Stop the Teabaggers, Give Them Green Jobs: Lessons From the Coalfields of West Virginia

West Virginia shows us how we could easily win over this key segment of society, working class whites, with a New Deal-style industrial policy. Currently, 85,000 people in the United States are employed by the wind industry; Slightly more than the 81,000 in the United States working as coal miners.

On election night 2000, the biggest shocker for me wasn't Florida, but that West Virginia had voted for a conservative Republican presidential candidate for the first time in nearly 70 years.

For decades, West Virginia, with one of the highest rates of unionization in the country, regularly voted for progressive candidates, even being one of only nine other states in 1988 to vote for the epitome of a Massachusetts liberal -- Michael Dukakis. To know the story of West Virginia is to know why the progressive movement is failing to win over white working class voters. Because of their primary concern: jobs.

Driving around West Virginia as a young union organizer with Marshall University labor historian Gordon Simmons, I quickly learned that underneath its beautiful mountain lay a history of exploitation, broken promises and economic degradation. Despite being "the Saudi Arabia of Coal," West Virginia is engaged in a yearly neck and neck race with Mississippi for being the poorest state in the country.

As a result of coal mining, West Virginia has a cancer rate that is nearly 70% higher than the national average . Every day more than three million pounds of ammonium nitrate explosives (a highly carcinogenic substance) are exploded in mountaintop removal. This is the equivalent of a Hiroshima bomb worth of explosives being dropped on West Virginia every month. Over 100 billion gallons of toxic sludge are contained in poorly regulated, coal sludge reservoirs from mountaintop mining contaminating local water supplies, leading to mind boggling rates of cancer.

A fact that is equally startling as the destruction of the mountains, is the destruction of jobs in West Virginia. Coal mining jobs have gone down by 75% with the shift to the highly mechanized, mountaintop removal. In the early 1950's, there were 145,000 miners employed in West Virginia; in 2004 there were just over 16,000 miners employed. While employment has decreased in coal mining, coal production has actually increased dramatically as a result of the environmentally destructive procedures of mountaintop removal.

Clearly, West Virginians would prefer jobs that didn't destroy their communities and health, but are forced into coal mining because few other jobs exist. As a result, West Virginians desperately fear losing these jobs. The fossil fuel lobby exploits this fear to kill investments in clean energy jobs.The industry uses events like the upcoming free concert called "Friends of America" hosted by Sean Hannity, which has press materials implicitly attacking clean energy legislation, hysterically warning, "we must keep these [coal mining] jobs from being regulated out of existence".

These industries always say that regulating them will cost jobs -- even when it is proven that jobs will be created. This is because they have created a situation where people are hanging on by a thread, paid so little that they desperately cling to what they have and other people are starving in front of them.

The ability of these AstroTurf groups to mobilize people fearing the loss of their jobs led to the dramatic weakening of the Waxman-Markey climate bill and quite possibly health care. We often make fun of teabaggers showing up at town halls, but fail to realize that the reason they are motivated to rebel against change because all change has ever meant to them is job loss and the destruction of their communities.

West Virginia shows us how we could easily win over these key segments of society with a New Deal-style industrial policy. Racial tensions and prejudices in West Virginia have long been as severe as in other places in the South. However as a result of heavy unionization, West Virginians learned to look beyond race to take on the true oppressors -- big corporations. West Virginians also remembered the importance that the New Deal played in transforming their lives. It gave them jobs, electricity, roads, and helped to bring the region into the 20th Century.

As result, West Virginians stuck firmly with FDR's Democratic Party and voted consistently for Democrats for the following five decades. While the once solid Democratic South became the Republican South after passage of Civil Rights legislation, West Virginia -- despite its strong racial tensions -- remained an island of Democratic support, until 2000.

In the 1990s, the generations that had survived the Great Depression, the New Deal, and World War Two began to die out, and a Democratic president forged the job-killing NAFTA trade deal. Support for Democrats in West Virginia suddenly began to weaken. All the new generation knew was rising unemployment and broken promises at the hand of liberal politicians promising them jobs, but instead taking what jobs they had away.

The failure of the progressive movement to advocate for the improvement of the economic conditions of the white working class created a vacuum that allowed right-wing demagoguery to flourish. West Virginians turned to conservative Republicans who promised to protect their country, their most cherished recreational activity - hunting, and the churches at the center of their communities because no one else seemed to be protecting their communities.

