Wade Rathke: Chief Organizer Blog » Citizen Wealth

Toil Index and Tax Credits for Home Ownership

dine — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 15:03:39 +0000

Robert Schiller from Yale gave props to Richard Green of USC for his recommendation that there be a targeted tax credit to encourage homeownership. Green and Andrew Reschovsky of Wisconsin have studied the data closely are clear that the real benefit of existing tax policy allowing a standard deduction for interest on mortgages is for more wealthy homeowners who itemize their taxes. They have concluded that this primarily encourages them to build bigger houses, rather than distributing the benefits as real incentives to home ownership. The multi-billion dollar tax loss of interest deductions is the largest US investment in citizen wealth, and despite the fact that this investment has created homes as the single largest source of citizen wealth for many working families, the recent recession has now wiped out wealth for such families and destroyed confidence without offering an alternative for low-and-moderate income families to create wealth. I’m not sure that these professors are right, but at least it is a way to go until we can right-size solutions to our current predicament and the emerging future.

Robert Frank of Cornell helped defined challenge to the middle class by creating what he called a “toil index” to puzzle out a problem he had recognized from Elizabeth Warren and her daughter’s book about the “two income trap.” That problem was essentially that middle income families were being pushed into buying houses past their means in order to secure good schooling for their children. He notes that, “The increase in the toil index has been spectacular. From a postwar low of 41 hours a month in 1970, it rose to more than 100 hours in 2005.”

If a family is lucky, and it takes a lot of luck these days, to have two breadwinners working fulltime 100 hours of work would still be almost one-third of their income going to put a roof over their heads. That doesn’t work under any calculation either for a family or for the entire economy which despite the failures of HAMP, Treasury, and the Obama Administration to address, is still very important to the US economy and the recovery from neighborhood to neighborhood around the country.

Near Poor: Trouble at the Dividing Line of Poverty

dine — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 21:03:33 +0000

New Orleans Nothing like stumbling over the obvious, but then the whole point of being relatively poor or “near poor,” as the Times called it today, is being invisible, no matter what they or anyone else may want to call it. In looking at the new numbers that try to define the terror and tragedy of poverty now being issued by the Census Bureau by examining how much money people really have to spent, as opposed to believing that anyone can “eat” something as gross as “gross income,” the razor edge between being dead ass broke and just barely scraping by is clearer.

It also has a number now thanks to a “freedom of information” request by the Times to the Census folks for the numbers of people that are only at 50% above the poverty line. The numbers are huge: 51,000,000 people are “near poor” and bleeding at this sharp edge where any bad break can push them below the poverty line. There are hundreds of reasons families are in this bind, including the housing crises, stagnant wages, undervalued work, medical bills, and whatever, but the point is they are there and it’s no picnic with no relief in sight. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the characteristics of the “near poor” include the fact that 50% include a married couple, 49% own their homes, 42% have health insurance, and 28% work fulltime. On the “citizen wealth” index where I have argued that “maximum feasible participation” could spell the difference, 20% are barely above the poverty line solely because of benefits that they have successfully accessed.

Conservatives bickered over whether or not this means that 100 million people (counting the near poor and the rest of the poor) in the USA are “starving.” This is hardly the point, because this is really an emerging definition of precariousness that would be the statistical point where any tremor or imbalance can push a family into deeper poverty and even hunger.

As an organizer of low-and-moderate income families, I was probably only asked to define that term a thousand times over the decades, but, like it or not, it now appears that we are getting closer and closer to a real definition, even though there seems to be no will or reason that any are arguing to do something about it.

Accelerate Bank Transfers and Create Citizen Wealth and Reinvestment

dine — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 15:30:40 +0000

New Orleans Credit union and community banks report the number of new accounts opening in October rose to by 13 times the normal rate of increase with over 650,000 new accounts since September 29^th when Bank of America announced its (now rescinded) larcenous run on their own customer’s bank accounts through debit card fees. The Credit Union National Association (CUNA) reported that new deposits resulting from these efforts had swelled deposits in credit unions by $4.5 Billion, which is certainly not small change. ABC News yesterday announced a figure of over one million customers having switched. Other commentators reminded readers and listeners that $4.5 Billion within the lending rule of thumb that for every dollar in assets, the institution can loan ten dollars, which means that credit unions may have just acquired an additional lending ability of $45 Billion if they are willing to step up to the plate. Having called for a boycott of Bank of America and any other money sucker that wanted to add this charge and keep fleecing consumers, this all makes me very happy!

