Prefatory Note:
In the fall of 2011,
while I was still teaching at Laney College, many students in my Foundational
Skills classes wanted to debate about Occupy Wall Street, which started a few
weeks after the semester did, and appeared to be growing into a full-fledged movement.
There was both enthusiasm and skepticism expressed by my under-served, largely
disenfranchised, and mostly black, students. Many were skeptical
about the strategies and tactics of the local “Occupy Oakland,” and for many of
the same reasons I was—but I tried to direct their attention to the original
national vision proposed by Occupy Wall Street itself. Originally, OWS’
“Virtual Presence” on the web, and through writing, was as much the front-lines
as setting up a tent by Oakland City Hall was, if not more—working on both
fronts is what made the movement so effective in the beginning. There was even
a plan for a proposed convention in Philadelphia on July 4, 2012.
Since this was a writing
class, and we had already been talking about manifestos (including the Black
Panther Manifesto), before OWS began, I handed out copies of the various
demands OWS was inviting people nationally to debate and vote on in hopes of
proposing ONE SINGLE SHARED DEMAND to the federal government that would be a
rallying point to unite its various factions, and bring even more people into
movement. As Oakland Police Department helicopters circled above my classroom,
my students collaborated on coming up with one-common demand.
In coming up with my own
proposed demand, I wrote for at least two different audiences: 1) Those who primarily identified with the OWS movement, and 2) those who were skeptical of a latent
Racism they found in the direction the movement was taking: I found common
ground in the 14th Amendment. I hoped to educate many of the newly
politicized white 99%ers, but also speak to, and even for, many of my black
colleagues and friends well aware of the history of institutional racism—many
of whom were reluctant to make the demand for “reparations to slavery” public---for
the very justifiable reason that they saw what happened to most people who spoke
out in the past.[i]
I thought that, in this
newly politicized climate of 2011, I would be able to use my relative advantage
as a white male, and professor, to educate and further galvanize the movement.
I had the privilege of teaching in the same community college district that had
begun the nation’s first “Black studies” program in the 1960s, which educated
many of the Black Panthers. The school was very proud of its legacy, and my
department chairs encouraged such debates in classrooms, as long as they were
engaged in the spirit of Critical Thjnking.
Corporate
Personhood and The Case For Reparations (11/11/2011)
--in
memory of Gil Scott Heron (1949-2011)
The core of the Occupy Wall Street and 99%
Movement is expressed in the proposed demands #1 and #2 at http://atung.net/2011/10/17/the-99-declaration/
These demands are essentially the same as
proposed demands #3 and #8 at http://coupmedia.org/occupywallstreet/occupy-wall-street-official-demands-2009. Another version
of this demand exists at Dylan Ratigan’s www.getmoneyout.com.
For discussion and debate, I propose a hybrid
version that combines the essential wording of all three, as my candidate for
the ONE COMMON DEMAND—since every other
proposed demand ultimately depends on swift federal enactment of this one:
Congress Should Enact Legislation for
Publicly Financed Elections And Reverse the Effects of the Unconstitutional
Citizens United SCOTUS decision by passing an
amendment to prohibit any
private financing of elections and ELIMINATE
"PERSONHOOD" LEGAL STATUS FOR CORPORATIONS, and restore the 14th
Amendment to its original purpose.
The Citizens United decision itself is
but an extension of the broader demand to revise the interpretation of the
famous 1886 case where the U.S. Supreme Court supposedly ruled that
corporations are "persons" having the same rights as human beings
based on the 14th Amendment. As the Occupy Wall Street
website sums up this genesis of corporate “personhood.”
As most lawyers know, the Supreme Court made no
such decision. In the case in question - Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific
Railroad Company, the court itself never rules on personhood. A court reporter
by the name of J.C. Bancroft Davis (a former railroad president) snuck that
"ruling" into the books. The 14th amendment was supposed to give
equal rights to African Americans. It said you "can't deprive a person of
life, liberty or property without due process of law". Corporation lawyers
wanted corporations to have more power so they basically said
"corporations are people." Amazingly, between 1890 and 1910 there
were 307 cases brought before the court under the 14th amendment. 288 of these
brought by corporations and only 19 by African Americans. 600,000 people were
killed to get rights for people and then judges applied those rights to capital
and property while stripping them from people. It's time to set this straight.”
