borrowers will file for bankruptcy in
order to block a foreclosure. In these instances, courts order
creditors to cease their collection activities immediately. Home
auctions can be postponed as the bankruptcy plays out, which can take
months. What really needs to be done is for lenders to work harder to
find solutions that allow delinquent borrowers who can afford to make
reasonable mortgage payments to keep their homes. Speaking as a
minister of the Gospel, simply throwing people and even whole
families out in the street in the name of profit is absolutely
barbaric and utterly immoral. The fact that such things have taken
place is exactly why the Occupy and the “we are the 99%”
Movements are so successful, and that success will be greatly
magnified in the coming months, of that you can be sure. In the
meantime, there are plenty of industrious Americans who are joining
the swelling ranks of those who are boycotting their debts, as
selected excerpts from the following Web posting point out in stark
detail.
50
Ways to Leave Your Banker: What Happened When One Man Just Refused to
Pay $80,000 in Credit Card Debt
By
Kimberly Thorpe, Mother Jones
Posted on November
1, 2011
“At
last count, Steven Katz owed $80,000 on his six credit cards, and he
has no intention of paying any of it off. In fact, he'd like to show
you how to be like him—a "credit terrorist" in open
revolt against the banking system. Debtorboards.com ("Sue Your
Creditor and Win!"), a five-year-old online forum where he's
collected countless tricks and tactics for evading and repelling
persistent creditors. He's written how-to's on shielding your assets
from seizure, luring collection agencies into expensive lawsuits, and
frustrating private investigators looking for debtors on the run.
He's even infiltrated the bill collectors' forums, where he's been
tagged a "credit jihadist" and his site's been called a
"credit terrorist training camp," a label he embraces.
"Debtorboards is one of the biggest and most successful temper
tantrums ever," the 59-year-old Katz boasts. The site has more
than 10,000 members—double what it had in 2009....
“Katz
wants the millions of Americans buried in debt to stop feeling guilty
about not honoring their obligations. "People are brainwashed to
think that paying a credit card is more important than paying for the
necessities of life," he says. "Business and morality have
nothing to do with each other, according to the bankers." One of
Katz's mottos is "No one ever went to hell for not paying a
debt...."
Beside
walking away from their debts, exasperated and infuriated Americans
are in some cases walking away from the whole damned unfair economic
system, having come to the realization that the so-called “work
ethic” is a lie and always was. Working long, hard hours in a
futile attempt to save up enough money for a home, college, and
“retirement” (another myth) will only get you one thing –
TIRED! That's where the underground economy comes into the picture as
an alternative to the status
quo.
Also called the shadow or informal
economy, it's not just illegal activity like selling drugs or doing
sex work. It's all sorts of work that doesn't get regulated by the
government or reported to the IRS, and it's a far bigger part of the
economy than most of us are aware. In 2009, the underground economy
was nearly 8 percent of the US GDP, somewhere around $1 trillion.
(That makes the shadow GDP bigger than the entire GDP of Turkey or
Austria.) This doesn’t include illegal activities in this count –
only legal production of goods and services that are outside of tax
and labor laws. And that shadow economy is growing as regular jobs
continue to be hard to come by.
The Young
Women's Empowerment Project describes the “street economy” as
any way that girls make cash money without paying taxes or having to
show identification. Sometimes this means the sex trade, but other
times it means braiding hair, babysitting, selling CDs/DVDs, drugs or
other skills like sewing and laundry. A good number operate websites
online that yield an all-cash income, all one needs to succeed is a
Paypal account or a smartphone. This
underground economy goes far beyond the homeless collecting aluminum
cans or clogging day labor halls. It includes the working poor
getting cash for all forms of recycling: giving plasma, selling
homemade tamales outside shopping plazas, holding yard sales, doing
under-the-table work for friends and family, selling stuff at
pawnshops, CD, book and used clothing stores, and even establishing
tiny one-person businesses selling all kinds of dollar-store-type
merchandise at flea markets and sidewalk kiosks.
Since
so may of us have patronized or even operated these micro-businesses
at some time in the past, that means
nearly all of us have participated in some way in the underground
economy. Yet little is known or discussed about this area of our
lives, even though it touches many of us as we try to make ends meet.
People enter such arrangements because of their difficulty finding
formal employment. Think of undocumented immigrants that work as home
or office cleaners or in the construction or hospitality industries.
Employers or consumers who use workers in this way are doing so to
boost profits or lower prices. Of course documented workers also can
end up choosing to work in the underground economy but that choice,
like the choice for the undocumented, has the same basic driver –
the inability to find formal paid employment that meets a worker's
needs. I would
compare the growth of the underground economy to payday lending; a
typically undesirable practice operating in a legal gray area that
develops and thrives because it fills a need created by the failure
of public policy to address societal needs. The
informal economy, though, does not only consist of low-wage workers.
There is also an informal economy of creative professionals. By
keeping creative professional work informal, these workers avoid the
corporatist rigidity of creative work, maintaining their freedom to
be innovative and self-sufficient.