Reports from Seattle on blogs and websites indicate there were lines of people pulling out there money. Once again ABC had footage of a modest sized business owner with $3 million in accounts pulling his money out in Seattle and putting it into credit union accounts. I was less enthralled with the footage of an interview with Kristen Christian, who had announced a Bank Transfer Day, and has gotten a lot of ink with a Facebook page and this, that, and the other, with her ham-handed attempt at distancing herself from the Occupy movement, which has been more helpful in getting traction here than any other force. I assume she got typically bad advice from someone that she needed to distance herself specifically from the tactics of the few, rather than showing the good judgment of just keeping her mouth shut on the Occupy movement and push forward on the bank transfer themes. Watch any politician on TV, young sister, and they will teach the value of keep stepping rather than sewing dissension on irrelevant side issues.

Nonetheless, this is all good, and in fact needs to continue to be a major push by way more people. Banks and all of the Homeland Security mess that attends the opening and closing of accounts do not make it easy to move money from place to place, so in fact the effort to continue to “green line” these big banks and consumer rip-off artists must continue to build to continue to divest their ridiculous coffers and subsidize their management bonuses and Wall Street level salaries.

This is part of what it means to build “citizen wealth” in our communities. This is not simply a protest effort, but it is the way that lots of individuals and families can create their own “community reinvestment” initiatives to return money to work in their communities rather than simply piling up on the balance sheets of the huge, bailed out “ghost” banks with their inflated portfolios and their refusals to loan and extend real credit to help pull the country out of the great recession.

If 1 million means $4.5 billion out and $45 billion for our communities, then why not 10 millions to move $45 billion out and $450 billion into our communities to create livelihoods and better, more vibrant cities for all of our families?

The Assault on Citizen Wealth Entitlements

dine — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 18:23:00 +0000

New Orleans No matter how jaded we have all become about the cynicism of political experience and the hijacking of popular government, regardless of the party and people in power, by the interests of the rich and the corporations, it is still shocking to see the mean-spirited erosion of consensus that in the richest country in the world there should be at least some semblance of care and concern for the less well off in our society. The emerging multi-party détente on the need to cripple the last of the entitlements around Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security goes is a concerted effort to flatly impoverish both communities and entire populations.

This wave of attack on citizen wealth or income security is not simply a matter of Texas governor Rick Perry being a flame throwing crazy man arguing that Social Security is a “Ponzi scheme.” The fact that he could even hurl such a stink bomb calculating that it would move his base is undoubtedly a shrewd calculation that the last shred of “compassionate conservativism” is gone. Exposing Perry as whack and a con artist, will not rebuild the consensus, given that the economic debate has now become stuck on the issue of debt period.

The debt attack is a scorched earth strategy by the right designed to obscure that is being burned in the name of saving some fancy houses in another block that are already getting all of the goods, services, and tax breaks. The strategy is cynical because it focuses on the least organized constituencies politically and therefore the powerless. Subsidies for the military, financial institutions, oil companies, and many others can still roar on, while poorer and older people will be impoverished and in some cases given the death sentence.

It is scary to think that millions will only be saved by the right’s overreaching and extremism. Social Security may be cordoned off, while medical and feeding programs are eviscerated. There may not be a bait-and-switch on emergency aid for communities as some of the Republicans were arguing, but that does not mean that there will not be pain and suffering for others.

The organizational and oppositional vacuum that exists at the street level rather than the internet assaults is devastating. At what point do we come together with a new plan? Before it’s too late!

Citizen Wealth Takes Recession Beating

dine — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 13:47:38 +0000

New Orleans I knew it was coming, but I had crossed my fingers and hoped that it would not be so devastating. Unfortunately the numbers are in and minorities especially have taken devastating downturns in their citizen wealth or basic assets during the recession pushing previous progress back a generation.

According to a recently released Pew report based on the 2010 U.S. Census net worth for families fell as follows:

Hispanics -66% $18359 /05 $6235/09
Asians -54% $168103/05 $78066/09
African-Americans -53% $12124/05 $5677/09
Whites -16% $134992/05 $113149/09
All -28% $96894/05 $70000/09

Part of the reason this economic beat down was not surprising, as I detailed in Citizen Wealth: Winning the Campaign to Save Working Families is that so much of low-to-moderate income wealth has been tilted to home ownership by government policy and personal practice. With foreclosures soaring and values cratering in community after community for millions of homeowners, especially newer homeowners, losing a house was an asset knockdown. The one-two punch of losing a house and job was an out for the count knockout!

