Last night, I had the occasion to speak with world-renowned hip-hop provocateur Boots Riley on a wide range of subjects spanning from his childhood in Detroit, spent in a household of Communist organizers, to his current work, organizing people in his neighborhood as a member Occupy Oakland. And, of course, we touched on his equally ground-breaking and ass-shaking music, and the 20-years that he’s now spent “using hip-hop to empower people” and “destroy Capitalism,” in bands like The Coup and Street Sweeper Social Club.

Riley and The Coup, as I suspect that most of you know, will be performing in Ypsilanti on Sunday night, headlining a fundraiser for Ozone House, to support their work with at-risk, marginalized, and LGBTQ teens. The show, which will take place at Woodruff’s, starting at 8:00 PM, is being hosted by Washtenaw Eviction and Foreclosure Defense (WEFD), and, from what I understand, a few tickets are still available. (Also on the bill are Japanther and Kev Choice.)

As for the interview, as you’ll soon discover, it’s not perfect. As I was picking Clementine up from school during the call, and as Boots was in the middle of a soundcheck, the quality of the audio isn’t great, and, as a result, much of what was said was garbled. And, because of that, I’m sure that I made a few mistakes in my transcription. I’ve also slightly edited both my questions, and his answers, in hopes of making the transcript flow better. Those of you who would like to hear the interview live and unedited, though, with all of the awkward pauses, blasting organ music, screaming children, and inartful, half-developed thoughts (on my part) that lead nowhere, can find the recording embedded at the bottom of this post… Enjoy.

MARK: I’ m curious about your background, if we can start there. I’ve read that you come from a long line of organizers… of “radical” organizers… I guess, in particular, your father. And I’m curious to know what got him involved in the Progressive Labor Party, and what took your family to Oakland, after having started out in Chicago, and then lived in Detroit for a while.

BOOTS: So, the exact details would be something you’d have to get from him, but he started out in the civil rights movement, in the NAACP, in the 50′s. He worked on the organization of the first sit-down strikes, at the coffee shops in Greensboro, North Carolina. And, later on, he was in CORE (Congress of Racial Equality). And CORE moved him out to San Francisco. And he got involved in SDS and the Progressive Labor Party (PL) at that time, just before the San Francisco State strike, which led to the creation of the College of Ethnic Studies, and all of that happened. Then the Progressive Labor Party moved him and my mother out to Chicago to be involved there. And then they needed a full-time organizer for Detroit. So he moved, and took that spot, and was a full-time organizer for the Progressive Labor Party in Detroit.

MARK: Trying to organize inside the auto plants?

BOOTS: Yeah, that was some of it. I was very young, so I don’t know exactly, but there was some auto plant work, and some student work. All I remember is that there were a lot of parties at my house, which I found out later were meetings.

MARK: What do you remember of your time in Detroit? I know you were really young, but…

BOOTS: There’s a woman who’s still active around there named Barbara Ransby. She was a teenager who was always coming through. I remember my father coming hoome with his ribs bandaged up, because the Klan had tried to make a come-back in Detroit, or something like that. And they went out and fought the Klan. And he got billy clubbed by the police, or somebody got him in the back, while they were fighting. So I remember that picture of him having bandaged ribs. What I also remember is that there were a lot of big parties, with people talking a lot, with their legs crossed. I was six when I moved away from Detroit, but those are the things that I remember. I remember Ohio Players records being played a lot.

MARK: A lot of kids rebel against their parents, but it sounds as though you kind of followed in your father’s footsteps, at least with regard to your association with the Progressive Labor Party.

BOOTS: Well, to a certain extent, (joining the Progressive Labor Party) was something of a rebellion, in a sense… (My father, Walter Riley) left Detroit to become a lawyer, and he split with the Party. But some of the family friends were still folks in the Progressive Labor Party. There was a political split, but there were still friendships. And, so, by the time that that I was eight, he wasn’t in PL anymore. And I started getting involved with the Party when I was fourteen. And that’s like a lifetime, those six years between eight and fourteen. And he actually did not want for me to be involved, not because of the political differences… I think, later on, as I became more developed, it had to do with political differences… but, at the time, he was arguing with them, saying, “When I was leading the Party, we never would have let someone like him (me) in. He hasn’t read enough.” You know, he felt that they were being opportunist, for letting me in just because I wanted to be in. And, to be honest, it was in the 80′s when there wasn’t much going on. I think a lot of political organizations were happy with anything… so they were a little more liberal.

MARK: Yeah, you want young people with energy, so you bend the rules a bit, right?

BOOTS: Yeah… So I became involved in their summer projects, like helping to built an anti-racist farmworkers union (in California), an undertaking which was mainly being led by people who had been kicked out of the USW (United Steelworkers), for being Communists, and being militant… who then joined the Progressive Labor Party. So I learned a lot being there.

MARK: What’s your ongoing role with the Party now? Are you still involved?

BOOTS: I’m 41 and I haven’t been involved in about 21 years.

MARK: So you left at about the same age as your dad?

BOOTS: No, he was probably 30-somethng when he left.

MARK: You still identify as Communist, though, right?

BOOTS: Yeah… So, I had ended up being a part of (their) Central Committee meetings. And a lot of the people who I met through that were the folks who had created the Progressive Labor Party, who had split off from the Communist Party in the 50′s. And their take on how to organize, combined with some British folks who had been union organizers, who had moved to the U.S. and joined the Progressive Labor Party… They taught me a lot… My experience in the Party was… The way that they organized at the time – with the exception of the work with the farmers union – was more of a one-on-one thing. It was more like a religion. Our meetings would be about who we had talked to that day, and how close they were to the ideas of the Party. “This is not going to get anywhere,” (I thought). I was in there from the age of fourteen to the age of nineteen or twenty, and I was supposedly in the leadership, and I had ideas that were more about broadening things, and making us known to the people who lived around us. But my ideas were always sort of poo-pooed and argued against. What I realized was that a lot of those folks who were still around in the Party weren’t the folks that where great organizers, who had been involved before. You know, a lot of times, folks who are great organizers have an idea that tells them… they know that you have to shape the aesthetic of your message to best suit what works. That’s what great organizers do. That’s what good conversationalists do. They communicate the essence of the idea, and the details of the idea, but they don’t have to be stuck in one tactic, or one mode. So I feel like what was going on then, and it’s what’s been going on in a lot of organizations since then. People are tied to an aesthetic. They’re tied to a tactic. You know, I was told a lot of really strict rules for how organizing works. They weren’t really true. They were just basically what they did twenty years before.

MARK: Which I assume leads into why you adopted music. I mean, that was your new aesthetic, right?

BOOTS: Definitely. Yeah… I had been told in the organization that any art form that was created by Capitalism could not be used to make revolution, you know.

MARK: I read somewhere about you going around Oakland on a flatbed truck, doing guerilla hip-hop shows, on street corners… which, I guess, illustrates how you were getting away from the one-on-one approach that the Party had been pushing, and going into people’s neighborhoods and engaging them on their own terms, in their own language, right?

BOOTS: Exactly. There wasn’t a direct correlation between the two, though, because that happened in 2000. That was a development of a few circumstances… Prop 21 was being put forward.

MARK: That had to do with kids being prosecuted as adults, right?

BOOTS: Yeah. Exactly. And, I was teaching a workshop a the La Peña Cultural Center. So I decided to do something. The workshop was about art and organizing, so I decided to make it so that folks came and had to do something. We had a lot of young rappers involved, so that was the idea.

MARK: I’m curious as to how you balance stuff now. It sounds like, when you were coming up, a lot of the work that you did was really hands-on. You were in Oakland, working on really specific causes. You were drawing attention to specific cases of police brutality, and social justice issues, and making tangible contributions. And then you transitioned to a bigger stage, where the rewards are much different, and the pay off is a lot farther off. I’m curious as to how you juggle those two things. I know you’re still doing stuff on-the-ground in Oakland, but do you think you’ve got the mix right?

BOOTS: No, I don’t. I never have a good mix. It’s a struggle to figure out how to do both. Usually, I’m either doing one or the other. Like, when I was doing stuff with Occupy Oakland, I wasn’t doing music. Anything that you do right is going to take a lot of time. It’s hard to figure it out. I think the best way that I’ve figured out is just to have different time periods during the year where you work on different things. But it’s still not easy to work out. But, you know, I hear about people who can multitask and do those sorts of things, but, the way that I write, I’m not able to do that.

MARK: Do you think, over the last twenty years, you’ve kind of figured out how you’re of the most use to the cause?

BOOTS: It changes.

MARK: How’s it changing now?

BOOTS: Well, the world changes… What allows me to keep doing my music is the thought that, these folks (doing other forms of organizing) are only reaching a very limited number of people, and my music can reach way more folks, so I need to keep doing this music, to talk to more people… but we’re in a period where certain kinds of organizing actually can grab the attention of more people than it has in the past. It’s not the same kind of organizing… I think we went though a period in the 90′s where the idea of political organizing was anything but labor related. And, now, we have a certain amount of confluence in those two realms, that I think is lending itself to a new situation.

MARK: There are definitely positive signs with regard to labor organizing. What just happened a few days ago with the Walmart walk-out strike was encouraging. But, at the same time, I think union membership is at an all time low, isn’t it?

BOOTS: It definitely is, but that has nothing to do with where people are at, and what they want to do. The reason membership is an an all time low is that the unions aren’t militant. People don’t see unions as being able to win fights. Here’s an example. Occupy Oakland, a couple of different times, shut down the port. People, wether they agreed or disagreed with us, know that that we can shut stuff down… We broached the idea of a fast food workers union in Oakland, with it being connected to Occupy Oakland. We got a tremendous response, with people being in favor. Why? Because people thought that we could win. And the reason they thought this was because they knew, whatever the case, business owners knew that Occupy Oakland could shut shit down. So, therefore, it could win. I don’t think that a lot of people have faith that unions can win. They don’t think that unions will take militant routes that can win. Like, you have to be able to keep out scabs, which means a certain amount of breaking the law. In this day and age, if you play by the Taft-Heartly laws, you’re also going to have a hard time winning. You’re probably going to lose. So it’s going to take a different set of rules to win.

