Jason

STOP THE AMAZON BOSTON DEAL

Locals have until Oct 19 to say ‘No Public Bribes to Corporate Scofflaws’

Sept. 12, 2017

BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS

Fresh off of throwing tens of millions of dollars at General Electric, Boston Mayor Marty Walsh and Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker are now planning to enter the international horse race to convince Amazon to let the city and the commonwealth shovel vast amounts of public money at it in exchange for building a new second headquarters (“HQ2” for short) here.

But this HQ2 won’t be just any corporate headquarters. No no no. None of this GE business — with maybe kinda sorta up to a piddling 800 jobs at a new Boston HQ at some point. Amazon plans to put 50,000 workers in its new digs. Fast.

Thing is, the bulk of those jobs are apparently slated for software developers. Which, true, our colleges produce in some numbers. But most of the students who train for high-tech jobs are from “outta town.” So the new jobs are not going to benefit our shell-shocked Boston-area working class. If the Seattle experience is any guide, the gigs they’re going to get from the deal will be the same unstable jobs as subcontractors — ranging from cafeteria workers to security guards — that they’re already struggling to survive on now. And those jobs do not “raise” any “boats” in anyone’s fantasy scheme of how capitalist economics works.

For both the city and the state, there’s another big red flag: Amazon proposes to spend $5 billion building a campus of around 8 million square feet. Leaving aside the lack of the necessary 100-acre plot in or near downtown Boston, that kind of build-out is going to place a huge burden on both our metro housing and transportation infrastructures. Yet Amazon is coming on to cities like Boston with hand outstretched. Looking for the tax breaks and direct aid (read: bribes) that all big companies expect when they move to a new location these days. And after starving even more social programs to pay for this latest boondoggle, what are working families going to get back from the huge multinational?

Probably not much. According to the New York Times, Amazon only paid an average local, state, federal, and foreign tax rate of 13 percent between 2007 and 2015 — far less than the official federal corporate tax rate of 35 percent alone, and less than even the 15 percent corporate tax rate that the Trump administration is trying to pass. Given that Boston real estate developers have been allowed to build primarily “luxury” condo complexes in the last many years, vacant units will be quickly snatched up by Amazon employees, and then the remaining downmarket properties will be upgraded by landlords looking to cash in. The result will be even more Bostonians without decent housing, legions more homeless people, and little new tax revenue to pay for the mounting social crisis thus created — or for making the desperately needed repairs and upgrades to our crumbling and utterly underfunded public transportation infrastructure.

Back on the labor tip, Amazon has gone out of its way to crush even the most insignificant union drives at its facilities worldwide since its inception. As when a small group of maintenance and repair technicians at its Middletown, Delaware, facility voted 21–6 against joining the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers after an intense management campaign against the workers. Meanwhile, in Germany, where better labor policies and worker militance have forced Amazon to accept some unionization, management was recently shown to be “using peer pressure” to convince workers to not use their government-guaranteed sick days. No surprise, for a company which has made some of its warehouse workers walk 15 miles a day on a typical shift.

So is this the kind of company we should let state and local government bigs lavish public money on?

Hell no. And there’s one big reason, aside from the above, why we shouldn’t. Allowing a company as large as Amazon to suddenly parachute a huge operation into our midst means it will immediately command an inordinate amount of political and economic power in Boston and Massachusetts. Particularly, the ability to threaten a capital strike in the form of leaving the area if any future demands for public lucre aren’t met.

Once Amazon arrives, it is going to distort the metro political economy so severely that we’ll be stuck with it. The ultimate white elephant.

Which is why any potential Amazon Boston deal must be stopped — with even more finality than the Olympics deal was torpedoed. Fortunately, unlike the GE Boston Deal — that got sprung on Boston and Massachusetts residents after months of secret negotiations — there’s still time to organize a very strong “NO” campaign. The deadline for Boston to get a proposal to Amazon is Oct 19.

Readers have a bit over a month to force Walsh, Baker, and other local pols to stand down on this one. I recommend hitting the ground running.

Apparent Horizon is syndicated by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism. Jason Pramas is BINJ’s network director, and executive editor and associate publisher of DigBoston. Copyright 2017 Jason Pramas. Licensed for use by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism and media outlets in its network.

THAT ‘FREE SPEECH’ THING

Photo by Kori Feener

Mayor Walsh and various police agencies were no friends of civil liberties at Boston’s monster protests against the ultra right

August 22, 2017

BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS

Despite the “mission accomplished” happy talk in most of the news media, Saturday’s 40,000-strong Boston protests against extremism — and the tiny ultra-right rally that sparked them — were only wins for free speech to the degree their organizers and participants made them so. From a civil liberties perspective, they were highly problematic affairs.

First, Mayor Marty Walsh and various department heads in Boston city government slapped the right-wing rally with ridiculous restrictions on what otherwise would have been a very standard rally permit. Although scheduled for a public park that hosts dozens of similar rallies every year, only 100 people were allowed to attend. On the day of the event, the rally site — Parkman Bandstand on Boston Common — was surrounded by fences and a large number of police. The cops kept virtually everyone out of the arbitrarily-imposed cordon sanitaire — including a number of people who said they were supposed to participate in the rally and, as DigBoston reporter Sarah Betancourt criticized in the Columbia Journalism Review, the entire press corps.

Now, city solons certainly had reason to be concerned. But that doesn’t change the fact that, regardless of their extremist politics, the reactionaries had the right to hold a rally on the Common, and that right was severely and probably illegally curtailed.

Second, Boston Police Department Commissioner Bill Evans stated at a press conference last week that Boston would not use riot police at the outset of the protests and that “we plan on handling this on a very soft approach. You won’t see the helmets and sticks out there.” Yet “helmets and sticks” were very much the order of the day.

Platoons of Boston police and Mass State Police in nearly identical black riot gear were deployed all around the protests. Some were used to escort attendees of the right-wing rally off the Common when it ended and into waiting police wagons. But as Chris Faraone and other DigBoston reporters witnessed, those wagons tried to leave on the Boylston Street side of the Common where huge numbers of protesters were essentially trapped in relatively small spaces. When trying to move the wagons out of the park, the riot cops on hand did what riot cops do — they started shoving people, hitting them, and inevitably arresting those who argued they had nowhere to go. They even pepper-sprayed some people later in the afternoon.