Without
solutions coming from Washington or local governments, it continues
to be up to working people to find a way to negotiate today's rough
economy. People shouldn't have to give up fundamental human rights
like access to income in retirement, paid sick days, or safety on the
job because they need work. But in a society like ours, which
tolerates high levels of unemployment (which is inexcusable in the
richest country in the world), the underground economy is often the
next best alternative to starving. While
some have been able to flourish working underground, it's important
to remember that most workers are not off the books to dodge paying
taxes or because they prefer it that way. As we see more and more
people dropping out of the formal labor market in despair, the
informal economy will remain a destination of last resort – and
will keep growing. That, in turn, is a signal that people are giving
up on the system. Why obey laws that prevent us from succeeding?
Unemployed
Americans aren't the only ones who are giving up on this rigged
economic system we are currently stuck with. A wave of discontent is
beginning to build among those who work for the system designed to
solidify the power and domination of the top 1%. In the past during
uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East, there are numerous
documented cases of the police and the soldiers being sent to quell
the demonstrations and quiet the protests, only to defect to the side
of the protesters after being ordered by their government to fire
upon unarmed civilians engaged in peaceful and nonviolent political
and social activism. If you were a cop, a soldier or in the National
Guard, and your commanding officer ordered you to kill innocent,
unarmed civilians who posed no threat to anyone, would you do so? I
sure as hell wouldn't, and I'm confident that there are multitudes
more who would share my view if asked. The only remaining question to
be answered has to do with the timing of the tipping point, and if
the system will be totally upended by such an event, or will it be
able to continue to function while repairs are made?
“In
a highly developed society, the Establishment cannot survive without
the obedience and loyalty of millions of people who are given small
rewards to keep the system going: the soldiers and police, teachers
and ministers, administrators and social workers, technicians and
production workers, doctors, lawyers. . . . They become the guards of
the system, buffers between the upper and lower classes. If they stop
obeying, the system falls.” — Howard Zinn, from “The Coming
Revolt of the Guards,” A People’s History of the United States
For
those of us who have demonstrated and marched in the Occupy movement
as I did at Freedom Plaza in Washington in early October 2011 (while
selling a few books on the side as I gleefully participated in the
underground economy), it is obvious that the police and the corporate
press serve as guards. They act as buffers between the vast majority
of the American people and the ruling “corporatocracy” (the
partnership of giant corporations, the wealthy elite, their
collaborating politicians and their armies of lobbyists). In addition
to the police and the corporate press, there are millions of other
guards employed by the corporatocracy to keep people obedient and
maintain the status quo. Most guards also perform duties besides
“guard duty.” The police don’t just protect the elite from the
99 percent; they also provide people with roadside assistance. And
mental health professionals also perform “non-guard duty” roles
such as improving family relationships. Guards certainly can perform
duties helpful for the non-elite, but the elite would be foolish to
reward us guards if we didn’t serve to maintain their system.
Even a
partial “revolt of the guards” could increase the number of
protesters on the streets from the thousands to the millions. For
example, many teachers went into their profession because of their
passion for education, but they soon discover that they are not being
paid to educate young people for democracy, which would mean
inspiring independent learning, critical thinking, and questioning
authority. While teachers may help young children learn how to read,
they are employed by the corporatocracy to socialize young people to
fit into a system that was created by and for the corporatocracy. The
corporatocracy needs its future employees to comply with their rules,
to passively submit to authorities, and to perform meaningless
activities for a paycheck.
If you are
comfortably at the top of the hierarchy, you reward guards to make
your system work. In addition to the police, the corporate press,
mental health professionals, and teachers, there are clergy,
bureaucrats, and many other guards in the system, all of whom are
given small rewards to pacify and control the population. Some guards
have rebelled from their pacification and control roles, but at least
as many have not. I will go out on a limb just a little here and
predict that the revolt of the guards will occur when guards
recognize that they are expendable. So, law enforcement officers,
beware. Cameras and other surveillance technology are becoming
increasingly inexpensive, and law enforcement labor costs will
increasingly be replaced by inexpensive Orwellian surveillance. You
see, the 1% will eventually come for you too.
To
accelerate the revolt of obedient guards, I recommend two strategies:
(1) create unpleasant dissonance about their role as guards; in other
words, put guards in some pain for their unquestioning obedience that
maintains the system, and (2) offer encouragement for even small acts
of rebellion against their guard role; small acts of rebellion may
well be major financial risks. For example, if you have social
contact with off-duty law enforcement officers, you might ask them
“Wouldn’t it be more satisfying putting the handcuffs on some
billionaire tax dodger than arresting some small-time pot user?”
I’ve asked police officers if they’ve heard of Jonathan Swift’s
quote, “Laws are like cobwebs, which may
catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.”
On-duty police will respond with “no comment” or a blank stare,
but some off-duty cops will smile and even agree. And should off-duty
police ever tell you an anecdote in which they ignored a law designed
to catch a small fly, give them encouragement. For guards, it is not
easy coming out of denial of their role and their fate. As Upton
Sinclair once observed, “It is difficult to
make a man understand something when his salary depends on his not
understanding it....”
