CONTENTS

SECTION.80

Introduction: Section.80 and HiiiPower

THE KIDS ARE NOT ALRIGHT

Issue I

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED

Issue II

OCCUPY OUR STREETS

Issue III

25

33

45

5

HIIIPOWER

SECTION.805

SECTION.80

6

This is for the babies born in the 80’s, when the crack epidemic affected the country as a whole, and the Ronald Reagan era set the stage for what categorizes the millenial generation. Through Section.80 is the movement ‘HIIIPOWER’ which represents the way we think and live. The three stands for heart, honor, and respect. What we’re about to do is raise the level of expectation and rise above the everyday corruption. HiiiPoWeR talks of self enlightenment through ref lec-tion and active work. It constantly touches on racial subjects, f igures and conspiracy theories of today and the past. HiiiPower is a way of thinking with higher expectations, and achieving richness in body and mind. Essentially a quest for knowledge and wisdom of the body, mind and spirit.

A GENERATION OF BLISS AND DISOBEDIENCE

SECTION.80 BABIES

“EVERYBODY PUT THREE FINGERS IN THE AIR. THE SKY IS FALLING, THE WIND IS CALLING. STAND FOR SOMETHING OR DIE IN THE MORNING.SECTION 80, HIIIPOWER.”

SECTION.807

8

HIIIPOWER

Issue I9

HIIIPOWER

10

“MY ISSUE ISN'T TELEVISED AND YOU AIN'T GOTTA TELL THE WISE HOW TO STAY ON BEAT, BECAUSE OUR LIFE’S AN INSTRUMENTAL.

THIS IS PHYSICAL AND MENTAL, I WON'T SUGAR COAT IT. YOU'D DIE FROM DIABETES IF OUR GOVERNMENT WROTE IT.

EVERYTHING ON TV JUST A FIGMENT OF IMAGINATION. GOD BLESS THIS DAMN PLASTIC NATION.”

A movement where Kendrick adopts the onus of uniquely tumbling with the utmost urgency into the role of play-ing the admitted evil and spiritual rhetorician; speak-ing—with captivating, dark, and intriguingly deep-seated temperament likened to someone whose lived two life-times—vividly from our neighborhood corner to the souls of us, the good kids and criminals, about the uncomfort-able truths of our generation’s identity perplexity, and the causing, complex communal and historical say-so’s that have left many perceptively rejected and subsequently disobedient. Yet, not without offering his inner-ref lections of the many vices that accompanied the troubled decade which stripped him of his childhood, and racing—without gimmick, but as a human being also engulfed in the battle between virtue and demoralization, who chooses to show through poetry rather than just telling—forward shinning building blocks to depict the “HiiiPower” to overcome.

Section.80 is was created for and belongs to everything pertinent to you. An entity that you share with a greater whole, but exclusively should absorb alone in a relaxed driver’s seat holding your ref lective motifs and ideals while zooming through the nebulous mist on the way home from the club. The title “Section 80” interweaves the central notion of the anxiety that makes Lamar look at himself and around at his fellow young adults, whom com-bine to make the offspring of the tumultuous, drug-laced, notoriously hostile and violent 80’s era where immoral-ity prominently defeated honorable, and the issues living within the Section 8 government program that provided housing to low-income families (that turned to poverty-stricken, riotous ghetto’s), to see an abundance of self-hate, skepticism-turned-lawlessness and injustice resulting

HIIIPOWER

from being media and government institutionalized. The millenial generation birthed during of the crack-infused era is passionately remembered by Kendrick (Who vaguely lived in it — Another example of a dead child-hood) The offshoot from the conceptualism results in the masterfully crafted heartbeats of a messenger to and of the oppressed; who saw stray bullets kill his innocence: “You ever see a newborn baby kill a grown man? That’s an analogy for the way the world make me react.”

Searching and questioning throughout the opus for some type of clarity to suff ice his self-awareness, right before the book is set to close, Kendrick decides it only possible for that to manifest if in fact, he’s the one creat-ing the answers. And that realization discharges musi-cally in the form of “HIIIPOWER,” a pinnacle to his our conquering of the numerous society’s ills mentioned in the previous chapters—The good kid from the mad city shinning with the transmitted spirits of great revolution-ary leaders to build a world to positively manipulate a generation of bliss and disobedience.

Issue I11

WHILE YOU’RE WAITING, I BE OFF THE SLAVE SHIPBUILDING PYRAMIDS, WRITING MY OWN HIEROGLYPHS

HEARTHONOR

RESPECT

HIIIPOWER

12

Issue I13

BASTARD

14

Here’s a shout-out to Andrew Jackson, Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan. You won’t find them on Mount Rush-more, yet each of these Presidents can lay claim to a status that transcends stone portraiture or academic canonization. For each has stamped his name and, more important, his ideas, personality and values on a defining chapter of the American story. How do you get an age named after you? Simply put, by shattering the existing political consensus and replacing it with one of your own making, one whose influence is felt long after your time in office. The Age of Jackson spanned four tumultuous decades, from the 1820s to the Civil War (during which Lincoln, though of the op-posing party, did not hesitate to cite his predecessor’s robust nationalism in order to justify his own Constitution-stretch-ing). The man adversaries dubbed King Andrew I converted the early republic, governed by the well bred and well read, into an embryonic democracy. In making war on the Second Bank of the United States, the entrenched money power of his day, the choleric old soldier joyously invented the politics of Us--factory workers, white farmers, land-hungry frontiersmen--vs. Them--the commercial and intellectual élite, blacks, both free and en-slaved, and Native Americans, whose road out of Jacksonian America turned into the Trail of Tears. In the 1930s, Frank-lin D. Roosevelt promised Depression-weary Americans a New Deal. In practical terms, this meant rescuing demo-cratic capitalism from its own unregulated excesses. Along the way, Roosevelt transformed the relationship between the average citizen and his government. The welfare state he fashioned in place of classic laissez-faire was largely impro-vised. Yet much of it--Social Security, the Tennessee Valley

Authority, federally subsidized agriculture, stock-market oversight, for starters--has long since been woven into the fabric of American life. Politically, too, F.D.R. shuffled the deck, luring black voters out of the party of Lincoln, even while placating lily-white Southern Democrats. A self-proclaimed “preacher President,” Roosevelt raised a stricken nation’s spirits through his unquenchable optimism and masterly use of the bully pulpit invented by his distant rela-tion and role model Theodore Roosevelt. In Dixon, Ill., Jack Reagan’s son Ron listened spellbound to F.D.R.’s honey-on-toast baritone as it came out of the radio. Four times the future Great Communicator cast a vote for Roosevelt, whose consolidation of power in Wash-ington the adult Reagan would set out to reverse. The Age of Reagan didn’t begin on Jan. 20, 1981, when he famously declared, “Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” Its roots run much deeper--to 1966 at least. Two years after Barry Goldwater pronounced an end to Eisenhower-style moderation, two years before Richard Nixon appropriated Roosevelt’s forgotten man as precursor to his Silent Majority, Reagan the citizen-politician found himself leading a federation of the fed-up. His election that year as governor of California mirrored a broader repudiation of urban riots and campus turmoil; of perceived moral decay, the long reach of the tax collector and a liberal consensus stretched to the breaking point by Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. In 1980 an electorate similarly radicalized by double-digit inflation, crippling interest rates and the humiliating spec-tacle of 52 Americans held hostage by Iranian kidnappers would award the old Hollywood player what Reagan biog-