The stripping of these rights from people goes
even deeper than this. The 14th Amendment, in
addition to guaranteeing personhood status, with full voting rights, to former
(male) slaves, also included provisions for the long deferred economic
compensation of the former slaves without which such ‘freedom’ could mean even
greater servitude: “neither the United States nor any State shall assume or
pay…any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts,
obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.” (14th Amendment)
Thus, all claims by plantation owners for “losses” (incurred from partial back
payment to the their former slaves) are illegal and void.
The 14th Amendment also authorizes the United
States government to incur whatever costs it needs by seizing the assets from
the former antebellum slave-owners to emancipate the former slaves.
Reconstruction cost money, and the 14th amendment
provided the legal mechanism to fund the transition from a slave economy to a
“free economy.” Lincoln knew that no true freedom could exist for the 99% of us
without providing economic compensation for the former slaves: “Necessitous men
are not free men.” The rights were human rights--both civil and economic;
“freeing” the slaves required monetizing millions of people who had been
property so that they could now compete on a level-playing field with their
former “owners.”
In 1865, after the Confederacy was defeated, Union
General William Tecumseh Sherman issued Special
Field Orders, No. 15, a temporary plan granting each freed family forty acres of
tillable land in the sea islands and around Charleston, South Carolina for the
exclusive use of black people who had been enslaved. The army also had a number
of unneeded mules, which were given to settlers. Around 40,000 freed slaves
were settled on 400,000 acres (1,600 km²) in Georgia and South Carolina.
However, President Andrew Johnson reversed the order after Lincoln was
assassinated and the land was returned to its previous owners. Reparations, in
the short term, would have hurt the former plantation owners, but it would have
helped the poor white farmers who did not own slaves during the antebellum
period, especially after the rich whites raised the price.
The economic grounding needs to be recognized.
The failure to deliver on the promised reparations destroyed this natural
alliance of poor whites and blacks as the rich northern (Republican)
industrialists realized it was more profitable to side with the former
plantation owning Dixiecrats against the working poor. If the founding crime of
the Democratic Party was the refusal to free the slaves after the Revolutionary
War, the founding lie of the Republican Party was to renege on the promise of
reparations made at the end of The Civil War. No slaves were truly freed; they
were abandoned. The slave was, legally, only 3/5 of a person, but the
personhood granted in the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments was
now abridged by the creation of the “Corporate Person.” When the corporation
first became a “person,” the rest of us became less of one; they didn’t even
need numbers like 3/5 anymore.
Bancroft Davis exploited the amendment’s
wording that protects “the pursuit of property,” rather than the “pursuit of
happiness” to quantify values. The newly- freed slaves, who had been property
themselves, were much more interested in freedom than in owning
property. The theft of the African American community and working class in
general after Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad just
continued the plantation owner’s theft under a different name. In retrospect
the Civil War was fought to free the corporation from the jurisdiction of The
United States more than it was to free the slave from the plantation owner. Enter
Jim Crow, and a new class of wage slaves: black and white; Citizens
United is simply the latest manifestation of this founding crime. Thus,
Corporate Personhood and Reparations are, at root, the same issue. This
explains why it was a central plank in the Black Panther Ten Point Platform:
We Want An End To The
Robbery By The Capitalists Of Our Black Community.
We believe that this
racist government has robbed us, and now we are demanding the overdue debt of
forty acres and two mules. Forty acres and two mules were promised 100 years
ago as restitution for slave labor and mass murder of Black people. We will
accept the payment in currency, which will be distributed to our many
communities. The Germans are now aiding the Jews in Israel for the genocide of
the Jewish people. The Germans murdered six million Jews. The American racist
has taken part in the slaughter of over fifty million Black people; therefore,
we feel that this is a modest demand that we make.