MARK: It’s kind of a difficult subject to broach, but I’m curious on your thoughts concerning militancy, and how far people should be willing to go. You’ve got songs like The Guillotine and Five Million Ways to Kill a CEO, which clearly allude to violence…

BOOTS: It’s symbolic…

MARK: Yeah, but it hints at a threat, right? It reminds people that, if they push folks too far, they’re going to pay a price.

BOOTS: Yeah, but militancy doesn’t only have that narrow definition. A militant movement is one that, at the drop of a hat, will shut things down… Let’s say this. The longshoremen are the most militant of the traditional unions that exist. The ILWU (International Longshore and Warehouse Union). Any time there’s a dispute, they’re down to shut the place down. That’s militant. They’re not waiting for it to be OK’d through arbitration. They’re showing their force, right away, and exacting a cost. Many of these unions will be involved in a fight and not want to strike right away. They’re scared about a number of things. Because of that, many people feel betrayed by their unions. They feel that they’re not going to be strong enough… that they’re not down for the fight. “Militant” implies that there are going to be actions, that may be physical, that allow one to win. And that means physically keeping out scabs. If you have a strike where replacement folks get brought in, the strike is usually over. Unions have to physically, forcefully, keep scabs out.

MARK: You mentioned that you were making some headway in Oakland with the fast food workers. What happened with that?

BOOTS: The main problem was convincing other folks in Occupy Oakland that it was something worthwhile compared to the other things that were going on. There are so many things going on with Occupy Oakland. People are spread really thin. So, it just wasn’t the time to bring this out. People weren’t down to dedicate the time.

MARK: It’s tough. It seems, with the Occupy movement, that so much time and effort is spent providing social services… like just recently, with all of the Occupy Sandy stuff. There are just so many needs that have to be addressed, that it takes up a lot of the bandwidth.

BOOTS: I think Occupy Oakland is different. It does provide services, but in the midst of campaigns. We’ve got the foreclosure defense stuff going on. And we’ve got various folks working on police brutality stuff. There are all sorts of things happening. Some people don’t want to do the service stuff and all, and, other people, that’s their thing. They like feeding people.

MARK: So it wasn’t a question of capacity. It was more a result of an internal discussion within the organization concerning priorities.

BOOTS:Yeah, a fast food workers union seems like a good idea, but the question is whether fast food workers would be down with it, and you’re not going to know unless you’re part of that outreach. And, at the same time, we had the school occupation happening, and a lot of people were involved in that. There were foreclosure defense actions. There were neighborhood assemblies. We were declaring moratoriums on foreclosure in certian neighborhoods. So, a lot of people were doing many different things. So, that was part of the problem at the time. Then there’s people that had experience organizing unions, and many of them wanted to be sure that it was their union that got to do it, and it was just too early to declare that. Let’s put it like this… It wasn’t for lack of wanting by people that were in fast food work. We actually had people that were down to do it, and we had a few things in place, we just didn’t have enough people to really carry it through.

MARK: Speaking of the plight of low-paid workers, your new album, Sorry to Bother You, is about telemarkting, and, in a broader sense, I guess, it’s about shitty, low-paying jobs in general. In addition to just being a good record, in the tradition of The Coup, is there a bigger message behind it? Are you trying to rally support for anything specific? Does either the album, or the movie that you’re working on, which uses the album as a soundtrack, touch on, for instance, the importance of organizing low-wage workers?

BOOTS: Not specifically around organizing telemarketers. The movie has some stuff about a union that’s being attempted at a telemarketing spot. Which is what was happening at the place that I worked at (when I was doing telemarketing). But it’s not specifically around organizing telemarketers. It’s around organizing people in the workplace in general.

MARK: So that message is in the movie?

BOOTS: Yeah. Yeah… Well, I don’t know that the “message” is in the movie, but the situation is in the movie.

MARK: Are you in pre-production yet for the movie?

BOOTS: I guess, technically, yeah.

MARK: Your producer, I’ve read, is Ted Hope, who produced movies like The Ice Storm, Happiness, American Splendor…

BOOTS: And 21 Grams. And the director is this guy, Alex Rivera, who did this movie called Sleep Dealer.

MARK: How’d it all come together?

BOOTS: I just kind of put a blast out to people I know, and Danny Goldberg, who was managing Street Sweeper Social Club, and also used to manage Nirvana and work with Led Zeppelin, read it and loved it. And he got it to Ted Hope. And Ted Hope was like, “I want to make this movie.” It probalby also helped that I had a soundtrack.

MARK: How did you sell them on the idea that you would be the right person for the lead? Or was that just part of the deal going in?

BOOTS: That was just part of the deal. I was like, “I’ve written this script. I have the soundtrack. And I will play the lead.” So, if somebody did’t like that, they just didn’t respond… It’s also a good marketing thing for them too. You know, if it’s going to be an independent film, there’s probably going to be more interest in it if the creator of it is part of it as well. I’m acting all the time anyway.

MARK: What do you mean… on stage?

BOOTS: Yeah, as a performer – it’s theatrical.

MARK: Had you attepted to do someting like this before? Didn’t I hear about a book that was being written from one of your songs, and the possiblity that it may turn into a film as well?

BOOTS: So a woman heard a song (Me and Jesus the Pimp in a ’79 Granada Last Night) and wrote a book based on it… I didn’t want the movie made. It had the potential to be a very terrible movie, if not done by the right person… I didn’t like the themes. She took the story and read things into that I…

MARK: With this new record, when you started writing it, did you know that you wanted to see it evolve into a dark comedy…

BOOTS: Well, I wrote the script first. I took like a year and wrote the script, while my manager, agent and record label said, “What are you doing?”

MARK: Because they wanted to keep you recording, and playing on the road…

BOOTS: Yeah. Yeah. It’s like, “You’re not going to get a movie made.” They wouldn’t say it in exactly that way, but that was the thought.

MARK: So, you think that it will do well in the marketplace… that people will buy tickets and like it?

BOOTS: Oh, yeah. There are people that have read it that I trust, that think that it’s a great, new, and interesting thing.

MARK: I’m happy for you… You put something out on Twitter a few days ago. “I realized five years ago,” you said, “we’re never going to go platinum, we’re never going to get radio play, we’re never going to make money at this.” Is part of this movie thing because you want to reach a wider audience, or is it more about paying the bills?

BOOTS: I don’t think people are able to pay bills on independent movies.

MARK: I imagine that you’d get a cut on video sales, right?

BOOTS: Yeah, but think about the time that you spent on it.

MARK: I guess what I was getting at is that it’s probably a little more lucrative than the record business.

BOOTS: Maybe for somebody. But independent movies? No. It’s not like that. It’s a labor of love. But people want to make some money at it. And that’s one thing about Ted Hope. He’s an independent movie guru. He’s someone who’s able to make independent film turn a profit. But, again, like I said, the amount of profit, compared to the amount of time put into it… It’s not like some cash cow. But it’s possible, you know. Maybe it could be some breakout hit. But it’s not real likely to happen. And that’s the name of the game in every industry. “More work for less pay.”

MARK: I’m curious as to where you draw the line. You mentioned earlier that folks in the Progressive Labor Party had told you that no artistic endeavor could come out of the Capitalist system and have any meaning, or something along those lines. And you pursue this line as a career. But you draw a line at advertising…

BOOTS: I didn’t believe them (that nothing good could come from works produced within the system)… In reality, that’s where music comes in. It’s advertising. Music is licensed to TV shows. It’s advertising. TV shows are there to keep people watching, so they’ll watch commercials. So, the music that’s licensed to them helps that to happen. And we do that.

MARK: Yeah. You’ve done that. You’ve written music for the Simpsons, and done other stuff. But yet, when it comes to selling a song to Levi’s, you’ve said something like, “That’s a line that I won’t cross.” And I’m curious about that line, and where you draw it. Like you say, the TV show is there to sell ads, and you work with them. So, that line is kind of fuzzy… I’m just wondering what your thought process is. Do you consider, for instance, the good stuff you could do with the money that you’d receive from selling a song to a company, or the fact that it would get your music out to a broader audience? I guess what I’m asking is, how firm is that line?

BOOTS: Well… For instance, K-Mart offered us a bunch of money for the Magic Clap. They wanted to make it a part of their main commercial ad campaign for the fall. So, you’d turn on the TV, and you’d hear, “K-Mart, Magic Clap,” forever. And you’d think of K-Mart when you hear that song. And do I want to spend my life with that? Like, the job market is hard out there, but… That would erase a lot of shit, you know? If I were going to try to make money, I could probably think of some other things to do, that weren’t music-related. If I did that, though, I’d reach more of an audience, but people would be thinking of that song, or whatever it is, as connected to that group. So, you know, when they offer The Coup money, they’re not only offering The Coup that. They’re buying a group. They’re buying an idea, you know? The idea that, “Even these dudes, are behind this product.”

MARK: So they’re buying your credibility…

BOOTS: It’s the idea that people think that we represent (the company or product). They’re buying philosophy. If I was just an artist known for making… Let’s say that I had my same revolutionary ideas, but that my art, that I was know for, was acting, or making love songs, or whatever. Then, when I did something like that, it would just be about me. But for me to attribute those songs to a product, means to attribute those ideas… So, for instance, when I was in Portland, we did an eviction defense rally, people were marching down the street changing, “we got the guillotine.” So, lets’s say I turned around, and sold that song to Nike… It wouldn’t just be about me. It would be about a movement.

