the boston occupier - issue 11 - november 2012

www.bostonoccupier.comIssue No. 11 November 2012 FREE PRESS

FREE

In this special edition of the Boston Occupier, we take a look at the issues surrounding the production, sale, and consumption of food in the United States

Putting Revolution On Your Plate

By Sarah herman

Boston Workers Sue Over $100,000 In Wage Theft

By Joe ramSey

Monsanto Slides Through the Revolving Door

By JoSh Sager

Beyond the FarmBy erin WilkerSon

THe politics of food

November 2012 bostonoccupier.com | The Boston Occupier - Free Press

The Boston Occupier’s Staff/Contributors:Staff:

Angie BrandtD.J. Buschini

Doug Enaa GreeneSarah Herman

Emily HopkinsKendra Moyer

Julie OrlemanskiJoe RamseyJosh Sager

Dan Schneider

About the Boston OccupierThe Boston Occupier is a volunteer-run, independent newspaper and website located in Boston, Massachusetts. We are committed to high journalistic standards. The Boston Occupier is run by a group of volunteers involved, to varying degrees, with the Occupy movement and other grassroots activists groups. However, our proximity to these groups does not prevent us from reporting with honesty and integrity.

SubmissionsThe Boston Occupier has an open submissions policy, and review content submitted by anyone. Whether you’re a trained journalist or a first-time writer, we will give your work due consideration for publication in The Boston Occupier or on bostonoccupier.com. We also accept original analysis and reports, opinions, letters to the editor, political cartoons and photographs. If you’re interested in seeing your work published in The Boston Occupier or on bostonoccupier.com, send it in to:[email protected].

TransparencyMoney donated to The Boston Occupier - both through our Kickstarter and WePay accounts - has and will solely be used for the printing and distribution of our newspaper. In the interest of transparency, we keep a public, continually updated record of all financial transactions on our website. To view this record, go to:bostonoccupier.com/budget-report.Please send your questions to:[email protected]

ContentsNews and Commentary2 Death From Above: The US Drone

Program in PakistanBy Dan SchneiDer

A new study highlights unreported civilian casualties as a result of the US Drone program in Northern Pakistan.

6 Drunk Banker Stabs Cabbie, Gets Off Without a TrialBy JoSh Sager

10 Boston Restaurant Workers Fight Back Against Wage TheftBy JoSeph g. ramSey

One World Cuisine, a Boston restaurant chain, has been accused of stealing over $100,000 from its employees, who have now launched a lawsuit against the company.

12 Observations on UnemploymentBy Doug enaa greene

13 What’s Driving the Student Debt Bubble?By Jack hammonD

Thinking Outside the (Ballot) Box: Election 20125 “What if They Held an Election and

Nobody Came?”By Joe ramSey

An interview with the founders of Boycott Election 2012, Terri Lee and Mark E Smith, about American democracy and why folks should consider staying home on election day.

Rulings on Voter ID LawsBy kenDra moyer

Kendra Moyer reviews recent court rulings over Voter ID laws in Texas and Pennysylania.

The Politics of Food7 Monsanto’s Government Connections

and IconsBy JoSh Sager

Mega-agricorp Monsanto has walked through the regu-latory revolving door more than a few times. The company now has former employees and lobbyists working in the Obama administration.

8 Putting Revolution on Your PlateBy Sarah herman

The divide between food workers and “good food” illus-trates gaps in the current U.S. food system that privilege consumption, industrialization and corporate profit.

9 Beyond the FarmBy erin WilkerSon

Permaculture GardeningBy kenDra moyer

10 Debunking Monsanto’s GreatnessBy Sarah Herman

11 Don’t Think You’re Buying What You Think You’re BuyingBy emily hopkinS

Companies promoting “green” and “conscious” products are often not as progressive as they appear.

12 99% Spotlight: Food Inc. By Joe ramSey

The acclaimed 2008 documentary is an example of a new “food justice” genre, both in its insights and blind spots.

ContributorsPaul BuhleChase CarterJack HammondTom HaydenJohn HilliardMichael HoranKip LyallSam MarlowStephanie McMmillanBoyd NielsonEllis RosenJuan SorrentoTruthoutOccupy Design

Letter From the Editors: One Year and Eleven Issues Later.. Dear Readers,

A little over a year ago, on a crisp October day at Dewey Square in downtown Boston, the Boston Occupier was formed as an answer to inaccurate media coverage of the Occupy Movement and the need to separate news from propaganda .

Even though we started out at Dewey Square, it quickly became clear that to enable ourselves to be accurate, fair, and critical in our reporting, we needed to maintain a degree of independence from Occupy Boston. This caused confusion for some. Many asked, Why were we there? What was our purpose? And if we were in support of Occupy Boston, then why did we not identify ourselves as an Occupy Boston Working Group?

An organizer at one of our earliest meetings at South Station stated the conviction that if we did not train a critical eye on what we, as the Occupy movement, were doing, we would likely be doomed to repeat mistakes over and over again. This was reason enough to ensure that our newspaper worked to remain ideologically supportive but separate from Occupy.

Since our days in Dewey Square and meeting at empty tables in South Station, we have gained footing as a solid independent news source expanding from solely Occupy related articles to cover a variety of grassroots movements, social justice issues, and local, national, and international events. We have also cultivated strong editorials and thought-provoking cartoons.

Continued StruggleFrom the start, those of us who helped form the newspaper knew it was going to be a long, hard road. Our

decision not to be an Occupy Boston working group was not taken well by some Occupy Boston organizers. Also, in not being a working group, our newspaper was ineligible to receive funds that had been raised by Occupy Boston.

Even though our finances looked grim at first, The Boston Occupier was able to raise its initial funds through a successful Kickstarter campaign. We raised over $8,000, and our first issue was printed shortly thereafter.

Since our initial fundraising, we have worked steadily to find new sources of support for our print edition, relying on the generosity of our subscribers and the ingenuity of our editorial staff to come up with new ways to stay afloat.

We have learned to work without an office, though not without difficulty-- doing the bulk of our editorial processes through emails. Meetings in the expansive, echoing hall of South Station’s main terminal gave way to a series of food courts, coffee shops, and patios around Boston and Cambridge. By finding balance between long-term commitment to volunteer journalism and our daily lives as teachers, students, service workers, artists, and activists, we have come together to develop ourselves into a respectable team of writers, editors, and photographers.

Since the destruction of the Dewey Square Occupy Boston camp, distribution has been harder than ever-- with the bulk of distribution responsibilities falling to roughly a dozen people, most of whom are Boston Occupier’s longstanding members, though we are helped by a smattering of other volunteers. We have had to cut back dramatically on our issue runs: initially printing 20,000 copies, we are now down to 7,000, largely because we do not have the people-power necessary to distribute more.

The results of our efforts can be seen clearly.Our website’s popularity continues to grow, all thanks to the tireless reporting and commenting of our

contributing writers. Our print edition now reaches much of North and South Shores of Eastern Massachusetts, with thousands of our papers regularly reaching the citizens of Boston, Quincy, Lowell, Salem, Fall River, Randolph Newburyport and Falmouth. Our list of subscribers continues to grow with some as far away as California, Las Vegas, New Orleans, and Florida.

But more importantly, we have grown as a news outlet. Unsurprisingly, the blind-spots and biases found in our major local news organizations—such as the Boston Herald and the Boston Globe—did not disappear when the police hauled off the tents from Dewey Square. On the contrary, this election year has shown us how willing our mainstream news outlets are to marginalize crucial issues in favor of the agenda of the two-party political system. Ask someone who’s worried about climate change if the media has given proper space to that issue lately, or our country’s multiple wars in the Middle East.

Here at the Occupier, we strive to provide you with the best news money can’t buy. We report on orga-nizations, actions, and issues that major media outlets would rather gloss over. We offer commentary that challenges the limits of mainstream discourse as well as analysis unconstrained by the mainstream media’s false dogma of “balance.”

We Need Your Help!Looking to the future, we at the Boston Occupier are increasingly aware that to survive and to continue

growing as an independent, activist-centered media source, we need readers like you to become involved in the paper. Whatever it is that you can give to this effort—ideas, writing, a story tip, artwork, funding, a meeting space, making deliveries along a paper route—we want to work with you!

Even as our one-year anniversary arrives, we know that the journey towards a popular journalism for the 99% is truly just beginning, and we know that bringing this news to the people remains a pressing need. We are have come to recognize that we need to work in new ways if we want to grow as both a news source and a healthy, sustainable volunteer organization. But no matter what happens going forward into 2013, whatever challenges lie ahead, we have already accomplished more than any of us ever thought possible.

In solidarity,The editorial staff of the Boston OccupierAngie Brandt, Julie Orlemanski, DJ Buschini, Joe Ramsey, Doug Enaa Greene, Josh Sager, Kendra Moyer,

Dan SchneiderPlease accept our open invitation to volunteer with the Boston Occupier! We need your help! If you

are interested in becoming part of the Boston Occupier and helping to keep an independent news source growing, please email us at [email protected].

November 2012bostonoccupier.com | The Boston Occupier - Free Press

Death From AboveStudy Highlights Drone Program’s Civilian Casualties

By Dan SchneiDer

At the beginning of 2012, the U.S. experienced a watershed moment in the history of its eight year old Drone program: the President of the United States acknowledged, for the first time, that it existed at all. President Obama described the program, which by then had spread from Northern Pakistan into Yemen, Somalia, Iraq and Afghanistan, as one with “pinpoint” efficiency that is “kept on a very tight leash.”

However, as a new joint study by NYU and Stanford states unequivocally in its opening paragraphs, “this narrative is false.”

The study, which involved nine months of research, two investigations in Pakistan and 130 interviews with victims, witnesses, and experts, provides damning new evidence that the U.S. drone program not only kills civilians regularly, but has created a massive culture of fear in Northern Pakistan’s Federally Administered Trival Area (FATA). On top of analyzing the program’s effects on the native population, the study also delves into the legality of the U.S. drone program and the problems with major media outlets’ reporting on drones.

Strikes Without A Lot of PersonalityThe U.S. drone program in Pakistan (officially) kicked off

under former President George W. Bush in 2004; he would go on to authorize strikes an estimated 52 times during his tenure as President, according to The Bureau for Investigative Journalism (TBIJ). President Obama, on the other hand, “has reportedly carried out…292 strikes” as of September 2012.

Initially, the Pakistan government supported the use of drones by the U.S. The report mentions a Wikileaks-released embassy cable in which Pakistan’s Prime Minster, Raja Ashraf, tells US officials that he didn’t “care if they [conduct strikes] as long as they get the right people. We’ll protest in the National Assembly and then ignore it.”

The differences between the policies of Bush and Obama don’t end at scope, however; it’s also a matter of style. Former President Bush tended to use drones for “personality strikes” against “named, allegedly high-value leaders” of terrorist groups. President Obama, on the other hand, has made frequent use of “signature strikes”, where “groups of men who bear certain signatures, or…characteristics associated with terrorist activity are targeted.”

What exactly constitutes these “defining charac-teristics” of potential militants has not been made public. The little we do know has come from rare

leaks to journalists by anonymous government sources. For instance, a widely publicized report in the New York Times recently revealed that, under President Obama, “all military-age males [killed] in a strike zone” are considered “combatants…unless there is explicit intelligence posthu-mously proving them innocent.” The issues with this defi-

nition weren’t lost on the NYU/Stanford team, who wrote:“How the US would go about gathering such posthumous

evidence is unclear, in part because drone victims’ bodies are frequently dismembered, mutilated, and burned beyond recognition.”

The report states that since 2004, an estimated 49 high-profile “militant leaders” have been killed by drone strikes, representing just two percent of all those killed.

The Sound of a Buzzing MosquitoDuring interviews conducted for “Living Under Drones,”

researchers discovered that the U.S. drone program has had massive psychological, social, and economic impacts on residents of FATA. From the wreckage, a culture of fear has begun to blossom.

First responders, medical professionals, and NGOs have had to exercise greater caution as well, due to the use of a practice known as a “double tap,” in which a targeted strike site is hit multiple times within several minutes. A situation like this makes it difficult to administer necessary aid to those who are wounded, as first responders must now worry that an indiscriminate drone operator will mistake them for a militant.

In FATA, many parents have become afraid to send their children to school, due to fears that they will be killed in a drone strike. Funerals, an immensely important event for the Muslims of North Waziristan, have been complicated because, as the report claims, “drone strikes have targeted funerals and spaces where families have fathered.” Because of a strike on March 17, 2011, which killed dozens of civilians attending a Jirga—a male-only community decision-making assembly—it has become more difficult for local-level government activities to take place.

There has also been considerable economic hardship imposed on the people of FATA. No victims have yet been remunerated for the damage done by drones, though the cost of strike can often be insurmountable. In

addition to material losses, like a car or a house, victims are often “burdened with enormous medical bills…for surgeries, mental health care, and hospital stays…running up bills of several lakhs each (each lakh equivalent to more than US $1000 each)…” FATA is one of the poorest places on Earth, with a per capita income of about US $250 per year, and 60% of its population lives below the poverty line.

But the damage to the wallets of FATA residents pales in comparison to the long-term psychological effect of living under drones. The report describes how Pakistanis’ “power-lessness to minimize their exposure to strikes” has affected their mental state:

“Several interviewees provided a troubling glimpse of the methods some communities turn to in order to deal with mental illness in the absence of adequate alternatives. One man said that “some people have been tied in their houses because of their mental state.

A Waziri from Datta Khel—which has been hit by drone strikes over three dozen times in the last three years alone—said that a number of individuals “have lost their mental balance . . . are just locked in a room. Just like you lock people in prison, they are locked in a room.”

The constant threat of a strike has put many residents in a state of perpetual fear. Violence was already a major part of North Waziristan’s landscape before the strikes began —with both militant groups like Al Qaeda and state groups like the Pakistani military playing a role—but the last few years have added a new dimension to this violence, one that is unpre-dictable and devastating.

