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California Protesters Refuse to Become ‘Wisconsin of the West’
Budget protests continued in California this week as hundreds of San Jose city workers gathered at City Hall plaza Tuesday night to dispute the city budget that aims to cut staff, salaries, and benefits.
Waving signs and chanting, "They say cut back, we say fight back!" the protesters rallied, then marched from the plaza to the council chamber, where Mayor Chuck Reed and the council had scheduled an evening meeting to discuss the 2011-12 budget.
The 300 or so protesters -- mostly city employees and union members, some faith leaders and community members -- are fighting proposed budget cuts that will slash neighborhood services, reduce library and community center hours, cut funding for youth programs including gang prevention, and lay off police and firefighters.
The city faces a general fund shortfall of $115 million in the fiscal year that begins July 1. When that gap is closed, the general fund budget will total $819 million.
Under the proposed cuts, nearly 200 police and 64 firefighter positions would be eliminated, library services and hours would be reduced to three days per week, ten hub community centers would have their hours reduced, and park ranger jobs would be slashed by more than half.
"San Jose will not become the Wisconsin of the West -- we will not let that happen," Lee Saunders, [secretary-treasurer of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, AFL-CIO], told the crowd gathered outside City Hall early Tuesday evening.
Pensions have long been a loathed target of austerity hawks who view the system as wasteful even though a conducted city audit indicates that 40 percent of city retirees, as well as survivors and other beneficiaries, have annual pensions earnings of less than $24,000 a year.
In Sacramento, hundreds of police officers and staff members also protested Tuesday night before a city council budget hearing to oppose $12 million in cuts. On the chopping block are 167 police department positions, including 80 police officers.
Those opposing the police cuts pleaded for observers to consider the consequences of firing law enforcement employees. For example, longer waits when you call 911.
"Every second counts, especially when you have a loved one who's suffering a heart attack, a mother finding her child floating in a pool. Minutes count," supervisory dispatcher with Sacramento Police Department Paul Troxel said.
Troxel said his job is on the line. "With the budget cuts, my rank (as) supervising dispatcher would be eliminated," Troxel said.
Here in New York City, we saw the consequences of these kinds of budget cuts during a particularly bad blizzard in early January. Mayor Bloomberg’s decision to fire 400 sanitation workers meant that there were less workers to clear the streets, which resulted in Emergency Medical Service workers having a hard time reaching distressed citizens.
The city had a backlog of around 1,300 critical calls – not calls for minor occurrences, but critical, life and death stuff. Over a thousand of those went unanswered.
With resources in short supply, the EMS was forced to limit CPR time to 20 minutes. Desperate and unable to wait for the limited EMS response team to come and save them, residents of Forest Hills dragged people from a fiery building and transported them to a nearby hospital on sleds.
That’s the reality of a world quick to cut services at the bottom instead of moderately raise taxes at the top, which is why California residents are trying to stop that dystopian vision before officials unleash it.
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Show All"San Jose will not become the Wisconsin of the West -- we will not let that happen,"
We aren't letting it happen in WI either but here we are.
I keep waiting to hear about how the capitol has been taken over by the people, The Governor has been dragged out by his ears and strung up..
But hey these are the american sheeple wee talking about here, and that just couldn't happen. or at least the sheeple will need to become a lot hungerier.
>^^<
Thank you, Ms. Kilkenny for another well-written, articulate article.
Here's my fantasy: If enough police personnel become involuntarily retired, added to plenty of returning disgruntled military troops... we just might have the makings of a REAL civilian army, one able to stand up to the drones of corporate capitalism without conscience.
Without investment in domestic infrastructure, added to calamitous weather events escalating, not every region will remain open (or accessible) to the commands of our new Empire-version of Big Brother. As more and more people feel cheated, betrayed, or cast off by a system that only rewards the corrupt (or a small loyal following), armies of the dissatisfied may well form.
Of course the more pragmatic answer is to tax the rich, take the $ out of wars of convenience (for an elite few), add a Tobin Tax to Wall Street transactions, and presto... all the money missing from the pot is returned, and necessary jobs are once again tasked.
I wonder which of these scenarios (and of course there are others) will be more likely to play out?
Sioux Rose, your fantasy is truly a fantasy. You contrast a home-grown militia against "the drones of corporate capitalism" without defining what the latter phrase means. How does one "go up against" an ambiguous entity?
If you consider what went on in Egypt and what is going on in Libya, the fallacy in your scenario becomes clearer. The people in the Middle East could (and can) rebel against a person, not just a symbol - a person who clearly is to blame.
