Burlington Gets Occupied

Progressive Eclipse – Chapter Three

Thousands of people were taking to the streets, protesting the growing global disparity of wealth and income. Beginning on Wall Street a decentralized rebellion had spread nationwide, and was on the verge of turning into a significant multi-issue mobilization. By October 2011, the fledgling movement had reached at least 150 communities across the country and more overseas. In the nation’s capital a group calling itself Occupy DC set up camp in McPherson Square, a few blocks from the White House; more events were being planned from New York and Boston to Chicago, Denver, Seattle, and San Francisco.

In Burlington, hundreds of people began to gather as part of the broader uprising, giving voice to local anger about economic inequality and the excesses of banks and economic elites. Inspired and emboldened by the wave of protests, they promised to return each week until the roots of problem were addressed. They also began to discuss whether a local “occupation” should occur.

On a typical Sunday, after a warm up in City Hall Park, the group would march and sing their way up Church Street’s pedestrian mall as shoppers watched. Then, without having requested a permit, they’d turn down College Street to the Citizens Bank, a convenient symbol of excess across from City Hall. Standing in front of the bank door, people took turns addressing the crowd, which repeated key phrases so that everyone could hear. Participants were also learning a new language, one linked in turn to a radical democratic process.

“You go bankrupt you lose your house,” shouted organizer Matthew Cropp on a Sunday in early October. “The largest banks in this country go bankrupt and they get a free ride from the government. They get billions of dollars in bailout money.” Each sentence was repeated by about 125 people.

The local protest was part of what was now called Occupy Wall Street, or the 99% movement. Spokespeople – it claimed to have no leaders – described it as a decentralized, non-violent rebellion against economic tyranny that had burst forth through social networks, websites, and a loose alliance of groups and activists.

On June 13, as part of a “day of action” in New York, a group had attempted to occupy Zucotti Park, a public space close to Wall Street and the New York Federal Reserve. Although that early attempt to “occupy” the park failed a People’s General Assembly was formed, and by October Zucotti had become the site of what was looking like a permanent encampment attracting thousands and serving as the nexus for decision-making and broader action plans.

On September 17, Adbusters magazine issued a public call to Occupy Wall Street, which immediately became known as OWS. Radical groups with names like Anonymous, A99, and US Day of Rage were among the earliest to endorse its goals. According to David DeGraw, editor of AmpedStatus.com, the unifying principle was that, “anything you can do to rebel against the system of economic tyranny in a non-violent manner is welcome.”

It was radical, but in some ways mirrored the outrage and defiance of the conservative, anti-government Tea Party movement that had preceded it.

After weeks of rallies, police eventually arrested 700 protesters for attempting to block Brooklyn Bridge. This hardly discouraged the movement. In fact, more people joined. OWS wasn’t focusing primarily on the government, although it did have a legislative agenda. Its primary targets were “banksters” and corporate forces that had destabilized the economy and widened the gap between the rich and poor while enriching themselves.

Burlington’s OWS wasn’t just complaining about Wall Street; its objective was to give the growing activist urgency a local focus. Social networks made it possible both to mobilize people within hours and provide local examples of larger problems. “We need to start looking here in Burlington with our homeless shelters being more than three times of capacity,” suggested local organizer Jonathan Leavitt. Months earlier Leavitt had been a leader in the local anti-Lockheed mobilization.

Senator Bernie Sanders and Congressman Peter Welch were among the first officials to back the goals of Occupy, and even offered some legislative proposals to address its grievances. For example, Welch was opposing attempts to add banking fees to checking accounts. He called the plan by Bank of America and Citibank to charge users a monthly fee for the use of their debit cards “simply shameless.” At a time when consumers are struggling, “they stick the knife in by charging customers to get access to their accounts,” Welch charged. “When will enough be enough for big banks?”

Sanders meanwhile praised the protesters for “shining a national spotlight on the most powerful, dangerous and secretive economic and political force in America.” He floated a list of ideas to change the financial system, including a proposal to break up banks that were supposedly “too big to fail,” cap credit card interest rates, provide low-interest loans to small businesses through the Federal Reserve, end excessive oil speculation, force Wall Street to invest in job creation and impose a fee for speculative investments like credit default swaps and derivatives.

At Marlboro College, Ralph Meima, director of the school’s Sustainability Management graduate program, launched an online “crowd-sourced” Google document that let contributors around the world help to develop an American People’s New Economic Charter. Crowd-sourcing had recently emerged as an Internet strategy to promote diverse, democratic input. Contributions varied from the profound to the superfluous.

