Seizing a Bank

In the middle of a nation-wide crackdown on the occupy movement, and facing serious threats to the local movement from police harassment and the cold weather, a group of activists in Santa Cruz including both Occupy Santa Cruz community members and UC Santa Cruz students organized the occupation of a former bank located at 75 river street, successfully defending it for 4 days from Wednesday November 30^th to Saturday December 3rd.

The bank, formerly 'Coast Commercial Bank' has been empty and unused since it was consolidated into Wells Fargo's empire and closed in March of 2008; one of the many unused, vacant offices and commercial buildings in Santa Cruz which stand as monuments to the depth of the economic crisis and the contradictions of a system which maintains massive homeless and unemployment amidst foreclosed homes and vacant offices. The occupation of the building, its reappropriation for use by the community, represented the first time in over three years that the building had seen any use and the first time ever that it functioned as a productive rather than parasitic force in the community.

The seizure of the bank was promoted and built in advance in an open and democratic way. Although the tactical restrictions of a building occupation make it necessary to conceal the target, the event was promoted as a picketing of banks and an attempt to reclaim a foreclosed property. By presenting the action in this way it was possible to build momentum around the action in advance and to do broad outreach, including announcing the march to student occupiers at the Hahn Student Services building at UCSC on Monday. Although the crowd gathered for the initial rally at the Occupy Santa Cruz encampment was comparatively small, about 100 people, most knew what to expect from the action and were prepared to actively defend the space.

The group assembled at 2:30 and then marched with chants and a mobile sound system to picket outside a local branch of Chase Bank before moving to the target, located next to a branch of Wells Fargo. As protesters stormed the bank, flyers were passed out announcing the action and declaring that "Spaces like this one, reclaimed from the wealthiest 1%, are places where we can seek redress to our grievances. In the years to come, this space will be used to organize humanitarian efforts, house a library, and provide a forum for discussions." Occupiers opened the doors to the public, no trespassing signs were torn down and furniture, bedding, food and other supplies were brought in to begin transforming the bank into a home. Almost immediately about 8 police officers attempted a first sortie to shut down the occupation, however as the crowd outside linked arms and rallied in defense the cops retreated temporarily.

A banner proclaiming the slogan "Occupy Everything", an idea which first made its appearance in 2009 at an occupation at UC Santa Cruz, was hung from the roof. A real estate sign claiming the space as available was painted over to say Occupied. Signs were hung up with slogans such as "Capitalism left this place to die. We're here to bring it back to life." and "This Bank Occupied our lives... Now, we occupy it!"

Around 4:35 the police started to block traffic from passing in front of the occupied bank and it became clear the police were massing in the parking garage of the building. Reconnaissance by protesters revealed that the police had set up a lookout post out of a second story office in the closed Wells Fargo Bank next door from which they were spying on protesters and preparing to co-ordinate the coming assault.

The assault came rapidly and unexpectedly at 6:24, protesters and occupiers were caught off guard as about 30 riot cops attempted to seize control of the entrance to the building and push back the protesters. Although the police succeeded in preventing the doors from being closed, rapid and effective construction of barricades in front of the door prevented the police from being able to gain entrance. Although initially taken off guard the crowd, which had by now swelled to about 150 outside with more than a dozen inside the bank, reformed itself and surrounded the cops to the inspirational music of The Coup and NWA's 'Fuck the Police", with the front lines of the crowd linking arms and advancing on the police. After a 20 minute standoff, the riot police, outnumbered and outflanked, began to retreat and were forced to ask the crowd for permission to leave.

The mood among the crowd was a surge of exhilarating confidence and joy, protesters from newcomers to old veterans recognize the tremendous significance of the victory. Facing a co-ordinated police assault, the riot cops who seemed almost invincible throughout weeks of repression around the country, have been turned back and forced to ask permission to leave because of the militant solidarity and resistance of those within and without the occupied bank. It was clear for those of us participating that whatever happened later in the night, the victory in terms of the consciousness of those of us who participated in the action and succeeded in routing a police assault was one which would last the rest of our lives and could not be reclaimed by any further assault on us or the reclaimed building.