It is hard to reify something as nebulous as "drones of corporate captialism"
True enough but isn't interesting that the USA government is not bothered by warring on something as nebulous as "terror"? Unlike the Egyptians we are NOT a people and the US is more of a gigantic corporation. A rupture will come but with millions of people with guns and no great love for one another we may likely witness multiple "civil" wars.I truly hope I am wrong and that something will change that will enable everyone see that what is at stake with the impending ecological crisis is our very ability to survive.
sheepherder: Not really a fantasy. What she means by "the drones of corporate capitalism" is the over-paid pencil-pushers (CEO's, CFO's, and high-placed executives) whose names and positions in the corporate world of capitalism most people have never heard of, working in juxtaposition with state and federal legislatures to enrich themselves even more, at the expense of working-class people, through lower tax rates for the rich and super-rich and the large corporations, and money sent to off-shore bank accounts for tax avoidance--the estimate is in the trillions--which, has caused most of this so-called budget crisis, along with the capitalist delight of moving their manufacturing facilities overseas in sweatshop countries for making even more profit to feed their insatiable appetite of greed.
Not "nebulous" at all, when you see the big picture and their game plan.
Siouxrose - Your fantasy is not completely in the realm of dreams.
During the last protest at Wall Street on May 12th, the police tried to stop the peace contingent from joining the main march citing some mix-up in the routes planned. After a long delay, we finally started to shout "Why are you protecting those rich m-----f----rs?"
Some of the police could not contain themselves and broke out laughing. Many of the police are relatives, neighbors and friends of teachers facing layoffs, nurses whose jobs are now harder due to staff shortages, firefighters whose stations are slated for shutdown. Their own starting salaries, pensions and benefits are threatened. (One woman I had worked with had a policeman husband. She lamented that because of money problems, she had to dilute the children's milk with water.)
I do not have illusions that they will refuse to obey orders, or that if they do, that some overpaid Blackwater types can be deployed. But I think that there are many levels of compliance, rigor and looking away among police and soldiers. (The passive or active resistance to injustice saved many lives during the Vietnam invasion and more lately in Egypt.) Now the firefighters are refusing to contribute to any political party. My fantasy is to see firefighters, who are heroes to all, lead a huge march against budget cuts and for taxing the rich and ending invasions.
The police in NYC are no longer a blue wall of right-wing white males. As a more diverse group, they have seen friends and relatives unjustly arrested. There are cracks in their world view. In terms of demands for taxing the rich and ending wars, we should approach police as they are, in part, and if they wish to be, our working class brothers and sisters.
" The city faces a general fund shortfall of $115 million in the fiscal year that begins July 1. When that gap is closed, the general fund budget will total $819 million."
How should the city address this shortfall; reduce the cost of government, borrow the money, or raise taxes? And do we know what the taxpayers prefer?
People are Un-Incorporated and are therefore treated to live as Zombies. Our President and his leadership is headed by Corporations - that are more alive in the freedoms they enjoy. Corporations that are too big to fail. Money is no issue for One plane. However, one entire County's budget? Humans? Not even a sorry. It will help in your low budget, need health care, car needs fixing, check to check, stress to stress, zombie life.
Socialism or not just barbarism but annihilation next time.
Or as the chickenhawks say, only cut non defense spending
"They say cut back, we say fight back!"
Nice sentiment, but the money isn't there. When Wall Street bankrupted the fed in late 2008, it was inevitable that this would trickle down to state and municipal governments. Obama's $800 billion or so "stimulus bill" was a mere stopgap measure now nearly exhausted in its hiring effects.
According to conventional Samuelson-style economics, there is something called a "multiplier effect" resulting from employment. If I have income, I tend to spend it, providing money to others, who spend it, etc. Everybody is happy.
The concomitant is the "reverse multiplier effect." Every time a stable local job is eliminated, that person stops spending money, etc. The downward spiral becomes self-fulfilling. Individuals who paid taxes to local governments no longer pay taxes. Local governments lose the revenue to maintain infrastructure. Etc.
This disaster is happening simultaneously with the foreclosure crisis that results in a massive loss of revenue to local governments that rely on property taxes (which are mostly used to support public education). This is also happening in a context in which those owning rental properties (not itself a sin!) now have tenants who can no longer afford to pay the rent, the price of which is largely determined by the cost of the mortgage---another downward spiral. (College graduates in their late 20s are still living with their parents because they can't get a "real job".)
How does it feel to spend your life curled in a fetal position feeling utterly and totally helpless? Wellbutrin won't help...not that you can afford the cost of the visit to the doctor and the price of the scrip. They have us coming and going.
On the other hand---no acronyms here---while it may be a good thing that so many municipalities are laying off police officers, when it comes to the question of civil disorder and its control, are they also decommissioning their national guards?
"Four Dead in Ohio" May 4, 1970. Kent State.
We seem to be living in the center of a circular firing squad.
-30-
good post, OMR. Honestly, the laying off of police is probably the closest thing we'll get to a cut in military spending in the US. I agree that elites might live (or not) to regret this. My feeling is that the cops are the bigger obstacle to resistance in the US, and the less of them the better, in spite of the occasional socially positive contributions they make.
Sadly, I think they'd correct this error quickly, though, so how useful it would be is suspect.
"tin soldiers and, "Barry's" com'in", where next???????