Gerald W. McEntee - The Main Street Moment: Fighting Back to Save the American Dream

The

MAIN STREET

Moment

The

MAIN STREET

Moment

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Fighting Back to Save the American Dream

Gerald W. McEntee & Lee Saunders

New York

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Copyright 2012 by The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees

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DEDICATED TO OUR 1.6 MILLION SISTERS AND BROTHERS
WHO MAKE AMERICA HAPPEN

Contents

The electoral debacle of 2010where corporate-backed politicians stormed Congress and state capitals across the countryopened the door to the greatest onslaught against working people since the emergence of the robber barons of the late nineteenth century. Seizing upon the frustration of average citizens still reeling from an economic crisis that had threatened their jobs and retirement security, these elected officials pursued a divide-and-conquer strategy that almost worked, thatif we are not diligentmay yet still work. Multimillionaire media moguls and talking heads stoked the flames of desperation with a barrage of anti-government rhetoric that seemed, merely by repetition, to reflect reality. In Washington, D.C., the new majority in the House of Representatives passed a budget that took a wrecking ball to the very pillars of the American Dream, including Medicare, Social Security, education assistance, health research, and job training programs.

In dozens of states, radical politicians, in debt to the corporate interests that fund their campaigns, launched an all-out assault on the working middle classthrough unnecessary cuts in health and education programs, privatization schemes, and corrupt efforts to turn the public purse over to profiteers out to make a buck at the taxpayers expense.

In Wisconsin and Ohio, the politicians also targeted the very freedom of workers to have a voice on the job.

This new breed of radical politicians across the country has no doubt succeeded in pushing through policies that will have damning and lasting impact on the American Dream, including denying union rights, voter suppression, and selling off public services to the highest corporate bidders. But they have also sparked an opposing, passionate, energized, and focused movement that continues to grow as we write today. It is a movement that won a moral victory in Wisconsin, an electoral victory in Ohio, and is on the march to save the American Dream this fall and beyond.

This book is our effort to take stock of this Main Street moment. From coast to coast, Americans have mobilized, rallied, lobbied, and protested in vast numbers, building the foundation for an ever-expanding coalition of millions, committed to addressing the growing crisis of economic inequality and the disastrous record of the 1 percent during the past thirty years.

We tell the story of how this happened, along with a look at how powerpolitical power as well as economic powerhas shifted during the past thirty years into the hands of the wealthiest members of our society. Wall Street and the billionaires didnt get this powerful by accident. They planned for it. They paid for it. And they will not give up power and restore our democracy to the people without a fight.

This book is not an attack on capitalism, success, or wealth. But at the core of this book is a belief that, increasingly, we are living in a society where the cards are marked. It is not a belief one comes to easily or with any degree of satisfaction. And it is a belief that is supported, sadly, by the facts. One of the tenets of the American Dreamclass mobilitynow appears too far out of reach for too many Americans.

And yet

The spirit kindled in Madison and Columbus has now spread throughout America, in state capitals, in workplaces and campus halls, in houses of worship and senior centers, in schools and veterans halls. Finally, with a burst of energy, we saw the spirit inspire Occupy Wall Street, the remarkable protest movement that has done so much to call attention to the criminal inequality that currently exists in our nation. It is not too much to hope that we are witnessing the early hours of nothing less than the dawn of a new day, when an invigorated and inspired coalition of workers, students, clergy, small-business owners, and others can all come together to say, Enough is enough.

As democratically elected officers of a national union of public service employees, we represent members in communities across Americaplowing streets, caring for the ill, looking after children and the elderly, working in schools, hospitals, and prisons. They are active in politics because they know what is at stake for communities when the wrong people are elected into office. This, fundamentally, is why they are under attack. Corporations, Wall Street moneymen, and the politicians who work for them know that public service workers and their unions are the last line of defense against their culture of greed.

Public service workers believe in public service, not in survival of the fittest. They believe that we are all in this together. You will meet some of them in the pages that follow. They believe in a country where we find solutions based on basic American values, rather than the law of the jungle. They know that if we lose, the American Dream dies, replaced by a national Darwinian nightmare in which only a chosen few survive. They are what Main Street looks like. They are what democracy looks like.

We stand at a crossroads. We can either continue down the path of greater income inequality, ceding our voices and our democracy to the wealthy and the powerful. Or we can fight back. That is what men and women across America have chosen to do to make this Main Streets moment. They chose to fight and to build a better futurefor themselves, for their communities, and for this country that we love. We have written this book to enlist even more Americans in the struggle to save the soul of our nation and return power once again to the people. We know that, together, we can win this fight.