Homework Assignment #3

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Get a load of this shit.

The N.Y. Post is a Murdoch-owned rag, so we must take the story with a tablespoon of salt, but honestly, it doesn’t matter if the owner’s allegations are true or not.  If there was merit to the violations, then the inspector wasn’t doing anything wrong, and should be commended for his professionalism in continuing to write them while on-camera.  Frankly, he should get a raise.  If, on the other hand, they were bogus, then it is absolutely within the rights of the owner to document evidence of such, so that he can challenge them, thus preventing an injustice.  Either way, the inspector had no legitimate reason to object to being recorded.  A public servant, performing his official public function, in a public place no less, has no reasonable expectation of privacy, whatsoever.  None.  As the authoritarians like to say, “If you’re not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to fear.”  That statement applies to everyone, not just the little people.

This heavy-handed punishment of Citizens who record public officials, going about their official public duties, IN PUBLIC, and then dare to demand one Goddamn iota of accountability from them, has got to stop.  It’s happened in Rochester and elsewhere, it’s already been challenged in court, it’s widespread, and it’s unequivocally unconstitutional.  The Police know it’s unconstitutional, too, which is why they’ve had to resort to intimidation so that people will back off.

Isn’t it funny that The Powers That Be keep saying that widespread surveillance is a good thing and makes us all safer, but as soon as Citizens take that to heart and start using cameras to promote the rule of Law, everybody gets their panties in a twist?  Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?

Occupy Yourself

This is cross-posted at the Farmers & Builders website.

In a little more than a week, the Occupy Wall Street protests will be 3 months old and, especially since their evictions, no more immune to the criticism that they haven’t done anything more than make a big stink in a public place. Irrespective of the “victories” of inserting “income inequality” back into the public discourse and Cuomo’s reconsideration of the millionaire’s tax, there is still a lot wrong in the State of America. People are still making a stink, however (there have been two days of action of note even this week: the Occupy Food protest of U.S. agricultural policy and today’s Occupy Homes seizure of bank-owned foreclosed houses), and the opposition is still calling the “movement” a bunch of smelly crybabies who should just get jobs. This accusation can be stressful to people sympathetic to the occupations as they strive with general assemblies and resolutions to validate their existence and speak directly to policies. While I have no problem with the protesters engaging in such noble pursuits, I submit that change in the system was unlikely to ever come from the protest camps themselves, but rather spring up from the larger ideological movement that the camps are a symptom or projection of.

With all due respect to the occupations, at heart they are an art project, that is, a culture jam conceived by Kalle Lasn and delivered by Anonymous. Lasn, a long-time critic of American capitalism, and Anonymous, techno-Lokis extraordinaire, wanted to see what would happen if you plopped a bunch of weird, pissed-off, arty, educated, and drum-playing people on the doorstep of conservative, white-collar America. Just as they hoped, people freaked out. Cops beat people up. Other occupations in every major U.S. city cropped up. Homeland Security started advising. Ports got shut down. A big stink got made. It was awesome. But the protests are, at their core, protests. Protests don’t solve the problems, but they’re provocative. They get people going.

I would be ecstatic if the solutions to America’s ills came from the protests, but I’m skeptical. That’s where projects like Farmers & Builders come in. We are building the alternative to the system the occupiers are protesting against. We and the protests are two different projections of the abstract, deep-down sense that the status quo is unjust, unsatisfying, and unsustainable. As the protest camps are one-by-one swept away, Farmers & Builders and other alternative economies and societies stand in solidarity and ready for those who want to occupy themselves, providing as a composite for our necessities while enabling the autonomy to pursue our own ventures.

What’s your occupation?

Onward, Vegan Soldiers

I hear the #occupiers in Niagara Square have released a request for food donations.  Among the items they “desperately need” (their words, not mine) are “fresh tomatoes” and other assorted bourgeois white-people food, most notably Veggieburgers.  As crunchy as the Square’s new residents appear to be, they know absolutely nothing about the Earth they inhabit, and they are embarrassing themselves and everyone around them.  This post, for what it’s worth, is primarily directed to the #occupiers; I believe they have a “media tent” wherein they can access The Intertubes, so they may, in fact, actually hear what I have to say.  I could present the following at a weekly General Assembly, but this way is much easier, since I will neither have to deal with The Consensus Model™ nor my words being repeated (my words being repeated) two or three times (two or three times) so that those in the back can hear (so that those in the back can hear).  I’ve been in theater productions, I can project just fine without the crowd helping me along.  Let’s begin, then!

