TRANSCRIPT: cornel west & chris hedges goldman sachs mock tr

TRANSCRIPT for "Cornel West Chris Hedges at Goldman Sachs Mock Trial Occupy Wall St Nov 3 2011 people's hearing"

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Transcript (rough formatting, but accurate) by Robert K. Chin



Chris Hedges
Goldman Sachs, which received more subsidies and bailout-related funds than any other investment bank because the Federal Reserve permitted it to become a bank holding company under its “emergency situation,” has used billions in taxpayer money to enrich itself and reward its top executives. It handed its senior employees a staggering $18 billion in 2009, $16 billion in 2010 and looks set to hand out $10 billion in mega-bonuses in 2011. This massive transference of wealth upwards by the Bush and Obama administrations, now estimated at a staggering $13 trillion - $14 trillion, went into the pockets of those who carried out fraud and criminal activity rather than the victims who lost their jobs – some of whom we’ll hear today -- their savings and often their homes.
Goldman Sachs’ commodities index is the most heavily traded in the world. The company hoards rice, wheat, corn, sugar and livestock and jacks up commodity prices around the globe so that poor families can no longer afford basic staples and many literally starve. Goldman Sachs is able to carry out its malfeasance at home and in global markets because it has former officials filtered throughout the government and lavishly funds compliant politicians—including Barack Obama, who received $1 million from employees at Goldman Sachs in 2008 when he ran for president. These politicians, in return, permit Goldman Sachs to ignore security laws that under a functioning judiciary system would see the firm indicted for felony fraud. Or, as in the case of Bill Clinton, these politicians pass laws such as the 2000 Commodity Futures Modernization Act which effectively removed all oversight and outside control over the speculation in commodities, one of the major reasons food prices around the world have soared. In 2008, and 2010, prices for crops such as rice, wheat and corn doubled or tripled, making life precarious for hundreds of millions of people. And it was all done so a few corporate oligarchs -- the 1 percent -- could amass personal fortunes in the tens and hundreds of millions of dollars. Despite a damning 650-page Senate subcommittee investigation report, no individual at Goldman Sachs has been indicted, although the report accuses Goldman of defrauding its clients.
When the government in the fall of 2008 provided Goldman Sachs with billions of dollars in the form of cheap loans, FDIC debt guarantees, TARP, AIG make-wholes, and a late-night label-shift from investment bank to bank holding company, giving the firm access to excessive Federal Reserve aid, access by-the-way it still has, it enabled and abetted Goldman’s criminal behavior. Goldman Sachs unloaded billions in worthless securities to its clients, a process that decimating 401(k)s, pension and mutual funds. The firm misled investors about the true nature of these worthless securities, and insisted the securities they were pushing on their clients were sound, they hid the material fact that, simultaneously, they were betting against these securities, in one case a $2 billion bet on just one of their deals. The firm then had the gall to extort from its victims—us—to make good on its bets when the global economy it helped trash lost $40 trillion in worldwide wealth and huge insurance firms such as AIG were unable to cover these bad debts.
The Securities Act of 1933, established in the wake of the massive fraud that pervaded the securities market before the 1929 Crash, was written to ensure that “any securities transactions are not based on fraudulent information or practices.” The act (also), “prohibits deceit, misrepresentation, and other fraud in the sale of securities.” The subcommittee report indicates that Goldman Sachs clearly broke these security laws.
As part of the political theater that has come to replace the legislative and judicial process, the Securities and Exchange Commission agreed to a $550 million settlement whereby Goldman Sachs admitted it showed “incomplete” information in marketing materials and that it was a “mistake” to not disclose the nature of its portfolio selection committee. This fine was in fact a payoff to the SEC by Goldman Sachs, a payoff that cost Goldman Sachs about four days’ worth of revenue, and in return they received immunity from prosecution, and going to court. CEO of Goldman Sachs Lloyd Blankfein apparently not only lied to clients, but to the subcommittee itself on April 27, 2010, when he told lawmakers, “We didn’t have a massive short against the housing market, and we certainly did not bet against our clients.” Yet, clearly he, and Goldman Sachs did.
And yet nothing has been done. No Goldman Sachs officials have gone to trial. This is because there is no way within the corporate state to vote against the interests of Goldman Sachs. There is no way through the formal mechanisms of power to restore the rule of law. There is no way to protect the ordinary citizen and the poor around the globe from the predatory activity of financial institutions such as Goldman Sachs. Since the courts refuse to put on trial the senior executives of Goldman Sachs, including Blankfein, who carried out these crimes and then lied to cover them up, we the People will. Speculators like those in Goldman Sachs—who in the 17th century when speculation was a crime would have been hanged—must be prevented by law from again destroying our economy, preying on ordinary citizens, hoarding food so the poor starve and running our political process. We are paying for their crimes—not those who orchestrated perhaps the most massive fraud in human history. Our teachers, police, firefighters and public employees are losing their jobs so speculators like Blankfein can make an estimated quarter of a million dollars a day. Working men and women are losing their homes and going into personal bankruptcy because they cannot pay their medical bills. Our unemployed, far closer to 20 percent than the official statistics of 9 percent, are in deep distress so a criminal class, a few blocks from where I speak, can wallow in luxury with mansions and yachts and swollen bank accounts.
What we are asking for this morning is very simple—it is a return to the rule of law. And since the formal mechanisms of power refuse to restore the rule of law, then we -- the 99 Percent – must see that justice is done.