THE OFFICIAL END OF THE REAGAN ER A By: Richard Norton Smith

RONALD REAGAN ERA(1981-1989)

SECTION.8015

THE TITLE “SECTION 80” INTERWEAVES THE CENTRAL NOTION OF THE ANXIETY THAT MAKES LAMAR LOOK AT HIMSELF AND HIS FELLOW YOUNG ADULTS, WHOM COMBINE TO MAKE THE OFFSPRING OF THE TUMULTUOUS, DRUG-LACED, NOTORIOUSLY HOSTILE AND VIOLENT 80’S ERA. THIS IS THE BACK DROP OF THE RONALD REAGAN ERAWHERE IMMORALITY PROMINENTLY DEFEATED HONORABLE, AND THE ISSUES LIVING WITHIN THE SECTION 8 GOVERNMENT PROGRAM THAT PROVIDED HOUSING TO LOW-INCOME FAMILIES (THAT TURNED TO POVERTY-STRICKEN, RIOTOUS GHETTO’S), TO SEE AN ABUNDANCE OF SELF-HATE, SKEPTICISM-TURNED-LAWLESSNESS AND INJUSTICE RESULTING FROM BEING MEDIA AND GOVERNMENT INSTITUTIONALIZED. THE MILLENNIAL GENERATION BIRTHED DURING OF THE CRACK-INFUSED ERA IS PASSIONATELY REMEMBERED THROUGH THE EVENTS OF THE THE RONALD REGAN ERA.

16

rapher Lou Cannon calls the role of a lifetime. Thirty years before Barack Obama, Reagan offered hope and change to a nation sick of the status quo. As with F.D.R. in 1933, the new President’s most pressing task was to dispel gathering fears that the U.S. might be entering a period of irrevers-ible decline. Ironically, nothing so impressed voters as the grit and humor he displayed after being shot by a would-be assassin. Reagan practiced coalition government, though in his case it meant melding the cultural conservatism that had made him governor with the economic conservatism that had propelled him into the Oval Office. Populists and pinstripes--Reagan spoke to, and for, both. His governing majority included Wall Street titans and nascar fans, right-to-lifers and leave-me-alone libertarians, Jeane Kirkpat-rick neocons and xenophobes channeling Father Coughlin through his lineal descendants on toxic talk radio. Reagan preferred laughing at his adversaries to demoniz-ing them. He disarmed critics of his relaxed administrative style by acknowledging that the right hand of his Admin-istration didn’t always know what its far-right – was up to. As the laughter crested, so did the tax-cutting, the regula-tory rollback and the military buildup that foreshadowed, paradoxically, the most sweeping arms reductions of the nuclear era. The ensuing political realignment was measured less in voter-registration rolls than in a pervasive skepticism about the state. Because there were many things government did badly, it came to be assumed, there was virtually noth-ing it did well. Long after his return to California in 1989, Reagan’s anti-Washington consensus continued to exercise a powerful restraint on his successors. Even the notably activist Bill Clinton was driven to acknowledge an end to

the era of Big Government. Nothing so visibly riled the last Democratic President as Obama’s description of Reagan earlier this year as a transformative leader. More recently the same phrase has been applied to Obama by General Colin Powell, himself a prominent alumnus of the Reagan White House. Inevitably the prospect of an Obama presidency has led observers to ask, “Is the Age of Reagan over?” In the wake of Wall Street’s collapse, Reagan’s vaunted “magic of the marketplace” has come in for heavy criticism. Did the deregulatory pendulum swing too far? Have Americans glo-rified individual success at the expense of shared purpose? And what of the visionary who could imagine a Strategic Defense Initiative to trump the existing arms race but who couldn’t, or wouldn’t, conceive of an alternative to cheap fos-sil fuels? The very debate is a tribute of sorts. (Stop and think: When was the last time you heard anyone arguing Franklin Pierce’s legacy?) Moreover, if you doubt Reagan’s continuing influence, look no further than the dueling tax cuts offered by Obama and John McCain to a populace awash in red ink. That said, no President is immune to the law of unintended consequences. By decoupling conservatism in the 1980s from fiscal responsibility, he unwittingly sanctioned future deficits and helped usher in a consumerist society gaudily living beyond its means. The result: credit-card conserva-tism. Deprived of their green eyeshades, the Cold War and the Soviet Union, Reagan’s ideological children have little to unify their fractious family except love of country and loyalty to the past. Certainly the campaign they ran this fall was anything but Reaganesque. One wonders what Reagan the onetime movie star would make of a campaign that

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17

made an epithet out of celebrity. More than tactics, ideas mat-tered to Reagan. He was the proverbial conviction politician, and his midlife conversion from New Deal liberal to Goldwa-ter conservative owed more to Friedrich von Hayek than Joe the Plumber--the latter a perfect symbol of a party running on intellectual fumes. While Reagan thought in decades, if not centuries, his political heirs define success as owning the news cycle. Thus Halloween came early this year, as GOP operatives lurched from Ayers to acorn to questioning their opponents’ patriotism and flinging allegations of socialism. The last claim in particular rang hollow coming from one who voted to recapitalize Wall Street and partly nationalize the banking system with $700 billion in taxpayer funds. A base campaign indeed. McCain is a better man than his robocalls. Yet he became enmeshed in the red-state-vs.-blue-state, hot-button, wedge-issue, 50%-plus-one formula that has domi-nated and degraded our politics in these locust years of racial, regional and cultural polarization. Reagan at his best was a happy warrior, who put a smile on the sometimes dour face of conservatism and recast his political faith as both optimistic and futuristic. He was no hater, and cultural scapegoating wasn’t his style. Indeed, in 1978 Reagan courageously opposed a California referendum that would have made it easier to fire gay schoolteachers simply on account of their sexual orienta-tion. Conservatives wishing to honor their modern founding father might begin by practicing what Reagan preached in his valedictory address to the 1992 GOP Convention in Houston. “Whatever else history may say about me when I’m gone,” he told us, “I hope it will record that I appealed to your best hopes, not your worst fears, to your confidence rather than your doubts.” Some things are ageless.

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18

WHO’S FOOLIN’ WHO?

SECTION.8019

WHO’S FOOLIN’ WHO?