The overall goal was to create a comprehensive list of legislative, regulatory and social reforms consistent with the new movement. Billed as an “experiment in total inclusion and transparency,” Meima described his project as “a declaration of the economic changes that the 99 percent want to see come out of the Occupy Wall Street movement.”

Labor leaders also backed the general goals of the Occupy movement, according to AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka. During a conference with reporters he announced, “We are going to support them in any way we can. We’re not going to try to usurp them in any way.”


General Assembly in City Hall Park

The poster for an October 15 Montpelier rally captured the mood with this pointed headline: “The War on Wealth.” The schedule for the day included a solidarity rally at City Hall, then a March to the Statehouse and a people’s General Assembly. Similar events were organized in Burlington, Brattleboro and Rutland. In Burlington, more than 500 people marched for two hours, taking their jobs and justice message from downtown to the University of Vermont campus. In Montpelier, 300 turned out on the steps of City Hall and the Statehouse.

At this point, almost half of all Americans felt that the economic system was personally unfair to them, according to a Gallup poll.  A big reason was that they were getting the picture: The top 1 percent had amassed greater net worth than the “bottom” 90 percent. And, in an unusual generational twist, more people under 30 viewed the concept of socialism in a positive light than capitalism.

The movement’s objective was nevertheless ambitious – to occupy parks, schools, corporate offices, streets, basically anywhere and everywhere – until something substantial was done about what was now being called economic tyranny. It was an uncomfortably apt description of the current “world order.”

On the other hand, many in the movement expressed shock at the heavy-handed official response, as if they had discovered something new about the relationship between the state and those who disagree. Others tended to be overly suspicious about cooptation or thought that even unions and moveon.org were political “Trojan horses.” Still others suggested that their efforts to create self-governing communities represented a breakthrough of paradigm-altering significance. Was it hubris, naiveté, or just idealism and youthful ambition?

Many saw OWS as a counterculture, a transformational social experiment. To survive, they argued, it would have to remain separate and uncompromised by the dominant culture. The problem was that, in order to fully participate in its non-hierarchical, consensus-based process, people had to make it a central part of their lives. This posed a problem for those without that much “free time.”

Combining 18th century democratic principles with 21st century methods, Occupy activists wanted to change the political culture. And to some extent, they were starting to succeed, shifting the focus from debt and deficits to wealth inequality. But they also wanted much more. As writer Todd Gitlin explained, “They wanted to produce a society of their own, and half believed they were producing it.”

By late October OWS activists in Burlington had launched an encampment at City Hall Park. As long as some basic rules were followed, announced Mayor Kiss, he was prepared to be flexible. Things went well at first, in contrast with the violent confrontations between police and protesters that shut down encampments elsewhere. But an impromptu concert in the park led to the relaxation of normal rules one night, and the next day some campers were still intoxicated -- including Joshua Pfenning, a 35-year-old homeless man.  His death that day from a self-inflicted gunshot wound was traumatic for the local movement, and especially for those who had tried to help Pfenning. It also marked the abrupt end of the Burlington encampment.

By that time, however, almost everyone was talking about the 1%, the few with most of the wealth – bankers, energy tycoons, hedge fund managers and the rest. And as filmmaker Robert Greenwald pointed out, there was an even smaller elite – the top 0.01 percent, wealthy military contractors. That made the welcome given to Sandia Laboratories and Lockheed Martin by Vermont’s progressive leaders even more troubling for local liberals and peace activists. 

As protesters on the streets chanted "We are the 99%,” election season was just heating up in Burlington. At a Democratic debate two days after declaring his candidacy for mayor, State Sen. Tim Ashe, a former Progressive member of the City Council, proposed an unusual alliance – fusion with the Democrats to defeat the Republican challenge from Kurt Wright. Yet on the F-35s and partnering with a predatory corporation, leading progressive critics of concentrated wealth and the military-industrial complex like Bernie Sanders and Bob Kiss were making basically the same arguments as their conservative opponents. Most local Progressives preferred to ignore it and focus instead on survival.

NEXT: The Fusion Option

When Lockheed Came to Town

Progressive Eclipse - Chapter Two

The chances were never great that Vermont’s popular US Senator, widely known as an Independent, a socialist and a congressional hero of the left – would run for President in 2012. But that didn’t stop people from talking about it – and not for the first time. In Bernie Sanders’ old political stomping grounds, however, populist anger was aimed at the overtures he and Mayor Bob Kiss were making to Lockheed Martin and Sandia Laboratories.

On August 8, 2011 after six months of debate, the City Council had voted 8-6 in favor of nonbinding community standards for proposed climate-change partnerships, prompted by an agreement between the mayor and Lockheed. The resolution called for standards which, if they were followed, would exclude working with weapons manufacturers and environmental polluters. 