The “mule” is the start up capital needed when
the banks out price long term residents and deny small business loans. Once
this one-time payment of reparations is determined, it will be used to set up
the infrastructure for self-determination. In their current formations, neither
of the proposed Occupy Wall Street or 99% Declaration demands speak of
reparations for slavery, at least under that name. The platform for A New
Revolutionary Party, written by ex-Panthers Kiilu Nyasha and Larry Pinkney,
which is clearly influenced by the Panthers, replaces the demand for
reparations with the demand for:
Social Security, unemployment insurance, and the safety net:
In a country as wealthy as the USA, every person should be guaranteed an
adequate income during hard times, illness, disability, and aging infirmity. http://kiilunyasha.blogspot.com/2011/09/revolutionary-party.html
The lessened expectations, or even hopes,
evident in the new party’s demand shows just how much America’s material base
has deteriorated since 1966. While certainly Social Security should remain off
the table, this demand could be included in the demand for repeal of corporate
personhood and reinstitution of reparations. The Panthers tried
to elevate the discussion and raise the stakes by bargaining from a position of
strength: if you DEMAND reparations, maybe you can SETTLE for social security
and Medicare for all, but if you only demand social security, you may have to
settle for dying under a bridge. If the demands for reparations were met, the
positive effects on the economy would be almost immediate. If the government
will take care of its unfinished business, and finish what it started in 1865,
the reparations could even render the crumbs of social security un-necessary.
In this sense, the demand for reparations is
closer to the demand for a new WPA, to create full employment to work on
America’s crumbling infrastructure. Since repealing “personhood” status for
capital and property, if enforced, will ensure that corporations pay their fair
share of taxes, these taxes should be used to create an economic stimulus
program that pays the long-denied reparations to the African American
community, in the spirit and the letter of the 14th Amendment. In order for
this one time payment to do anything, however, the investment banks must be
closely monitored so they don’t devalue the currency as they’ve done in the
past when regulations are not enforced. However the demand is worded, it’s
important to recognize this history when we convene in Philadelphia on July 4,
2012.
While the phrase “reparations for slavery”
apparently still makes many people queasy, the 99% Declaration uses the word
once, but in connection with Education Reform. This comes dangerously close to
what Jared Sexton calls: “The metaphoric transfer that dismisses the legitimacy
of black struggles against racial slavery while it appropriates black suffering
as the template for non black grievances.” This illustrates where my biggest
hope for the OWS movement can turn into the biggest fear: that this movement
will turn into more of a 60s white youth-culture movement rather than a 30s
worker based movement.
10.
Implementation of a student loan debt relief forgiveness program. Our young
students are more than $830 billion in debt from education loans alone with few
employment prospects due to financial collapse directly caused by the unbridled
and unregulated greed of Wall Street. Interest on these debts should be reduced
and deferred for periods of unemployment and the principal on these loans
reduced or forgiven by using a Wall Street corporate tax surcharge as
reparations for their conduct leading to the economic collapse of 2007-2008 and
current worldwide recession.
While Education Reform is crucial, this demand
should be secondary to the primary focus on repealing Corporate Personhood and
returning the 14th Amendment to its original purpose, since the latter demand
must be met in order for the former demand to be funded. Furthermore, the short
term focus---charge Wall Street to bail out the students--should not be called
“reparations” unless we’re also willing to argue for the reparations for
slavery that have not been paid. Otherwise, this seems like a very partisan
demand. If one is going to bail out students because their degrees are
devalued, what about those who couldn’t even make it into college?
I can understand while many of my students feel disenfranchised from
the 99% movement, why some object to the use of Oscar Grant’s name for the
plaza, and why others carry signs that say: “Blacks have always been the 99%”
and “there’s racism in the 99%.”I will address the demand for education reform
(which I have a deep personal stake in as an underemployed professor) in another
proposal, but in the meantime we must acknowledge that racism in America is
first and foremost an economic war. We must ensure that this movement does not
lose its economic grounding and inclusive focus.
Otherwise, we may very well repeat the mistakes
of the 60s that moved from a “Civil Rights” movement to an increasingly
segregated youth culture movement, as “stop the wars got distorted into a mere
“stop the draft” and some of the more overzealous white students would spit on
African-American soldiers coming back from the war, while applauding themselves
because a statue made by Chinese slave labor is erected to Martin Luther King.
[i] I posted a version
of my proposal on facebook on NOV. 11, 2011, and some of the comments I
received helped generate “backchannel” conversations on this issue.
I Kiilu Nyasha So far, there are simply not enough folks ready for a
new revolutionary party. So now I'm thinking, perhaps a revolutionary united
front (an umbrella group similar to that of So. Africa that united all the
various organizations to end apartheid) might be the best idea. What do you
think?
Jameelah Larkin
If we will be all protected, I am sure a lot more will stand up https://www.facebook.com/notes/chris-stroffolino/why-i-support-occupy-oaklands-direct-action-of-11211/238355719557053
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