Helena, Occupied

Volume 1, Issue 3 February 2012

Solidarity through the Bars:

By Tegan Maynard Hahn
Member of Occupy Helena

Occupying for an End to Racism and the Prison Industrial Complex

Lets Talk: Occupy Helena to

host a Community Dialogue Series

People not Prisons! On February 20 , 2012 Occupy groups around the Country will rally in support of people who have or are currently living behind prison walls. Occupy4Prisoners events have been staged in several urban areas including Boston, Washington DC, the Bay Area and Chicago, among others. Activists will take to the streets to make demands for more humane treatment of prisoners, freeing of all U.S. held political prisoners, and reformation of the sentencing policies. I learned, serendipitously, about the Occupy4Prisoners protests as I was preparing this piece on the prison system for the Occupy Helena Newsletter. This action symbolizes the uniting potential of the Occupy Movement and brings us renewed hope for the possibilities of building solidarity despite the barriers that are constructed to keep us from working together. The discussion of mass incarceration in this County is inextricably linked to a discussion of racism, I will begin my reflection on this issue with some thoughts on the dynamics of race within the occupy movement. How do we acknowledge and respect the diversity of the 99 percent? This question was raised at a recent informational session I attended, entitled Occupy Main Street, which was sponsored by the Montana Women Vote organization. Ive been thinking about this question in regards to criticisms I have heard about the Occupy Movement being predominantly white (the blog http://infrontandcenter.wordpress.com/ has some very well written critiques on this issue). For many of us participating Occupy, this observation has been more than a little disheartening. We acknowledge, however, that this movement is very young. Confronting racism (along with the other -isms that keep certain groups in our society marginalized) within Occupy wont happen overnight, but at least this dialogue has begun. With this criticism in mind, how can we work towards solidarity across differences within Occupy? A place to start for white people who are allies in the fight against racism is to begin by acknowledging our privilege within the 99%. Education and increased awareness of our
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th

On February 26, Occupy Helena will host the first of many events designed to open up conversation on Wall St and Corporate Power issues and challenges. It will be a lively series of speakers and films focused on further educating ourselves and each other and making plans for how we can respond to the issues with effective, coordinated action. To kick off the series, we will be viewing and discussing the documentary The Economics of Happiness by Helena Norberg-Hodge, Steven Forelick, and John Page. The film takes us across the planet to show us an unholy alliance of governments and big business that continues to promote globalization and the consolidation of corporate power at the expense of people, describing corporate activities that have been decimating democracy and have worsened nearly every problem humankind now faces. The film also shows that there is also a creative response from people all over the world resisting those policies, demanding a re-regulation of trade and finance, starting to forge a very different future in which communities are coming together to rebuild more human scale, ecological economies based on a new paradigm, an economics of localization. The film brings a message of hope, showing how, far from the old institutions of power, people are starting to forge a very different future. The film screening will be held in the large meeting room of the Lewis & Clark Library at 1 p.m. on Sunday, February 26. See Page 4 for a complete calendar of speakers and films.

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What We Have Been Up to in Helena: J21

By Emily Waugh
Member of Occupy Helena

On Saturday January 21, members of Occupy Helena, and many of our fellow Montanans, gathered at the Montana State Capitol Complex to thank the Montana State Supreme Court for their defiance of the Citizens United decision. Montana Attorney General Steve Bullock defended the States 100 year old law prohibiting corporations from spending money on political campaigns when Western Tradition Partnership (now American Tradition Partnership) attempted to sue the state after the 2010 Supreme Court of the United States Citizens United decision that declared corporations persons (thereby giving them First Amendment rights) and money: speech. The law was upheld, citing the States extensive history of corporate corruption in the days of the Copper Kings. The fact that the 1912 Corrupt Practices Act was enacted by voter initiative helped as well. The court also said political corporations like American Tradition Partnership act as conduits for anonymous spending by others and represent a threat to the political marketplace. It was a good day to be a Montanan. Elsewhere around the country, Occupy movements held Occupy the Courts events to protest the infamous Citizens United decision on its two year anniversary. Though we spoke out against Citizens United in Helena as well, our event was one of celebration. Because Montana got it right. Somewhere around 50 people gathered at noon on the steps of the Capitol. We shared coffee and cookies and got to know one another, as there were representatives of Occupy groups from Missoula, Bozeman, and Butte, as well as some local community members we were pleased to meet for the first time. Then the speakers began. Members of Occupy Helena Frank Kromkowski, Debra Bullington, Jan Ellen Siemers, and Wendy Fox gave us some brief historical context for the day. Carole Mackin, Montana author and spokesperson for the Peoples Power League, told us the stories of the men and women whose statues stand inside the Montana Capitol building almost all of whom are remembered for standing up against corporate corruption of our government. Mark Mackin, a Helena attorney, helped us understand the legal process by which Montana upheld the law. Finally, Jeff Milchen, founder of reclaimdemocracy.org,

