People, as individuals and collectively, are taking more dramatic action to end corruption by the wealthy and the growing wealth divide. In the past week there were two powerful individual actions on Capitol Hill.
On Tax Day, April 15, 61 year old Doug Hughes, a mailman from Florida, landed a gyrocopter on the Capitol lawn to deliver 535 letters to members of Congress in order “to spotlight corruption of Congress and to present a solution to legalized bribery.” Hughes told the Tampa Bay News that “I’d rather die in the flight than live to be 80 years old and see this country fall.” He has been released on bond with home detention and returns to court on May 8th to face charges of operating an unregistered aircraft and violating restricted airspace, facing a total of four years incarceration.
On Saturday, April 11, 22 year old Leo Thornton shot and killed himself in front of the Capitol. He had a sign taped to his hand that read, “Tax the 1%.” The media ignored him, some called him an extremist and did not report his “radical” message of fair taxes.
On April 14, Popular Resistance held an action in the Senate to bring attention to the Senate Finance Committee, the most corrupt in Washington, DC, and announce that it has lost its legitimacy. Members of the committee received almost $237 million in campaign contributions from Big Business during the 2014 election cycle. We renamed the committee the “Corporate Financed Committee” and condemned it “by authority of the people.”
Protests by individuals and groups become impactful when they ignite others to join, to mobilize in support of the call. We urge you to support protests by participating, spreading the word and mobilizing in whatever way you can.
Time to hold institutions accountable
More people are growing weary of the corruption and the harms it produces.
This week the European Central Bank met in advance of the World Bank meeting. Another lone protester was able to reach the table where the president of the ECB was holding a press conference and “glitter bomb” him. The ECB is planning to start a Quantitative Easing program similar to the one in the US in which public dollars were used to bail out the banks. The banks largely held onto those dollars or gave them to executives as bonuses rather than investing them in the economy or providing much-needed business loans.
Farmers and trade unionists around the world are asking the World Bank to justify its exploitative actions. They want to know why they aren’t included in decisions that impact them, why the World Bank rewards countries that cede power to foreign corporations and why it pushes models that destroy the environment and increase poverty.
On a similar note, the US Congress introduced fast track legislation this week . Obama wants fast track in order to sign international agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and the Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) without full disclosure of their contents, public participation or full Congressional review. Popular Resistance attended the Senate Finance Committee hearings where the bill was introduced and turned our backs on the committee and US Trade Ambassador, Michael Froman as part of the Fast Track People’s Block.
Kevin Zeese explains what is in fast track and why it reveals the deep corruption in our government. The agreements being negotiated will drive more neoliberalism that will privatize our services and they also take our judicial and legislative powers away and give them to large corporations. They will offshore jobs and lower wages even further.
Opposition to fast track and these agreements is exploding. Labor held a 1,200 person rally in Washington DC on Wednesday. More than 110 farming groups have come out against fast track. Today there are more than 750 actions all over the world. We urge you to take the action pledge at Flush the TPP – CLICK HERE – and contact your members of Congress using StopFastTrack.com. These next two months is the culmination of a three year campaign to stop the TPP and other rigged corporate trade agreements. It is the people against transnational big business. We can win, but people need to join us and mobilize.
Even bank workers are protesting the corruption. They no longer want to be forced to push predatory products on customers. They want to stop being forced to meet quotas and start receiving better wages and being treated with respect.
Workers’ movement is growing
Wealth in the US is growing but it is only reaching a few. Poverty, hunger and homelessness are also growing. Poverty is infecting sectors of the economy that used to provide solid wages and benefits. Currently nearly a quarter of adjunct professors are on public assistance.
On Wednesday, Tax Day, there were more than 230 protests across the country organized by the Fight for 15 movement, the largest worker mobilization ever in the US. In San Francisco, they chanted, “Hold the burger. Hold the fries. We want our wages supersized!”
Although the Fight for 15 was started by fast food workers, it has expanded to include home care workers, adjunct professors, students and airport employees. It takes great courage for workers to fight for their rights. In this fragile economy, many workers who organize or demonstrate face retaliation from their bosses.
Workers are also taking their fight to those at the top who are responsible for exploitation and inequality. The Hedge Clippers took over a hedge fund conference where they chanted, “Hedge fund billionaires, pay your fair share.” There are many ideas being floated at present for a new type of labor movement. Erik Loomis writes that it should include holding American corporations accountable for treatment of workers in other countries.
Workers in Europe are collaborating with a wide range of social movements to create a strategy and timeline for actions to protest the power of the financial sector (equivalent to our Wall Street). They are beginning with a general strike this fall.
Communities also demand accountability
Communities that are being exploited are coming together to fight for accountability from the government. Beyond Extreme Energy formed last year to focus on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) which is funded by the industries it ‘regulates.’ FERC permits dirty extreme extraction energy projects without regard for the harm they cause. Activists will return to Washington this May for a series of actions called “Stop the FERCus” to apply creative pressure on FERC.
Since a week of action last fall that shut down FERC, BXE’ers have disrupted every FERC monthly meeting. The demand is that FERC halt construction of a dangerous fracked gas refinery and export terminal in the community of Cove Point. CLICK HERE for information about BXE. And CLICK HERE to learn more about the campaign in Cove Point.
Another group of activists in Washington, DC is fighting a huge energy monopoly and calling for solar cooperatives. In New York, activists are demonstrating against the Whitney Museum over its deal with a gas pipeline. In Seattle, a Flotilla of kayaktivists is taking on a giant oil rig with a sHellNo! campaign. And activists in Houston took over the BP headquarters for the fifth anniversary of the Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.
The fossil fuel divestment movement is expanding with actions across the nation including a full week of action at Harvard. Now students are also demanding that universities divest from the Prison Industrial Complex.
This was another active week for the Black Lives Matter movement. Cornel West called for actions on April 14 and the response was strong across the country. In Oakland the demonstrators shut down highways and took over City Hall. The Justice League is on its way to Washington, DC from New York on foot to demand accountability for police who commit murder. The numbers are staggering: for every 1,000 people killed by police, only one officer is convicted. Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo writes that these murders have reached epidemic proportions and urges you to join the Mothers for Justice in Washington, DC on May 9 for the Million Moms March. Popular Resistance will be there in support. Volunteers are needed.
The corruption in corporations and our government is deep and becoming more blatant. It is causing great harm to our families, communities, country and the world. But our capacity to join together so that we can expose and fight that corruption is also growing.
We will close with a comment made by one of our readers in response to Leo Thornton’s suicide. Alan McDonald wrote, “This is how the Arab Spring started in Tunisia — with one young man killing himself publicly to confront the lies and disguise of his land being anti-democratic.” McDonald goes on to say that we must also expose the root of the crises we face, the disguised “Global Capitalist Empire.”
Democracy is ‘people-power’ and we can only achieve it if we use it. Every day people are taking action and learning to collaborate and be more effective. We will stop the machine and create a new world because people are mobilizing and taking action on their own or joining the actions organized by others.
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