Posts
Is it worth trying, once again, to explain what is going on
with Capitalism? We have a population
that simply can not listen nor think.
Yet, just to round it up once and for all, is a chance to
see the two discussed. It is worth
pointing out that much of the material referenced does not even give credit to
past actions, so it might be worth while to point to them here.
Moves towards de-regulation started with Carter and took off
with subsequent Presidents. The Bushes
and Clinton did the most damage lately.
All of the regulations put in place were put there during the Roosevelt
administration and were ideas supplied by Eugene Debs and Henry Wallace (FDR's)
VP until his final term. Roosevelt,
himself one of what they call the "one percent," said he was running
to "save my friends from themselves." In other words, of of his socialist ideas were implemented to
save capitalism.
Later, even things like Social Security are considered
Socialist and without Medicare and Medicaid many, perhaps a majority of the
population, would have filed bankruptcy.
In fact, the economic damage done by repealing many of the FDR reforms
even led to a redefining of many of the bankruptcy laws, especially Chapter 7
which is used by the lowest section of the so-called "middle-class".
On the other hand, the upper one-percent file bankruptcy on
a regular basis. Even more telling is
the importance of socialism to that one-percent in the form of bailouts, or
"to-big-to-fail" institutions.
It is pointed out below that not one of the countries with free
healthcare (socialized medicine) have repealed it, although wealthy interests
have done their best to castrate it.
One reason I seldom see Fox News is that very shoert periods
go by without some discussion of "Obamacare," a program that is
hardly socialist. There was an early
attempt to make it so, then reduced to a "public option," and finally
eliminated altogether to make it run exclusively by for-profit (Capitalist)
insurance companies. If the so-called
"Public Option" had been insisted upon, it would have defeated the
entire program.
A point it that whenever people hear about
"Socialism," they are conditioned to think of all sorts of horrible
things, they know not what, perhaps Stalin or Kruschev, but certainly not a
true democracy which it is. In other
words, Capitalism is an economic system that uses the government and military
to further its own ends, in other words Fascism, or not a political system at
all. You may be interested in the role Israel plays in this.
THURSDAY, APRIL 10, 2014
Wall Street’s Land Grab: Firms Amass Rental Empire, Ousting Tenants & Threatening New Housing Crisis
The Blackstone Group, a private equity firm,
is now the largest owner of single-family rental homes in the country. In one
day alone, Blackstone bought up 1,400 houses in Atlanta. And as private equity
firms gobble up huge swaths of the housing market, they are partnering with big
banks to bundle the mortgages on these rental homes into a new financial
product known as "rental-backed securities," reminiscent of the
"mortgage-backed securities" that helped cause the last financial
crisis. Could this new private equity rental empire help spark the next housing
crisis? We are joined by Laura Gottesdiener, author of "A Dream
Foreclosed: Black America and the Fight for a Place to Call Home," who
calls this wave of purchases "a land grab." Gottesdiener’s latest
article focuses on New York City’s rental market, a case study in what critics
call "predatory equity." Large firms have used abusive tactics to
oust tenants in a bid to hike up rents — and tenants have been resisting. We
are also joined by Benjamin Warren, who, along with nearly 1,600 families in 42
buildings, is a victim of one of the largest single foreclosures in the city’s
recent history.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in
its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: You may not have heard of the Blackstone Group, but it’s
the largest private equity firm in the world. And now it’s become the largest
owner of single-family rental homes in the country. Over the last few years,
Blackstone and other Wall Street firms have been quietly grabbing up huge
swaths of the rental housing market, purchasing more than 200,000 cheap homes,
hoping to turn a profit. At one auction in Atlanta, Blackstone swept up 1,400
houses in a single day. A new report released Wednesday by Right to the City
Alliance found like Blackstone tenants in Atlanta had reported a range of
issues, from burst pipes and exposed plumbing to bed bugs, which their Wall
Street landlord has been slow to fix. In addition, private equity firms are
partnering with big banks to bundle the mortgages on these rental homes into a
new financial product known as "rental-backed securities,"
reminiscent of the mortgage-backed securities that crashed the economy in 2007
and 2008.
AMY GOODMAN: Now a new article turns the spotlight on New York City, a
case study on what critics call "predatory equity." Here in New York,
private equity firms have bought up rent-regulated properties, hoping tenants
will leave so they can hike up the rent. When tenants fought to stay, the firms
resorted to predatory tactics, from sending out fake eviction notices to
shutting off heat or water. Right now in New York City, 1,600 families in 42
buildings are falling victim to one of the largest single foreclosures in the city’s
recent history, after a conglomerate of private equity firms failed to pay its
mortgage.