Cornel West
We thank our dear brother Chris Hedges for that powerful and subtle analysis. We gather here at this historic place consecrated by the bodies hearts minds and souls of so many fellow citizens who courageously and with great vision have decided to lift their voices that we enact and embody a deep democratic awakening which means that we allow our precious fellow citizens, precious ordinary people to make sure their voices are heard in public and you shall hear eloquent courageous visionary voices talking about the effects of corporate greed, not simply connected to Goldman Sachs, but the whole oligarchic and plutocratic system that has sucked so much of the democratic energies out of our body politic. The relation between the deep democratic awakening and deep democratic enlightenment there must be systemic social analysis to keep track of the operations of power and then to hear the voices that are resisting with great dignity. We are in the midst of an intense battle. For 30 years there has been a top down one-sided class war against working people and poor people—or low income brothers and sisters, my dear sister Cliftonia doesn’t like that word “poor” she likes “low-income” because we know so many so-called poor people are so rich in terms of their spiritual, and cultural creativity—but we are concerned about no access to health care, no access to jobs, no access to quality housing, no access to quality education. And so deep democratic enlightenment requires a public teach-in, as it were, that takes the form of listening generously and critically to our fellow citizens as they reflect on the impact of corporate greed on their lives. And last but not least there’s a direct connection between the deep democratic awakening, the deep democratic enlightenment, and the deep democratic revolution. Because we are calling for rule of law, yes, but we’re also calling for a transfer of power from greedy oligarchs and plutocrats, to ordinary citizens and everyday people. Let us be very clear, and yes we do it with a deep sense of what John Coltrane call a “Love supreme”. Occupy Wall Street movement is not about hating anybody, we hate oligarchy we hate plutocracy, we hate greed, we hate bigotry, we hate xenophobia, and we love those Sly Stone call “Those everyday people”; this is a love movement. And justice is what love looks like in public so we’re here to promote justice, and the condition of truth is to allow suffering to  speak so we’re here to promote truth. In the name of truth and justice we now convene this court let us listen to the voices of our ordinary citizens, our fellow human beings who we love so deeply.

Sade Adonis
Right now we will start getting into testimony from our fellow 99 percenters. First up we have Agnes Rivera, she comes from Community Voices Heard, she’s from Harlem, she’s amazing, inspiring, and she’s going to tell you her story.