MARK: When I first heard about your band, it was right after 9/11, and the cover for your record Party Music became a news item. I’m just wondering if you were at all scared when that happened, when you saw what happened on 9/11, and then thought about the album cover that you’d just created, which showed you blowing up the World Trade Center using a guitar tuner… Were you afraid of a backlash?

BOOTS: You know, I got into the music to talk about ideas. So I really didn’t worry about it. It gave me a platform to talk about other ideas.

MARK: I know that Bill Maher gave you a hard time about it on his show, and he also, as I recall, said something about you being a Communist, like “people who sell records aren’t Communists.” Are you getting better at answering those kinds of challenges now, after having heard them for a couple of decades?

BOOTS: The idea of wanting to make a revolution… You have to be in the system to do it. You can’t say, “You can’t be a Communist and work retail.” If you work in an automotive factory, you’re participating in Capitalism, but how else do you organize anyone, if you’re not part of it? Folks that say stuff like that either don’t understand, or they’re looking for a quick retort. The reality is that what people are saying is not that they don’t want to participate, but that they don’t want other people to be affected. I don’t want other people to be affected by Capitalism. I feel that, in reality… and I may be deluding myself… I’m a pretty crafty dude. I can figure out how to survive. I could figure out how to be the crab that climbs up the barrel, or whatever. But I don’t want for there to be a barrel. I don’t want everybody else to get cooked. And that’s the point.

MARK: Do you think we’re making any progress? Things have gotten a lot worse in a lot of ways since you started in 1991. Wealth inequality, for instance…

BOOTS: Really? In 1991, we were having demonstrations with ten people. So, things have gotten a lot better. Now we’ve got thousands of people, all with the idea that we need a systematic change, with class analysis being a part of it. Things have gotten better.

MARK: I wasn’t thinking about the numbers of people in the street. I was thinking about wealthy inequality, the fact that our public schools are being systematically dismantled…

BOOTS: The numbers are the only thing that matters, though. What matters is not how the state is working, or how the system is working, but the point at which the movement is that could change the system.

MARK: I can see you point, and there’s potential there. A movement is starting to build. But, at the same time, you see the public school system being systematically taken apart, our wealth being siphoned off by for-profit charter schools, the growing, racist “patriot” movement in America…

BOOTS: Yeah, and all of those things are going to happen as long as we don’t have a movement. So none of that surprises me. As long as you don’t have a movement, any of the gains that you make are going to be dismantled. And that’s why a revolutionary movement that fights for reform, on the way to making revolution, and sustains the movement… That’s why you chart your progress relative to how the movement is growing, not on how strong the system is that is attacking you.

MARK: One last question… Were do we have the most leverage? Where should we be focusing right now, if we really want to make long term, systematic, sustainable change?

BOOTS: Well, it’s like we were talking about earlier. I think right now what people want are material gains. They need to see victories. And they need to see it done in a certain way. We need a radical, militant labor movement that uses direct action and work stoppages to gain some of these things. We need for it to be connected to the community, and not just built around wages. But using labor and work stoppages to effect change in other areas, that would normally be considered community things – community organizing. An example is how the ILWU shut down the port of Oakland in protest of the Oscar Grant verdict. They might have done it in a safe way, but that’s an example. And there need to be sympathy strikes. That’s got to become a tool. And union leaders are going to have to be down with going to jail, just like anyone else on the line is down for it…

Now here’s the recording, for those of you who either can’t read, or just refuse to.

A big thank you to my friend Jeff Clark for reaching out to Boots, and making all of this happen. And thank you to all of you who contributed via Kickstarter to bring the vision to reality.

See you Sunday night.

…As the largest private employer in the United States and the world, Walmart is setting the standard for jobs. That standard is so low that hundreds of thousands of its employees are living in poverty—even many that work full time. The problems extend to workers who toil in unsafe working conditions in subcontracted warehouses. And also to workers in developing countries such as China and Bangladesh who make incredibly low wages while manufacturing the goods on Walmart’s shelves. That pulls down standards for workers in the United States and around the globe.

Because of its size and political influence, Walmart is affecting much more than just working conditions. Although it has gained much fanfare for its efforts in environmentalism, sustainability has mostly been a public relations campaign for Walmart. The company has written hundreds of press releases and thousands of blog posts, but made little actual progress in reducing the environmental impacts of its products and business.

And Walmart has an outsized impact on our food system. It is the largest and seller of food in this country. That gives Walmart influence over which foods are available to the public, the methods in which food is produced, and the prices paid to producers.

Across this country, in rural and suburban communities, there are too many small businesses to count who have closed their doors due to competition from Walmart. Now, Walmart has aggressively set its sights on the final frontier—large urban communities like New York City and Los Angeles.

The company is also a major contributor to widening gap between the very rich and everyone else. The average full time Walmart “associate” makes about $15,500 a year. And worse, Walmart is pushing more and more workers toward a permanent part-time status. Meanwhile, the six members of the Walton family—heirs to the Walmart fortune and near majority owners of the company—have a combined wealth of $93 billion. That’s more than the bottom 30% of Americans combined…

According to the Corporate Action Network website, while there could be protests at several local Walmarts tomorrow, it looks as though the main ones in our area will be at the Walmart Supercenters in Bellville (10562 Belleville Road at 11:00 AM) and Dearborn (5851 Mercury Drive at 10:30 AM). If you know of others, please leave a comment.

For those of you who can’t make it out to support the strike in person, and take up a few parking parking spaces that could otherwise be used by Walmart shoppers, there are a few things that you can do to help. If you’re so inclined, you could, for instance, write a letter to Rob Walton and let him know that you won’t return to Walmart stores until they begin paying a living wage. (You might also want to ask him not to fire the Walmart employees who walk out this holiday season.) If you have the financial wherewithal, you can also make a cash contribution to the Stand Up, Live Better Fund, which will be supplying striking workers with food cards for their families. And, if you have a moment, you can help spread word of the strike online, asking your friends to join you in avoiding Walmart on Friday.

One last thing… I know that quite a few of you probably shop at Walmart because it’s cheap, and may not care that the company’s employees have been treated poorly, bullied, kept from organizing, etc. While I understand, given the state of the economy, that value is important, I’d ask you to consider the following… The price that you pay at the cash register, when you shop at Walmart, likely doesn’t reflect the true price that you’re paying… We, the tax payers of America, you see, essentially subsidize Walmart, by funding the public assistance programs that keep its poorly-paid employees alive. Walmart employees, more than those of any other company in America, are likely to be on food stamps and we pay the price for that… Following, with more on that subject, are a few facts pulled together by the Winning Words Project.

✔ Walmart’s intentionally low wages force employees to need approximately $420,000 per year, per store, totaling $2.66 BILLION annually in food stamps and other taxpayer assistance… to survive.

✔ Walmart’s intentionally low wages cost our communities the ability to hire and retain important public service workers like firefighters, police officers, maintenance workers, and teachers.

✔ Walmart’s intentionally low wages and lack of covered benefits cost taxpayers over $1.02 BILLION a year in healthcare costs.

✔ Walmart’s intentionally low wages cost taxpayers as much as $225 MILLION in free and reduced price lunches for school-age children.

✔ Walmart’s intentionally low wages cost taxpayers over $780 MILLION in tax deductions for low-income families.

And, here, if you still need convincing, are Walmart workers explaining, in their own words, why they think action is necessary.

Here’s hoping them the best of luck. The Walton family, in the past, has responded harshly to such attempts. One hopes that this time it’s different, and that those who walk out won’t immediately lose their jobs.

[note: If you're interested in following the movement, you can do so on both Facebook and Twitter.]

[note: And, as long as you're not shopping at Walmart tomorrow, why not just not shop anywhere at all, and join those of us who will be celebrating Facebook and Buy Nothing Day?]

After news broke that Hostess was going under, the Wall Street Journal chose to frame it as the handiwork of organized labor, emboldened by the results of the last election. The liquidation of the company, they said, would be, “a sobering reality check for unions and workers looking to shift the post-recession balance of power with private employers.” The blame, it would seem, lay exclusively with the union employees of Hostess, who, when they saw an opportunity to bleed their employer for even more, went on strike, without a thought as to how the company would be impacted.

But, it didn’t take long for a competing narrative to emerge in the non-right-wing media.

It would appear that Hostess, among other things, was horribly mismanaged by a cadre of assholes for years, who were more interested in lining their own pockets than in keeping the company alive. It wasn’t mentioned in the Wall Street Journal article, even in passing, but earlier this year, the CEO of Hostess was awarded a 300% raise (from approximately $750,000 to $2,550,000), as the company prepared for bankruptcy, and began defaulting on their contractually-obligated payments to the pension plans of their union workers. And, the CEO wasn’t alone. According to a press advisory put out by the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union, “at least nine other top executives of the company received massive pay raises. One such executive received a pay increase from $500,000 to $900,000 and another received one taking his salary from $375,000 to $656,256.” It also wasn’t noted by the Wall Street Journal, but, as executive pay was soaring, so too was the company’s debt. And that, folks on the left are arguing, is why we’ll no longer have Twinkies to blame when we go on murderous rampages.

The truth, though, from what I can tell, probably exists somewhere in between these two competing narratives. Or, at least that’s the sense that I’m getting from this post that I just happened across on Reddit, by someone calling himself King of Kona. (Among other things, that CEO who boosted his pay by %300 was forced out earlier this year, and replaced by a CEO that cut executive pay, and offered a 25% ownerships stake in the company to the workers.) As I found it incredibly interesting, I thought that I’d share it here.

I know I am going to get in trouble for posting this because there is a thing called confirmation bias in psychology that causes people to only want to hear what they already believe – it is why you see racists skip over stories that portray minorities in positive ways or why the religious will often hurry up and click to another channel if a special talking about Darwinism is on television. But I’m going to write it anyway. Why? Because it is the right thing to do.

