Monday, January 18, 2010
The March of the Virginia People’s Assembly
Words Jay Ford
Monday, January 18th, 2010 at 6:03 pm
It’s freezing cold in downtown Richmond, and the tall buildings of the business district act as funnels, channeling a biting wind that’s whipping down its nearly deserted avenues. It is Saturday and the city is practically empty.
That is, except for the hundred-plus people marching down Main Street, fired up, ready to go, and shouting down the bitter chill with calls for social justice. These impassioned individuals are stomping down unfilled streets and yelling at certain ominous and emptied buildings, but, as I look about, I see nothing but smiles. Many types of people, with a broad range of differing concerns, march excitedly towards the General Assembly building. Undaunted by the weather or the seemingly small turnout, the group joyfully marches its serpentine path through the city.
It is the weekend before the General Assembly begins; our new Governor will be inaugurated, and down the street from the state capital, the Virginia People’s Assembly gathered. They are an amalgamation of groups and individuals from across the state who feels the General Assembly is not hearing their concerns. Their hope is that in joining together their issues can no longer be ignored. The individuals supporting the Assembly range from the likes of the famed Noam Chomsky to Norfolk’s own Tom Palumbo of Offbase Coffeehouse and Activist Center. Groups participating include the state chapter of the NAACP, labor unions, immigrants’ rights groups, prison justice groups, health care advocates, and supportive student groups. All share one thing: a committed belief to the need for progressive reforms in Virginia.
This is only the second year the Virginia’s People’s Assembly has gathered to discuss the needs of Virginia’s working-class citizens. All of the issues must be collectively agreed upon by all of the wide-ranging groups. And for the second year in a row, the People’s Assembly unanimously endorsed the entire agenda. The primary slogan that emerged was, “Jobs! Peace! Justice! No to budget cuts and layoffs! Make big corporations pay their fair share!”
As we head into another legislative term with a serious budget deficit, most anticipate cuts to government employee salaries and government-provided benefits. However, the state of Virginia has one of the lowest corporate income taxes in the country, and the Virginia People’s Assembly would like to see this increased to help close the budget gaps before we make even more cuts to the working-class citizens of our state. The full platform also includes a call for a moratorium on layoffs, cutbacks, evictions, and foreclosures. Also, they ask for no scapegoating of immigrants and equality for people of color, women, and the Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Transgender communities. Lastly, the Assembly calls for money for jobs and education–not for prisons, wars and occupations.
These broad-base, high-minded calls for social justice are often criticized as over-simplistic thinking, based on a lack of understanding the complexities of governance, and a whole host of other legalistic charges. However, it is in the unabashed, unsophisticated language that I find something pure and free from the nuance that so often is a barrier to participation. The demands reflect the straightforward nature of the march which is designed to deliver them. Too often we use words to complicate the policy, cloud the waters of morality, and prevent our average citizen from influencing their government. Issues are rarely clear cut, and a way forward is often times elusive, but a march is concrete. Solid and simple, a march breaks down the walls separating us from the democratic process, allowing one voice to call for what’s right, unencumbered by technicalities and legal acrobats. Sure, shouting loudly that you want justice is not the most rational approach, nor the most elegant, but sometimes it is what people need. It is the democratic equivalent of running into the woods and screaming until your bones shake and you feel something intangible leave you. Sometimes citizens cannot or should not have to draft a bill to be heard; sometimes they need to ask simple questions, and get straightforward answers.
The very existence of the Virginia People’s Assembly reflects a glaring weakness in our economic system; that when times are tough those among us who can least weather the storm, receive the biggest hit. The working poor, those who live hand-to-mouth, are devastated during an economic downturn because a pay cut can mean the difference between heat and no heat, home and no home, hope and no hope. What’s worse is that during these times, the organizations that help our needy receive less donations and government support, and yet have more people to provide for.
Economic downturns aren’t brought about because Americans are not working hard enough. These depressions, recessions, and stagnations occur because people who never worry about how they will provide for the well-being of their family gamble on the well-being of working-class people’s families.
Looking out at the crowd, at the faces of people from all different backgrounds, it is this righteous indignation that is on every person’s lips. It is a simple call for fairness. Why should average citizens shoulder the brunt of our state’s budget shortfalls? Why is our government shifting the burden of economic folly to those who can least afford it and are least to blame?
