39. Summoned to WashingtonDOUG COLEBROOK AND HIS COOPERATORS decided it was time to expand operations to Washington, DC. The preliminary work and agendas were ripe for a deeper engagement, which would swing into the in personam focus that the Summons Group's presence in the nation's capital would facilitate.
The adequate funding, which was given at just the right time by the billionaire trio, relieved the group of restraints and restrictions that were dollar-based. The fact that they chose not to work in the media spotlight was extremely useful in keeping them away from distractions so they could sort out the talents, tasks, and co-ordinations of this band of brothers and sisters. They knew that the tranquility would soon end as they entered the fray more directly, and they were preparing for a transition that they would shape. As they conceived it, moving to Washington was but an extension of the steadfast Summons-driven activity being carried on back in the districts. The circuits had been carefully organized back home so that the plug, once put in the socket in Washington, would flow with energy and light up the arena where Congressional voting takes place.
The Cooperators, as they now called themselves, arrived ready to initiate an ingenious approach. They would tap into the expertise of the appropriate think tanks and citizen groups but steer clear of the occupational hazards of those organizations, which included bickering, intrigue, and overblown claims of influence on their members around the country.
To accomplish their purposes, the Cooperators located advocates for very well-thought-out legislation for reforming the campaign finance system, for progressive taxation that would give the country needed revenues to fund progressive policy goals, for providing facilities that enable focused organized civic cooperation associations where people would have the space to voluntarily band together to redress imbalances of power and foster community self-reliance.
Besides drawing from the think tanks and already organized citizen groups, the Cooperators knew they could get help from those who had impressive expertise, however subdued, among retired dissenting military, security, and diplomatic persons. These experienced Americans could inform them regarding military/security budgets as well as on foreign policies that prevent wars and enhance standards of living, health, and safety.
Once in Washington, they soon learned of other groups that had developed budgets that represented the values of justice and compassion with attention to workers, children, and posterity. They found seasoned, articulate promoters of energy conversions away from fossil fuels and nuclear energy and toward renewables. The Cooperators had hardly anticipated that so much data-driven common sense and experience would so quickly flow into their modest offices. As Doug Colebrook remarked eloquently, "The traditional virtues have a way of simplifying the common good. Invidious motivations complicate to hide. They build in cancers against public interest. They twist, turn, obfuscate and commercialize in order to subordinate civic values to short-term commercialism."
The Cooperators didn't have to prove themselves to gain entry to the varied progressive organization they found in Washington. They drew on their support back home to earn the respect of these organizations and readily accepted cross-monitoring and checking by other specialists of their submissions. The spreading impression that the Cooperators had large financial resources at their beck and call did not harm the alacrity with which their calls were returned.
They learned that many of the honest experts tapped by them were frustrated, daunted, and discouraged after witnessing years of the crude monetization of the nation's public institutions. But their spreading sadness had not dented their work ethic, because they remained committed to the belief that someday the situation would change so they had better be ready. Their files were gold mines. The Cooperators were enthused to discover in the archives scores of enlightened bills filed over the past century by senators and representatives of both parties but never passed, sometimes never even heard, but kept as a record of what our country could become. Publicizing and taking inspiration from these bills showed that the Cooperators were moving with the rhythms of the best of the past as formulated by legislators of conscience from all parts of the country, and this strengthened the standing of the Cooperators' missions.
Other citizen groups provided the Cooperators with excellent comparative material showing that in Western countries from Australia and New Zealand and Canada to Western Europe, for a long time people had enjoyed the fruits of social justice movements and multiparty vigor, giving them more vibrant polities and more citizen rights, although recently the virus of corporate financial globalization was destabilizing their political economies and fraying the edges of their productive and distributional practices.
These materials provided quite a lesson for the public, showing that people in nations not aggregately wealthier than ours have obtained higher wages, stronger unions, universal health care, good pensions, highly used, modern public transit, one month or more of paid annual vacation, free university education, well-maintained parks and support for the arts, paid maternity leave, daycare, family sick leave, and more humane criminal justice and prison policies. This fortified the Cooperators' position beyond their expectations, as they were astounded by the wealth of material.
As each new bit of information was gleaned, these studied "assets" were conveyed to the Cooperators' fast expanding constituencies and informal alliances, given out both person-to-person and over the internet, even reaching the world of teenagers who were starting to understand the stakes they had in what was transpiring.
Doug and his civic kin particularly wanted expertise in simplification. While most experts are trained to dote on complexity, the ones the Cooperators were searching for would be able to simplify laws, regulations, forms, red tape, and those uncompetitive sign-on-the-dotted-line fine print contracts. They also needed experts who could do weeding, ones who could pinpoint outdated, useless laws and laws that shoveled taxpayer monies into crony capitalism, all of which needed to be repealed. This expertise, more often than not, was available at self-described conservative think tanks and related civic organizations.