As someone with a very deep economics, financial, and business background, this entire conversation is painful to read. There are so many misconceptions about pension accounting and the bankruptcy process that I feel like reading this thread is the equivalent of seeing those videos where people at Glenn Beck rallies are interviewed spouting off about Obama’s secret muslim plot to make us all gay married communists who have interracial children and cross dress while burning flags.

Instead of writing a thirty-page explanation, I am going to explain this like I would to my five-year-old niece. I am not trying to be condescending, so I apologize for the tone. I am trying to remain sane.

For more than eleven years, Hostess was horribly run, including by a CEO who left earlier this year after awarding himself huge pay increases and demanding union concessions.

The new CEO came into office back in March or April and, after discovering these large pay hikes, ordered the top four executive salaries to $1 for the remainder of the year to make up for it, before being restored next year, evening things out.

This new CEO, with the backing of the bailout investors, went to the unions and offered them a package that included:

A twenty-five percent (25%) ownership stake in the business, which would transform Hostess into one of the largest partially employee-owned firms on the planet.

A package of bonds in the company to go to the employees with a face value of $100,000,000 that would generate interest and be repaid in the future

Two seats on the board of the directors, providing influence and power to shape the future of the enterprise

In exchange, the unions had to agree to:

Cut existing pay levels to fall in line with other major bakeries

Do like the other 90% of American manufacturing firms have and “freeze” pension plans, meaning that any new employees will have to use a 401(k) instead.

Pay more out of pocket for some other expenses such as insurance

If all of this happened, the employees of Hostess would not only get to keep their job, but they would be working for themselves. It was the best possible solution to a terrible situation caused by years of mismanagement, none of which was the fault of the current CEO who has only had the job for 8 months or so.

The Teamsters union wisely signed up. They acknowledged that the situation was bad. They talked about how terrible former management had been. They focused on the future and knew that this could work out well and, among all the potential choices, was the best that could be expected.

Then, a smaller union – the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union – said no.

They (the BCTWGMIU) were warned that if the company shut down in a strike, the finances were so weak the doors would have to be closed. Everyone would lose their job. There would be no ownership. There would be no bonds. There would be no seats on the board of directors. There would be no new employees let alone pensions for new employees. It was a complete thermonuclear scenario that would destroy the lives of 18,500 hardworking families.

The BCTWGMIU struck anyway and the Teamsters, to their credit, crossed picket lines and remained reasonable because their actions were based on facts and analysis of what was economically feasible. The company begged the BCTWGMIU to return to the table, but they refused, talking about the litany of abuses of past managements.

For anyone who is successful, well educated, and familiar with strategy such as game theory, the choice is clear. When faced with a total wipeout, you take the option that gives you the greatest long-term chance of survival. Even if the new deal had resulted in only an extra six-months of paychecks, that is six months of income for 18,500 families that relied on that cash. When you represent others, like union leaders do, their welfare is your sole concern.

That is precisely what the Teamsters did. However, the BCTWGMIU behaved like a father who commits a murder-suicide of himself and the children when a spouse leaves, convinced he is in the moral right and that he had no other choice because of his evil ex-wife. He writes a long note detailing all the past mistakes she made and how she drove him to take this action. BCTWGMIU drove Hostess straight into liquidation. The murder-suicide analogy is appropriate because that is exactly what this was: An economic murder-suicide. A vast majority of those 18,500 workers were innocent, behaved the best they could, and did the right thing in a terrible situation. Their entire lives have been destroyed by a handful of their foolish coworkers who were more interested in making a point and detailing past grievances than working with the new team that had come in and offered them a partnership stake in the firm. They were so stuck in the owner vs. employee mindset they ignored the chance to become owners.

The BCTWGMIU just struck a major blow to the little workers’ rights power remaining in the United States and hurt the labor movement incalculably. Even worse, they are too foolish to see it. The ramifications have already begun. If a new factory wants to raise money, don’t you think investors are going to demand that it locate in a right to work state like Texas, so if this had happened, all of the workers can be summarily fired? The legacy cost of this will be with us for decades.

TL;DR: The Teamsters Union behaved reasonably. The new CEO behaved reasonably. The BCTWGMIU decided it couldn’t get what it wanted – which was not economically possible based on the numbers – and turned down the chance to own 25% of the business, collect $100 million in bonds, and get seats on the board of directors. Now they get nothing, everyone loses their jobs, the owners get wiped out, and other corporations get to come in and pick up the assets for pennies on the dollar.

I share this not to take the heat off the management at Hostess, which clearly, over the past decade, has done a piss poor job, but to illustrate that, often times, we may not be getting a complete picture of events from our trusted news sources, whether they be on the right, or the left. Based solely upon the infographics floating around Facebook today, for instance, I was sure that it was the current CEO at Hostess that had inflated his pay as it became clear to everyone that they were headed for disaster. I should add that it’s possible that King of Kona has no idea what he’s talking about. For what it’s worth, though, I’ve fact-checked a few things since reading his post, and he seems to be right on the money.

Putting all of that aside for a moment, though, it just occurred to me that without Twinkies, there can be no Twinkie defense to fall back on once the revolution is over and we’re all compelled to answer for our actions. If for not other reason than that, I think we all need to start praying for a last-minute resolution at Hostess.

Also, I know that the accompanying image of Charlton Heston doesn’t really fit with the post, but I thought that I was pretty clever adding the “cold, dead hands” line, and wanted to share it.

update: And it looks like our prayers may have been answered. Word is, both sides have agreed to enter mediation. So, keep your fingers crossed. If all goes well, we could have Twinkines, Wonder Bread and Ho-Hos back to hasten our deaths before we know it.

Caterpillar, after record profits, squeezes its union for a six-year wage and pension freeze and increased insurance contributions – not because it has to, but because it can. As the machinists’ union enters its fourth month on strike, the company says it’s getting along just fine with temps and union workers who have crossed the picket line. Private-sector union membership is now at an all-time low of 6.9%. Even as calls to remedy America’s income inequality grow from Occupy and other movements, nobody in power is helping. The Democratic Party’s ship has long since sailed. (previously)

As for the question that I posed in the title of this post, I don’t think that the American labor movement is truly at its end. I think labor will eventually reemerge as a force to be reckoned with. I just think it’s going to take a while. Eventually, though, all of the fights that our great grandparents lived though, and, in some cases, died as a result of, are going to be fought again. It’s unfortunate that we let it come to this, but I suppose that’s the way it goes. It’s the cyclical nature of human existence. I’m just hoping that we’re as successful against drones, and today’s high-tech security apparatus, as we were against the industrialists of old, and the Pinkertons that did their bidding.

MARK: Can you start by telling us a little about who you are, the work that you do relating to prison labor, and how it is that you first became interested in the subject?

BOB: …Back in 1981 I was convicted of a white collar crime and went to prison in Florida. While serving my sentence, I worked most of the time for the prison industry there, Prison Rehabilitative Industries and Diversified Enterprises (PRIDE). Back then it was run by drugstore magnate, Jack Eckerd. During my tenure with PRIDE I worked closely with Eckerd and PRIDE President, Floyd Glisson on product development and inmate issues. I was a college grad with a degree in architectural drafting and design, and my abilities earned me the position of head of PRIDE’s “Tiger Team,” responsible for developing and prototyping new customer products, and designing new seating and modular office systems (office cubicles, work stations, panels, etc.). I designed the new factory for PRIDE’s office systems industry, and, when complete, I headed up their CAD training program, instructing other inmates in computer drafting and engineering.

At that point in time, PRIDE’s pursuits were in keeping with a mission statement that stressed the training and job placement of prisoners, in order to reduce recidivism, and keep these people from reoffending once released. PRIDE not only trained them, they had a job placement service on the outside that got them employed after release.

By 1990, I was home, and continued to work with Eckerd on youth programs, and helping inmates who were released to find jobs. In 1990, Eckerd and Glisson left PRIDE, with Eckerd publicly saying he did not like the direction the new PRIDE executive staff was taking the company, and expressing concern over new “accounting” procedures put in place by the same administration. From 1989 through 1996, I continued to work in my spare time finding jobs for those released from prison, and performing some free-lance consulting with PRIDE’s corporate MIS in Clearwater, Florida. During that time, I saw firsthand that Eckerd had been correct – PRIDE had gone from a company dedicated to rehabilitating inmates to one that was profit-driven. Inmate wages stayed where they had been since 1983, inmates were trained on antiquated equipment (and thus not employable for the same work when released), prisoners were being worked longer (with no overtime), etc.

I moved to Indianapolis in 1996, and, from that distance, lost track of PRIDE, concentrating on my life up here and working like everyone else. In 2002, I had an unfortunate “mistake” created by the Florida authorities, who decided that I still owed them some time on probation from the 1981 case. I was picked up, taken back to Florida, and sent back to prison, where it took me two years to get the court to realize that they were incorrect, and release me. During that period, I was again assigned to work for PRIDE, in a factory in north Florida. When I got there, everything was different than it have been previously… except the pay was basically the same. (It hadn’t really changed over the intervening 20 years.) There was no longer a real job training effort, rather everything revolved around filling orders and shipping them out on time (regardless of the quality).

They were participating in a program known as the “PIE Program” which allowed prisoners to earn as much as minimum wage for working on orders which were sold in the private sector. None of the prisoners knew what the PIE Program was, just that they made more money – even considering that 80% was taken back for room and board, victim restitution, taxes, etc. I had my wife get me a copy of the PIE Program regulations from the US Department of Justice, and send it to me. I sat down and read it, and discovered that it had mandatory requirements that PRIDE was supposed to abide by (mandatory payment of prevailing wages for workers, no displacement of private sector workers or interference with local labor groups and unions, etc.). I was assigned to quality control as a supervisor and discovered that the company was avoiding paying prevailing wages, and was placing “in-house” orders for products that they knew were about to enter the production stream as PIE products. In this way, they paid inmates between $.20 and $.50 an hour for labor, placed the products in inventory, and then drew them out to fill PIE orders, thus avoiding paying even minimum wage scale to the inmates. There was a lot of other hanky panky going on as well (shifting hours from one pay week to another to avoid overtime, etc.).

