Reversing the tax shift would not only reduce the tax burden borne by the bottom 70 percent of taxpayers; it would also allow us to make long-overdue investments in upgrading our aging public infrastructure and defending the commons.

  In the United States, we tend to take for granted the advanced commons (public infrastructure, property, and knowledge institutions) that our ancestors built. We’re like fish who swim in an ocean of publicly funded services without seeing the water around us. Taxes are the way we pay for this healthy common heritage, ensuring that they exist for the next generation.

  Here are three things you can do to support the commons:

  1. Join your local occupation, or start a new one. Bring a sign showing how you feel about unfair taxation and talk with fellow protesters to find ways to bring this issue to light.

  2. Help close overseas tax havens. Business for Shared Prosperity and Wealth for the Common Good are enlisting investors and small businesses to speak out against tax haven abuse. Go to businessagainsttaxhavens.org to learn more.

  3. Support a financial speculation tax. A modest financial speculation tax on Wall Street transactions would raise over $150 billion annually in urgently needed revenue. See the campaigns page at wealthforcommongood.org for more information.

  Chuck Collins is a senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies where he directs the Program on Inequality and the Common Good. This chapter first appeared on YesMagazine.org on April 12, 2010.

  CHAPTER 12

  HOW TO CREATE LIVING-WAGE JOBS THAT ARE GOOD FOR THE PLANET

  SARAH VAN GELDER AND DOUG PIBEL

  Officially, the “Great Recession” ended in the second quarter of 2009. For some people, the recovery is well under way. Corporate profits are at or above pre-recession levels, and the CEOs of the two hundred biggest corporations averaged over $10 million in compensation in 2010—a 23 percent increase over 2009.

  But for most Americans, there’s no recovery. Twenty-five million are unemployed, under-employed, or have given up looking for work. Forty-five percent of unemployed people have been without a job for more than twenty-seven weeks, the highest percentage since the Bureau of Labor Statistics started keeping track in 1948.

  American workers have become expendable to many of the corporations that run the economy; NAFTA and other trade deals opened the floodgates to outsourcing. Other jobs are being eliminated, or hours, pay, and benefits are being cut.

  As corporations amass greater power, wealth, and influence, they successfully lobby for tax breaks and federal subsidies and set the national policy agenda. And as long as they continue to cut jobs, the economy will not have sufficient demand to recover.

  Real Solutions

  Leaders in both parties tell us growth is what’s needed, but the evidence suggests growth alone won’t help. GDP has grown steadily, but since the official end of the recession, virtually all of the new income has gone to corporate profits, according to a May report by the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University. None of the increased GDP has gone to boost wages and salaries.

  More importantly, since World War II, growth has been built on cheap energy. Now the easy-to-pump oil is nearly used up, and the cost of extraction is rising. At the same time, we’ve used up the Earth’s capacity to absorb climate-changing gases and other forms of pollution. Changes in the delicate balance of atmospheric gases are already disrupting the climate, and extreme weather events are happening with increasing frequency.

  So how do we create an economy that provides dignified livelihoods to all who are willing to work, without undermining the natural systems we, and our children, rely on?

  A real solution requires a vision that is both humble in terms of the material wealth we can expect and ambitious about the fairness, mutual support, and quality of life we can build.

  That means building our local economies so they can sustain our families while also sustaining the natural world, which we rely on for our future.

  1. Local Economies, Local Ecosystems

  Strong local and regional economies are the way to build a sustainable and resilient recovery. Small businesses actually create more jobs and innovation than big corporations, and entrepreneurs with long-term stakes in their local environment and economy have both the means and the motivation to protect them. There are many simple ways individuals and communities can support the transition back to local economies.

  • Buy local goods and services and keep money circulating in the Main Street economy, where new jobs are most likely to be created.

  • Bank local, too. Credit unions, community-rooted banks, and state banks invest in the local economy, instead of siphoning off our bank deposits to use for global speculation.

  • Start with strengths. Build economies from the grassroots up, starting with existing assets, whether that’s a vibrant local arts scene, farmland, or a hospital.

  • Use wasted resources. Instead of demolishing and landfilling obsolete buildings, disassemble them and sell the components. Other common wastes: used clothes and books, unharvested fruit trees, and church kitchens that could be health department certified for food processing start-ups.

  • Do it cooperatively. Home health care workers, house cleaners, grocery store clerks, and laundry workers have all become worker-owners of successful cooperatives.

  • Allow communities to control their resources. Community-controlled forests are more likely to be sustainably managed; sustainable agriculture is more labor-intensive but less polluting. Sustainable and fair practices create jobs that last while boosting local resilience.

  • Keep ownership human. When owners are workers, customers, or the community at large, an enterprise can operate in accordance with multiple values, such as human well-being, the good of future generations, and ecological health.