On this note, someone brought up at a left/right meeting, that the Canadian Medicare Bill, written in the 1960s, which provided full healthcare with free choice of doctors and physicians (i.e., public insurance and private delivery of health services) was all of thirteen pages long. By comparison, the new health insurance legislation in the U.S. ran over 1500 pages with thousands of pages of regulations. The abundance of confusing detail and bureaucratized language confused and froze people in bewildering ways.
The Cooperators task force on this specific issue challenged the rule-writers, who were crafting a new health insurance law, to explain everything in plain English. For they saw that what those who had put together the current legislation couldn't explain was the enormous time expended over exemptions, waivers, co-payments, deductibles, and tax consequences that regular citizens were obliged to endure, suffer, or even be brought down by when they fell into innocent violations. The task force well knew that Canada covers all its people at half the average per-capita cost of what the wasteful, corrupt, incomprehensible health care billing industry in the U.S. imposes on American citizens - and still millions of Americans go without insurance.
The Cooperators realized that while the hardline conservatives they worked with understood the corporate control problems, they pigheadedly insisted on free market solutions. They could not, however, provide any very convincing facts or results to testify to real-world cases where their honestly held abstract philosophy actually proved workable or beneficial, especially as they consistently overlooked the perverse incentives and exclusions that reigned in the health insurance fee-for-service business, resulting in avoidable loss of life and other physical and psychological harm to consumers, workers and other citizens.
In working with collaborators of all ideological stripes, the Cooperators tried always to determine and separate expertise from such things as fact-deprived ideology and biased or hidden agendas. Obviously, their own preference was for democratic, open, community action when individuals were unable to cope with the forces arrayed against them or simply unable as individuals to acquire what they needed without engaging in common action. While this suggested an idealism in their preferences, at bottom, the Cooperators were very empirical. They wanted to leave open what scientists called "options for revision." This meant they constantly sought nourishment from their base. They backed a devolution of activities to local levels wherever possible to enrich and advance continual improvements into the future.
40. A New, Formidable Progressive Alliance Is FormedWITH CONGRESS BACK IN SESSION, The Reporter was back at his post. It did not take him very long to note a fervent mobilization of progressive, and sometimes libertarian/conservative lawmakers in both Houses. While other reporters were mesmerized by the right-wing revolt against The Speaker, The Reporter kept his eyes on the formation of a real political alignment, being cemented without much ballyhoo, and calling itself the All-American Caucus (AAC). This trans-partisan alliance was not bipartisanship in the old sense. They were not meeting to cut the difference between them so as to locate themselves in the lukewarm middle. They met to see where there was, issue by issue, principled common ground for action. Where there was no agreement, the subject was dropped.
About 105 Representatives and Senators joined AAC. Some were seasoned Congressional veterans. Others made up for their brief experience with hard work and a fresh optimism about making history. They lacked the hard-to-suppress hopelessness of the sensitive old-timers, whose faith in positive change had been dimmed by the erosion of years mired in gridlock.
The ACC's agenda was quite similar to that of the Cooperators, and they promptly reached out to initiate a working relationship with them. Both groups knew that inside and outside pressures were critical to aid them in getting enacted legislation to the White House. Tactically, they decided to lay low and keep their alliance out of the news as they prepared a very solid groundwork of considerable intricacy, fitting their members for action, equipped with carefully written legislation, without having the press on their back and the fulminating talk shows bookers baying at the moon.
One thing the alliance didn't figure on was The Reporter's unparalleled contacts. Tipped off by the adversaries of the AAC inside the hardcore Rules Committee, The Reporter wrote a 1500-word scoop that named names, meetings, and even mentioned some upcoming moves. Given everything going on around the country and in Washington, DC, the scoop did not cause much surprise. It served to intensify the time sensitivity of the AAC, which had one eye on the upcoming primaries as a widely recognized deadline for decisions, and the other eye on the rampant impatience of the rapidly multiplying, enraged public. As one of the Alliance's originators, Representative Christina Eckhardt, said, "The shortness of time is on our side."
Something else was on their side: Rats! Every day, several rats were seen scurrying across the carpets of some Congressional offices, seemingly trying to escape the whole complex, but trapped in it by the closure of every aperture by the Exterminators.
The CIA analysts called it one of their favorite words, "blowback." Exits had been sealed, food was no longer left lying around, and so the rats were hungry, looking for any tiny bit of food and spot of water. And each time a rat emerged, the staff went crazy - some fled to their homes, others started weeping or got furious. "When will it ever end:''' seemed to be their common cry.