That’s a problem right there — and the early stories we’re hearing from several of the 30 people arrested all around the protests are similar — but it’s not clear why the right-wingers were given a police escort at all. Aside from some black bloc-style antifa groups that typically limit themselves to defensive violence, and maybe a few random tough kids looking for a fight, the overwhelming majority of protest attendees were there to demonstrate peacefully. So the right-wingers were in little danger.

Ultimately, the BPD fielded at least 500 officers — including riot police and an unknown number of undercover cops. The MSP had around 200 troopers available and definitely deployed at least some of them, the MBTA Transit Police had a “substantial presence” including undercovers on duty, and security forces from other agencies were doubtless also on the ground. There’s really no way of knowing the total number of cops at this time. But even assuming the rough numbers we have are in the ballpark, that’s a lot of cops to deploy to a right-wing extremist rally that had already been cowed into submission by serious violations of its organizers’ rights to freedom of speech and assembly, and by the impressive outpouring of nonviolent protesters against it.

All of this is simply unacceptable in a democratic society. It’s perhaps understandable that any city government will have a police presence at such a big political event. But it makes little sense to have hundreds of cops — including militarized “robocops” — from a number of local, state, and, almost certainly, federal agencies on hand. Unless the city, state, and federal governments were more concerned about the protests against the ultra-right extremists than they were about the extremists. Which would absolutely be in keeping with the policies of most levels of American government — in ceaseless and ongoing collusion with the capitalists that own the country — since the founding of the nation. The things this “large-s” State fears most of all have always been democracy and social justice.

Returning to my first point: Why should anyone care about the right-wing extremists having their civil liberties violated Saturday? Because if the government can do that to a motley crew of nazis, fascists, racists, and little weasel shitposters of the type I regularly mock and deride on the interwebs, then they can do it to the broad left wing… and, well, anyone really. Which means that protestors interested in defending democracy won’t succeed by beating back a still-weak ultra-right street sideshow. No. The incipient movement for democracy won’t have won until the rise of what’s looking very much like a corporatist police state is stopped. But it wasn’t even slowed on Saturday. Quite the reverse actually.

Sign up for the Daily Dig newsletter here: tiny.cc/DailyDig

A PROTEST BY ANY OTHER NAME…

The best way to defeat the ultra right is to stop playing their game

August 15, 2017

BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS

Street protest is a vital part of any genuinely democratic political system. But how and when people choose to demonstrate (or counterdemonstrate) determines the tactic’s relative success or failure. So in a situation like this week’s, when the ultra right is planning to hold a Boston rally in the wake of a similar event that caused the deaths of one left-winger and two cops in Charlottesville, what is the most effective way for the left — led by those political groups that believe in democracy, equality, human rights, and social justice — to grow their ranks while helping stop the reactionary drive for power in its tracks? At least in this corner of the US.

As I see it, there are three possible ways for the left to respond to public actions by right-wing extremists in the current moment. Here’s a quick look at each with my gloss.

1) Lead: Educate and organize for the long haul.

Organizing target: People who already agree with left ideas, and the huge middle ground of fence-sitters who will work with whichever side makes the strongest effort to talk to them.

With this approach, left organizers generally do not respond directly to particular ultra-right actions. Instead, they always seek to set the political agenda in society. To reach out to the vast sea of unorganized folks in a diverse array of communities and engage them in discussion and debate about matters like racism in American society. To build a culture that makes it impossible for the hard right to operate in the open. This option is often misconstrued by more militant left activists as “doing nothing,” but that is far from the case. Winning hearts and minds — especially in suburban communities that the left has failed to pay attention to for decades — is the most important political work of all, because it results in a strong political base and makes better political solutions to societal problems possible. It is also a majoritarian strategy because it seeks to build the largest possible social movement. And it has the added bonus of depriving the ultra right of publicity.

2) React: Hold counterdemonstrations every time the ultra right calls a public action.

Organizing target: The activist left.
This approach involves left organizers taking the bait and dropping longer-term organizing work to attempt to blunt ultra-right public initiatives. Which allows the ultra right to dictate both the terms of debate and the terrain of political struggle. Also, in the interest of speed, it forces the left to narrow its outreach to activists that are already pushing for its ideas. If repeated frequently, this option leads away from political solutions to societal crises by leaving power in the hands of the current capitalist duopoly, and it causes the ultra right to be perceived as more powerful than they actually are — since political strength is often judged by the size of a group’s enemies. Thus a rally of a few hundred will be taken much more seriously by many if thousands of people directly respond to it — ironically, assisting the ultra right’s PR and thence helping them to grow rather than shrink.

3) Provoke: Attempt to defeat the ultra right militarily.

Organizing target: The small number of left activists willing to take up arms against the right in this time and place, and the small number of allies who think that it’s a good idea to do so.

This approach involves giving the ultra right what they want most of all: violent street fights. It requires responding to the armed militias organized by the hard right with what amounts to left-wing militias. Which I think is a very bad idea in this place and time. Because it means activist militants must, by default, restrict their organizing to the very small groups of people willing to take up arms against their ultra-right antagonists in any given community. It tends to alienate huge numbers of people who don’t think it’s wise to try to fight fire with fire… and causes people who could have been organized into the left to be disorganized into fence-sitters. It also feeds the fantasy of actually beating the ultra right badly enough that they exit the political stage. Which is a highly unlikely outcome for the simple reason that right-wing militias have a big head start on any left imitators in both armament and training. Plus many militia members have military and police backgrounds, yet very few left-wingers have spent much time in either institution. Giving the ultra right far more allies in the police and military — and therefore in government. With those connections in place, a right-wing government like the Trump administration will certainly use any significant left violence as the excuse for a massive state crackdown on all of the ultra right’s political opponents. And even without such a crackdown, on a practical level, ultra-right recruitment increases every time they get in a street fight. Pursuing this course tends to make them stronger. Because they look badass whether they lose or win. If they lose, that feeds into their claim that “white people are oppressed by ‘Social Justice Warriors.’” If they win, it looks like history is on their side.