inspired us to ride this momentum to real change. He reminded us that the fight will be long, but that the end is worth it. Montanas decision will be challenged in the Supreme Court of the United States. It may be overturned. If were lucky, we may get some sort of accommodation for our state because of our history with corruption (though we have a feeling that our history isnt as unique as they would have us believe). But this does not mean that the fight is over. Several congressmen have introduced legislation for a Constitutional Amendment that would clarify that only natural humans are persons. Some also address the issue of money as speech, which allows a few citizens to have much, much more of a right to speech than the majority. (Sounds a little bit like not being able to vote unless you own land, to me.) This is where we come in. Support these congressmen and women. Write letters and call your own representatives asking them to support the efforts for amendment. Meanwhile, start at ground level. Several cities around the country have already passed local initiatives in support of the movement to amend, many with margins as great as 3:1. On January 21, we finished our celebration by walking the two blocks from the Capitol steps to the Montana Supreme Court. We took a picture with signs that read Montanas Supreme Court Rocks. Then we activated the Peoples Mic for the first time in Helena. Mic check! shouted Occupy Helena member Gary Carnefix. MIC CHECK! rang back 50 Montanans with one voice. The complete wording of the mic check from J21 is currently being circulated through Occupy Helena for any editing and is expected to be approved as an official position of Occupy Helena at the 15h General Assembly on 2/18/12. You can read it on page 4.

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Solidarity through the Bars, continued from page 1

actions and the language we use is imperative in this process. The world OCCUPY itself is very weighted term in a nation that was created through the violent OCCUPATION of Indigenous lands. In Albuquerque, NM activists are organizing an (Un)Occupy movement. This group acknowledged, early on that the term Occupy caused discomfort for many in the Native American community and amongst people of color as a whole. If we want to create solidarity among the 99% we might look to the fringes. Whose faces would we see? The 2 million people currently imprisoned in the United States occupy very tenuous and vulnerable space on the outer extremities of the 99%. The U.S. imprisons more people than any other nation under the sun. According to the Prison Studies Center, 1 in every 100 adult citizens in this Country is behind bars. For comparison, in England the imprisonment rate is 151 out of 100,000. In Japan this number is 63 out of 100,000. Systemic racism contributes to the disproportionate number of people of color behind bars. In Montana, Native Americans make up 6% of the total population and over 20% of the prison population. Even more disconcerting, Native American women are 32% of the total female prison population in Montana. The incarcerated people of this county are essentially voiceless. Their right to vote and participate in democracy has been taken away. Even if these individuals are eventually released from prison, depending on their crime, this right may never be restored to them. At any given time a large portion of

Eric J. Garcia

the electorate is barred from voting. This has huge implications for the legitimacy of our democracy, especially when we take into account the disproportionate number of people of color and people of low-economic status who have been incarcerated. It is for this reason that the Occupy Movement and prison activism go hand in hand. The one percent benefits from keeping this segment of the population from voting. They also enjoy the spoils of this huge industry. The prison system props up the economy by providing thousands of public and private sector jobs, while removing a large portion of the potential work force and keeping unemployment numbers artificially low. Additionally, as many states look to address budget deficits, privatizing prisons is becoming a more and more attractive option. The Private Prison industry has not been shy about making it known that the success of their business depends on an ever increasing rate of incarceration in this County. Capitalism, after all, depends on growth. There are many barriers to overcome as we work to stand in solidarity with the prison population. Some of these barriers are physical. They are concrete and barbed wire. Other barriers are mental. They are the prejudices we hold against these individuals, fueled by the media and politicians who cast them as dangerous monsters, when in reality roughly half of the Nations prisoners are incarcerated for non-violent crimes, such as doing drugs or writing bad checks. A little while back, I had a chance to meet some of the organizers of the New Orleans based Books 2 Prisoners program. This program provides literature, free of charge, to inmates in Louisiana and southern states. Inmates correspond with Books 2 Prisoners to make literature requests. After learning about this program, I was talking to a friend one day about his time in jail. He commented that he had never read so much in his life and how difficult it was to get his hands on quality books. The Books 2 Prisoners program states expressly that it does not seek to radicalize prisoners; they focus instead on building literacy and making the lives of prison inmates a little more bearable one book at a time. Efforts to stand in solidarity with people living behind prison walls fly in the face of the goals of the one percent. The powerful in this country would love for us to forget about these individuals. By refusing to forget, however, we can magnify the voice of people in prison and create new means of connecting across differences within the 99%. We can take steps to reaffirm the collective humanity that they system has tried so hard to strip us of.