20

The modern institution of the presidency is the primary political evil Americans face, and the cause of nearly all our woes. It squanders the national wealth and starts un-just wars against foreign peoples that have never done us any harm. It wrecks our families, tramples on our rights, invades our communities, and spies on our bank accounts. It skews the culture toward decadence and trash. It tells lie after lie. Teachers used to tell school kids that anyone can be president. This is like saying anyone can go to Hell. It’s not an inspiration; it’s a threat. The presidency – by which I mean the executive State – is the sum total of American tyranny. The other branches of government, including the presidentially appointed Supreme Court, are mere adjuncts. The presidency insists on complete devotion and humble submission to its dictates, even while it steals the products of our labor and drives us into economic ruin. It centralizes all power unto itself, and crowds out all competing centers of power in society, including the church, the family, business, charity, and the community. I’ ll go further. The US presidency is the world’s leading evil. It is the chief mischief-maker in every part of the globe, the leading wrecker of nations, the usurer behind Third-World debt, the bailer-out of corrupt governments, the hand in many dictatorial gloves, the sponsor and sustainer of the New World Order, of wars, interstate and civil, of famine and disease. To see the evils caused by the presidency, look no further than Iraq or Serbia, where the lives of innocents were snuffed out in pointless wars, where bombing was designed to destroy civilian infra-structure and cause disease, and where women, children, and the aged have been denied essential food and medi-cine because of a cruel embargo. Look at the human toll

taken by the presidency, from Dresden and Hiroshima to Waco and Ruby Ridge, and you see a prime practitioner of murder by government. Today, the president is called the leader of the world’s only superpower, the “world’s in-dispensable nation,” which is reason enough to have him deposed. A world with any superpower at all is a world where no freedoms are safe. But by invoking this title, the presidency attempts to keep our attention focused on foreign affairs. It is a diversionary tactic designed to keep us from noticing the oppressive rule it imposes right here in the United States. As the presidency assumes ever more power unto itself, it becomes less and less account-able and more and more tyrannical. These days, when we say the federal government, what we really mean is the presidency. When we say, national priorities, we really mean what the presidency wants. When we say national culture, we mean what the presidency funds and imposes. The presidency is presumed to be the embodiment of Rousseau’s general will, with far more power than any monarch or head of state in pre-modern societies. The US presidency is the apex of the world’s biggest and most powerful government and of the most expansive empire in world history. As such, the presidency represents the opposite of freedom. It is what stands between us and our goal of restoring our ancient rights. This is why the governing elites – and especially the foreign policy elites – are so intent on maintaining public respect for the off ice, and why they seek to give it the aura of holiness. For example, after Watergate, they brief ly panicked and worried that they had gone too far. They might have discredited the democratic autocracy. And to some extent they did. But the elites were not stupid; they were careful to insist that

(2008-20??)THE HOPE FOR CHANGE

DOW N WITH THE PRESIDENCYby Lew Rockwell

21 SECTION.80

the Watergate controversy was not about the presidency as such, but only about Nixon the man. That’s why it became necessary to separate the two. How? By keeping the focus on Nixon, making a devil out of him, and revel-ing in the details of his personal life, his diff iculties with his mother, his supposed pathologies, etc. Of course, this didn’t entirely work. Americans took from Watergate the lesson that presidents will lie to you. This should be the f irst lesson of any civics course, of course, and the f irst rule of thumb in understanding the affairs of govern-ment. But notice that after Nixon died, he too was elevat-ed to godlike status. None other than Bill Clinton served as high priest of the cult of president-worship on that occasion. He did everything but sacrif ice a white bull at the temple of the White House. The presidency recov-ered most of its sacramental character during the Rea-gan years. How wonderful, for the sake of our liberties, that Clinton has revived the great American tradition of scorning tyrants. In some ways, he is the best president a freedom lover can hope for. Of course, someday, Clinton too will ascend to the clouds, and enter the pantheon of the great leaders of the free world.The hagiographers do admit one failing of the American presidency. It is almost too big an off ice for one man, and too much a burden to bear. The American people have come to expect too much from the president. We are unrealistic to think that one man can do it all. But that’s all the more reason to respect and worship the man who agrees to take it on, and why all enlightened people must cut him some slack. The presidency is seemingly bound by law, but in prac-tice it can do just about anything it pleases. It can order up troops anywhere in the world, just as Clinton bragged in his acceptance speech at the Democratic convention.

“THE PRESIDENT IS BLACK, BUT YOU CAN’T VOTE FOR SKINYOU VOTE FOR THE BETTER MAN. COME TO OUR SHOW YOU CAN SEE THE DIVERSITY, UNIFIED PEOPLE THEY GOING TO PEEP UNIVERSALLY.WE MIGHT NOT CHANGE THE WORLD. BUT WE GOING TO MANIPULATE IT, HOPE YOU PARTICIPATING.”

‘AB-SOUL’S OUTRO’KENDRICK LAMAR

22

It can plow up a religious community in Texas and bury its members because they got on somebody’s nerves at the Justice Department. It can tap our phones, read our mail, watch our bank accounts, and tell us what we can and cannot eat, drink, and smoke. The presidency can break up businesses, shut down airlines, void drilling leases, bribe foreign heads of state or arrest them and try them in kangaroo courts, nationalize land, engage in germ warfare, f irebomb crops in Colombia, overthrow any government anywhere, erect tariffs, round up and discredit any public or private assembly it chooses, grab our guns, tax our incomes and our inheritances, steal our land, centrally plan the national and world economy, and impose embargoes on anything anytime. The presidency has the power to bring about a nuclear holocaust with the push of a button. On his own initiative, the president can destroy the human race. One man can wipe out life on earth. Talk about playing God. This is a grotesque evil. And the White House claims it is not a tyranny? If the power to destroy the entire world isn’t tyrannical, I don’t know what is. Why do we put up with this? Why do we allow it? Why isn’t this power immediately stripped from him? What prevents fundamental challenge to this monstrous power is precisely the quasi-religious trappings of the presidency, which we again had to suffer through last January. One man who saw the religious signif icance of the presidency, and denounced it in 1973, was – surprisingly enough – Michael Novak. His study, Choosing Our King: Powerful Symbols in Presidential Politics, is one of the few dissenting books on the subject. It was reissued last year as – not surprisingly – Choosing Our Presidents: Symbols of Political Leadership, with a new introduction

repudiating the best parts of the book. Of course, none of the conventional bilge accords with reality. The US president is the worst outgrowth of a badly f lawed Con-stitution, imposed in a sort of coup against the Articles of Confederation. Even from the beginning, the presidency was accorded too much power. Indeed, an honest history would have to admit that the presidency has always been an instrument of oppression, from the Whisky Rebellion to the War on Tobacco. The presidency has systematically stolen the liberty won through the secession from Britain. From Jackson and Lincoln to McKinley and Roosevelt Junior, from Wilson and FDR to Truman and Kennedy, from Nixon and Reagan to Bush and Clinton, it has been the means by which our rights to liberty, property, and self-government have been suppressed. Each president has tended to be worse than the last, especially in this century. Lately, in terms of the powers they assumed and the dictates they imposed, Kennedy was worse than Eisenhower, Johnson was worse than Kennedy, Nixon was worse than Johnson, Carter was worse than Nixon, and Reagan – who doubled the national budget and permanently entrenched the warfare State – was worse than Carter. The same is true of Bush and Clinton. Every budget is bigger and the powers exercised more egre-gious. Each new brutal action breaks another taboo and establishes a new precedent that gives the next occupant of the White House more leeway. What does greatness in the presidency mean? It means waging war, crushing liberties, imposing socialism, issuing dictates, browbeat-ing and ignoring Congress, appointing despotic judges, expanding the domestic and global empire, and generally trying his best to be an all-round enemy of freedom. It means saying with Lincoln, “I have a right to take any