  2. Redefining Middle Class

  To live within our means as we approach the end of the era of cheap energy and seemingly limitless growth, we’ll need to produce and consume less stuff. That may mean less paid work available, at least in some sectors of the economy, so it makes sense to share those jobs and work fewer hours.

  A shorter workweek could benefit those who are working too much while opening new jobs for the unemployed. Productivity increases when workers aren’t overstretched. Profits now going to the wealthiest 1% could be distributed to workers so they could afford to work fewer hours and have more time for the rest of life.

  Working less also means we have more time to do things for ourselves and for our neighbors. These informal exchanges among neighbors help reweave a community fabric that has been badly frayed by overstressed lives. Once you get the tools to repair your bicycle, you can fix other people’s bikes or teach them how. When you’re canning jam, it’s easy to make some extra for gifts and exchanges.

  With a strong community DIY ethic, people can live with less money, so they can afford to spend less time at a job and more on building the rich networks and practical skills that will enhance our resilience in an uncertain future.

  3. Build People Power

  We are still a wealthy country. We could use our tax dollars to put Americans to work replacing obsolete energy, water, transportation, and waste systems with green infrastructure that can serve us in the resource-constrained times ahead.

  We could invest in universal health coverage, which offers people the security to risk launching new businesses and helps make shorter workweeks more feasible. We could fully fund education and job training.

  We could save money by cutting the bloated military budget, oversized prison populations, and the drug war. And we’d have enough money if everyone—including the wealthiest Americans and large corporations—paid taxes at the rates they paid during the Clinton administration.

  To get these sorts of changes, we need the American government to work for all of us, not just for corporations.

  Powerful moneyed interests won’t willingly give back the power that has allowed them to acquire most of America’s wealth. We need strong people’s movements to get government to work for ordinary Americans. That’s the way American workers won the eight-hour day, women secured the right to vote, and African Americans ended segregation.

  Enlightened politicians may cooperate with these movements, but they cannot lead them. We the people will have to set our own agenda and insist that government respond.

  Sarah van Gelder and Doug Pibel wrote this article for “New Livelihoods,” the Fall 2011 issue of YES! Magazine. Sarah is executive editor and Doug is managing editor of YES! Magazine.

  Photo by Scott Eisen

  BOSTON, October 5, 2011

  PART III

  WE HAVE THE POWER

  Through the Occupy Wall Street movement we’re redefining power, learning new ways to make change, and winning back our political self-respect. Instead of petitioning the powerful for change, we’re making it happen ourselves. Instead of taking direction from leaders, each of us can claim the right as a sovereign individual to be part of powerful collective action.

  But do marches and occupations really make a difference? And how do we take the next steps to build power for the 99%?

  Thomas Linzey and Jeff Reifman in chapter 13 tell stories of communities around the United States—especially those resisting hydrofracking—that are using local lawmaking to end corporate “personhood” and determine their own futures.

  Ralph Nader in chapter 14 reminds us of past victories accomplished via organized, persistent street action, and through the willingness of people in all walks of life to “speak out and stand tall.”

  Rebecca Solnit ties the Occupy Wall Street movement to the revolutions of the Arab Spring and the uprisings in Europe in chapter 15, showing that ordinary people are often strengthened and transformed by such upheavals.

  Sarah van Gelder wraps up this section with chapter 16, a list of 10 Ways to Support the Occupy Wall Street Movement. Whether or not you choose to sleep outside with your local occupiers, there are many, many ways to get involved.

  CHAPTER 13

  HOW TO PUT THE RIGHTS OF PEOPLE AND NATURE OVER CORPORATE RIGHTS

  THOMAS LINZEY AND JEFF REIFMAN

  The history of populist uprisings like Occupy Wall Street is far from reassuring. The last one to have any staying power was the populist farmers revolt of the 1800s, and it was aggressively dismantled by everyone from the two major political parties to the banks and railroad corporations of its day.

  Most revolts are snuffed out well before their efforts affect the political scene—not because their ideas and issues aren’t relevant, but because the major institutional players within the system-that-is attempt to snag the power and energy for their own. In the eyes of the Democratic Party or the national environmental groups, this revolt is merely an opportunity to assimilate newly emerging troops back into those groups’ own ineffective organizing. Yet, if those institutional groups had actually been effective all of these years, why the need for a revolt at all?

  It’s when these revolts become mainstreamed by their “friends” within existing institutions that they lose their steam and become mere footnotes in an endless list of revolts that burned out early. The pundits and “experts” are already trying to put this revolt in its place. A recent New York Times editorial declared that it “isn’t the job of these protesters to write legislation.” That, the editorial argued, was what the national politicians need to do. The Times couldn’t be more wrong.