It didn't help calm things down when many witnessed a designated office rat hunter, left on site by the Exterminator company, bludgeon a cornered rat to a messy death. Nor did it quiet the ravenous reporters looking for a daily rat story for the insatiable masses, who could never get enough of those rodents. For the AAC folks, the perennial rodent stories in the news served to maintain the public ridicule, the hooting and howling that seemed to have instigated the positive transformation of the dignity-obsessed Speaker of the House of Representatives - along with promoting an expanding sense of public engagement.
41. The People's Tide Flows InMEANWHILE, by car, bus, rail, plane, and even by bicycle and by foot, people of all ages and backgrounds continued to pour into Washington. They filled the restaurants and motels. They needed to find rooms in a city where there were few affordable apartments but many large, under-inhabited houses whose longtime owners wanted to make money to pay for their property taxes and repairs. So they rented to the new arrivals.
The ways these visitors made their voices heard were quite imaginative. There was a cavalcade of horseback riders in a procession down Constitution Avenue resplendent with the signs, "Pass this ... " or "Pass that ... ", always ending with the ominous "or Else!" One horseman was using his trumpet to raise the emotional level of the demonstration, which was fully covered in the press. Others joined the daily "Resign ... or Else" rally going on at the backside of the Capitol. Mini-demonstrations were becoming daily events in front of the White House and at other major government buildings containing departments and agencies. Even those agencies in the suburbs, such as the Pentagon, the CIA, the Patent Office, and the Food and Drug Administration, where the employees had thought they would be beyond reach, did not escape their rallying.
As the arriving tenants began to converse with their hosts, they learned about the de facto "colony" of the District of Columbia. Very few visitors knew about DC's absence of voting rights for members of Congress. DC had a delegate who could watch but could not vote. These first timers in the city also learned there was a push for DC statehood. Some became indignant and added this to the grievances that had drawn them to the city. They were riled up enough to make placards calling for the proposed state of Columbia, parading them in front of the White House.
42. Visiting Your Local Congressperson In SituNOT SURPRISINGLY there were a lot of freelance, unaffiliated organizers among the popular inflow of citizens, and being self-starters, they took their own initiatives. One of them was to rent space near Congress from which emanated scores of people dropping in on their own member of Congress. The Congressional corridors, until then filled by grasping lobbyists, began to be utilized by common people with uncommon pursuits.
This storefront organizer was no mere dispatcher, though he did handle logistics for the visitors so that they could properly schedule their visits. The fellow once was a staffer for a state senator in Massachusetts, in charge of handling letters from constituents. He was familiar with the granular, easy-to-miss differences in the way letters were written, which determined what got attention and what went straight to the circular file. In the latter group were the "we protest/we demand" ones. The storefront guy offered free 30-minute long orientation classes several times a day in which he explained how to compose these missives and also how to approach their district legislators, giving the benefit of his experience to the human flow in and out of his gathering rooms.
He advised visitors not to do all the talking but make their points and ask the lawmakers or their staff for their reactions orally and in writing for later reference. As Storefront explained, politicians love to have their visitors do the talking so that they can simply smile and make no commitments or judgments. He counseled the visitors to exude some mystery about how large their circle was and who was in it. He said they should have factual questions written that require the staff to get the answers from, for example, the Congressional Research Service. In the process of finding information, the staff would be learning about their concerns. Moreover, he said, in talking to one group, "Don't leave unless you give the staff and the legislator a clear impression that you and your group are only going to get stronger when you meet next time either here or back in their district or state. You may wish," he added, "to ask for a town hall meeting some weeks hence and inquire about how many names on a requesting petition he or she would like to see before coming to your community to talk about your chosen subject. Finally, do your homework on the politician's record and background before you show up."
Storefront wagged his finger and said, with a trace of sadness, "Too many voters are in awe of the aura of power in the Congressional offices and just make nice. That means they leave empty-handed. Politicians know full well how to be very polite and empty. It's practically a job requirement."
Prepared with instructions on how to make the most of their stop-ins, the visitors piled up the meetings with their senators and representatives, who were often unnerved to find how different, how well prepared, how determined their constituents were by comparison with what they were used to. What they were asked about were often things the congresspeople would have preferred not to talk about, and when they left, the visitors impressed them to no end by saying such things as they were now on the way to meet with the lawmaker's primary opponents. The smooth, seldom-seen- through public relations veneer that coated Congressional offices like a fine varnish didn't begin to work with these people whose attitude was simply, and (for the lawmakers) shockingly, "You work for us. We are the people calling for these necessities. You will do what we want ... or else."
