Below, a statement:
We all know that, in spite of the claims of politicians, wealth does not “trickle down” from the richest to the poorest. Even during boom times, when the rich might “create” a few jobs, we all end up getting paid less than we are worth – assuming we even get enough to survive. But as we are quickly learning, something big and ugly is “trickling down” to us: a multi-billion dollar “bail-out” of banks and corporations that lost their high-risk bets with our money. Now that the latest speculative bubble has blown (remember the Savings & Loan scandal? The IMF-engineered debt default crisis? The dot com bust?) we are once again hit with the bill, with politicians across the spectrum trying to scare us into accepting this or else “this sucker could go down.”
But the only sucker that’s going down is the latest model of capitalist accumulation – and if we don’t act together to stop it, the next model will be built upon the same hard working backs that are now getting stepped on by the predatory lenders, executive con-men, and modern-day robber barons who lay low in their mansions while their cronies in government absolve them of their class war crimes. We need to fight back the way people did in the 1930s, not by asking for a “New Deal”—which was barely effective compared to the military build-up that really ended the Great Depression—but by strikes, sit-ins and other direct actions to defend our livelihood and our communities.
If the business press is any indication, it is clear that this is just the beginning. Just as Third World people were “structurally adjusted” into accepting lethal austerity measures after the World Bank schemes failed, our new regime—whoever wins the elections—is going to try to make us pay for the failures of a take-the-money-and-run economy that they constructed. Inflation, higher taxes for fewer public services, and the elimination of social security and Medicare are all on their agenda. Foreclosures, evictions and high food prices are ways in which they are already squeezing us in order to save their world of funny-money. And we can expect that, just as the working poor are being blamed for the sub-prime fiasco, the sordid American tradition of racism and nativism will be re-charged,: they will try to get us to blame and compete with each other in order to distract us while they once again loot our future and our planet.
What can we do about it? If we want to survive this crisis, mutual aid will be crucial. Eviction/foreclosure defense networks, concerted demands for affordable healthy food, and workplace organizing for a living wage will all be urgent tasks – and this must be done across the racial and cultural divides that impede our human solidarity and only help the rich exploit us more easily. This kind of activity is already happening in U.S. cities, including Boston, Philadelphia, and Cleveland (e.g. www.esop-cleveland.org). Here in the Bay Area, the Eviction Defense Collaborative (www.evictiondefense.org) is a promising start.
However, if we want to do more than survive, if we want to take this crisis as the opportunity to re-create our world in a way that exploits no-one, we are going to have to establish this mutual aid society on a wider scale. Through organizations like neighborhood and workers councils, we will have to demand representation and foster popular participation in a way most of us have never seen. Are we up to the task, brothers and sisters? If we’re prepared for the worst, if we give reign to our most intelligent and generous instincts and stand together against the coming ruling class attacks, we just may achieve the society for which many of us have only dared to dream.