In 2000, Republicans in West Virginia portrayed environmentalist Al Gore, who played a key role in passing NAFTA, as a job-killer who would destroy West Virginia's coal-based economy. Ever since then, West Virginia has voted consistently Republican in presidential elections, while at the same time continuing to elect Democratic Senators and Congressman who promised to protect coal producing jobs and fight to keep manufacturing in West Virginia.

In response to the shifting winds against progressives in West Virginia, local activists have called for New Deal-style projects like the Coal River Wind Project which seeks to create a sustainable, green economy economy not based on the boom and bust cycles of coal. Recent studies show that Appalachia will be mined out of coal in 20-30 years. In contrast the wind energy is sustainable industry that is here to stay and could create far more jobs.

It's estimated that only a $30 billion investment through Senator Sherrod Brown's IMPACT Act would create 2.5 million jobs -- many of them high, paying manufacturing jobs. The IMPACT Act could help replace the nearly 2 million manufacturing jobs that have been lost since the recession began in December 2007.

A New Deal-style industrial policy is crucial as well for winning over the politically elusive, white working class. The New Deal was successful in creating a lasting political coalition because it created lasting political constituencies. As a result of the wide range of people it helped: Social Security for seniors, labor unions for workers, subsidies for small farmers, and jobs for the unemployed, these groups were brought into the Democratic party and stayed there for nearly forty years.

However, a recent poll of non-college educated white males, showed that only 35% approved of Obama's performance . Some liberal commentators like Ron Brownstein of the Atlantic Magazine claim that we don't need the white working class to build a lasting progressive movement. Some argue that we shouldn't waste our effort to reach out to them because we can build majority built simply based upon minorities, women, college educated professionals, and youth.

To that I simply say is if the progressive movement wants to have a lasting impact we should include everyone as the New Deal coalition did. By advocating for New Deal - style industrial policies we can bring in the white working class as part of our movement, help with efforts at racial healing, and could create a lasting political movement that could last for another forty years. Such tactics were successful in the past in bringing the white working class into the party and will be successful in the future.

If the progressive movement put as much energy into advocating for a New Deal-style industrial policy as they have attacking and debunking the teabaggers, there wouldn't be teabaggers at these town hall meetings.

Yes, New Deal-style industrial policy will bring people into the progressive movement. But the real reason we why we need an industrial policy is similar to the one we had under the New Deal: it was the right thing to do. The New Deal helped people. made their lives better, created the middle class, set up regulations that protected people ,and created the solid foundations for the economic revival and amazing growth that followed.

GE Moves Green Jobs to China

While Ohio is traditionally thought of once being a center of auto manufacturing, there was such a strong tradition of light-bulb production in the state that the world's largest maker of light bulbs, General Electric, located the headquarters of its light bulb division in Cleveland. The jobs provided by light-bulb manufacturing allowed people to buy homes, send their kids to college, and fuel a vibrant economy in Ohio for decades.

But in the last decade, GE has closed over fifteen factories in Ohio and downsized numerous others. Since 1980, employment in GE Lighting has dropped by 68 percent.

A large chunk of that manufacturing has gone to China, and now GE plans to send even more to China in the wake of new clean energy policies. By 2014, Americans will only be able to purchase more energy efficient CFL light bulbs. However, GE has located all of its facilities for high-efficiency light bulbs to China and has told the union representing the workers that they have no intention to locate compact flourescent facilities in the United States.

GE is currently threatening to close one factory in Niles, Ohio that produces light bulbs. The workers, members of United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America (UE) at one are calling on GE to look for a way to refit their plant so that they can be part of the new clean energy economy. Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown and Rep. Tim Ryan wrote a letter to GE's CEO Jeffery Immelt expressing "deep concern" for the workers at the plant:

"The workers and tradition of the Niles facility present an enormous opportunity to show how we can transition manufacturers from contracting industries, like incandescent bulbs, to emerging industries in energy and medical IT."

Ohio could indeed be a hub of new light bulb production. Recently, a Chinese-owned manufacturer of high-efficiency light bulbs has opened a factory, citing Ohio as having some of the world's most highly skilled light-bulb workers.

Ohio's legacy of bulb production, and its factories that could easily be converted from incandescent production to CFL production, presents a grand opportunity to employ workers in building a green energy economy in Ohio.

The IMPACT Act introduced by Brown in the Senate would help small and medium-sized manufacturers transition to the clean energy economy. Brown's bill creates a $30 billion Manufacturing Revolving Loan Fund to provide these manufacturers with much-needed access to credit to improve energy efficiency and retool for the clean energy industry.