23

measure which may best subdue the enemy.” The key to winning the respect of historians is to do these things. All aspirants to this vile off ice know this. It’s what they seek. They long for crisis and power, to be bullies in the pulpit, to be the dictators they are in their hearts. They want, at all costs, to avoid the fate of being another “postage-stamp president.” Madison said no man with power deserves to be trusted. Neither should we trust any man who seeks the power that the presidency offers. Accordingly, it is all well and good that conserva-tives have worked to discredit the current occupant of the White House. Call him a cheat and a double-dealer if you want. Call him a tyrant too. But we must go further. The answer to restoring republican freedom has nothing to do with replacing Clinton with Lott or Kemp or Forbes or Buchanan. The structure of the presidency, and the religious aura that surrounds it, must be destroyed. Most historians agree that there would have been no presidency apart from George Washington, who was trusted by the people as a true gentleman, and was presumed to under-stand what the American revolution was all about. From the standpoint of the average American, the presidency was almost invisible. The President is at liberty, both in law and conscience, to be as big a man as he can. His capacity will set the limit. Ge is the only spokesman of the whole people. Finally, Presidents should regard themselves as less and less executive off icers and more and more direc-tors of affairs and leaders of the nation – men of counsel and of the sort of action that makes for enlightenment. This is not a theory of the presidency. It is the hope for a new messiah. That indeed is what the presidency has come to. But any man who accepts this view is not a free

SECTION.80

man. He is not a man who understands what constitutes civilized life. What the neocon logic comes down to is this: The US has a moral responsibility to run the world. But the citizens are too stupid to understand this. That’s why we can’t use democratic institutions like Congress in this ambition. We must use the executive power of the presidency. It must have total control over foreign affairs, and never bow to Congressional carping. Once this point is conceded, the game is over. The demands of a central-ized and all-powerful presidency and its interventionist foreign policy are ideologically reinforcing. One needs the other. If the presidency is supreme in global affairs, it will be supreme in domestic affairs. If it is supreme at home, there will be no states’ rights, no absolute property rights, no true liberty from government oppression. The continued centralization of government in the presidency represents the end of America and its civilization.

25 Issue I

THE KIDS ARE

NOTALRIGHTNOT

26

What's more, when jobs do come back, employers might choose to reach past today's unemployed, who may appear to be damaged goods, and pick from the next crop of fresh-faced grads. Starting one's career during a recession can have long-term negative consequences. Lisa B. Kahn, an economist at the Yale School of Management, estimates that for white, male college students in the U.S., a 1 percentage point increase in the unemployment rate at the time of graduation causes an initial wage loss of 6 percent to 7 percent—and even after 15 years the recession graduates earn about 2.5 percent less than they would have if they had not come out of school during a downturn. There's a psychological impact as well. "Individuals growing up during recessions tend to believe that success in life depends more on luck than on effort, support more government redistribution, but are less confident in public institutions," conclude Paola Giuliano of UCLA's Anderson School of Management and Antonio Spilimbergo of the International Monetary Fund in a 2009 study. Downturns, the study suggests, breed self-doubting liberals. The coincidence of protests in Egypt and record youth unemployment elsewhere has caught the attention of the world’s most powerful capitalists and diplomats. At this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, held while Cairo was in chaos, the hallways buzzed with can-do talk about improving employment opportunities for the young. Even before the latest whiff of grapeshot, the U.N. declared the year beginning last August as the International Year of Youth. In December the Blackstone Group (BX) and CNBC held a conference in London with top experts to discuss solutions to youth unemployment. Companies from AT&T (T) to Accenture (ACN) to Siemens (SI) are working on ways to prepare high school and college students for the working world. In the U.S. and much of Europe, the problem is just the opposite of

the Arab world’s: not too much college education but too little. According to a study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, less-educated youth are 4.6 times as likely to be unemployed as more-educated youth in the U.S.—a measure of the potency of knowledge in a knowledge economy. That means that the U.S. has fallen off the top of the world league table for college graduation rates at the worst possible moment. As of 2008, only 60 percent of students in American four-year schools had managed to graduate within six years, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. To free-market economists, one solution to youth unemployment is simple: Clear away the government-imposed obstacles to hiring young people. They blame high minimum wages, for instance, for discouraging companies from hiring promising young people who haven’t had a chance to accumulate the knowledge or experience to justify being paid even the minimum wage. The evidence is that high minimum wages do exclude some young people, while benefiting others by raising their pay. Likewise, too-strong protections for the permanent workforce can hurt young people because they aren’t similarly protected and bear the brunt of downsizing in hard times, the ILO warned in a 2009 report. Chronic youth unemployment may not be fixable. But there’s evidence it can be reduced through the concerted efforts of government, labor, business, education, and young people themselves. Luckily the soil is fertile: All over the world, the hittistes and shabab atileen, NEETs and freeters and boomerang kids are hungry for a chance to thrive. Says John Studzinski, senior managing director at Blackstone Group: “To a certain extent, all you can do with youth employment is plant seeds.”

AR AB SPRING IN RELATION TO U.S. HIGH YOUTH UNEMPLOY MENTBy Peter Coy

YOUTH UNEMPLOYMENT

YOUTH UNEMPLOYMENT

27 Issue I

“YOU GONNA LIVE ON YOUR KNEES, OR DIE ON YOUR FEET? TAKE OUT THAT STUDENT LOAN, AND PAY OFF YOUR COLLEGE DEGREE. DO EXACTLY WHAT YOU SEE ON TV”‘AB-SOUL’S OUTRO’KENDRICK LAMAR

28

THE SYSTEM SET US UP

FOR FAILURE

THE SYSTEM SET US UP

FOR FAILURE

Issue I29

EGYPT

8.9 10.8

25.4

12.7

8

21.6

14.716.5

11.6

10.9

15.2

30.5

JORDAN LEBANON MOROCCO SYRIA TUNISIA

TOTAL

YOUTH

UNEMPLOYMENT RATE, 2012(PERCENTAGE)

18.3

30

YOU ARE YEARS OLD.

YOUR DREAM IS TO

YOU ARE YEARS OLD.

YOUR DREAM IS TO

Issue I31

.