Throw some more ringers into the ring like credit card and educational debt, and it is easy why families are on the mat. At this point the family or household citizen wealth is less than the value of a half-decent used car for Hispanics and African-Americans, and it’s a car with 80000 miles on the engine!

Make no mistake. This is not only an economic catastrophe, but a huge political problem for President Obama and the Democratic Party. People going to vote next year notice when they hardly have car fare and lost between a quarter and two-thirds of their money in the short space of 4 or 5 years. That’s not a feel good, “hopey” dopey moment for folks who are depressed when they go to pull the lever.

If the time for a change isn’t now, and I mean right now, then it is going to be hard to resist change in November 2012.

Coming Republican Governors’ Crisis on Unemployment and Benefits

dine — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 14:54:11 +0000

New Orleans When governments do not support full access to the programs that support citizen wealth, the entire community suffers and pays the price, not just the family.

Michael Siemienas, speaking for SuperValu (owner of Save-A-Lot which is only a couple of blocks from my house) hit on this point in a Times’ piece saying on the coming crisis in the collapse of benefit payments to the unemployed, that “Regardless of why people have less money to spend, it affects all retailers in all industries.” Wayne Vroman, and economist at the Urban Institute, hit the nail on the head even harder in the same article estimating that every $1 paid in unemployment benefits generated $2 in economic benefits. Furthermore, as I documented in my book, Citizen Wealth, money received in such benefit payments invariably stays in the local community where the unemployed live, making the payments targeted in ways that have a multiple impact.

In short whether you have a job or not, you need to care if all of a sudden your neighbors are getting the back of a hand on their benefits, rather than a hand up from them. Congress has now approved a final extension of jobless benefits which terminate at the end of this year. Tragically the number of people receiving the benefits vastly exceeds the level of job growth, so no matter what the right might pretend, there simply are not enough jobs out there to allow everyone who needs and wants to work to in fact find work.

In Florida the Times’ Motoko Rich notes that 476,000 people are collecting unemployment and only 11, 200 jobs were added last year. In Michigan he notes that 40,000 jobs have come on line since over the last 12 months or so, but 267,000 are collecting benefits.

Note this well, almost 20% of personal income in the USA is coming from government payments of one sort or another, including unemployment payments, adding up to $2.3 trillion in 2010, an increase of $600 billion over 2009. If you don’t think this recession is fricking horrendous, you are either insane or drug-addled!

Looking at the chart compiled from Bureau of Labor Statistics and other sources, it was amazing to see that the states where benefit payments are the largest percentage of personal income for the citizens, ranging from 21.2 % to 28% at the top, how many of those states have Republican governors, yet they are oblivious about biting the hands that feed them and the hands stretched out for help. Look at this:

West Virginia 28.0 Democrat

Mississippi 26.2 Republican

Kentucky 24.8 Democrat

Arkansas 24.5 Republican

Maine 23.8 Republican

South Carolina 23.4 Republican

Alabama 23.4 Republican

Michigan 23.2 Republican

New Mexico 22.7 Republican

Ohio 22.0 Republican

Tennessee 21.8 Republican

Arizona 21.2 Republican

So of the top 12 states depending for the citizens’ lifeblood on government payments to their people, 10 of them are governed now by Republicans!

Either the Republicans and the right are going to have to strap up and make unemployment and the whole package a major part of their program, or this recession will start sinking a lot of ships in a lot of states.

Banks Silently Step up on Remittances

dine — Thu, 26 May 2011 13:19:28 +0000

Atlanta On ACORN International’s Remittance Justice Campaign (www.remittancejustice.org) we have had difficulty getting any response from the big banks except in the most cursory terms. Wells Fargo did finally reply and told us they were doing great within a small footprint of countries. Bank of America and JP Morgan/Chase were stone silent. Not surprisingly given the predatory nature of their pricing.

A story broke yesterday on the wire and NPR which might more clearly indicate that the big boys can actually hear the footprints coming up behind them even as they stick to stonefaced spinning. These three banks got together on something called ClearXchange in order to try and retain some of their customers exhausted with the constant fee rip-offs and increasingly inventing other alternatives including hand-to-hand transfers through prepaid debit cards within families or utilization of the PayPal if folks are sophisticated.