"Wow" and "Whew," both the legislators and their staff sighed after the visitors departed. Yet, it seemed the minute one contingent left, the congressperson's secretary would be ushering in another bunch. They never seemed to stop coming - hour after hour, their accumulating pressure demanded urgency, action. They would no longer listen to the usual excuses, instead, insisting, if not in these exact words: "No more bullshit or excuses or blaming institutional lethargy."
It didn't help the legislators' peace of mind that while inside talking with the visitors, the incumbents could hear the roars of the rhythmic, "Resign, Resign, Resign, Resign, Resign, Resign," coming from the assembled masses on the back Capitol lawn. For all they knew, their visitors would be going outside to join the shouters as soon as they left the Congressional offices.
43. The Reporter Keeps Spelunking While the Masses Get ArtySUCH A TIDAL WAVE OF VISITS, along with all the other new developments, began to have a haunting effect on the solons. The "other developments" included the gentle pressure of the AAC, the rat-crazed media, and the coming-our of The Speaker - who knew he was a "closeted Commie," as Tush Limba, who used our public airwaves for free to make millions of dollars yearly, put it.
There were also the approaching primary battles, the demanding editorials and, especially, the volcanic eruption of the Cooperators' agenda, which was now being widely publicized - its immense popularity measured by incessant polls, e-mails, telephone calls, and letters.
Further, there were demands for meetings from their constituencies, coming from what they would have to call the "unusual suspects," meaning people who had never been heard from before. At this stage, what you had were 535 lawmakers looking for survival, for any way our, and for any stratagem that would turn the popular tide from enmity to admiration.
The Reporter caught these dynamic strains on the members and noted that these were new experiences for them. The old slogans and assurances, the intimidating campaign cash hoards, and the manipulation of patriotic and religious symbols were not only not working, they were backfiring - evoking a blowback of ridicule, not acquiescence.
It was The Reporter who characterized the legislators' new state of mind with such accuracy and trenchancy that the politicians had to be impressed. After reading The Reporter's latest articles, which seemed to peer into their souls, instead of avoiding him as they used to, they were calling him up for interviews. They also wanted to pick his brain as to what he felt was heading their way on the fast track. The Editor provided two interns to help The Reporter handle all the requests. As he saw it, the more the legislators came to depend on The Reporter, the more inside information would come his way.
The most frequent question legislators put to The Reporter was: "What do you think all those corporate lobbying firms, the trade associations and the powerful Chamber of Commerce are going to do about what is happening?"
To his mind, one of the lawmakers' underlying fears was that the spigots of lobbyist-sponsored campaign cash and resources - so-called fact-finding junkets to places with good golf courses - and other perks would be abruptly turned off. Rather than allay that fear, The Reporter merely called it as he saw it. "There's a good chance the lobbyists, trade associations, and other such organizations will lie low so as not to be caught in the Tsunami. Some overdue restored redistribution of wealth they can take in their stride. Some wildly popular law and order motions, especially targeted at egregious corporate wrongdoing, they cannot visibly oppose. Only when they feel their wealth and acquisitions personally are being expropriated or confiscated will they behave like the proverbial cornered rat, stand on their hind legs, and fight.
"Remember, corporations are expedient, opportunistic. When they have to, they'll adjust. That's a lesson from American history. Whenever Congress meant business, business backed off to avoid worse, so as not to let the public think they were as vulnerable as they really were."
For the congress people The Reporter spoke with, this message was hardly reassuring, especially as he made no mention of whether this would affect their perks. Personally, The Reporter quite enjoyed watching the way those he was chatting with on the Hill squirmed whenever the back-door protesters got particularly loud.
Truthfully, the hourly, "Resign, Resign, Resign, Resign, Resign, Resign," was becoming a little tedious for the listeners, though individual town criers didn't do this shouting out for hours, but rather took things in turn as the organizers would rotate fresh criers from the large influx of people into their nation's Capital.
They also started to break the monotonous drill by featuring prominent artists singing songs of rebellion, of peace not war, and of unionism. The first celebrity volunteer on stage was Patti Smith who sang, with the crowd joining for every word, not just with the chorus, her famous composition "The People Have the Power" several times in one day. She insisted on inviting any member of Congress or their staff who was listening to join with them. To the astonishment of the assemblage, several dozen lawmakers and assistants came down from their offices to lend their lungs and lock swaying arms. Other singers followed with their own famous renditions.
This addition of famed artists to the lineup attracted a different kind of media: the entertainment and celebrity reporters who reached actual and larger virtual audiences rarely touched by even the most vibrant political demonstrations. Such celebrity performances also attracted fans, some of whom, feeling they couldn't really enjoy the music of their favorite singers and bands unless the experience was "enhanced" with some libations, became unruly when they became tipsy. The police made some arrests.