Or, as “Mohammad Kausar”—a FATA resident and father of three—put it, “They are like a mosquito. Even when you don’t see them, you can hear them, you know they are there.”

To read the full version of this story, visit bostonoccupier.com.

The Toxic Combination of Corporate Money and a Passive MediaBy JoSh Sager

In a post-Citizens United political landscape, those with large amounts of money are able to spend near-unlimited amounts in order to spread propaganda favorable to their interests. During this presidential election cycle, over $1.5 billion have been spent by presidential candidates and their super-PACS.

Corporations, unions, and rich individuals invest in political advertising and attempt to sway the public into supporting politicians who are friendly to their interests. With the weakening of campaign finance laws, modern elections have become billion dollar events with interest group as their advertising sponsors. As most of the money in political races is spent in the production and distribution of ad campaigns, this increase of money in politics has led to the public being bombarded with political propaganda. Much of it is non-factual, and all of it is focused on shaping public opinion.

Money may not directly buy an election, but it definitely buys a megaphone which can be used to influence voters—the more money which can be spent, the larger and louder the megaphone that can be bought to sway the election. Americans are currently being inundated with millions of dollars of political advertising, and there is rarely any real fact-checking that would correct the falsehoods propagated by these ads. Some fact checking may occur by independent, third-party groups like FactCheck.org, but it is almost never propagated back to the viewer with the same frequency of the lie.

By virtue of shear repetition and lack of a loud debunking voice, political advertising allows those with resources (ex. oil corporations, SEIU, the Chamber of Commerce, etc.) to convince wide swathes of the population to vote in a certain

way, regardless of the real effects of that vote. At this point in American politics, the “megaphones” that corporate interest groups are using to spread their propaganda are the size and power of air-raid sirens—even if the truth about an issue is spoken, it is drowned out by the much louder lies of those who wish to buy the election to serve their interests.

In the traditional political model, the media acts as an information source and a fact-checking organization—in this capacity, they are known as the “Fourth Estate,” a sort of fourth check-and-balance on our government. By reporting the facts and debunking lies, the media serves to keep both sides honest and confined within the facts. Unfortunately, due to both the sheer volume of political propaganda being thrown at the American public and an unwillingness by the media to risk being seen as biased if they debunk propaganda, the traditional media function is now failing. The American media have gone from the objective arbiters of fact, to neutral stenographers who report partisan lies on equal footing with factual arguments.

It’s important to define what is meant by ‘neutral’ here. A neutral media may report on both sides of a debate, but does not do significant fact-checking to ensure that the points of view it is reporting on are based in fact. For the most part, the current mainstream media has become totally politically neutral and has neglected much of the fact-checking that it should be doing. As most Americans lack a personal knowledge of the issues and rely on the media to tell them the facts, the equal portrayal of political propaganda and factual arguments often leads Americans to draw the wrong conclusions.

When there are no fact checkers, it is far easier to construct a set of lies to prop up a false premise than to make a factual argument; reality has contradictions and exceptions, while an argument engineered to spread a lie simply forces all facts to conform to the selected outcome.

In the absence of an objective referee, the loudest (wealthiest) interest groups will be allowed to shape public opinion in their favor and will gradually indoctrinate the public to support their interest.

A democracy doesn’t work if the people voting have been indoctrinated to the point where they are incapable of making rational choices when they step into the ballot box. Because of their exposure to a flood of misinformation, the low-information voter is increasingly likely to vote contrary to their interests, not because they don’t want to pursue a certain policy, but because they have been brainwashed. If we, as a society, want to retain our democracy and the integrity of our government, we must prevent private entities—all of which have an agenda, regardless of whether they are large aggregations of power or simply people with wealth—from being able to drown out all other voices. How are the poor and middle class expected to get their voices heard when millions of dollars of advertising is blaring propaganda across every media medium?

By equalizing the playing field through stronger campaign finance laws, the strongest of which would be a constitutional amendment which destroys the legal notion of ‘corporate personhood’, we may create a system where the discussion is based around who has the best ideas rather than who shouts the loudest. To protect our democracy, it is imperative that every American recognize that limitless money in politics is a recipe for a government that only serves those who can afford a loud voice, and that campaign finance is an issue beyond partisanship. Without sane rules on the money in our political process, there is no way to have an actual conversation about the issues.

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) or “drones” have been used in hundreds of air strikes since the Bush Admin-istration, as a part of a program with no transparency or accountability.

The constant threat of a strike has put many residents

in a state of perpetual fear.


Don’t Rock the Vote. Block the Vote. By BoyD nielSon

In what follows, I will attempt the impossible. I will argue that the Left should view a vote boycott as a politically affirmative act. I call it impossible because many on the Left are committed to the position that a vote boycott is either, at best, an empty act of theater or, at worst, an aid to the enemy.

Let’s start with the problems. Political viability (which is different from eligibility) belongs to a select few on a narrow end of the political spectrum. In principle any kid can dream of growing up to be President, but in reality only candidates who perpetuate the interests of the dominant elite are politically viable. Moreover, those on the Left are gripped by fear of what could happen if a conservative politician were elected, so the Left invariably ends up siding with the Democrats. Our political imagination, indeed, our political intensity is held hostage by whatever right-wing bogeyman is at hand. Elections are today an alibi for an economic and political apparatus that has no other way to justify itself. It is a system that guarantees wars, environmental catastrophe, and general immiseration. Elections make it seem as though these things are rational and endorsed by the people. Disillusionment and paralysis are the result. Real change demands we take a chance on more.

A vote boycott can be effective only is if it is collective and it means total withdrawal from the system. Arguments that we can target issues to vote on while simultaneously departing from the two-party stranglehold are incoherent. They are incoherent because they can never tell us why particular politicians or ballot initiatives require our vote while others do not. Why should we vote for a local politician or ballot initiative if we don’t vote on who becomes President? Is the legalization of marijuana or gay marriage more important than war or the rights of women? These questions can’t coherently be answered, and so we are inevitably led

back to the problems above. We can’t shatter this paralysis until we begin to rock the boat by refusing to rock the vote.

The time is set for a vote boycott in the United States. Protests around the world, including Occupy, have demonstrated that we are living through a period of unprecedented global tran-sition. It is up to us to determine the direction of our future. A boycott offers the chance to reimagine our common struggle, one that includes the undocumented, unjustly imprisoned, and homeless alongside workers, feminists, LGBT activists, and others. We are no longer living in the End of History. Capitalism is (again) in crisis. Do we want to salvage it and return to the last forty years of increased inequality, imperialist wars, and unsustainable environmental destruction, all while bankers and financiers go on snorting coke and wreaking havoc on world markets? Democrats and Republicans apparently do, in slightly different ways. There is a better future worth struggling for, and it is worth the risk.

Against Left and RightBourgeois Democracy and Our TasksBy Juan Sorrento

The November presidential elections have spawned a multitude of reactions from both the so-called Marxist ‘Left’ and the strains of post-Anarchism and autonomism emerging from the self-liquidation of the Occupy movement. Positions range from an inside-outside strategy which calls people to “vote against Romney” while simultaneously building a left pole both inside and outside Democratic Party, voting for a third party candidate, or organizing for an outright boycott. However, as Mao says, “one divides into two.” All these strat-egies are self-contradictory. The USAmerican “left” provides us with the false choice of outright liquidation into the Democratic Party or the similar erroneous choice of following spontaneous moral outrage in organizing a virtual boycott of the entire institution of bourgeois democracy. I will briefly describe these two, seemingly opposing lines, and offer a third position on our tasks within developed bourgeois democracy from the standpoint of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.

We’re Pissed Off!Some forces call for a complete boycott of bourgeois demo-

cratic institutions. Their boycott is primarily a Facebook campaign in which you register your moral outrage. Taking the Occupy Movement, the convergence of primarily petit-bourgeois students and professionals fearful of re-proletarian-ization as a starting point, these forces make the assumption that the Occupy Movement itself must remain a politics at a distance from the state. From this summation, developed through the work of Alain Badiou, they see the proliferation of communes and Occupy-related forms as the practical work of building a movement to overthrow the state and its institu-tions. But, in effect, they only substitute voluntarism (itself a form of liquidation) for liquidation into the Democratic Party. Instead of addressing bourgeois democracy as an overdetermined ideological state institution, boycotters rely

principally on the “Event”, the radicalization of the individual qua collective, as its primary mobilizer.

The “boycott the system” populist line is not only totally vapid, but, equates bourgeois democracy entirely with Capital, as if politics do not shape economics co-terminously but that the entire system is determined by “material circumstances” and the conspiracies of the imperialist bourgeoisie alone. Yet, what is Democracy? Democracy comes from the term ‘Demos’ (or the rabble), and as Plato begrudgingly admits, the only qualification of democracy is that there are no qualifications. However, engaging bourgeois democracy requires a substantial assortment of qualifications. You can’t be a prisoner. You can’t be on parole. You may need proper identification and so on. What the “boycott” line avoids is national oppression.

While I agree that our focus should never be on handing Obama victory in 2012, there should be massive mobili-zation in regards to defending and enhancing the democratic rights of the excluded and nationally oppressed. Communists should intervene in reforms which decriminalize nationally oppressed youth, even if this activism only culminates in a massive turn-out at the voting booth. For example, our “pure” Communist friends would have abstained from voting on the question of decriminalizing marijuana, even though this directly contributes to the struggle against settler white supremacy. I’ll call it: Racism. While the right opportunist line calls for liquidation, the left opportunist line envisions a petit-bourgeois utopian movement which asserts that the fundamental contradiction is between the people and the system, neglecting that it is not solely ‘the system’ which renders the oppressed and exploited invisible, but, the very popular classes themselves who also readily enforce national oppression viz. their class position.

Beating A Dead HorseBill Fletcher and Carl Davidson, two long-time Marxists

and labor activists central to developing an American-style

‘21st Century Socialism’, tote a decades old line on the strategic centrality of elections for the Left within bourgeois democracy. Except in this election, they also make some sense. Bill Fletcher and Carl Davidson both believe a vote for Obama is necessary because the Romney campaign represents white revanchism. This outright white supremacy, not even couched in post-racial discourse, is thoroughly on display as Donald Trump launched a campaign to “uncover” Obama’s foreign birth and the Republican Party attempted to marginalize nationally oppressed at the voting booth through id checks. While voting for Obama can be understood as a symbolic gesture against white supremacy –as Bill Fletcher notes, his critical support for Obama is not at all about his record-- Fletcher and Davidson’s ‘inside-outside’ strategy is historically flawed. Fletcher and Davidson, as a corollary, the creation of mass-based left-wing electoral formations to run progressive Democrats for office, in the hope of eventually challenging the Party duopoly. This strategy has never worked and has only led to the liquidation of Marxist-Leninist forces in the United $nakes, who, openly (and often rightfully) fearful of ultra-leftism, resorted to disillusion instead, citing isolation from the working masses and the need to “meet people where they’re at.”

We’re Not There YetThere is not yet a comprehensive, non-reformist strategy

which takes into account the contradictory character of bour-geois democracy, that, while supposedly requiring no quali-fications, enacts qualifications for its very existence. Yet, the future of the Communist movement in the United $nakes requires walking that tight rope between reform and revo-lution. The failure of articulating a centrist position on this question which simultaneously strives to achieve a strategic offensive through a people’s war while taking into account the gaps in our formal freedoms is disconcerting and reveals our continued state of overall disarray. Away with false choices: Let’s make the hard choice of building a strategy, which can really unite the proletariat with the vanguard and rally the masses around the proletariat.

Thinking Outside the Ballot Box: Election 2012


“What if They Held an Election and Nobody Came?” An interview with Election Boycott Activists Mark E. Smith and Terri Lee of the Boycott Election 2012 campaign.By Joe ramSey

This interview was conducted in September and October 2012, via email, by Joe Ramsey. The responses below were co-authored by Terri Lee and Mark E. Smith.

Joe Ramsey: Do you think that it’s correct to describe the U.S. as a “democracy” in 2012? How so or how not?

The definition of a democracy is a form of government where supreme power is vested in the hands of the people. In such a government, the final say on everything, including fiscal and foreign policy issues would be up to the people to decide by a direct vote.

Obviously we don’t have that kind of government, in fact both the Bush and Obama administrations were explicitly clear that they would not allow public opinion to influence policy decisions, so rather than having the final say, as we would if we the people had supreme power over government, we have no say at all.

The best we can do is ask them to hold themselves accountable, and they don’t seem to want to do that–in fact they tend to grant themselves immunity and/or pardon themselves even for flagrant Constitutional violations and war crimes.

JR: What exactly are you calling for? And what’s your motive for doing so?

We’re calling for a boycott of the 2012 election. The reason for this is that only a major party candidate has any chance of winning, and both major parties are dependent upon big corporations to fund their election campaigns, so both would represent Wall Street rather than Main Street. We already know that however people vote, the election will result in more trillions spent on foreign wars while domestic needs go unmet, and more bailouts for banks that deserved to fail due to their irresponsible investment schemes. When you know the results of an election beforehand, it isn’t really an election and doesn’t deserve the consent of the governed.

JR: What has been the response to this boycott call so far?

The response has been mixed! Some naturally gravitated to the Election boycott as they had already been quietly boycotting presidential elections for years. Others are attached to elections and hold on to the illusion that it has something to offer. For others still, there was lack of clarity about the Election Boycott.

Our first task was to clear up some misunderstanding about the 2012 Election Boycott.

Some think that the Call to Boycott 2012 is a ‘call for apathy’ and ask “How can you make a difference by not participating?” They view the boycott as lazy and irresponsible ‘inaction’ and view voting as ‘participatory’. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Those ideas are completely reversed: The Election Boycott is a call for Direct Action and requires much more effort, coordination and effort than the simple “two minutes it takes to pull the lever” (Howard Zinn) required to vote.