Agnes Rivera
Hello everybody, my name is Agnes Rivera, and yes, I am with Community Voices Heard, and yes I am from Harlem, my beautiful people. First of all, and foremost, I have to say we will not get into a conversation because everybody seems to say that this is a budget crisis. Let’s get the facts out right this is a BUDGET crisis, not no, “It’s a revenue crisis” not a budget crisis. Let’s get it together. Let’s fight for what is true and just; I’m fighting for public housing. Public housing is diminishing, and it’s going away, and people like myself are “low-income” [referring to Cliftonia Johnson] that we represent because I’m not sure what you consider poor because once we’re fighting for our jobs, for our lives, for our homes, for our health, we are not getting none of it back because these banks seem to think they have the power over the people, and we are the people. We need to stop and start listening to each other, and fighting back, and putting things into perspective. Public housing has lost a lot of money, 1.5 billion capital funds each week to 508 million over 2011. 873million below the Obama request . People are becoming homeless because of this. This is because, why? The banks got bailed out, and the people got sold out.


Cornel West
First, I just want to thank our dear sister Vera for such powerful, and eloquent words, it inspires me. But I think part of what we are dealing with is living in a society in which commodification, marketization, and commercialization, and privatization is leaving everything up for sale for the highest bidder. And so human values and public life are now subject to full-scale market calculations; if it doesn’t make money it has no value. And so public housing, public education, public life as a whole (is) pushed to the margins. And if we don’t fight back in the name of democratic accountability for those at the top to restore a vital public life, and public education, and public housing then we’re in deep trouble. But I know we got to fight back Mrs. Rivera, no doubt about that, and all of us.


Chris Hedges
That’s what unfettered, unregulated capitalism is as dr. West says, it is about the commodification of everything. Human beings become commodities; the natural world becomes a commodity that these corporations exploit until exhaustion, or collapse. In that sense, Karl Marx was right, “unfettered, unregulated capitalism is a revolutionary force”. And that is the force we are attempting to fight back against. Of course as Vera was telling us last night, the public housing is purposely left underfunded so that, in many cases, large numbers of units vacant, because the tactic as it is throughout the society is to degrade, destroy basic services, and then give you an excuse to essentially rip them down. It’s called “harvesting” in the world of business. And that’s what these large speculative firms are doing to the country, they are harvesting the country. They know far better than you, or I, that this process of hollowing America out from the inside means its destruction, and they are trying to grab as many fistfuls of money as they can on the way out at our expense.


Sade Adonis
Thank you from our expert, and thank you agnes. Next we have Cliftonia Johnson. She’s a real firecracker, she’s a member of DC 37, and she is going to share her story with us.


Cliftonia Johnson
Good morning, my name is Cliftonia Johnson, and I am a mother of two children. I work in the New York City Department of Education public school system for 13 years as a community associate. For many years I tracked the attendance of children in schools, made daily phone calls to parents, and interacted and visited with parents in their homes. In my position, I was the first line of defense against truancy, and I helped ensure parents who are aware of certain issues their children were facing in school. In addition to that, I have been a union activist for 20 years. I helped my coworkers by supporting their right to organize, and their right to address their grievances. On October 7th, I was laid off from my job as well as 672 public school support staff who perform vital functions. It was one of the largest layoffs in New York City public employment history; Ya heard what I said? “In history of public employment” These layoffs This includes school aides, parent coordinators, health aides, and many others. These layoffs were another step by the Bloomberg Administration and his banking friends to privatize public education. The layoffs occurred in predominately low-income neighborhoods, and were predominately head of household black women. Over the last 8 to 9 years, a culture of fear has been created in the public education system where teachers and support staff are suddenly intimidated if they speak out against the shortchanging of our students, the lack of safety and security in the schools. They continue to cut staff who maintain an environment where children can feel free to learn. With these layoffs schools are less safe, parent-teacher interaction is lost, and the environment is changed where learning is not stressed. This issue is not just about me and my layoff, not just about the 672 school employees. This is about the children who will not have hard-working individuals who are looking out for them, who are talking to their parents about what these children are facing on a daily basis. This is about the future of our children; hear me again, this is about the future of our children, which in return is the future of this country.  Thank you for your time.