Issue II33

TELEVISED

THE REVOLUTIONWILL NOT BE

Countless websites — including Google, Wikipedia, Scribd, O’Reilly Media, WordPress have put up some kind of message today asking users to take action against the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act. Some, such as Wikipedia, have gone so far as to replace their typical content with a black screen and a message about the proposed legislation. Even though I personally agree with their stance (I don’t support SOPA or PIPA), as protests go, I have reservations about their approach. These anti-SOPA protests represent a shift in how politics are played out, and I’m not sure it’s a step forward. To begin with, the biggest actors in the SOPA/PIPA protests today are corporations, which are changing their sites and asking their users to take action. Second, the protests, which are taking place almost entirely on the web, leave out chunks of our society that aren’t connected to the web or don’t rely on those sites, making those people oblivious to the issues involved. Regardless of what one thinks of SOPA and PIPA, these mostly online protests — especially when contrasted with the physical protests of the Occupy movement and in the Middle East — beg the question: Is this the new face of activism in the U.S.? And, secondly, are web companies promoting activism for the greater good or for the preservation of their livelihoods? Whose war is this is anyway? As legislation that affects the average consumer, SOPA and PIPA touches the lives of Americans, but not as deeply as other hotly debated laws, such as health care reform or even spending bills, do. As a journalist, I’m worried about these bills, which is one reason I write about them. Sites such as Wikipedia, which are platforms for sharing and conversation, are rightly concerned about provisions in the legislation that could end up forcing them and other sites to police users instead of merely providing benign platforms for sharing. In grayer areas, there are

34

actors such as Google, which may actually f ind parts of its business directly affected as an intermediary between those providing pirated and counterfeit goods and those searching for it. As an example, check out Google’s settlement with the U.S. government over selling ads for Canadian drugs.It’s these for-profit (or, in the case of Wikipedia, non-profit) sites — not neutral sources — that are mobilizing concerned citizens. As grass roots as this may seem, it’s really just another example of corporate inf luence in the political process. As a testament to the power of corporate action on an issue, thousands of Americans branded their Twitter avatars with a message related to an intellectual-property bill, while the Occupy movement – a legitimate grass roots effort that more directly affects most Americans — seems to wither. The Occupy movement in particular seems to be suffering in part because its organization and messaging is poor, an area where corporate involvement would undoubtedly help get the message out on Occupy’s issue of income inequality. I take issue with his idea that no one is in charge: The heads of many of these sites are in charge, taking action to protect their interests, which also happen to coincide with the interests of their users. Aside from a few active consumer organizations, journalists and web celebrities, corporations are very active around SOPA, especially when it comes to attracting a wide base of citizenry to protest. Tech industry activism and using tech for activism are different. Given the digital divide on the issue, the reliance on corporate entities to drive attention to the anti-SOPA/PIPA position and the almost-hysterical reaction from the web, I’m hoping this kind of protest doesn’t represent the future of the technology community’s strategy in Washington — or at least, doesn’t represent the only facet of that strategy. I hope we see citizens who have become engaged through this process use the web-based

THE UNCONSTITUTIONAL CONSTITUDTIONBy Ethan Zuckerberg

DIGITAL ACTIVISM

Issue II35

“THE SYSTEM SHUTTED DOWNTHEY TRIED TO TAKE WHAT FOUND.I’M HOLDIN’ SHIT AROUND TOWNTRYIN TO HOLD ME DOWN.

I’M STANDING AT THE STATIONIN NEED OF EDUCATION.ITS THE MEDICATED NATIONWE CAN’T BE MORE PATIENT.”

36

tools, such as the dial-a-congressman service from Engine Advocacy or their Facebook pages (or Twitter streams) to bring attention to political issues in a constructive and educational way. Maybe like-minded individuals can get together on the web to raise money to hire a lobbyist. Likewise, the monolithic voices of astro-turf ing groups or large corporations pretending to represent a segment of the population could be refuted widely by actual members of that population. Washington proposes many poorly written (at best) or blatantly biased laws (at worst) each year. Having a citizenry that can educate themselves and take their messages viral about such legislation would be the best legacy SOPA and PIPA could give us. It’s easy to frame the f ight over SOPA and PIPA as Hollywood vs. Silicon Valley — two huge industries clashing over whose voice should dictate the future of Internet policy — but it’s absolutely wrong. The bills are dead, thanks to widespread protest. But the real architects of the bills’ defeat don’t have a catchy label or a recognized lobbying group. They don’t have the glamour or the deep pockets of the studios. Yet they are the largest, most powerful and most important voice in the debate — and, until recently, they’ve been all but invisible to Congress. They are you. And if not you personally, then your neighbors, your colleagues, your friends and even your children. The millions of people who called and wrote their congressional representatives in protest of the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect Intellectual Property Act were “organized” only around the desire to protect the Web sites that have become central to their daily lives. Change like this needed a fresh set of voices. The established tech giants may have newfound political inf luence, but their f ights are still the same closed-door tussles over minor details. They have been at the table, and they have too much invested in the process to change it. More important,

they are constrained by obligations to their shareholders and investors, as well as by the need to maintain relationships with their advertisers, partners and customers. Wikipedia, its users and its contributors don’t have the same constraints. We don’t rely on advertising dollars or content partnerships. The billions of words and millions of images in our projects come from the same place as our f inancial support: the voluntary contribution of millions of individuals. The result is free knowledge, available for anyone to read and reuse. Wikipedia is not opposed to the rights of creators — we have the largest collection of creators in human history. The effort that went into building Wikipedia could have created shelves full of albums or near-endless nights of movies. Instead it’s providing unrestricted access to the world’s knowledge. Protecting our rights as creators means ensuring that we can build our encyclopedias, photographs, videos, Web sites, charities and businesses without the fear that they all will be taken away from us without due pro-cess. It means protecting our ability to speak freely, without being vulnerable to poorly drafted laws that leave our fate to a law enforcement body that has no oversight and no appeal process. It means protecting the legal infrastructure that allowed our sharing of knowledge and creativity to f lourish, and protecting our ability to do so on technical infrastructure that allows for security and privacy for all Internet users. We are not interested in becoming full-time advocates; protests like the Wikipedia blackout are a last resort. Our core mission is to make knowledge freely avail-able, and making the Web site inaccessible interrupts what we exist to do. The one-day blackout, though, was just a speed bump. Breaking the legal infrastructure that makes it possible to operate Wikipedia, and sites like ours, would be a much greater disruption. Two weeks ago we recognized a threat to that infrastructure and did something we’ve never

BIG BROWSER

IS WATCHING YOU

BIG BROWSER

Issue II37

done before: We acknowledged that our existence is itself political, and we spoke up to protect it. It turned out to be the largest Internet protest ever. The full-time advocates of freedom of information, such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Public Knowledge, have been f ighting for decades to help create the legal environment that makes our work possible. We cannot waste that effort by failing to speak in our own defense when that environment is threat-ened. It’s absolutely right that Congress cares about the content industry, recognizing its ability to innovate, to create wealth and to improve lives. But existing copyright enforcement laws were written in a world in which the information we had access to on a broad scale came from a few established media outlets. The players were easy to identify. They organized into groups with common inter-ests and fought to protect those interests. The “content industry” is no longer limited to those few inf luential channels.The laws we need now must recognize the more broadly distributed and broadly valuable power of free and open knowledge. They must come from an understanding of that power and a recognition that the voices f looding the phone lines and in-boxes of Congress on Jan. 18 represent-ed the source of that power. These laws must not simply be rammed through to appease narrow lobbies without suff i-cient review or consideration of the consequences. Because we are the media industry. We are the creators. We are the innovators. The whole world benefits from our work. That work, and our ability to do it, is worth protecting for everyone.