In the aftermath of the victorious confrontation with the police, protesters worked on expanding the defenses of the occupied space. Rocks were spread out to create rough terrain that would make a police advance in formation more difficult, and traffic cones seized from the police added to the primitive defenses. Attempts to improve the geography and reinforce the defenses within the building itself did not detract from peoples perspactive that is was recognized the number of people mobilized within and without to defend the building which would be the decisive factor.

Around 8:00pm a General Assembly was convoked of around 75 people. At this meeting the historic character of action was emphasized, with several speakers eloquently expressing the power of the example this action could set to the rest of the Occupy movement, with one speaker saying "I want to be a part of history" and exhorting others to join in the process of moving the Occupation movement inside, into a bank which presents the perfect target.

Around 50 people slept in the occupied bank overnight, expecting a second police assault to come at any moment. However the demonstration of militancy and commitment by protesters outside earlier, and the political climate created by the widespread popularity of the movement around the country, turned out to be sufficient to prevent another attempt by police to break up the occupation. After a mostly sleepless night the occupiers awoke to help further publicize the occupation in order to gather more people to its defense.

While activists mobilized and did outreach to the campus and community, the local elite mobilized their own campaign through the local media. Although Media coverage at the beginning of the occupation was comparatively objective, as the occupation continued the local media, in particular the Santa Cruz Sentinel, transformed itself into a transmission belt for the sentiment of the local 1% and for the intimidating threats of the Santa Cruz Police Department.

The threats and statements of the Santa Cruz Police Department were the most revealing. In response to concerns from other property owners who have vacant property, Police Chief Vogel declared Friday morning that “You can always count on police to kick people out”, clearly demonstrating that the Police stand with the 1%.

Early Saturday Morning in an article in the Santa Cruz Sentinel posted at 1:30am the threats became more vicious, underscoring the threat which the occupation posed to the local ruling class. Police Chief Kevin Vogel threatened protesters with the possibility of felony vandalism and even burglary charges. Deputy Chief Steve Clark declared that among those inside "Mothers are going to jail. Babies are going to Child Protective Services."

The media campaign was not limited to threats of physical violence and imprisonment, a property manager, Darius Mohsenin, threatened a tenant supposedly involved in the occupation, declaring that "If he's not going to respect the rights of this property owner, then I'm going to evict him.”

The Occupation held strong over 4 days, functioning as a community center and a rallying point for the movement. However as protesters faced a combination of physical exhaustion, escalating police threats and difficulty mobilizing sufficient supporters to defend the building forced a tactical withdrawal.

In response to the exhaustion felt by many occupiers living in a constant state of siege for 3 nights, and due to the inability to mobilize community support in the numbers that would have been necessary to maintain the space over a longer period of time, occupiers Saturday night decided to clean and vacate the building. The statement released by the occupiers stands as a fitting epithet to the action.

[quote]“In response to heavy, increasing, and underhanded threats from city officials and police on our community, we agreed by consensus to withdraw from 75 River Street, and did so earlier this evening. Though our establishment in this physical space was unfortunately brief, our goals were in part successful: to show that through courage, determination, and action, we the disenfranchised can seize our dreams. The case for community self-empowerment stands stronger than ever. For every occupation repressed, a dozen will rise in its wake. This is just a beginning.”[/quote]

The occupation of 75 River Street for the 4 days in which it was managed under popular control stands as a powerful example of what can be done with the resources left hollow and lifeless by an economic system in which human needs only exist insofar as they can be made to serve private profit. It has also set a powerful example for the Occupy movement around the country.