The alternative party presidential candidates and the voter both know — in advance and with absolute certainty — that third party candidates have absolutely no chance whatsoever of sitting in the Oval Office. Ever. And yet the left circles around them agonizing as to which non-viable third party candidate to choose from.

JR: What would it mean to succeed in a campaign like this? What do you think that this campaign can accom-plish? What has it accomplished so far?

Success would be a clear demonstration by means of a historically low turnout, indicating that most people do not feel this government represents them.

JR: Do you conceive of your efforts as an attempt at pressuring for reform, or more as laying the basis for a more revolutionary movement? Do you think that the US political system can be reformed, or will it have to be overthrown? How can a boycott of elections contribute to a more radical political shift?

The boycott is a revolutionary rather than a reformist movement. We don’t want government to grant a few privi-leges here and there–a more benign tyranny so to speak–we want government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

JR: Is it simply the limited offerings or bad policies of the two major parties that you object to, or is it something deeper that is at issue here? What do you see as the funda-mental nature of the problem we face?

The problem we face is that no matter who is in power, the US is only has two major growth industries, the military-industrial complex and the prison industrial complex–killing people and caging people.

Derivatives and other fraudulent fiscal schemes always crash, so we need a sustainable economy that isn’t based on killing people or caging people but on making the world a better place for people to live in.

JR: Do you see the Democrats as “the lesser evil”? How so or how not?

Let’s say you have the Devil himself, Satan, running for President on the Republican ticket. The Democrats nominate a little demon from Hell, who is obviously a much lesser evil than Satan. Unless you look a little closer and understand that the demon takes his orders from his boss, who happens to be Satan. So there is no lesser evil. When corporations spend billions of dollars funding the election campaigns of both major parties, they consider it an investment and they know they’ll get trillions back in government contracts and bailouts no matter who wins. Corporations aren’t exactly known for their philanthropy, they have a bottom line to consider and a fiduciary duty to their shareholders.

With Citizens United, they can spend as much as they want. But supposing they spent billions of dollars getting out the vote for the major parties and nobody voted–do you think their boards of directors would let them do it again?

To learn more about the Election Boycott 2012 campaign, visit www.electionboycott2012.org.

Recent Rulings on Voter Identification LawsBy KenDra moyer

On August 30, 2012, a federal court in Washington DC ruled that the new Texas voter identification law, which requires registered voters to show state issued photo identification at the polls, is unconstitutional. A federal three-judge panel ruled that the law was inherently racist and would curtail the voting strength of traditionally oppressed minority and impover-ished communities.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 outlawed practices that largely targeted Southern African American communities, effectively denying them the right to vote. These practices, known as “Jim Crow” or Black Code laws, I included literacy tests to determine intellectual compe-tence to vote. The Voting Rights Act requires states and districts with a documented history of discriminatory voting suppression to obtain federal permission before implementing any changes that will affect voting. The law largely affected post-antebellum Southern states with long histories of suppressing and denying African, Latin, and Indigenous Americans the right to vote. In the South, it was largely viewed as an attack on states’ rights, an issue that continues to be a right-wing rallying cry.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 required that electoral jurisdictions not make changes to the voting process without “pre-clearance” from the Federal Government. Many Southern states then employed “devices” such as literacy tests to limit voter eligibility, frequently disquali-fying African Americans. This “Jim Crow” system, which restricted the civil rights of African Americans, also included restrictions on the right to use public restrooms, stay in hotels, or eat at dime store lunch counters.

Many of these communities also suffer a dilution of voting block strength due to the large percentage of felons in the population who are ineligible to vote. This phenomenon has been coined “The New Jim Crow” by activist attorney Michelle Alexander.

These new voter identification laws are being carefully reviewed by the Federal Election Commission to determine if they are inherently racist in nature and therefore unconstitu-tional. Some of the new restrictions have been challenged for creating a burden for those voters without transportation to registration offices. Others struggle to obtain the often costly docu-ments required to vote, including birth certificates. In Texas, some found that identification offices were as far as 100 miles outside of their communities making registration an undue burden.

Attorney General Eric Holder called the state issued ID requirement an equivalent of a poll tax, requiring voters to pay a fee for access the voting booth.

“Many of those without IDs would have to travel great distances to get them and some would struggle to pay for the documents they might need to obtain them,” Holder said speaking before to the NAACP in July, citing Texas’ new voter identification legislation. “We

call those poll taxes.” In the state of Texas 25% of African Americans compared to 8% of White Americans do not have the proper identification required by the new law.

Many Southern states believe that the Voting Rights Act of 1965 is outdated, claiming that Jim Crow racism is a relic of the past. Still, on August 30, 2012 in Texas a federal three- judge district court panel unanimously cited racial discrimination against both Latin and African Americans as a motive and potential by product of the new vote identification law. This ruling acknowledges that enforcement of this law would meet the legal requirement of racial discrimi-nation to qualify as a violation of the Voter’s Rights Act.

Voter ID laws have been blocked in both Texas and Wisconsin in recent years. Other Southern states, including Arizona and Florida, have drafted such laws despite protests and legal challenges. To the north, in Pennsylvania, a judge recently highlighted a key problem with new voter identification legislation, citing that the law did not allow time for voter’s to obtain the documentation and identification in advance of the upcoming election. Tennessee, however, just succeeded in passing a voter’s identification law on October 25, 2012.

Most of the new voting laws that have faced vigorous legal challenges from local, state and national civil rights groups, including the ACLU, NAACP and National Lawyers Guild) have effectively been weakened or blocked.

Pennsylvania is seen as key battleground state critical to the outcome of the upcoming November presidential election. The recent Pennsylvania ruling delayed implementation of the voter identification requirement for one year into the future. The court ruled that enforcing the new law so near to a presidential election was effectively shortening the reaction time of voters and likely detrimental to vulnerable populations. A revised version of the law is expected to pass in the upcoming presidential election.

While physical attacks, late night visits from the KKK , and lynching are no longer common-place, attempts to intimidate voters in ethnic minority communities remain a common political strategy of the political Right. Long after the heyday of activists like Fanny Lou Hamer, who was viciously beaten by police in Mississippi, and SNCC activists, who were murdered for promoting voter’s registration in Black communities, efforts to suppress the minority repre-sentation at the polls remain. 140 billboards that recently appeared in Ohio and Wisconsin in African and Latin American neighborhoods warning that “voter fraud is felony” punishable with jail time and high fines sponsored by an anonymous family foundation. Public outcry of voter intimidation led to the removal of the bill boards for violation of the Voting Rights Act. Clearly the struggle for the basic right to vote are not over.

While attitudes do not change overnight, future demographic projections balance the scales of justice. Ethnic minorities are quickly becoming the new American majority and the long struggle for civil rights and equal representation be ultimately be resolved by simple mathematics.


Capitalism and the Environment(Revised from notes for a talk at Occupy Boston, October 30, 2011)FreD magDoFF

The purpose of capitalism — and the way it functions — is to invest money in order to make more money. In other words, the moti-vations of investors are to make profits and accumulate, without end, ever-larger quan-tities of capital. This is done through either making something or providing a service and selling the product for more than what it cost (in labor, raw materials, machinery, etc.) to produce it. Capital can also be used to make more money without producing a tangible good or service. For example, when a bank loans money to buy a car, the buyer needs not just to pay back the original loan, but also interest on the money. And much of the financial system operates making money without making a tangible product—it is essentially a giant casino in which all kinds of bets are made in the hope of making profits.

It is important to keep in mind that the purpose of the capitalist economic system is not to provide the basic needs for all people, not to provide jobs for everyone that wants to work, not to protect the environment. As ecologist Richard Levins has explained: “Agriculture is not about producing food but about profit. Food is a side effect. . . . Health service is a commodity, health a byproduct.”

On the other hand, it is true that jobs are produced for many people and that a lot of people in advanced capitalist countries have their needs met. But this leaves out a large segment of society. And at the same time, all are damaged—including the well-off — by the competition and dog-eat-dog behavior that are encouraged in people as well as by the inequality that the system develops and maintains.

Capitalism is especially good at doing a number of things:

a) Accumulating huge quantities of capital in private hands.

b) Maintaining a large number of people in poverty or scraping by under precarious economic conditions. According to a report based on the 2010 United States Census, this includes one-half of the U.S. population—approximately 150 million people.

c) stimulating crises of all sorts: economic, social, political, imperial (warfare and other types of imperial activities), and ecological.

For example, economic crises (recessions, with high levels of unemployment) occur at approximately 10-year intervals. And financial crises (such as the savings and loan bank crisis of the late 1980s and the financial system crisis that began in 2007), speculative bubbles that eventually burst (the “dot.com” bubble of 2000, the housing bubble of 2005-2007) are also occurring frequently. Wars are fought (directly or using proxy armies), normally under the leadership of the strongest economic power, to try to assure access to key resources.

The unfolding ecological disaster is not just about climate change. Also important are air, water, and soil pollution, soil erosion, ocean acidification, species extinctions, etc. And as a consequence to exposure to many different pollutants, our bodies are polluted with a variety of synthetic chemicals as well as metals such as mercury.

Many of the more sophisticated environ-mentalists are aware that there are two over-whelming problems with the functioning of the capitalist economy that lead to environ-mental degradation—perpetual growth and environmental “externalities.”

Capitalist economies keeps growing without end (when not in recession) –using more of the earth’s nonrenewable resources and using even renewable resources faster than they can be replenished. As a sign at Occupy Wall Street said, “Infinite Growth on a Finite Planet is not Possible.” The more sophisti-cated environmentalists also understand that part of what keeps the economy growing is the far successful drive to get people to purchase more and more stuff—consumerism.

Negative unintended consequences occur naturally in the processes of production and consumption —social, environmental, and economic “externalities.” In addition to envi-ronmental harm, other “externalities” include the lack of sufficient good jobs, poverty, disparities of wealth and conditions of people, and loss of homes and savings during economic crises.

But, while admitting that a major cause of ecological havoc is the way capitalism is currently working, most environmentalists don’t believe that the problem is the funda-mental way that capitalism must work. Therefore, all sorts of “solutions” are proposed that leave the system intact. These include such schemes as trying to get corporations to take into account other goals in addition to profits, encouraging “green” production practices and consumption of “green” products, trying to account for “externalities” in the prices of products, cap-and-trade using

carbon trading, purchasing carbon-offsets, and so on.

However, no-growth capitalism is not possible. The way the system work it impels owners of companies to expand. Individual companies must grow to compete with others (or buy them out) for increasing market share, new companies must grow to establish themselves, and the economy as a whole has to grow. In addition, high levels of unem-ployment occur during periods of slow or no growth. This year (2011) the economy is expected to grow fairly slowly, between 1 and 2 percent. But even a 2% rate of growth —very modest and not sufficient to produce enough jobs to dig out of the Great Recession hole—will cause a doubling of the economy (GDP) in 36 years. At 3% annual growth, a doubling occurs in 24 years.

Ecological damage happens largely inad-vertently as capitalists go about the process of extracting and processing raw materials, making product, building factories, etc. But since these effects must occur the way the system works, “externalities” are actually internal to the workings of the system.

An ecological society is one that will need to be the opposite of capitalism in essentially all aspects. In order to be ecologically sound and humane, a civilization must develop a new culture and ideology based on funda-mental principles such as substantive equality. Equality is needed for moral reasons as well as an overriding practical one—we simply do not have the multiple earths necessary to provide the resources for everyone to live at a western “middle class” standard. Thus it becomes morally important for everyone to live at a similar modest standard of living. An ecological civilization will require an economic and political system truly under social control—by the people. This new society will need to stop growing when basic human needs are satisfied in the context of substantive equality, protect natural life support systems, and respect the limits to natural resources.

Drunk Banker Stabs Cabbie, Gets Off Without TrialBy JoSh Sager

In today’s political climate, many Americans have claimed that there appear to be two standards of justice: one for the general public, and one for those who have power, money or influence. In late October, 2012, this accusation was again levied when it was announced that a banker, accused of stabbing a New York City cab driver in New York, late last year will never be brought to trial; just weeks before the trial was set to start, the Connecticut DA announced that all charges had been dropped and will not be pursued at a future date.

While it was a fairly large story last year, this incident has not been in the media recently, as everybody assumed that justice was taking its course and that there were no new developents to report. On December 22nd, 2011, Mohamed Ammar, a NYC taxi driver, accused a Morgan Stanley banker of assaulting him during a fare dispute. William Jennings, a banker employed at Morgan Stanley, has been accused of second-degree assault, theft of services and intimidation by bias (hate crimes) for his alleged assault on Mr. Ammar.

According to Mr. Ammar, he picked up a heavily inebriated Mr. Jennings in Midtown and was asked to drive him to his mansion in Connecticut. After reaching his home, Mr. Jennings refused to pay the $200 fee for the 40 mile taxi ride and then attempted to stab the cab driver in the upper torso when Mr. Ammar said that he was taking Mr. Jennings to the police station. While attempting to stab Mr. Ammar, Mr. Jennings said “I’m going to kill you. You should go back to your country [Mr. Ammar is an Egyptian American]. Fortunately, Mr. Ammar only sustained minor injuries (lacerations that required 6 stitches) in this incident because he blocked the knife with his hand and managed to disarm his attacker.

Mr. Jennings corroborates a majority of Mr. Ammar’s story, but asserts that he attacked Ammar with his pen-knife because he was afraid that Mr. Ammar was “kidnapping” him back to New York. According to Mr. Jennings, Mr. Ammar locked the doors from the inside and began driving back to NYC, when Jennings “escaped” by stabbing the cab driver and unlocking the door.

In the immediate aftermath of the stabbing, Mr. Jennings was arrested and put on indefinite leave from his job at Morgan Stanley. Jennings was released on $9,500 bail and has been awaiting trial ever since.