And history is definitely not right now. But if the left wants to ensure the victory of the ultra right in this period, pursuing the military option will virtually guarantee it.

That said, my favorite choice is obviously the first one. I hope that local left leaders will take my comments to heart, and that both the right and left will de-escalate their tactics enough to let traditional political activity supplant the looming downward spiral toward violent conflict. Because, if history is any guide, the latter path leads our society to a place we really don’t want to go.

Apparent Horizon is syndicated by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism. Jason Pramas is BINJ’s network director, and executive editor and associate publisher of DigBoston. Copyright 2017 Jason Pramas. Licensed for use by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism and media outlets in its network.

Sign up for the Daily Dig newsletter here: tiny.cc/DailyDig

STRIKE. IRON. HOT.

Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) demonstration with Joseph J. Ettor speaking from platform to striking barbers in Union Square, New York. (1913)

You don’t need a union to take action for justice on the job

July 18, 2017

BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS

Last week 1,200 Tufts Medical Center nurses unionized with the Mass Nurses Association (MNA) called a rare one day strike for a better deal on their latest contract. This doubtless left many onlookers — especially younger ones — scratching their heads and asking “what’s a strike?” No surprise, given the American corporate media’s ideological aversion to covering all matters labor, past and present. But fortunately a willful omission that is easily remedied by news outlets willing to honestly discuss the political economic struggles of working people.

A strike occurs when any group of workers refuses to work. Usually to demand reforms on the job like better pay, benefits, and working conditions. Although commonly perceived as an action that can only be taken by members of a labor union, that is not the case. Historically, workers struck long before there were formal unions — and more recently, the right of most workers in the private sector to strike was enshrined in section 7 of the New Deal era National Labor Relations Act of 1935. The salient part of which reads:

Employees shall have the right to self-organization, to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing, and to engage in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection…

The Supreme Court supported the idea that any group of workers covered by the NLRA had the right to strike and engage in “other concerted activities” — whether unionized or not — in the 1962 decision National Labor Relations Board v. Washington Aluminum Company. Finding that a group of seven ununionized workers had the right to refuse to work in an unheated factory in the dead of winter until its furnace was repaired.

Naturally, most formal strikes are called by organized unions like the MNA, but it’s worth focusing on the right of ununionized workers to strike because we live in an era when labor unions have been beaten down by giant corporations and the rich people who own them. To the point where the vast majority of all working people in the US are not unionized. Over 89 percent of us in fact. Much research indicates that the precipitous decline in living standards for American families since 1979 is directly connected to the decline of union power. Notably a 2016 study by the Economic Policy Institute “Union decline lowers wages of nonunion workers” that demonstrates the important role unions play in increasing wages for all workers when they are strong.

But another way of looking at the situation is that worker militance on the job has been in steep decline over the same period that unions have been smacked down to the proverbial curb. When strikes were common, working people got the goods. As strikes have become more and more infrequent since the 1970s, the fortunes of the working class (which by the way includes all you supposedly “middle class” people out there who wear dressier clothes to work and have fancy degrees) have trended downward.

This state of affairs is certainly the fault of the “one percent” who control the commanding heights of capital, but blame can also be laid at the feet of many American unions — which have become decidedly less willing to fight over the decades since they won concessions like the NLRA from bosses and the government. Its leaders preferring to put their dwindling funds and often woefully limited political aspirations into backing Democrats for office at all levels. Who — on the rare occasions that they get elected now that most Americans understand them to be bought and paid for by the same ruling class that has made the Republicans into a caricature of a political party — continue to backstab working families with depressing regularity.

So workers in Boston and beyond, unionized and ununionized, need to step up and start exercising their NLRA right to “concerted activities” on the job… up to and including strikes. Before we all lose that right. The Trump administration is many things, but it is no friend of working people. And any damage it does to labor will not be undone by corporate Democrats or anyone else without pressure from below. Strikes, aside from their instrumental value, are very much part of the necessary political pressure for a more fair and just America.

It won’t be easy. Many, many laws have been passed by Democratic and Republican administrations alike since the McCarthy Era to reverse pro-labor reforms and stop working people from fighting for their rights on the job. People who do so will definitely lose battles on their way to building a better society. Believe me, I know. I have taken such risks inside and outside of unions, and lost jobs on more than one occasion.

But there will also be many victories. And as Frederick Douglass, a man who did not just help lead the abolitionist movement to victory, but was also elected president of the Colored National Labor Union in 1872, said:

Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.

If you believe in democracy, on and off the job, then you will stand with union workers like the Tufts nurses when they strike. And you will take the fight to your workplace — whether it’s unionized or not. Reviving existing unions and building new ones along the way. And then onward to vie for control of the halls of power.

Apparent Horizon is syndicated by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism. Jason Pramas is BINJ’s network director, and executive editor and associate publisher of DigBoston. Copyright 2017 Jason Pramas. Licensed for use by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism and media outlets in its network.

REAL RIDESHARING

Evolving the way the world moves … beyond Uber (and Lyft)

July 7, 2017

BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS

The following column was written as commentary for the July 2017 episode of the Beyond Boston monthly video news digest — produced by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism and several area public access television stations. It’s aimed at suburbanites, but fun for the whole Boston area family.

Over the years, I’ve often written about how to improve public transportation in the Bay State. But this time out, rather than rehash my standing call for the legislature to raise taxes on the rich and corporations to properly fund such a necessary service, I’d like to take a different tack and discuss a topic germane to the future of both transportation in general and public transportation in particular. Specifically, the so-called ridesharing industry pioneered by corporations like Uber and Lyft.

Ridesharing is a transportation system in which riders and drivers interact via software on cell phones, rather than going through human dispatchers. The software allows riders to see which drivers are near them, and to have the closest one assigned to them. It provides price estimates for rides, features seamless automatic payments from rider to driver at the end of each trip — and it incentivizes simple but important things like drivers keeping their vehicles clean.

