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Protester’s New Front: Student Loan Debt

23 Apr

Alexander Zaitchik, writing in Salon:

A year ago, the student debt crisis was a quiet one. Default-triggered cascades of compounding interest and collection fees were matters of lonely shame and anxiety. Journalists writing on the issue networked through friends and family to find subjects willing to go on record. Then the debt-confession signs started popping up at OWS protests, and stories of debilitating student debt were everywhere. Numbers that had been a source of private depression became symbols of generational defiance. “I have $80,000 in student loan debt,” declared a typical sign. “How can I ever hope to repay that now?” Others demonstrated the vertiginous arithmetic of the classic default spiral: “Borrowed $26,000. Paid back to date $32,000. Still owe $45,000.”

There’s no shortage of statistics capable of illustrating America’s economic elephantiasis. Taxes, health care, wages — take your pick. But it’s the student debt numbers that most shock college graduates over 50. If you went to school in the 1960s or ’70s, it doesn’t seem possible that the class of 2012 is graduating with an average debt load of more than $25,000. The macro milestones tend to get more press — America’s $1 trillion in aggregate student debt now surpasses that owed on its credit cards — but it’s the 25 large that makes boomers whistle and start talking about the days when a semester at Berkeley cost the same as a trip to the laundromat.

Years ago: Continue reading →

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Global Warming and the Beginning of the Great Transition

20 Apr

I’ve been thinking about the recent poll showing that a majority of Americans now believe that global warming is real and that it is the cause behind recent extreme weather (as reported in The New York Times):

The poll suggests that a solid majority of the public feels that global warming is real, a result consistent with other polls that have asked the question in various ways. When invited to agree or disagree with the statement, “global warming is affecting the weather in the United States,” 69 percent of respondents in the new poll said they agreed, while 30 percent disagreed.

Not only that, but “one of the more striking findings was that 35 percent of the public reported being affected by extreme weather in the past year.” That is global warming is no longer something affecting only “those people” who live “over there, in that other place far far away from me.” It’s happening here and now, to me!

What’s the ripple effect of these beliefs? William McKibben says ““My sense from around the country and the world is that people definitely understand that things are getting freaky” and his group, 350.org, is planning rallies on May 5 to help people to “Connect the Dots” between the crazy weather we have now and long-term climate change.

Of course those aren’t the only dots that need to be connected. Climate change needs to be connected to energy policy and practices, to farming and ranching and food practices, to relationships between local and global communities, to, well, when you think about it, to just about everything.

Certainly to war and peace. All the time, energy, and resources we throw into way is just thrown away. We need to devote that to saving the earth and thus to saving ourselves and our grandchildren, and their grandchildren.

But first we need to believe that all that must be done. Is this newly emerging consensus on global warming the beginning of that belief? Is this the beginning of the Great Transition?

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Investigation: Two Years After the BP Spill, A Hidden Health Crisis Festers | The Nation

19 Apr

This article is a horror story of health problems following the Gulf oil spill. Many/most of the afflicted people will probably never be compensated.

It will take years to determine the actual number of affected people. The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), with financial support from BP, is conducting several multiyear health impact studies, which are only just getting under way. I spoke with all but one of the studies’ national and Gulf Coast directors. “People were getting misdiagnosed for sure,” says Dr. Edward Trapido, director of two NIEHS studies on women’s and children’s health and associate dean for research at the Louisiana State University School of Public Health. “Most doctors simply didn’t know what questions to ask or what to look for.” There are only two board-certified occupational physicians in Louisiana, according to Trapido, and only one also board-certified as a toxicologist: Dr. James Diaz, director of the Environmental and Occupa-tional Health Sciences Program at Louisiana State University.

Diaz calls the BP spill a toxic “gumbo of chemicals” to which the people, places and wildlife of the Gulf continue to be exposed.

via Investigation: Two Years After the BP Spill, A Hidden Health Crisis Festers | The Nation.

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Ron Paul – 2012 TIME 100: The Most Influential People in the World

18 Apr

Ralph Nader explains why Ron Paul makes Time‘s list of 100 most influential people of 2012.

… people like a politician without marbles in his mouth.

Paul does not censor himself. He comes across as sincere, earnest and independent of his party’s fat cats. In the debates, only he called out the American Empire’s meddling in the business of countless nations around the world. He assails the Pentagon’s bloated budgets and has worked with liberal Democrat Barney Frank to shrink the military-industrial complex. He wants to end our boomeranging wars.

Paul, 76, draws a distinction between libertarian conservatives and those corporatist conservatives entrenching a corporate state in which Big Business merges with Big Government.

via Ron Paul – 2012 TIME 100: The Most Influential People in the World – TIME.

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ALEC Disbands Task Force Responsible for Voter ID, ‘Stand Your Ground’ Laws | The Nation

17 Apr

Ah, the CorpState blinked. That’s not much change, but it is change in the right direction.

Pressured by watchdog groups, civil rights organizations and a growing national movement for accountable lawmaking, the American Legislative Exchange Council announced Tuesday that it was disbanding the task force that has been responsible for advancing controversial Voter ID and “Stand Your Ground” laws.

ALEC, the shadowy corporate-funded proponent of so-called “model legislation” for passage by pliant state legislatures, announced that it would disband its “Public Safety and Elections” task force. …

The decision to disband the task force appears to get ALEC out of the business of promoting Voter ID and “Stand Your Ground” laws. That’s a dramatic turn of events, with significant implications for state-based struggles over voting rights an elections, as well as criminal justice policy. But it does not mean that ALEC will stop promoting one-size-fits-all “model legislation” at the state level.

via ALEC Disbands Task Force Responsible for Voter ID, ‘Stand Your Ground’ Laws | The Nation.