On Monday, October 15th, 2012, the Connecticut District Attorney handling the case announced that all charges had been dropped on Mr. Jennings. The stated reason for this development was that Mr. Ammar found the knife used in the assault several weeks after it happened, yet did not turn it in until last May; this delay was due to Mr. Ammar’s fear that he would get into trouble because he touched the knife and left his fingerprints on it. In May 2012, Mr. Ammar turned the knife in to authorities and the case proceeded without incident.

The assertion that the delay in the turning in of the knife caused the charges to be dropped is extremely unusual, considering the fact that this revelation happened last May. As the delay in the turning in of the knife was exposed months ago, any complications stemming from this would have been dealt with in May 2012. The DA’s office continued to work on the case for months after the knife was turned in—work that would be both expensive and wasteful if the delay were truly the reason that the charge would later be dismissed.

There is no legal reason that this case could not have gone to trial in order to be decided in front of a jury: Both Jennings and Ammar agree on most of the facts of the case, as well as that Jennings attacked Ammar with the knife—the only thing in contention is the motive behind the attack. Evidentiary inconsistencies are fairly common in our legal system and are rarely a reason for all charges to be dropped in an otherwise strong case. The defense is able to bring up the delay in the knife turn-in at trial in order to attack the credibility of the accuser. In the face of this dismissal, many, including the lawyers of the victim, wonder why such an unusual and abrupt end to the case would occur.

In their statement, Mr. Ammar’s lawyers stated that “Not only do we feel that it [the dismissal] represents a miscarriage of justice for our client, but the timing of this decision makes it that much more disappointing and alarming.” According to their law office, Mr. Ammar’s lawyers have been in contact with the DA’s office for months and were discussing Mr.

Ammars availability for testimony as recently as October 5th,

2012. While there is no concrete evidence of any alternative

reasons why the case would be dropped, this case demands more coverage as well as a better explanation of why the charges have been dropped.

Regardless of the reasons for the dismissal, this case repre-sents an example of how the American justice system favors those with money and influence. Assault cases, like this one, are fairly common in the United States, and it is extremely unusual for a defendant to walk away from charges based upon a single inconsistency in the victim’s case. It is inar-guable that the quality representation of Mr. Jennings, as well as his economic means, factored into the decision by the DA’s office to drop the charges; if Mr. Jennings were a working class African American man it is essentially certain that he would now be on trial for his crimes.

In juxtaposition with the Jennings case, we see an example of a similar case resulting in drastically different results that illuminates this disparity. In August 2010, Michael Enright, a film student, stabbed a Muslim cab driver in New York City. Just as in the Jennings case, Enright flagged a cab while drunk and assaulted the driver, inflicting non-lethal but painful wounds while yelling racial attacks and statements of intent to kill their victim. Despite the similar circumstances, Enright has been charged with his crimes and Jennings will never have to step in front of a jury for his alleged crimes. The key difference in these cases is not the crimes committed, but rather that Enright is a working-class student, while Jennings is a rich banker.

In order for justice to be fair, it must be applied with equity, regardless of means, social status and race. Going simply by the information available to the public, there is no legal reason why the Jennings case is unable to go to trial—the jury may or may not convict, but it isn’t up to the DA’s office to abort the legal process before it even reaches this point. We, as a society, must hold those who work in our legal system to the highest standards and ensure that the only thing that factors into legal decisions is the law.


Responsibility of “the 21st Century Generation”The Dalai Lama at Brown University

By D.J. BuSchini

“These people are the gener-ation of 21st century,” asserted His Holiness Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet, before a sea of raised hands at the Rhode Island Convention Center on October 18. Invited to Brown University to give an address titled “Global Change: Creating a Culture of Peace,” the spiritual leader had asked those under the age of 30 to raise their hands. Then those below 20, then below15.

“Whenever I meet people, I always feel like we know each other, because we are the same human being,” he began. “I want to address mainly the youth. We have to think, seriously, how to build more peaceful world in this 21st century.”

His earnest entreaty called for this century to be one of dialogue, peace, and compassion.

“Do not concentrate on your own family, your own community, your own city, your own nation,” he instructed. “[You] must look beyond. Look seriously at the world as one entity, including the environment: you must pay serious attention to the environmental issue.”

About 5,600 people listened to the 77-year-old as he stood at the lectern and reflected on his years.

“Almost my whole life, some kind of violent world,” he testified, citing conflicts in China during his 1935 birth, then WWII, Korea, Vietnam, and beyond. Vividly, he recounted his boyhood visit with survivors of the atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. “Really terrible,” he assured. “That century, sadly, become century of bloodshed, immense violence. Violence always brings fear, and fear increases

tension, stress, frustration. And that usually creates violence. So violence often creates more violence.”

The Dalai Lama referred to the terror witnessed since 2000 as a lingering “symptom of the 20th century’s mistakes,” one that may be treated if we can come to see others’ fate as one in the same as our own.

An unprecedented duty rests with the current generation. According to “experts in science, economics, ecology, and food” he had met the previous day at MIT, the Dalai Lama attested that, in each field, there are “immense challenges,” yet also the “possibility to overcome.” More and more, scientists are coming to see that “we cannot feed human beings as a machine.” Technological progress has taken us to great heights — the moon and beyond — but our immense resources and capabilities should be prioritized for healthcare and peacekeeping here on earth, he reasoned.

The basic human emotional intelligence shared by the world’s spiritual traditions, is

key to surmounting interlinked obstacles of environmental ruin and economic inequality.

His Holiness noted exciting developments at universities in the U.S., Europe, and India that all feature “some kind of experi-mental curriculum” connecting science and spirituality. At Emory University, for example, cognitive scientists have collab-orated with Tibetan Buddhist monks to learn about how the latter’s spiritual practices can give light to areas of research and therapy. The Dalai Lama

found it remarkable that subjects participating in the Emory-Tibet Science Initiative showed reduced

stress and blood pressure after just 2-3 weeks of cognitive-based compassion training.

After finishing his talk, he retreated from the lectern to a nearby couch to field ques-tions and sip a cup of tea.

Brown University Professor Elizabeth Hoover, a Mohawk native, asked about parallels between Chinese treatment of Tibetans and colonial treatment of Native Americans. “From the prospective of an indigenous person who has been separated from your homeland,” she asked, “what advice do you give to your own people who are currently suffering from the forced changes to their culture, and how would you advise native people here who are suffering from the same experiences?”

“People have every right to carry on preservation of their own culture, language, [and] identity,” the Dalai Lama replied. He recounted having fled China as a refugee in 1959. “Our first priority [was] education: both modern education, and traditional education, including values, Buddhist philosophy.” He

urged indigenous American cultures rendered precarious by colonial genocide to continue to educate themselves and, for those that haven’t, to “invent a writing system,” so that the heritage may live on.

But what about “violence and anti-American sentiment among Muslims in the Middle East?” asked medical student Terra Schaetzel-Hill. “How do we approach events that seem threatening from peace-centered perspective?”

The Dalai Lama said he feels it necessary to “sort of defend Islam,” a key world religion, in a “21st century world [that] is now heavily interdependent.” He cautioned that to over-simplify the entire Muslim community is unfair, for there is “mischief among every community: Christians, Jews, Hindus, everywhere.”

So we must “extend and reach out to Muslim world,” he implored, and not merely continue “taking oil in one particular area, or meeting with kings and their families, and not meeting with rest of the community.

“We must find a nonviolent approach based on strong, genuine, spiritual broth-erhood, sisterhood — oneness of humanity on this same planet.” The audience applauded with spirit.

“So please take some of my points,” he continued. “If you feel interest, think more, and you yourself investigate some of these things, and then try to share with more people. If you feel these points not much relevant, not much interest, then...,” he paused. “Forget!” Unfortunately, the Dalai Lama’s rich accent led many in the audience to misinterpret his final word, including the venue’s closed-captioning keyboardist. “Fuck it,” read the errant transcription on the overhead video screen, unbeknownst to the monk and Brown University President Christina Paxon. Laughter and applause followed, and nods of approval.

Monsanto’s U.S. Government Connections and IconsBy JoSh Sager

The Monsanto Corporation is the world’s largest and most powerful corporation in the agricultural and genetically modified foods industries. Monsanto is a multi-billion dollar corporation, reporting nearly $12 billion in sales during 2011, and owns patents in GMO (Genetically Modified Organism) crops and biopesticides/bioherbicides. If you have eaten processed foods (ex. cereal) in the last few years, most of which contain high-fructose corn syrup, you have eaten a Monsanto product. Monsanto regularly deals with the United States government—it must comply with FDA food and safety regulations and it also receives federal funding for research.

The need to comply with government rules and the search for government money that Monsanto faces has led them to push for increased levels of involvement with federal agencies. Monsanto lobbyists and executives have attached themselves to state-level politicians and have successfully garnished high-level advising posts in the government. By infiltrating the regulators and grant-issuing agencies, Monsanto associates sway public policy in the favor of their employer (or future employer, as many of these people go back to work in the private sector after serving as a regulator).

Numerous government agency appointments by the Obama administration are of people who were previously, or are currently employed by Monsanto . While there are dozens of such point of overlap between Monsanto and federal agencies, the three most important appointments by the Obama administration are that of Michael Taylor, Roger, Beachy, and Islam Siddiqui—all three of these Monsanto affiliates were appointed to high level, influential positions within the federal government.

In 2009, the Obama administration appointed Michael Taylor—the previous vice president of Monsanto and a current Monsanto lobbyist—as senior advisor to the Food and Drug Administration [FDA] Commissioner. After serving a year as an advisor, Taylor was named the Deputy Commissioner for Foods for the FDA. It is inarguable that

this appointment constitutes a massive boon for Monsanto and an undeniable conflict of interest for Taylor. Taylor is a lobbyist for Monsanto and is being paid by the agri-giant while he is supposed to be working for the FDA. This conflict of interest begs us to ask, is Taylor working for the public, or is he focused upon helping his private sector employer reduce its regulatory burden and improve its profitability? Taylor’s connection to Monsanto is not a secret, and we can conclude that the Obama administration knew who they were appointing when they did it.

Roger Beachy—the Director of the Danforth Plant Science Center (a Monsanto affiliate)—was appointed by the Obama administration as the Director of the USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA). NIFA,a department of the USDA, focuses on funding research and innovation in agriculture, as well developing efficient methods of food production As the primary grant-writing division of the USDA, the NIFA department has the ability to grant or reject agricultural research grants. By giving Beachy the Directorship of the NIFA, the Obama administration gave a Monsanto associate the most powerful position in the orga-nization which allocates agricultural research grants. Needless to say, this appointment is a great boon for Monsanto and will likely result in favorable consideration for Monsanto Co. during their pursuit of government research grants.

In 2010, Islam Siddiqui—a Monsanto lobbyist—was appointed to the post of Agriculture Trade Representative by the Obama administration. Trade representative are tasked with promoting trade of goods within their appointed field (ex. Agricultural trade reps promote the export of American crops). As Monsanto has a controlling interest in American corn production, the appointment of a Monsanto lobbyist to the position of trade representative is a large boon for the corporation. Siddiqui’s government job is to promote the export of American crops and his Monsanto job is to promote the sale of Monsanto crops; it is undeniable that these two

jobs present a conflict of interest and will likely lead to Siddiqui representing Monsanto’s interests as though they are the interests of the United States.

While the Obama administration has a history of appointing agri-business agents to federal posts, the Romney campaign surely will follow suit; Romney has a business history with Monsanto—they were his first large corporation to hire him as a business consultant—and the Romney campaign has named several Monsanto agents to its “Agricultural Advisory” committee. This committee, which is tasked with advising Mitt Romney on all issues relating to agriculture and agri-business, is staffed by “experts” on the field. The experts who staff Romney’s advisory committee come directly from the agricultural industry and represent a huge level of cooperation between Romney and big agri-business. Of the Agricultural Advisory committee “experts”, none are farmers and all are agri-business or food processing executives.

Randy Russell, the top lobbyist for Monsanto Co., has been appointed to this committee and will likely stay if Romney wins the election. Russell’s involvement in Romney’s agri-cultural advisory committee represents a direct line between the Romney campaign (and thus his presidency) and the Monsanto Corporation. The simple fact that the top lobbyist for Monsanto has been given a top-level advisory job with the Romney campaign is not unprecedented, but it does pose the worrying question: Where does the Romney agricultural policy begin and the lobbying efforts of Monsanto end?

Unfortunately, the appointment of industry lobbyists and executives to federal regulatory agencies and posts is nothing unusual. As shown by the fact that both Romney and Obama have appointed lobbyists to high-level federal posts demonstrates that this phenomenon is bipartisan, and it is unlikely to stop any time soon. Regardless of which major candidate wins the next presidential election, it appears that Monsanto will have a rather large foot in the door for it to influence American agricultural policy. Given the fact that processed foods are very difficult to avoid (go to your nearest supermarket and try to find food items that don’t have “high-fructose corn syrup”), the issue of this revolving door is extremely important—our regulators should work to protect our, and our families’, ability to eat safe foods, not the profits of a private corporation.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama delivered the Stephen A. Ogden Jr. ‘60 Memorial Lecture on International Affairs on Wednesday, Oct. 17, 2012, at the Rhode Island Convention Center in Providence, R.I. (Photo: Frank Mullin/Brown University)


The Politics of FoodPutting Revolution on Your PlateBy Sarah herman

The disjunction between good food, workers’ rights, and consumer decision-making in the U.S. “food chain” perpet-uates bad legacy. The food chain continues the long record of class division, xenophobia, and destruction of land that characterize industrial agriculture.

“Good foods” are local, seasonal, organic foods, produced in reaction against the government-supported commercial-ization and industrialization that fills grocery store shelves. Mono-cropping, pesticide and herbicide usage, and genetic engineering are some of the biopesticide and biotechnology innovations mainstream agriculture has adopted in recent years. By contrast, independent farmers who honor biodi-versity and agricultural variety, as well as the dignity and rights of workers, represent the cultivators of “good food.”