One would think this ridesharing system would be great for riders and drivers alike, but that’s not the case. The problem with ridesharing … is that it’s not really ridesharing. That is, Uber and Lyft and smaller companies like Fasten completely control their operations from top to bottom. Including the economic structure that determines how much riders will pay in fares — and what cut of those fares go to drivers. This system is non-transparent and largely unregulated.

An actual ridesharing system would be controlled by its riders and drivers. It could, and I would posit should, be publicly managed. In short, rather than allow ridesharing companies to assist in the dismantling of existing public transit systems like the MBTA by gradually privatizing them, those systems — or agencies set up by individual cities — could run municipal ridesharing services at cost.

Fares would be regulated in ways that would ensure riders the best fares — which poor and working class riders would be able to consistently afford. A small percentage of each fare would go to the municipal rideshare service to develop and maintain the necessary software and infrastructure. Then all the extra money that presently flows into the coffers of Uber and Lyft top brass and investors would be paid to drivers in the form of the best possible wages.

Such a service would be an excellent adjunct to public trains and buses, and would make it much easier for everyone to get from point A to point B. Plus it would be far more democratic because it could be organized to ensure that riders and drivers would play a large role in managing the service. It could even be run as a hybrid of a consumer and a worker cooperative. And democratically controlled from top to bottom. Restricting the growth of Uber and Lyft to something like their natural share of the private transportation market by its mere existence.

Going the public route — or at least a similar nonprofit route being experimented with by RideAustin in Austin, TX — would satisfy the needs of the loyal base of Uber and Lyft clients by providing comparable service at a better price point. And it would also satisfy the needs of a whole new layer of riders who will be able to afford access to new municipal ridesharing services on a regular basis — in addition to public buses, trolleys, and trains. All while paying living wages to drivers. Who are, after all, the backbone of the current corporate ridesharing system. But who are also the most exploited by it.

GETTING TO BIKE

Urban multimodal network needed to make bicycles a viable alternative in the ’burbs

June 21, 2017

BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS

The following column was written as commentary for the June 2017 episode of the Beyond Boston monthly video news digest — produced by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism and several area public access television stations. It’s aimed at suburbanites, but fun for the whole Boston area family.

There are many merits to backing legislation, regulations, and customs that make it easier for people to use bicycles to get around. Improving individual health by getting more people more exercise, improving public health and global warming prospects by reducing carbon emissions, and relieving traffic congestion to name just a few. And over the last four decades, many communities have created bike lanes and bike paths, installed bike racks, and limited certain streets to pedestrians and bikes for those very reasons.

The problem is that the societal benefits that come with an expanding bike culture are unevenly distributed. In the car-centered suburbs — meaning most of the US — using a bike as a primary transportation mode is more difficult and significantly more dangerous than it is in many cities. And the distances people have to pedal to get to jobs or shop are longer — stopping more people from getting out of their cars and onto bikes day to day.

Ameliorating that situation will require better regional planning with an eye toward creating bigger, better public transportation networks that link to bicycle infrastructure in their “last mile.” Then building bike lanes from the network hubs where buses, trains, and trolleys converge. Out to the neighborhoods where people live.

It will also require a change in thinking by millions of people who are used to jumping into their cars anytime they need to go anywhere. Be it 100 miles or, all too often, only a few blocks away. Such a change means that people will need a pretty big incentive to begin to do things differently.

So here’s one important incentive: life is easier when you don’t have to rely on a car to get around. In cities like Boston, more and more people are riding their bikes to subway stops or bus stops in the morning, parking them there, taking the T to work, and reversing those steps in the evening. Many others ride their bikes all the way to work — moving much faster on average than the cars stuck in traffic around them. Still more use our growing rental bike system, Hubway.

From my perspective, living and working in the city spares me the expense of a car. And, more importantly, I don’t need to own one to get around. I live a couple of blocks from four bus lines, and a 10-minute walk from two T stops. With a bike, that 10 minutes plus any wait time becomes two or three minutes. And skipping the T and biking across town takes 20 to 30 minutes. Even in busy traffic.

When it’s time to shop, one can either use a bike equipped with a basket or trailer. Or take a bus or train both ways. Or walk or bike to the nearest market and take a cab back, if buying heavy stuff. Or take a cab both ways. Or use a car sharing service like Zipcar to rent cars and vans by the hour. Myself and fellow urbanites have all these options, and more, because Boston, Cambridge, Somerville, and Brookline all have dense public transportation networks — augmented by quasi-public and private transit options. And a fast-growing separate bicycle infrastructure. Businesses and public services cluster around transportation hubs; so there’s much more for me to do much closer to home than when I lived in the suburbs.

In general, this means that I have more leisure time in the city than many people in the suburbs do because I’m commuting less — and I have more money in my pocket because I don’t have to own a car to get around. I’m also not sitting in traffic for big chunks of my day — so my life is that much less stressful (understanding that every form of transportation has its own problems). Best of all, I can take comfort in the fact that my “carbon footprint” is very small. The amount of carbon that’s burned in the form of oil and natural gas to allow me to be a modern person in an advanced industrial society is much lower than someone who has to own a car. True, housing prices are higher in the city than the ’burbs, but the difference is definitely offset by cheaper transportation costs. And having more free time is invaluable.

My point here is simple. More folks need to get behind policies that make an urban multimodal transportation network possible for the vast majority of US residents — instead of just a minority of Americans in mostly coastal cities. That’s going to require large numbers of people to be more aware that life with bikes and public transit is easier and better in some important respects than life in the current suburban car culture.

And that’s why I’m recounting my daily transportation experience here. So that you all think it over, and consider joining advocacy coalitions like MassBike in backing policies that improve transportation options in your city or town. And then help fight for more money to vastly expand our public transportation system. Two reforms which will, in tandem, transform suburban biking from a recreational activity, sport, or idiosyncratic form of commuting into a commonplace.

This article was produced in collaboration with the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism as part of its ongoing Vicious Cycle series. Learn more about the project and how you can contribute at binjonline.org, and share your stories about cycling in Greater Boston at facebook.com/binjnetwork

Apparent Horizon is syndicated by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism. Jason Pramas is BINJ’s network director, and executive editor and associate publisher of DigBoston.