As camps and tents are increasingly battered by the winter cold and police repression, the occupation presents an example of a line of advance for the movement which directly confronts the property of the financial aristocracy, which provides real shelter and a more effective organizing space to activists, and which most importantly begins to reveal the stark contrast between what it is possible to build with the vast wealth our society possesses, and the threats of violent repression which the state of the 1% must resort to in order to prevent that wealth being put to work in the interests of humanity.

Austerity Comes to California

Appropriately signed behind closed doors without a formal ceremony, and coming 2 days after Democratic Governor Jerry Brown vetoed a bill giving California’s agricultural workers the right to unionize through card check, the latest California budget is a toxic mix of shallow hopes in economic recovery and a ruthless evisceration of services and programs essential to working class Californians.Having surrendered the plan of regressive taxation meant to shore up the budget proposal Brown released in January (See http://socialistworker.org/2011/02/09/brown-attacks-those-in-need ) Brown and the Democratic legislature have moved forward with an all austerity budget. Other than some additional revenue expected from forcing online retailers to pay sales tax (itself a product not of the Democrats taking a stand for taxing the rich but instead of lobbying by Amazon’s retail competitors like Wal-Mart) what has emerged is nothing short of an open declaration of class war and a clear pronouncement that not only Jerry Brown but the whole of the California Democratic Party is lining up on the side of Capital in the struggle over California’s future.

A testament to Jerry Brown’s ideological commitment to austerity is the pride with which the Office of the Governor’s official website declares as positive the fact that “California’s General Fund spending—as a share of the economy—is now at its lowest level since 1972-73.” This budget includes $15 Billion in total cuts, with additional cuts of $2.5 Billion to be triggered if hoped for additional revenue fails to materialize.This reliance on additional revenue is built on shaky economic ground, depending on an additional $4 Billion in revenue based on a hoped for surge in income among California’s rich. For California’s ruling elite however it’s a win-win; if the additional revenue fails to come through they’ll be unaffected by cuts which eviscerate public education, if it does materialize then they’re riding high on their own spectacular wealth increase in the midst of generalized poverty and unemployment.

The bulk of the new budget however clearly relies on an assault on the services California’s poor and working people depend upon. Brown vetoed an earlier all cuts proposal from the Democrats as having been insufficient to meet California’s need for “very strong medicine”, a ‘need’ which Brown is meeting in part through a massive assault on California’s low income public health insurance program. Californians will face higher co-pays and be limited to 7 doctor visits a year, a limit which is potentially disastrous for those with chronic conditions or ongoing medical problems. $345 Million of the nearly $1.8 Billion cut and an additional $103 million cut to California’s health insurance program for children, teens and pregnant mothers is unallocated and so the full consequences of the budget are not yet known.

The state’s welfare to work program, CALWORKs, is gutted in the latest round of cuts. Grants for those in the work program have been slashed by 8% to an average of $460 for a family of three, less than 30% of what the federal government considers necessary for a family of three to meet the most basic needs in the state with one of the country’s highest costs of living. In addition this meager cash assistance is cut from 5 years to 4 years and the programs employment services and child care components have been slashed to pieces.

While the state continues to pour hundreds of millions of dollars into maintaining the death penalty and billions into the prison industrial complex as a whole, prisoners themselves who face inhumane levels of overcrowding are also going to be subject of further cuts to their already inadequate healthcare, with $82 million cut this year and $160 million cut next year. A $350 million cut to Court systems will likely grind the system to a halt. While this may provide an opening for activists seeking to utilize more militant tactics against the government with the assumption that charges will be dropped, it also means that those in jail awaiting trial and especially those denied or unable to afford bail will be incarcerated for longer.

Students who have faced unprecedented fee hikes in the last few years face another $1.7 Billion in cuts, including cuts of $650 Million each to the University of California and California State University systems, a 23% slash in state funding. California Community Colleges, supposed to provide a low cost alternative to those who can no longer afford four years at a UC or CSU, face a $400 Billion cut which will provoke a 38% fee hike and reduced course offerings and admissions for students. If the additional revenue doesn’t materialize then a further $72 million cut to community colleges $100 million cuts to both UC’s and CSU’s will be imposed.

