The Little Red Hen said: "Who will help us get broadband out to rural and poor America?"
Trump said: "I won't".
Pai said: "I won't".
Verizon said: "I won't".
AT&T said: "I won't".
So the Little Red Hen said: "I guess we'll just have to do it ourselves."
Welcome to this edition of These Revolutionary Times. Each Sunday, we focus on a small selection of papers, articles, and essays published in various publicly available sources that reflect political change already happening or that we think ought to happen or ought not to happen in 21st Century America. Our goal is to spur people to read these pieces with an open-minded but critical focus and engage here in an interchange of ideas about the issues raised in them.
(Acknowledgements: Thanks to DKos folks tote, bleeding blue, and elenacarlena for ideas and examples and links, and gmoke’s story on sewer socialism from several years back. I apologize for the lack of images — I don't want to upload anything that I haven’t gotten permission to use.)
What in the world is “sewer socialism”?
Well, come on in and let’s find out…
“There is always a charge that socialism does not fit human nature. We’ve encountered that for a long time. Maybe that’s true. But can’t people be educated? Can’t people learn to cooperate with each other? Surely that must be our goal, because the alternative is redolent with war and poverty and all the ills of the world.” — Frank Zeidler, socialist mayor of Milwaukee from 1948-1960
“The Last of the ‘Sewer Socialists’”, The Nation, July 14, 2006 (obituary of Frank Zeidler)
This is a several-part series on how states, cities, towns, and citizen groups Get Stuff Done in the face of indifference and opposition. (These will appear scattered among other These Revolutionary Times stories.)
Part 1 will focus on DIY socialism, ranging from the original “sewer socialism” in Milwaukee, through state banks and municipal broadband, and on to a plethora of projects that aren’t generally thought of as socialism at all, but show the fundamental feature of cooperating to get sh...stuff done. Note I’m using DIY in the plural sense — do it yourselves — sometimes called DIWO — do it with others. This will tend to be more upbeat and enthusiastic than the later parts…
Part 2 will cover the limits of DIY — when does the situation require solidarity from the outside? It will focus on disaster response, and use Puerto Rico as an example, because I am going to talk about Puerto Rico regardless, and this will let me point to organizations that we can support.
Part 3, on rebel cities, will go over the case where there is active hostility from outside. It will showcase what states and cities are doing to push back against ICE and deportations, against Jeff Sessions’ DoJ’s Reefer Madness, against the end of net neutrality,...
But I still haven’t told you about sewer socialism. Sherman, set the WayBack Machine for the early 20th century…
Milwaukee and those pesky sewers
Once upon a time, Milwaukee was run just like most other cities. Contracts for city services were handed out to cronies of elected officials. Graft and corruption were standard operating procedure. Services didn’t work unless payola changed hands. Ok, I take that back — services just didn’t work. Officials feathered their own nests. City jobs were doled out as patronage. Pollution hung like a pall over the city. No open spaces, no green, no civil engineering...
At the same time, there was ferment among socialists, and tension between those with a more visionary and revolutionary bent, and those who wanted to work through the electoral system and focus on improving people’s daily lives. Some of those more nuts-and-bolts socialists ran for mayor and city council on a platform of ending corruption and making city services work, and there was a strong socialist presence in city government for a fair chunk of the time from 1910 through 1960. Milwaukee’s socialist mayors were Emil Seidel (1910-1912), Daniel Hoan (1916-1940), Frank Zeidler (1948-1960).
During their tenure, there were such unheard-of innovations as:
- Municipally owned utilities — sewer, water, power
- Public housing
- Public transit
- Public parks
Yeah, those sound radical, don’t they? Public utilities — outrageous! Public transit — what a bizarre concept!
For more on Milwaukee’s sewer socialism:
Shepherd: So how did the Socialist mayors govern?
Gurda: Emil Seidel, the first one, said, “We wanted our workers to have pure air, we wanted them to have sunshine, we wanted planned homes, we wanted them to have living wages, we wanted recreation for young and old, we wanted vocational education, we wanted a chance for every human being to be strong and live a life of happiness. And we wanted everything that was necessary to give them that—playgrounds, parks, lakes, beaches, clean creeks and rivers, swimming and wading pools, social centers, reading rooms, clean fun, music, dance, song and joy for all.” [laughs] It’s a great quote.
The Socialists were not ideologues insisting on one interpretation of doctrine. They were people who saw just problems screaming for attention and were determined to make life better for everybody. Seidel comes out and says it. There was an optimism, to some degree there was a romanticism to some of the way they governed. At the same time, there was a hard-as-nails determination that the entrenched interests would not rule, would not prevail.