The Apollo Alliance--a coalition of business, labor, and environmental groups--estimates that the IMPACT Act could create 680,000 direct manufacturing jobs nationally and 1,972,000 related jobs over the next fiver year.

So far, GE has shown every intention to take the American tax dollars being used to subsidize the green-energy economy and use them to build Chinese factories and pay Chinese workers. As I wrote earlier this week, in spite of GE CEO Jeffery Immelt's statement that companies need to stop outsourcing, GE continues to lead the effort to outsource clean-energy jobs. Most recently, GE has cut off a contract with a windmill factory in Indiana and shipped the work to China despite the factory offering to sell their parts at the same price as their Chinese competitors.

To add insult to injury to workers losing their jobs from foreign outsourcing, GE has even launched a television ad campaign promoting American manufacturing. "GE has the ability to locate its new manufacturing for CFL's, LED's, as well as the new incandescent lighting technologies in Ohio and elsewhere in the U.S. So far they have not done this, and we see no sign that they are even considering doing this. GE Lighting workers in the U.S. see little to cheer in GE's pronouncements and feel good advertising because for several decades now every plant has been on an extended deathwatch," said Chris Townsend of the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers.

It's time that CEO's like Jeffery Immelt live up to their word and help rebuild the American economy by keeping American manufacturing jobs in America. It's also time that we adopt a comprehensive policy that promotes American manufacturing and prevents companies like GE from using taxpayer funds intended to stimulate the American economy to undermine our economy instead.

The Fat Cats of Wall Street Want to Tax Your Health Care Benefits

When I heard Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., floating the idea of a tax on health benefits in order to raise revenue for health care reform, I was baffled; how could this be?

Barack Obama's victory in the presidential campaign was due, in part, to his promise to never tax health care benefits. And even as tax schemes on benefits for ordinary American workers gain traction in the Senate, many conservative House Democrats -- the so-called Blue Dogs -- balk at a tax increase on the country's wealthiest citizens to help pay for a much-needed health care fix. 

That puts conservative Democrats in line with the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal, which in a May editorial, embraced the tax on benefits for regular people (calling the exclusion of taxes of employer-based health care benefits "a huge money pot"), but just this week railed against the tax on the wealthy proposed in the current House bill.

On July 21, seven members of the Blue Dog Coalition forced House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., to cancel debate and a vote on a health care bill already passed by two other House committees. The Blue Dogs cited their objections to the cost of the program, and Blue Dog spokesman Rep. Mike Ross, D-Ark., questioned the wisdom of taxing the wealthy to pay for it.

A June survey by Lake Research Partners for the Health Care for American Now coalition found that 80 percent of likely voters opposed a tax on health care benefits.  Many health care advocates argue that taxing health care benefits could actually turn the country against the public health insurance option, which a Wall Street Journal poll shows shows that 76 percent of Americans support. If you tell people that to pay for that public option, you have to tax the benefits of those who have private insurance, that support would likely drop off a cliff.

Political concerns aside, there's also the probability of unintended consequences if the health care benefits provided by employers are taxed -- even if, as currently proposed, the tax would only kick in after a certain level of benefits. A report by the Commonwealth Fund shows that working people with employer-provided benefits could see their tax liability increase by 20 to 28 percent if a cap on tax-free health care benefits was imposed.

Yet, despite the burden that would be felt by many regular people resulting from a cap on tax-excluded benefits, some conservative Democrats are upset about a proposed surtax on the wealthy included in the House bill as a revenue-generator for health care.

The legislation proposed by leaders of three House committees would set a 1 percent surtax on couples with more than $350,000 in annual income, with higher rates taking effect for those earning $500,000 and $1 million.

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., said the surtax would raise $540 billion over the next decade, according to Bloomberg News. Still, Ross reportedly objects to the measure.

"I don't like the idea of raising taxes in the worst economic crisis since World War II," he told Politico. In response, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., is reportedly floating the idea of setting the bar higher -- adding the surtax to the incomes of only those who earn more than $1 million per year.

And that's just one way to go. The Center for Tax Justice, a progressive think tank, laid out a variety of options [PDF] for paying for health care reform. One suggestion is a 1.45 percent Medicare tax on the capital gains and other non-wage income of millionaires -- a measure that could raise billions of dollars.