  If the Occupy movement is to succeed over time, it must follow the lead of community rights building efforts that have begun to dismantle the body of law that perpetually subordinates people, community, and nature to wealthy corporate minorities. For example:

  • In November 2010, Pittsburgh’s city council stripped corporations seeking to drill for natural gas of their corporate person-hood rights, protections of the commerce and contracts clauses of the U.S. and Pennsylvania Constitutions, and the right to pre-empt community ordinances with federal or state law.

  • In March 2011, for the first time since Ecuador added rights for nature to its Constitution, a judge stopped destructive corporate development in a suit brought by ordinary residents on behalf of the Vilcabamba River.

  • This November, Spokane, Washington residents will vote on Proposition One which 1) grants neighborhoods complete control over local development, 2) affords rights and protections to the Spokane River and aquifer, 3) grants constitutional protections to employees in the workplace and 4) makes people’s rights superior to corporate rights.

  These communities, and many like them, have begun adopting community bills of rights, which elevate the rights of people and nature above the rights of corporations. It’s not another exercise in putting out good-sounding statements. Instead, it’s a seizure of governmental lawmaking authority designed to make the government work on behalf of the majority, rather than continuing to serve as a colonized lackey for corporations.

  Instead of diluting themselves to meet the needs of already-institutionalized groups who aren’t going anywhere, the Occupy folks must move in the opposite direction: deepen and strengthen their effort by demanding structural change. That means moving away from the mainstream progressive organizations and the institutional advocacy they promote (which has proven ineffective against the type of consolidated wealth that influences decisions about every aspect of our lives today) and towards a new form of advocacy and activism. Rather than negotiating the terms of our de-occupation, we can and must rewrite the very rules under which our system operates.

  Mainstream progressive groups have failed by working within legal and regulatory systems purposefully structured to subordinate communities to corporate power. Transformative movements don’t operate that way. Abolitionists never sought to regulate the slave trade; they sought freedom and rights for slaves. Suffragists didn’t seek concessions but demanded the right for all women to vote.

  The Occupy movement must begin to use lawmaking activities in cities and towns to build a new legal structure of rights that empowers community majorities over corporate minorities, rather than the other way around.

  It’s taken a century’s worth of manufactured and concocted legal doctrines to create an environment so skewed in the favor of corporations and their decision makers that not only our legislatures but also our courts can be wielded against us. Our country’s wealth inequality did not arise overnight, but emerged slowly as the corporate minority eviscerated almost every memory of a true democratic system.

  They’ve built a system that not only allows those with the most wealth to have the most decision-making power, but one in which our most essential constitutional rights have now been bestowed onto corporate “persons,” thus insulating them from governing authority.

  What’s been happening in communities such as Pittsburgh and Spokane since the early 2000s is a revolution that takes those constitutional rights back and makes them work for communities again. Residents of over a hundred rural American communities have now seized their local governments by using municipal law-making power to recognize rights for nature, to strip corporations of certain claimed rights, and to elevate community decision-making rights above the claimed “rights” of corporations. In the process, they’ve stopped everything from proposed corporate factory farms to natural gas fracking and corporate water withdrawals.

  These communities have begun to understand that the specific issues that affect them cannot be solved without dismantling a structure of law, government, and culture that guarantees that corporate minorities will continue to make decisions on energy, agriculture, and resource extraction.

  Occupy Wall Street must become Occupy New York City—with groups of New Yorkers seizing the city and its boroughs and using the municipal entities to align their governing structures with their demands. That may mean eliminating corporate rights within the city, recognizing the rights of neighborhoods, and restoring labor rights within the workplace.

  Occupy Seattle and Portland must actually occupy their municipalities via citizen initiatives and other processes to begin to change the law with which their cities operate by eliminating corporate rights and privileges.

  This means understanding that our current system, in which a corporate minority wields a stranglehold over 99% of us, won’t change just because one bill is introduced into congress, or promises are made by financial institutions. Structural change—focused on toppling the corporate domination of policy on everything from energy to transportation to finance—must be forced. We must begin in our cities and towns, then drive upwards against state and federal frameworks of law that protect decision-making authority by the 1%. In each of the cities where we live, we need to start working together to define the rights we need and then use our municipal structures to obtain them.

  As winter nears, the Occupy movement should take note of community organizer Saul Alinsky’s observation in Rules for Radicals, “A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.” There may only be a brief window to convert street-level momentum into organized rights-legislating movements in each of our local communities.

  Thomas Linzey is the executive director of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund. Jeff Reifman is co-founder of Envision Seattle, a freelance writer, and an organizer. This chapter first appeared on YesMagazine.org on October 14, 2011.

  CHAPTER 14

  GOING TO THE STREETS TO GET THINGS DONE

  RALPH NADER

 

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