How to defeat the Wall Street Pigmen

(I wrote this the other day while thinking about the Wall Street protests. It meanders a lot, but I decided to keep the emotional stream of thought thing. This was all typed off of the type of my head, mostly on my phone at work, without access to any references. It is what it is. But I like it.)

How to defeat the Wall Street pigmen

America is at the lowest level of unionization since unions became legal. We might as well start there. We need a union drive in America. These don't need to be the conservative ossified unions that have managed to survive. Like all institutions, there are good unions and bad unions. But the important part of the union is that it is a representative organization. A more informal structure is all that's necessary. This union drive could be focused in one city, at first. Let's just say New York for argument sake. All people would be needed to join. The IWW could fill this role, or a new union. Dues could be small, or non existent. People could join “One Big Union”, or separate unions that agree to cooperate with one another.

The important part is to get people signed up and agree with the program so the super weapon can be used. This super weapon is the general strike. The strikers could do a few things. One option would be to have a sit in strike at the workplace. A sit in could evolve into an occupation or even worker management, depending on the situation. Employees, again, depending on the business, could keep working and fulfill existing orders but distribute the payments more equitably. Or whatever they wanted. But the key is that "they" refers to the employees.

Now when we talk about sit ins and worker appropriation, it should be clear we're not talking about small businesses. The intent isn't for the three employees at a baseball card store to boot the old grampa who owns it into the street. The target of the strike is the state-corporate economy. But I fear we've gotten ahead of ourselves. If we want our general strike to be a revolution, a bloodless revolution, some ground work has to be laid.

There needs to be a recognition that the interests of the ruling class and the overwhelming majority of the country are not the same. If 99% of the country is sharing 65% of the wealth, then there is always going to be people without enough. The structural inequality, and the finite amount of wealth, means that as long there is a super rich class, there will be a super poor class. The one cannot exist without the other.

What we need is a country where 99% of the country owns 99% of the wealth. Or something close. To do this, we need to create a parallel economy. The way our economy works now, passive participation in it strengthens it. We need a parallel or counter economy. One that can outgrow the official economy. This doesn't mean we have to give up computers or high top sneakers, just that we can do better as human beings. There is more than enough wealth in the world for everyone, but that's not the world we live in. We need only organize ourselves differently.

Let's get back to that ground work. We need friendly banks. We need banks that can do something in the vein of the Grameen Bank, lending loans to people to get themselves in a better place. The innovation with Grameen Bank is that it lended to people without collateral, and found that people paid back anyway. Because the amounts we are dealing with in America are larger, and there isn't the same market for cottage industry, lending groups could be used. A group of people could take a loan out together, each responsible for paying off their part of it. If someone is delinquent the loss is much smaller, because everyone else is still paying. It's a risk pool for lending. People could set it up a few different ways. Someone behind on their payments could be covered by someone else, or bought out if they won't be able to make payments anymore. The goal is to let people get loans for economic projects (like starting businesses or installing solar panels on their house) easier.

Some could criticize this, saying excess lending caused the financial collapse. The lending I'm talking about isn't about lowering standards, only setting up a structure so that people can get a loan without explosive interest rates. These loans would be for improving people's lives, not just to snare them in mortgage schemes. Credit unions could be used for this, or new institutions. Proudhon used the term "People's Banks", which sounds right to me, but probably would make too many Americans uncomfortable. Americans are taught to fear anything with the words "People's" or "Liberation" in it's name.

It would be important to transfer money into the new “friendly” banks. If everyone withdraws their money at once, a run on the bank will happen. A “run” could be timed with the strike, the boycotts and everything else for maximum effectiveness.

To coincide with our People's Banks, we need to revive Mutual Aid societies. Mutual Aid societies were largely driven out of existence by the government around the first half of the 1900's. There are still things that can be done though. People with cash can pay a premium, and receive benefits back later. These benefits could be determined by a board, or a management team. They could be chosen, hired, elected or rotated in and out. People without money could access the society for barter service. An unemployed person could do work on someone’s house, and in exchange receive dental work or food. Hours and goods exchanged can be tracked, perhaps with a sharing ratio like Peer2Peer networks. A group of people can volunteer to run a daycare (an enormous expenditure for single moms) in exchange for work on their cars, groceries or what have you. The society could serve as a clearinghouse for simple user run insurance plans and for LETS style transactions. An existing fraternal society like the elks or moose could serve as a base, or a church group or school. Or an entirely new institution could be made. Whichever works best.