Frankly, this is a Band-Aid the banks are applying when a tourniquet is called for. They may keep a couple of their more inept and lazy customers, but folks are leaving this train station and demanding other tools that reflect modern technology, rather than ancient and pervasive greed.

The NPR report seemed to hint that Google was talking about moving into the space of money transfer utilizing phones and mobile devices. Talking about “doing good” or something like that which used to be their motto, I could fall in love again! I couldn’t track down the whole story on a Google search (sounds contradictory doesn’t it?) but I did find that it has been possible to move money between various Google accounts fairly seamlessly using something called Google Checkout for the last two or three years. Obviously not widely recognized or publicized, but they could also be knocking on the right door.

In Citizen Wealth I argued that companies, even big bad boys like Wal-Mart and H&R Block could create business models with huge returns by delivering service that low-to-moderate income families need and demand. Money transfer of remittances is precisely the service that will see the game change fundamentally in a short time. The banks and credit unions are trying to hold on to old models that are predatory and not realizing that you can’t leave $22 billion in profits out there and not have other, easier and cheaper services eventually suck them dry.

It’s past time for remittance justice.

Karla Lara, Valle de Angeles, and Informal Worker Unions

dine — Sun, 22 May 2011 13:44:56 +0000

Tegucigalpa The highlight reel of this year’s annual meeting of ACORN International’s board and staff is rolling out now. The Mexican and San Pedro Sula delegation were on a morning bus Saturday for the journeys home. At 4 AM I saw off the first five from ACORN Canada heading for their 24 hour journey home. A universal assessment from one and all was “bueno reunion!”

Saturday was the wind down day. Dilica Zavala, ACORN International’s organizer in Tegucigalpa thought the folks might enjoy a short trip to an old colonial village 30 kilometers up the mountain, Valle de Angeles, where we ate pupusas in the rain and any interest in souvenirs could be easily handled.

Mildred Edmond, Local 100 United Labor Union’s president, sat next to me in the van and told me that “I couldn’t even imagine how much the meeting and the visit meant to her,” and I felt like she was speaking for me and probably everyone there!

I thought of this often the night before at Cinefilia, a mutli-purpose bar, restaurant, video rental, and meeting space popular with the resistance crowd. For an hour I had enjoyed sitting on the window sill listening to the great Honduran singer, Karla Lara, sing South American protest songs and romantic ballads. Her voice was full, robust and gorgeous as she swayed to her songs. The power of the singing and music was fascinating because it transcended language itself. I could fall bits and pieces of the verses, but eventually would almost not try and instead just connect to the power and passion of the singer, the singing, and the music itself. Several times Karla Lara dedicated individual songs to me and to ACORN International’s staff and leaders, which was humbling. Karla was a singer from the feminist wing of the popular resistance to the golpe de estado. I had googled her later and she had toured Europe and the USA to build support for the resistance through her song. I was sorry so many of our team were outside chatting and missed some of the dedications. I was proud of Dilcia for having been able to convince Karla to sing for us. I could imagine some of these songs as background for the documentary that Toronto filmmaker Nick Taylor traveling with us this week for his “Citizen Wealth” film. It was a great time.

The last session was a make up event at the end of the day where we discussed the essay I had written in Social Policy (www.socialpolicy.org) on the “Maharashtra Model of Informal Worker Organizing.” For an hour and half we quietly talked about Local 100′s experience with these kinds of workers and organizations and how various initiatives and legal opportunities might evolve in Canada to allow us to pilot some of these programs. It was hard not to feel excited at the prospects even as momentous as the obstacles to success seemed.

Every meeting is always defined by how the meeting is defined later, and this one has set the stage for great work in the future. It was hard not to be both exhausted and hopeful!

Domestic Workers Pushback as Citizen Wealth Advances

dine — Sat, 21 May 2011 13:45:01 +0000

Tegucigalpa What are the odds that as we talk about achieving living wages and income security as a central theme of Citizen Wealth that in successive days there are surprising stories of domestic workers winning or holding on to higher wages in both Brazil and Saudi Arabia?