IS WATCHING YOU

38

FROM: BOBBY WITH LOVE

Issue I39

FROM: BOBBY WITH LOVE

40

Each year, Congress authorizes the budget of the Depart-ment of Defense through a National Defense Authoriza-tion Act (NDAA). The NDAA of 2012, however, is unlike any previous ones. This year’s legislation contains highly controversial provisions that empower the Armed Forces to engage in civilian law enforcement and to selectively sus-pend due process and habeas corpus, as well as other rights guaranteed by the 5th and 6th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, for terror suspects apprehended on U.S. soil. The f inal version of the bill passed the House on Decem-ber 14, the Senate the following day (ironically, the 220th birthday of the Bill of Rights). It was signed into law by President Obama on New Year’s Eve. With his signature, for the f irst time since the Internal Security Act of 1950 and the dark days of the McCarthy era that followed, our government has codif ied the power of indefinite deten-tion into law. This pernicious law poses one of the greatest threats to civil liberties in our nation’s history. Under Sec-tion 1021 of the NDAA, foreign nationals who are alleged to have committed or merely “suspected” of sympathizing with or providing any level of support to groups the U.S. designates as terrorist organization or an aff iliate or associ-ated force may be imprisoned without charge or trial “until the end of hostilities.” The law aff irms the executive branch’s authority granted under the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) and broadens the definition and scope of “covered persons.” But because the “war on terror” is a war on a tac-tic, not on a state, it has no parameters or timetable. Con-sequently, this law can be used by authorities to detain (for-ever) anyone the government considers a threat to national security and stability – potentially even demonstrators and protesters exercising their First Amendment rights. One popular myth surrounding this law (which has been marketed well by the White House and the mainstream

media) is that it does not pertain to U.S. persons (citizens and resident aliens). While the law does not explicitly target U.S. persons, it neither excludes nor protects them. Section 1022 of the law covers U.S. persons. The section allows for open-ended executive judgment with regard to the handling of U.S. persons. In other words, the detention of U.S persons is optional, rather than a requirement as it is for non-U.S. persons. Jonathan Turley, legal scholar and professor at George Washington University, explains that “the provision merely states that nothing in the provisions could be construed to alter Americans’ legal rights. Since the Senate clearly views citizens are not just subject to indefinite detention but even execution without a trial, the change offers nothing but rhetoric to hide the harsh real-ity.” Regardless of whether or not this law is interpreted as applying to U.S. persons, by specif ically targeting foreign nationals, the NDAA violates the “equal protection” clause of the 14th Amendment, which guarantees that all people be treated the same under the law. Therefore, any way you slice it, this law is unconstitutional. Accompanying the President’s signature was a sign-ing statement which was intended to clarify some of his perspectives on the NDAA’s most controversial language. The statement read in part, “my administration will not authorize the indefinite military detention without trial of American Citizens.” However, what is important to keep in mind here is that the statement refers only to what this administration pledges, not to the intentions or require-ments of future administrations. As television host and political commentator Rachel Maddow put it in recent seg-ment, “you now live in a country where, technically at least, the military has a legal role to play in civilian law enforce-ment.” Dr. Maddow pointed that while this may or may not be invoked during the present administration, “thanks to this bill…if this president changes his mind or some

NDAA“While America nurses hangovers and revels in rose parades and football,

President Obama snuck behind the distractions to sign the NDAA into law Saturday. Although he has made it clear that he reluctantly does so, no one is more reluctant about the act then the socially conscious Americans who recognize the potentially

damaging ramifications of “Section D: Counter-terrorism.”

WE ARE THE MEDIA, AND SO ARE YOUBy Jimmy Wales and Kat Walsh

Issue II41

“THIS LAW LEAVES A WIDE GRAY AREA FOR THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT TO INDEFINITELY DETAIN TERRORISM SUSPECTS WITHOUT TRIAL. I AM NOT MEANING TO BE ALARMIST HERE, BUT I DO AIM TO EDUCATE. WHAT THE PRESIDENT IS SIGNING HAS LONG BEEN DECLARED UNCONSTITUTIONAL BECAUSE IT FOREGOES DUE PROCESS OF THE LAW. ALL IN THE NAME OF THE WAR ON TERRORISM, WHICH BASICALLY MEANS, THE GOVERNMENT CAN DO WHATEVER THE FUCK THEY WANT (FOR YOUR SAFETY, OF COURSE).”

42

clining since the so-called “war on terror” was declared by President Bush, has been diminished further. The NDAA of 2012 increases the United States’ worldwide detention authority. In doing so it further entrenches a culture of war in American society. According to the American Civil Lib-erties Union (ACLU), “The statute is particularly danger-ous because it has no temporal or geographic limitations, and can be used by this and future presidents to militar-ily detain people captured far from any battlef ield… the breadth of the NDAA’s detention authority violates inter-national law because it is not limited to people captured in the context of an actual armed conf lict as required by the laws of war.” As diff icult as it might be to have any faith left in the Congress, there is hope on the horizon for overturning at least the portion of the law that threatens U.S. persons. The Due Process Guarantee Act of 2011, H.R. 3702, authored by Rep. John Garamendi (D-CA) and Martin Heinrich (D- NM) and currently co-sponsored by 32 House members, including the ranking members of the Armed Services, Foreign Affairs, and Judiciary commit-tees, clarif ies existing U.S. law and states unequivocally that the government cannot indefinitely detain Ameri-can citizens or lawful U.S. residents. It ensures that U.S. citizens and permanent residents on American soil are protected. The bill amends the Non-Detention Act of 1971, clarifying that a congressional authorization for the use of military force – such as that in the NDAA which included the detainee provisions – does not authorize the indefinite detention without charge or trial of U.S. citizens appre-hended on U.S. soil. H.R. 3702 is companion legislation to Senator Dianne Feinstein’s Due Process Guarantee Act of 2011, S. 2003. Since 2001, the Patriot Act, the AUMF, and now the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 have eroded many of our most valued constitutional rights. Our

“THE NDAA SCARES ME FOR A NUMBER OF REASONS, BUT NONE MORESO THAN THE JAPANESE-AMERICANS’ EXPERIENCE DURING WORLD WAR II.”