After the vote Kiss was defiant. Discussions with the corporation would continue, he announced. The city attorney added that the mayor wasn’t bound by the Council’s decision in pursuing such an executive-level agreement. Nevertheless, a few weeks later the talks ended. Apparently aware of the local mood, the defense contractor backed out of the deal in an e-mail message to the Burlington Free Press.

As Lockheed spokesman Rob Fuller put it politely, “While several projects showed promise initially and we have learned a tremendous amount from each other, we were unable to develop a mutually beneficial implementation plan. Therefore Lockheed Martin has decided to conclude the current collaboration.”

It sounded like a Dear John letter – and a bow to public pressure. In reality, the courtship was just beginning.

Sanders refused to comment. But his typical view of corporate criminals and wasteful military spending was well known; in fact, it was part of what had made him a compelling figure. Consider his fiery speech in October 2009 on the floor of the US Senate, taking on Lockheed Martin and other top military contractors for what he called “systemic, illegal, and fraudulent behavior, while receiving hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer money.”

Among the crimes he mentioned were these: Lockheed Martin had defrauded the government by inflating the cost of several Air Force contracts, lied about the costs when negotiating contracts for the repairs on US warships, and submitted false invoices for payment on a multi-billion dollar contract connected to the Titan IV space launch vehicle program. Sanders called the corporation a “repeat offender” that rarely faced serious penalties.

“It is absurd that year after year after year, these companies continue doing the same things and they continue to get away with it,” he proclaimed.

And yet he had invited Sandia Laboratories, which is managed by Lockheed Martin for the Department of Defense, to establish a satellite lab in Vermont. In fact, he’d been working with Vermont utilities, energy enterprises, the university and business leaders on the plan for more than two years. Sanders also accepted the proposal that Lockheed-built F-35s be based in the future at the Burlington International Airport. If the fighter jet, widely considered a massive boondoggle, was going to be built, Sanders argued that some of the work should be done by Vermonters (Rutland’s GE plant had contracts to build an engine) and Vermont National Guard jobs should be protected. In other words, he was just bringing home some “bacon” for his state.

Sanders first visited Sandia’s headquarters in New Mexico in 2008. “At the end of the day,” recalled Les Shephard, Sandia vice president for energy, resources and nonproliferation, “he turned to the laboratory director and said, ‘I’d really like to have a set of capabilities like Sandia in New England — and very much so in Vermont.’ And that’s how it all evolved.”

Sanders listens to Sandia's Stulen at the lab's launch.

Despite concerns about Lockheed’s consistently bad behavior Sanders didn’t think inviting a subsidiary to the state would help them get away with anything. Rather, he envisioned Vermont transformed “into a real-world lab for the entire nation” through a strategic public-private partnership. “We’re at the beginning of something that could be of extraordinary significance to Vermont and the rest of the country,” he predicted.

It was a highly optimistic picture: Businesses, ratepayers and researchers would get a boost, a Department of Energy planning grant would jump start the research, and more government support would follow as the project gained steam. Sandia Vice President Richard Stulen meanwhile confirmed Sanders’ pledge that no weapons development work would be involved. The focus, they promised, would be cutting edge research on cyber security, “smart grid” technology and stopping hacker attacks.

Sandia’s motivation? As Stulen explained it, Vermont’s small, compact energy infrastructure was an “ideal place” to create a model for the rest of the country. The Feds were impressed with the work underway on forward-looking renewable energy technology and a willingness to “tinker with related policies and regulations.” Sandia defined the lab’s mission as energy “security.” For Vermont, the carrot was the prospect of jobs and a chance for local enterprises to get a “global competitive edge.”

The letter of cooperation between Mayor Kiss and Lockheed made a similar argument. Lockheed Martin Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer Dr. Ray O. Johnson stressed national security and “the economic and strategic challenges posed by our dependence on foreign oil and the potential destabilizing effects of climate change.” A local partnership, he said, would “demonstrate a model for sustainability that can be replicated across the nation.”

Kiss insisted that the climate crisis required radical action, while Sanders felt comfortable simply ignoring his critics. Yet both claimed, remarkably, that they never discussed or coordinated their positions.

Cracks in the Coalition

Mayor Kiss claimed that his introduction to the idea of a partnership with the corporate giant began in Richard Branson’s “Carbon War Room.” The result was a Dec. 20, 2010 “letter of cooperation” signed with Lockheed Martin to address climate change by developing green-energy solutions. The plan was vague, mentioning only “sustainable business models” and analysis, and “energy and transportation technologies.” Yet Kiss envisioned future fuel efficient vehicles, improving the use of steam from the city-owned generating station, and generally turning “swords into ploughshares.”