"If the only income Paris Hilton gets is in capital gains, stock dividends, interest and other types of investment income, [then] currently she is completely exempt from the one big tax we have right now that is dedicated to health care," said CTJ's Steve Wamhoff when he released the proposal.

However, there is a lack of political will among those heavily subsidized by the financial-services industry to levy any kind of tax that could adversely affect the titans of Wall Street.

Some conservative Democrats have taken in sizable sums from Wall Street in campaign donations; Blue Dog leader Ross raked in nearly $900,000 from the financial-services industry in campaign contributions. Montana's Sen. Max Baucus counts the securities-and-investment industry as the top sector from which he gleans campaign contributions, according to OpenSecrets.org; among his top five contributors are Goldman Sachs, AIG and KKR & Co. 

Instead, friends of Wall Street have zeroed in on an easier target: labor unions. Some supporters of taxing health care are portraying unions as greedier than the actual greedy people they fight by talking about the high-quality health care they negotiate for members as having "gold-plated" benefits.

In reality, a tax on health care benefits would hurt people who work in small, non-union business far worse than it would union members.

A study by Elise Gould of the Economic Policy Institute shows that those most affected by taxing health care would small businesses and the people employed by them, since their health care plans are often more costly per-employee than those of larger businesses.  Businesses with an older workforce would also be adversely affected, Gould found.

The most perplexing aspect of conservative Democrats' opposition to a health care reform bill that taxes the wealthiest but doesn't tax benefits is political. With public support high for taxing the rich to pay for health care, it's hard to imagine that even conservative Democrats would suffer at the polls for voting on a progressive plan. If Democrats instead choose to tax health care benefits, it could potentially derail health care reform. The political cost for failing to pass health care reform would be high.

Robert Creamer, political strategist and author of Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win, writes, "History shows that swing-district Democrats have the most to lose if Congress fails to pass President Obama's sweeping health care proposal."

When I worked as a community organizer on Obama's presidential campaign, I could swing some of the most ardent Republicans to vote for Obama by telling them that McCain would tax their health care.

I encountered NRA members who were more scared of McCain taxing their health care than of Obama taking away their guns. (Granted, McCain's plan called for taxing all health care benefits, not just those that exceeded a cap. But I doubt they would have been enthusiastic about a tax on especially good benefits.)

"If any of these Democratic senators vote for [a tax on health care benefits], they will be voted out in 2010, and this will definitely be used against Obama in 2012," Vincent Panvini, the Sheet Metal Workers Union political director, told The Nation's William Greider. People are already hurting, unemployed -- and then you are going to tax them more? That's crazy." 

Honoring Paul Wellstone: Fighting Like Hell for Health Care Reform

I had the rare privilege of meeting one of my heroes, Paul Wellstone, shortly before his death in 2002 when I visited Washington as part of a conference for high school students interested in politics. We had the opportunity to meet several senators during our time in Washington, but Paul Wellstone treated us differently—more like we were friends coming over for a cup of coffee than a bunch of nerdy high school students on a trip. He insisted that we not call him "senator," but instead simply Paul.

While other senators were going on and on about their accomplishments or telling corny jokes, Paul went around and asked what issues were important to us and what we were doing currently to advocate for these policies. He suggested ideas about how we could become more involved, more effective, and what other issues we might want to get involved in. He encouraged us "to go out and fight because that was the only way change has ever been achieved." Paul's faith in my ability to achieve social change inspired me so much that I spent the rest of my summer volunteering full time to help elect Ed Rendell as governor in Pennsylvania.

A few months later. I was in tears as I listened to the news over NPR that Paul Wellstone and his loving wife, Shelia, had died in a plane crash on their way to a funeral of a steelworker in Northern Minnesota. Paul Wellstone, a tireless champion of the working class served as an inspiration to a generation of activists during the dark days of a decade long Republican reign. For the last seven years, I have kept a photo of Paul Wellstone and me on my desk as a source of inspiration for when the times get tough.

Paul came to the United States Senate under the most unusual of circumstances. He was a college professor who had been arrested protesting with union workers and had previously spent most of his career organizing welfare mothers and poor farmers. No one had expected him to win his first campaign for Senate against an incumbent Republican Senator as he was outspent nearly seven to one. Paul had a secret weapon though his ability to inspire regular people to get out and organize. Unemployed, single mothers held bake sales to help fund his campaign, youth not old enough to vote spent hours volunteering for him. He formed a grassroots army of thousands of ordinary folks and trained them in community organizing.

