The White Working Class was Bamboozled

Originally, this was to be a commentary on the plight of the white middle class, but that demographic no longer exists in America.  So, let’s talk about the swindling of the white working class.


And although it has all come to a head in the past few years, it is a story that is years in the making.  If Stockholm Syndrome relates to the feeling of empathy that kidnap victims have with their captors, then certainly what we are witnessing today is a Stockholm Syndrome of those on the losing end of American capitalism.


To single out white working people is not to assume that others are immune from identifying with those who would exploit them financially - their own economic kidnappers, if you will.  At the same time, it was white working folks who made a deal with the devil a long time ago.  And now they’ve been sent the invoice from that Faustian bargain.  Allow me to explain.


American capitalism has promoted the mythology of the “American Dream,” the notion that everyone has a chance to get rich.  In pursuit of that dream, poor and working white Americans chose their enemy years ago.  They made a conscious decision to side with the “1 percenters” whose feet were firmly placed on their neck, rather than with similarly situated black and brown common folk.  They decided it was those of a darker hue whose progress stood in the way of their own movement up the ladder.


Generation after generation, they fought and died in wars, someone else’s beef, designed to protect the interests of the 1 percent. 


They opposed social programs that had any chance of helping blacks, even if they stood to benefit from the programs themselves.  And ultimately they failed to join forces with workers of color to build a strong labor movement.  As a result of that fatal decision, the jobs moved offshore to where the labor costs were cheapest.  Chinese slave laborers are now making our iPhones, iPads, X-Boxes and other toys, and now even Chinese workers are becoming too expensive.


The most impoverished European immigrant had neither a pot nor a window to throw it out of.  But at least he or she was not black, and thus could be considered a real American.  Though poor whites had far more in common with their poor black-, Latino-, Asian- and Native-American counterparts than with some Wall Street banker or fat cat industrialist, nonetheless they viewed racial minority groups and others as the enemy.  That’s how scapegoats are created. 


So, the blame is not placed where it should, which is the über-wealthy sucking the lifeblood out of democracy.  Rather the problem is identified as affirmative action, or welfare queens, or undocumented Mexican immigrants.  Solutions to the nation’s woes are offered in the form of mass incarceration and the death penalty.  Tighter social controls are introduced in the form of bans on Sharia law and Latino studies, voter ID, draconian anti-immigrant legislation and prohibitions on same-sex marriage. 


Culture wars are the ultimate shell game, a cheap parlor trick of smoke and mirrors to mask the wide scale corporate theft taking place.  These cultural issues - which also include gun proliferation and the war against a woman’s reproductive rights, including contraception - will do nothing to improve anyone’s station in life.  Yet these time-tested culture wars are fought because someone is betting that the common folk will take the bait.  And usually, such is the case.


Meanwhile, the sanctimonious and self-righteous rightwing among us, a morals police and Christian Taliban of sorts, would distract us with fertilized egg personhood and mandatory sonograms for women seeking an abortion.  But in the face of injustice, like the white clergy in Martin Luther King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail, they “have been more cautious than courageous and have remained silent behind the anesthetizing security of stained glass windows.”   King called the contemporary church “a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound.  So often it is an archdefender of the status quo.  Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church's silent - and often even vocal - sanction of things as they are.”


So, those who obsess over the sex lives of private citizens have said little about our national scourge of economic inequality or the suffering of the poor - you know, the stuff Jesus talked about.  Preoccupied as they are with birth control bans and zygote rights, they were conspicuously silent when the living among them suffered and the innocent died.  Last year, when the state of Georgia killed Troy Davis, an innocent black man, they said nothing.  And they had remained silent seven years earlier, when the state of Texas wrongfully executed Cameron Todd Willingham, an innocent white man.


Yet, there is hope that for their own sake, people will not fall for the shell game forever.  There is a chance that citizens are waking up, resisting the Stockholm Syndrome, and refusing to act against their economic self-interests.  The spirit of the Occupy movement has liberated the public discourse, an alternative to the neo-segregationist Tea Party and its reliance on racial scapegoats.