To go with our mutual aid societies and our People's Banks we will want a helping of self sufficiency. The more we disconnect from the state corporate economy the weaker we make it, and the stronger the parallel economy can become in comparison. If someone has solar panels on their house, they then don’t have to pay into the power companies. If you have an electric car, running from your solar panels, you can disconnect from the oil and energy industry in two ways.

Gardens and goods production can be quite prosperous on a small scale if well handled. Food produced this way can be used personally, traded at a community store or for labor. This unplugs you from the food and factory farm industry. To take this to an extreme, if someone were to have the necessary capital, a person could probably make all of their goods instead of working a job. If mutual aid societies could provide things like health insurance, communities structured around small self producing family units could be almost entirely self sufficient. Some people won’t want to take it that far. And that’s fine too.

Ok, so when our general strike hits, our parallel economy is already going. We’ve got self sufficient families with their own food and power. We’ve got mutual aid societies providing services, food, or helping people still get things done with out cash. A strike fund can feed and house those on strike who need to be fed or housed. Occupy Wall Street functions largely off of donations as far as I know, which people from the around the world can use to help. That could be a source of supplies.

There are three approaches the strikers can take, each with pros and cons. People can stay in their homes. Their physical presence is not felt on the streets but it is harder for the cops to attack them. A sit in can be used to occupy and appropriate a workplace. This makes it easier for the cops to know where to strike. Expect a SWAT team and flashbangs. There is the classic protest march, which gets the message out. Good for morale. Again though, you are an easy target for the cops. Obviously, different people and different situations can use different approaches.

While we are striking, it’s important to start a boycott. A boycott of all functions of the corporate-state economy. A list could be maintained of services and companies to boycott in turn. Each time a workplace is reclaimed that workplace is added to the list of places to favor over others. As the strike and boycott drives business under, those business can be replaced by comparable services, run in a more equitable fashion and join the parallel economy.

As the parallel economy grows, the issue of currency is raised. It could be beneficial to issue a counter currency. This is illegal under US law. The liberty dollars, based on gold, would have been great for this purpose. The government smashed that operation however. A way around the law is to have local towns issue their own currencies. Town councils are susceptible to local democracy and could be used to issue local counter currencies.

If we add all this up, the pig men won’t stand a chance. Each major city can be tackled with strikes and boycotts, one at time, as the movement slowly grows in the margins across the country.

The enemy is the “corporate-state” economy, though. How do you strike against the state? This one is much harder. The most obvious way is to refuse to pay taxes. A refusal to pay taxes will eventually put someone up against the IRS. A single person against the IRS will always end with the IRS winning. If, however, a huge number of people going up against the IRS together the government will find itself swamped in it’s own legal system. A loss of perceived legitimacy is more of a blow than the lost revenue. Will the government have the resources to send huge numbers of people to jail for non-violent tax protests? Any debate, delay or controversy will weaken the government position. Not everyone would be able to do this. If you have kids at home, you probably shouldn’t risk getting sent to jail. A covert tax protesters insurance society could be started via an Internet listserv. A large group of people pay a modest premium. They then refuse to pay their taxes. Anyone who gets roped in by the IRS would receive a benefit, either to pay off the audit or support their family if they get sent away. The larger the group grows the more powerful the tax protest becomes. This would also allow people who can not refuse to pay their own taxes to support those who do.

Other ways to resist state power are refusal to pay the standard fines, like drivers license tabs, or to serve on jury duty. But again, a single person will always get crushed. In large groups, the system will start to choke. A more direct approach would be to protest in front of government buildings to block the entrance, or use tow trucks to drop of scrapped cars in front of the entrances. Or denial of service attacks against government websites. Denial of service attacks against “bad” corporations could also be used.

All of these ideas are completely non violent. They are also non governmental. There are no candidates or platforms to vote for. It’s not a call for more or less regulation, more or less taxes. This is libertarian socialism. Some of it is illegal. This is true. Some of it might go too far for some people. But it is not dogma or an orthodoxy. Someone who agrees with one part but not others is not a heretic. It’s a living idea. If it is ever tried, and fails, then I will be the first to bury it. The important part is to imagine a better, more equitable, more just world. Then close your eyes. When you open them, you are living in that world. It need only be built.

