Horizontal Meets Vertical; Occupy Meets Establishment

http://www.thenation.com/article/166817/horizontal-meets-vertical-occupy-meets-establishment

Occupy has cracked open the door that lets us imagine that another world is possible. Thousands of arrests, months of protest and acts of incredible personal risk and sacrifice have put inequality and Wall Street’s out-of-control political and economic power on center stage. As activity ratchets up this spring, the challenge is to get more people pushing that door open ever wider.

To build this movement, Occupy needs to connect with tens of millions of people who are watching the unfolding battle but are not yet involved. To sustain it, we must link this spring’s protests to victories where people live, learn and work. Focusing on three issues—housing, student debt and the devaluing of work—allows us to thread different strands of activity through a common analysis of how Wall Street, big banks and corporations have profited by tanking and then reorganizing the economy.

Saving the neighborhoods where we live: The houses of 11 million homeowners and their families are threatened by foreclosure or are underwater by $700 billion, drowning people in negative equity. The housing crisis is central to how 60 percent of wealth has been stripped from communities of color since the 2008 economic collapse. Writing down principal to fair market value would inject tens of billions of dollars into the economy, reduce average mortgages by hundreds of dollars a month and help create a million jobs.

Freeing ourselves from student debt: Students and their families now have nearly a trillion dollars of debt, with average debt totaling over $25,000. The explosion in student debt is a direct outgrowth of the defunding of education in state after state. Unlike corporate and other debt, student debt is excluded from bankruptcy relief, strangling students for life. Reducing student debt load and the interest rates applied to it would save hundreds of billions of dollars in debt payments. It’s a first step to creating equal access to education and giving students a fair start without a lifetime burden.