Despite years of anti-corporate, peace movement rhetoric the two main elected leaders of the state’s progressive movement had both decided to make research and development deals with a powerful corporation – one that many people considered a war profiteer and a corporate criminal. It was no shock that this policy "coincidence" set off a local revolt and a period of self-assessment.

Military contracts represent less than five percent of Vermont GDP, but substantially more in the Champlain Valley, home base for the two largest recipients, General Dynamics and Simmonds Precision. Between 2000 and 2011 around 600 companies received $7 billion in contracts. Chittenden County was the big winner but there were smaller businesses employing people in almost every Vermont County, producing guns, ammunition, “quick reaction” equipment, explosive components, missiles and aircraft parts. The main Congressional booster for military contract jobs was Vermont’s senior US senator, Patrick Leahy, who frequently made appearances at factories to announce big contracts.

On the other hand, Burlington also had a rich history of social activism. In fact, over three decades it developed a series of progressive foreign policy initiatives. As Ken Picard explained in the weekly Seven Days, the debate over Lockheed Martin touched on “a bigger issue about Burlington identity and the corporations with which it chooses to associate: Given the dire predictions about imminent and catastrophic climate change, should the city accept Lockheed Martin’s technical help, and ample dollars, in the interest of achieving the greater good?

“Or, should Burlington refuse to lend its name and reputation to help burnish the image of the world’s largest maker of weapons of mass destruction? In short, is Lockheed Martin ‘beating swords into ploughshares,’ as Mayor Kiss had characterized it, or engaging in corporate greenwashing at Burlington’s expense?”

 

Jonathan Leavitt addresses Mayor Kiss
at August 2011 review of the Lockheed deal

Those weren’t easy questions to answer, or even discuss. But an early opportunity came on February 7, 2011. City Hall’s Contois Auditorium was crowded that night as the Council considered the mayor’s deal with Lockheed. In a scene reminiscent of the early days of the Sanders era, dozens of local residents told their leaders why they didn’t like the idea. An August follow up attracted a similar audience and the same concerns.

The proposed arrangement reinforced emerging questions about Progressive leadership. After Kiss was re-elected in 2009 major financial trouble was uncovered in the financing and operation of Burlington Telecom. Without public notification $17 million had been borrowed from city coffers to build the system. The apparent plan was to get new commercial financing that would allow repayment, then announce the violation of the utility’s license to the Department of Public Service.

BT also borrowed $33.5 million from CitiBank, and wasn’t able to handle the payments. By September, 2011 the municipal enterprise was under interim management and actively looking for a private partner. But the prospects for finding a “white knight” while holding onto a public stake weren’t bright, and the scandal had meanwhile damaged the mayor’s reputation, not to mention the future prospects of his Party.

With that backdrop, left-leaning residents and younger activists were shocked and upset that the administration also wanted to partner with a corporation that Sanders himself considered one of the biggest corporate predators – number one in contractor misconduct with 57 violations and $577 million in fines and settlements.

In February, the City Council had instructed Kiss to put the deal on hold until they had more information and a public hearing was held. Their resolution also called for serious effort on climate change and local standards for companies hoping to work with the city. The mayor ignored them.

At the same time Sanders flatly refused to discuss the situation, avoiding interviews about Lockheed, F-35s or his alliance with Sandia. And when he was finally caught off-guard at a speech in Boston a few days after the February City Council vote and asked about local objections in Burlington, he testily told the inquiring journalist he was just misinformed. There was simply no opposition in Burlington, the senator said.

In any case, the City Council had voted to set standards for partnerships that clearly excluded a corporation like Lockheed Martin. And opposing that policy were a coalition of conservative Democrats and Republicans, including mayoral candidate Kurt Wright. That put the city’s Progressive mayor and the movement's de facto leader on the same side as hawks and other conservatives.

The anti-Lockheed resolution was proposed by another Progressive, Mulvaney-Stanak, and was backed by the only other Council Progressive and several Democrats, including Ed Adrian, a frequent critic of the Kiss administration who proposed outright rejection of Lockheed. The overall dynamic dramatized a developing rift between the base of both parties and their leadership.

By October, it looked as if Kurt Wright might actually win the upcoming mayoral race. Even if Kiss opted not to run again – or was rejected at a Progressive Caucus – his party needed to heal some serious divisions and find a way forward. Once again, some Progressive "thought leaders" were coming to the conclusion that their best hope was a sympathetic Democrat. If they didn’t find the right one, the coalition that had launched Sanders and changed Vermont politics could lose control of local government, perhaps permanently. 

Others were more cynical, speculating that it might be better for progressives -- at least in the long run -- if in the short run a Republican ran City Hall.

NEXT: Burlington Gets Occupied