PRESS FAIL: AS GE CEO STEPS DOWN, BOSTON JOURNALISTS MUST DO THEIR JOB

June 14, 2017

BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS

A recent column by the Boston Globe‘s Shirley Leung perfectly encapsulates the problem with local media cheerleading for General Electric’s decision to move its headquarters to Boston. The title alone says it all: “Will GE’s new CEO remain committed to Boston?” Because, like so many pieces on the subject by Leung and company, it fails to ask the key question: why did state and local government shovel huge amounts of public money to a private enterprise, and put it in a position to potentially cause grievous harm to a major city’s economy, to begin with? And why did the region’s newspaper of record — and much of the Boston press corps — back the scheme so uncritically?

But now, after all the prattle by fawning journalists about the days of wine and roses to come, it turns out that the various moves GE CEO Jeff Immelt made to reinvent the conglomerate as an “innovation” company came at the expense of a significant drop in profits. And it looks like the GE board balked and forced Immelt out — although the official line is that he “stepped down.” Doubtless after noting a rise in share prices in March after activist investors told Fox News that he might be pushed into retirement. He’s been replaced with a new CEO from within GE’s own ranks, John Flannery. Who hails from Chicago, and may not have the same warm fuzzies for the Hub that Immelt at least pretended to have. If Flannery doesn’t back the Boston deal as strongly as Immelt that could mean disaster for everyone who shilled for it. And if GE’s stock prices continue to tank, fuggedaboutit!

In that spirit, it’s worth recalling that the whole boondoggle was dumped on the public by Mayor Marty Walsh and Gov. Charlie Baker as a done deal in January 2016. There were no public forums on the plan, no deliberation by the state legislature or the Boston City Council, and certainly no referendums. The whole thing was cooked up on the quiet by high level politicians, their aides, and top GE brass. In the end, over $145 million in state and city tax breaks and direct aid was promised to GE — together with another $25 million in state money to fix up the area around the site of the company’s new Fort Point HQ, and up to $100 million in repairs to the Old Northern Ave. bridge. Up to $270 million in public money in total. Although the bridge project is now up in the air; so the final total — as with all final totals in public spending — remains to be seen. Still, a huge amount of money to spend on a vast multinational any way you slice it. Especially when GE is not yet being asked to pay rent for the 20 year lease on the public property its new headquarters is using.

As my own series of columns on the deal showed last year, GE has a decades-long track record of screwing government at all levels, communities it operates in, and its own workers six ways from Sunday. Which is why unearthing corporate crime after corporate crime by way of demonstrating why the people of Massachusetts have absolutely no reason to trust the company did not require much new reporting on my part. It was a relatively simple matter of looking at major investigative stories on GE by several news outlets — including the Globe itself. What I found was disturbing in the extreme. Yet the largest Boston news outlets were virtually silent about the very obvious downsides to championing the payoff of a corporate behemoth to relocate its HQ to our fair city. And now the most prominent of them is clearly getting worried about its violation of the public trust.

To review, General Electric has done a lot of bad stuff over the last forty years — much of it in Massachusetts. It slashed tens of thousands of good unionized jobs here. Destroying the economies of Bay State cities like Lynn, Pittsfield, and Fitchburg in the process. GE played highly illegal games with municipal bond investment funds nationwide — and got away with it. It wreaked havoc with the environment in many of the places it did business. Notably in Pittsfield and the Housatonic River valley south to Long Island Sound. Which it polluted with carcinogenic PCBs. A horrendous mess that it partially cleaned up after a protracted struggle with the EPA and local activists. Yet it continues to try to weasel out of finishing the job to save some small fraction of its annual profits. Like it did in a similar Hudson River cleanup. GE also played a major role in creating the toxic housing debt that led to the 2008 financial crash, and was then bailed out by the federal government with boatloads of practically free public money. In exchange for ruining the lives of thousands of poor mortgage holders. And it did all this while paying hardly any taxes at all relative to its huge size.

Ultimately, far too many area journalists dropped bags of balls with the GE Boston Deal story. If they had been doing their job — instead of engaging in a particularly crass form of unthinking civic boosterism that one would expect of low rent PR consultants for a down-on-the-heels rust belt city — Boston might not be in the position it’s now in. Stuck with a bad deal and light a bunch of money that the city and state desperately need during our ongoing fiscal crisis. Which was created by the very neoliberal playbook that still guides both government policy and kid glove news coverage of same.

But that’s what passes for thinking on economic development in the American press of today. My colleagues in major news media generally don’t push for regional planning controlled by democratically elected politicians and overseen by the public in real ways. They don’t support a grassroots process directly involving local communities that start by asking “what do working families need, and how might those needs be best served?” No, they just figure “let’s encourage the pols to throw public money at big corporations, and then they’ll come to Boston, and we’ll have a great economy.”

Well an economy that’s not great for working people is not a great economy. It’s a bad, unequal economy. And that’s the root of most of our major societal woes in this era.

Whatever happens going forward, I hope that next time top politicians cook up another backroom deal with corporate titans that the rest of the Boston news media will join my teammates and I at DigBoston in calling it what it is: corruption. Those who won’t should just go ahead and get jobs in the sleaziest PR operations they can find. Because they’re not fit to be journalists.

Apparent Horizon is syndicated by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism. Jason Pramas is BINJ’s network director, and executive editor and associate publisher of DigBoston.

THE PEOPLE’S BUDGET

A better way forward for the federal government

May 30, 2017

BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS

At this point, anyone who pays attention to current affairs in even a cursory manner will be aware that President Donald Trump’s proposal for the next federal budget is a savage attack on working families — and a slap across the collective face of the working people who voted for him.

Appropriations for Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”), the Children’s Health Insurance Program, Social Security Disability Insurance, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, Meals on Wheels, the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Public Service (student) Loan Forgiveness program are to be slashed — with funding for programs like Child Care Access Means Parents in School, the Legal Services Corporation, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and the National Endowment for the Arts to be wiped out entirely.