The Death Penalty and #OccupyWallStreet

Recently I attended the 12th Annual March to Abolish the Death Penalty in Austin, Texas. Participants included death penalty abolitionists, and members of Witness to Innocence -- over two dozen freed death row prisoners who spent years in prison, and once faced certain execution for crimes they did not commit. The day's events included a walk past the governor's mansion, and a rally on the Capitol steps.

One thing that struck me about the event in Austin was the presence of Occupy Austin protestors who were present to speak and lend their support. Clearly, they get it. They understand the link between the struggle for economic justice and the fight to end the death penalty in America. Perhaps you don't. Allow me to explain.

Both movements seek to reform an unjust, rigged system that stacks the deck against poor and working people. The Occupy movement rails against greed and corruption on Wall Street, and unprecedented wealth inequality brought about by policies of theft that transfer resources from the have nots -- the 99 percent -- to the have alls -- the top 1 percent.

They're angry that they must subsidize the lifestyles of the big bankers who caused our misery, as nearly 46 million are on food stamps, and almost 50 million (16 percent) are mired in poverty. And a lost generation of college graduates saddled with mortgage-sized student debt is jobless and living at home with their parents.

Meanwhile, the anti-death penalty forces would end a practice that discriminates against people of color and poor whites, those who lack high-priced lawyers and often cannot afford to buy justice.

Capital punishment operates under a pretense of justice, when in reality it represents pure vengeance and mob retribution, favoring expediency and finality over finding the real killer. Those who administer the death penalty seem to care little about evidence and actual guilt or innocence. We all witnessed this with Troy Davis in Georgia, and with other problematic capital cases, including Cameron Todd Willingham and possibly now Hank Skinner in Texas.

Innocent men and women have been executed in the face of police coercion and jailhouse snitches, evidence tampering, incompetent court-appointed defense counsel, prosecutorial misconduct and racism sanctioned from the bench.

And 139 innocent people have been exonerated since 1973, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. We will never fully comprehend what these people experienced in their personal Hell -- as they suffered for years behind bars while the state planned their murder. Many of them have told me their stories. The exoneration of these innocent victims provides no proof that the system works. Rather, many of the wrongfully convicted were freed with outside help, including dedicated lawyers, activists and journalism students, despite the best efforts of certain judges and prosecutors to block crucial exculpatory evidence and put them to death. It is a scathing indictment of the U.S. justice system.

As Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia once said, "This court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a court that he is 'actually' innocent."

America's economic and justice systems thrive on winners and losers, and someone is made to pay in the end. America's government has been sold to the highest bidder in the form of concentrated and unchecked corporate power. In the eyes of many, the political system is working for the few and against the vast majority of everyday people. Unlimited campaign finance is a scourge upon the land, operating as a legalized bribery scheme for the rich and famous. And the death penalty is part of a kangaroo court system in which poor and working class people become scapegoats for society's ills. These scapegoats are utilized to help deflect attention from the nation's problems, as we are all promised that their imprisonment and/or execution will make our problems disappear.

For years, the public had been sold on broken institutions that breed inequality, insensitivity and injustice. But there is ample proof that the people are no longer buying it. And the death machine -- not unlike American-style capitalism with its socialized risk and privatized gain -- is so inherently flawed that tweaking around the edges simply will not do. Fundamentally broken, it must be scrapped and replaced. What is needed is what Dr. King called a radical revolution of values, so that this nation emphasizes human rights over property rights, and upholds people over money.

Now that is why the death penalty abolition movement has so much in common with the Occupy Wall Street folks. Both know the fix is in.

David A. Love is the Executive Director of Witness to Innocence, a national nonprofit organization that empowers exonerated death row prisoners and their family members to become effective leaders in the movement to abolish the death penalty.

Why Conservatives Need to Support the #OccupyWallStreet Movement

Alright, it is clear that conservatives don't like the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Rep. Eric Cantor (R, Virginia) characterized the protestors as a mob. One Fox News host even called the protestors dirty and useless. Glenn Beck said they are only interested in destruction, while his compatriot Ann Coulter compared them to Nazis and the beginnings of totalitarianism.