When Paul Wellstone was elected to the Senate, he never forgot the thousands of ordinary folks that put their hopes and their dreams in him by working to get him elected. He summed up his philosophy about why he was in the Senate by saying, "I don't represent the big oil companies, the big pharmaceuticals or the big insurance industry. They already have great representation in Washington. Its the rest of the people that need representation."

Many Senators had referred to Paul as "The Conscience of the Senate." Only 5 feet 4 inches tall and walking with a severe limp, Wellstone would stand on the floor of the U.S. Senate and rail against corporates interests with the tenacity of the All-American wrestler that he was once. And then he would go back home on the weekends and teach those people how to community organize and fight against the powerful interests that were ruining their lives. Its unknown how many people Wellstone inspired, but to this day you can still see thousands of green bumper stickers in Minnesota with the phrase "W.W.W.D. - What Would Wellstone Do?"

Last week, Al Franken, a friend of Paul's who had been inspired to run for office by Paul's death, took back Paul's old seat from Republican Norm Coleman. After reading, I found myself wondering of what Paul would be doing now if he was still a U.S. senator. Paul had spent the majority of his career in the minority party in the Senate. In his book "Conscience of a Liberal," Paul admitted that in his time in the U.S. Senate he spent nearly 85 percent of his time defending against Republican attacks on working families and he never had the opportunity to fight for things like the big reform measures that he craved. I thought about how Paul would be down on the floor of the Senate to talk about the 20,000 people that die every year due to a lack of health coverage, or to talk about how his access to quality health care as a United States senator allowed him to continue having a productive life despite his semi-debilitating multiple sclerosis.

While Paul spent the most of his career in the minority, he did indeed spend a very brief time in the majority in 1993-1994 when Democrats had the opportunity to pass a health care reform. However, Democrats caved to the insurance companies' lobbyists and no comprehensive health care reform was passed. As Mike Lux, a top Clinton aide at the time argued in his book "The Progressive Revolution," Democrats were then swept out of power for their inability to stand up to special interests. Democrats would remain in the wilderness for the rest of Wellstone's tenure in the Senate.

If Democrats fail to deliver on a strong public health insurance plant that an overwhelming 76% favor according to the Wall Street Journal, they too will fail as a party. Reforming health care is about standing up to the big special interests that are spending $1.4 million every day on an army of lobbyists so that they can continue to deny people the health care they need.

Furthermore, health care reform is literally about saving lives. Democrats should avoid looking for some easy compromise on health care with the insurance industry that would deny some people care in order to score a quick legislative victory.

As Wellstone said, "Politics is not about power. Politics is not about money. Politics is not about winning for the sake of winning. Politics is about the improvement of people's lives. It's about advancing the cause of peace and justice in our country and the world. Politics is about doing well for the people."

Beating the insurance industry is going to be one of the toughest fights we as a movement have ever engaged in. Unfortunately, we don't have Paul Wellstone around to fight for us anymore. However, we do have the people that Wellstone believed in the most—ourselves. So I say its about time that we ask ourselves, What Would Wellstone Do?

Let's fight like hell. Let's win one for Paul!

Union Busting Ended My Love Affair with a Beer

Over many years, I have developed an intimate relationship with the sweet, lager taste of Yuengling Black & Tan. After moving to the cutthroat world of Washington, D.C. politics, I found that Yuengling always comforted me with memories of my working class roots and the world of flannel hunting jackets, wedding receptions at union halls, 4th of July barbecues, and tailgate parties that represented my native Western Pennsylvania. I took pride in introducing my friends to this beauty of a beer—cheap, delicious, and made by union workers back home in Pennsylvania. Women had come and gone, dogs had died, but Yuengling had always been there for me - until now.

This past weekend when I discovered that Yuengling had illegally busted their union, I was emotionally devastated. I had just bought a case of Yuengling earlier that same day and had it sitting at home in the refrigerator waiting for me. What would I do? I was broke and couldn't possibly afford to buy another case of beer, but at the same time I couldn't possibly enjoy drinking a Yuengling knowing what they had done to their workers. So instead, I found myself at home, watching a baseball game on a Saturday night, and enjoying a nice, cold glass of milk as I struggled to deal with how Yuengling had betrayed not only its workers, but me.