But fear not because Trump offsets domestic immiseration with major increases to the military and law enforcement budgets. Which translates to more dead peasants globally, more dead immigrants at our borders, and more dead black kids at home. Making America great. According to the administration anyway.

No real surprise to anyone who was paying attention to the company Trump was keeping (defense contractors and theocrats and charter school flacks, oh my) during his campaign. Even as he mouthed populist rhetoric that convinced enough white working and middle class voters in swing states to back him that his victory in the Electoral College was assured.

So what’s the alternative? At the moment, the People’s Budget: A Roadmap for the Resistance FY 2018 proposed by the Congressional Progressive Caucus does a reasonable job of pointing to a more positive future for the nation. It hasn’t gotten much coverage, unsurprisingly, but it’s definitely worth a look. Bullet points from the CPC website follow.

Massachusetts Reps. Jim McGovern (D), Mike Capuano (D), and Katherine Clark (D) have all sponsored the forward-thinking budget. Plus a raft of left-leaning Democratic groups and organizations to their left are supporting it. The proposal is obviously a long shot, but you can’t have a successful movement for change without some aspirational campaigns like this one. For more information, and to plug into local activism for the passage of the People’s Budget, check out mass-peoples-budget.org. Readers seeing this column online on Tuesday 5.30.17 can take immediate action at the March Against President Trump’s Budget Plan, tomorrow (Wednesday) at 11:30 am at the Tip O’Neill Federal Building on Causeway Street in Boston.

Invest In America

Invests $2 trillion to transition to a 21st Century infrastructure to transform our energy, water and transportation systems
Closes loopholes so our government agencies use materials made in America
Expands our commitment to efficient renewable energy and green jobs
Invest $100 billion to increase access to reliable, high-speed internet

Affordable Health Care

Maintains critical coverage gains under Affordable Care Act
Lowers costs of prescription drugs
Allows states to transition to single-payer health care systems
Expands access to mental health care and treatments for opioid and heroin addiction
Repeals excise tax on high-priced healthcare plans for workers and replaces with public option

Fair Tax System for Working Families

Ends corporate tax break for offshoring American jobs and profits
Stops companies from renouncing their American citizenship to dodge U.S. taxes
Closes wasteful corporate tax loopholes that cost billions of dollars
Taxes Wall Street to fund Main Street
Ensures profits from investments are finally taxed at the same rate as income taxes
Raises revenue from the wealthiest few who can afford to pay more
Expands the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Care Credit

Justice and Fair Elections

Ensures the justice system is fair and effective for all Americans by increasing funding for voter protection and legal assistance programs
Rebuilds trust in the justice system by developing community oriented policing reforms
Protects American election systems from any interference and increases protections for voting rights by strengthening key election reforms
Funds public financing of campaigns to curb special interest influence in politics
Supports policies and initiatives to significantly reduce gun violence

Educational Opportunities for Every Student

Delivers on the promise of lifting working families up by investing $1 trillion in effective early learning opportunities and for a child care for all program
Makes debt free college a reality for all students
Greater investments in K-12 education
Increases computer science opportunities for all students
Allows refinancing of student loans
Fully funds IDEA and provides Pre-K for all

Pathways Out of Poverty and Empowering the Middle Class

Supports a minimum wage increase and collective bargaining rights
Provides a plan to reduce poverty by half in ten years
Increases discretionary funding to invest in women, communities of color and their families
Provides an increase in Trade Adjustment Assistance for workers
Strengthens the Small Business Administration’s ability to provide support to America’s small business owners
Addresses the pay equity gap

Comprehensive and Just Immigration Reform

Implements comprehensive immigration reform, including a pathway to citizenship
Prohibits funding for construction of any border wall and any immigration policies which seek to ban people from entering the U.S. because of their religion
Supports continued funding to sanctuary cities

Access to Housing

Fully funds programs to make housing affordable and accessible for all Americans
Invests $12.8 billion to end family homelessness

Protecting our Environment

Closes tax loopholes and ends subsidies provided to oil, gas and coal companies
Identifies a price on corporate carbon pollution
Invests in clean, renewable, and efficient energy and green manufacturing

Protecting Our Veterans

Eliminates veterans’ homelessness
Increases access to mental health care for all veteran and service members
Invests in job training opportunities for transitioning service members and veterans

Sustainable Defense: Promoting Peace And Security

Modernizes our defense system to create sustainable baseline defense spending
Ends emergency funding for Overseas Contingency Operations
Increases funding for diplomacy and strategic humanitarian aid
Adds robust funding for refugee resettlement programs

Apparent Horizon is syndicated by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism. Jason Pramas is BINJ’s network director and senior editor of DigBoston.

Check out the Apparent Horizon Podcast on:
iTunes, Google Play Music, Blubrry, Stitcher, TuneIn, and YouTube

BATTLE OF THE NOOBS

Photo by Luke O’Neil

‘Boston Free Speech’ protesters and counter demonstrators both lose the day

May 17, 2017

BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS

Last week’s right-wing Boston Free Speech protest at the Parkman Bandstand on Boston Common did not require a response from the left wing. Let’s get that out of the way up front. The small rally and march of — to be generous — maybe a couple hundred people throughout the course of the day was not newsworthy. Because its political message was incoherent.

By way of proof, check out this rally speech from an older activist I’ll call Scooby Doo:

There’s a reason why these people think the way they do. They are being indoctrinated. They have been indoctrinated since they were very young. Since they were in elementary school that whites are the evil people, that here are the evil white boogeyman. That the white man has his boot on the neck of every minority out there. And that they somehow have to right the wrongs of their ancestors. This is nonsense, people. This is bullshit what they’re trying to do. As if they’re trying to destroy western civilization. And to do that they’re going after whites.

Then compare that to this talk from a younger activist I’ll call Scrappy Doo:

But the shot that was heard was our voices, people. Today we come together united. [Unintelligible] all races, all nationalities, all genders, we don’t discriminate. Contrary to what the left says, if you’re a liberal, you love the constitution, you belong here with we the people. People, this is just the beginning of this movement.

