History suggests that at least two important conditions precede social change: One is education about society’s true conditions, an education that has to spread out from the elite to the general population. The very well established, of course, naturally delay or debunk such education because they don’t much like the change that may come with it. As a Kenyan activist once said when asked why he did not go after corruption at the highest levels, “The big fish don’t fry themselves.” The one thing that loosens plutocracy’s control, therefore, seems to be a deepening awareness of society’s true conditions that gradually spreads to the general public.
But there is another very important ingredient for social change to happen. From some source must come inspiration. A politician, a poet, a musician, draws up a vision and lifts the dream for all people of new possibility. “I have a dream today!” cries out Martin Luther King, and when that vision combines with broadly held information, or knowledge, then there may be something like a ripple or a wave that spreads through the culture and change may happen.
In this connection, let me bring to mind two important dates: The first has to do with inspiration. On Friday, September 26th at 7:00 PM, a reading of inspiring cries and voices from history, those who have preceded social change: women, people of color, laboring people, will be presented at El Museo de Santa Fe. We will hear the voices of those who through the centuries have been walled out from power, but who have in some heroic way harnessed their furies and described pathways for the common people of dignity, compassion, and hope. When their voices are strung together, like pearls on a string, these voices amount to a sustained cry, an appeal, an exhortation for us all to rise to become our highest selves.
So this is my invitation: These voices, these pioneers of the mind and heart in human history, will speak to us in a dramatic reading at El Museo Cultural on September 26th, at 7:00 PM. The cast is professional; they will rattle your bones with fire and hope. Admission is free. Please come.
Change, however, does not come from inspiration alone. We also need knowledge. We all know now we do have the knowledge in 2014, about plutocracy. We all know about the inordinate influence of the billionaires in these upcoming 2014 elections. We all know how the Congress has become dysfunctional, unwilling now to care for those least advantaged and how it has come under the influence of, or perhaps even been colonized by, the great industries of finance, oil and gas, pharmaceuticals and defense. We all know the despair that comes from our inability to change Wall Street outright, or to make our poor contributions to the political campaigns be sufficient to create a new Congress. For the last several years many of us throughout the country have been attempting to get our minds around this plutocracy issue, searching to find a place to put the lever to change our unbalanced world.
Now WeArePeopleHere! has decided not to wait for the Congress or the presidential elections or even the state legislatures to initiate change. It has become clear that contrary to our approach of the last 70 years, the locus of initiative and creativity is shifting from the federal government to local governments, to our cities, to the places closest to the beating hearts of the most people. Cities can’t wait for the Congress to wake up to our compassionate needs, or to climate change, or to our crumbling roads and bridges. Cities can’t dwell in the mystic expectation that laissez-faire capitalism and trickle-down economics will revive them. Cities have to be practical and up-to-date, not mired in the 19th-century ideologies of the Gilded the Age that produced America’s first experience of rampant plutocracy (and has now succeeded in producing our second plutocracy).
City mayors and counselors have to make sure that the water runs in the pipes, that the lights turn on, and that the streets are safe and passable. Unlike the congress, cities have to plan for the future. The sea is rising toward the subways of New York and the citizens of that city cannot wait for the senators from rural states to understand New York’s new reality. Farms are scorching in California and the farmers in the San Joaquin Valley cannot wait for scientists hired by the oil and gas industry to come to their senses.
That brings us to a most peculiar aspect of today’s economic culture. The money for all these things that we need is provided to us by loans from private banks. Whatever money we take from those banks we pay back with interest. Whatever interest we pay diminishes the monies we have left over to solve our problems. How then, we might wonder, did we get into this situation in which the private banks, the moguls of Wall Street, the financial industry managers who pay themselves literally billions of dollars of bonuses every year, determine what public projects should be funded and at what cost? How did these gargantuan financial interests, come to control the life-blood of all our communities, big and small? What a peculiar system this is!
Mr. J.P. Morgan at the turn of the 20th century had gained a massive fortune through the use of bribes, corruption, rebates, and fraud. The managers of Mr. Morgan’s banking empire today run J.P. Morgan Chase, the largest financial institution in the country. Why should such an institution with such a financial ancestry today maintain such a huge influence over the loans and lending and public projects of, not just the federal government, but of towns like Santa Fe? Or of Albuquerque? Or of any town in the country?
That is the question that has driven so many of us to investigate a different kind of banking: public banking. To gain knowledge about the possibilities for public banks dedicated to the interest of the whole public, We Are People Here! Is hosting a day long Symposium on September 27, at the Santa Fe Community Convention Center. This will be the next day following the inspirational dramatic reading of the night before. On Saturday we will address the whole issue of community funding for community projects.
You all are invited to participate in this Symposium. If you are frustrated with the general condition of the government beset by financial controls and the financial dominance of the mighty few, and if you are looking for a place to put the lever, someplace local for you and me to take action, join us to begin the public education process about public banking. Market on your calendars: reserve Friday night, September 26th, and Saturday, September 27th for a combination of inspiration and information, to gain the tools with which we may address change right here, by ourselves, with our own resources.
– Craig Barnes, September 6, 2014