other president in the future does want to arrest Ameri-cans and lock them up in military custody forever without trial, our government statutorily now claims that as its right.”Although more than two-thirds of the House voted in favor of the NDAA, not every member was on board with it. Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) remarked that “what this bill does is it takes a wrecking ball to the United States Constitution.” Rep. Paul Tonko (D-NY) described this bill as a threat to “the inalienable due process rights af-forded to every American citizen under the Constitution.” The NDAA’s draconian detention provisions have receivedmost of the attention, effectively overshadowing the fact that this legislation continues a trend of spending vast sums of taxpayer money on so-called “defense” objec-tives. According to Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), one of only 13 members of the Senate to vote against the NDAA, “the bill continues to authorize heavy spending on defense despite the end of the 9-year-old war in Iraq. Ironically, the Senate vote came on the same day when Defense Secre-tary Panetta was in Baghdad off icially declaring that our military mission there has ended and that virtually all of the combat troops will leave Iraq by the end of the year. At a time when we have tripled defense spending since 1997 and spend more today on defense than the rest of the world combined.” The executive branch has acquired greater authoritarian and unaccountable power under this law which disaff irms justice as a fundamental human right. It brings the illegal practice of extraordinary rendition home. Tom Parker of Amnesty International USA argues that the NDAA “provides a framework for ‘normalizing’ indefinite detention and making Guantanamo a permanent feature of American life.” What democracy and civil liberties we did enjoy in this country before the NDAA of 2012 became law have been severely weakened, and our nation’s moral and legal credibility in the world, which has been gradually de-

“THE NDAA SCARES ME FOR A NUMBER OF REASONS, BUT NONE MORESO THAN THE JAPANESE-AMERICANS’ EXPERIENCE DURING WORLD WAR II.”

nation is moving away from government “of the people, by the people, for the people” and toward a totalitarian state. The late historian, Howard Zinn observed, “Terrorism has replaced Communism as the rationale for the militariza-tion of the country, for military adventures abroad, and for the suppression of civil liberties at home. It serves the same purpose, serving to create hysteria.” It is up to the Ameri-can people to stop this fear-mongering and this unfettered growth of the military industrial complex. How? Ameri-cans can begin by actively dissenting against laws that violate their Constitution and their conscience. Dr. Zinn believed very strongly that “dissent is the highest form of patriotism. If the Constitution is to be defended against those who aspire to destroy it, all Americans have a duty to themselves and their country to stand up and demand progressive change toward a culture of peace and justice. One of the most effective ways to do this is by engaging in methods of nonviolent direct action, as demonstrated by the Oc-cupy Wall Street movement. Only then can the freedoms and civil liberties the people are promised in the Consti-tution be restored. Obama broke his promise on signing statements and attached a statement that he really does not want to detain citizens indefinitely (see the text of the statement here). He insisted that he signed the bill simply to keep funding for the troops. It was a continuation of the dishonest treatment of the issue by the White House since the law f irst came to light. As discussed earlier, the White House told citizens that the president would not sign the NDAA because of the provision. That spin ended after sponsor Senator Carl Levin (Democrat, Michigan) went to the f loor and disclosed that it was the White House and insisted that there be no exception for citizens in the indefinite detention provision.

Issue II43

“ALTHOUGH THE UNITED STATES PROFUSELY APOLOGIZED FOR IT LATER AND VOWED FOR IT TO NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN, AMERICAN CITIZENS WERE UPROOTED AND CONFINED TO INTERNMENT CAMPS BECAUSE THEY WERE SUSPECTED OF BEING IN CAHOOTS WITH THE ENEMY. WITHOUT TRIAL.”

Issue III45

STREETS

OCCUPY OUR

46

“EVERY DAY WE FIGHT THE SYSTEM, JUST TO MAKE OUR WAY. WE BEEN DOWN FOR TOO LONG BUT THAT’S ALRIGHT. WE WERE BUILT TO BE

STRONG.”‘HIIIPOWER’

KENDRICK LAMAR

Issue III47

“EVERY DAY WE FIGHT THE SYSTEM, JUST TO MAKE OUR WAY. WE BEEN DOWN FOR TOO LONG BUT THAT’S ALRIGHT. WE WERE BUILT TO BE

STRONG.”‘HIIIPOWER’

KENDRICK LAMAR

48

SINCE their irruption half a year ago, Occupy Wall Street and its ilk have created a new political slogan--the 99% against the 1%--and a new catchphrase: “Occupy X” is now a synonym for all subversive disruption, where X can be any-thing from the court system to Valentine’s Day. But max-ims aside, the movement has always struggled to explain its agenda to the world. That has much to do with its anti-hi-erarchical structure: no central authority, no single ideology, no unif ied set of demands. For most journalists, accustomed to clear leaders and talking points, this makes the movement a slippery and exasperating subject. The f lip side is that from the activists’ point of view, as one of the writers in “Oc-cupying Wall Street” puts it, “mainstream coverage of Oc-cupy Wall Street has been a f ickle, ornery beast,” alternat-ing between indifference and obsession. Even the attentive left-wing American media--from old-time bastions such as Mother Jones, the Nation and Z Magazine to newer arrivals such as Salon.com, Current TV (a political news site) and n+1 (a cultural journal)--have remained, at most, enthusi-astic observers. These outlets may carry polemics from the movement’s leading lights and serve as occasional arenas for debate, but none has become a devoted forum. Distrustful of outside agendas, the Occupy movement has chosen to build its own media instead. Besides using social networks such as Twitter and YouTube to organise and docu-ment its activities, devotees employ a bewildering array of websites. Each Occupy chapter around the world has a site for its “general assembly”, the collective decision-making group that is the nearest thing to an off icial body. There are several national sites with confusingly similar names--occupywallst.org, occupywallstreet.org and (still under construction) oc-cupywallstreet.net, plus occupytogether.org, occupycafe.org, interoccupy.org and others--each with its own constituency and focus. Debates rage on e-mail lists and Facebook groups over everything from campground sanitation to whether po-

lice off icers are agents of class warfare or fellow victims of it. Off the web there have been a pair of sporadic print newspa-pers, a couple of documentary f ilms and at least three books.Of these, “99 Nights with the 99 Percent”, a series of vi-gnettes from assorted Occupy encampments by Chris Far-aone, a Boston-based journalist, is the best read. Though absolutely pro-Occupy, Mr Faraone retains some critical perspective. He paints a telling picture of the mix of exhila-ration, boredom, confusion and absurdity that accompanies the growth of a grassroots movement. He even profiles a con man who scammed Occupy Boston into giving him control of its f inances. “Occupying Wall Street” by “Writers for the 99%” is a largely self-congratulatory collection of pieces by various activists. And “Occupy!”, an anthology from the oc-casional Occupy Gazette published by n+1, includes ref lec-tions on such dilemmas as how to deal with the drummer-occupiers, who see any request to stop drumming as a grave assault on their right to self-expression, even if this means preventing others from sleeping at night. There is also a lovely piece on the diff iculties of organising an occupation’s laundry, which works as a handy metaphor for some of the movement’s larger challenges. But these books are more or less boosterish. None examines the movement’s basic goals in depth; instead, they exemplify its unwieldy belief in letting every voice be heard. This plu-

TALKING ABOUT A REVOLUTION:OCCUPY WALL STREET & THE MEDIABy Justin Heo

OCCUPY

Issue III49

ralism makes the Occupiers very good at talking to them-selves, but less good at making themselves understood to outsiders, even sympathetic ones. This may be one reason why a movement that claims to represent 99% of the popu-lation has managed to mobilise only a small fraction of its constituents.“The theoretical principles of the movement, total horizontality and openness, run counter to what seems to make effective media,” observes David Sauvage, a f ilm-maker, who this week launched yet another site (with an enviably tidy URL), occupy.com. When all one had to do to get involved was show up at an Occupy camp, he says, the barrier to entry was low. But now that most of these encampments have been dismantled, it is harder to know where to start. His site aims to reinvigorate partici-pation by serving as a media-savvy repository for stories, photographs and video from the Occupy trenches, coupled with easy routes to taking part.Unlike the “effective media” that this site aims to emulate, Mr Sauvage does not intend to craft a larger narrative out of these individual voices. But with Occupiers trying to rally support for a general strike on May 1st, they will need to communicate with people who might join if only they could know what exactly they were joining. For potential sympathisers, a coherent, collective story may be easier to grasp than lots of personal ones.

