The Showdown In Chicago

Chicago: Michigan Avenue, Wacker Drive, La Salle Street, October 26, 27

Reading the blog Debtonation by British economist Ann Pettifor – who predicted the bursting of the debt bubble and the subsequent economic meltdown– I stumbled across a mention of The Showdown In Chicago.  I decided to go after I went to the Showdown web site and saw that it was being organized by a collection of community groups and unions including both national trade union federations: the AFL-CIO and Change To Win.  I was further encouraged when I found out that two of the speakers at the conference would be Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, and Sheila Bair, the Republican appointed by Pres. Bush II who’s still the head of the F.D.I.C. 

Durbin is the US Senate majority whip, a downstate  (not from Chicago) progressive Senator in the mold of his mentor, Sen. Paul Simon, an early backer of Obama, and an advocate of credit card reform.  Bair tried to blow the whistle before the meltdown about the mortgage mess, and even though she was appointed by Bush, was the left wing of the establishment’s choice for Secretary of the Treasury, instead of Timothy Geithner, who it appears, wants her thrown off the FDIC.  Geithner’s from Goldman Sachs and the Federal Reserve, Bair from small town Kansas, worked for Bob Dole, and taught at UMASS, and was dubbed the second most powerful woman in the world by Forbes Magazine in 2008..

During the recession of the 1970s I had attended the Hard Times convention in Chicago, which may have been the last gasp of the New Left.  It compiled a lengthy unfocused list of demands with a promise to march on Washington D.C. that April 15, but no plan to implement anything concrete, and as far as can recall, nothing came of it. (See A Boomer’s Lament) The idea of attending, in 2009, a gathering of unions, community groups, politicians, regulators, and other non-profits suggested the possibility of real world, political engagement.  I wasn’t disappointed.

The three days of events included meetings/rallies in a downtown hotel just across the Chicago River from the American Bankers Association convention, and demonstrations in front of the banker’s convention hotel, at Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo.  I will skip a description of each day’s events to jump to some observations.  For details check out www.showdowninchicago.org or find ABA Showdown on YouTube where there are at least 20 different videos, or AFR, described below.

Reasons To Feel Hopeful

1. Leaders from both sides of the national labor union split spoke at the rallies and seemed to be on good terms.  Anna Burger and Andy Stern from Change To Win and Richard Trumpka from AFL-CIO.  It was my impression that SEIU in Illinois was the main force behind events, and Tom Balanoff, head of the SEIU in Illinois was visible on the podium and in the crowd.  That’s the back of his head  atop the purple windbreaker in the photo with the Financial Reform Now sign.  Some of us are old enough to remember when his father ran the biggest Steelworker’s Local in Gary, Indiana and was Ed Sadlowski’s mentor, back when there were still steel mills.
2. There were a number of fiery preachers, both black and white,  from Peoria, Illinois  (location of the heart-breaking foreclosure sequence in the Michael Moore’s movie Capitalism, A Love Story) and Decatur, Illinois, (location of three long, bitter, simultaneous strikes in the 1990s that went unreported outside of the Midwest) and pissed-off farmers and city folk, not just from Chicago, but Wichita, Rochester, Des Moines.
3. Most people in attendance and in charge were much younger than me. This was not still yet another Farewell Tour of the ‘60s Generation.  The one person that I ran into who I knew was my old friend Heather Booth, who might be described as an organizer within the progressive wing of the Democratic Party – election mobilization, campaign building, training —  who worked for many years in Chicago and now lives in DC.  She heads a new coalition formed by unions and non-profits like Public Citizen called Americans For Financial Reform or AFR.
4. All the events were very well organized, suggesting, from my experience, a commitment to some kind of focused follow through. 
5. Speakers represented with their personal stories or referred to four major problems or constituencies, suggesting the ability to project a coherent message.  These were: People who lost their homes due to foreclosures caused by ballooning mortgages with hidden qualifications, bundled, bought and sold by financial entities far removed from the communities they devastated.  People in insurmountable debt due to predatory payday loans.  People overwhelmed by incomprehensible credit card rules and unregulated interest rates.  Students driven into debt and away from public service by loans.    Mortgages.  Payday loans.  Credit Cards.  Student Loans.
6. The appearance of Dick Durbin and Sheila Bair (who was also speaking at the ABA Convention) suggests a real division inside D.C. power circles, with some politicians and regulators looking for a populist push to get the Too Big To Fail institutions under control. I found Bair’s speech particularly encouraging, in that it did NOT feature the hot air and platitudes that are sometimes used by big shots to slide through public events. Check out the video:  Sheila Bair at Showdown in Chicago
7. A fairly coherent and consistent list of goals.

• Pass the Consumer Financial Protection Agency.  As one speaker said “If we can regulate milk we can regulate mortgages.”  Credit Card regulations can be made comprehensible and rates can be controlled
• Break up financial institutions that are too big to fail.  Too Big To Fail Is Too Big. 
• Allow courts to modify personal loans and mortgages, as banks modify debts during bankruptcy.
• Bring all home loans under control of the Community Reinvestment Act
• Modernize the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act
• Democratize the Federal Reserve
• Trace back the links between the huge financial institutions and the blizzard of foreclosures and abandoned businesses. 

 Reasons to Be Unsure

It’s been over 40 years since I lived in Chicago, and I have no real sense of who was missing or who was noticeable by their presence other than Durbin, Bair, Balanof, Stern, and Trumpka.  I saw lots of different Protestant Ministers, but only one Rabbi, and no Priests or Nuns or Imams.  I didn’t see any Steelworkers, and I don’t think my union, the CWA was there.  I don’t know if the SEIU elsewhere in the country will get involved, or whether this was something associated with the leadership in Illinois. 

National People’s Action (NPA) appeared responsible for lots, if not all of the community groups at the Showdown, but as I write their website  doesn’t have any news about it.  There was no mention of similar events to be held anywhere, for instance, on Wall Street, or at the headquarters of Bank of America in North Carolina.

Pop Music Addendum

The musical interludes included a Karaoke-ish version of Aretha’s “Think”, a topical blues, and a sort of folk song with a rap interlude.  If I heard right, the final big rally (5,000 people) included a sanitized version of Kanye’s “Gold Digger”.  The high point for me, however was a presentation at one of the indoor events by a charming bunch of teenagers from Chicago’s South Shore neighborhood which included a top hat and tails dance to Sinatra’s “Chicago is My Kind of Town”, some tricky banner twirling by young gals to Beyonce’s version of Etta James’ “At Last”, a “Beat It” remix that included Barack Obama on an audio clip saying “God Bless The United States of America” and a crowd-electrifying multi-costumed recreation of the Thriller video ending with two Michael Jackson imitators.   

Jesse Jackson’s Column

“President Obama says that we can’t go back to an economy where finance captures 40 percent of the profits, but we’re headed there right now.”

Here’s a link to Jesse Jackson in the Chicago Sun-Times the day of the rally at the American Banker’s Association convention.  Jackson gave the benediction at the conclusion of the rally.

Tom Smucker