Other provocations were not so easily explained, leading the organizers to suspect the authorities were using the old technique of infiltrating the crowd with deliberate provocateurs, who would bring the police swarming in when they created a disturbance. So far, organizers had good relationships with the Capital Police, the DC Police, and the Park Service. There seemed to be no evidence of the casually dressed informants and agitators that the FBI had sent to anti-war rallies in years past. Just in case, however, the organizers began" deputizing" young, strong, alert people to be informal sentinels, who would nip brewing trouble in the bud.
Along with talking to those who now held the power, The Reporter, getting antsy, wanted to interview some of the primary challengers who were tearing up the hustings and soon enough might themselves be power brokers. If they were elected in droves, which was not inconceivable, it would represent the second eviction of the current lawmakers from their offices.
He approached some of these new faces, selecting two challengers in a Kansas Congressional District. One was taking on the incumbent, Republican Danforth Dufur, in the primary and the other, as a Democrat, was set to run against Dufur in the November election. Strangely enough, to The Reporter, these erstwhile opponents seemed downright chummy. The Reporter asked how this could be since there were on different sides of the electoral and ideological aisles.
"We have something very important in common," smiled the primary challenger, "and it's not our great hairdos."
"It's a secret society," teased the November challenger, "with tentacles everywhere."
Not sure he was hearing this right, The Reporter took the bait. "What's that?"
The primary fellow answered for both of them "We both belong to a small select organization around the country. It has no staff. All it has is a name and an indomitable spirit."
He bit on this one too. "So, what's its name?"
"It's called Ousters United in Time or, mellifluously enough, OUT," exclaimed the Primary Challenger. "Each of us has agreed that we need a new agenda, something like the one the Cooperators are working on. Our first task is to give permanent layoffs to the entrenched waddling around Congress at the moment."
His Democratic friend continued the discourse, "We can't lose. If my bud doesn't win the primary, he'll have left Dufur in such a weakened condition, that I'll simply be administering the coup de grace at election time."
"It's like tag-team wrestling," the Primary Challenger ended with a flourish.
Although The Reporter would have had to admit, if pressed, that he wasn't all that familiar with the gentle sport of pro wrestling, he found the comparison was quite appropriate.
Everywhere he journeyed, The Reporter witnessed a similar confident elan and a sharing of resources between supposed opponents. Everywhere the tumult of the masses was providing the backdrop for the challenger's brazen boldness. Those running in elections acted audaciously because the public dared them to.
The Reporter's three-part series, in which he detailed the spirit and strategies of the challengers, raised the fright index to stuck-in-a-haunted- house level on Capitol Hill. But the public reaction was almost gleeful, with some comments reflecting the prevailing determination among them, which could have been put into words as: "Whoever wins, they're going to be taking orders from 'we the people'."
44. The Rats and Their HandlersAS A SIDEBAR, The Reporter updated the public on what had happened to the white mice in cages that the two I8-wheelers delivered to the Congress for each member's office. They didn't last long in their new digs. Within a day, they were collected by an accommodating chain pet store and put up for sale. However, that was not the end of the white mouse saga.
Daily, visitors to the Congress carried caged white mice, some undercover in large tote bags and others in plain sight, right through the X-ray machine and past the guards. Since pets were allowed into the Capitol, the police did not know how to stop them.
Their Chief went to see the Administration Committee Chairs, who in turn called in the House and Senate Parliamentarians.
"What can we do without arousing the animal rights and welfare lobby?" asked one leading Senator, a guy who was said to leave no interest group without a nod - and a request for a donation.
One of his staff told him, "The House Parliamentarian said that they conceivably get legislation passed that would bar 'mice,' from accompanying visitors. But - and you know these Parliamentarians are all lawyers - they say there would be a problem of definition. You'd logically have to include rats, but how about other rodents such as voles, hamsters, or woodchucks?"
The Congressman at the discussion threw up his hands. "Whatever we did, we'd look like fools as well as anti-pet. There's no label that will destroy your career faster than being called anti-pet, a person who doesn't like cats, dogs, or even guinea pigs is pilloried. It's worse than being labeled a Red."
"And can you imagine," The Senator added, "how this will feed the cartoonists a five-star dinner:' Imagine when Doomsbury gets ahold of it."
"You're probably right," replied the Senate Parliamentarian, who was, indeed, a lawyer, "too narrow a definition would be an animal bill of attainder, that is, it would deny singled-out species their day in court, and too broad would be inviting charges of animal abuse, especially if the humans claim that the pet rodents perform as 'service' creatures, something like seeing-eye dogs though offering, obviously, more intangible benefits."