TO SECURE THESE RIGHTS,

GOVERNMENTS ARE INSTITUTED

AMONG MEN, DERIVING THEIR

JUST POWERS FROM THE

CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED,

THAT WHENEVER ANY FORM

OF GOVERNMENT BECOMES

DESTRUCTIVE OF THESE

ENDS, IT IS THE RIGHT OF

THE PEOPLE TO ALTER OR TO

ABOLISH IT, AND TO INSTITUTE

NEW GOVERNMENT, LAYING

ITS FOUNDATION ON SUCH

PRINCIPLES AND ORGANIZING

ITS POWERS IN SUCH FORM, AS

TO THEM SHALL SEEM MOST

LIKELY TO EFFECT THEIR SAFETY

AND HAPPINESS. DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE (1776)

99%99%

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While only Ron Paul and two other Republicans voted against the bill in the House of Representatives (the bill passed 388-3). Not a single Democratic politician voted against the bill. As part of this legislation, Congress expressly forbids tres-pass onto the grounds of the White House. Many likely be-lieve that such a law already existed and they are right. The controversial aspect of this bill ’s restatement of that statute is that it expands the scope of the federal government’s au-thority to bring charges against those deemed trespassers at any location placed provisionally under the jurisdiction of the Secret Service. The present state of the law prosecutes White House trespassers under a local Washington, D.C. ordinance. Prior to this latest federal action, violation of this ordinance was a misdemeanor. Under HR 347, however, the Congress endows itself with the unbounded power to impose federal criminal charges on not only those who enter the White House grounds without prior permission, but on anyone who participates in protests at or near a location falling within the greatly enlarged scope of this new prohibited zone. Among the central provisions of H.R. 347 is a section that would make it a criminal offense to “enter or remain in” an area designated as “restricted.” The bill defines the areas that qualify as “restricted” in ex-tremely vague and broad terms. Restricted areas can include “a building or grounds where the President or other person protected by the Secret Service is or will be temporarily vis-iting” and “a building or grounds so restricted in conjunction with an event designated as a special event of national sig-nif icance.” The Secret Service provides bodyguards not just to the US president, but to a broad layer of top f igures in the political establishment, including presidential candidates and foreign dignitaries. Even more sinister is the provision regarding events of “national signif icance.” What circum-stances constitute events of “national signif icance” is left to the unbridled discretion of the Department of Homeland

Security. The occasion for virtually any large protest could be designated by the Department of Homeland Security as an event of “national signif icance,” making any demonstra-tions in the vicinity illegal. H.R. 347 comes on the heels of the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which was signed into law by President Obama on December 31, 2011. The NDAA gives the president the power to order the incarceration of any person—including a US citizen—anywhere in the world without charge or trial. The passage of H.R. 347 has been the subject of a virtual blackout in the media. In light of the nature of the bill, which constitutes a signif icant attack on the First Amendment, this blackout cannot be innocent. The media silence represents a conscious effort to keep the American population in the dark as to the government’s efforts to eviscerate the Bill of Rights. The timing of the bill is signif icant. H.R. 347 was reported to the Senate f loor by the Senate Judiciary Committee on No-vember 17, 2011, amidst a massive nationwide crackdown on the Occupy Wall Street protests – and just two days after hundreds of New York City police conducted the infamous military-style raid on the demonstrators’ encampment in Zu-cotti Park, driving out the protesters and erecting barricades. A Congressional Budget Office Cost Report accompa-nying H.R. 347 explains that the bill “would modify and expand the current laws that prohibit access to certain fed-eral property” such that the government could “pursue cases against violators that it otherwise would not be able to pros-

PROTESTUS CONGRESS EXPANDS AUTHORITARIAN ANTI-PROTEST LAWBy Tom Carter

Issue III53

“STARTED HIIIPOWER BECAUSE OUR GENERATION NEEDED A GENERATOR. THIS SYSTEM IS MEANT TO DISINTEGRATE US. ALL WE DO IS ASSIST THEM. WE’RE NOT VICTORS, WE’RE VICTIMS.”

ecute.” The CBO report claims that “H.R. 347 would apply to a relatively small number of offenders,” but the dramatic sweep of existing law combined with the changes made by H.R. 347 suggest otherwise.H.R. 347 expands the existing law (according to congressional records, it “clarif ies” existing law) by replacing language prohibiting “willfully and know-ingly” entering a “restricted area” with language prohibiting merely “knowingly” entering a “restricted area.” This seem-ingly minor change in fact dramatically increases the reach of the law and makes the prosecution of demonstrators easier. Under H.R. 347, individuals could be charged for violating the statute even if they did not intend to do so. The bill also extends the reach of the law to include Washington, DC, which previously was covered in regard to “restricted” areas only by local laws. This change, reportedly requested by the Secret Service, enables the accused to be prosecuted in fed-eral court. The bill now awaits President Obama’s signature before it becomes the law of the land. What lies behind the ongoing attack on the US Constitution and Bill of Rights is a growing understanding in the ruling class that the protests that took place around the world against social inequality in 2011 will inevitably re-emerge in more powerful forms in 2012 and beyond, as austerity measures and the crashing economy make the conditions of life more and more intoler-able for the working class. Bubble zones and free speech zones, in essence, destroy the very purpose of the First Amendment, which assures us

of the right to peaceably assemble and petition the govern-ment for a redress of grievances. In other words, we, as citi-zens, have a constitutional right to address our government off icials in a public manner so that they can hear our griev-ances or concerns. What these zones do, however, is create insulated barriers around public off icials, thus keeping us out of sight and sound’s reach of those who are supposed to rep-resent us. Many prominent activists, from Occupiers, to the Tea Party, from anti-war protestors and so on, will be shut out from the view of public off icials under this legislation. These zones also serve a secondary purpose, which is to chill free speech by intimidating citizens into remaining silent. If these types of laws had been in effect during the Civil Rights movement, there would have been no March on Washing-ton. Martin Luther King Jr. and his fellow activists would have been rendered criminals. And King’s call for “militant nonviolent resistance” would have been silenced by police in riot gear.

‘HIIIPOWER’KENDRICK LAMAR

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Issue III55

WHO WILL SURVIVE IN AMERICA?