For more, we’re joined now by two guests. Ben
Warren is with us. He’s a housing advocate who has been part of his building’s
tenant committee in the South Bronx since the 1980s. He’s a tenant in one of
those 42 buildings now being hit by the massive foreclosure, member of
Community Action for Safe Apartments, or CASA. And Laura Gottesdiener is with us, the author of A Dream Foreclosed: Black America
and the Fight for a Place to Call Home. It was published by Zuccotti Park
Press. She’s an editor at Waging
Nonviolence. Her most recent piece for TomDispatch is called "When
Predatory Equity Hit the Big Apple: How Private Equity Came to New York’s
Rental Market—and What That Tells Us About the Future."
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Laura, tell us about this particular
case.
LAURA GOTTESDIENER: Sure. Thanks for having me. It’s—you know, as we’ve been
looking at the growth of this single-family rental empire across the country,
what we hear over and over again is that this is an utterly unprecedented
phenomenon, that nothing like this has ever happened in the history of the
United States. In many ways, that’s true. But in other ways, in New York City,
we have this case study of what it’s looked like over the last decade when
private equity firms have gone in and seen what they consider to be
opportunities in the housing market to make a lot of money really quickly. I
know this is something, Juan, that you’ve covered extensively for the Daily News. And what’s
important to see, both in this case right now that Benjamin is living through
and that 1,600 other families are living through and in a slew of other past
very high-profile deals, is that this has been something of a disaster not just
for tenants, but also from a financial perspective. These are deals that they
were betting big—these private equity firms were betting big that they could
turn these buildings around by pushing out hundreds of thousands of families.
They weren’t able to push out families, because families organized. And as a
result of that organizing, these deals failed, and it made a situation where
the broader housing market in New York City got hit and these tenants had to
live in completely inhumane conditions.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, what about the rise of this private equity
involvement? Because, I mean, most of these private equity firms often depend
on pension funds, on labor pension funds to invest in them to create the
capital they amass to then do these cash buyouts. Hasn’t there been any
reaction on the part of activists to tell—question these pension funds on how
they’re investing their money?
LAURA GOTTESDIENER: Yeah, I think that’s one of the most important aspects of
this story that is very rarely reported. So, for example, one of the most
spectacular private equity deals, predatory equity deals, to fail in New York City
happened in complexes in Manhattan called Stuyvesant Town and Cooper Village.
And these were—these are massive properties, you know, in lower Manhattan where
a private equity firm, the BlackRock Group, or BlackRock—which is different
than Blackstone, but they’re often confused—believed that it could buy up these
properties, transition these families out, force these families out—
AMY GOODMAN: Thousands of families.
LAURA GOTTESDIENER: Yeah, tens of thousands. We’re talking about tens of
thousands of families. We’re talking about one of the largest deals in New York
City history, in U.S. history. And it completely failed because the tenants did
an incredible job of organizing for the fight to the right to stay. But what’s
interesting is BlackRock, at the end of this $5.4 billion deal, lost just over
$100 million. However, the California public pension fund lost $500 million.
The California teachers’ retirement fund lost $100 million.
AMY GOODMAN: Because?
LAURA GOTTESDIENER: Because they had invested in this deal, and because these
deals are often rigged, such as that if the private equity firm loses, they
don’t lose very much money, and if they win, they win an incredible amount of
money. So, again, it’s one of these examples of these perverse incentives where
private equity firms, big banks, are able to eliminate risk for themselves
through these complex financial products, through these securities, but
meanwhile, our own lives, our own communities, are getting significantly less
secure.
AMY GOODMAN: Why rental properties? Why are they—turn a profit for
these equity companies?
LAURA GOTTESDIENER: In New York, the bet was that private equity firms could
buy up an incredible number of rent-regulated buildings and force the tenants
to leave. And by forcing them out, they—based on New York City tenant law,
these owners now have the opportunity to raise the rents dramatically. The
tenant laws in New York City is that if you’ve been living in an apartment for
a long time, there’s a cap on the amount that the rent can go up each year. If
a long-term tenant goes out, leaves, then you can raise the rent dramatically.