Quickly I found my outrage shifting from beyond Yuengling to the lack of U.S. labor law protecting workers from such abusive, unfair practices. It turns out that the company had petitioned for a decertification election to kick the union out of the brewery when the contract of the union expired. Dick Yuengling, the owner of Yuengling Brewery, gathered all the workers and told them that "the writing was on the wall". He said that if they didn't vote to kick the union out, he would close the plant, and ship the work to a non-union facility in the South. The workers, scared of losing their job in a region with high unemployment, voted to ditch their union and save their jobs.

While threatening to close a plant if a union wins such an election is highly illegal, the Yuengling Company has been able to get away with due to the weakness of U.S. labor law. According to a study recently released by Kate Bronfenbrenner of Cornell University, employers threaten to close plants in 57% of union elections if workers choose a union, despite the fact that this threat is carried out only 2% of the time. This is because under U.S. labor law the penalty for threatening to close plants or firing workers during a union election is that the boss merely has to post a piece of paper saying they broke the law.

As one longtime union organizer once put it to me "If the penalty for robbing a bank was you had to post a piece of paper saying you robbed a bank, we’d all be bank robbers!"

Under current U.S. Labor Law, employers can freely violate the law without serious penalty. As a result, workers are fired from their job 34% of the time for attempting to a join a union and companies illegally threaten to close plant 57% of all union elections. In this economy, losing one's job is tantamount not just to losing more than just a job, but also to losing home to foreclosure and more gravely - one's health insurance. As a result of the ability of bosses to freely intimidate with such Gestapo-style tactics, 58% percent of workers indicate they would like to join a union, but only 8% of private sector employees are members of one out of the fear of what their bosses might do to them for trying to join one.

The Employee Free Choice Act would give U.S. labor law real teeth - leveling heavy fines against employees who unlawfully intimidate or threaten workers. The Employee Free Choice Act would allow workers to join unions free of intimidation a process of majority sign where workers merely would have to get 50% of their co-workers to sign a card to be part of a union.

Currently, The biggest obstacle to the passing the Employee Free Choice Act is quite ironically the very Senator who represents the workers at Yuengling Brewing, who have had their rights trampled on - "Democrat" Arlen Specter. Quite ironically, Arlen Specter, who had in previous years voted for the Employee Free Choice Act, has fallen victim to the same type of corporate intimidation and flipped his position to being against the Employee Free Choice Act. Its time that Arlen Specter show solidarity with the 20,000 workers that are fired every year for attempting to join a union. Arlen Specter needs to vote for the Employee Free Choice Act, which would protect the rights of workers to freely join unions that the overwhelming majority of his constituents favor especially the once unionized workers of a once dear friend - Yuengling.

A New Player in the Banking Reform Fight - Citizens!

The fact that regular citizens have been largely excluded from the debate over financial regulation on Capitol Hill was underscored most vividly when Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill, said last month that "frankly the banks own the place."

But this week a coalition of citizens groups have taken the offensive, organizing to demand a seat at the table in making a bank system that works for all of us, not just corporate profiteers. As part of that effort, a group of organizations including Campaign for America's Future, National Community Reinvestment Coalition, and A New Way Forward met on Capitol Hill today to discuss a growing citizen's movement to bring the voice of working families to the debate over banking system reform.

Simon Johnson, former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, argued at the event, at the Rayburn House Office Building, that financial reform is important not just to rebuilding our economy, but to fixing our democracy. As banks grow bigger through deals and mergers, they increase their ability to corrupt the political process through campaign contributions and lobbyists. The more banks grow, the more money they have available to use this influence lawmakers to write rules in their favor and prey on ordinary Americans through predatory lending and other practices. Most recently, we have seen a particularly gross example of this: grossest major banks using our taxpayer money via the bailout to lobby against very popular legislation that would allow judges in bankruptcy cases to readjust homeowner mortgages at current market rates.

Johnson argued that the sense of crisis that has driven a populist push to break up so -called "too-big-to-fail" banks this spring In the wake of the bailout and outrage over AIG bonuses scandals has diminished as the media drums up the myth that the economy is recovering. However, the financial crisis remains very real for ordinary Americans: Unemployment is on the verge of reaching nearly 10 percent and foreclosures are increasing as laid-off workers are unable to pay their mortgages.

Financial reform is one that we as a progressive movement need to begin dramatically organizing around, Johnson said. He estimated will be an approximately five-year-long fight. Similar fights over breaking up trusts in the early 1900's and regulating Wall Street during the New Deal took equally as long and required a great deal of public pressure to achieve real reform. The fight won't be easy, it will be long, it will require serious organizing done by citizens taking to the street to be heard in order to create a Wall Street that works for Main Street.