The industrialization of processed foods has lowered the cost of edibles, and access to food increased by institutional-ization of processed foods. Good food, however, remains less accessible to the working classes.

Today, the U.S. food chain, supported by over 20 million workers, is stratified by race, immigration status, class and gender. The food chain denies food workers access to good food, and good food consumers are distanced from the food workers and agricultural land that nurture good food. The contemporary food system is strongly fueled by corporations that produce foods through industrial farming and processes, such as Monsanto. The current U.S. Food System affirms racial and class divides by relying on industrial processes headed by corporations that violate labor rights, and safe keep good food’s inaccessibility with high price tags.

The industrialization of processed foods has lowered the cost of edibles and made industrially processed foods more accessible. Good food, however, remains out of reach to many less affluent people. The working poor and people of color are those most affected by food (in)security, diet-related diseases, and “food deserts.” Food deserts are primarily low-income rural or urban communities with limited food access. Members of these communities affected by food deserts often rely on local markets, which supply primarily low-nutrient, long-shelf-life edibles filled with additives. Unfortunately, the

communities that grow and produce food are not immune to food deserts.

The working classes are simultane-ously overrepresented in low-wage food system jobs. Food workers often seem invisible although they are responsible for keeping people’s bodies nourished and well-fueled -- or at least those who can afford the high cost of good foods. Many food workers face barriers to accessing good food themselves.

The Applied Research Center (ARC) released the report The Color of Food in July 2012, drawing the connection between good food and good labor. Yvonne Yen Liv, author of the ARC report claims “...healthy food is a human right.” The good food movement advo-cates fresh, healthy, nutritious, organic, local, seasonal, culturally-appropriate food that all people can access, grown through small-scale farms with regard to the land and animals, and produced to sustain people and the planet.

Good labor prioritizes rights for dignity and respect for workers with family-sustaining wages and benefits, safe working conditions and clear career path for food workers. The report suggests bridging good food and good jobs in order to bring together those who produce food with those who consume it, as a means to eliminate the silo between food workers and food consumers that fuels racial and economic inequities and injustices. The ARC report suggests that good foods and good jobs should collaborate to advance economic and racial equality in the food system.

The racial wage gap further striates food workers hourly wage; people of color earn fewer wages per hour than white people at every level of the food system. According to the ARC report, the average hourly wage for people of color working in food production is $8.79, while white people in production earn $12.04 per hour.

The ARC’s report also states white men food workers earn the most wages; for every dollar white men earn Asian men earn 83 cents, Black men earn 71 cents, and Latino men earn 66 cents, and Asian women earn 68 cents, white women earn 63 cents Black women earn 53 cents and Latino women earn

50 cents. Women’s unpaid, invisible labor, preparing and purchasing of food in the home, must also be considered.

The discrepancy between wages earned in food service and the living wage suggests good food is unaffordable for many, and the barriers to food good increase with intersecting racial and gender identities other than white and male.

The divide between food workers and good food, and food workers and good food consumers, illustrates gaps in the current U.S. food system that privilege consumption, indus-trialization and corporate profit. As the food system continues industrialization, it becomes more similar to the prison- and military-industrial complexes.

If revolution is to start on our plates, resistance must begin around our tables as we discuss the implications of our access and barriers to food, and who grows, produces and supports food processes. Diego Perez Lopez, a coffee farmer and member of Cirsa co-op in Chiapas, Mexico says “consumers and farmers must continue to walk together, we are all in the same struggle for a life of peace.”

For a list of references visit this article online at bostonoccupier.com.

A Beginner’s Guide to Occupying the FoodscapeBy michael horan

Does reforming our food system—literally from the ground up—sound daunting? It is.

The idea of refashioning a multi-trillion dollar global industry that seems to require advanced understanding of microbial activity in the soil, livestock antibiotics resistance, advanced storage techniques and international trade treaties is almost enough to send anyone straight to the local conve-nience store for an aspirin, Pringles, and a Big Gulp full of high fructose corn syrup-based “soft drink.”

And yet it’s an idea that’s really caught on. It wasn’t long ago that Pringles and Pepsi were two of my fundamental dietary staples. I had no understanding whatsoever where each of them came from. Nor from whom, nor from what. Nor at whose expense and to whose profit. Nor did I actually care. One was salty, one was sweet, and I had the munchies: problem solved.

Then, like so many others, I picked up a copy of Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, the book that launched a thousand farmers markets. I’m not sure what moved me most—the horror show that is “factory farmed” animals, the insanity of a corn-based diet in itself entirely dependent on fossil-fuel derived herbicides and pesticides, the entirely counter-productive efforts by our government to mass produce a surfeit of sheer crap—but moved I was.

Still, I felt helpless, the way I often do when confronted with one behemoth or another—say, electoral politics, or unfettered capitalism. But learned two things pretty quickly: there’s an advisable relationship between our actions and the global foodscape, and unlike many other forms of resistance and revolution nearly every step down this road is an increas-ingly joyful one. With that in mind, I’ve come up with my personal set of recommendations for anyone who wants to make sustainability a part of their menu:

Read some books. Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, along with his short treatise In Defense of Food, a delightful primer on how to eat. Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation woke up the country up much as did Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle over a century ago. Raj Patel’s Stuffed and Starved is literally all over the map, from Southeast Asian rice paddies to urban “food deserts.” Food Fight is a heavily-graphic laden book on the Farm Bill that actually makes the subject entertaining. Ben Hewitt’s account of Hardwick, VT, The Town That Food Saved, provides a hopeful look at alternative ways of feeding ourselves.

Organize. I highly recommend joining NOFA (Northeast Organic Farming Association). The quarterly news-paper is as dense as is the terrific three-day conference at U-Mass (Occupiers, take note: you can pitch a tent in the center of campus that week). SEMAP (Southeastern Massachusetts Agricultural Partnership) is a treasure-trove of information including a slew of excellent events.

Buy local and direct. While writers from Bill McKibben (in Deep Economy) to Barbara Kingsolver (in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle) have adopted the “100 mile diet,” here in Massachusetts you quickly learn what can’t be sourced within that radius. Start by replacing one item in your diet at a time based on cost and availability. Some stuff you’ll replace, some you’ll begin to eschew altogether, and, yes, some you’ll continue buying in a processed and packaged form from the west coast. But those ratios will gradually change.

Try to tread lightly through moral quandaries. Don’t get too hung up on issues of “organic vs. local” or whether you can sample the chicken at your aunt’s dinner table. Everything you purchase that is locally or sustainably produced is a step in the right direction. Work on the right steps, and don’t fret over the others.

Take some classes. If you want to study crop rotation, Bristol County Community College offers a certificate program in Organic Farming. Interested in the policy side? The Tufts Friedman School of Nutrition grants a BS in Agriculture, Food & Environment. Plenty of other colleges and universities are doing the same.

Learn a skill. Becoming adept any one particular thing makes you a valuable participant and consultant. Whether it’s tuning up a tractor or staking tomatoes, developing some specific expertise and sharing it is of value to all eaters.

Think ecologically. Food lies at the nexus of politics, health and nutrition, climate (and climate change), finance, international commercial agreements, transport,et cetera. It’s one of our most primal appetites, and is also the subject of the most bleeding-edge tech-nological experimentation going on. In other words, it’s complicated and it’s rife with paradox. Find your place in it.

Get political. Legislators actually listen, especially on the state level. My first experience testifying before a legis-lative subcommittee came a few years ago, when I spoke on behalf of a bill to grant the same breaks to “micro-farmers” as they do farms of five or more acres. On the federal level, pay attention to the Farm Bill.

And, of course: Till. Sow. Tend. Reap. No matter how global and abstract your own feelings about food may be—grow some. All you need is water, sunlight, soil, and a seed. If you have an acre, sow an acre. If you live in a rented room, grow window herbs. My bible is Eliot Coleman’s The New Organic Grower.

Cook. I’d also add: don’t preach—feed. Your meals are your best testament. In this case, the way to people’s hearts and minds is through their bellies.

Oh, and one last thing. Drink local craft beer. There is a stupefying large variety of them around. I recommend sampling at least one of each.Michael Horan can be reached at [email protected].


Beyond the FarmBy erin WilKerSon

The capitalist system requires a tiered hierarchy founded on the myth that success is based on compe-tition and hard work. Innate within the system is star-vation and poverty. This is the true power of capital. As opportunities for workers decline, we must create new means for survival. Urban farming is a viable method to prevent starvation by increasing access to organic nutrient rich foods at a fraction of the cost. New and engaging farming models, such as Beyond a Construction Site, in Ljubljana are emerging to set precedence for land use and community engagement.

According to a study done by the US Department of Agriculture, approximately one in seven households in the United States regularly suffer from hunger. These facts have been absurdly marginalized by the bureau-cratic departmental re-terming of hunger to “food insecure” in 2006, as if the erasure of the term makes the issue obsolete. As the economy shows little sign of improvement, hunger will become more pervasive.

Conversely, according to worldhunger.org, though the world population has increased, there is enough food produced worldwide to provide each person 2,720 kilocalories per day. This is more than the average indi-vidual dietary caloric needs. Why then are there almost one billion people hungry and starving? The profound disconnect between food production and availability is unacceptable.

Beyond a Construction Site, a thriving urban farm built on an abandoned construction site in a residential area of Ljubljana near the main train station, offers a concrete solution to this dilemma. Any one in the community can farm their own plot. Vegetable beds are made from recycled stones and wood and raised to prevent toxic contamination from the excavated site. Tools are shared. Each person must help maintain communal space, which is used for educational classes, art collaborations, and community harvesting events. Most importantly, people have direct access to organic and sustainable fruits and vegetables.

An obvious and easily identifiable marker of the economic crisis and over speculation has been the abundance of aban-doned construction sites. These wastelands have become as ubiquitous as strip malls in suburbia. As properties are

foreclosed on, contracts lost to bankruptcy, and ownership challenged in court; land is held in limbo. This provides profound opportunities.

Slovenia has a long history of agricultural land in urban areas, however Beyond a Construction Site is a shift in the paradigm. It is the only area there where plots are

not privately owned. The city owns the land, leasing it to the community, free of charge on a year by year basis, with the understanding that when there is funding to build, the city will sell the land and the farm will likely have to move. They are currently exploring options for extended land grants. As crops must be sowed seasonally, the temporal nature of the grow space is adequate.

Glasgow based SAGE, Sow And Grow Everywhere, offer a solution in their modularized growing kits. Made from organically finished reclaimed wood and UV resistant polypropylene fabric, and including an organic growing mix, the kits can be quickly erected on any flat surface on underutilized land. They disassemble and reassemble easily and since they do not require a foundation or surface digging, they leave no impact on the land. Their modularity creates an interesting spatial condition, in that it allows for an infi-nitely expandable growing ground able to move as construction resumes, and new wastelands inevitably emerge. In short: the nomadic farm.

The paradigm must continue to shift. We must grasp the opportunity to develop community through sustainable, regenerative, and productive public space. The prevalence of worldwide starvation forces us to reexamine land use. It must provide access to basic needs. Hunger should be an excised phenomenon. We must eliminate destructive and archaic notions of ownership. Whether we grow over concrete, dirt, rubble, or rooftops, the people must reclaim the wasteland.

An Introduction to Permaculture GardeningBy KenDra moyer

Permaculture gardening is sustainable and supports an organic and pesticide free farming philosophy. A combination of techniques includes the integration of native plants and tradi-tional agricultural methods. Permaculture gardening can be done in small container gardens or large community gardens. Community gardens, seed banks, and seedling sharing offer communities opportunity to connect with nature in the direction of a common goal of food independence. Alternative economic benefits include a reduced grocery bills and increased fresh vegetable consumption. In addition to reclaiming nature, gardening has encourages physical activity and well-being. There is nothing more rewarding than taking a project from beginning to end and reaping what has been sown.

Permaculture is methods of agriculture that protect the environment, maximize the use of space, and adapts to climate change. The techniques employ pesticide free gardening favoring heirloom variety plants as over genetically altered. Genetically modified varieties have not been extensively tested as safe and recent research suggests that the modified strains are poten-tially harmful, with recent research out of France suggesting that rats fed genetically modified corn are more prone to cancers. Extensive research into farming produced techniques oper-ating in a harmony with the planet joining traditional and modern agriculture. Crop rotation allows the soil to recover from mineral depletion, and compatible plants are carefully paired.

Compost is simply broken down organic matter. Compost can be started with shredded newspaper, sawdust, leases twigs, brush, and the manure of grass feeding animals. Mulching and composting are critical aspects of permaculture. The debris decomposes into a highly fertile soil. Composting reduces landfill waste produces larger crops. A simple compost bin can be creating by poking holes into a garbage can. More professional compost bins are available at most local garden stores. Compost is turned frequently and may take 18 months to mature.

A worm farm accelerates the breakdown of compost. A worm bin can be a simple five-gallon bucket with air holes the preferred species of red wriggler worms. The worms are fed scraps of organic matter and their droppings create excellent compost. Simple worm bin plans are accessible online.

Permaculture incorporates recycling and reduces waste. Discarded rubber car tires can be used as raised flower beds and dividers. Cardboard serves as garden dividers and pathways or as a cover for decomposing compost. After preparing the soil with compost, organic clippings, lime and cardboard, the farmer creates a healthy bed into which greenhouse-raised seedlings are planted.

Small green-houses can be constructed from simple plans, half-moon loop houses, or low budget plastic houses found at the local garden supply. In the interest of maximizing the growing season, the seedlings can be nourished along indoors. A garden can have an extended growing season if started indoors with seedlings that move into greenhouses as they mature. Once the last frost ended in the early spring, cold hardy varieties of seedlings can be planted. A garden on an acre of land can feed a family of four for one year.