So the bet by these private equity firms was that they could buy up these
apartments and just force people out—at a rate that was, I mean, spectacular. In
one deal, they bet, essentially—Rockpoint, a private equity firm, bet that in
five years they would be able to force 50 percent of the tenants out of their
properties. The turnover for rent-regulated properties in New York City is 5
percent. So, the reason we call this a predatory equity deal is because there
is no way—and you can testify to this—there is no way that they could hit these
financial projections without doing things like cutting off the heat, cutting
off the water, cutting off the hot water, allowing vermin infestations to
fester—all of these abuses to push people out of their homes.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Ben Warren, tell us your story and the buildings
that you have been helping to organize now for quite some time.
BENJAMIN WARREN: Well, I’m in 1511 Sheridan, 1511-1521 Sheridan Avenue. And
that building—
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: This is in the Bronx.
BENJAMIN WARREN: In the Bronx, correct, the South Bronx. Well, in that
building, we have problems with—one is—one time it was a problem with the heat,
hot water. They found a way of just shutting off the heat, turning it on at a
certain time, shutting it off at a certain time. They have a thing about rent.
Tenants will move in those apartments. They say, "OK, you have to pay
three rents. You have to pay a month’s rent, a month’s security and a month’s
broker’s fee." Now, I make it clear to the tenants that if you didn’t—
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Now, this is for tenants who are already living in the
apartments?
BENJAMIN WARREN: No, tenants that’s coming in for the first time.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Oh, coming in, OK.
BENJAMIN WARREN: They would charge them a broker’s fee. And I tell them,
"Now, wait a minute. Did you see a broker? Did you contract with a
broker?" They say, "No, I just came to the building. I saw the super.
And, OK, we end up paying a broker’s fee." "Why? Did you know that
broker’s fee was illegal, because you did not contract with a broker?"
They don’t know this.
But then, we have
other problems, like tenants moving into a new apartment. If the previous
tenant was there, and he’s only paying $626, the new tenant come in, they’re
paying a thousand dollars, which is way above the equity price of that
apartment. Yet, if a tenant bring in another relative or another member to live
in that apartment with them, they will raise the rent again, to $120, $160
more. And this is going on kind of rapid, you know, just regular with Colonial
Management.
AMY GOODMAN: You’ve called the city to complain about conditions like
not having fire or proper routes to get out?
BENJAMIN WARREN: That’s correct. I—
AMY GOODMAN: What’s the issue?
BENJAMIN WARREN: Well, first of all, as everybody knows, we have—you must
have a secondary exit to get out of the building. If you have emergency where
you can’t leave the front of the building, you must be able to have a secondary
way to get out. In my building, 1511-1521, they blocked off the secondary
exits. So, one time, they actually blocked off the secondary exits for 1511, so
you couldn’t get out if there was an emergency. They blocked off the CDC and C&D [phon.] side, where
if they had to get out of the building through a secondary exit, they can’t get
out. They’re blocked. They’re stuck.
AMY GOODMAN: So what is the city doing about it?
BENJAMIN WARREN: Well, first of all, we had the fire department come in.
They issued violations that these are illegal gates. As of yet, they’re still
there.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you tell us about Ocelot, Laura?
LAURA GOTTESDIENER: Sure. Ocelot was a real estate company based in New York
that was backed by private equity money from Israeli private equity companies.
It—I’m using the past tense because it essentially all but disappeared in the
midst of this crisis that it orchestrated. It bought up a number of properties
up in the Bronx and immediately started creating unlivable situations, with the
goal of forcing tenants out. We’re talking about no heat. We’re talking about
no hot water. Sometimes we’re talking about no water at all. We’re talking
about ceilings caving in, pipes bursting. One tenant organizer who went up and
did a site visit said that she found a family living with no bathroom and three
small children.
And, you know, people
always ask, "Well, why don’t people just move?" But we have to
contextualize this in the midst of a much broader housing crisis that we’re
very much still living through. So, you know, when people have this rent
regulation or they have a housing voucher and it’s affiliated with a building,
it’s attached to a building that they can afford, but even if it’s unlivable,
people will stay and fight for the right to live in the city where their job
is, where their community is, where their family is. And so, Ocelot really made
headlines by highlighting the fact that these private equity firms were
creating situations that people can’t conceive families are living through in
New York City.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And what’s been the response of the regulatory officials
on some of these issues? I know when Eliot Spitzer was attorney general, he
went after some of the groups, but he actually himself is from a landlord
family, and he didn’t go after them too vigorously. And now with attorney
general—then Andrew Cuomo came in as attorney general; now you have Eric
Schneiderman. What’s been their response to these abuses?