The Virginia People’s Assembly will most likely be ignored by most of our representatives in Richmond, and our new governor, whose transition team advocated he try to completely eliminate our corporate income tax. However, the Virginia People’s Assembly continues to grow in numbers, and as people struggle to recover from a recession they did not cause, more and more of Virginia’s citizens are starting to ask the same questions as the Assembly.
Chanted declarations that “The people united can never be defeated” rise up from the group to fill the deserted roads, reverberating off the vacant buildings and drifting up into an empty sky. The leader of the state NAACP leaps and skips down the sidewalk bellowing, “Jobs! Peace! Justice!”, a scene that at almost any other time would seem ridiculous, but today it is has us all screaming like madmen. Energy ebbs and flows, and at times we fall silent, and in those times you can hear the steps fall into a cadence and heavy breaths into a chorus as we all gather enough oxygen to begin to yell once more.
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ABOUT THE WRITER
Believes the world would be a nicer place if we all made some of our own furniture and grew some of our own food. He has worked on various state and national political races around the region, before switching over to issues based campaigns, where he advocated for voting rights, universal health care, and the environment. He has taught grassroots activism, and happens to think it is pretty important. He believes passionately in environmental reverence, social equality, the power of collective action, and his ability to speak with his cat. He fancies himself a part-time philosopher and thinks that people should dance on their cars more often. Jay thinks that abolishing the hand shake and replacing it with mandatory five second hugs would go leaps and bounds in changing the world.
Other posts by Jay Ford.
Other posts by Jay Ford.
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This article is so well-written that it is hard to even think of a comment that adds anything. Thanks – hope to see more like it.
This is really well written, thanks Jay, and thanks everyone fighting for justice.
Jay, I am so proud to have this story on AltDaily. Thanks for all that you’re doing, for us and for the local community.
this is great! and something im very proud to have been a part of. its wonderful to be caught up in the whirlwind of emotions that a rally like this can bring. small but strong, some sort of messgae was sent that day! …and every day, when people stand up for what they believe in..
Hi Jay,
In responding to your facebook comment on that picture and this article:
I’m not disagreeing with any particular policy proposal, and I feel sympathy for the poor of Virginia, but I disagree with your characterization and approval of this form of emotional protesting.
When you ask for “peace” and “justice,” you are implying that the other side advocates war and injustice (at least, that is how it appears to a partisan of the other side), and you are therefore calling them evil, precluding any type of dialogue. Emotion and indignation are the characteristic features of modern protest because, since the two sides share fundamentally inconsistent premises of how society should be structured, the only way to “win” the argument is to yell louder and more passionately than your opponent. Instead of delving into the details and figuring out where the two sides can compromise, you advocating making the dialogue even more shrill and emotional.
I think it is condescending and untrue to claim that the intricacies of public policy are too much for the working class or whoever they are trying to persuade to understand. Many of the working class are very intelligent and they understand exactly what they need. They should work piecemeal towards achieving their most important goals, rather than presenting a package of demands and calling the other side “unjust” if they don’t accept them. Modern society often involves a balancing of interests and while the working class’s interests are often under-represented, by adopting this indignant tone, you take away whatever leverage they may have had in the political process. Quoting Nussbaum, “symbolic verbal politics, in addition to being offered as a type of real politics, is held to be the only politics that is really possible.”
Sorry if you all hate me now.
Even a one eye man is King in the Kingdom of the blind. I was in the rally, the march, the drafting of said demands for “Jobs, Peace, and Justice”. And I can tell you, who wrote such a beautiful rebuttal, that you fail to see the forest for the trees. Therefore you are blind to the truth.
The chant, “Jobs, Peace, Justice” sumed up every participating organization and issue interest person who endorsed the VPA. I am referring to the unemploy, the black, hispanic, asian, gay and lesbian and others who have felt the whip of oppression, just because they are different. And then the call for “Justice” for those who have been confined to another form of institutionalized slavery, because of the “No Parole” laws and the new prisons that are designed to relegate and negate rather than to educate to produce viable citizens who can re-enter society with the full rights to participate as voters in a state that, at one time, made people disenfranchised because they were never taught to read by the so called “just system” of systemic oppression you seem to be advocating.
Yes I did feel a sense of cleansing for my soul when I shouted to the top of my voice, on that cold wintry day, “Jobs, Peace, Justice; JOBS, PEACE, JUSTICE!!!”
