Left Forum 2010 is off to an insanely, if not chaotic, positive start. It’s a beautiful day in downtown New York City. The bright sunshine outside is apparent in the bright ideas echoing through the halls of Pace University, and on the bright and cheery attidues of the many attendees.
I haven’t done a count, but the heft of the printed program indicates there are dozens upon dozens of panels happening throughout the weekend, stacked with hundreds of panelists, as well as a book fair, exhibition hall, art show, theater performances and the requisite motley crew of pamphleteers.
I, along with JK Fowler, will do our best to bring you as much of LF as possible. Readers will forgive us for our paraphrasing(!), choppy reports, and haphazard coverage—there’s just too much to cover in too short a time to do justice to it all. That caveat noted, away we go!
I started the morning in the main room with a panel loaded with participants and name: Power from Below. Readers can do some Google searching and visit LF’s website for more information on all speakers. This will help orient the reader and give them an idea from which angle they are coming.
Weighing in on power from below included: Frances Fox Piven (chair), Max Fraad Wolff, Max Rameau, Frank Morales, Robert Meister, and late addition, Esther Wang. Here are some highlights:
Piven: How to mobilize volatile/troublesome/disruptive pressure from the bottom and the Left to pressure the Democraty Party into positive, fair action?
The panel took on a decidedly housing-in-the-economic-crisis theme…
Morales: A squatter and a priest, notes calls for an insurgency of squatting to subvert corporatism, capitalism. Housing is a human right, and squatting makes the right real. (This is power from below!). “The power of the strike is the working class’ gun.”
Rameau: We are living in a unique time because, amidst the economic crisis, we are witnessing the dialectic process of history. We must take advantage of the historical moment by doing two things: a) move the homeless into vacant, federally-owned property and b) protect people currently in homes from evictions.
Housing is a human right achieved through de-commodification of land into a sort of “public trust” mechanism. There must be mass action to take over houses owned by banks, and then negotiate terms of settlement. Occupying foreclosed homes put people in a position to negotiate.
Wang: Working to convert empty condos in NYC into low and very low income housing.
Meister: In fighting tuition hikes at UC Berkeley, if students hadn’t protested and took up the struggle, the fight would have fizzled to the detriments of the student body. [My thought: Just another indication and further evidence that when students get together to pick a fight, they can effect change].
The question coming from Meister’s discussion: is higher education a driver of equality or inequality? When students and tuition are tied to Wall Street money (lending), certainly inequality may come out on top.
Wolff: Max Fraad seemed to steal the show with his snappy delivery and comically appropriate analogies. He admits that as a political economist he hadn’t been taking much time to speak with activists and practitioners, so “now’s a good time to start.”
“All financial markets and debt can do is move purchasing power and wealth distribution through time. That’s it folks.”
Borrowing and lending are faith based—there’s a reason instruments are called bonds, trusts, and securities. [Note: the elder Wolff, Richard D., tackled the language of capitalism and free markets in a subsequent panel].
From 1975-now, real wages have stagnated. The U.S. represents 4.5% of the world’s population, but represents 30% of global consumption. We also represent 65% of global borrowing.
The laugh moment of the panel: securitization is like hot dogs—spare parts that nobody wants are mashed together, dyed a different color, given a new shape and package, and sold off to unsuspecting customers.
Banks service loans of the housing market. They don’t want the houses on their books, and don’t want to have to re-sell (at a loss), pay the taxes, and pay for maintenance.
7.1 million homes are in foreclosure (according to some of the best models, which Wolff works on). 63% of those who get “help” (from HUD's HAMP) will need “help” again in 12 months.
To curb this vicious cycle, modifications on the principal, not just the interest, of the loans must be made.
Wolff ends on a positive note, saying that researchers like himself and activists (like the panel) need to do a better job of communicating with each other to assist each other in their respective fields.
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And isn’t that what Left Forum aims to do? To bring intellectuals and activists and artists and all matter of disparate groups together, to share ideas, hash out differences, and take matters to the next step?
No rest for the weary—onto the next panel!
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