I filed complaints with the Governor and FDOC about PRIDE opening 9 separate for-profit corporations that were being used to exploit the PIE program, and about their policies and procedures at more than 40 separate factories. I approached supervisors at the plant and explained that what I thought they were doing was illegal under the federal PIECP regulations [18 USC 1761(c)]. I was allowed to change jobs and went home shortly thereafter, once the court ruled and released me.

I continued to pursue complaints with the Governor (Bush) and pushed for an investigation by the DoJ. All federal complaints were directed to the Bureau of Justice Assistance which in turn sent them on to the National Correctional Industries Association (NCIA), which had been given oversight of the program by the BJA in ’95. The NCIA never responded to my numerous complaints. In fact, they blocked any incoming emails from my address. While I was pursuing this from Indiana, the Florida Inspector General responded to my complaints and performed an audit of PRIDE. He discovered that PRIDE board and executive staff had formed the separate corporations, loaned themselves $18 million dollars, awarded the spin-offs no-bid contracts worth another $20 million, and had begun to write down the debts owed to PRIDE by those spin-offs. In the end, the entire executive staff were asked to resign, along with half the board (appointed by the Governor). And, in the end, only $400K, of the more than $38 million, was ever recovered.

The Secretary of the FDOC, James Crosby (a Bush Cabinet appointee) was on the PRIDE Board. He continued to turn a deaf ear to my ongoing complaints, even knowing that my complaints had caused the IG’s to audit PRIDE, and catch the illegal transactions. My complaints, at this point, concerned the PIE Program, and how PRIDE had been allowed to partner with private sector companies that were using the inmates as a nearly slave-labor workforce. Additionally, from 2000 through 2005, PRIDE had simply stolen five of those companies outright. Under the contracts, the partner was to supply all of the equipment, materials and proprietary technologies to PRIDE, which then chose one of its factories in which to make the products for those companies. Once the inmates were trained, and the staff was knowledgeable about the operations and customers of the private companies in question, PRIDE would then falsely claim these partner companies owed them money for processing, etc., and demand hundreds of thousands of dollars be paid to them immediately. When the companies balked, PRIDE had the FDOC throw the company’s supervisors off the prison grounds. Then, PRIDE would seize all of the equipment and materials, and simply continued the operation on their own, selling to the “partner’s” customers. At the same time, PRIDE would sue the companies in a friendly court in Clearwater, and tie them up, making them spend huge amounts of money to try and recover their businesses and assets.

One of those owners that lost his business to PRIDE contacted me and I’ve been consulting with him since 2005, trying to help him recover his losses. I went to Florida and met with the board three times in 2006 on behalf of the owner, and in an effort to get PRIDE to become compliant with the PIE Program requirements. To no avail. That same year, Secretary Crosby was indicted and arrested for corruption and kickbacks on a private canteen contract with the Keefe Commissary network (sentenced to 9 years, and still in). His replacement was James McDonough. He contacted me about PRIDE, and we worked together trying to reform PRIDE through January 2008. He had documents and inmate letters from workers at the PRIDE plant, order numbers, copies of pay checks, copies of time cards, etc., which I had supplied to him. In 2007, he resigned from the PRIDE Board and petitioned Governor Crist to abolish PRIDE completely, and turn the prison industries over to the FDOC to operate. The GOP legislature forced McDonough to “retire,” and left PRIDE intact. (Pride has two top lobbyists in Tally, who they retain for $350,000 per year, and they spend hundreds of thousands of dollars per year to keep the lawmakers in line with their agenda).

I opened my website, continued to try and make PRIDE compliant, and began investigating state prison industries state by state. I found more than 40 states participating in the PIECP program, and that the NCIA, the a trade association for the prison industries, had worked with Congress to change legislation, allowing them to develop “Policy” and procedures for the PIE Program, which they had been given oversight of in 1995. I found that, under the program, PRIDE is supposed to turn over 40% of inmate wages to the FDOC to offset the costs of incarceration, but that they lobbied for state laws to divert that money back to PRIDE, to offset their costs of “training.” So, in essence, the inmate wages deducted are used to operate the prison factories. The employees themselves are paying 40% of their wages back to the company. Unbelievable corruption… and I found that it’s also happening in Minnesota, Oregon and Iowa.

MARK: As you and I have discussed, there’s a sense among the citizens of our country that prison labor, while perhaps distasteful, serves a purpose, in that it provides job training for incarcerated men and women who will eventually enter the workforce. Would I be correct in saying that your research has proven otherwise, though?

BOB: The prison industry program was designed to allow for training of offenders on contemporary equipment, using contemporary technologies, to increase the likelihood that, when released, the trained former offender can secure employment and avoid a return to prison. There were several criteria that had to be met for a prison industry to participate, and, as mentioned above, those have all changed through policy amendments. Here is a link to the program overview. (The 9 mandatory requirements are listed on page 3.)

Today the focus is on profits… and training, along with other core mission goals, have been sacrificed in exchange for increased sales and profits. An example of this is that today Florida’s prison industry workforce is comprised of 15% men and women serving life sentences. Overall, 28% of the workforce has at least 15 years until release or possibility of parole/probation. This helps increase production, but takes positions and training out of the reach of short term offenders who could utilize that training in the shortest time to fulfill mission goals.

MARK: Can you give me a sense of how big this is? I realize that we’re talking about dozens and dozens of companies, ranging from IBM to Nordstrom’s, that are utilizing prison labor, but what scale are we talking about? Does it represent a significant portion of our GDP? Is it growing?

BOB: Currently there are more than 300 full scale prison factories operating nationwide. Many are operating two or three shifts in order to keep up with orders and shipping. 109 of those factories are operated by the federal Prison Industries (UNICOR). Here is a link to the NCIA site where they list the companies “partnered” with state prison industries using inmate labor, the products made, etc. The NCIA also has a “Buyer’s Guide,” where consumers and companies alike can shop for prison made or related goods. The NCIA Board is comprised of all those involved in prison manufacturing – prison industry executives, vendors, UNICOR, ACA, etc., and these are the people who determine policy and have oversight over the entire PIE Program, in effect overseeing themselves.

I cannot provide the % of our GDP that prison-made goods represent. I would have to refer you to a CPA or individual with more knowledge than I on this. I can tell you, however, that a conservative estimate of the gross sales in total prison-made goods, in 2010, was $2.4 billion. This is in addition to the $75 billion spent on incarceration. And, it’s worth noting, none of that $2.4 billion is returned to the taxpayers to offset their expenditures for incarceration. The total number of prisoners working in our prison factories nationwide is now estimated at between 600,000 and 1 million, manufacturing thousands of products that include missile guidance components, aircraft wiring for Boeing products, wiring for electronic equipment, phone cables and related sub-products for companies like IBM, Escod Industries, HP, Dell, etc. Federal prisoners also make nearly 100% of the clothing supplied to our military services, canteens, helmets, web belts, back packs, boots, shoes, dress and camo uniforms, underwear, t-shirts, etc.

The actual number of prisoners reported in the PIE Program are skewed, as many who are in training are not counted, and not paid… yet the products the they make are included in outgoing orders. Likewise, any non-PIE products manufactured using standard prison wages, of between $.20 and $.50 per hour (Florida and elsewhere), put in inventory, and later drawn dawn to fill PIE orders (avoid paying even minimum wage to the workers), are also not counted.

MARK: I suspect it’s different from state to state, but, in general, how are much are these prisoners being paid for their labor?

BOB: Pay for inmates range from $0 per hour to around $10.00 per hour. The PIE Program now authorizes inmate pay to begin at the minimum wage level (it is supposed to be set at prevailing wage). After an inmate completes a “pre-training” period of approximately 6 months (without pay), they can then enter the PIE Program at the lowest pay scale. Only after completing 4-5 years of “training” do the inmate workers earn the “potential” of receiving prevailing wage scale. The NCIA has set the prevailing wage scale at the 10th percentile (which means inmate workers receive less in wages than 90% of other workers in the private sector make for the same job description. Inmates can also be transferred from position to position, requiring new training, which stalls their wage progression, saving more money for the prison industry and their partners. Of the number of prisoners working in prison industries, I estimate less than 1% ever reach even the potential for receiving prevailing wages.

MARK: So, is it safe to assume that this is a profit center for both public and for-profit prisons?

BOB: Yes. Though prison industries are self-sustaining and operate without any tax funding, the taxpayer does not share in the profits made. All profits made are to the private sector companies, with a small percentage going to the prison industry itself. In many instances today, the prison industry is both the employer and customer, not partnering with companies. Instead, they determine the products, develop the markets and sell the products under their own labels. The PIE Program provides a loophole… unless the products leave the state of manufacture, the industry is not required to abide by the PIECP mandatory requirements on pay, benefits, hours, etc. This allows them to sell to brokers who have a shipping address in the state. Once the items are received by the brokers, they ship the products all over the country with impunity, and thus avoid paying PIE wages, or having to abide by the prohibition against unfair competition with private companies, and the requirement of getting labor and unions to sign-off on the operation.

MARK: Can you talk a little about the point of intersection where for-profit prisons and the prison labor industry meet? Are there regulations in place to address the enormous conflicts of interest that must exist?

BOB: The points of intersection between private prison companies and prison industry and profits can best be demonstrated by a former company, US Technologies (UST) and their contractual partnership with Geo Group (then Wackenhut Corrections Corp). Read the SEC filing of UST here. (Begin on page 3 with the overview. Then read about the BOD of UST on Page 4.)