… i wonder if i too am friends with rumpy?
maybe after 400 years of stoic parliamentarian bureaucracy we may be beginning to recognize the subjectivity within our legislative processes. does the “other side” really need to self-identify as directly opposed to “emotion and indignation”?
i believe the author is offering accolades to those willing to emote within a system that rejects the inherent human need to respond subjectively to its situation. we can attempt to change public policy with the stories of those most experienced with the policy, how it positively and negatively affected their lives. true, its wonderful to see a group of individuals on the steps of the capital building working to affect mandatory minimums legislation, but sometimes it needs to be radically suggested that it just can’t wait.
jdavidow, your dichotomy between the emotional proletariat protesting in the street and the soulless rational system is wrong. The other side DOES emote very strongly; sometimes their emotions are influenced by vicious things like racism and Fox News, but many of their emotions are influenced by their own theories of justice and fairness. But turning this debate into a Nietzschean clash of wills and imitating the worst excesses of conservative populism, rather than attempting to come to a rational solution, only makes this debate angrier, more hateful, and less likely to lead anywhere.
I didn’t attend the protest and I didn’t see all the signs, but just based on the pictures I saw, I didn’t see any signs talking about “mandatory minimums legislation.” I saw signs talking about “stop budget cuts” and “increase corporate taxes.” So I don’t know what you are talking about.
And lest we forget the word “Peace” symbolic of the senseless war that is taking the money from the infrastructure of America and the people who voted for representatives who are supposed to see to their health, education as well as welfare. I AM DONE!
100 liberal wingnuts marching through Richmond on a Sunday. Pardon me if I’m not all aflutter….
Call me crass, but this isn’t much to crow about. I’m with Rumpy – all I see is calls for more distribution of wealth with no substance.
Virginia has a long tortured history of struggle for peace and
justice. We’re making progress sic semper tyrannis!
Immy,
I do not think you read what Rumpy wrote. What he said was that this type of advocacy led to a shrill and emotional debate, when change in government comes from compromise. Dismissing a cause you don’t agree without addressing the people’s central concern… namely that our state budget will be balanced on the backs of the working class when they are not responsible for our current economic crisis. If you disagree and think the average citizen should be on the hook for the action of others than please defend that position, but sarcasm and name calling… well those are a sure sign of a weak argument.
It is possible I misunderstood Rumpy’s spirit and intent.
However, I stand by my opinion. This “event” was a small number of people with a clear “progressive” agenda who claim to speak for the working class. Their slogan, “Jobs! Peace! Justice! No to budget cuts and layoffs! Make big corporations pay their fair share!” sums it up nicely – another “damn the man!” cry for extracting money from successful people and businesses to give to the little guy. Am I off base here?
You said “our state budget will be balanced on the backs of the working class when they are not responsible for our current economic crisis”. Care to explain that? The so-called working class didn’t sign off on those easy term mortgages? They didn’t max their credit lines – not for staples, but for a big screen TV? People seem to forget that consumer credit was a huge part of the current crisis, making we consumers just as liable (if not more so) than the lenders who offered them.
Businesses pay plenty of taxes. So do individuals. Fiscal accountability should be the tool used to balance budgets. If cuts in services are part of it, so be it. Services provided for by state and federal funds are used in large part by the lower economic class, who pay near nothing for the services rendered. That money comes from the upper-middle on up, who use it the least, and who I assume you want to bear more of the burden? Sounds like redistribution of wealth to me.
I do, however, want to apologize for coming off flippant and dismissive in my first post. Not cool.
I am glad you came back to make the case. I will come back to this as I would like to keep the discussion going… but I am busy working now. Got to make money so they can tax it eh?
LOL Cool man – yeah, ya gotta make so they can take…
Something to chew on – regarding the mortgage crisis, check out this link. It seems the working class was lining up in droves for mortgages they couldn’t afford.
Blame? Yes, the lender was somewhat at fault, but most of the responsibility rests with the person signing on the dotted line, IMO.
Rumpy… or should I say Ramtin… that’s right I outed you. First off I do not think anyone hates you… at least I do not. Your points were exactly what one anticipates hearing with an action of this kind, and I am happy you brought them into the discussion. I think these types of issues will only be addressed through dialogue in the public forum.