Admittedly, it is hard to organize a parade when the real story in Brazil in the Times was kind of a “man bites dog” thing about a likely very small group of higher end nannies that had managed through additional classes and courses to force their way into the middle class working for high end Brazilian professional women. One talked about a “nanny mafia” holding the line on higher wages, which can only be described as a dream we all have the domestic workers would unite so effectively that they could demand higher wages through their solidarity.

The Philippines government with 1.2 million domestic workers in Saudi Arabia made news by indicating it would refuse to allow its citizens to work in that country if they reduced the minimum wage by 50% as they had proposed doing recently. More countries should stand up for their migrant workers around remittances in the same fashion if they cared about their own citizen wealth and that of their citizens.

All of this was on our minds as we spoke about the themes of Citizen Wealth in Tegucigalpa at the Cinefilia and told the stories of winning living wages in India, Canada, and the United States. The discussion on salario minimal in Honduras was lively in the same way. It was exciting to be able to announce that Citizen Wealth has just been translated into Spanish and soon we will be able to offer it more widely to our hermanos and hermanas in Latin America in a more accessible way.

Workers and Expats Both Hungry for News and Change

dine — Sun, 20 Feb 2011 14:53:51 +0000

San Miguel de Allede The two groups that assembled to hear me speak about Citizen Wealth and ACORN International’s organizing and campaigns at the Workers University of Mexico (Universidad Obrera de Mexico) less than a kilometer from the Zocalo in Mexico City and then last night in the patio of the Center for Global Justice in San Miguel could not have been more different. The crowd at UOM included ACORN Mexico leaders and dozens of old labor activists grizzled from decades of debate and struggle in the plants and streets who were looking for ways to do some things different, while the 50 folks that packed into the patio were largely expatriates from all over the USA and Canada with stories of Minnesota, Winnepeg, Vermont, and Hamilton who were trying to put their arms around a lifetime of liberalism and sometimes long, hard activism finding it difficult to believe the new world of division and conservative clawbacks in both countries could possibly be real.

Had both of these presentations and all of these people been thrown in the same bag and jostled together the lack of connections with each other, the divisions of experience, language, analysis, and wealth would have been stark and unsettling to both. But, amazingly, standing at the point of their questions and feeling the huge good will and earnest searching from both crowds made me feel there was a powerful spirit of unfathomable and resilient hope that still ran deeply through both of them. There was disappointment. There was recognition in each of these crowds that they still wanted to believe that there were miles to be run in the race and victory was still possible, though we were skeptical when we looked at the facts. Many battles had been won which sustained everyone, but there was a feeling that the war was somehow being lost.

The difference in both of these frankly, older crowds was passion. At the UOM during the questions occasionally someone would stand and talk about the need to continue to push for justice in Honduras. Many were starkly critical of the United States and its policies in dealing with Mexico. There was a lot of love, but no sugar in the coffee. Anger beat deeply in the breast of many of these old warriors.

At San Miguel curiosity, commitment, good feeling, strong support, all of these were there in full measure. One after another from Vancouver or Toronto or Texas would come up and tell me their stories and wish me well and good luck with heartfelt thanks. A man from Houston told of working with Orell Fitzsimmons of Local 100 there and feeding him information in the on-going fight to hold ARA Services accountable within the school district food service. Anne Lewis introduced herself to me and told me her son, Chris, who had been ACORN’s legislative whiz in DC on tough fights around housing for several years, had “ordered her” to attend giving me a chance to personally thank her for her late husband’s behind the scenes help and the tremendous job Chris had done. An architect, Bill Peters, who had volunteered for ACORN in the early 70′s while dating one of our staff came by having sent the local notice, just to say hello and lend support. A couple from Winnipeg put the hard sell on me about the need for ACORN to organize in Winnipeg and wouldn’t take “no” and later for an answer, even when I played the “Judy Duncan is from the Peg” trump card. A couple from Vancouver wanted to know exactly where we were organizing there and what they could do to help. It was moving. It was rewarding. I can hardly wait to come back to San Miguel, but the passion and anger was not there when most of these new and old friends talked about the countries where they still had other homes, family, friends, and past lives.

It turns out that I’m just the guy to call on to “fill a patio” for you, but I’m hardly the “good humor ice cream man.” Nonetheless, I found myself feeling obligated to try and remind both audiences why there was hope and why it was so essential to keep pushing forward. In San Miguel I quoted Eugene Debs that “victory was as inevitable as the rising of the sun.” I wanted my friends in San Miguel to keep their sense of humor and the huge assets of their open hands and warm hearts ready and able to help.