The House Parliamentarian paused, holding up a hand to indicate that he still had more to say. Raising an eyebrow, he contemplated something that had just come to him in a 'light bulb' moment. He resumed, "We could, maybe, stop this scandalous rat-toting by having the rodents declared a public health threat. For the Congressional medical clinics to impose a quarantine is well within their discretionary authority."
"Presto!" said the Senator. "That's why I keep saying we need more of these brainstorming sessions to handle the all these new challenges ... and challengers."
"Perfecto," said the relieved Congressman, though, since he was removing a cigar from his vest pocket, it was unclear whether he was referring to the solution or the brand.
Both rushed to the doctors, with their demand that pet rats be declared risk factors. The prudent doctors said they would have to check the science before deciding anything.
And while that checking went on over endless days and delays - the Ides of March had come and gone - there were more visitors, more pet mice, and more consternation among the denizens of Capitol Hill encircled by omnipresent press corps eagerly updating their rat stories. And, without any takers, brazen press photographers asked the congresspeople to pose with the pet rats.
45. The Cooperators Step Up Their GameNOT MANY BLOCKS AWAY, as the Capitolists endured visits from rat-carrying constituents, Doug Colebrook's group was working furiously as if every day were a deadline. The Cooperators had lined up the most proficient, action-starved citizen groups and think tanks as crews to work on crafting basic legislation covering the necessities of life for the American people. The categories were many: 1) Food, 2) Housing, 3) Energy, 4) Health, 5) Safety, 6) Transportation, 7) Communication, 8) Insurance, 9) Credit, 10) Security, 11) Taxation, 12) Public Works, 13) Children, 14) Retirement/Pensions, 15) Education, 16) Leisure/Play/Art, 17) Work/Wages, 18) Civil Rights/ Civil Liberties, 19) Street and Corporate Crime Prevention/Enforcement, 20) Environment, 21) Clean Public-Funded Elections With Choice, 22) People Empowerment, 23) Community and Self-Reliance, and 24) Corporate Accountability.
All these laws were put forward within a broad frame of political, economic, and social philosophy, one that drew from the best of both left and right traditions. For example, to conservatives who might view the numerous categories as invitations to expansive government, which, they might feel, was meddling in the polity with no limits, they offered a paper by a prominent legal philosopher, in which he described the two pillars of freedom: Freedom To fulfill human possibilities and Freedom From arbitrary and abusive power whether public or private in its sourcing. Using these as guiding principles, the philosopher explained how the new laws in multiple areas would enhance these two goods.
Meetings between Cooperator personnel and the over 100 sympathetic members of Congress and/or their staff were daily and intense. Everybody knew that time was of the essence. The plutocrats and the oligarchs were caught off guard, but it would not be long before they would develop a multifaceted counterattack. Before they did so, the Cooperators were trying to put those opposing them on the defensive.
In war and in politics, it comes down to who is seen to be on the offensive and who is seen to be on the defensive. Fence sitters decide which side to back according to their understanding of which side is pushing forward and which side is giving ground. This perception of who is advancing and who is retreating is acutely judged on Capitol Hill. Members of Congress shape their behavior, their expectations, their very daily identity according to what they perceive. On any given issue, lawmakers know immediately who is on offense and who is on defense. At this crucial juncture, the people were decidedly on offense. History - and we know Doug and many of the Cooperators were profound students of history - shows the people do not usually get a second-strike opportunity if they muff the first.
A key part of keeping up the pressure and maintaining the offense was keeping the object of struggle in the public eye by putting up posters and carrying placards, physically and on the internet, that contained a set of common-sense, democratic slogans. What the innovators were demanding was not exactly exotic or alien to American capabilities or expectations. The U.S. has a heritage of democratic rebuffs to the fat cats. The visitors roaming Washington, DC, in ever greater numbers, had come up with a particularly juicy poster slogan, referring back to that heritage, though some criticized it as unglamorous and less radical than it might have been, given the scope of change demanded by the general public.
Hundreds of placards were carrying the words: NO BIG DEAL - WE'VE EARNED IT, WE'LL GET IT! It was a phrasing that resonated for anyone with a modest knowledge of American history. This was not Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal, it was not Harry Truman's Fair Deal, nor was it Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society.
It was, simply, "No Big Deal!," a slogan that summarized their key demands: get it over with; put civic-spirited people in office; and let us live better lives utilizing the resources that we've already produced and earned, resources that have been aggressively taken from us for over half a century.
