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The program for the July meeting of Progressive Democrats Sonoma County was the second in a series of informational programs on the topic of "Disaster Capitalism: the mortgage melt-down, and the current economic crisis."
At the July meeting we saw a clip from a film about the calamity on Wall
Street, "Heist" co-produced by Donald Goldmacher and Frances Causey. The film is a hard-hitting and no-holds-barred report on free-market economics, Milton Friedman's view of how the world should work, how that translated into Reaganomics and corporate greed, and why that not-so-ancient history is important in understanding who's getting richer and who's getting even
poorer today. In order to build a progressive action plan we need to understand what happened and how it happened and learn the vocabulary that the pundits and economists use.
Dr. Goldmacher himself then spoke to the standing-room only crowd; he clarified for us that ever since FDR's New Deal, conservatives have been working overtime to repeal any regulation or program that benefited the poor or middle class. Goldmacher made certain that we understood this fact: the regulations the corporations decry as barricades to economic growth are actually the framework that keeps American families safe. Corporate lobbyists make the claim that "excessive regulation" causes increases in the cost of doing business that must be passed along to the consumer in order to disguise this truth: that corporate America wants no
impediments to limitless corporate profits and the free market economy.
Goldmacher outlined a concise history of the post-New Deal incremental
rule-changes that benefited corporations and the people who changed the rules at the expense of workers; unfortunately, as we know, many of those
people are still in positions of authority today.
At the close of his presentation, Dr. Goldmacher then led a lively question-and-answer session for the very engaged and focused crowd. The program ended with this question from the audience: what can we do about the situation? Goldmacher's reply was that we can start by returning to an economy that actually produces real goods and provides living-wage work for our labor force, rather than off-shoring our manufacturing to the lowest bidder and relying on the low-paying service-related economy as we do now. We will build on this suggestion as we develop our action plan.
The first program in this series included a film short on The Shock Doctrine with Naomi Klein, who cautioned us that the best way to resist any shock is to be prepared; the best way to resist and to recover is to be educated and informed ahead of time about what is happening and why.
The third in this interesting and informative series of programs is
in August; stay tuned to learn details.
Sonoma County PDA activists, including elected delegates to the California Democratic Party, will attend the CDP Progressive Caucus meeting scheduled for Friday night at the CDP Executive Board meeting to be held in Burlingame, Calif, the weekend of July 17-19. More info here: www.pdsonoma.org.
There we will join PDA activists and other strong allies in the CDP Progressive Caucus from up and down the state as we continue to strategize, plan and refine our continued resistance to the economic "shock therapy" currently being delivered by the California governor and his Republican enablers in the California State legislature, as they block and veto any solutions to the current California budgetary crisis.
Sonoma County PDAers are making plans now to attend the PDA Western Regional Conference to be held in Oakland, Calif., on Saturday, September 26. We are looking forward to a rousing, inspirational and full day of strategic organizing for all of PDA’s Priority Issues including Healthcare NOT Warfare and Economic and Social Justice and for progressive electoral success in 2010 and beyond.
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