A New Way Forward-Organizing site to protest bank bailouts
Posted March 18, 2009 by k_c_ in Events
I came across a website today called A New Way Forward. Its a website set up to encourage folks in the USA to organize demonstrations in their cities on April 11th.
It’s time to stop giving huge handouts to banks and start creating systemic change that helps everyone. We demand a new way forward now.We are sick of bailouts that are enriching bankers without restructuring a broken industry. Join us on April 11, 2009 as we rally for systematic change based in fairness and intelligent economics. Nationalize, Reorganize, Decentralize.
The site looks like a good resource and tool for people who haven't been involved in activists campaigns.
A New Way Forward is made up of national protests that will take place all over the country in major cities on April 11, 2009. This site was set up to help people and groups organize around a progressive approach to economic recovery in a ground up, localized organizing effort. People from all backgrounds will come together to influence national policy and organize their own rallies in their own city on April 11.The site allows anyone to sign up their city for a rally and begin working out the details with other local protesters in designated forums. Though each rally will be executed differently by different groups of people, the website provides a national community that will help draw attention, support and resources to the local efforts.
I am unaware of how long this has been online, yet it will be an experiment in people taking leadership and organizing outside of their previous networks. That also depends on how well this site is distributed, with networks like Facebook, Twitter, and a host of other new trends, it could be interesting.
Comments
This campaign looks pretty lame, actually. It's really just calling for the government to step in and save capitalism, by seizing complete control of the "too big to fail" banks, and then reconstituting the financial industry into a more atomized version of its former self. Very Krugmanesque, but substantively little more than a call for a return to the way the economy used to operate before these mega-banks got so big and sloppy.
It's a perfect example of why anarchists often have little more in common with the goals of progressivism than they do with that of conservatism (e.g., at least you don't hear conservatives whining that the $3+ trillion in tax funds allocated so far isn't nearly enough).
It sure feels like an amazing anti-capitalist revolutionary moment, but also has clearly demonstrated that the anti-capitalism movement isn't even close to ready to seize the opportunity. We're not large enough in numbers, not organized enough, and have yet to articulate clear, positive alternatives to capitalism in a compelling enough fashion. Progressives are just worried about keeping their jobs, and passing more regulations -- enforced equality via authoritarian methods of redistribution -- not about fundamentally changing the system of economic and political exploitation that led to the current crisis.
Jason,
I couldn't agree with you more about these last few months offering us an incredible moment,
unfortunately whereever, on the Left, I look I just find "how to save capitalism".
Beyond USA borders is different. Many places where the "benefits" of Neoliberalism don't return, or ever arrive, are where creative attempts in constructing autonomy and self-sufficiency are found.
I have been lamenting over the minimal response of the anti-capitalist left over the last year,
please pass along any texts, campaigns, and actions you come across, anywhere, that can be discussed here.
email
blog at justseeds dot org
ANWF: Wm Greider just recommended you to me on Bill Moyers'
Journal.
"We have had too much speculation. We need to get back to saving for investment." So spoke President Obama at his news conference on Tuesday. Yet his SEC chairman, Mary Schapiro, has not moved to put an end to an SEC policy that allows "short sellers to ride bank shares down". (The quote is from a statement by Wm Isaac, former FDIC chairman. He appeared 2/24/09 on the NEWSHOUR, asking that the SEC rein in short sellers.)
Until 7/06/07, the uptick rule had forbidden short selling until the stock had an uptick in price. Ever snce that date, professional investors have observed extreme downswings in the price of stock of a number of companies--the work of vulture-like speculators.
Now is the time to create a UNION OF SAVERS:
Creators of capital, fuel for enterprise; Sponsors of Wealth Creation by Patient Progress; Sponsors for Identifying Promoters who, by stealth and subterfuge, engaged in Speculative Activities that brought more harm to our economy than the attack of September Eleventh, 2001.
Eligible for membership: Owners of a deposit in a community bank or thrift. (There are 90 million members of Credit Unions.)
Annual Dues: $1 to $25, to be used to hire robust represen-tation of Savwers' interest before Congress the SEC and other regulatory agencies. (No money for political campaigns. Leave that to the financial services industry, the source of $101 million
for the campaigns of elected federal officials during the 2008 election cycle. Team up with community banks, thrifts and credit unions to represent saver interests as policy-makers respond to the present contraction. Defeat with electoral power the interest of the professional speculators: unregulated Hedge and Equity Funds and the creators of "derivatives" designed to generate fees, hide risk from stockholders and regulators while extending leverage to imprudent levels.
BOARD of ADVISORS to be composed of, for example:
John C. Bogle, "life-long Republican", founder of Vanguard Funds and author of The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism, "How the financial system undermined social ideals, damaged trust in the markets, robbed investors of trillions---and what to do about it.", Yale U. Press, 2005
Teresa Ghilarducci, author of When I'm Sixty-Foour, "The Plot against Pensions and the Plan to Save Them", Princeton, 2008.