By the end of the evening, I had convinced myself that in the smallness of the world and its vast interconnectedness perhaps there were bridges to be built that could unite so many around the globe in moving for change. I crossed my fingers that I had left some hope and commitment with folks on this journey.

Unions Stepping Up in Wisconsin, Egypt, and Around the World

dine — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 15:36:26 +0000

Mexico City This evening I speak at the Workers’ University of Mexico (Universidad Obrera de Mexico) about my book, Citizen Wealth: Winning the Campaign for Working Families. It will be hard not to make the point about unions, even weakened and beleaguered, and the vital role they are playing around the world in standing up for not only workers but progressive social movements and programs for the poor.

In Egypt part of the story finally bursting through the popular high-tech Facebook narrative is the role of workers and their unions that struck repeatedly across the country to force the military and government’s hands. Partially it cannot be ignored because the strikes and worker protests continued unabated throughout the week since President Mubark finally stepped down. Reports linked to the AFL-CIO’s Solidarity Center operation indicate the strong role played in developing infrastructure and capacity. A critical driver here is the union demands to build an independent formation launched earlier this year as an alternative to the state connected labor federation. This is huge! The real lesson in Egypt may be the power that is built and unleashed when a social change movement is linked so concretely with the labor movement.

In Wisconsin the state AFL-CIO, individual unions, students, and others have mobilized reportedly up to 35,000 to protest the new Republican governor and the Republican legislative majority attempt to eviscerate collective bargaining protections for public employees and teachers. There has been a three-day sit-in at the Capitol. The Governor in best-Mubarak style has stated that he will wait out the protests in order to work his will claiming that the state’s fiscal crises driven by the on-going recession gives him no choice. The test will be whether or not this is simply organized “engineering” or the birth of a new understanding and movement to resit anti-worker anti-people legislation in the United States that is now erupting coast to coast.

In Britian as the new conservative government announces a wholesale slashing of the existing welfare program for the unemployed and poor, the loudest opposition and the clearest voice also seems to be labor, understanding that the unemployed victims are not to be blamed, when the economy is not producing the jobs. There is no real sign of a permanent and powerful coalition being built in the UK, but the ruling government may force the time for this idea to have to come.

For all of the rocks thrown at the house of labor and the continued questioning of whether or not it has a heart to go with its hands, events bursting out every day in headlines and back stories around the globe, underscore the critical role that workers and their organizations play in both creating change and defending against repression and reaction everywhere. That is another lesson being relearned today that should not be ignored.

“We know the way to Tahrir Square.”

dine — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 14:32:48 +0000

San Pedro Sula Landing in Honduras I felt lost in a dark seam of time. No blackberries were working. The news was trailing the heat and humidity of the city. Finally able to connect in mid-afternoon, it appeared Mubarak’s last play had been trumped on the street, and he was gone.

Speaking that night to twenty young activists about Citizen Wealth and ACORN International and our work supporting ACORN Honduras, I asked how many were on Twitter. Answer: One. I asked how many were on Facebook? Answer: All! I asked how many knew the news from Cairo. A couple of hands were raised. This was a touchy subject. Many of these young men and women had been vitally involved in demonstrating and protesting the coup that pushed out an elected president in Honduras less than two years ago. They were veterans of a failed effort and dispirited despite their energy and commitment.

Their questions wee the right ones? Mubarak is gone? The Army is in. We’ve been there, done that, what’s going to happen their next?

It seems trite and romantic to simply answer, it’s in the hands of the Egyptian people now, but I think that’s actually the right answer. The U.S. State Department may always be willing to settle for stability rather than support democratic struggle whether in Honduras then or Egypt now, as they juggle expediency over principle, but as we see over and over again, the people united can not be defeated.

One of the organizers quoted a few days ago in the paper when asked the same question answered along the lines, that he didn’t care if a “monkey” was “president” as long as it was a “government of institutions.” I cringed at that, though I understood the hyperbole. The military is a huge and powerful institution. Kicking out a dictator and substituting the military, despite the fact that it is a respected institution, supposedly, in Egypt doesn’t seem like a good trade.

An organizer quoted today named Ahmed Sleem, when asked about various future scenarios including army control, answered in a slogan I hope is picked up everywhere: “We know the way to Tahrir Square.”

What has now been won on the streets, can be enforced on the streets. The future is in the hands of the people now.