Many crops work best if paired with compatible strains as with the example of the Three Sister’s First Nations Indigenous American traditional garden plan. The garden is named for the Three Goddess Sisters who feed the Nation and cThe onsists of squash, beans and corn. This planting enriches the soil and discourage pests. Vining beans and squash are able to grow up the stalks of corn saving space.

Permaculture pest control is managed through rotating crops and encouraging the presence of birds by planting seeds. Birds are natural predators of many common pests, and it is not unusual to find Robins specifically visiting the garden to feed off of insects in the overturned soil. Butterfly bushes and bee-friendly planting also enhance pollination and a number of beneficial insects that attack harmful pests. Nasturtium plants attract pests from food and marigold repels pests. Organic pesticide free plants for amateur beekeepers are also beneficial for pollination of organic crops producing chemical free pollen for Earth’s endangered bees.

Soil and region analysis can be done with kits that measure the acidity of the soil prior to planting. Once the soil’s condition is known, it is enriched with a mixture of manure, mature compost, peat moss, sand and or organic materials. A clay soil might need sand, moss and compost added to reduce the stickiness. Certain plants like carrots or burdock reach deep into the soil to break it up and keep it loose.

Broad leaf plants are with deep rooted plants to take advantage of morning dew on the broad leaves. The water is soaked deeply into the soil where it nourishes root crops. This technique reduces water usage in dryer regions. Rain barrels water collection also stores rain water runoff from gutters and save on utility bills. Permaculture is the environmentally friendly alternative to big factory farming.

A mandala garden at the Kootenay Permaculture Institute, a center for research and education in British Columbia, Canada.

Making allotments, April 2011(Photo: Suzana Kajba)

Gardening Summer 2011 (Photo: Gregor Gobec)


Fair Food Program Protects Florida Tomato PickersBy Dan SchneiDer

This article originally appeared in the November/December 2012 issue of Dollars & Sense magazine. Used with permission.

The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), a non-profit worker’s rights organization in South Florida, was able to celebrate another victory in October when Chipotle Mexican Grill announced that it would finally sign on to the group’s Fair Food Program (FFP). The program guarantees that the company will buy tomatoes only from farms certified to observe fair labor practices, including the establishment of health and safety boards and allowing worker-to-worker education sessions on company time. In addition, buyers like Chipotle agree to pay an extra “penny-per-pound premium” on tomatoes from FFP-certified farms.

The victory comes after years of pressure by CIW on the burrito chain. For years, Chipotle has refused to sign onto the program, claiming that it would exert an undue degree of control over the company’s business. In 2011, founder and CEO Steve Ells told Coloradan Magazine that the company’s situation with the CIW “would be like you giving to a charity, and then the charity protesting you for not signing a contract forcing you to do what the charity tells you to do in the future.”

When Chipotle sidestepped the CIW in 2009 to negotiate a “penny-per-pound” agreement directly with East Coast Growers and Packers, one of Florida’s largest tomato growers, the group penned a letter to Ells with over 70 sustainable food advocates, food writers, chefs and family farmers as cosigners. Barry Estabrook, a Vermont farmer and author of the 2009 tomato industry exposé Tomatoland, was one of those co-signers.

“Their absence was noticeable, since Chipotle prides itself on being sustainable,” Estabrook said. “The ultimate irony is that, how can something be sustainable if somebody who picks it can’t sustain a lifestyle?”

The CIW is based in Immokalee, Fla., in the heart of southwest Florida’s tomato-growing country. The city has been a poster child for abuses within the industry ever since Edward R. Murrow brought it to national attention in 1960 with his documentary Harvest of Shame. Today, Immokalee’s overwhelmingly Hispanic population provides a major portion of farm labor during tomato season, with 10,000 to15,000 workers coming from the area. The average farmworker earns between $10,000 and $12,500 per year.

In 1993, laborer Luís Benitez started the CIW with a mission to improve industry working conditions in four areas: low wages, theft of wages, crew-leader violence against workers, and a general lack of respect from employers. After nearly two decades of work, CIW has not only gotten eleven major fast food chains to agree to sign onto their Fair Food Program (FFP), but helped to exposed slavery-like conditions for over 1,000 workers.

One of the CIW’s greatest assets might seem like a weakness on the surface. The 1935 National Labor Relations Act (or “Wagner Act”) excludes farm workers, a Roosevelt adminis-tration tactic to gain support from Southern politicians at the time of the bill’s passing. This means farm workers cannot unionize through the NLRA’s secret-ballot election system,

and aren’t protected against employer retaliation for attempts to unionize.

Conversely, labor unions covered by the NLRA are barred from organizing “secondary boycotts,” such as actions directed not against an employer but its suppliers or customers. Since the CIW is not a labor union covered by the NLRA, it can take actions against the big buyers of tomatoes in the United States, like fast food restaurants and grocery-store chains. Much like early boycotts initiated by the United Farm Workers (UFW) in the 1960s and 1970s—also possible since the union was not covered by the NLRA—the CIW has organized high-profile boycotts of Yum! Brands (the corporate owner of Taco Bell, KFC, and Pizza Hut) and Burger King in the past decade.

During the Chipotle campaign, the coalition did not go so far as to stage a boycott of the chain. Instead, it staged protests on the company’s home turf, in Colorado. A rally outside Chipotle’s Denver headquarters involved several dozen sustainable food activists and local clergy stacking 153 tomato buckets in a pyramid, representing the number of buckets a field laborer must fill in a day to make minimum wage. The announcement that Chipotle would sign on to the FFP came just two days before a mass demonstration was to take place at the Chipotle Cultivate Festival, a national gathering of chefs, farmers, and musicians that likely would have drawn massive publicity to the CIW’s cause.

Gerardo Reyes, a farmworker and CIW staff member, told Dollars & Sense that although the “penny-per-pound” doesn’t amount to a massive increase in worker pay—since 2001 it’s yielded a total of $7 million split between tens of thousands of seasonal workers—the FFP is an essential step in improving working conditions in an industry rife with “slavery-like conditions.”

“One of the important things to remember that when people talk about sustainability is that there’s always been a blind spot when it comes to farmworkers,” Reyes said. “It’s always about the environment, buying locally, and respecting the rights of animals. All of that of course is very important, but it’s a little incomplete, because the reality is that without workers there is nothing. Organic or inorganic.”

Debunking Monsanto’s GreatnessBy Sarah herman

Agricultural biotechnology multinational company Monsanto has a rockin’ facade. Their profile shines as the honest do-gooder, the scientist, the inventor, the Fortune 500, the farm savior. This constellation of identities forms a dangerous network of distrustful authority. Monsanto boasts that they are “producing more, conserving more, improving lives--that’s sustainable agri-culture, that’s what Monsanto is about.” Fast farming is similar to fast money, however, as neither ranks people’s welfare or respect for land on its agenda. While Monsanto glows from an outsider’s perspective, everyone should be wary of the corporate giant, previously a leading chemical company, that is controlling their foods.

Monsanto innovates high-yield conventional biotech seeds, or GMO corn, soybean, cotton, wheat, canola, sorghum, sugar beets, alfalfa, sugar cane seeds, and bioherbicides. According to short-term studies performed by Monsanto, their bioseeds and technologies are healthy. Critical research, however, suggest GMO crops need to be researched further; the research on the safety of GMOs prematurely endorses Monsanto products and GMOs.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has never conducted studies on GMO crops, even though 85 percent of corn products and 93 percent of soybeans grown in the United States are GMOs, according to Mother Jones’s Tom Philpott (link: http://monster.com/). Due to the high percentages of products that contain GMO ingredients, it is worrisome that the FDA has not sponsored studies that approve GMOs. Processed foods that contain GMO ingredients are not labeled, unlike the European Union who mandates GMO labeling; the only way for U.S. consumers to avoid GMOs is to eat organic. Eating organic is not a perfect alternative.

Mass suicides of farmers in India’s “suicide belt,” highlights one of Monsanto’s most egregious cases. During post-independence years, farmers planted GM Monsanto seeds with hopes to escape poverty. However, they became further entrenched in poverty due to the costly GM seeds. Most recently, Monsanto donated 7.1 million dollars to No on Prop 37, or Stop Deceptive Food Labeling Scheme. Proposition 37 is the California Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act which requires manufacturers to label GM foods and prohibits the “natural” food label.

A multi-billion dollar, trailblazing multi-national corporation, Monsanto is spotlighted on the world stage. Monsanto greedily prioritizes money-making “global commitments,” political bribery, and ballooning net sales even while their agriculturally, environmentally and socially irresponsible products, seeds and technologies attract positive media attention. The Sustainable Yield Program (Monsanto-jargon for their long-term imperialist growth) claims that “over the next four decades, the world will need to double food production to combat hunger, malnutrition and meet the needs of our fast-growing population.” Monsanto cast their net wide with 404 facilities in 66 countries, over 21 thousand employees, and a 75 thousand dollar annual state-level government donation fund. Monsanto’s products and their greedy fingers reach into the land, the media, and people’s bodies; we are filled with Monsanto.

Monsanto’s claim that they are “meeting the needs of today while preserving the future of tomorrow” is a force-fed lie. A corporate giant messing with biotechnology, agriculture, funding and imperialism is sketchy, dude.

Infographic by ReuseThisBag.com


Don’t Think You’re Buying What You Think You’re BuyingBy emily hopKinS

Our entire world is flooded with advertising. According to the publication Media Matters, a typical adult is exposed to about 600 to 625 ads per day. We’ve all become experts in the art of the commercial, sitting on our couches or at our computers, critiquing the ads for their efficacy and their entertainment value. We’re part of the ad machine that has us retweeting, forwarding, sharing and wearing our favorite corpora-tions’ logos—we actually pay them for the chance to use our own bodies as billboards.

Being the experts that we are—having been bombarded with advertising since birth—we know the funda-mentals of what makes good advertising, and one of the top priorities is being able to feel good about what you are buying either because it’s good for you, your family, or society. Even if you haven’t been motivated to the point of being an activist, you surely realize that the health of our planet and even our own health are in dire straits. Corporations are aware of it, too, which is why they want to make it as easy as possible for you to “go green” while still buying their products.

People like buying “All Natural” foods because they care about their bodies and the environment, but the “All Natural” label is meaningless and unregulated. Kashi, the Kellogg’s subsidiary that touts a more earth-friendly line of products, is currently enmeshed in a class action lawsuit after a Rhode Island Grocer discovered that the cereal brand was including genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and non-organic ingredients in its cereal while advertising that it was “all natural.” People are angry because they feel like they have been lied to, but since the government does not regulate the label, companies are free to define it themselves. In the case of Kashi, “All Natural” means “food that’s minimally processed, made with no artificial colors, flavors, preservatives

or sweeteners,” so GMOs and non-organic foods are still legitimate ingredients.

It seems insufficient to single out Kashi for misleading customers when there are rows upon rows of “All Natural” products lying in grocery stores. It’s important to look at the bigger picture. We’re trying to be good to the environment by only purchasing “green” products, so that our money is sent to companies who are interested in making a change. We’re voting with our dollars. But that seems to only be really effective if you are a wealthy member of society backing one of two candidates in an election. Money that goes to Kashi really goes to Kellogg’s, who makes a number of other products that have no interest in being “natural.” Clorox will sell you some milder “green” cleaning products, but your money goes in the same pool as the profits they got from the rest of the stuff. And you might be trying to avoid the dairy industry with its questionable animal treatment and its hormone and antibiotic rich products, but soy milk producer Silk owns a number of dairy farms as well.

It’s easy to use greenwashing as an example of how corpo-rations appeal to our desire to be pragmatic, but there are other ways in which they’re trying to overhaul out social

consciousness. Those who were at this year’s Pride Parade in Boston (or almost anywhere else, for that matter) would hardly believe that Pride began as the Stonewall Riots, an explosion of early morning violence between police and the LGBTQ patrons of the Stonewall Inn. A history of police harassment came to its breaking point on June 28, 1969, and every year after, marches have been held in memory of the event. But now the marches are parades, and are full of people—and corporations–showing their support of LGBTQ rights. Google had a spot in Boston’s parade, as did Macy’s, Marshall’s, TD Bank, AT&T and Microsoft, among others. As beautiful as any Pride Parade is, it has ceased to be about

the continual inequality present in the LGBTQ community, from workplace

discrimination to health care costs to, of course, marriage.So corporations are finding anyway they can to make us

feel like we’re buying something that is in line with what we believe, but all we end up doing is really buying into the idea that where we spend our money has any kind of actual impact on their business decisions. That’s the bad news.

The good news is that you can work around it. It’s not about buying the right things from corporations; it’s about not buying them at all. We can find easy, and often cheaper solutions to going out and putting down some cash. Make your own cleaning products, grow your own food or go to grocery stores and take that bread or that produce that they’re about to put in the trash. Make music and art, and sell it or trade it. Work with your community to make that specific environment better, and you’ll see how amazing direct action can be as opposed to the trickle down change corporations have you thinking you are buying. There’s a whole DIY community that is thriving and growing to make things better for the people around them, and they aren’t using their wallets to do it.

Local Restaurant Workers Fight Back Against Wage Theft By Joe ramSey

Outside the Diva Indian Restaurant in Davis Square, a bois-terous crowd fills the sidewalk on Friday evenings, chanting and holding signs. “Don’t dine at Diva!” one protester calls out. “One World Cuisine Steals Wages!” shouts another. An organizer holds aloft a sign for passing cars to see: “Honk if you hate wage theft!”

Organizers are picketing to inform the public that Diva Restaurant’s owner, One World Cuisine, stands accused of stealing over $100,000 in wages from its workers. According to former employees, Diva paid workers less than minimum wage and failed to pay them for overtime, even while making them work 60 or 70 hours per week. Former workers are now suing the company.

Most would-be patrons stop and listen. Some continue inside. But about half of them, standing on the threshold, change their minds and go elsewhere, thanking the organizers. “Wow. I had no idea,” says one local student.