Tony Bates
I think we have to speak again about education and what that means to the larger picture not just in the city but the larger country and if you two would address that with expert analysis.


Chris Hedges
This is clearly about the destruction of public education starting in low income areas. It is about allowing hedge funds to come in and create charter schools, and anytime hedge fund managers start taking a deep interest in educational facilities for the poor is not because they care about learning. They see that pot of money, six-hundred-something billion dollars of Federal funds for education as something they can take. They are trying to break the unions -- charter schools have no unions – and what you are describing is a very frightening process whereby professionals such as yourself, as well as teachers, essentially are replaced by temp workers; non-unionized, poorly paid, easily dismissible temp workers who have no training, and no commitment to the children at all, because the purpose of a charter school is to make money, not to educate.


Cliftonia Johnson
Correct


Tony Bates
And can we speak also of the leadership academy.


Chris Hedges
Yeah, we spoke about that last night [to Cliftonia] maybe you can address that point? As an introduction, Mayor Bloomberg -- and by the way [to Cliftonia] if you want to run for mayor, I’ll be your press person. Mayor Bloomberg, Eli Broad, these figures have created what they call “Leadership academies” where they bring in people with absolutely no experience in the public school system, or in education, no training. They’ve never spent an hour in the classroom, they run them through 9-month courses where they teach them corporate management and then they put them in charge of these schools to carry out this policy of “harvesting”. And these people are deeply anti-union. And I think it’s something [to Cliftonia] you’ve  experienced that anybody who attempts within the system to stand up for union rights is suddenly, their reviews are negative, they’re shunted aside, there is a war happening within public education on the part of these corporate forces and powerful corporate overlords. Plutocrats like Bloomberg are placing these figures in charge of these schools to carry out that policy.


Cliftonia Johnson
I would have to say that is absolutely correct. And it’s a shame because when I was growing up, and I’m 48, when I was growing up and a lot of you remember, we had a principal in the school who came up through the system as a teacher, then an (assistant principle) , then a principal. That’s not the case now. They are coming straight from the outside in the corporate world coming into the schools and don’t know a thing about educating our children, especially our low-income, and minority children. And it’s those schools that (are) on the first line of attack because they (are) not attacking the schools that are doing well, they (are) not attacking the schools that are mostly white. They are attacking the schools that are mostly Black, and Latino. Watch it, and I’m telling the parents come to those schools, come to those school leadership team meetings, come to those P.A. meetings, just walk in you have the right to. But watch how the principal do not want you there, but come in anyway because that’s your child in that school and you have (vowed) to stay.


Cornel West
My dear sister Cliftonia is hitting the mark, I’m telling you. But I think it’s important for us to acknowledge the intimate relation between corporate greed and the vicious legacy of white supremacy. That the disproportionate amount of effect of our brothers and sisters, not just black and brown, but also red and also yellow. That we love all children, but the disproportionate effect is on the chocolate side of town and it spills over to the vanilla side, and we hate white supremacy, we hate male supremacy and (it) also has a disproportionate effect on our sisters of all colors, disproportionately black and brown. Male supremacy, and then our precious children. Oftentimes, the women carrying and nurturing for the children where so many of the brothers tied to what Michelle Alexander calls,“The New Jim Crow”, the prison industrial complex, and the collapse of our public educational system is intimately connected to the New Jim Crow and the expansion of the prison industrial complex with the increased police surveillance, and the arbitrary police power in the form of stop and frisk. So we have a holistic view when we talk about Occupy Wall Street movement. Why? Because we are committed to truth and justice.


Tony Bates
This dumbing down, this loss of education, is it intentional?