In this vein, the National Community Reinvestment Coalition and A New Way Forward are sponsoring over 100 events today throughout the country, from rallies to town hall meetings with elected officials to community organizing meetings. In Chicago, workers of United Electrical Workers from Moline, Ill. , whose factory Quad City Die Casting is being liquidated by Wells Fargo, are marching today threatening to occupy their factory, following the lead of workers who occupied and successfully reopened Republic Windows and Doors in Chicago back in December. As John Taylor, CEO of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition said, "In the era of 'too big to fail,' the public must be too loud to be ignored. Today's actions, in communities across America, loudly say that enough is enough—it's time to return integrity and trust to the financial system."

The fight over financial reform is important not just in reforming the financial system, but showing the progressive movement's ability to defeat special interests. At today's event, Mike Lux, author of the Progressive Revolution and honorary co-chair of a New Way Forward, argued In order for the Obama administration to be successful, it must be able to take on these big lobbies. Every time the administration succeeds in defeating one major lobby, it will make passing subsequent reforms easier. Lux argued that when you have early success against special interests, as FDR did in his first 100 days, it weakens the choke-hold that special interests often have on lawmakers.and makes passing subsequent reforms easier.

The fight over banking reform is a crucial battle in the progressive movement's drive to put people power back into the political process. Now is the time to get involved. Visit A New Way Forward and the National Community Reinvestment Coalition to see how you can get involved in events happening across the country.

Ken Lewis Ousted: The Start of Something Big?

Yesterday marked the beginning of what could be a stockholders revolution as CEO Ken Lewis was ousted as Chairman of Bank of America. A coalition of unions, community groups, pension funds, and angry stockholders forced Ken Lewis down over his acquisition of Merrill Lynch at 15 billion dollar loss and decision to give out $3.6 billion in bonuses to Merrill Lynch's executives. His loss of the chairmanship is most likely a precursor to him being forced to leave as CEO as it was for Wachovia's Kennedy Thompson and Washington Mutual's Kerry Killinger.

A coalition of groups called Take Back the Economy composed of organized labor, religious groups, community organizations, and Moveon.org, had been calling for the ouster of Ken Lewis for several months. Brave New Films even produced a video narrated by Robert Reich outlining the corruption occurring at Bank of America . Through a grassroots and netroots driven campaign over 100 events were held across the nation against Bank of America and over 90,000 tax payer proxy card were collected calling for Ken Lewis's for his corruption and greed.

In addition to calling for Ken Lewis's ouster, these group demanded that two new board seats be created for an independent taxpayer director and a front-line employee. They demanded that all bonuses for executives be eliminated until taxpayers are paid back TARP money. They also demanded that stronger whistle blower protections for any workers who reports abusive lending or banking practices are put in place. Finally, they called for Bank of America to provide health-care to all of its 247,000 workers, which it currently does not.

Meanwhile, The Finger Brothers owners of 1.1 million shares of Bank of America, from the sale of their family-controlled bank, Charter BancShares to Bank of America),spent over 100,000 dollars of their own money running television ads against Ken Lewis. At the same time, worker controlled pension funds like the CalPERS (whose efforts to sucessfully bring down corrupt NYSE Chairman DIck Grasso I wrote about last month here) and other state workers' pension funds came out publicly that they were going to vote against Ken Lewis. All the heat put on Ken Lewis by activists, angry investors, and state pension funds lead proxy advisory firms like RiskMetrics and Glass Lewis, which advise the portfolio managers of large institutional investors such as churches and nonprofits, to advocate that their clients cast their votes against Ken Lewis.

As a result of the organized campaign from activists, pension funds, and angry stockholders, Ken Lewis was ousted as Chairman of Bank of America by a narrow 50.34 percent to 49.66 percent margin.

The message to the CEO's was clear - Watch Out! With over 6 trillion of workers' money in retirement plans, pension funds, profit-sharing, and stock plans, worker-controlled pension funds and their allies have a lot of weight in making these CEO's more accountable. In the future, CEO's will be more responsive to the demands for reform from small stockholders and activists or risk sharing the same fate as Ken Lewis.

Could we be onto the start of something big perhaps a stockholder revolution? I certainly hope so. My message to all the people upset over their losing their retirements being lost is "Don't Mourn, Organize!”