On the picket line, dozens of Somerville residents—some-times sporting drums and musical instruments—join former Diva employees, alongside organizers from Centro Presente, a state-wide community organization whose mission is to empower Latino immigrant workers and their communities.

“We want to set a precedent. To teach these employers a lesson. Un entendecedente!” exclaims Edic Herrera, a worker-activist with Centro Presente. “We’re going to make them pay what they owe.”

The lively pickets have become a regular feature in Davis Square, as workers and their supporters draw public attention to the labor practices of One World Cuisine, which owns and operates ten high-end Asian dining establishments in the Boston-area. The picket runs every Friday from 6-7pm.

For Occupy Somerville activist Rand Wilson, this campaign provides a “great opportunity for our community to assert our values. If we can win at Diva it will send a message to everybody else,” in the Davis Square, in Somerville, and beyond.

It amounts to what Centro Presente Board President, Gabriel Camacho, calls a “community education campaign” aimed to alert neighbors and passerby, as well as would-be patrons, about the abusive labor practices of One World Cuisine.

The campaign versus One World Cuisine began over a year ago, when a restaurant worker, complained to a friend, Edic Herrera of Brighton, about his boss refusing to pay him. “Come back next week, they kept telling him, for four weeks in a row.” Herrera put the worker, newly arrived in the US from Guatemala, in touch with Centro Presente’s Workers’ Center. It soon became clear that the worker wasn’t alone. Herrera helped to locate at least seven former One World employees who had similar grievances: being forced to work extraor-dinarily long hours for no overtime, having their paychecks bounce, and receiving far less than the Massachusetts minimum wage of $8.00 per hour. Centro Presente sat down with the workers and compiled the information about the pay they had been collectively denied, estimating the total wage theft to be over $100,000, literally thousands of hours of unpaid work.

It wasn’t the first time that One World had been accused of wage theft. Just last year Centro Presente handled a similar case, involving fewer workers. That case eventually came to a settlement of more than $10,000. “So we’re dealing with a repeat offender here,” as Camacho puts it. To date, One World Cuisine owner, Amrik Pabla, has refused to negotiate in person with his former employees.

One World Cuisine’s practices may be more the rule than the exception. Wage theft, according to Camacho, is pervasive in the US today. Immigrant workers and especially those who lack proper papers bear the brunt of this illegal exploitation. As Camacho puts it, ““The immigrant labor force in the US is viewed by employers as a cheap and disposable labor force. Unscrupulous employers knowingly take advantage of these workers’ vulnerability. They think they can get away with it.”

And by many accounts, they do. Most undocumented workers either do not know that they have workplace rights under the law (regardless of their legal status), or are afraid that if they exercise those rights, their employers will turn them into immigration authorities. Others are in such dire economic conditions that they are unwilling to do anything that may jeopardize their jobs, even if part of their pay is being stolen.

Such wage theft, common in the fields of construction and across service industries, is particularly widespread in the restaurant business, where notoriously intense competition drives many employers to squeeze worker wages. Those who

work in the “back of the house” –cooking the food, cleaning the dishes, as well as the kitchen and the dining rooms themselves at the end of the night—are often paid less than minimum wage, and routinely denied over-time pay even as they are expected to work up to 70 hours per week.

“The reality,” Rand Wilson points out, “is that most restau-rants are engaged in some kind of wage theft.” He added, “What’s unusual here is that these workers stood up and said, ‘No!’ And that they have community support behind them.”

According to Interfaith Worker Justice and WageTheft.org, billions of dollars in wages are effectively stolen from workers every year, in the US alone.

As Camacho points out, “In most states today even if an employer is found guilty of stealing wages, all the workers can win back from them are the owed wages, no damages. So there’s no financial incentive for employers not to try to deny workers.”

Unlike most other states, however, Massachusetts statute Chapter 149 mandates that an employer who is found to have knowingly withheld wages owed to workers can be required to pay up to three times the owed amount (including legal and court fees), in punitive damages.

Despite the relatively “worker-friendly” Massachusetts law, however, litigation can take years and can costs thousands of dollars, while workers often cannot afford either the time or legal fees to complete the process. According to Camacho, while the current Massachusetts Secretary of Labor, Hilda Solis, has been much more responsive to wage theft concerns than her predecessor, her office still lacks the funding and the staff to seriously take on what amounts to an epidemic of extra-legal exploitation. This means long delays before cases get heard.

Davis Square activist and picketer, Dave Grosser points out the hypocrisy of class-biased law enforcement: “The government spends billions terrorizing immigrants with programs like ‘Secure Communities,’ while laws that are supposed to govern employer conduct aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on.”

Thus, while several workers have sued One World Cuisine in both state and federal court, Centro Presente hopes that picketing and other community education events can pressure One World Cuisine ownership to come to the table with the wronged workers to negotiate a settlement outside of court.

As Centro organizer Patricia Montes puts it, “This is a campaign directed by the workers. We’re here to educate, organize, and fight for justice.”

Photo: fotdmike, via Flickr


99% Spotlight:Food, Inc. and the Limits of Consumer ActivismBy Joe ramSey

The widely acclaimed documentary film Food, Inc. (2008) makes a valuable contribution to the cultural conversation about food: what we eat, where it comes from, and what that all means. Bringing together some of the most startling revelations from muckraking best-sellers like Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation and Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Food, Inc. is represen-tative of a new “food justice” genre, both in its insights and its blind-spots.

Director Robert Kenner has remarked that while Food, Inc. began as a film about food, it quickly “became a film about unchecked corporate power.” Indeed, at its most incisive, Food, Inc. encourages viewers to follow the food chain down to its roots in the corporate domination of land, animals, people, and scientific knowledge. At other times, however, it obscures the systemic problems—as well as the openings—created by corporate capitalism, proclaiming that the “people have the power,” primarily through their “voting” at the check-out counter and through “green” entrepreneurship. “Empowering” as such consumerist conclusions may feel (at least to those with money in their pockets), they tend to defer both the necessity and the possi-bility of more radical social change.

The heart of the problem here lies in what we might call a kind of “food determinism” which implies that taking better care of food will necessarily radiate outwards to other aspects of the social system. For instance, the film suggests that if we could just stop treating hogs (and other animals) badly, then the lot of workers would also improve.

The sad truth is that things are not that simple. Avoiding mass-produced meat does not mean your food is produced with justice. As Eric Schlosser pointed out in his first food exposé in Atlantic Monthly, fruit and vegetable production involve some of the most exploitative labor conditions in the United States. Moreover, organic agriculture, as Felicia Mello observed in The Nation, is far from less likely to

exploit workers. Instead, it is often compelled to be even more ruthless and grueling. Organics’ non-reliance on pesticides requires that acres of produce be weeded by hand. Moreover, within a market economy, organic firms must struggle to maintain competitive prices (and profits), despite their extra-costly methods, meaning there is often even more pressure on owners—and labor contractors—to “control costs” wherever they can. This often means getting more for less out of their non-union, frequently undocumented fieldworkers. Furthermore, many organic farms are coming under the control of corporate institutions bereft of a mission of long-term sustainability beyond the bottom line, making it likely that “organics” will be increasingly contained as a market niche, and that serious ecological transformation will be relegated to the status of a corporate after-thought.

In the end, Food Inc. calls us all to scrutinize our purchasing and eating habits. We should exercise our “freedom of choice” to alter corporate behavior, rewarding “good” firms and punishing “bad” ones. However, at its best, the documentary shows why this is far from enough. It demonstrates how the food system in the US (and, increas-ingly, worldwide) is not determined primarily by consumer “choices,” but by US agricultural and economic policies, which are themselves rooted in the political-financial

control of US food corporations over all branches of government . The strength of the film is that it helps us to see how the terrain of “choices” on which we are taught to exercise our precious “freedom” is itself structured, constrained, and shaped “behind the scenes.”

Perhaps the most insightful and radical segment of Food, Inc. is its surprisingly deft “behind the scenes” treatment of NAFTA and immigration. The film shows the effects of NAFTA in expropriating and impoverishing millions of Mexican small farmers. The same companies who lobbied for NAFTA – companies whose cheap, federally-subsidized corn production has

driven these Mexican farmers out of business and off the land –now aggressively recruit these displaced, desperate ex-farmers to labor “illegally” in US meat-processing plants, where their lack of proper documentation leaves them espe-cially vulnerable to abuse and exploitation (not to mention, deportation).

How can these impoverished and unemployed workers make “better choices” on the market when they lack the resources to purchase food at all? How does including these hungry proletarians in the picture change our strategy for revolutionizing not just the food system, but our entire society?

Unfortunately, Food, Inc. doesn’t consider these workers allies in the struggle so much as passive victims in a system that only consumers can set right. But unlike the cattle whose suffering appalls us, the workers in the food system are capable of thought, organization, and collective action. Are they not the ones best situated to occupy not just the marketplace, but the food system itself?

This article is based on a longer essay, “Rattling the Capitalist Food Chain,” found in Minnesota Review’s “Feral Issue” (Spring 2010).

Get a Job! Observations on UnemploymentBy Doug enaa greene

“Get a job!”….There’s no more common insult hurled at political protestors by hostile passersby.

Never mind for the moment that those words were just a way to ignore what the Occupy movement is protesting. That insult also reveals a fundamental ignorance about how unem-ployment functions in the economy and shows that the insult—hurler either has no idea how the world around them functions, or prefers to act as if he has no such idea. Since the Recession of 2007-8, millions have lost their jobs and have been tossed into poverty. Even now, four years later, the jobs destroyed by the Recession have not come back; for millions in the U.S. there are no jobs to be had. Saying “get a job” to the jobless means that unemployment is looked upon as just an individual rather than as a structural problem.

Unemployment is not the result of a single individual’s shortcomings or failures; rather it is a fundamental characteristic built into the very genes of capitalism and cannot be remedied by calls for full employment.

For many workers, the latest recession has resulted in a steep decline of their living standards. Unemployed workers, who get new jobs are often working part time in low wage sectors such as the service industry. At the same time, young workers who are just finishing college also face reduced job prospects and lower wages. “From 2007 to 2011, the wages of young college graduates, adjusted for inflation, have declined by 4.6 percent, about $2,000 each per year,” says the New York Times.

Yet for millions, just having a job is seen as a blessing. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics the unem-ployment rate for June 2012 is at 12 million or 8.2% of the working population. Still, this figure hides the truth about government unemployment statistics, which ignore the underemployed and those who give up looking for work. Add those numbers in and the real unemployment rate in the United States is actually nearly 15%.

These unemployment figures are not merely the result of personal failings. In order to gain an understanding of the causes of unemployment, we must look at how capitalism operates. In a capitalist economy, the main drive of business is the accumulation of profit. As a business gains more profit, they tend to grow by hiring more workers and bring in more machinery. A profitable business wants to stay profitable and this often means introducing labor-saving machinery, increased productivity and the hiring of new workers.

One method of increasing profit is for the capitalist to introduce new machines that save on labor costs. If a new machine needs only one worker instead of ten to produce the same amount of output, then why wouldn’t the capitalist bring it in? Not only will the capitalist save on paying for wages; they will be able to make far more money, assuming he can sell the products produced, and at a similar price.

However, as one capitalist introduces new machinery or new cost-cutting measures, others catch on. Soon the innovations become generalized and the advantage for that particular capi-talist is wiped out.

Yet the introduction of more productive machinery doesn’t necessarily mean more unem-ployed. At least so long as business is booming and profits are going up. So long as this is the case, more machinery may be brought in, and with them more workers.

What we have is a contradiction: The Employment Effect (the growth of capital increases the demand for workers) occurs at the same time that machinery is replacing humanity, an action that causes the Displacement Effect (the reduction in the demand for workers).

When the Employment Effect is stronger than the Displacement Effect, the pool of the unemployed begins to dry up. This results in a shortage of labor and a rise in wages, as capitalists must compete to attract labor power on the market. If there are fewer workers to go around, businesses will have to pay more in order to attract them. Or if the businesses are unwilling, unions and other popular organs can take advantage of the tight labor market to push wages upward. For instance, capitalists may have trouble finding replacement workers, aka “scabs,” during strikes, as the surplus army of the unemployed is not available.

This contradiction of capitalism means that a business means that there is an overproduction of goods for the market since more and more workers are not able to buy them. As capitalists across the system lay off workers and replace them with machines (while also systematically deskilling and thus rendering interchangeable, cheaper, and more exploitable much of the human labor that is still required), they also tend to reduce the amount of aggregate demand for the goods that they are producing. This leads to a stagnation in the non-financial sector, since there is no way to realize a profit. Instead, capitalists invest in the financial markets, conjuring up vast profits of trillions as if by magic by riding the waves of stocks, bonds, and derivatives.

Following the boom, comes the bust. The onset of a bust brings a drop in profits for business and a growth in the pool of the unemployed. The crisis is an excuse and an opportunity for capitalists to slash wages and to roll back other gains of the working class.

For instance, General Motors was on the verge of bankruptcy in 2008 and bailed out by the Federal Government. At the end of 2011, General Motors was making profits of over seven billion dollars. At the same time, the United AutoWorkers (UAW) were told by the company that the time had come for a “shared sacrifice.” The UAW had won generous health and retirement packages for workers through decades of long struggle.

After the bailout, new hires at General Motors can now expect to make $16 an hour, about half of what workers used to make.

Still if unemployment is actually good for business, where does that leave various well-meaning calls for “jobs for all?” Unfortunately unemployment is a permanent feature of capi-talism in both good times and bad. Full employment would alleviate the threat of workers of being without a job. They could demand greater wages and benefits, possibly cutting into the profits of business.

So what is to be done? The latest recession shows that unemployment is not some kind of personal failing for the millions of jobless. What we need to do is think not about providing jobs for all under a system with a destructive addiction for profits. We need to think about getting rid of capitalism and building a new one that puts human needs first and guarantees meaningful jobs for all.

Unemployment is a permanent feature of capitalism in both good times and bad.