Chris Hedges
Of course it’s intentional, that’s what standardized testing is all about. It’s about rote memorization, it’s about class. It’s about slotting people within their place within the corporate state. So if you graduate from an ivy-league school you go and become a systems manager at Goldman Sachs. The poster child for the idiocy of this system is a man named Lawrence Summers, youngest tenured professor at Harvard in economics who carried out under the Clinton Administration most of the deregulations including ripping down the firewalls between the banks that created our financial crisis. And a figure like Summers knows only one thing, and that is how to serve a dead system, that’s all they’re trained to do. They have this narrow analytical intelligence, and the emotional maturity of a 12-year old. All they know is how to loot, steal money from taxpayers, from the Treasury, and the Fed to pump these systems back up. In essence they’ve never been taught how to think. And that’s what the corporate state wants; it wants to teach you…  It teaches you what they want you to know. It doesn’t teach you how to think, which is something radically different. And that whole process of standardized testing, that whole diminishing of quality public education for low-income people, and people of color is part of this war. So that some people are funneled directly into Walmart, and some people are funneled directly into Goldman Sachs. And those who essentially don’t want to accept their place within this system – as many people in this park understand -- are completely shunted aside. In short, the corporate state makes war on the qualities of truth and beauty, anything that’s transformative whether that’s journalism, and whether that’s art, whether that’s education, all of these disciplines that have the capacity to make us whole human beings are being crushed.


Tony Bates
Thank you Chris Hedges. Dr. West, maybe you can speak to the effects, on the New Jim Crow. But also we see that young men and women of color being funneled into the military because there are no jobs for them, because the social net has been ripped out from under them, and because so much of the money has gone up to that upper 10 percent of the folks in this country.  Speak to those effects please whereas people of color find themselves more and more in that… In fact we are a war economy at this point. We spend most of our money on the military and that’s where many, many Americans find themselves working. And the effects of that on families, on mental health, on the health care system in general, talk to us about that please.


Cornel West
I think you said it brother. You put it very clearly; we have to keep in mind when we talk about the military industrial complex, our armed forces which are disproportionately working class, and disproportionately people of color. But because even it requires a high school education, and so many of our precious young people are dropping out of high school that they do not even become candidates for the armed forces. And they find themselves tied to an underground economy with drugs, guns -- both highly available -- especially in certain sections of the city, and it generates a kind of fear that makes it difficult for persons to step forward, organize, and mobilize. And many of those persons themselves can be usually deployed by the power that be. So it’s a complicated situation, it’s a very complicated situation. But I think you said it with great clarity, though.


Chris Hedges
I covered all the revolutions in Eastern Europe. I covered all the street demonstrations that brought down Slobodan Milošević, I covered the two Palestinian uprisings -- the Intifadas.  And the fact is when you hold fast to a moral imperative, when you hold fast to a truth, and when you have the courage to walk out into the street to defend that truth, you don’t know the power that you’ve unleashed. You don’t know where it’s going. None of the clergy in Leipzig -- who began the candlelight vigils against the East German communist regime -- had any conception when they began that within months over half a million people would be gathered in Alexanderplatz in East Berlin to bring that regime down. That was also true in Prague;  I spent every night in the Magic Lantern Theater with Václav Havel and all of the leaders of the opposition. Nobody knows where movements go; they have a life and a power of their own. Even the people most intimately connected with those movements don’t know. On the afternoon of November 9th, 1989 I was sitting with the leaders of the East German opposition when they told me that perhaps within a year there would be free passage back and forth across the Berlin Wall; within a matter of hours, the Wall, at least as an impediment to human traffic, no longer existed. Trust the movement, trust courage, hold fast to those moral imperatives, and when you stand up against a discredited, corrupt, reviled, narrow oligarchic elite and you don’t back down, you win.


Tony Bates
And so we’re continuing with testimony with some of the 99 percent. Joining us also today this morning is from Queens, Shelly Seabrook. Shelly has been a victim of a crime so egregious, that it surprises me that it can even be pulled off. There have been demonstrations around this city both in Brooklyn and in Queens at courthouses to stop illegal and fraudulent foreclosures on people’s homes. There is a rate of fraud where people steal citizens documents, which are public documents, place their own names on them, place some other information and the folks who own their own property end up with a loan against them, or some other fraudulent transaction and Shelly Seabrook is going to tell us his story in this regard. He’s joining us, again from Queens, welcome to WBAI and to Occupy Wall Street.


