My Van, My Tardis, My Home

Trevor Brown writes about My Van, My Tardis, My Home (pp.18-19) in The Big Issue #428 (22-28 March 2103).

In this article, Brown laments the detrimental effects of the Occupy Movement on the homeless:

Ripples that spread out from various ‘Occupy’ movements over the past couple of years increased pressure on many of us on the streets. We came under increased attention from law-enforcement personnel who seemed intent on making sure we weren't an advanced guard for groups hoping to take up residence in the middle of cities. The homeless were found ‘guilty by association’; we were caught in the open ground between authorities and Occupiers. The pressure increased: I came under verbal attack by members of the public for the first time. Sadly, activities by the group only disenfranchised the very people they were trying to promote as worthy of help and support.

Emphasis Mine

The backlash against the Occupy Movement has rebounded on the homeless. It has drawn them into a political battle they do not want to be part of. They just want to be able to rejoin society.

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Ten Years of The Big Issue

In the latest issue of The Big Issue, the editorial extols how business solves a social problem. It is really not Capitalism that makes it work but a form of Socialism. Could the mechanism of how this magazine works give an indication of how to implement Socialism in Australia?

Graeme C. Wise, Patron, The Big Issue, concludes the editorial in the 03-18 July 2006 issue of this magazine with:

I have long held the belief that the brightest minds gravitate to the business sector and that if we encourage businesspeople to apply their problem-solving abilities to social needs, we greatly increase the chance of finding real and eduring solutions.

I am proud to see this enterprise blossom into a viable and successful business solution to a social problem. In the past decade, more than 3000 people throughout the country have sold The Big Issue and used it as a means of pulling themselves up. Many people have found a new direction and a sense of purpose. In turn, they have made us more aware of how we can help others by giving them a hand up, not just a hand out.

Emphasis Mine

Under Capitalism, a successful business is a profitable one. It cannot be otherwise: it has to regenerate the capital invested within a reasonable time.

In the addendum to the editorial, Martin Hughes notes that:

Although The Big Issue runs on the positive energy between readers and vendors, it takes a massive effort just trying to maintain that connection every fortnight. Simply put, we wouldn't have survived all these years without the spirited band of volunteers, staff, writers, illustrators, photogrpahers, advertisers, creative types, lawyers, accountants and other folk who donate their services and work for discounted rates to sow a little more compassion in the community. On the behalf of the thousands of marginalised people who've steadied their lives with the help of The Big Issue, heartfelt thanks and an Australia-sized warm fuzzy to you all.

Emphasis Mine

Here we see the true inner workings of the magazine: there is a lot of free or cheap labour. This keeps costs down so that the vendors can sell the magazine at a reasonable price and get a reasonable return for their investment.

In a Capitalist sense, the magazine is a failure because its income does not cover the costs, hence the need for volunteer labour. In a Socialist sense, this magazine is a great sucess because it brings together people for a worthwhile purpose to fulfill a social need.

The business knowledge that is accumulated and used under Capitalism is still useful under Socialism because it is the knowledge of how to make people work together in a productive fashion to achieve a common goal.

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Rize

Rochelle Siemienowicz reviews the movie Rize:

Down in the slums of Los Angeles, there is a new dance movement transforming the lives of underprivileged kids. It's called 'krumping' and it's so fast and athletic that the makers of this film have to tell us that the footage hasn't been sped up. The dancers move as if possessed, both by the spirits of their African ancestors and a furious rage at their powerlessness - Rodney King is often invoked. Instead of joining gangs, they paint their faces like clowns and engage in non-violent competitive dance-offs with rival troupes.

Made by music video director and Vanity Fair photographer David LaChappelle, Rize is sometimes unfocussed and sloppy, seemingly unsure of whether it wants to glorify or objectively observe what it finds. Nevertheless, it's full of pummelling energy and arresting visuals as it traces the roots of krumping back to an ex-jailbird called Tommy the Clown, who first combined hip hop music and dance with children's birthday parties. Today, more than 100 groups practise this 'ghetto-ballet'. Their pride and courage is inspiring (and, honestly, a little scary), and you only hope that they'll find a way to move their politics beyond their beautiful, gyrating bodies.