And compare both to these remarks from another younger activist I’ll call Dooby Doo:

This isn’t a Massachusetts thing, this isn’t a white thing, this isn’t a black thing, this is an American thing. And it’s not wrong to say make America great again. It doesn’t mean racist things. Make America great again means let freedom ring. And not it be silenced. We have our veterans to thank for that. So let’s support our veterans to support our rights to freedom of speech, our Second Amendment, and the cops. To all you police, we’re with you.

To review, the speakers platform was shared by an older unreconstructed racist who thinks a decent history education is some kind of communist plot, a younger very accepting guy who thinks the broad left doesn’t like the Constitution, and another younger guy who thinks Trump’s campaign slogan was meant for everyone Black and white — while sending unconditional love to all cops everywhere. Including, by default, racist killer cops. No one was exactly what I’d call “on message.” Because the rally’s message was all over the road … and even the demands its organizers listed in their press release were gonzo: “First, encourage public institutions to reaffirm their commitment to the First Amendment or face cuts to their federal funding; second, label ‘Antifa’ a domestic terrorist organization due to the violence at previous Free Speech events; and third, end the culture of fear surrounding political correctness.”

So, like a hundred small left-wing actions that have been staged at the same location in recent decades — with the same intent of “reaching the public” while suffering from a serious lack of political focus — there was literally no danger at all of rally organizers reaching anyone they weren’t already reaching. Let alone recruiting significant numbers of new people to any hard right organization. Both because it was poorly attended for a regional event and because it was confusing. Like, really confusing. Since the language [e.g. “Kekistan”] and symbols [e.g. the “Kekistan” flag] used by many attendees and speakers are meaningless to anyone who doesn’t spend a large part of their life in online forums shaking their virtual fists of aimless rage at the hated sky.

All in all, if you held a political rally on an island in the middle of a frozen lake in the deepest wilds of the Canadian tundra, you’d likely have more effect on the public discourse than this event would have had.

And how could it be otherwise? The action was run by a mismatched coalition of older right-wing extremists and a larger number of younger hacker types. The main thing that seemed to bring attendees — who were mostly white (with exceptions like three members of a conservative Black family) and male — together was disdain for sectors of the American left that believe it’s important to try to shut down right wingers’ ability to exercise their First Amendment right to free speech. Hence the name of the event.

This was an action, therefore, run in no small part by amateurs. By “noobs” in the parlance of dank corners of the internet — like the 4chan and 8chan imageboard websites where many of the rally organizers found each other. Newbies. People with very little experience in politics, in this case.

That’s great, right? No harm, no foul. A group of people smaller than you’ll find in the average chain restaurant at lunchtime, yelling to each other with megaphones for a couple of hours. Then “taking to the streets” to yell at random passersby. Then calling it a day.

Well, that’s how it would have gone … until some younger inexperienced left-wing activists decided that the event was a manifestation of some kind of new mass fascist organization on our doorstep. And went off on the very “black bloc” trip that pissed off a lot of the hackers enough to have a “free speech” rally in the first place. Given that, as readers may recall, Bay Area black bloc types recently played a role in forcing the cancellation of talks by conservatives Milo Yiannopoulos and Ann Coulter at the University of California, Berkeley. That is, in the absence of forethought, they thought that hiding their faces from the majority of the population who are their natural allies against the confused array of outright reactionary and merely unschooled ideas on offer at the rally was somehow a good plan.

And so it came to pass that an even smaller group of mostly younger people politicized and organized in a different set of internet forums donned a motley assortment of heavy clothing (black being the most prominent color), masks, and in some cases helmets, and stood on Flagstaff Hill looking down on the right wingers around the bandstand from some distance away. Ready to fight if necessary. They were joined by a slightly larger coterie of area left-wing activists — also mostly younger people, but with more political experience overall — who had taken a nonviolence pledge before attending. The Boston police formed a cordon between the right- and left-wing groups. And a shouting war started between the two sides capped by another conservative I’ll call Scooby Dum crossing the skirmish line and belting a left winger after shoving a Pepsi at the person (in an apparently ironic reference to the Kendall Jenner commercial scandal). Both antagonist and victim were arrested. The BPD version of equal justice, one supposes.

This tyro armageddon provided red meat for the press that would otherwise have ignored the event, and resulted in coverage that would not have happened if the counter demonstrators had left well enough alone.

Now it’s true the organizers of the right-wing action fell on each other shortly afterwards in a torrent of mutual social media recriminations involving the absurd neologism “cuck.”

But the critical lesson of the whole sorry affair should not be lost on erstwhile “anti-fascists” on the fringes of the American left: There are indeed times when it’s important to stand up against the right wing in militant and very public ways … but you never want to hold response actions to dysfunctional right-wing events that will result in their learning to become more effective organizers. You don’t want to help them evolve. You don’t want to act like an overdose of old antibiotics on a mutating strain of TB. You need to be smart and LET THEM FAIL. So badly that they’re forced to scurry back under their disconnected individual rocks to lick their wounds and perhaps even rethink their more extreme political positions.

In this situation, the correct thing to do was let the right wingers have their wonky little rally and then faction fight themselves into oblivion over its failure. Instead, the ill-conceived counterdemo got that rally far more attention than it deserved, and taught the fringe right that it’s really easy to bait the more jumped-up sectors of the left to play the part of “bad freedom haters” in their latter-day Old Glory-waving passion play. Helping them organize more disaffected young people … and possibly turning them from a sideshow of a sideshow into a serious threat in the process. Not good.

Here’s hoping that the younger left activists who participated in the counter demonstration now decide to turn their energies toward better educating themselves politically and then focus on reaching out to engage society at large with organizing campaigns to challenge the root causes of racism and racist white reaction. And that the more established left-wing organizations that inexplicably decided to join them on the Common revert to their usual activities along those lines. Helping build the majoritarian movement for democracy that America desperately needs, rather than comporting themselves in ways that could end up bringing ruin down on the heads of the left at large. At the hands of a right wing that will always be better at violence in this period than macho posturing fringe leftists looking for a shortcut to their ill-considered version of “revolution.”