K-12 Schools, battered by years of underfunding and neglect, will have $2.1 Billion “borrowed” from their budget for the year. If sufficient additional revenue doesn’t appear then a $1.5 Billion cut to K-12 will be triggered, slashing 7 classroom days away down to 168 days a year in a move which will further rob teachers of a job, working parents of effective daycare and children of their intellectual potential. The effects will be compounded for the poorest students, with a $248 Million cut which ends school bus transportation likely to make it difficult for them to even get to their underfunded schools.

In addition to the major cuts outlined above the budget is riddled with smaller but profoundly impactful cuts that will affect the quality of life for all but the wealthiest Californians. 70 State Parks will close, cutting off access to many of California’s stunning natural parks and beaches. The budget eliminates all state funding for public libraries which have already been gutted over the last few years. A $15 Million cut to California’s Emergency Management Agency in a State which has been long overdue for another major Earthquake has the potential to kill. An 11 percent cut to state funding for preschool and child care programs will force an estimated 25,500 children to lose access. The Governor went out of his way and used his line item veto to axe $234.6 Million in state funding for mass transport which millions of poor Californians, unlike the Governor and his friends, rely upon to make it to work and school ever y day. In addition there will be a $308 Million cut to State Employee Compensation. If the hoped for revenue doesn’t come through, among the first to suffer will be a further $100 Million to In-Home supportive services hours and $100 million to the Department of Developmental Services, once more robbing from California’s disabled and elderly to maintain corporate tax breaks.

As he signed the bill Brown declared that it “really does put our fiscal house into much better shape, but we’re not finished.” In fact it was only the complete intransigence of Republicans in the latest budget cycle that kept Brown from offering them the pensions of public sector workers on a platter, and as the crisis continues to unfold and shallow hopes of economic rebound continue to appear real only to Wall Street investors, the cuts are only going to grow more intense, more frequent and more terrible in the violence they wreak on the lives of millions of Californians.

A section of the Wall Street Journal’s “Wealth Report” was headlined “Why the Rich Fear Violence in the Streets”, describing how according to a new survey among those with over $1 million in liquid assets, “94% of respondents are concerned about the global unrest around the world today.”Anecdotal stories of the extent of despair in the US, like that of a North Carolina man who made national headlines robbing a bank in the hopes of receiving healthcare in prison, provide the negative counterpart to the positive examples of mass resistance which have emerged in Wisconsin. Yet they are emblematic of the pain and frustration ripping through tens of millions of students and workers raised on the lie of the American Dream who stand confronted with a reality of a capitalist system shedding any remaining illusions of compassion or humanity in order to salvage a few more percentage points of profit.

As the ruling classes’ neoliberal program of austerity in California, across the United States and internationally seeks to expand the assault on unions, to gut welfare and reduce the working class to a condition of immiseration unseen since the 1930’s, the rich are right to be afraid. Outside their gated communities, in the factories and workshops and retail stores where workers are bled bit by bit body and soul, and in the projects and tent cities and prisons where Capitalism’s surplus humanity is sent to be forgotten, a storm is brewing. From the occupations of University administrative buildings by students being shackled to chains of debt to the hunger strikes of prisoners locked in State Prisons, resistance is sprouting up amidst the assaults of the establishment. The worlds rich should be afraid, because when the world working class begins to fight back, it will not be “finished” until all the Jerry Brown’s and Barack Obama’s of the world are swept aside, until the very state through which they rule and enforce their dictates of austerity is smashed by the tide of workers’ democracy, and until the social system which produces a super-rich at the expense of the human potential of billions is buried and forgotten like the Feudal and Slave systems which preceded it.

As the German revolutionary Rosa Luxembourg once proclaimed, as the more honest and self-reflective sections of the ruling class seem to be remembering, and as those like Brown at the frontlines of enforcing austerity are soon to discover;

“Your 'order' is built on sand. Tomorrow the revolution will rise up again and to your horror it will proclaim with trumpets blazing: I was, I am, I shall be!"