46. Hear, HearTHE ALL-AMERICAN CAUCUS had a seminal meeting, which they all attended with their legislative calendars in hand. Now numbering 110 and all calling themselves "co-chairpersons," the members agreed that the next order of business was to press for prompt Congressional hearings for each item on their tables and the Cooperators' agenda. Fortunately, the logisticians among them had found that there were many under-challenged Committees and Subcommittees with readily available hearing rooms and budgets.
Of course, AAC members realized that stopping a bill in the hearing was a traditional way to block any action since the routine was that no piece of legislation, except for refueling the country's boomeranging wars such as in Iraq and Afghanistan, could go to the Floor without prior hearings. With this in mind, the AAC wanted hearings for reasons of professionalism and to take away the excuses of obstructionists and their lobbying friends, who, if the AAC had tried to put a bill on the floor before it had been vetted in hearings, would have cried foul, labeling the process unfair, precipitous, and authoritarian.
Although as Committee Chairs, conservative legislators were reluctant to hold hearings, they were swayed not only by the clamoring inside the buildings of the AAC caucus but by the clamor arising outside when the "Resign, Resign" crowds started chanting, "Hearings, Hearings." Their voices reverberated and were repeated throughout the congresspeople's districts back home. The chairs of the committees, no matter their positions, felt they had no choice but to schedule hearings for ten straight days, allowing only one-week advance notice for preparations and witnesses. Obviously, weekends were cancelled, and all hands were on deck.
The media were relieved. Reporters did not like how demonstrators and many in the public had taken to calling them "Rat Reporters" or "journalists on the Rat Beat."
It demeaned them even though all this political discontent and protesting sold papers and got high TV/radio ratings. They were sick of being assigned to reporting on these tedious government news conferences, in which they were asked to be no more than conduits, presenting the official view to the public. They were ready for substance and the clash of interest groups.
Their editors, seeing the public was hungry for this news, reassigned reporters and columnists from the business, style, and sports pages to join their colleagues on Capitol Hill and bolster coverage of the hearings. These men and women, having become bored feeding the masses' once-insatiable desire for gossip and sports stats, were more than glad to be freed from their daily drudgery to join in conveying to the American people, and the world, what was going on during these historic days of action, drama, of serious purpose.
As would happen with most anyone, the prospect of significance - that is, the fact that what they did might make some valuable imprint on the world - elevated their feelings of professional self-regard and competence. Before this historic opening, the newspeople's marketing of trivia, repetition and other dreary formulaic routines was feeding a work attitude of just "put in your time," then retire.
Once Committee hearings were scheduled and their times posted, long lines, starting at dawn, formed outside the House and Senate Office Buildings as the common people sought entrance into the limited seats of the hearing rooms. This was not going to be the usual fill-'em-up with lobbyists unless, that is, the lobbyists themselves - no paid stand-ins - were willing to line up in the cold at 5:00 a.m. and wait for four hours till the doors opened.
The Reporter, who was covering the hearings and the lines, noticed that the lobbyists' customary ploy - hiring young men and woman at $20 an hour to stand in line for them until the hearing room opens at which time the lobbyists sauntered in to take their place in line - was not working. The street ralliers had warned the lines against such usurpations, so that now crowds identified such substitutes and politely ushered them away.
Once inside, and after the committee and subcommittee chairs had gaveled open the hearings, The Reporter found another departure from business as usual. The witnesses were distinctly unrepresentative of the tight circle of professional testifiers from corporatist think tanks, trade groups, and compensated "experts," who usually dominated the witness stand.
The average people spoke during these sessions, put forth by populist politics back home. They related the experience, expectations, and demands of usually forgotten, excluded, disrespected, and overcharged people. It was a veritable citizens' army of the harmed, underpaid, uninsured, pension-stripped, job-insecure, workers. Those chosen to represent were unbowed - they were the thinkers and doers unbound and free to speak truth.
The chairs, forced to accommodate such plain speakers, were happy when, having given them a fair say, they were able to call on the characters they were more accustomed to listening to: the well-heeled "suits," with well-oiled tongues.
Yet the chairs and The Reporter each saw that something was wrong. The lobbyists and corporate flaks presented their views, but the calm exhibition of command was not there. The overall climate in the country seemed to have discouraged them from coming our so complacently with their usual warnings that if anything was touched in the business world there would be massive layoffs, and companies would move abroad or lose the incentive to produce.
Yet even with largely toned-down presentations of their business-first views, which called for standing pat on all the current, cozy arrangements, there was a clear contrast between what they claimed and what the rest of the population challenged and knew. It was really no contest.
Everybody - those inside the hearing rooms and the vast streaming audience outside - recognized the change. Whether they were elated or they were biting their tongues, no one could assert that there was a lack of information, public records, or working models, as AAC staffers supplied the facts pertinent to each subject area.
