This month's TeacherTalk is by Kennedy High School 's Joe Beck, a professional writer and a member of our English Department.
Protestors
Demand Economic Justice and Participatory Democracy in
November 17, 2011
by Joe Beck
I met a guy
dressed as Captain
I have to admit it, spending the weekend with them made me fear for corrupt and idle politicians and executives on Wall Street and in banks-and I loved it. I’m supposed to be neutral but a bully is a bully- especially when a bully gets to legislate the rules, stay anonymous and cowardly hide behind corporate bylaws and incestuous corporate and government legislation, then enforce the laws they make on the working middle class.
It happens every time the government subsidizes something-producers respond, (particularly banks, mortgage brokers and colleges who get paid with student loans) by raising prices to soak up as much of the subsidy as they can.
Under the mask was Hugh Delgado, a 36 year-old ceramic tile worker from Farmingdale who had a day off. “I just registered to vote for the first time in my life,” he said. I’ve never paid attention to politics but when Obama is on TV, I listen. My parents are from Ecuador, came to this country and worked hard all their lives so I could have a future here. I consider myself a person of color and when I see what Obama has achieved, I’m inspired.” Delgado’s police record from jacking cars as a kid and credit problems are preventing him from working as a counselor with young people at a non-profit. “This is a second chance for me. I’m here to educate myself and be smart about my future, a future where I’m involved and vocal and standing up for what is right-economically and politically.” Like a lot of people I would meet, Delgado has more the one reason for being here. “I have a niece who is 15 and it’s important to me that my example will teach her to stay on the right path and stand up for her American dream.”
Like so many people I would meet filing this story,
my goals are also personal. I make a good salary as a high school English
teacher, write articles, books and memoirs for hire (working two and sometimes
three jobs) for years, but because I have two college-aged sons, I need money.
Have you seen what colleges want to educate our young people? I know I’m not
alone so I went to lower
On the ride in
before I interviewed Captain
Former
House Banking Committee Chairman Barney Frank, the democratic congressman from
We all know what happened next. I remember being pleasantly surprised and quietly horrified when, like a lot of others, I had my house appraised one day and my little three bedroom ranch in a quiet Nassau neighborhood was worth nearly half a million dollars. It was laughable and lamentable. I knew something was deeply wrong.
I was equally horrified when some of my friends with contracting businesses were taking equity out of their homes and buying second vacation homes with no income checks. Sign and own was the name-no money down and no income checks-even no doc loans! Fantasia.
Money was free
and anyone who’s ever wanted some knows it’s more addicting then crack and
the
When everyone was paid, they then sold the loans to second and third parties-thereby relieving them selves of the liability to collect. Someone down the line had to pay-and it’s the middle class who are now losing homes and racking up college debt they can never pay back. So off I went to the park with my pad of paper and my tape recorder.
Although I wanted
hear their struggle and get a central, clear and coherent message, I didn’t
get one. The voices and issues are too many and too complicated and the
frustrated pitch is nearing its breaking point. And it’s spreading and I
realized I’m among them. I still can’t afford to send my kids to the college
of their choice. I’m frustrated and tired of barely scraping by each month. I
can only imagine what people do who are out of work. I wanted to find out why.
Here’s what people told me when I spent the weekend at
I went looking and listening to stories. Some people have been ensconced for 22 days in makeshift camps with tarps over crates and boxes and sleeping bags and pillows. They shower at friends’ apartments, and McDonalds and other businesses allow them use of their bathrooms (without necessarily being paying customers). From a distance it looks chaotic, hippy and temporary. Inside the compound faces become clear. Organizers and leaders are streaming live video to the web, recruiting volunteers, running training sessions for future leaders to branch out across the country. They are looking to the future, the long haul. They also have portable generators, lights, microwaves, poster and sign making stations, petitions, a mailing center, people playing music and the passion of percussion-a tribal, primitive response to yearning and wanting, and volunteers on laptops researching 24/7 to develop strategies for tracking legislation and scouting locations for their future Michael Moore tactics.
Sometimes when I was there, I became overwhelmed with so many messages and voices, but got my bearings when I had conversations. One thing was clear-older generations were there for younger people. Gus Bent, a New Yorker for most of his 78 years and Native American, is a part of the Cayuga tribe from the Iroquois nation, was there with his friends, all elderly gentlemen, to support young people and remind them what was. “When I started working in 1963 minimum wage was $1.25 hour and now it’s a little over $7 an hour. That’s a little over a dollar an hour per decade increase! How are working people supposed to live on that when rent, food, electricity has risen 500% since then!?” Gus looked to his friends for confirmation. “I wouldn’t want to be young again, not now in our country. The goddamn politicians are out for themselves or in the pocket of big corporations and they don’t care about the man no more,” he said.