Five Ways to Support Re-Occupation | The Nation

17 Apr

Empowered by a federal court ruling that allows protesters to legally sleep on public sidewalks, as long as they don’t block building entrances or take up more than half of the available space, #SleepfulProtest is proving to be an effective new tactic helping speed Occupy Wall Street’s re-emergence into the streets and public spaces of the US. (My colleague Allison Kilkenny recently explained and explored this new strategy.)

It’s been so effective, in fact, that this morning at 6:00 am the NYPD, in direct defiance of the 2000 decision Metropolitan Council Inc. v. Safir, which held “public sleeping as a means of symbolic expression” to be constitutionally protected speech, raided the corner across from the New York Stock Exchange where Occupiers have been sleeping. A motion for an emergency injunction against NYPD disruption of the sidewalk protests was filed this morning.

In the meantime, here are five ways you can help support the Re-Occupation of America:

1. Go to Wall Street to join the Occupiers if you can….

2. Spread the word.  …

3. Donate to Occupy Wall Street through its website. …

4. Get ready for the May 1 actions. This is expected to be a major day of resistance on many fronts and of many forms. Do something!

5. Help save Chicago’s Woodlawn Mental Health Clinic.

via Five Ways to Support Re-Occupation | The Nation.

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Occupy Returns to Its Roots With ‘Sleepful Protests’ | The Nation

12 Apr

Now let’s sleep on the sidewalks outside banks, but within legal limits. No big camps, just modest sleep-ins:

The concept of sleepful protests combines Occupy’s two most powerful elements: physical occupations and the targeting of Wall Street, thereby alleviating one of the major criticisms of OWS, which was that the occupations of parks and squares is too far removed from the movement’s actual targets.

When people see Occupiers sleeping outside a bank, the natural question for them to ask is “Why this bank?” And that allows the protesters to segue into an explanation of what Occupy is and what they stand for.

via Occupy Returns to Its Roots With ‘Sleepful Protests’ | The Nation.

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Occupy’s Plans to Take Down Bank of America | The Nation

10 Apr

Alternet’s Sarah Jaffe today posted an article about Occupy’s future plans to protest the bank, ranging from direct actions to Move Your Money efforts, all of which will focus on the need to break up Bank of America.

April 13 will be the “move your money relay,” entailing escorting people from Bank of America branches, where they’ll close their accounts, to community banks and local credit unions.

OWS activist Nelini Stamp told Alternet, “We want to make sure that people feel like that is a direct action unto itself. It’s not just ‘I’m just moving my money from here,’ but actually people are feeling empowered and knowledgeable about the choices that they’re making when they’re making their banking decisions.”

The week of April 16 will feature Occupy activists attempting to disrupt home foreclosure auctions.

via Occupy’s Plans to Take Down Bank of America | The Nation.

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Gary Johnson, the anti-war 2012 candidate – POLITICO.com

10 Apr

Former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson is branding himself as the anti-war candidate of the 2012 campaign, dismissing both President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney as standard-bearers for “interventionism.”

Johnson, who dropped out of the GOP primary and is now seeking the Libertarian Party’s nomination, said opposition to the war in Afghanistan represents a potent force in presidential politics — one that neither major-party candidate is in a position to channel.

“Get out tomorrow,” Johnson said in an interview with POLITICO. “We should have gotten out of Afghanistan 11 years ago. Eleven years ago! Romney is saying we should stay in Afghanistan until the mission is accomplished. What does that mean?”

Obama, on the other hand, has “doubled down” on an unpopular and directionless war, Johnson said. What’s more, he warned that the White House could try to gain electoral points with a strike on Iran before the November election out of a “political calculation … that bombing Iran shows strength.”

If Johnson wins the Libertarian nomination next month, he would become the only general-election candidate with a down-the-line stance against the unpopular war. For a long-shot third-party candidate, who will essentially be campaigning for a place in the fall debates, Afghanistan is conceivably the kind of issue that could draw national attention to an underdog effort.

via Gary Johnson, the anti-war 2012 candidate – POLITICO.com.

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Protecting Face-to-Face Protest – NYTimes.com

9 Apr

Another tradition endangered by the corpstate:

Although virtually ignored today, a right to petition is part of the First Amendment, and the Constitution does not leave it to the government to decide who should have access to it.

The historical model of petitioning, going back to medieval England, literally involved laying a petition at the foot of the throne — while the king was sitting on it. The presentation of petitions has deep roots in American political culture. Quaker abolitionists used mass petitioning campaigns to advocate an end to the slave trade in the 1790s and the American Anti-Slavery Society renewed such efforts with similar campaigns in the 1830s and ’40s. Female suffragists embraced petitioning — as did Native Americans and veterans in later decades.

The 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery, organized by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, included a petition seeking protection of political and civil rights for Alabama’s black citizens. It was to be delivered to Gov. George C. Wallace after a rally at the State Capitol. (Although Mr. Wallace declined to receive the petition then, he did so about a week later, after meeting with a delegation of S.C.L.C. representatives.)

What would have happened if Alabama, invoking “security concerns,” had banished the Selma march and rally to a fairgrounds miles away from downtown Montgomery? The answer should be obvious.

via Protecting Face-to-Face Protest – NYTimes.com.

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