I think you are on to something when you mention the differences in how society should fundamentally be structured. This is certainly the case and the reason that people take to the streets, or a tea party, or any other type of assembly. Certainly to reach an accord compromise is necessary, but what you advocate for is a defeatist model of policy. You seem to hold that the two sides (or 3 or 4) are completely static. A rally and march are so much more than a call for policy change, they are a way of jump starting public discussion, and reshaping public perceptions.
Our right to assemble has been a driving force behind most major shifts in our cultural consciousness since our nation’s inception. Your “post-rally era” seems weak to me considering the record numbers of people at rallies during the last presidential election and the numbers moved over the summer to fight health care debate.
Your model of policy creation assumes no one will change their mind, and you also assume that the way we do business now is the way we should always do business. I happen to think that the way our government creates legislation is not even close to ideal, and so I think the Virginia People’s Assembly would be wrong to put down their signs and hire a lobbyist.
I believe everyone can understand everything our government does, but that many people, groups, and institutions make it more complicated than necessary in order to control the process. I believe the “condescending” comes into play when you prima facie set parameters for what is a reasonable way in which to voice your concerns. Why is the march automatically “shrill and emotional”, because it is not a white paper? Because Nussbaum was not consulted? Can’t the opinions they are voicing be valid, or does the method of delivery automatically discredit your message?
The right to assemble was instituted by intelligent people for good reason. They recognized that governments have a tendency to be insular and self propagating, and without a free flow of information in public discourse the framework though which we consider our nation’s ills would be severely restricted. The voices of the Virginia Peoples Assembly are not being heard and events like this play a vital role in expanding awareness to the wider public in hopes that the policy process might one day catch up with the needs of real working people.
First of all, I am not Ramtin. Second of all, I am not saying that people shouldn’t protest or that they do not protest anymore, I am saying that the characteristics of modern protest is shrillness because the two sides do not share the same underlying premises when they argue. When the colonists rebelled from Great Britain, they were appealing to the dictates of universal reason which the people of Great Britain also shared. In addition to tea parties, the colonists created a set of rational reasons for secession in the form of the Declaration of Independence which they sent to Europe. Intellectuals and lay people all over Europe analyzed and debated that document, and the colonists eventually received much sympathy and support because the rational principles they were fighting for made sense.
Thirdly, I am sick of people acting like its ok to drag down our level of political discourse because people are stupid. They are pretty stupid, but they are not that stupid. People can understand a rational argument and be swayed by it, and that actually happens all the time. See, for example, the Civil Rights movement. The Civil Rights Movement was about rational principles conflicting with emotional racism. The Civil Rights Movement did consist of marches and rallies, but it also consisted of legal challenges, newspaper editorials, academic articles, and changes in education. Performance art can be used to awaken people’s conscious and make them more aware of the situation, but there has to be some sort of rational theory in there somewhere for people to debate and discuss. To to say that people are stupid and can only be swayed by slogans sounds wrong to me.
Nowadays, modern protest is all about yelling and anger. If you continue this path, you’ll be people like Immy, who will just say “sounds like a bunch of dumbass liberals asking for more money” – which is actually exactly what they look like to people who don’t share their emotional state.
Rumpy Etc. — Whoa. Stop drafting these comments like you’re lawyers. promoting intellectual barriers and trying to shift the dialogue to something that the common person can’t participate in wont aid anyone’s approach to this situation.. What we need to have here is something meaningful, that doesn’t need to be Webster cross referenced a minimum of twenty times. this is huge. its all about our rights, representation, and actions in seeking proper acknowledgement of our liberties and persecutions.. I for one, strongly believe that any sense of participation is a step in the right path; whether it be in the form of a protest, a rally, a petition, attending a meeting, writing your representaives, joining a club, or a commenting on a blog… it’s all energy snowballing in the right direction…
I’m sorry, I just don’t think people are that stupid.
Most people are rationally ignorant about things that don’t affect their lives, but if it is something that directly affects them, most people have the capacity to learn whatever details are necessary to understand the problem at hand. I don’t know what you mean by the “common people,” but if you mean that there is a group of “un-common people,” or an elite that should be creating slogans and stereotypes to guide the decisions of the “common people” then I disagree with that. I consider myself a common person and I think you are too and I think its arrogant and infantilizing to think that some people are too stupid to engage in deliberative democratic debate in a civilized country.