Note: This column was written based on my analysis of news coverage and social media posts about the Boston Free Speech rally from the perspective of a longtime political activist who has run large numbers of left-wing protests. I did not attend the event.

Apparent Horizon is syndicated by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism. Jason Pramas is BINJ’s network director and senior editor of DigBoston.

Check out the Apparent Horizon Podcast on:

iTunes, Google Play Music, Blubrry, Stitcher, TuneIn, and YouTube

PROGRESSIVE CONFUSION

Only multiparty democracy will ensure that left policies are enacted in Mass

May 10, 2017

BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS

There is a persistent myth that Massachusetts is a left-wing state. The basis of this demonstrably false conceit is that the Commonwealth has had a Democratic majority in its legislature for as long as anyone can remember. In that context, a recent State House News Service article, “Mass Progressives See Something Missing on Beacon Hill,” makes sense. It examines the political travails of the left-leaning Democratic Party pressure group Progressive Massachusetts, and questions why a progressive grassroots organization in such an ostensibly progressive state can’t get its bills passed with any regularity.

A state that just 50 years ago could build public housing, significantly expand public transportation, and build public colleges, today can’t pass any forward-thinking social program of any significance. Unless you think cutting taxes, slashing public spending, and throwing public money at giant corporations like General Electric is a social program. Yet all along, the state has been run by politicians calling themselves progressive Democrat.

The answer to this quandary lies in the fact that the meaning of key terms in politics is always shifting, as thought leaders modify them to suit the times. So, “progressive” has had a variety of definitions over the last three centuries — all of which center around the idea of modernity. From early “laissez-faire” free market capitalist modernity in the 1700s and 1800s, to socialist modernity from the mid-1800s to the present, to the capitalist social reformer modernity of the Progressive Era in the US between the Civil War and WWI, to welfare state social democratic capitalist modernity from the 1930s to the 1970s, followed by a full-circle return to free market ideology with neoliberal capitalist modernity since that time. And its meaning continues to be contested to this day.

Especially since a main feature of neoliberalism has been its ability to seduce once social democratic formations like the Democratic Party and produce so-called “Third Way” political leaders like Bill and Hillary Clinton — who have proved themselves more than willing to do tremendous damage to their core working and middle class constituencies. Via right-wing economic policies barely obscured by an ever-shrinking layer of critical social welfare programs, and a somewhat thicker layer of policies extending human rights guarantees to LGBT folks and other oppressed minorities.

So, in a sense, virtually all the legislators in the Mass State House today can call themselves progressive with a straight face. And many do, including lots of neoliberal Clintonite Democrats who play the role of Republicans in Bay State politics — the actual Republican Party being quite weak here. Which leaves left-leaning Democrats like the organizers of Progressive Massachusetts, heirs to the social democratic tradition of reform-minded Keynesian welfare state policies as they are, in a bit of a pickle.

Because the main version of progressivism in American politics — electoral politics anyway — remains the neoliberal one. The Hillary Clinton wing of the Democrats, which just drove the party off a political cliff, and will continue to speed its descent to earth as long as its corporate paymasters wish them to do so. That wing, backed by multinational corporations, took power from the earlier generations of union-backed social democrats within the Democratic Party by the 1990s. It will not give power up without a major political struggle, and therein lies the heart of the problem facing groups like Progressive Massachusetts.

In countries with more democratic electoral systems, this would be less of a problem than it is in the US. Or in Mass. We would have a multiparty democracy. The Republicans would be a smaller (but still powerful) right-wing capitalist party with smaller ascendent hard right parties on its flanks. The Democrats would be a smaller (but still powerful) center-right capitalist party. Progressive Massachusetts would be part of a center-left social democratic capitalist party. Socialists like me would have at least one significant left-wing party. And there would be smaller hard-left parties on its flanks.

Both the Democrats and Republicans would have to form coalition governments at the national and state levels. And it would be possible for smaller parties to drive their policies through in exchange for joining such ever-shifting coalitions. Messy perhaps, but far more democratic than our two party American system — where both “big tent” parties are dominated by corporations and the rich.

In that situation, a center-left party built around a group like Progressive Massachusetts could actually get its bills passed and have more influence in state politics. And a democratic socialist party of the type I’d like to see formed would join it in fighting for all of the good reforms it would back: single payer health care, free higher public education, etc. Then seek to influence the center-left party to back its policies … like a state bank and municipal control of utilities, for example.

The term “progressive” might devolve back to its original meaning: “believers in human progress, in modernity.” And be used more sparingly as a yardstick of societal advancement rather than a marker of a particular political camp.

Until then, many people — being creatures of habit we all are — will continue to use “progressive” to refer to the broad left. Or the even more misused term “liberal.” Various kinds of capitalists will continue to refer to themselves as “conservative,” “libertarian,” and, yes, progressive, and liberal. Massachusetts politics will remain to the right on economic matters and to the left on social ones — until new mass movements rise to shatter the status quo.

And we’ll muddle through somehow until then.

Apparent Horizon is syndicated by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism. Jason Pramas is BINJ’s network director and senior editor of DigBoston.

Check out the Apparent Horizon Podcast on:

iTunes, Google Play Music, Blubrry, Stitcher, TuneIn, and YouTube

Jason

Locals have until Oct 19 to say ‘No Public Bribes to Corporate Scofflaws’

Mayor Walsh and various police agencies were no friends of civil liberties at Boston’s monster protests against the ultra right

The best way to defeat the ultra right is to stop playing their game

You don’t need a union to take action for justice on the job

Evolving the way the world moves … beyond Uber (and Lyft)

Urban multimodal network needed to make bicycles a viable alternative in the ’burbs

A better way forward for the federal government

Check out the Apparent Horizon Podcast on: iTunes, Google Play Music, Blubrry, Stitcher, TuneIn, and YouTube

‘Boston Free Speech’ protesters and counter demonstrators both lose the day

Only multiparty democracy will ensure that left policies are enacted in Mass

Check out the Apparent Horizon Podcast on:
iTunes, Google Play Music, Blubrry, Stitcher, TuneIn, and YouTube