Shelly Seabrook
Thank you very much. Good morning everyone, my name is Shelly Seabrook, I live reside in St. Albans Queens and I’m associated with Organizing for Occupation (Housing Justice). But however, I’m here to tell you how my 91 year old mother-in-law was a victim of mortgage fraud by one of the largest banks in the City of New York. The end result was she was evicted from her home of over 50 years. In essence, the bank submitted two different loan numbers. They also, when you file a mortgage with the City of New York Department of Finance, it’s a recorded deed. Well they submitted two of them, one number that they use was a system that has not been employed in over 30 years.  So what you are seeing is how can you have two mortgages, two notes, two recorded deeds, one of which is a system that has never been employed. My mother-in-law is just one of the many people, elderly, minority, widows, in St. Albans, and Hollis Queens that are being victimized. This thing is occurring every Friday morning at 11am at the Queens County Supreme courthouse, to make matters worse with these auctions you have to have a certified check with the name of the referee. Initially, they never put up whose house was being auctioned off. They’re doing it in Brooklyn also. Yet we see the Queens County district attorney and the Kings County district attorney when you go to them and their office of economic crimes they tell you, “oh, this is a civil matter”. They refuse to do anything. Thank you.


Tony bates.
 So let’s get this straight Shelly, I want to understand this a little bit better. So someone got a copy of the deed or a note that was attached to your mother-in-law’s property. They put their name onto it, is that correct?


Shelly Seabrook
Well, what happens is when you have to consign a mortgage. you have to, when a mortgage is recorded, put in their name, their number, and they also have to where they record the deed. In my mother-in-law’s case they used two different numbers for the same “mortgage”. They recorded under a name and numbering system that no longer is employed by the City of New York. And also if it supposed to be shifted now when they sold a house on a “referee’s deed”, the referee’s name was supposed to be there (instead) they used her name. They’re supposed to, when they file papers, they’re supposed to use her address


Tony bates
But was she, did someone else take a loan on the house? Did they transfer the title? What happened exactly here?


Shelly Seabrook
Well later on they transferred the title
Tony Bates
How were they able to transfer the title without their signature?


Shelly Seabrook
You can do it.

[Spectator]
Is there a default on the mortgage?


Shelly Seabrook
They claim to, but there was no default on the mortgage. The bank automatically, on one case, said “Hey this is not right” dismissed everything so we agreed, hey everything is done. They came back around using Steven J. Baum who is the leading “mortgage foreclosure attorney” in the state of New York. He is now being investigated, so what you are seeing in Queens again, and Brooklyn is mortgage fraud being [unintelligible]. They’re using illegal documents. You can have [unintelligible].  The way I can do it right now if I have access to your house and I record your water meter number, I can your bill sent to my house in three months, then I can go in and claim that I own the property. What you’re seeing is that the banks are going along with this process. The banks in the past would sit down tell the court, “Oh we don’t have a copy of the deed”, and they would accept it, it’s too bizarre to completely explain.


Tony Bates
It seems indeed there must be collusion at the very least and what have we found as we approach this as a criminal matter?


Shelly Seabrook
The Queens county district attorney refuses to look at these matter as a criminal offense. They will tell you it’s a civil matter. In staten island, that district attorney doesn’t even believe that mortgage fraud even exists, “This does not happen in Staten Island”.


Tony Bates
If I would you I would file a police report immediately.


Shelly Seabrook
Well I believe the New York Attorney General’s office is refusing to get active


Wanda E.
I am angry as hell. Today, I’m here to speak about unemployment. I was working at Families United for Racial and Economic Equality as an organizer there. Because of what happened in the financial institutions, (we get funding from) foundations, they put their money into stocks, they lost a lot of money. A lot of non-profit organizations, their funding were cut in half, or some non-profit organizations didn’t get any money at all. So I was a victim of what happened when financial institutions take advantage of our communities, of our societies, and working class people. We were (a) non-profit organization in order to fight social (in)justice, and in order for us to fight against what’s going on in our communities, and also in the world, it’s for us to make sure funding a non-profit organization continue to flow.


