In my recent review of Wael Ghonim’s “Revolution 2.0”, his memoir regarding his experiences in helping to organize the Egyptian revolution, one overall theme stood out: “The Egyptian revolution showed us that the great mass of people who are normally risk averse, aren’t normally activists, can become extraordinarily brave and active when they unite together as one…It was when large numbers of people discovered that they were not alone and overcame their fear that the revolution really took off."
So what’s the problem here, in the United States? While I’m not advocating for revolution (I’m more of a reformer), still, it’s been three years since the financial crisis began, years of massive layoffs, over six months since the Occupy Movement began, how come we don’t see more movement here? While much has happened, and continues to happen (see this article for news on this spring’s planned activities: http://abcnews.go.com/... ) and while there are clearly still protest events going on, and public discourse has shifted somewhat, on the whole I see little evidence that public opinion on the issues, or public policy, has changed at all in response. It isn’t that the public doesn’t support things like progressive tax policies or employee rights, because opinion polls indicate that they do. Yet, while we have some new regulatory structures and some new laws, wealth disparity continues to increase, corporate handouts continue unabated, markets continue to be under-regulated, and most importantly of all, the systemic corruption that results from campaign funding, partially the result of recent Supreme Court rulings, deepens unabated.
So what is holding us back? Malaise? Oppression? Stupidity? Lies in the media? While those sources of inertia are undoubtably important, I feel that there is a more critical barrier, the one Ghonim identified with respect to change in Egypt: fear. I think average, ordinary American are afraid to commit themselves to making change because of the risks they perceive that are associated with that. In Egypt, people were afraid of state repression- people, including Ghonim himself, were “disappeared” if they were suspected of involvement in resistance to the regime. Such authoritarianism isn’t practiced here in the U.S., so what is it that people would be so afraid of? In a word, it’s unemployment. People are afraid of losing their jobs if they stand up for themselves.
That Americans are terrified of losing their job seems obvious, even common sense. As the jobless rate stays in the upper single digits, it’s a “buyers” market, giving employers an opportunity to practice “hire the best, and fire the rest.” Certainly the fear of losing one’s job remains high, according to surveys: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/...
But what may be less obvious is the way our society seems set up to exacerbate such fears. Obviously, in a country in which most health insurance and retirement benefits are purchased through employer-based plans, losing a job means much more than losing a paycheck, it means losing most of your financial support network as well. National policy uses employment as the gateway to a great many benefits, presumably because from a systemic point of view it’s easier to manage that way. Private sector services are also affected by employment status- everything from one’s credit rating to the cost of insurance is affected. In each of these cases there may be justifications for doing so. Yet a general policy which relies on employers to funnel social support to employees also ends up empowering employers in ways that are patently unfair: make me angry and you will lose much more than a job.
Beyond that, “Job Creators” have become the lynchpin of economic policy. The business community has become sanctified almost to the point of deification as the source of all jobs. While economists argue over how much economic production should originate from within the public vs. the private sector, no politician running for office, from either party, dares question the “common wisdom” that anything good for American employers is per se good for all Americans. They merely quibble over which specific concessions to make to employers, and which rights to take away from employees (“Employee Rights Act” anyone?).
Becoming unemployed has other terrors. It’s well known that the longer one remains unemployed, the less likely it is that one will be re-hired. The phrase “long-term unemployed” has largely replaced “welfare bums” or even “slackers” as the euphemism of the day for people who are considered unworthy of respect. The loss of self-esteem and identity among laid off workers is very well documented, as is the rise of crime, suicide and mental illness. There is an entire mental health industry that has been built up to service such people (for a fee, of course).
So no one messes with the Man. But not only does this fear undermine the efforts of people to improve their own working conditions, it also has societal costs. The term “The Lost Generation” was recently borrowed to describe what happened to an entire cohort of young Japanese professionals in the wake of that country’s seemingly never-ending economic recession. An unprecedented number of college graduates simply never found work in the field for which they earned their degree, condemning them to lifelong under-employment and debt. The United States has not yet reached that point, but it isn’t entirely unrealistic to fear that it one day might.
No one talks about “job preservation.” Yet if one looks closely at the expressed fears and desires of Americans, people are not just concerned about high pay and good benefits, important as those may be, because what Americans really want, what anybody really wants, is financial security. It’s the simple ability to plan ahead- people want to know what assets they will have in a year’s time, or ten years. How else does one make certain fundamental decisions, such as whether to buy a home or rent one, how much to invest in retirement vs. the children’s tuition, whether or not to even have children? The mantra we hear is that if employers are prevented from laying people off whenever they see a need, they lose “flexibility” and become less competitive, but fewer people talk about how competitive our consumers are. If people feel their future is financially less secure, they spend less in the present, thus slowing the economic recovery, and keeping under-employment high.
“Fear is the mind killer” as Frank Herbert once wrote. It’s also the progress killer, the justice killer, and the future killer. In Egypt, all it took was a facebook page to convince people that they were not alone, that millions of others were willing to confront the regime and demand that their tyrant go. Here, it wouldn’t be that easy. We have no single person who represents oppression. But a law that put an end to regular, massive lay-offs would be an equally effective step, both as a symbol and a real solution. So would de-linking benefits from employment, or a national job bank. Agitating for legal solutions isn’t necessarily as inspiring as fighting tyranny, but it would bring hope to hundreds of thousands of people who fear that they have would have nothing left if they lost their job. So would protest actions against the worst offenders.
Ultimately, we overcome fear by helping each other. A sense of solidarity and community gives people the courage to stand up for themselves. Staging occupations of things like housing foreclosures and state legislatures are very important and will continue, but the one thing we need to help everyone "occupy" is their fear. I’ll end with these words:
“…Of course I believe in free enterprise, but in my system of free enterprise, the democratic principle is that there never was, never has been, never will be, room for the ruthless exploitation of the many for the benefit of the few.”
Harry S. Truman
For more book reviews and essays, see my website: http://dmarkkey.weebly.com/