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Community Dialogue Series Calendar

All events held at the Lewis & Clark Library February 26, 1:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m.: Film Economics of Happiness See description of Page 1. March 11, 1:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m.: Speaker- Donna Peterson: Housing Foreclosure Crisis: A Personal Struggle Against an Unjust Foreclosure in Helena. Donna Peterson of Helena describes her struggle against Bank of America over their foreclosure activities. After being diagnosed with stage four cervical cancer in 2009, she lost both of her homebased businesses while undergoing treatment. She asked Bank of America for help. "They said 'Oh, no problem. Given your circumstances we can get you right into a 2% loan. All you have to do is to go into default; you are not eligible unless your payments are late.'" That was more than two years ago, and after failing to honor their pledge to help her, Bank of America started foreclosure proceedings. Peterson has filed a lawsuit to hold them to the contract they have promised her. The law firm she has hired has already filed 10 cases against Bank of America for not honoring contracts, and they continue to receive about five phone calls a week. March 25, 3:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.: Speaker Jim Macdonald of Occupy Bozeman: Wells Fargo Divestment Campaign April 1, 1:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m.: Speakers Sherri Downing (President of the Montana Coalition for the Homeless), Kellie Goodwin McBride (Executive Director of the Helena YWCA) and Frank Kromkowski (Montana Coordinator of the Progressive Democrats of America): The Trauma of Homelessness and Poverty April 22, 1:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m.: Speaker- Jim Barngrover: Corporate Threats to Our Food System: The Monsanto Corporation and Genetically Modified Organisms May 6, 1:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m.: Speaker Senator Christine Kaufmann: Tax Reform for a Just Society: Tax is Not a Four-Letter Word May 20, 1:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m.: Film Bullshit: The work of Activist Vandana Shiva

J21 Mic Check as Official Resolution

We, the people of Helena and the great state of Montana, exercising our First-Amendment right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances, do hereby petition our elected representatives, city, county, state, and national, as well as our fellow citizens, to oppose by all legal means available, the legal fiction that corporations are persons with rights equal to human beings that are protected by the Bill of Rights of the Constitution of the United States of America; including: by rejecting the notion that unconstrained corporate spending in elections constitutes a free-speech right of a corporate person that trumps the rights of actual human beings to free and fair elections, uncorrupted by such corporate attempts to purchase a desired outcome; by refusal to uphold and enforce any such rights wherever they conflict with the compelling public interest in free and fair elections uncorrupted by unconstrained corporate spending; by legitimate civil disobedience; and by overturning the legal fiction of corporate personhood, as embodied most egregiously in the United States Supreme Court decision, Citizens United versus Federal Elections Commission, by resolution; by legislation, up to and including amending the U.S. Constitution; and by litigation, including appeal all the way back up to the Supreme Court of the United States. _____________ We fully and unequivocally endorse the words of The Honorable Justice James Nelson, from his dissenting opinion in the Montana Supreme Courts December 30, 2011 ruling in Western Tradition Partnership, Inc. v. State of Montana (finding that Montanas Corrupt Practices Act of 1912 is not contravened by the U.S. Supreme Courts decision in Citizens United): "Corporations are not persons. Human beings are persons, and it is an affront to the inviolable dignity of our species that courts have created a legal fiction which forces [us] to share fundamental, natural rights with soulless creatures of government."

How to Get Involved

Join us for a General Assembly: Every other Saturday, 3:00 - 5:00 p.m. Location changes, but will always be posted on our website. Check out the website! http://occupyhelena.org Check out the Facebook page Occupy Helena supporting occupy wall st Email us at occupyhelena@gmail.com

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