Tony Bates
How do we address this disparity, this inequity?


Cornel West
Well, one is we must never lose hope that the oligarchy system might be mighty, but they are not almighty. That people will continue to step forward (to) organize, (to) mobilize and they may have short term victories at the moment, but in the long run everyday people will triumph precisely because “Truth Crushed to Earth Shall Rise Again”, shall rise again. You’re going to reap what you sow; chickens come home to roost; what’s in the wash going to come out in the rinse.


Chris Hedges
This may be a very long struggle, but I think that the Occupy movement which is now been replicated not only across the United States, but around the globe has already begun to shatter the foundations of the power elite which is why they’re running so scared. And their propaganda organs are attempting in every way possible to discredit this movement, and shut it down as fast as possible. When I covered the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia, there were posters up and down the streets in Prague of a young student who in 1968 to protest the Soviet invasion of his country went to Wenceslas Square and lit himself on fire, and died four days later of his burns. When students carried his body to the graveyard, the police broke up the procession. There was no coverage in the official media, think corporate media. When his grave became a shrine, the authorities dug up his body and cremated it and gave his ashes to his mother and said he could not be buried. And yet on every street corner in that city during that revolution, his picture shown out to remind those protesters of the cost of defiance. And three weeks after the Communists regime fell, 10,000 people showed up in Red Army Square which was renamed in his honor. One of the most courageous singers in Czechoslovakia who sang the anthem of defiance once Communist rule was reimposed in ‘68 became a non-person. All of her recording stock was destroyed. She was no longer heard on the airwaves, and she survived by working in a toy factory on an assembly line. And yet I stood in Wenceslas Square with a half-a-million Czecks and watched her walk out on that balcony and sing that anthem of defiance, and everyone around me almost all of whom had been born long after she had been silenced knew every word to her song. Acts of defiance that center around moral imperatives and truth and love as Dr. West correctly points out, have a power that is unseen by the forces of darkness, the forces of exploitation, and when society breaks down, you can feel that power; it’s real, it’s palpable. I covered the war in Sarajevo when those heavy shells would come in, huge explosions dismembering bodies leaving people dying in pools of blood. You can see relatives tear through the crowds searching for their loved ones. And as you stood in those crowds you can feel radiating outwards the power of love and death, love and death, love and death. But in the end, love triumphs. Goldman Sachs is an institution that worships death, the forces of Thanatos, of greed, of exploitation, of destruction. And what we represent is Eros, those forces that nurture, conserve, protect, and promote life. And finally the forces of death are no match for the forces of life. How long will this be, I cannot tell you. It may be long; it may be hard; certainly we will stumble. There will be reverses.  But the fact is we have ripped, already, the veil off the face, and exposed the death mask in front of us.


Tony Bates
The energy that you spoke of, that you see in these other revolutions, is that akin to what is happening here in Zuccotti Square, or Liberty Square Park? Does it feel like that same energy?


Chris Hedges
This is at its core, and I’ll let Cornel speak to this because I know he agrees with me, this is a spiritual movement. That’s what this is. We’ve reclaimed life. We are fighting for life. We are doing it through the power of human kindness, through empathy, through compassion. And the more hopeless and absurd that empathy or compassion is, the more powerful it becomes. And that’s why they’re so frightened.


Tony Bates
We’ve seen Bank of America just recently back off of this debit card charge, or credit card charge minimum fee as well as Washington Mutual, I believe. This movement has power, but I’d like for you to speak to the same thing Dr. West, about the energy present here in Liberty Square Park.