Siemienowicz, Rochelle (2005), 'Rize', The Big Issue, No. 241, 07-22 Nov 2005, p.36

Emphasis Mine

What Dr. Siemienowicz did not mention was the racism behind the origin of the dance: this was promoted as something that black people could do that white people couldn't. This gave the dancers a sense of false pride. They have fully absorbed the racist propaganda of a Capitalist society. Malcolm X has been forgotten. The only mention of Dr. King was on the closing credits from his I have a dream speech:

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal."

Towards the end of the film, a white youth and an Asian youth are shown participating in the dance, and being accepted by the black dancers.

Thoughout the film, the dancers comment that they are oppressed or discriminated against, but they do not move beyond that. When they do not try to understand the oppression or discrimination, they are accepting it as part of their life. It is just another part of their lives as is drugs and the gangs. Forty years have erased the memories of the marches and the speeches of the Civil Rights era. The dancers are angry without having any way of understanding the source of that anger. They use dance to drain that anger out.

One problem with black liberation (whatever its manifestation - marches, dance, music) is that it attracts poor whites, Asians, and Hispanics. But with this aggregation of non-blacks, the blacks feel overwhelmed. The problems of the blacks are big enough without all these other poor people tagging along. Blacks want to solve the problems of blacks not everyone else's. The blacks then try to exclude the others by saying that they should solve their own problems.

With this exclusion, the politics of blacks do not develop beyond racism. This attitude entrenches racism further by dividing people into races. Instead, the blacks should welcome the others in their struggle and expand their struggle to include all poor people as Malcolm X and Dr. King were starting to do before they were assassinated. The struggle is a class struggle of the poor against the rich. It is not black against white.

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Shelter Skelter

In issue #239 (10-25 Oct 2005) of The Big Issue, Chris Middendorp writes in Shelter Skelter (on pp.13-14) that there are at least 200,000 household applications awaiting allocation of public housing in Australia. This represents those who are willing to wait ten years or more for a home of their own. There are cases of people paying $155 per week for rent out of a pension of $190 pw. The author concludes:

... Public housing works best when it consists of ordinary homes in ordinary streets. It's a question of dignity.

From my conversations with housing workers in several Australian states, it's clear that there's a substainal degree of shared insight. While it's certainly true that some people become homeless because of personal predicaments such as domestic violence, drug addiction or a disability, the recurring theme is that with professional support many personal problems are manageable. Most people are able to live the kinds of lives we all accept as our God-given right. To make this possible, people need a place to call home. A home offers an anchor; it offers peace of mind. Public housing allows people ... the chance for a fresh and promising beginning.

The author traces the decline in public housing to the shift in government ideology towards the private rental market. But the author does not expand on this.

I believe that this shift creates a rentier class whose income depends on the rents and capital growth of residental properties. These are not capitalists who risk money in businesses (services or manufacturing) but people who are really parasites on the Capitalist system. The rentiers do not increase the wealth of the economy but rely on the increase in wealth to increase their rents without any investment whatsoever.

From the perspective of the ruling class, the rentiers are more docile than the petite bourgeious, and more reliable in supporting the status quo. Increasing the number of rentiers makes for more dependent people while discouraging the petite bourgeious.

The captalist economy suffers as more capital is removed from productive investments into the dead zone of property investments. The ruling class maintains control by slowly strangling the capitalist economy.

An expanded public housing programme would force this unproductive capital back into the productive parts of the economy. In this case, a socialist policy invigorates the capitalist economy.

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"Give us our husbands back!"

Gerry wants to discuss theorectical aspects of Pacifism. In his imagination. all things are possible. However, a Marxist must study reality. I recently found an article in "The Big Issue" (Issue #230 (06.06.05)) about a movie (Rosenstrasse) about a peaceful protest that got the Nazis to change their mind (Defiant Housewives by Rochelle Siemienowicz, p.32, ibid.).