In the end, the experiment with socialist government in Milwaukee faded away due to, well, racism. Ok, also Red Scare politics. But mainly, racism. Zeidler was a proponent of civil rights, and opponents used racial fears to defeat him. But also, the increasing black population was segregated into part of the city, and wasn’t included in the benefits of socialism.
Here’s what DKos user YellowDogBlue says about the situation a couple of decades later:
I worked on a street crew for the City of Milwaukee in 1977, along with many returning vets and ex-cons. Paid twice as much as the job I quit washing dishes. The remnants of sewer socialism were there, all right—a regular job, with a punch clock and a straw boss, to keep you busy and on the straight and narrow.
It should be noted that they were only beginning to hire women. Or Blacks, except for the two old guys who had been there forever and worked together on their own crew. They had to open up hiring as a condition to receive Federal funding (under President Ford’s Comprehensive Employment and Training Act).
www.dailykos.com/...
But the concepts and programs started there — public utilities and services — have now become accepted as normal.
Hmm...if public utilities and public parks and public transit don’t sound so intimidating and weird, maybe public banks and municipal broadband aren’t so far-fetched either…
Public Banks
I’d bet I don’t need to enumerate what’s wrong with for-profit investor-owned banks — just think of Steve Mnuchin or Lloyd Blankfein or Countrywide or OneWest or mortgage fraud or redlining or every time you got charged a $35 fee for a $3 overdraft...
So just consider what we might do if we had public banks. We could:
- Fund infrastructure and other projects. Blue states getting shut out of federal funding by the Trump administration could transition to financing their own projects.
- Provide business and home loans without redlining.
- Support the transition to clean energy.
- Fund research. Especially research the Trumpers are shutting down.
- Provide banking services to cannabis businesses.
- Provide banking services to low-income customers (if we don’t get postal banking).
- Avoid paying a for-profit bank for banking services for state or municipal funds or to issue bonds.
So, with those positives, how many state or municipal public banks are there in the US? Er...two.
Bank of North Dakota
The Bank of North Dakota was established by legislative action in 1919 to promote agriculture, commerce and industry in North Dakota. ...
The state and its agencies are required to place their funds in the bank, but local governments are not required to do so. …
Other entities may also open accounts at the Bank; however, BND offers fewer retail services than other institutions, and it has only one office. These limit its competitiveness in consumer banking. The bank does have an account with the Federal Reserve Bank, but deposits are not insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, instead being guaranteed by the general fund of the state of North Dakota itself and the taxpayers of the state. BND also guarantees student loans (through its Student Loans of North Dakota division), business development loans, and state and municipal bonds.
Puerto Rico Government Development Bank
During its formative years, the GDB helped financially structure the Puerto Rico Water Resources Authority, the new publicly owned electric company that generated much of its power from a hydroelectric system. During its first decade, GDB financed infrastructure development, particularly the development of low-cost housing.
Between 1951 and 1965, the GDB issued over $1 billion in bonds to finance the islands' infrastructure, contributing to Puerto Rico's economic growth. It also spurred the growth of the private sector, financing Puerto Rico's first condominium and several of its first shopping centers built in 1956, when private banks were reticent in assuming such ground-breaking risks.
In Washington state, state senator Bob Hasegawa has been introducing a bill to create a state bank, over and over… Sen. Hasegawa explains the benefits better than I:
“The Washington Investment Trust will keep taxpayer dollars in our state working for Washingtonians instead of Wall Street,” Hasegawa said. “It will generate revenue, but also save money and provide public financing options by loaning money to ourselves rather than going through big banks and bond brokers. We could boost local economies, invest in infrastructure like clean water and sewer projects and even provide loans for students and small businesses. Currently, the state sets aside over $1 billion per year in our operating budget for debt service, much of which is profit to Wall Street. Instead of paying profits to bankers, we could be borrowing from and repaying ourselves.”
Senate Bill 5464 is modelled after the successful Bank of North Dakota (BND), which has successfully implemented it’s economic development and public support mission for almost a hundred years. The BND reported its 12th consecutive year of record profits for the state, which includes the period through the great recession and the ups and downs of the oil markets.
Municipal Broadband
The US lags behind many other countries in providing network access — about 75% of people in the US use the network, compared to upwards of 90% for many developed nations. The digital divide (by income level, and rural vs. urban) is a chasm. There are several reasons for this:
- As with rural postal delivery or rural electrification, for-profit companies don’t want to serve the places where their costs would be higher, or where they’d have to build out expensive infrastructure. Or, they want someone else to pay for their infrastructure. Or, they want to charge exorbitant fees.
- They don't want to serve low-income communities, because they can’t squeeze out as much profit.
- Network providers are often monopolies. They’re going to charge “what the market will bear”. Which means raising prices until (price * number of customers) is maximal. So lower-income customers are cut out, even if not in a low-income area.