Books:

Flight from the city by Ralph Borsodi

Community Technology by Karl Hess

sin patron by the Lavaca collective and Horizontalism

The conquest of bread by Peter Kropotkin

Post Scarcity anarchism by Murray Bookchin

Studies in Mutualist political economy by Keven Carson

Articles:

All power to the soviets by Murray Rothbard

Holy Terror

Frank Miller was once the wunderkind of American comics. While so many top comic writers are British (Grant Morrison, Warren Ellis, Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, and Garth Ennis being the most popular writers of the modern era) Miller created a uniquely American style of hard boiled sex, violence and pathos. DKR helped found the Dark Age of comics after all.

Looking at his works chronologically though, Miller's last home run seems to be That Yellow Bastard, written half way through his Sin City period. That was in 1996, fifteen years ago.

So here we have Miller, the American in a field dominated by Brits, over the hill and remixing his old style. The story's two main characters are obvious pastiches for Batman and Catwoman. The art is very reminiscent of Sin City. The content, according to Miller in interviews, is "a piece of propaganda". The reader is left to sort through these seemingly disparate elements.

Holy Terror, on a purely technical level, is very strong. The pounding urban rain has never looked better. Splotches of white amidst the downward lines suggest impressionistic artistic frenzy. Empire City's Lady Liberty strikes an imposing and majestic figure over the landscape. Close ups of the nails and razor blades packed into the terrorist's bombs lend an epic feeling to a scene that is just two people huddling on a rooftop. In fact, I thought the nail motif was a nice artistic touch.

The figures fall into the Frank Miller 2.0 mold, with the exaggerated hands and head from late Sin City and DKSA. For some reason, Miller seems intent to find as many excuses to draw the bottom of people's shoes as possible.

One of the most visually arresting sequences is when the casualties of the terrorist bombing are depicted with a series of grids. When it starts we have a grid with medium sized portraits. The second grid has smaller portraits, therefore more people, but has started to fade out. There is then two pages of increasingly more divided grids, completely empty, on a white background. This is an extremely impressive command of sequential art.

The sparse use of color is used to convey extra information, a green car and red shoe buried in the rubble reminds of the little red dress in Schindler's List. When "Catwoman" goes undercover by stealing a burqua, the audience can tell it's her because her eye's are always colored in green.

There are some technical flaws, though. The character designs feel old. Natalie is Catgirl from DKSA mixed with Gail from Sin City. The Fixer is Batman with a pair of Gats. A pair of girl assassins are Miho crossed with the twins from Sin City. There were honestly one or two panels where I stared at it, trying to figure out what the hell was going on. One remixed element that is improved upon is Miller's famous talking heads. Here, the heads are there, but they offer silent commentary. Miller doesn't waste space or time with political commentary. We know what they will say, he just shows that they are there and lets us fill in their rants.

The actual content is an entirely different matter. The story could be summarized thoroughly on a napkin, with room left for some illustrative doodles. A work can function without story if it has good characters. Holy Terror does not have good characters, though.

The story starts with "Batman" chasing "Catwoman", who has just stole something irrelevant. They take turns punching each other and making out. Then the terrorists strike! From there the plot functions basically like the first Sin City story. Our heroes steal a car to get around and torture bad guys for info. This leads us all the way to the final battle. Again, not much going on story wise.

Thematically, Holy Terror is a far right fantasy about the nigh omniscient threat that evil Muslims pose to Western civilization. The bad guys fortress? It's in a mosque. Truly. The narration tells us that this mosque was built by Saudi Arabia and is basically a sovereign nation inside America. Remember kids, mosques are scary. The first bombing is carried out not by a bearded Taliban looking fellow, but a cute Muslim college girl. A humanities student wearing pink. Second lesson kids, no matter who they are, how they dress or what they seem to believe, they might be a foot soldier in the Evil Muslim Conspiracy. Remember also that terrorists are evil untermensch, so it's totally cool to torture and kill them at will.

Once the bombs start going off, terrorists, bearded guys with ak-47s and burqa clad women with stinger missiles, come out of the woodwork to begin a military assault on the city. (They were probably hiding inside the Park 51 community center!)

