NY Rally Speakers highlight Core Democratic Values

A rally in NYC today highlighted issues and concerns that have been going unaddressed for some time in this country. The Nation highlights some of the featured speakers including Chris Hedges who says that President Obama is defying those core values supported by Democratic voters.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges also spoke at the rally. Beforehand, I asked him if he thinks acts of civil disobedience such as the Wisconsin union protests are the only paths of recourse Americans have left to fight for change. “There’s a moral imperative to carry them out,” says Hedges. “[I]f we don’t begin to physically defend the civil society, all resistance will be ceded to very proto-fascist movements such as the Tea Party that celebrate the gun culture, the language of violence, seek scapegoats for their misery.”

He calls the state of America an “anemic democracy,” and says it’s time for citizens to get off the Internet and occupy the streets because their leaders no longer represent them. Politicians have spoken incessantly about the need for shared sacrifice when in fact they’re guarding a plutocracy that levies the burden of budget cuts on the shoulders of the poor. This is a system in which Bank of America’s CEO Brian Moynihan gets a $9 million bonus while one in four American children survives on food stamps.

Hedges calls the idea of shared sacrifice farcical. “[Bank of America] sends out home invasion teams to throw Americans out of their homes through bank repossessions or foreclosures, and of course many of these people were given loans that the lenders knew they could never repay often under fraudulent conditions…and yet there has been absolutely no investigation — no criminal charges — brought against these corporations.”

We live in a corporate state, Hedges stresses, both in our interview and later when he takes the stage. “Not only the money, but the wages, and retirement benefits, $17 trillion worth have been robbed by these financial institutions. It’s repugnant.”

And the one in six Americans without a job aren’t the ones going to raise money to get President Obama reelected. The money, Hedges says, will come from the corporate state, what he calls the “predators.” Hedges says President Obama serves their — not our — interests.

Obama’s most recent budget speech, in which he adopted some of the populist rhetoric about raising taxes on the wealthy, didn’t impress Hedges. After all, it was Obama who extended the Bush era tax cuts for the wealthy. “To watch him sort of talk out of both sides of his mouth is a little disconcerting,” says Hedges. “I fear, like most people, that not only are we going to see an extension of those cuts, but they’ll be cemented into place permanently.” Like many in the liberal class, Hedges says Obama “speaks in the rhetoric of traditional liberalism, but every action he takes defies the core values of the liberal tradition.”

Other groups also questioned the current economic policies dominating our national conversation.  Some of the most persuasive speech was associated with the financial crisis and its perpetrators.

Dave Petrovich, executive director of the Society For Preservation of Continued Homeownership, agrees with that sentiment. “The president, and most of our lapdog Congress, are employees of the banking industry, so they’re not going to really discuss this unless it’s in their own financial self-interest.” Bank of America was once again a central target of the protest since the company hasn’t paid a nickel in federal income taxes in the past two years and received a “income tax refund from hell” of $666 million for 2010. The protesters demand to know why a company that received $45 billion in taxpayer money during the bailout now gets to play by a different set of tax rules, while simultaneously paying out obscene bonuses to its CEO and kicking hardworking Americans out of their homes

There’s something fundamentally wrong with a system that bails out perpetrators of mass fraud and destruction and applauds the removal of safety nets from its victims.  This started me thinking that maybe we should come up with a list of what we consider liberal and democratic values.  Frankly, I consider civil liberties, respect for the Bill of Rights, and provision of services essential to public health, safety, and education to be central.  I also consider the idea that liberty and justice for all means for ALL and not just the rich and powerful.  It’s been apparent from that Goldman Sachs and Bank of American can get bailed out for all kinds of crime.  What kinds of things do you think should go on the list?