- Network access is now a matter of public safety. Cities now deliver emergency alerts over the network. People report incidents on Twitter before they call 911.
- Without streaming network access, people recording confrontations with police would risk having their phones confiscated, and losing the evidence.
- Cellular network access isn't a substitute. Most cell services have a monthly quota of high-speed service. (No, that’s not a net neutrality issue — it’s entirely reasonable, else a few data hogs would tie up the network for everyone else.) Municipal WiFi can help provide reliable network access from mobile devices.
- And then there’s net neutrality. The official end of net neutrality is tomorrow, April 23, 2018. That’s TOMORROW. Got that? Tick tick tick… Although a publicly owned and operated municipal network can’t control what the network backbone providers do, they can at least follow net neutrality and privacy rules for that first hop onto the network, and for local government services.
So, how can a municipality, or an entire country, assure network access?
- They can try to negotiate with providers. Who will then gouge them for a zillion bucks.
- They can pass a “universal service obligation” law. And *then* try to negotiate with providers.
- They can map public WiFi hotspots, and provide apps to help people find and connect to them. For limited lengths of time, and limited number of times per day.
Yeah, no. That’s not going to get where we want to go. What was that other option? Oh, right:
This straddles the line between “sewer socialism” and “rebel cities”, because there has certainly been talk of cities and rural areas setting up their own broadband, but it’s been attacked at every step, from every direction.
- States have passed ALEC-provided laws that forbid local governments from setting up their own broadband.
- Telecom lobbyists have fought the attempts ferociously.
- Even public-private partnerships with Google get attacked.
- The public is inundated with misinformation.
Since this has to do with pushing back against hostility, the struggle will be covered in the “rebel cities” story. But have we got any positive examples? Is anyone doing this in the US? Yes!
Cooperative, Collective, Collaborative...
Now, let’s head off into some “Are you sure this is socialism?” forms of socialism. We’re exiting the realm of governmental structures, and heading to businesses and social organizations. At its core, socialism involves cooperation, teamwork, sharing.
Cooperatives and Mutual Organizations
People have noticed repeatedly that capitalist businesses involve someone siphoning off resources into their pockets. And they think, why don’t we get together and start a business, but we won’t have “owners” who sit back somewhere and skim off “profits”. And thus, we have:
- Credit unions
- Co-op businesses
- Mutual insurance
- Mutual savings banks
- Co-housing
Because healthcare has been a center of attention for some while, I’d like to highlight one co-op healthcare business: Group Health Cooperative in Washington state.
The health care visionaries who founded Group Health Cooperative in Seattle in 1945 were activists in the farmers' grange movement, the union movement, and the consumer cooperative movement. Their inspiration was Lebanese-American physician Dr. Michael Shadid (1882-1966), founder of the nation's first cooperatively owned and managed hospital (in Oklahoma). Dr. Shadid's crusade was to overthrow the traditional fee-for-service practice of medicine dominated by solo practitioners, expensive specialists, and private hospitals and clinics. Instead he advocated affordable, prepaid healthcare through the cooperative ownership of hospitals staffed by physicians -- practicing as a group -- who promoted the new idea of "preventive" medicine. Group Health Cooperative began providing health care after merging in 1946 with the Seattle-based Medical Security Clinic, a physician-owned group practice whose idealistic doctors also believed in preventive care. After years of struggle and despite virulent opposition by the medical establishment, Group Health became one of the nation's largest consumer-directed health-care organizations. ...
Group Health Cooperative, Part 1: Planting the Seeds, 1911-1945
(Recently, Group Health Cooperative merged with / was subsumed by Kaiser Permanente, so it’s no longer a co-op. But at least Kaiser is not-for-profit...)
Tool Libraries
If your community isn’t ready to dive in to city-scale socialism (well, except for the accepted things like public utilities and transit), a tool library is a good starter project.
Do you really need that bandsaw you have gathering dust in your garage? How many times have you used your set of Reed & Prince screwdrivers? Or that fancy schmantzy sewing machine? Or (in my case) that fruit and vegetable dehydrator that's still in its unopened box? Why not share them? You can always visit them to say hello…
So, a tool library (or tool bank) has tools for lending or sometimes use on site. Some live in community centers. Others start as “hey, wouldn’t this be nice?” ideas and grow by crowdfunding and talking to neighbors. Organizational forms and funding vary — some have membership fees, others get grants,… Many are volunteer run, and their costs are for rental...unless they can operate out of someone’s garage.
Makerspaces and Hackerspaces
DIY in the solitary sense can get boring...and sometimes the thing you want to do doesn’t get done. So instead, why not do it with others? A makerspace or hackerspace is a communal workspace where folks meet to work on projects, either their own or to help out with group projects. Many of these lean towards electronics and software projects, or arts and crafts, but any sort of “making” is appropriate.