On page 9, you’ll find UST/LTI were given facility leases for as little as $1.00 per year, with subsidized utilities by Geo in Florida and Texas. UST folded in 2006, after the CEO swindled investors out of nearly $20 million, and the SEC devalued their stock. Today, another company now takes their place, brokering inmate labor to companies wanting to reduce wage and overhead – from the same physical address in Lockhart, Texas that UST operated out of. This is OnShore Resources.

Just prior to the 2000 filing by UST… a meeting was held in DC with Janet Reno serving as keynote speaker (in 1998). Another meeting was held the same afternoon. ALEC member Rep. Ray Allen (R TX) was a speaker along with Pam Davis, CEO of PRIDE (the Florida private prison industry corporation) and Florida Rep. Bill McCollum (R). They met to discuss the expansion of the PIE Program nationwide. Following this meeting, the PIE Program exploded from state to state. Ray Allen was the Texas Chairman of the Committee on Corrections, a lobbyist for the NCIA, and, by 200,3 would head ALEC’s Criminal Justice Task Force. In ’94, Allen introduced legislation in Texas to expand the state’s prison industry program under PIECP. Once passed, he took it to ALEC, who adopted it as model legislation titled, “Prison Industries Act,” and disseminated it throughout the US from 1999 on. This has served as the standard for prison industry operations since 1999. This is exactly how the Stand-Your-Ground law was born, introduced in one state by ALEC members, then adopted as model legislation, and now has appeared in more than 20 states. It is ALEC’s most notable and effective MO.

There is no conflict of interest, they drown out the complaints of those in the private sector who object to the use of inmate labor and about unfair competition. The answer given to the objectors is to become competitive in their markets by partnering with a prison industry and using inmate labor.

MARK: Are you aware of any significant prison labor activities taking place in Michigan that my readers should be aware of?

BOB: Your state has the Mackinac Center (funded by the Koch brothers) that has been pushing for using inmate labor for production needs of private companies since 2002. Michigan is pushing for privatization of prisons, inmate healthcare and food services right now. Included in this, they’re pursuing legislation that would allow prisoners to be used by private companies as a labor source… Here’s a clip from the last link:

“Michigan lawmakers are taking it a step further. They want to allow the private prison companies to employ the prisoners to perform duties within the prison, such as custodial and food service, but first the state must legislate an exemption to the minimum wage laws so the private companies can have what will amount to a free work force to run the prison where they will literally have a huge captive labor force at their disposal to contract-out to make millions in corporate profits, all while enjoying Snyder’s generous corporate tax cut on their bounty.”

This article also links these efforts to ALEC, CCA, Geo and the model legislation they’ve introduced in Michigan. What your readers need to understand is that for every job taken over by a prisoner, a private sector worker or union member loses his/her job. In this manner, the state “saves” money through reduced wages and number of employees. Corporations get nearly free labor and use that to replace American workers.

MARK: I can see how this may fly in a country that doesn’t have unemployment over 8% (and much higher in places). How do legislators respond, though, when you ask why our utilization of cheap prison labor is growing at a time when jobs for tax-paying Americans are becoming harder and harder to find?

BOB: The response to my probes about employing prisoners in lieu of private sector workers generates a two-fold response depending upon whether the inmates are taking over public or private sector jobs. In both situations lawmakers respond with claims that inmates need training and the industries fulfill that need to help “reduce recidivism.” This is a lie to begin with. Many studies have shown there is no noticeable reduction in recidivism rates when an inmate is employed in prison industry programs. In the case of the public sector, lawmakers state that they are helping municipalities, state departments and agencies to be fiscally responsible through reducing the number of employees, and health and retirement benefit requirements, while teaching the inmate worker a trade. Of course, when inmates are used for free, cheap or slave labor, employers are reluctant to employ those same inmate employees once released – and pay them a fair wage, when instead they can simply continue to use the replacement provided by the prison classification process.

MARK: Anything that you would like to add on the role of ALEC?

BOB: ALEC created the Prison Industries Act and the Private Correctional Facilities Act in 1995 as the above links attest. This is an agenda they have pushed for their corporate members for more than 15 years now. They have been quite successful, and, as states have approached the bankruptcy abyss due to paying for the increased incarceration, ALEC is now turning their attention to “reforming” that which they created through the “Right on Crime” initiative advanced by Gingrich and Pat Nolan of Prison Fellowship Ministries and the American Bail Coalition (ABC). ALEC pushed for abolishing parole, and that legislation served to increase prison populations exponentially. Now, Conservative politicians are saying that they were wrong in their pursuits of Tough on Crime policies, mandatory drug sentences, and similar efforts. To make it right, they now propose that, in lieu of parole, states pass legislation to allow inmates to apply for an early release bond to ensure the state that they will not reoffend. These bonds will be underwritten by the ABC member companies, and require the inmate or his family pay a 15% fee for the $25 to $50k bonds. Of course this will create a windfall of money for the ABC companies, make the GOP lawmakers appear to have “solved” a problem they actually created in the first place, and will allow the ABC bondsmen to have total control over the released inmates through GPS ankle monitors (made by an ALEC member corp) and monitored by another company (also an ALEC member corp).

Overall the prison industry and privatization legislation has been responsible for more than a trillion dollars in profits over the years, Mark. Though ALEC claims they have dissolved that task force, the legislative efforts of that group has simply been absorbed by the remaining task forces.

For more information on this very important issue, I’d encourage you to visit Bob’s website where you’ll find a great deal more.

And, here, for those of you who are more visual, is an NCIA ad, encouraging companies to make use of prison labor.

It’s fucking chilling, isn’t it?

I particularly like how the voiceover actor says, “Be part of a progressive business solution.”

You asked for a solution to off-shoring, America. Well, here it is… Now, thanks to the likes of ALEC, we can bring jobs back to this country AND compete with the slave wages of China. It’s a huge “Win, Win.”

Oh, and guess what I just saw in the news today? According to new research, it looks as though private prisons are lobbying for longer sentences.

Schneiderman, as you may recall, formally launched this New York probe on April 26 of this year, saying, “The reckless deregulation and irresponsible conduct that brought down the American economy must be systematically investigated.” And, Occupy Wall Street had his back. As Berger noted during the panel, he and other Occupy protesters held a sit-in at Schneiderman’s office, showing their support, and encouraging him to take the matter and hand seriously. They, again, were hopeful. Unfortunately, it seems, people are now beginning to lose faith. Berger said, toward the end of the panel, that he personally thinks that Schneiderman didn’t know how powerful the forces aligned against him were… And, with that as context, here’s video of Scheniderman, who took the stage at Netroots Nation later that evening.

And here are my brief notes, for those of you how would rather hear what the Attorney General of New York had to say, filtered through my mind.

First, it’s probably worth mentioning that there were protesters. They were sitting right up front. When Schneiderman took the stage, they raised their placards. I couldn’t read what they said. They weren’t obnoxious about it. Someone yelled that he should make good on his promises to hold people accountable, but, otherwise, people just held their signs.

Schneiderman thanked the bloggers and activists in the crowd, saying that he wouldn’t be where he was today without an active online community, pushing for progressive change. He talked of our collective power, noting that leaders don’t create movements, but that movements create leaders. Politicians, he said, liked to come in late, after battles had been won, and claim credit for what others on the ground had done. I got the sense that he was acknowledging this about himself, which I liked. He said that holders of elected office, by their very nature, were inclined to be cautious. He said that it was our job to push them… He asked for us to push him… This was a refrain that he’d keep going back to over the course of the evening. “You lead,” he said, “and your leaders will follow.”

This is the point where someone in the audience yelled out something about his inaction relative to the prosecution bankers. Schneiderman smiled and said, “I apreciate your getting my point about pushing elected officials.”

Quoting FDR, he then said, “I agree with you. Now make me do it.”

In this country, said Schneiderman, we had a century of progressive action up until 1980, during which the conditions of the poor and middle class continued to improve. The conservative shift we’re seeing, he said, wasn’t started by Republicans holding office. The Republican movement was started by activists that were dedicated to derailing the progress being made by Progressives. We need to do the same thing on our side. We need to plan for the long term, and build a movement.

He talks of the difference between what he calls transactional politics and transformational politics. Transactional politics, he says, are the individual fights that we’re all engaged in on a day-to-day basis. They’re the battles over individual pieces of legislation, and the campaigns we wage over important issues. He argues that we need to strategize at a level above that. And that’s what he calls transformational politics. “We need to change how people think, so that the impossible becomes possible,” he says. We don’t just need to win the fights that are in front of us right now, but we need to do the groundwork so that we can get a better deal for all Americans in the future. The greatest damage that the conservatives have done, he argues, doesn’t have anything to do with individual pieces of legislation. It’s that they changed the mindset of the American people so that they would embrace laws that hurt them, by repeatedly telling them that government is less effective than the private sector, and convincing them that unions were bad for the middle class (despite the fact that they created the middle class). We need to change the way people think, so that when opportunities arise, we can push for positive change. That’s what the other side did. They worked for 40 years. We need to have a similar mindset.

He says that what we need is a second New Deal. The people in power, he says, know that this could be brewing, and it frightens them. He says that we need to know it, too. We need to know that this is a possibility, and we need to act on.

Speaking of the New Deal, he said that the thing that made it special wasn’t just the individual legislative components that comprised it, but that it marked a change in thinking about government. According to Schneiderman, it marked a transformation moment. With the New Deal, he said, people began to think, “We’re all in this together.” Furthermore, they came to accept that government could, if run well, exist to help us. And, according to Schneiderman, we could be on the brink of such a transformational moment once again. 2011, he says, marked the opening for this transformational work, and a second New Deal.