Jerry Brown's Assault on California

Jerry Brown's Assault on California

A washed up, aging Republican movie star is replaced by a Democratic governor who leads the state to adopt a budget cutting program vastly more conservative then that of his right wing predecessor. He gains a reputation as a fiscal conservative and is applauded by the right wing while those hoping for progressive change are left sorely disappointed. The year was 1975 and the aging movie star was a man by the name of Ronald Reagan who was just replaced by a Democrat named Jerry Brown. Karl Marx's famous quip that history repeats itself "First as Tragedy, then as Farce" has never seemed more prescient then it is in California today as the same Jerry Brown, 36 years later, has replaced Schwarzenegger in the governors house and is moving to implement on an exponentially more catastrophic scale the sort of cuts and austerity measures which made him one of the Right wing's favorite Democrats.

Far from the progressive that unions and liberal organizations have sought to present him as, California Governor Jerry Brown's history reveals that he's been as staunch a conservative as any Republican and economically would fit in well on the far right of the Republican Party.

In his previous tenure as Governor, Brown managed to be significantly more conservative then Ronald Reagan. Whereas Reagan had actually boosted spending an average of 12.2 percent a year, Jerry Brown cut it down to 4.6% in his first year, less then the rate of inflation effectively imposing cuts on California.

Although he was initially opposed to Prop 13, after it passed he spearheaded its implementation, declared himself a "born-again tax cutter" and won the praise and vote of the Republican who sponsored the act. Polls showed that by the end most Californians actually believed Jerry Brown had supported Prop 13. This fervent commitment to cutting taxes paid off for him in his re-election when he managed to carry Orange County, the states bastion of wealthy republicanism.

Jerry Brown's economic policies have been consistently far to the right of even mainstream American politics. In his 1980 Presidential Campaign he called for a constitutional convention to support a balanced budget amendment. Later in his 1992 Presidential Campaign he went so far as to call for and supported the institution of a flat income tax and flat sales tax, one which forces poor people barely getting by to pay the same percentage of their income as billionaires, an idea which is considered beyond the pale by even most of today's Republican Party.

Brown's more recent reign as mayor of Oakland is well described by a glowing review he received from American Conservative magazine.

"As mayor, Brown allied himself with cops and developers. He shooed away citizens who fretted that a new condo would disturb some ducks, aggravated labor activists by courting investment from The Gap, allowed the Marines to conduct urban-warfare training maneuvers in the city, and pushed through public funding for the Oakland Military Institute, a prep school for members of the California Cadet Corps."

Finally as attorney general he buried one of his few redeeming features, opposition to the death penalty, and pushed for the resumption and execution of the death penalty in California. Ending the Death penalty in California, a solution conspiciously absent from budget discussions in Sacramento, could easily save the state as much as $1 Billion over 5 years.

It should be clear from this that working class Californians do not have a friend in the Governor, and that Jerry Brown's resume as an "ally of cops and developers" places him front and center as an opponent of California's working class. A reputation which he is moving to reinforce by spearheading the latest round of Austerity measures in California.

While budget cuts have been a frequent and devastating aspect of life for all Californians who suffered through Republican Governor Schwarzenegger's tenure, this new assault by Jerry Brown constitutes nothing less then an attempt to impose Greek levels of austerity which will devastate working class people and cut lifelines for those most vulnerable in the state. The proposal includes