Your talk of “intellectual barriers” sounds like the excuses that conservatives make to engage in crass populism and inflammatory rhetoric at things like tea-parties and the Glenn Beck show. Oversimplifications and extreme rhetoric (like saying the General Assembly is “persecuting” people) only serve the obfuscate solutions, not to create them, in my opinion.
I personally think that this utopian rhetoric is a way for people to take the moral high ground and feeling good about themselves without actually doing the dirty work of finding solutions and compromise. As long as you take the side of “peace” and “justice” then you are always right.
Rumpy… I am not sure why you think that this rally was espousing irrational babble. Addressing what is a growing disparity between the haves and have nots is not a new debate, nor is it without many academic backers, and high minded ideals behind it. We have already seen legal challenges regarding the fallout and they will more than likely not be the last.
The issue has been exacerbated give the financial crisis and I think it has helped to propel the debate onto the public agenda. The number one domestic agenda item is jobs. This is not some fringe issue that is being thrown out haphazardly as an exercise in screaming, but rather a matter causing great discontent nation wide.
No slogan will ever be immune to criticism. The parsimony that makes them useful will ultimately lead to their picking apart, but you make a grave error in judgment if you summarize a movements intellectual credentials on the signs they produce.
“infantilizing”
and i certainly didn’t mean to “engage in crass populism” …atleast i don’t think i did? ….depends what it means. you deliberative debater, you.
I had no idea that Virginia has “one of the lowest corporate income taxes in the country.” This is a really interesting point, deserving more critical attention during this time of economic downturn. It’s obvious that VA is saying creating an environment for happy corporations is more important to it than the welfare of working class people. It’s disgusting, and there needs to be more attention drawn to this disturbing reflection of our state values.
Best of luck to the VA People’s Assembly and all those fighting of a more just Virginia.
margaret, weasel words like “one of the” cloud the issue. There are 11 states who have lower rates than ours, and that does not include states that have graduated rates that depend on income. It’s not as simple as that. Full list here.
Certainly “one of the” is an ambiguous term, but there is not perfect measurement of how friendly a state is to business either. 11 out of 50 is already pretty low, but this does not take into account that Virginia also has a long history of granting huge discretionary tax breaks. The overall climate in our state is overwhelmingly pro-business. For four years we have been the number one state to do business as ranked by Forbes magazine. This is something to be proud of, yet should also be cause for reflection.
What are the costs of being such a good state for corporations? Well it turns out the flip side of the coin is that we happen to be a very poor state regarding workers rights. We have awful union representation and we have a law blocking workers from collective bargaining.
Also, while we have had some successes around the state with the passage of living wage laws, we have a considerable distance to go. We also are one of 22 right to work states, which is often times called a right to fire state as it severely curtails unions organizing power and collective bargaining leverage.
It is easy to pull together a single statistic, or a group of figures to bolster a case, but there is no scenario in which Virginia can be said to have a strong record of protecting the interests of its workers over those of its corporate entities.
In order to maintain economic growth it is certainly in our best interest to cultivate a healthy business clime, but not at a cost to our working class citizens.
We’ll never agree here – I am VERY anti-union. I grew up in a city practically run by unions, and I can say from firsthand experience that unions with the type of power you advocate can ruin a company – all the while telling their members that they are doing what’s best for them, and banking the union dues.
Let me ask a question – should you be required to join a union to work at a specific job or in a specific trade? I don’t think so.
Additionally, I think you’re way off on laws to protect workers. My wife worked retail management for 18 years, and the crap employees get away with under the laws we have is absurd.
It behooves a company, particularly one operating in a state with laws like ours, to treat employees well for retention purposes. If they don’t, then their quality people leave and go to another job, causing a talent drain.
Unions are a Certainly a complicated matter. It’s hard to say that you should be required to join but it has proven a slippery slope in the past to not require it. Companies go out of there way to hire non union employees and the collective bargaining power is eroded.
Companies should work to keep quality employees but a lack of respect for workers is what caused the labor unions to come into existence in the first place. Too often employers opt to replace workers with new hires rather than pay wage increases or benefits. The problem is that too many of our businesses treat workers as disposable rather than invaluable.
I am not thrilled about compulsory union membership either but when it’s removed we see a slew of legislation quickly erode any remaining power the unions held leaving them intact in name only.