As for his work relative to the derivatives market and the crash of 2008, he tells us that he has three main objectives. He wants for those who caused the crash to be held accountable. He wants there to be meaningful help for home owners who are suffering as a result of the actions of these individuals. And he wants to get everything documented, and out in the open, so that people can’t rewrite history.

The collapse of 2008 did not, he says, happen because we were trying to get poor people into homes that they couldn’t afford, and it wasn’t because we spend too much on teachers, police or firefighters. Public employees and the working poor were not the ones who blew up our economy, he says. “Unregulated derivative trading caused this.” These people fought for deregulation, and this was the result. In 2004, he notes, our elected officials, at the behest of the big banks, refused to regulate predatory lended, and they stopped the states from taking action on their own. They led us down the path toward “supply-side devastation.”

Last year, the big banks offered the states a settlement deal. Schneiderman says that he found it to be inadequate, and refused to accept it. The banks, he said, in exchange for their money, wanted a broad release for all of their previous wrongdoing. Most of the other attorney generals wanted to do it. Schneiderman says that he, and a few others, didn’t want to accept it… And, as they were preparing to fight it out, something incredible happened… Occupy Wall Street came about, and gave voice to the demand for accountability. And, at that point, the national debate shifted. The attorney generals started to get behind a more narrow release, which would allow for wider accountability. Now, he says, it’s bsck on the national agenda. And, he added, because of this, Obama, at the State of the Union, began saying things about how “everyone needed a fair shot” and about how we all needed to “play by the same rules.” That wouldn’t have happened otherwise, he says. And we can’t stop now. We can’t just elect people and go home. We need to stay engaged, and we need to keep holding their feet to the fire. We need to keep pushing for comprehensive change. It won’t happen overnight, but we need to keep fighting for a second New Deal.

And here, for those of you who are interested, is a clip from early May of Occupy the SEC’s Alexis Goldstein discussing the investigation, and ongoing initiatives to reign in the big banks, with Schneiderman.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

…Sen. Bernie Sanders said, “The Koch brothers’ bid to buy elections in America speaks to the obvious need for a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United and subsequent rulings. In the short term, Congress must pass legislation to require disclosure of the corporations and wealthy individuals behind the ads by outside groups.”

Sen. Sanders said the Koch spending demonstrates that we are no longer a nation of the people, “When one wealthy family spends more money than was raised altogether by the last Republican presidential candidate, it tells us that we are no longer a country of the people, by the people and for the people. We are becoming a country of the rich, by the rich and for the rich.”…

If you haven’t done so already, please take this opportunity to divest yourself of any and all Koch Industry products. I know it will be hard to wipe your ass with something other than Quilted Northern toilet paper, if that’s what you’ve become accustomed to, and wear clothes without Lycra, but desperate times call for desperate measures… Our ancestors gave their lives so that we might be free. The least we can do, I think, is find a substitute for Brawny paper towels.

And, of course, we can support Bernie is his legislative push to see Citizens United overturned. Here, with more on that, is a clip from VT Digger.

…Sanders last December 8 introduced the Saving American Democracy Amendment. His proposal would restore the power of Congress and state lawmakers to enact campaign spending limits, like laws that were in place for a century before the controversial court ruling.

Sanders also is a cosponsor of legislation aimed at curtailing the power of special interest groups by requiring them to disclose more information about their role in purchasing campaign advertisements. The Disclose Act would address some concerns related to the Supreme Court ruling that let corporations pour money directly into campaign ads…

As I just mentioned the other day, in the thread about Ben Cohen’s plan to help us deface our dollar bills, in hopes of spreading the Move to Amend gospel, while there are a great many things wrong in the United States today, I believe that, above all else, we need to focus on getting the money out of politics. Until we do that, I’m of the opinion that no substantive, long-term change is possible. We need to strike at the root of the problem, and stop individuals and corporations from buying our elections under the guise of free speech.

Speaking of the Move to Amend, I don’t generally sign petitions, but their’s, I think, it simple, elegant, and beautiful. Here it is, in its entirety.

We, the People of the United States of America, reject the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United, and move to amend our Constitution to firmly establish that money is not speech, and that human beings, not corporations, are persons entitled to constitutional rights.

If you’re so inclined, you can sign it here.

And, as long as you’re signing things, how about a letter to your elected officials? Believe it or not, they do count the letters that come in, and a note encouraging them to back the Disclose Act and the Saving American Democracy Amendment, really could make a difference… Should you choose to join me, you’ll find the contact information for your Congressperson and Senators here.

Oh… One last thing… I know some of you don’t think there’s much difference between Obama and Romney. And, to some degree, I’d agree with you. I think, however, that the Citizens United decision, which was decided 5-to-4 by the Supreme Court, illustrates just how important it is that a Democrat holds the White House, especially when we have as many as three Supreme Court justices who could be retiring over the next four years.

MARK: First off, can you tell us a little about BALLE, and why it is that you think the work of the organization is so important at this point in American history?

PAUL: BALLE is the only national business alliance dedicated to connecting local, independent businesses to each other. That means the collective wisdom and knowledge about crowdfunding in Arizona is quickly and easily accessible by their business peers in Detroit, and that cross-pollination is proving to be a massive catalyst in moving the Localist movement to the forefront of policy and mainstream awareness.

MARK: In a few weeks, BALLE is holding its annual conference in Grand Rapids. Why Grand Rapids? Or, if I can put you on the spot… Why not Detroit, which seems like ground zero when it comes to this kind of thing?

PAUL: We have historically partnered to put on the conference with an established local BALLE network such that we can showcase their local living economy impacts up-close and personal. There is wonderful work happening in Detroit right now, which is why we have a post-conference tour of Detroit and a Michigan-specific scholarship fund recruiting Detroit (and other Michigan) leaders to come to the conference to share and to learn. But Local First in Grand Rapids is a national powerhouse network whose work is an example around the country. The collaborative work of the 600 members of Local First has proven that even the forces of recession and industrial decline are no match for the economic power of a thriving community of innovative locally owned businesses. By having the conference in Grand Rapids we’ll all get to experience that — to touch, smell, taste what real prosperity can look like in this former Rust Belt city.

MARK: Nationally speaking, when it comes to matters of local food production, and the evolution of complex, dynamic local business ecosystems, like those championed by BALLE, would you say that Michigan is in front of the curve, leading the way?

PAUL: I really don’t feel qualified to answer this. Maybe Rodger Bowser, one of the Deli’s managing partners, who is very connected with this scene would be a better person to weigh in on this question.

MARK: As I know that you spend a lot of time traveling the country, I’m wondering what areas you feel we have the most to learn from. I hear a lot, for instance, about the Intervale Food Hub in Vermont. What, if anything, can we learn from them? And what other regions can we appropriate ideas from?

PAUL: Regarding Intervale, I’d point here to the “Community Food Enterprise” study from 2 years ago, undertaken by BALLE and the Wallace Center at Winrock International, that profiled Intervale and other local and regional food businesses for what they have to teach other communities. See the Intervale case study online here. Intervale’s work is powerful because it took underutilized land and a dream of a city to meet 10% of its food demand through local production, and it accomplished this by creating and bringing together a whole range of locally owned, community-serving businesses that worked collaboratively to build a local food system specific to the needs and assets of Burlington.

Farmer training and support was one key component of their success, as with another model we profiled, Appalachian Harvest Network, taking former tobacco farmers and training them instead to become organic food growers for local and regional consumption. It’s an unlikely story but it’s been a big success in terms of local food access and rural economic development.

For those interested in food hubs, we’ll have a 2-hour interactive session dedicated to the topic at the BALLE conference in Grand Rapids.

MARK: Speaking of food hubs, how are things going with our local initiative? Is there any positive news to report?

PAUL: Again, talk to Rodger Bowser.

MARK: This may be a bit of an oversimplification, but we know from experience that chain stores, on the whole, are like a cancer. They force locally-owned retailers out of business. They tend to pay people poorly. They siphon money out of the communities the inhabit. And, ultimately, they have no allegiance to these communities in which they exist. They aren’t accountable. And, at the first sign of trouble, they pull up stakes and leave, after having decimated finely-tuned ecosystems that took decades to form. But, they’re efficient as all hell, and they provide goods and services at relatively affordable prices, which is important to today’s cash-strapped and financially insecure American consumer. Given that dynamic, how does one move forward? Clearly, as in the case of Zingerman’s, there’s a certain demographic that’s willing to pay for quality product. They’re going to pay a premium, knowing that the company they’re choosing to do business with, is paying a living wage, treating their people well, and contributing toward the betterment of their community. And that, in and of itself, is a good thing. But how do you broaden that audience? How do you move the line so that would-be Walmart shoppers start going to the local woodworker for their picnic tables, or the local butcher for their hamburger, when, I think it’s safe to say, those folks are never going to be able to compete on price? How do you make people value quality, and the acknowledge the fact that spending more to do business with a neighbor is actually in their best interest?

PAUL: We’ve all felt the very real and personal impact of what it means to be at the mercy of global conglomerations. We’ve seen them pack up and leave, and that has left many out of work for the first time in their lives. The local treasury has been bled, the community’s standard of living has been lowered, and, in some instances, the earth has been scorched. Consider the dollars staying in a community at your local butcher, how that helps pay local taxes, which help local schools, and keeps wages higher so that the people who live and work in your town are also shopping and spending and keeping your local economy humming along – that is real prosperity. It’s certainly an education process, and we’ve got a long ways to go, but the current love-affair with “buy local” is paving the way for us to have the broader conversation. We can then begin to have dialogue and education on what “the true cost of a product” is, in terms of people and planet.