Cornel West
I think first we have to acknowledge that in a certain sense the occupy wall street movement has already been victorious to the degree to which we have shifted public discourse toward truth and justice. Corporate media is now talking about corporate greed. Corporate media is now talking about  escalating poverty, escalating wealth inequality, arbitrary police power, focusing on the poor children, talking about the prison industrial complex. Six months ago, very few people would have ever envisioned that kind of public discussion. So that’s changing the spirit, the (zeit)geist, the ethos, the atmosphere of a society that has been so locked into vicious lies that hide and conceal social misery. And so in that sense the impact is already felt but it’s still first steps on the way to fundamental transformation. And you can see the panic, and the hysteria among the elite. That’s why they demonize us. That’s why they talk about us. That’s why they try and accent the worse of who we are when we know we are human beings; which means we have the best and the worse, but we accent the best of who we are. And that’s why for me to put a smile on the face of Martin Luther King Jr. from the grave; to put a smile on the face of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel from the grave; to put a smile on Cesar Chavas from the grave; to put a smile on John Coltrane and Curtis Mayfield from the grave; to put a smile on all of those who came before us, don’t forget about truth and justice in the midst of all the lies, the mendacity, the mediocrity, the mean-spiritedness, don’t  forget about this legacy of love, and kindness, and gentleness, and just struggle, and courage, and also style.  I hope you notice the style of each one of our voices. Because style is very important, and from the black part of town, style is fundamental. That’s why Edward Ellington was a “Duke”, that’s why Basie was a “Count”. That’s democratic nobility. That’s spiritual nobility. And it has to do with the depth of their love, and their soulfulness. That’s why George Clinton is part of democratic nobility with his funk, and Sly Stone with his funk, and James Taylor, and Carol King, and we can go on and on. Stephen Sondheim, all the folk that say everyday people ought to be at the center of who we are. And that’s what we stand for, and that’s why we are going down fighting.


Cliftonia Johnson
Ok, here we go with the sentencing, people listen up. Goldman Sachs is found by the People’s hearing held on November 3rd, 2011 to be guilty of felony fraud, violating Securities laws, perjury before a Senate commission, and the theft of 78 billion dollars in taxpayer money causing irreparable financial harm, and deep distress to millions of American citizens. It is decreed by the People’s hearing that Goldman Sachs must return the 78 billion dollars it took from the American taxpayer, with interest. Its senior officials including its CEO Lloyd Blankfein must receive prison terms for fraud and perjury. The senior executives of Goldman Sachs must henceforth be barred forever from the world of investment banking. Goldman Sachs must also be prohibited by law from commodities speculation, from fraudulent manipulation of financial markets, from lying to investors, and financial regulators, and must be barred from using company funds to manipulate the political process, fund lobbyists, and write legislation. We the People,
[heckler] power to the People!
…  since no governmental authority,
[heckler] yeah baby.
from the judiciary, to the Congress is willing to seek justice. We’ll march today to the doors of Goldman Sachs and as part of our verdict demand the immediate return of the 78 billion dollars that was looted without our consent from the United States Treasury. And finally, once this money is turned over to us, we will return it to the American people.


Tony Bates
Can you give us any last words?


Chris Hedges
I’ll let Cornel have the last word. I think it’s important to remember that all the true correctives to American democracy came through movements that never achieved formal political power. The Liberty Party that fought slavery, the Suffrages, the Labor movement, the Civil Rights movement, and one could argue that at least until April 1968 the most powerful figure within American society was Dr. Martin Luther King (Jr.) because when King went to Selma, or Memphis, 50 thousand people went with him. That it’s not our job to take power. It’s our job to be constantly antagonistic, and alienated from power, and as a movement, hold fast to those moral imperatives. As Karl Popper says in “The Open Society and Its Enemies”,
“"The question is not how do you get good people to rule” that’s the wrong question. Most people attracted to power are at best mediocre which is Obama; or venal which is George W. Bush – who was at Goldman Sachs last night, what a surprise. The question is how do you stop the powerful from doing this much damage to you as possible? How do you stop the powerful from exploiting the powerless? And that comes through movements, holding fast to those movements, that long tradition back to the old CIO, the Wobblies, even the Communist Party. And that’s what we got to create, that’s what we got to build, and if we cling to that, then I think we have a chance.


Cornel West
I think all the appropriate words have been said.  This has been a magnificent and sublime expression of everyday people bringing critique to bear on power at the top. It is now time for some of us to march.