And presidential candidate and former pizza guy Herman CaIn called them un-American and against Wall Street. "They're the ones creating the jobs," Cain said of Wall Street bankers and brokers, adding that those who are not rich or are unemployed should blame themselves.

Now, for those in the media and in politics who make a career out of bashing poor and working folks -- and are paid handsomely to look out for the interests of the Koch Brothers and others who belong in that select group of 1 percenters -- there's no surprise here. But what of ordinary, hardworking and struggling people who call themselves conservatives? How should they feel about the goals of this nascent movement that appears to be gaining steam? And why do some of them vote against their economic interests?

One should note that recent polls find huge majorities -- Democrats, Republicans and independents alike, even the wealthy -- supporting tax increases for the richest among us. This would suggest there is a broad consensus demanding fairness in the American economic system.

And really, that is all the Occupy Wall Street people are asking for. Their website says "We are the 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%." The message is simple and makes a lot of sense.

Wages have stagnated or fallen for working people, and poverty is on the increase. And yet, those with the most are accumulating even more everyday -- not necessarily because they are deserving, hardworking and ingenious, though some may be. Rather, the haves became the have-mores because the have-nots have less. This is called upward wealth redistribution, and it is a matter of public policy, including regressive tax policy that favors corporations and the rich on purpose.

The wealthiest 1 percent now owns 40 percent of the nation's wealth, whereas they only claimed 33 percent 25 years ago. Meanwhile, the top 20 percent own 85 percent of the wealth, and the bottom 80 percent is left with 7 percent -- effectively zero. U.S. inequality is greater than at any time since the Great Depression, and greater than most OECD nations. America is a banana republic.

If F.D.R. saved capitalism from itself years ago, he also saved America from capitalism. What is needed today is what Martin Luther King called a "radical revolution of values," as "an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring."

A few people control the wealth in this country, and those people control the system of governance. American politics is a scheme operating on legalized bribery. Money has corrupted the Democrats and the Republicans alike, especially Republicans. But even President Obama, who rode on a wave of populism and a demand for reform has appeared beholden to that Goldman Sachs money. Just look at the Wall Street lackeys doubling as his team of economic advisors these first three years, not to mention ill-advised policies, or lack thereof, on jobs and the financial system.

And the masses are angry because they are struggling, as they see the banks rewarded, by government, for their greed and failure. The banks wrecked the economy and now the working stiffs are paying the price. The TARP was in the hundreds of billions of dollars, while the Fed gave a total of $16 trillion in financial assistance to U.S. and foreign financial institutions from 2007 to 2010 -- more than the nation's 2010 GDP of $14.5 trillion.

The Tea Party was right to oppose the TARP bailout, but something went wrong along the way.
Actually, they were hijacked by billionaires, if not a creation of them to begin with. And while they have every right to be angry, as many of us are these days, their anger is misplaced and misdirected. Their enemy is misidentified.

Conservatives proclaim that they believe in freedom and the free market. But freedom never meant the right of a handful of to steal most of the nation's wealth, run roughshod over the rest of us and wreck the country for a buck. Further, ours is not a free market capitalist system. Rather, it is a system of subsidized corporatism where only the people are forced to sink or swim. And increasingly America is looking like feudalism, and most of us are serfs or sharecroppers spinning our wheels and going nowhere. Perhaps some people think that is a good thing.

Meanwhile, the Republican Party -- which is a 100 percent certified water carrier for Wall Street -- is adept at making its voter base believe its interests are aligned with that of the party's funders. When it comes to the American Dream, these are the true Kool-Aid drinkers.

Part of the GOP's success is its skill at sidetracking its base with contrived cultural issues. So, rank-and-file conservatives are kept busy hating undocumented Mexican immigrants, with promises to ban sharia law, gay marriage, abortion and voter fraud, and other issues that have no positive impact on their economic well-being.

Yet, in this crisis of U.S.-style democracy and capitalism, conservatives are hurting like everyone else. Who knows what conservatives are conserving these days, but it is hard to conserve when there's nothing left. That's why even they need to support Occupy Wall Street.