LAURA GOTTESDIENER: Yeah, that’s a great question. I mean, we did see the
Attorney General’s Office sue Vantage, which is one of the landlords of
Benjamin’s building, for a systemic attempt to force people out by sending
illegal eviction notices. We really have to highlight: These are illegal
actions. Sending illegal eviction notices, cutting off the heat, cutting off
the hot water, all of these are illegal. Why haven’t we seen sort of more, you
know, prosecution of these crimes? It’s a question I get all the time. At the
same point, I ask back, you know, "Why are we surprised that they’re
getting away with these types of abuses?" These are the exact same types
of crimes and abuses that we saw rampant during the mortgage crisis. This is
part of a too-big-to-fail mentality. I would also say this is part of a process
that the Bloomberg administration really made its official housing policy, to
gentrify the city, to rezone it, to push low-income and working-class people
out of it, people of color, to turn it into a gilded city. And so, you know, I talked
to a lot of people, for this article, who work inside city agencies. They say
that the city agencies that would sort of prosecute these are underfunded, but
there’s also a lack of political will.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, one of the things that you raise in your article is
that there’s been—the housing market has rebounded, but homeownership has not
increased nationwide.
LAURA GOTTESDIENER: Yeah.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Talk about that.
LAURA GOTTESDIENER: Sure. I mean, so, with that, that, we’re going to the national
level, at which we talk all the time—every single news article is about this
housing recovery. And it never asks who is it a recovery for. But, you know,
this discrepancy between homeownership and rising prices, I think, really gets
to the heart of the matter. We’re seeing home prices rise very rapidly in many
cities across the country. That said, the national homeownership rate is still
falling. So, who’s buying these homes? Well, it’s these private equity firms
like the Blackstone Group, like American Homes for Rent, that are buying up an
incredible number of homes, about 200,000 homes across the country, in what, in
my opinion, can really only be described as a land grab.
AMY GOODMAN: And bundling them.
LAURA GOTTESDIENER: Bundling them and selling off, you know, a bond as a
security to investors all around the world in these rental-backed securities.
What’s exciting to me in the New York City case is that even though, you know,
it’s created an untenable situation for many tenants, we have an example of
everyday, ordinary people organizing and beating these private equity firms.
AMY GOODMAN: We want to thank you both for being with us. Laura
Gottesdiener, who is the author of A
Dream Foreclosed: Black America and the Fight for a Place to Call Home, we’ll
link to your article at TomDispatch, "When Predatory
Equity Hit the Big Apple." And thanks so much, Benjamin Warren. We will continue
to follow your case, as well as so many others in the city and around the
country.
This is Democracy Now! When we come back, there is a vast
banner that’s been laid out in a field in Pakistan that can be seen from the
heavens, or at least from satellites. It’s a picture of a girl. She lost her
family in a drone strike. Stay with us.
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FRIDAY, APRIL 11, 2014
"Imagine Living in a Socialist USA": New Book Envisions Greater Democracy, World Without Capitalism
We end today’s show looking at a new book
titled "Imagine: Living in a Socialist USA." The book features essays by many prominent people,
including Michael Moore, Angela Davis, Frances Fox Piven, Martín Espada, Rick
Wolff and Democracy Now! co-host Juan González. The book comes out at a time
when polls show Americans aged 18 to 29 have a more favorable reaction to the
word "socialism" than "capitalism." The book is co-edited
by the legendary book agent Frances Goldin, who has worked in the publishing
world for more than six decades and will turn 90 years old in June. In 1951, at
age 27, Goldin ran for New York State Senate on an American Labor Party slate
headed by W.E.B. Du Bois. Goldin joins us now along with one of her co-editors,
Michael Smith. He is a New York City attorney and a board member of the Center
for Constitutional Rights.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in
its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We end today’s show looking at a new book titled Imagine: Living in a Socialist USA.
It is co-edited by the legendary book agent Frances Goldin, who has worked in
the publishing world for over six decades. Goldin turns 90 years old in May.
She has said she has long had two goals left in life. One was to help free
Mumia Abu-Jamal. The other was to publish a book about socialism in the United
States.