Suggested early goal: Tax exmption for up to $1,000 interest for each wage-earner. [If 100 million earners average $500 interest on savings, $50 billion escapes taxation. If the average tax for this cohort of earners (construction workers to brain surgeons) is 20 %, the cost to the Treasury is $10 billion. Loans by the banks and thrifts could be as much as $60 billion, all at work in businesses at the level that leads the way out of recession, creating jobs and no "derivative" b.s.
Please tell me who I may write to that may be interested in developing this as part of A New Way Forward.
Thank you. Tom Dawes, 11811 Ridgemont Road, Lutherville, MD 21093.
Just watched Bill Moyers on PBS where this protest was mentioned. Are any planned for Tacoma WA?
thanks !
This struggle is old in our country. The activism of the 30s was perhaps an aberration for America. A good enough reason to get out and join a protest on April 11. Here are some words of wisdom and some history:
"Today's problems cannot be solved if we still think the way we thought when we created them."_- Albert Einstein
I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country...Corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working on the prejudices of the people until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.
Abraham Lincoln in a letter to Col. William Elkins, Nov. 21, 1864
“The minority, the ruling class at present, has the schools and press, usually the Church as well, under its thumb. This enables it to organize and sway the emotions of the masses, and make its tool of them.”
Doctor Albert Einstein (in a letter to Sigmund Freud 7/30/1932. 1879-1955)
“The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the larger centers has owned the government of the U.S. ever since the days of Andrew Jackson.”
President FDR (to “Colonel” Edward M. House, co-founder of the Council on Foreign Relations and political fixer for the ruling class. House also handled President Wilson. 11/21/ l933 – from the book "F.D.R.: His Personal Letters" - New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce 1950)
“When the truth is replaced by silence, the silence is a lie.”
Yevgeny Yevtushenko (Soviet dissident, poet and filmmaker. Yevtushenko was the first Russian to publicly speak out against police state Stalinism (1933-).
“Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of the truth.”
“The truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the state."
Joseph Goebbels (minister of propaganda Nazi Germany, 1933-1945)
therealnews.com has an interview posted on March 26 "Chomsky on Geithner" in which Chomsky discusses the situation of the bailouts and then broadens the topic to include democratization of corporations, etc. He mentions what has happened in Bolivia in the past couple of years, one of my favorite histories, still unfolding, of the establishment of a real democracy, which we do not have yet of course. If you check it out, you can view some of their older articles on Bolivia. It's rather satisfying to see what Morales has done and how UNASUR has taken back most of South America by rejecting neoliberalism.
I just found out about A New Way Forward by watching Bill Moyer tonight. I hope this movement grows by leaps and bounds and covers more than just the bank bailouts. I am 69 1/2 years old and have been frustratingly waiting for most of my adult life for the people to unite, rise up and topple what has become a very lopsided Corporate State.
I'm in the middle of "nowhere" right now (Tracy, CA) and fighting health problems donated by both sides of my family, but if there's anything I can do to help, from a sitting position, I'd be ecstatic to do it. I'm a writer and I can talk to anybody about anything in person or cold call telephone.
One thing I plan to do is write an editorial to the San Jose Mercury. I don't have credit cards anymore, thank God, but I've watched with increasing disbelief at what's happening. Banks, especially American Express, are ruining people's lives by suddenly, unexpectedly shrinking their card holders' limits by 60% or more.
There's some law in my background and I believe that when people were given a limit by a bank on their cards, in writing, that this was a contract made with the card holders. I believe that the people could form a class action suit against the banks for breach of contract. I am sick and angry at the sight of the banks grabbing all the bailout money they can get with one hand and grabbing it away from their customers with the other. Again, even though I am not a credit card holder now, I would love to be part of that action.
I will check Tracy to see if there is any plan here for a demonstration on April 11th. I pray to be surprised. I'll grab my knee brace, my cane and be there! And if there is no plan, which I expect, I'll look into getting one started.
I have been an anarchist, political prisoner, anti war activist and I support the tea tax protests. Abolish the federal Reserve, the income tax and with it will go the military industrial complex. Onward with the Ron Paul/anti-war alliance. Tax strike today. We demand that the banks fail. This is the revolution we have been waiting for!
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some friends of mine are the initial organizers of this website -- I think they just put it up a day or two ago; I'm glad to see it get mentioned here!
these folks are also (in various re-combinations) involved with these internet-based social change projects: Miro, a free and open-source video player, and Open Congress, a crazy powerful tool for tracking the overwhelming amount of information that comes out of the u.s. government's legislative processes every day.
Posted by: jean c. at March 19, 2009 2:27 AM