Unfortunately, many makerspaces died off during the Great Recession. Even the granddaddy of makerspaces, Noisebridge in San Francisco, is facing trouble — their landlord didn’t renew their lease.
The maker movement lives on in local robotics clubs, assorted Meetup groups. And in Maker Faire. (Have a look at this bad boy, at the Seattle Mini Maker Faire last year. Yep, those are flamethrowers. Yep, it’s really big. And loud. Our booth, for our self-driving tricycle project, was on the far side and sorta behind that behemoth. We didn’t get much attention.)
Note: Paul Ryan and the Ayn Randies need to leave off trying to grab the word “maker”. When they say “maker” they mean someone who does not make anything. They mean someone who gets money from other people making things.
DIY and Maker Websites
If you can't meet in person, you can still collaborate, and still help each other out. Got a cool idea? Did you figure out how to do some tricky task, and want to help others learn to do it? Post it on a DIY website! Please! Your suggestions could be just the thing that solves someone else’s intractable problem!
Here are a few options:
Or, video-record your instructions and post ‘em on YouTube!
Crowdsourced Information
Do I need to say Wikipedia? Look, you’re right here on Daily Kos, where a lot of the content is produced by just plain folks.
But let me introduce you to a crowdsourcing project you might not know about — OpenStreetMap. There are some 4.4 million registered mappers. We map from aerial imagery, or by going out in the Real World with our phones or GPS devices. You, too, can learn to map! Go to the OpenStreetMap wiki and click the nice Beginner’s Guide link. For a more tutorial introduction, try LearnOSM.
A special case of crowdsourced information is crowdsourced humanitarian information, especially during disasters. Many people get involved with OpenStreetMap during disasters, when detailed map information is needed by emergency responders, in areas where there isn’t good map coverage. The mapping projects for emergency response are the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team and the Red Cross Missing Maps project, which seeks to get at-risk areas mapped before there’s a crisis…
Civic Hacking
For all of you experienced or aspiring software developers and data analysts, you can assuage your guilt at working for [whichever software company is in hot water this week] by helping out on social-good software or data projects. Look for Meetup groups with names like “Code for [your city]”. Or start here:
Citizen Science
There are a plethora of projects that need people to count or measure or observe things on a massive scale...or go out and do fieldwork tasks for local projects. As one example, I’m helping with a little project that involves sampling water from a local creek or nearby sewers, culturing it, counting E. coli colonies, and analyzing the data. You, too, could be outdoors counting birds! or hunched over your keyboard folding proteins!
Here are some lists of citizen science projects:
Want to try citizen science that doesn’t need studying? There are “human intelligence task” sites (similar to Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, but for scientific or humanitarian work). Instead of “using up” spare time playing games, how about trying crowdsourced science instead? Try one of these sites:
Last, but definitely not least...
Volunteering
Yep, also socialist. Find your next volunteer project at VolunteerMatch.
There are volunteer opportunities everywhere you look: building houses with Habitat for Humanity, helping at your local food bank, joining your local community emergency response team,… Everything in the crowdsourcing and civic hacking and citizen science sections counts too. If Google knows your location, try a web search for “volunteer opportunities” to get a local list.
Action Items
Today is Earth Day! The theme this year is Ending Plastic Pollution. This isn’t a one-day-and-forget-about-it project — it’s the start of a long-term effort. And this is not about cleaning up trash in your neighborhood.
- It’s about plastic microparticles in seawater being ingested by food fish.
- It’s about the massive garbage islands in both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
- It’s about...oh crap, China will no longer process recycled materials from Washington state. Maybe we’d better not generate as much plastic waste. Maybe we’d better do some of that socialist stuff, and take care of our own recycling.
Net neutrality ends TOMORROW, April 23, 2018. Scream.
Elections! Tuesday, November 6, 2018. Coming up Real Soon Now… Plus, there are still special elections. And primaries. For your convenience, here is the…
New York Times 2018 Election Calendar and Results
Remember that “Volunteering” thing just up ^ that ^ way a bit? It’s a simple, painless operation. You can:
- Help out a candidate running in your district / state.
- Find your local Democratic organization and say, “I want to be a precinct captain.”
- Sign up with an organization doing GOTV, like MoveOn or Democracy for America.
- Don’t wanna doorbell or phonebank? Send Postcards to Voters!
Discuss!
- Does your city / rural area have any form of public broadband? Is it a co-op? Public-private partnership?
- Are you participating in any of the “Are you sure this is socialism?” types of activities?
- Got favorite volunteer activities?
- Have you posted any how-to videos or tutorials?
- Are there upcoming actions / protests / events we should know about?