What’s Driving the Student Debt Bubble?By JacK hammonD

At more than one trillion dollars, student loans have grown to exceed total credit card debt. Debt has become a standard part of the college experience. Students take it on because they expect it to pay off in better jobs and higher salaries. But many will be disappointed. The buildup of debt in a weak job market means many of them cannot repay the loans and wind up in default. Many students’ expectations of earning potential, moreover, would be unrealistic even in better economic times.

The boom in student debt derives from the financialization of the US economy. In recent years financial institutions have enjoyed soaring profits and growing political power, as the bailout from the financial crisis of 2008 showed. They created the mortgage bubble by encouraging people to take out loans that were likely to end in foreclosure, deceiving them about the terms of mortgages and “robo-signing” documents that borrowers never saw, much less understood. Lenders could afford to offer mortgages at high risk of nonpayment, because they were securitized—packaged and resold to investors—so that the investors, not the lender, stood to lose in case of default. Major banks, moreover, could be confident that they were “too big to fail,” and that the federal government would bail them out if too many loans went bad.

The Student Loan BoomA recent report by the new federal Consumer Financial

Protection Bureau shows that something similar has happened with student loans. Most loans still come from or are subsidized by the federal government, but according to the CFPB the private student loan market grew from less than $7 billion in 2001 to more than $20 billion in 2008 (although it dropped off sharply after the financial crisis, and stands at $5.7 billion today).

Before the financial crisis, banks sought out student loans to create new investment instruments. Circumventing college financial aid offices, they marketed loans directly to students on apparently easy terms, accepting lower minimum credit ratings than required for federal loans and imposing no limit on the amount a student could borrow. Interest rates on these private loans are generally variable and often “risk-based,” that is, higher for borrowers with lower credit ratings.

Like mortgages, these loans are turned into asset-backed securities. Thousands of loans are “sliced and diced” into assets that can be sold as a package to big investors. As with securitized mortgages, the lender bears no risk and therefore has an incentive to market loans without regard for ability to repay.

Students take out loans because they expect payoffs and also because of the escalating cost of college, itself the product of several factors: colleges market themselves by spending lavishly on amenities to attract students, and then raise tuition to pay for them. Many colleges have reduced or abandoned need-based scholarships, instead funding students whose high

test scores or other attributes improve the college’s profile, making it more marketable. Even state legislatures are disin-vesting in higher education; nationally, spending per public college student, when adjusted for inflation, fell to a 25-year low in 2012.

Nor has government aid kept up with rising costs. Though appropriations for federal Pell Grant aid have risen, the maximum grant is expected to cover less than one-third of the average cost of attendance at public four-year colleges, a level that The Institute for College Access and Success (TICAS) has said would be “the lowest in history.”

The Role of For-Profit CollegesStudents in private, for-profit universities have the biggest

debt problems. Enrollment in these schools more than tripled between 2001 and 2010, to 2.4 million, or 13 percent of college students today; they receive about a quarter of federal student loans and grants. A recent report from the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee shows that their educational record is poor. 54% of students entering in 2008-2009 dropped out within two years.

These colleges recruit students aggressively and encourage them to take out federal loans. More than 80% of the revenue of some schools comes from the federal government, either loans or Pell grants. They often entice a student to take out the maximum allowable federal loan by calculating the student’s maximum eligibility, and then offering a “schol-arship” to make up the difference between the potential loan and tuition. Among 30 companies that own for-profit colleges, analyzed in the Senate report, an average of 22.4% of revenue went to marketing and recruiting, 19.4% to profits and 17.7% to instruction.

96% of students at for-profit colleges take out loans, compared to 57% at nonprofit private colleges, 48% at four-year public colleges, and 13% at community colleges. Costs are higher than at other schools. Students at for-profit colleges make up 13% of total college enrollment, but account for 47% of the defaults.

The boom in private for-profit colleges has been encouraged by conservative lawmakers, who promote the private sector in education as in other areas, supposedly to bring competition to the education market. They also want to keep the federal government out of lending. Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin, recently made famous for his statement about “legit-imate rape,” says government-supported student loans are

“the third stage cancer of socialism” and has called for an end to federal government involvement in favor of an expanded private sector role.

What Happens in DefaultWith growing indebtedness, student debt default has

increased dramatically: According to TICAS’s Project on Student Debt, 8.8% of borrowers who began repayment in 2009 had defaulted by the end of 2010, up from 7% for those entering repayment in 2008. For students at for-profit private institutions, the rate was 15%.

The consequences of default depend significantly on the kind of loan. For federal loans, the government can garnish wages and retain tax refunds. A borrower in default is ineli-gible to defer payment or receive future loans. Federal loans, however, offer more lenient grace periods and opportunities to defer payment than loans made directly by banks, which have much more rigid repayment conditions. Private lenders can charge additional fees and usually consider the borrower in default after the first missed payment. They must sue in court to collect on a default, but if they succeed they can garnish wages, tap into bank accounts, and put a lien on the defaulter’s home.

Amendments to the federal bankruptcy code passed in 2005 make all student loans—federal, federally guaranteed, or private—nearly impossible to discharge in bankruptcy, so the debt stays with the student for a lifetime, sometimes even beyond. After the financial crisis, lenders began more regu-larly requiring a cosigner, very likely a parent, who is obligated to pay if the borrower dies.

The nearly simultaneous publication in July of the CFPB report on private student loans and the Senate report on for-profit colleges gives the issues of college financing a needed look. These two experiments with private enterprise in education show that when government subsidizes the “free” market, the businesses that get created are much better at absorbing federal dollars than they are at providing genuine educational services.

But privatization and corporatization affects all kinds of colleges, not just the for-profits but public and traditional private institutions as well. They act more and more like capitalist businesses: see, for example, the full-page ad from Mercy College in the New York Times on September 9, boasting that it has an A rating from Standard & Poor’s. They adopt business-oriented practices, notably the centralization of decision-making in college administrations, deceptive marketing, and reliance on the cheap and disposable labor of adjuncts for the bulk of teaching. Colleges have become more concerned about generating revenue and promoting institu-tional prestige than about actually educating students.

But the students, especially those trapped in debt, pay the bill.

96% of students at for-profit colleges take out loans, compared to 57% at nonprofit private colleges, 48% at four year public colleges, and 13% at community colleges.

(Image by OWS Posters)


To Our Readers:The Boston Occupier is funded exclusively through

donations from our readers and supporters of the 99%. Your donations make it possible for us to keep putting out our paper.

We are offering a yearly subscription to the Boston Occupier. A base donation of just $30 entitles you to a year’s worth of issues mailed to your door.

A single copy of the paper costs $.08 to print and $1.10 to mail. Your $30 subscription will fund these costs, plus the printing of nearly two hundred additional copies of the paper which we distribute to thousands of readers in the Boston area and beyond monthly.

If you subscribe at our “Solidarity” rate of $75, you will personally fund the printing of nearly a thousand copies of our print edition.

To subscribe, please mail us your name, address, phone number and email, along with a check made payable to The Boston Occupier.

Or simply go to our website, www.bostonoc-cupier.com, and make your payment via our “WePay” account. As always, our finances are completely transparent—check out our financial history on the website.

Thank you for your generosity and support,

The Staff of The Boston Occupier

Please Mail to: The Boston OccupierP.O. Box 120021Boston, MA 02111

Name:

Mailing Address:

Phone:

Email: Can we add you to our mailing list? Yes ___ No ___Subscription Level (mark only one):$30 - Subscriber ___ $75 – Solidarity ___ $100 – Patron ___ $250 – Sustainer ___$500 – Sympathetic Member of the 1% ___ Other ___ = $___

Payment Method (mark only one): Check ____ or Wepay (via bostonoccupier.com) ____

This comic was originally published on truth-out.org. It is reprinted here with permission.


A Few Cross Words... By Josh Sager

To get the answers to this month’s crossword puzzle, visit

bostonoccupier.com!

2. The storm which recently paralyzed the east coast

5. NY island, home to 14,000 inmates, which unlike many surrounding areas was not given an evacuation plan during Hurrican Sandy

8. The name of the American Ambassador who was killed in Libya (2 words)

10. November 6th, 2012 is an important date becasue of this event

12. Greek neo-fascist political party twhich has seen a growth in support among Greek citizens in the last few years (2 words)

13. The high-end Boston restaurant chain that stands accused of stealing over $100,000 in wages from its employees (2 words)

15. The middle eastern country which is currently in the middle of a bloody civil war

16. The 2012 Green Party candidate for President of the United States (2 words)

17. The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) fights for Florida _____ pickers’ rights

ACROSS

11th Print Edition of the Boston OccupierJosh Sager

6

1

8

12

9

16

10

7

13 14

5

17

32

15

4

11

Across2 The storm which recently

paralyzed the east coast 5 NY island, home to 14,000

inmates, which, unlike surrounding areas was not given an evacuation plan during Hurricane Sandy

8 The name of the American Ambassador who was killed in Libya (2 Words)

10 November 6th is an important date because of this event

12 Greek neo-fascist political party which has seen a growth in support among Greek citizens in the last few years (2 Words)

13 The high-end Boston restaurant chain that stands accused of stealing over $100,000 in wages from its employees (2 Words)

15 The middle-eastern country which is currently in the middle of a bloody civil war

16 The 2012 Green Party candidate for President of the United States (2 Words)

17 The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) fights for Florida _______ pickers' rights

Down1 The next president will likely

appoint a justice to this court (2 Words)

3 A weapon system that is currently being used by the USA to remotely kill people in Pakistan and Yemen

4 The government agency which is tasked with responding to natural disasters

6 The casino mogul who has supported GOP candidates with millions in donations (2 Words)

7 A large and highly controversial agri-business

9 This sweetener is used in a majority of processed foods (hint: high-fructose________) (2 Words)

11 The abbreviation that describes food which has been genetically manipulated

14 The store chain which is currently engaged in conflict with its workers over labor conditions/compensation

DOWN1. The next president will likely appoint a justice to this

court (2 words)

2. A weapon system that is currently being used by the USA to remotely kill people in Pakistan and Yemen

4. The government agency which is tasked with responding to natural distasters

6. The casino mogul who has supported GOP candidates with millions in donations (2 words)

7. A large and highly controversial agri-business

9. This sweetener is used in a majority of processed foods (hint: high-fructose ____) (2 words)

11. The abbreviation that describes food which has been genetically manipulated

14. A chain store which is currently engaged in aconflict with its workers over labor conditions/compensation

EVENT CALENDARSaturday, November 610am Build Power! Foreclosure Outreach Action Location TBD Sponsored by the North Side Bank Tenants Associaation. Help

build the resistance to foreclosure and evictions. Going directly to foreclosed homes to connect with residents, advise them of their rights and invite them to join the movement.

Visit the North Side Bank Tenants Association Facebook page for more information.

Tuesday, November 6Election Day 2012 Vote! But only if you want to.

Wednesday, November 77pm Free Movie: Crips and Bloods Made in America Lucy Parsons Center 358 Centre Street, Jamaica Plain With a firstr person look at the notorious Crips and Bloods,

this film examines the conditions that have lead to decades of devastating gang violence among young African Americans growings up in South Los Angeles.

Friday, November 9 through Sunday, Nobember 11The 2012 Anarchist Book Fair Welcoming all rabble-rousers, anti-authoritarians, anarchists, anarcho-

curious folks, activists, and YOU! The 2012 Boston Anarchist Book Fair is upon us! Join us in Boston November 9th-11th for a weekend of workshops, skill-shares, films, actions and musical revelry!

Visit the Boston Anarchist Book Fair Facebook page for more information, and a schedule of events.

Monday, November 196pm Occupy Boston Community Gathering: Strike Debt Community Church of Boston, 565 Boylston Street Based off of the Strike Debt Working Group of Occupy Wall Street,

this gathering hopes to bring together community members to discuss how a powerful debt strike organization could be built in Boston. Light refreshments will be provided.

Tuesday, November 207pm Lawrence Lessig and Bob Massie on “The Role of Internet

in Creating a Just and Sustainable Economy” First Church in Cambridge, UCC, 11 Garden Street, Cambridge,

Harvard Law Professoir Lawrence Lessig and New Economics Institute President Bob Massie speak on the role of the internet in creating a just and sustainable economy. The event is free and open to the public, but you must pre-register online at the New Economics Institute website, as space is limited.

Thursday, November 2212pm 43rd Annnual National Day of Mourning Cole’s Hill, Plymouth, MA Since 1970, Native Americans have gathered at noon on Cole’s

Hill in Plymouth to commemorate a National Day of Mourning on America’s Thanksgiving Holiday. For these people, Thanksgiving is a reminder of the genocide of millions of Native peoples, the theft of Native lands, and the attack on Native culture.

There will be a potluck following the march and rally. Please bring prepared foods. All are welcome.

Friday, November 23Boycott WalMart Activists nationwide are organizing to boycott the multinational retailer

on Black Friday to highlight the company’s ongoing mistreatment of its employees and attempts to halt unionization within the company. If workers walk out of a WalMart near you, join them! Or just stay home - either way, you’ll be making a contribution.

Saturday, December 8TBD Radical Futures: Angela Y. Davis and Noam Chomsky Location TBD Vijay Prashad will moderate this conversation between activist,

scholar and author Angela Davis and professor, linguist and philosopher Noam Chomsky. Brought to you by Critical Resistance, with the City School and Black and Pink, along with Alternatives for Community and Environment, Beantown Society, Boston Area Youth Organizing Project, Project Hip Hop, and Reflect and Strengthen.

C ontact Critical Resisttance at 510-444-0484 for more information.

This comic was originally published on truth-out.org. It is reprinted here with permission.

learn more aBout Where your FooD comeS From at

BoStonoccupier.com

the boston occupier - issue 11 - november 2012

Documents

downtown boston

boston camp

boston organizers

boston working group

boston restaurant chain

food workers

consumption of food

politics of food