This could maybe be dismissed as a fantasy if it wasn't for two things: the opening text is a quote from Muhammad about killing infidels, and the last page tells us the book is dedicated to Theo Van Gogh, who was murdered by extremists. Seemingly Miller wants the audience then to tie this violent paranoid exercise in far right wish fulfilment into reality.

Whether it's his intent or not, this and 300 would make a great start to a Neo-Nazi graphic novel reading list. In fact, if Legendary wanted to make coin on this, they should market it en masse to right wing reading lists. It's got all the required elements: Lady Liberty, who gets blown up early on, is wearing a blindfold, telling us society is blind to the terrorist threat. "Batman's" greatest help? A secretive guy named David with a Star of David tattooed on his face. (really) Translated, Israel is our only true ally! The police commissioner is corrupt and the police useless when the chips are down. Translation: Only hard violent men stand between us and the Islamic hordes. Only guys like the Fixer and David have the strength of will to torture and kill their way to victory.

While I still respect Frank Miller for his past work, Sin City, Daredevil, Batman, Ronin, etc etc, he's been in a slump for a long time now, and I don't see it reversing in the near future. The man possesses technical skills, but even his short.dialogue.bursts lack the charm they once had. My hope is that if Frank Miller keeps making comics, he gets someone else to write them.

2/5

Three letter reviews of the nu DC

Action Comics #1 yay

Animal Man #1 yay

Omac #1 yay

Frankenstein: Agent of Shade #1 yay

Swamp thing #1 meh

Justice League Dark #1 meh

Demon knights #1 meh

Justice League #1 boo

Hellblazer #283

Peter Milligan's run on Hellblazer could be subtitled "The unintentional consequences of being John Constantine." To my pleasant surprise, after being assaulted by Demon Constantine, Gemma remains a supporting character in the title. To his credit, Milligan didn't just hop into the title, dispense rape and injustice to all the established characters and then toss them away for a lark. An unfavourable comparison could be made to the cheap way supporting characters are brutalized for a voyeuristic fix in Identity Crisis.

Speaking again of unintended consequences, our story starts with Epiphany and John waking up in the Thames. Their bed seems to have transported itself there while they were sleeping. A day in the life of John Constantine! The story is actually narrated by John's coat, which seems to have “awakened” after all the mystical jetsam it's been exposed too. The coat seems to exude an arrogant, amoral machismo, an extreme version of the air constantine uses to impress others.

Gemma is still dealing with the aftermath of her attack. She wants to turn to John for help, but she can't forgive him. And John, of course, refuses to admit he did anything wrong.

The stylized cartoony art accentuates the character's best characteristics, John's sneer and Gemma's crumbling innocence, for example. This same art previously gave us a rendering of a bird creature that was thoroughly nonthreatening, making the creature look less like an occult horror then something Superman would throw through a wall. This issue has an all human cast, so that concern is avoided.

On a side note, Epiphany's relationship with her father takes a weird turn when her father surprises her and John in the shower. He mentions that it's nothing he hasn't seen before when they were skinny dipping. I detect an incestous under tone here, something we might see explored in the future.

4/5

Sometimes I want to burn the comic industry to the ground

There recently has been controversy on the internet about the portrayal of women in the new DCU. Like here. I haven't read either of the issues in question, but assuming the description given of them is accurate, I agree completely with this author. (disclaimer: I am a straight white male)

Comics can do so much better than masturbatory wish fulfillment. As a medium combining pictures and word, studies have shown that information can be understood better than either pictures or words separately. That's why Will Eisner created sequential art army manuals.

Comics also have no budget limitations. We can enjoy stories of cyborg ninja pirates fighting alien spaces whales in the 12th zombie dimension without having to wait for 3 years of production and pay for 3D glasses. The medium is limitless. Think about that. Limitless. Any story can be told.

Comics should be the pre-eminent entertainment medium. But it isn't. Why? Because so much of the industry is caught up in making fan base wish fulfillment. So much of it is caught up making, for lack of a better word, shit.

It's like the industry is dominated by 12 year olds who just discovered breasts and market their products to clones of themselves. This crap has to stop. It's misogynistic, immoral and just plain gross. We can do so much better, and the medium can do better. Comics should be soaring through the sky, not wallowing in a fetid sexual gutter.