In Resisting the Holocaust, Ruby Rohrlich (Ed), Berg, New York:2000, Nathan Stoltzfus writes in Protest and Silence: Resistance Histories in Post-War Germany: the Missing Case of Intermarried Germans (pp.152-153):

During the following fifteen months, as intermarried couples for the most part remained together even under the new terrors, the regime repeated its decision to defer intermarried Jews from the Final Solution "temporarily." The battle of wills between intermarried Germans and the Gestapo over the fate of intermarried Jews came to a dramatic climax on February 27, 1943, as Joseph Goebbels, the Party Gauleiter of Berlin, unleashed a massive surprise action intended to make Berlin "free of Jews." The Gestapo's code name for this massive surprise arrest, often known as the "Factory Action," was the "Final Roundup of the Jews," and for thousands, this was the beginning of the end. A battalion of SS men in uniforms with machine guns, along with local Gestapo agents and Berlin street policemen, fanned out across Berlin to capture the city's remaining Jews. Every truck in the city–some 300 in all–was requisitioned for the hunt. Goebbels, the Reich Minister charged with preventing public displays of dissent, hoped that the protests of intermarried Germans would be silenced by the "brute force" displayed in this arrest action.

As news of the massive arrest pulsed through the city German family members of arrested Jews began gathering on Rosenstrasse in front of the Jewish Community Center where intermarried Jews were imprisoned separately, in preparation for deportation. Gathering by the hundreds these "Aryans," who were overwhelmingly women, began to call out together "Give us our husbands back." Again and again, the police scattered the women with threats to shoot them down in the streets, but each time they advanced again, resumed their solidarity and called out together. Day by day the protest grew; as many as 600 or more came together at once, and as many as 6,000 had joined in by the protest's end. Normally people were afraid to show dissent, but on the street they knew they were among friends. "At first it was as if I was paralyzed," recalled Johanna Löwenstein de Witt. "It was a feeling of solidarity with one another that drove us on and gave us courage." Another protester recalled that she had begun her protest as an act of desperation but that as the protest continued, and as the Gestapo was unable to dispel it, she began to view the protest as a means of gaining the release of their husbands.

On March 6, following a week of noisy disturbances on Rosenstrasse, Goebbels relented, and ordered the release of all intermarried Jews and their children. Hitler gave his approval. For Propaganda Minister Goebbels success, based on mass conformity, lay in making it appear as though dissent did not exist, especially in Berlin. Releasing the intermarried Jews was the best way to dispel the open protest, visible not just to Germans but to foreign diplomats, journalists and spies in the German capital. To him the crowd of women calling out for Jewish family members was a "disagreeable scene."

Rosenstrasse is the only incident of mass German protest against the deportation of German Jews, and as a result of it at least 1,700 to 2,000 Jews survived. German "Aryans" married to Jews succeeded in rescuing thousands of Jews because of their own actions and identity, and not just due to circumstances. First, by the time of their desperate street protest, their non-compliance had already divided the Nazi leadership on how to handle intermarried Jews. Also, they had hard-earned reputations as persons willing to put their lives on the line; thus, unlike other Germans, they were guaranteed to cause the kind of social unrest the regime feared, especially following its first wartime debacle at Stalingrad just prior to the protest. Finally, they did not overplay their cards, demanding collectively just the release of their family members, and doing so in a daring, awkward street protest, rather than conspiratorially (and hopelessly) attempting to overthrow the regime as a whole with arms that would make them look to most Germans like criminals, in an area the regime was in any case greatly superior. So regardless of whether the success of intermarried German opposition in rescuing Jews is dated to Rosenstrasse or before, their non-compliance and protest produced a conflict between Nazi ideology and perceived policy options, influencing Hitler and the Gestapo to hesitate and repeatedly decide to "defer temporarily" deporting intermarried Jews–until the war ended.

Emphasis Mine

In summary,

• The numbers were relatively small (600) at any one time
• The protest lasted a short time (a week)
• The protestors were seen as being capable of causing social unrest
• The reputation of the Nazi regime had suffered because of a military disaster (Stalingrad)
• The protestors' aims were simple and straightforward: Give us our husbands back
• The protestors did not expand their demands to overthrow the Nazi regime
• The Nazi leadership was divided over this issue

In other words, this protest was a trial of strength between the protestors and the Nazi leadership. It was not a quiet protest but it would appear to have been peaceful (this is not a contradiction). The protest was spontaneous without any leadership. The publicity surrounding it appears to be minimal (even after 60 years!). And most importantly, the protest achieved its aims without any lives being lost.

Even against the most brutal of regimes, peaceful protests by ordinary people can achieve results. But this was not achieved in a political vacuum. There was a crisis of confidence within the regime after the Stalingrad debacle. The protest was staged in the political centre of the regime making the impact more visible. And the protest did not seek to overthrow the regime. This last point, I believe, is important for planning peaceful protests.

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