AMY GOODMAN: While Frances Goldin is still working to help free Mumia
Abu-Jamal, her book on socialism was recently published. The book features
essays by Michael Moore and Angela Davis, Frances Fox Piven, Martín Espada,
Rick Wolff and our own Juan González. Frances Goldin joins us now, along with
one of her co-editors, Michael Smith. He’s a New York City attorney, author,
and board member of the Center for Constitutional Rights.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! So, Frances, tell us about why this
has been an aspiration of yours to publish a book on socialism.
FRANCES GOLDIN: Well, I have been pretty depressed about the route our
country is taking. It was shocking to me, after all the years of struggle and
the gains that we’ve made, with regard to people voting, with regard to women
having rights to abortion if they wanted it, all these hard-won gains being
destroyed by the right, which is—they’ve decided that Democrats are not going
to vote for them, so they’ve—the way they’re fixing it is to prevent people
from voting. And there are many, many states that have laws passed that make it
very hard there. They’re stopping early voting. They’re not allowing weekend
voting. You have to bring in your right arm and take a quart of blood in order
to cast a ballot. This is outrageous. That was one major reason, because we
were running to hell in a handbasket. We weren’t moving toward democracy; we
were moving toward fascism. And that scared the hell out of me.
And the other reason was the ignorance of the
general population as to what socialism really is. They didn’t have a clue.
And, of course, the media made sure they didn’t have a clue. And I thought it
was important in plain English—not in academese, but in plain English—and for
that, I credit our editor, Steve Wishnia, who did a wonderful job of making all
of these theories into plain English, so that students, high school students,
college students, and the masses of people who read their daily news could
understand what we were trying to say about what socialism would be like, not
in Russia, not in China, but in our United States. And I think the book
succeeds in making clear how people would benefit, not be harmed, by socialism,
because it has to be the most democratic form of government ever conceived.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Michael, how did Frances get you involved in this
project? And also, to the surprise of many, the book is being published by
HarperCollins, the Rupert Murdoch publishing company. How did that happen?
MICHAEL STEVEN SMITH: The demon of the publishing world, as Alex Cockburn said.
I knew Frances from Mumia defense work. Incidentally, the profits, if we make
any from this book, are all going to Mumia’s defense. Frances said, "I
don’t want a small, left-wing publisher. I want a major publisher." So she
went to Oxford, and the guy said, "This book isn’t balanced enough."
So Frances said, "What the hell do you mean, 'balanced enough'? What do
you want? A half a chapter on fascism?" But we lost there.
So then she went to
Harper. And Frances has dealings with Harper through her agency. They turned
her down. They said, "Well, we don’t think—our marketing people said that
we can’t sell enough books." So Frances says, "Let me remind you of
something. I gave you Barbara Kingsolver. I gave you the book that sold second
most, next to the Bible, in the world, Goodnight
Moon. And I want this book published." So they called her back, and
they said, "Frances, your passion has won out. Come up and see us."
So Frances and I and
my wife, Debby Smith, who is the other co-editor, go up to their office on 53rd
Street near Fifth Avenue. We meet with the executive vice president, a British
guy. He’s got one of those offices that looks like a living room, you know,
with a couch and a chair and tables, a desk, everything. We walk in, and on the
couch are two pillows. One’s got a drawing of Queen Elizabeth II, and the other
pillow has got a drawing of Karl Marx. So I said, "Mr. Burnham, this is an
auspicious beginning." And he laughed. He’s a congenial British guy. And
he said, "What’s your definition of socialism?" I said, "Well, it’s
not only political democracy, but it’s economic democracy, where people take
over and run the resources that affect their lives." And he said,
"Will you take $10,000 as an advance?" And I said, "Will you
plow it into promoting the book?" And he said, "We’ll try." And
I said, "Well, we’ve got a deal." So that’s how we got, of all
places, Harper’s.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, on that issue, that question, "What is
socialism?" Michael, for people who—in this country, the media rarely
talks about it, to say the least—if it’s ever mentioned, in a disparaging way.
MICHAEL STEVEN SMITH: You know, Paul Le Blanc—the book is set up in three
sections. The first is an indictment of capitalism. That’s easy. All you’ve got
to do is tune into Democracy
Now! every morning, and you
realize what’s going on. The second part, and the meat of the book—and we can
talk about this in a second—but it’s got 20 chapters on everything you can
imagine, every institution in this society, and how it would be different if we
didn’t have capitalism. And the last part of the book are six essays on how we
get from where we are to where we want to be, how to make that transformation.