* $1.4 Billion in cuts from higher education, including $500 Million each from the UC and CSU systems and $400 million from the Community College System. The result will be slashed services, slashed wages for workers and the acceleration of the privatization of education.
* $1.7 billion from Medi-Cal, including vastly increased copays which will drive poor Californians to put off medical care to the last minute or be unable to seek it at all.
* $1.5 billion from California's welfare-to-work program, a massive attack on one of the few programs to provide work and help to the unemployed. As the real level of unemployment in California reaches over 20%, this will be a devastating blow to the state's poor
* $750 Million in cuts to child care, eliminating services for 11 and 12 year olds, and decreasing eligibility from 75% to 60% of median income. In a state where the Median family income of $56,000 is already considered less than what's needed to get by the costs of the crisis will be pushed on to families already struggling to raise their children.
* $580 million from state operations and employee compensation, a new round of pay cuts to workers already suffering through furloughs and cuts for the last few years. Expect continued assaults on state worker's pension funds.
* $200 million in cuts to the court system. If you don't have the money to make bail, expect to spend months if not years awaiting trial.
* Although K-12 Is being left as it is in the current proposal, Brown's budget will take $1billion dollars from Prop 10 which helps fund children's programs and prepares younger kids to be able to go to school.
* Almost all state funding for libraries will be slashed
* An end to housing aid for those transitioning out of Foster Care

Many of the most devastating cuts however are going to be directed towards the mentally and physically disabled, those least able to fight back against what's an unprecedented assault on services which were already insufficient for supporting the state's disabled. These include

* Supplemental Security Income, benefits for those affected by disabilities or mental illness, will be cut to the bare minimum of $830 a month
* A reduction in the hours In-Home Supportive Services workers care for elderly and disabled residents by 8.4 percent
* $750 Million in cuts to regional centers overseeing care to the developmentally disabled
* $861 Million will be "borrowed" , which is to say stolen, from funding set aside by voters for Mental Health services.

The only taxes Jerry Brown is considering putting through are regressive taxes on the working class. Brown is pushing for an extension of increases in the sales tax and vehicle registration fees, both of which will disproportionately affect poor and working class Californians.

These tax hikes were the same ones presented by Schwarzenegger in 2009 and rejected as the regressive taxes they were. Interestingly enough, and quite revealing of California Politics, one of the biggest funders of the 2009 initiative were California Oil Corporations hoping to make sure they avoided any of the taxes they're subjected to in every other state, including and especially even Alaska.

California is currently the third largest oil producer in the state yet is the only major oil producing state to give companies like Chevron a free ride. A mere 6% tax on oil extraction could raise $1 Billion, if the tax was the same as it is in Alaska, 25%, that would be over $4 Billion dollars. Since all Oil Companies are doing is essentially pumping money out of the State of California into their profit margins it wouldn't be unreasonable to demand a much higher rate of 50% or even full control of California's own oil resources, something which would more then cover the cost of the cuts being proposed this year.

Yet even the subject of taxing oil in California leaves out the most obvious solution to the problem and the one which any working class citizen of the state should demand, taxing the rich.

According to the California Labor Federation, the state gives a way more then $50 Billion in tax waivers and loopholes for the rich and Corporations. The four richest Californians alone have a net worth of $69 Billion, more then 3 times the budget deficit. In fact the combined wealth of only those billionaires wealthy enough to make the Forbes 400 2010 list is $250.85 Billion, 10% of which would provide enough to close the deficit and even expand services without a single budget cut or tax on the working class.

And it's not like the wealthy have been hurting over the past year, not long ago Merrill Lynch unveiled it's World Wealth Report, which charts the finances of the world's super-rich, this year the wealth of those with over $1million in liquid assets grew by 18% with the numbers even higher among those in wealthier brackets. This is all wealth which has overwhelmingly come from stock market speculation and the dividends the super-wealthy have received from the bank bailouts financed by the country's poor and working class.

Yet taking back even a slice of this wealth won't be on the table under California's Democratic Governor Jerry Brown and the overwhelmingly Democratic legislature. Instead, workers, students, the unemployed, families and the mentally disabled have become the target of one of the most vicious budget cuts in California history. The necessity of building mass resistance independent of and opposed to the Democratic Party is about to become not only an urgent political need but for Californians about to be thrown off aid, cut off from services and left stranded without help it will become a prerequisite to survival.