MARK: I’m curious to know what you make of American Express’s well-financed, annual Small Business Saturday campaign. I’m torn. On one hand, I think it’s good that they’re giving national exposure to the importance of locally-owned business, but, on the other, it’s just one damned day. And it kind of feels, at least to me, like the movement is getting co-opted. Are you sensing that the “buy local” movement is at risk of being taken over? I mean we have malls now with signs saying “Buy Local.” How do we keep the waters from getting muddied, and the whole thing becoming meaningless?

PAUL: This is an interesting question. American Express asked for BALLE’s endorsement of the day, and after a lot of discussion with American Express representatives and our community, we decided not to. Certainly, they have reached a very large national audience with their Small Business Saturday campaign, and it does get people talking about small business, if not local and independent ownership. What we think is most important is to help the public connect this one day to the work happening on Main Streets around the country to support independent businesses throughout the year. Several dozen local business networks came together to create the Shift Your Shopping holiday campaign as our movement’s answer — a campaign that represented more than 38,000 businesses across the U.S. and Canada. You can find out more about that campaign here.

MARK: If I could take the opportunity to ask you an Ypsi specific question…. As you and I have discussed before, a great many Zingerman’s employees live in Ypsilanti. (I believe more than half, right?) While I know that there’s some synergy to be had, having all of your various enterprises co-located in Ann Arbor, might it make sense, at some point, to put some portion of your business in Ypsi? I know that it would be difficult to decouple the Bakehouse from Zingerman’s Mail Order, for instance, but I think that it would be awesome if you did your baking here… maybe on Water Street.

PAUL: It would actually be easier and more realistic to move our Mail Order operation to Ypsi, and that is a possibility. I still would really like to have a Zingerman’s presence in Ypsilanti and I believe that it will happen at some point. Although I do worry about being viewed as an unwanted outsider.

MARK: Back to chains, I’m curious what you think about legislation that would restrict their growth in, for instance, downtown areas. Is that something that we might want to consider in Ann Arbor, where, at the rate we’re going, over half of all storefronts will be either a 7 Elevens or a Starbucks by 2020.

PAUL: Many cities have experimented with ways to lift up their locally owned independents and define for themselves what they want their business community to look like. Some of those efforts have been more successful than others. For example, Think Local First DC and Go Local Tacoma (Washington State) are two BALLE networks that have been navigating Walmart coming to town, and Local First Arizona completed several landmark studies that have changed Phoenix procurement policies to support local businesses first. The ongoing research of Michael Shuman, a BALLE Fellow, and Stacy Mitchell, of the Institute for Local Self Reliance, are some of the most helpful resources about what’s been tried and what’s worked. You can find details here.

MARK: What are you most looking forward to at the BALLE conference?

PAUL: Hanging out with Mark Maynard. Having people from around the country coming to a city that Time magazine called “DEAD” and seeing how vibrant it is and also experiencing all the great, positive energy that is Michigan (irrespective of the legislature in Lansing). I always get re-energized with hope when I get to see and hear about all the people who don’t sit around complaining about what is wrong, but instead are imagining and acting on what is possible.

MARK: Is there anything else that I should have asked?

PAUL: What does BALLE mean when it talks about Real Prosperity vs False Prosperity?

False Prosperity
Consolidated, distant ownership
Benefiting only a few
Depleting natural resources
Dependent, volatile
Homogenizing, loss of heritage
Dollars leave the local economy

Real Prosperity
Diverse, local ownership
Improving quality of life for all
Protecting the natural resources we all need
Self-sufficient, resilient
Unique culture, pride of place
Dollars stay in local economy

Those interested in joining me and Paul at the BALLE conference in Grand Rapids, will find registration information here… Also, I’ve just been informed that the Kellogg Foundation has come forward with a generous offer to fund 25 scholarships to the conference. According to the announcement, these scholarships are intended especially for “entrepreneurs and community network leaders from underrepresented communities in the Upper Peninsula, Detroit, Flint, Grand Rapids, and Muskegon, and beyond, including communities of color, low-income communities, and women-led organizations.” (I imagine that Ypsilanti would meet their criteria.) If you’d like to apply, you can find the online application here.

For those of you listening at home, our friends at Think Progress have put together an interesting list of background facts. Here are a few of my favorites.

• Since the last SOTU, the economy has created 1.9 million private sector jobs. [Source]
• The top 1 percent take home 24 percent of the nation’s income, up from about 9 percent in 1976. [Source]
• Private sector job creation under Obama in 2011 was larger than seven out of the eight years Bush was president. [Source]
• The top 1 percent of Americans own 40 percent of our country’s wealth while the bottom 80 percent owns only 7 percent. [Source]
• Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, 2.5 million young adults gained health insurance. [Source]
• Last year, China spent 9 percent of its GDP on infrastructure. The U.S. spent 2.5 percent. [Source]
• 2.65 million seniors saved an average of $569 on prescriptions last year thanks to the Affordable Care Act. [Source]
• Union membership is at a 70-year low. [Source]
• The United States used to have the world’s largest percentage of college graduates. We’re now #14. [Source]
• 47.8 percent of households that receive food stamps are working, because having a job is not enough to keep them out of poverty. [Source]
• In the last three years, 30 major corporations spent more on lobbying than they paid in taxes. [Source]
• 50 percent of U.S. workers make less than $26,364 per year. [Source]
• More than one in 70 homes faced foreclosure last year. [Source]
• Since 1985, the federal tax rate for the 400 wealthiest Americans dropped from 29 percent to 18 percent. [Source]

So, do you think he sufficiently addressed all of these issues tonight?

Speaking of Obama, will anyone be going to hear him speak when he comes to Ann Arbor on Friday?

update: Did he just say that he’s launching a task force to explore the prosecution of those financial sector executives responsible for the economic disaster we’ve been living through?

update: Did I just hear people in the audience booing Obama for suggesting that we should pass a law making it illegal for members of Congress to benefit financially from insider trading? COuld that be possible?

update: The transcript of the entire address can be found here.

update: OK, here’s the part of the speech about the prosecution of Wall Street evil doers… I just hope that he follows though, and this isn’t just another election year promise, like that time he told us that he’d close GITMO.

…We will also establish a Financial Crimes Unit of highly trained investigators to crack down on large-scale fraud and protect people’s investments. Some financial firms violate major anti-fraud laws because there’s no real penalty for being a repeat offender. That’s bad for consumers, and it’s bad for the vast majority of bankers and financial service professionals who do the right thing. So pass legislation that makes the penalties for fraud count.

And tonight, I am asking my Attorney General to create a special unit of federal prosecutors and leading state attorneys general to expand our investigations into the abusive lending and packaging of risky mortgages that led to the housing crisis. This new unit will hold accountable those who broke the law, speed assistance to homeowners, and help turn the page on an era of recklessness that hurt so many Americans…

As of right now, I’m not terribly inclined to cut the Obama campaign a check. (I figure that’s what corporations are for, right?) That would change in an instant, though, if we actually started seeing bankers being brought up on charges.

…Our electoral system, already hostage to corporate money and corporate lobbyists, gasped its last two years ago. It died on Jan. 21, 2010, when the Supreme Court in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission granted to corporations the right to spend unlimited amounts on independent political campaigns. The ruling turned politicians into corporate employees. If any politician steps out of line, dares to defy corporate demands, this ruling hands to our corporate overlords the ability to pump massive amounts of anonymous money into campaigns to make sure the wayward are defeated and silenced. Politicians like Obama are hostages. They jump when corporations say jump. They beg when corporations say beg. They hand corporations exemptions, subsidies, trillions in taxpayer money, no-bid contracts and massive loans with virtually no interest, and they abolish any regulations that impede profits and protect the citizen. Corporations like Goldman Sachs, because they own the system, are bailed out by federal dollars and given essentially free government loans to gamble. I am not sure what to call our economic system, but it is not capitalism. And if any elected official so much as murmurs anything that sounds like dissent, the Supreme Court ruling permits corporations to destroy him or her. And they do.

Turn off your televisions. Ignore the Newt-Mitt-Rick-Barack reality show. It is as relevant to your life as the gossip on “Jersey Shore.” The real debate, the debate raised by the Occupy movement about inequality, corporate malfeasance, the destruction of the ecosystem, and the security and surveillance state, is the only debate that matters. You won’t hear it on the corporate-owned airwaves and cable networks, including MSNBC, which has become to the Democratic Party what Fox News is to the lunatic fringe of the Republican Party. You won’t hear it on NPR or PBS. You won’t read about it in our major newspapers. The issues that matter are being debated, however, on “Democracy Now!,” Link TV, The Real News, Occupy websites and Revolution Truth. They are being raised by journalists such as Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi. You can find genuine ideas in corners of the Internet or in books by political philosophers such as Sheldon Wolin. But you have to go looking for them.

Voting will not alter the corporate systems of power. Voting is an act of political theater. Voting in the United States is as futile and sterile as in the elections I covered as a reporter in dictatorships like Syria, Iran and Iraq. There were always opposition candidates offered up by these dictatorships. Give the people the illusion of choice. Throw up the pretense of debate. Let the power elite hold public celebrations to exalt the triumph of popular will. We can vote for Romney or Obama, but Goldman Sachs and ExxonMobil and Bank of America and the defense contractors always win. There is little difference between our electoral charade and the ones endured by the Syrians and Iranians. Do we really believe that Obama has, or ever had, any intention to change the culture in Washington?…

Our efforts must be directed toward acts of civil disobedience, to chipping away, through nonviolent protest, at the pillars of established, corporate power. The corporate state is so unfair, so corrupt and so rotten that the institutions tasked with holding it up—the police, the press, the banking system, the civil service and the judiciary—have become vulnerable. It is becoming harder and harder for the corporations to convince its foot soldiers to hold the system in place.

And, assuming you agree, here’s Bill Moyers telling you how to get involved and start fighting back.

Ask Bill: How can ordinary people help to overturn or nullify the Citizen United Decision? from BillMoyers.com on Vimeo.