And your essay, Juan, I have to say—it’s a book full of wisdom, not the least
of which is your essay on immigrants and the role that they’ll play in that
transformation.
But in any case, in a
word, Paul Le Blanc writes—he’s a historian, and he wrote one of the chapters
on how to transform it. He says, socialism involves people taking control of
their own lives, shaping their own futures, and together controlling the
resources that make such freedom possible. ... Socialism will come to nothing
if it is not a movement of the great majority in the interests of the great
majority. ... People can only become truly free through their own
efforts." That’s a good Passover message, by the way. That’s our
definition of socialism. It’s true democracy.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Frances, one of the—to me, the most striking essays—there
were many in the book—was the one by Mumia and Angela Davis on the
prison-industrial complex. First of all, how did you manage to put together
that collaboration between the two of them, one incarcerated and one traveling
around the world, and also the importance of that particular essay?
FRANCES GOLDIN: Well, it was easy, because Angela Davis was a supporter of
Mumia’s freedom. So they were not unknown to each other. Also, she wrote a book
about the end of prisons. So it was a natural for us. It was not easy, because
he’s in prison, she’s free. They had to collaborate by stuff going back and forth.
It was very complicated.
But what they came up
with was an entirely different approach to how we deal with so-called crime.
And it’s more like what was done by Native Americans when they had people which
broke laws—who broke laws. And they were tried, so to speak, by their peers—by
their mothers and fathers and doctors and chiefs, etc.—who embarrassed them in
front of the community and made them feel bad about what they had done and what
they could do to overcome their crime. So it was done—it was called "the
commons." It was done by the community, in the community, for the
community. And that’s why she says, get rid of prisons; just have local
tribunals, where the people who know this person, man or woman, can put them on
the right track.
It’s revolutionary,
but makes a lot of sense, because our prison system locks up millions of people
who have never committed a crime in their life, the prime one being Mumia
Abu-Jamal, who never killed anybody. And the woman who is grieving her departed
husband, she grieved for the person who really killed the guy, and not for
Mumia, who had nothing to do with that murder, and who has, incidentally,
become one of the leading intellectuals in the United States. And I am now
working on his seventh book. And all of his books have been in print for 30
years, and every one of them remains in print and continues to sell.
AMY GOODMAN: In January, we interviewed Kshama Sawant, one of the few Socialists to
hold elected office in the country. She is an economics teacher and former
Occupy Wall Street activist who was elected to Seattle’s City Council after she
ran on a campaign to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour. We asked Sawant why
she decided to run as a Socialist.
KSHAMA SAWANT: The important thing about running as a Socialist is, you
know, for one, to show that there is a definite openness for clear
alternatives, not only to the big business parties, but the system that they
represent, the capitalist system. And if you look at recent polls, they show
that people, especially young people, are much more open to socialism than you
would find out from the corporate media. People are also fed up with the
political dysfunction.
AMY GOODMAN: That is the new Socialist Seattle City Councilmember
Kshama Sawant. Michael Smith? And also, as we wrap up, because we have less
than a minute right now, when people say, "You choose democracy, or you
choose capitalism," the contradiction in that?
MICHAEL STEVEN SMITH: Capitalism is incompatible with democracy. Fascism is
compatible with capitalism, but not—democracy and capitalism don’t go. And we
can see that trend. We did a book—Michael Ratner wrote the introduction—on Bill
Kunstler’s writings, one of the founders of the Center for Constitutional
Rights, and we called it The
Emerging Police State. And people said, "Well, it’s a little over the
top, you know?" But it’s exactly what’s happening. And as Juan points out
in his chapter, we either develop some socialist leadership and build a
left-wing alternative here, or we’re going to have fascism. That’s the
direction things are going in. So, Imagine:
Living in a Socialist USA will
help people get from where we are to where we want to be.
AMY GOODMAN: We want to thank you both for being with us. Frances
Goldin, literary agent, she was the literary agent for Adrienne Rich, she was
for Barbara Kingsolver, Mumia Abu-Jamal, housing activist for over 60 years,
and she will be turning 90—I understand that we were making you a little older
than you were—in June. And so we wish you a happy pre-birthday. Michael Smith,
thanks so much for being with us, as well, co-editors of Imagine: Living in a Socialist USA.
That does it for the broadcast. Yes?
MICHAEL STEVEN SMITH: Brooklyn Folk Festival, the weekend after next in
Brooklyn.
AMY GOODMAN: We’ll let people know.
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