Throughout the hearings, there was a wealth of on-the-record cross-examinations, exhibits, and filings for public discussion in all media.
47. They Keep on TickingAS THE HEARINGS CONTINUED, The Reporter became intensely curious about the stamina of the people clamoring daily everywhere.
So many pundits had predicted that the public's burnout was just around the corner that he wondered what kept them going on, seemingly on an upward curve by which it seemed their involvement was continually expanding, not flagging as so often has happened to other movements over the decades.
Since the hearings and the background stories were being covered by hundreds of reporters, and, as we know, The Reporter didn't like to hunt with the pack, he asked his editor to send him around the country for a whirlwind week so he could try to fathom this remarkable civic constancy.
The Reporter's first stops were the bus lines. He Greyhounded it across the land, listening in to the small talk of the passengers. People were talking about how the demonstrations for this and that change were going to make their personal families lives better. Others were on their way in clusters to marches and rallies and city council hearings.
Even high school students were looking at each other (instead of their iPhones) as they talked over the rising possibility of their getting free college educations and high minimum wages for their part-time jobs.
The Reporter filed his first story, giving it the title: "Small Talk Down, Big Talk Rises." It was chocked with quotes he had overheard from his fellow bus riders. He captured the spontaneity and emotion of the common folk in a far better way than had ever been done in a stilted "man in the street" interview.
Next stop on his explorations were the diners and crowded fast food eateries. In them, he heard arguments about substantive proposals before Congress. He was surprised to hear that the speakers often evinced considerable knowledge of the subjects, more, perhaps than that possessed by Congress members.
It persuaded The Reporter, as he wrote in a second article, that when people give themselves a chance to read, talk, and think, they can, even in this flashy, sound-bite media age, rise to the occasion. He included in his story a quote from a 20th century organizer who, when asked why she fought so hard for democracy, had replied, "Because it brings the best out of people."
His next dispatch was based on his visits to the teeming student populations, heavily minority, whom he found attending California's large community colleges. He quickly learned that students were cutting their vocational classes so they could hear open-air speakers discussing the current democratic revival or to attend workshops for pending actions demanding big changes in how the country was run.
Previously, for a piece he'd done on that level of education, The Reporter had noticed that community college students, mostly from low-income families, were all about the business of enhancing their employment prospects. Apart from some charitable activity, there seemed to be little civic awareness or activity on campus, at least when he'd filed his story two years ago. That seemed long ago, for there had been a sea change in campus opinion.
The new dispensation was striking. It was as if the new political discourse had allowed students to articulate a sense of injustice in relation to their families' plights in the inequitable economy, which then galvanized them, finally putting some muscle into the "community" designation of their schools.
As The Reporter made his rounds, he noticed, further, that student involvement in civic actions was having a psychological effect. Activism and showing up for gatherings, rallies, and meetings was the thing to do, and, as this continued, the experiences had become internalized so that everyone counted on everybody to pull together as part of the local culture. Not turning out for a demonstration was frowned upon. The "mavericks" were the people who were apathetic.
In his fourth article, The Reporter alluded to the ancient city of Athens where the word "idiot" referred to residents of that remarkable town who did not engage in Athenian democracy. They shirked their citizen duties, and so were labeled ignorant, self-isolated, and not public citizens.
Idealists throughout the centuries have looked back to those ancient Athenians (although they restricted women and other subdued groups from full participation) as ideal insofar as it was a city state where peer group pressure bent toward public, civic engagement and reproached people who withdrew into their individual selfishness. They saw voluntary, self-motivated engagement as a collective survival practice.
The Reporter had a talent for weaving in such historic references to older state forms into his daily narratives, giving them context and gravity.
In his final wrap-up article on visiting engaged people across the nation, he described the emerging culture of civic-ism finding roots in the psyche, the status, the self-actualization of many people. He noted that people such as these, who were making history often did not realize it, and, if they did, they would push forward with even more force and profundity.
Common people reading his now-celebrated reports felt pride. Uncommon people, namely the oligarchs, felt dread. They gritted their teeth and hunkered down with the belief that corporate stamina would eventually outlast these public outrages. They had to be careful not to overplay their hands. Refusing to bend, they could indeed be broken. Bending became their present tactical mantra.
Little things began to worry the ruling cliques. An exchange of words from several high-schoolers waiting for their bus went viral. Three students were overheard chatting about some politicians' voting records. A couple of students, laughing, told them they "were not turned on to politics," and urged them to come to a dance that night.
One of the serious students replied, "Don't you remember your history courses? Whenever people anywhere in the world were not turned on to politics, politics turned on them. Viciously."
"Activism by the young has become 'cool'," concluded The Reporter.