Popular Sovereignty

The Declaration of Independence teaches us that governments derive their powers from the consent of the governed. Thus, a government that operates without any meaningful consent of the governed is not a legitimate one, regardless of what form it takes. It could be an absolute monarchy, a military junta, or a garden-variety corrupt banana republic in which the elections are just for show.

It could also be a nation where there is little, if any, actual difference between candidates of the two major parties; where the choice posed to the electorate is between a sociopath who lies, cheats, and steals, and a sociopath who lies, cheats, and steals slightly less, and the outcome is effectively determined by how much money is poured into the race, usually by large corporations to whom the candidates have pledged their fealty, rather than the people they claim to represent.

Homework: Assignment #1

Reading:

“Hollow States and a Crisis of Capitalism” by John Robb

“The Studen Loan Debt Abolition Movement in the United States” by George Caffentzis

“The Glass Bead Game” by John Michael Greer

Extra Credit:

Listen to “The Fall of the American Empire” by Dmitry Orlov

Demands – Rob

In talking about the spreading Occupy protests yesterday, we at 26W wondered aloud about what our top five demands would be, were we the ones with the Occupy Wall Street bullhorn. I think it would be interesting if all of us here would articulate five demands that we have of the current system (the socio-politico-econo-cultural system that the protests are aimed at). To kick things off, here are mine in no particular order:

• Forgive all student debt
• End subsidies for unsustainable agriculture
• Cease all military actions overseas
• Institute a tax on all carbon emissions for every industry
• Close tax loopholes for corporations and their officers

20 Years of Tuition Hikes

In the 1991-92 school year, in-state undergrad tuition at UB was $1,350, now it’s $5,270. That’s an average 7.95% hike a year for twenty years.

Grad school in-state tuition was $2,150, now it’s $8,870, for an average 8.2% hike every year for twenty years.

The med school at UB cost $5,550 in 1991. Now it costs $27,090.

UB Law in 1991-92 cost $3,150 a year. This year it costs $19,020, more than 6 times as much, with an average 9.75% tuition increase every year for twenty years.

How’s that for a “rational tuition plan”?

If you’re a UB student, chances are that you are the 99% as well. Walk out today at noon to let them know that you’re sick of being ripped off for the elite’s benefit.

Update (10/6/11):

People in my generation have had it hammered into our heads from as far back as we can remember that we MUST go to college in order to succeed. Every institution from the our parents and churches to Sesame Street to the White House to giant corporations have convinced people that, to have a fulfilling life, one must go to college by any means necessary. Take out loans, run up credit card debt, beg, borrow, or steal.

The result has been a watering down of the value of a college degree, skyrocketing tuition, and crushing debt, all while college administrators and the banksters lending the money get filthy rich.

Since I was accepted to UB Law School in 2009, tuition there has gone up 44%. There is no way that the class of 2012 has gotten a 44% better education than the class of 2009 (though in actuality, the number should be higher because the class of 2009 was subjected to tuition hikes during their time at the school as well). I wouldn’t mind paying more money for school if I realized some benefit from it. Instead the tuition hikes have amounted to nothing more or less than a tax on my generation for graft on the part of SUNY and UB administrators and for the malfeasance of the New York State government.

No offense to WNYMedia, just poking some fun

On Counter-Revolutionaries

There has been a lot of criticism levied at the young people participating in the ongoing Occupy Wall Street protest. This is all well and good; there is definitely a use for discourse when it comes to any group or movement, however loosely defined, that is making a big fuss somewhere. Much of the criticism, however, is directed at the fact that there is no centralized leadership to this group of indignados or that their demands are somehow not serious or, because they’re spoken in broad terms and have not come up with concrete demands and the means to achieve them within our current system, are unfocused. When viewed through the lens of the type of political movement and type of protest to which America and Americans are accustomed, this seems like a valid criticism. The images coming from the mainstream media portray Occupy Wall Street as a bunch of pissed-about-no-one-particular-issue trustafarians who are protesting for the sake of protesting. It’s possible, if not probable, that some of the folks there are exactly this. To write off this movement as such, though, is dangerous. It writes off the value of what these people in New York are doing as being counter to “real” issues that need to be addressed as well as perpetuating this system whose fundamentals are more broken than most people want to admit. It is exactly what the powers that be want everyone to do. It’s a mistake and it’s the same kind of thinking that leads to popular support for all kinds of bad things, such as bank bailouts, UB2020, and voting Republican.