Fight the Establishment

So this is the were I bitch about corruption and such right? Well let me tell you all about a little something that I've been standing up against for years now.

I'll start with a quick mention of Tammany Hall. Tammany Hall was a political group in new your city. What would be called a good old boys network. They were the establishment of the Democratic party in the mid 1800's and under Boss Tweed they controlled they city with near mobster like precision. When people try to play the Republicans are the bad guys card Boss Tweed and Tammany Hall are the go to counter.

But Tammany Hall lost it's power and their grip over New York politics and were fully kicked out in the 30's by the New Deal you say. Sure they were but that does not mean there have not been other fraudulent democratic parties that have tried to control things since.

This brings me to my time 'Living here in Allentown.' Well the factories have already been all torn down and now they built an arena. An arena built on the backs of the tax payer. I first got involved with fighting the future PPL center hokey arena in Allentown PA near the very start, early 2011. Eminent Domain was being thrown about as a way to scare business owners into selling their property to the city. Meeting were held, citizens were outraged, and the city council did not care. Things are going to move forward they said. You can fight us or give n now either way you will lose.

Just the threat got all but one business to sell to the city right away. That one business that fought got more for their property then anyone else. Never give up the fight, even if you can't win.

Then came occupy. I didn't do it. I was never at a meeting at the beaver street building in New York, I didn't camp on Bloombergs lawn that summer, but I had heard that something was in the works. Our own Arab Spring. (An American Fall if you will) And when it hit I knew what was up. We were going to do what we had been doing for years. Protest income inequality, point to the banks (and the WTO, and the G8's & 20's) This was old hat for me. I had been doing these sorts of events for years. I didn't start with the big one in Seattle in 99but I had followed that and knew the ins and outs. This time however we were going to go to an old method of protest, seizing public land, and since no one understood us we were going to put away our black flags and ideologies. Sure Anarchism is about empowering the workers but so much propaganda against us over the last 150+ years had fooled people into thinking we really were the bomb throwing crazy people we had been framed as since the Haymarket Massacre.

I did not call the first Occupy Allentown protest but I was there the first day. I had read "How to cook a pacific revolution" the handbook created by those behind the Arab Spring. Take a global problem and find a local issue that involves it they said. That's why New York took the monetary issue right to the root, Wall Street. In Allentown someone else already called the first Occupy Allentown protest on the corner where they were taking peoples businesses away from them to build a tax payer funded arena.

Now I know what your saying right now, arenas are usually built by tax payers but Allentowns case is special. They set up a new law, the NIZ (Neighborhood Improvement Zone) that not only lets the arena get funded by tax dollars it also gives private developers that ability to take tax money and use it to pay off loans for new construction. Before the first day of Occupy I was already following the money. As Occupy was going strong I was in the streets with the news paper, often that days edition, running commentary on what was going on. Showing people who two people, J.B.Reilly and Joe Topper, who own 'City Center Development co.' had bought up much of area just before the law was signed by Pat Browne, J.B.'s old school chum. How the Lawyer who had been hired by Browne to draft the law was also J.B.'s personal lawyer. How Reilly and Topper had hired Browne's wife Heather to work as a lobbyist for them. How City Center was given a 20 million dollar tax payer backed loan to buy more property BEFORE THERE WAS A WAY TO APPLY FOR NIZ FUNDS. How when the NIZ area of 120 acres was mapped out if was not a simple rectangle but rather a complex form that jutted out here and there to include only certain buildings here, and odd block there. All properties owned by City Center.

And of course JB and Joe were the top donors to Allentown Mayor Ed Pawlowski. While Ed was not in charge of creating the NIZ zone he was the one who appointed the people to the comity that did draw up those borders.

For months I camped on the streets telling everyone who walked past about what was going on. I connected all the dots. I pointed out connections to then Montgomery county Democratic Party Chair Marcel Groen (Now Chair of the State party) I warned that the city was miscounting parking spaces (the city has now said there is not enough parking and has increased meter prices from $1 an hour to $2 and hour and extended paid parking hours from 6 to 10pm to encourage carpooling) I pointed to lists of names that had given money to the local Democratic Party only to end up with lucrative contracts. I showed how the Allentown hokey arena cost 3 times as much as any other minor league hokey arena.

When the police came are destroyed our camp, cutting tents open and breaking tent polls in half, claiming the camp was covered in piss and shit and that's why they had to throw our stuff in the dump, I was there leading chants against them. And I did not go away. I spent another year + holding rallies and going to city council meetings. I tried to save the water when they city, after giving away over a billion in tax payer backed loans, needed to make up lost revenue so they sold the public water supply. I fought Marcel Groen when he tried to put in an incinerator downtown that would have burned an experimental mix of feces and garbage. So experimental that it was given special status that would have let it break EPA emission guidelines as a "test"

Total from the time I first heard of the arena plans, through occupy, till I left after we lost the water (but we did stop the incinerator) I spent 3 years fighting city hall in Allentown. Fighting the Democratic party establishment. They say you can't fight city hall, well I did. I fought them long and hard. I had a lot of allies. Old political friends from my anti war days, new people mad as hell who joined occupy, clean water action, the sierra club, fellow union members (IWW 4 life) Some stayed for one or two campaigns, so were there for the long hall. Finally I left. I was to tired. I had watched too many battles get lost. The construction was in full swing, people had re-elected the same assholes I had warned them about. The very people who made fun of citizens when they came to council meetings. The money we were fighting was too much. I was suffering from protester burnout. It happens to us all. When your giving everything you have and your fighting against a system that just takes from those your trying to help to fund the fight against you... nothing is easy.

But then something happened. Something I never would have expected. The FBI had my back. No not with cross hairs (not just with cross hairs) they filed last year a corruption case against the mayors of Allentown and Reading. They raided city hall looking for documents pertaining to many of the people I had been pointing at. They have started charging people and getting guilty pleas, sending politicians to prison. The case is still early but it looks like a full blown RICO trial will happen soon. Right now they are still gathering, getting confessions from the weak links. But Mayor Pawlowski is going down. Once he was prepped to run for Governor, soon he will just be another perp walking up to a federal judge. Allentowns own Tammany Hall is falling.

I like to think the protests I helped organize had something to do with it. (or maybe those multiple calls to the state ethics hotline) but there is one thing I do know. Boss Tweed fell but Tammany Hall continued, albeit smaller and slower. It took the Democratic Socialism of FDR and the New Deal to really clean house. I know the Democratic party today is full of establishment politicians like Pawlowski. While the NIZ is being investigated three new cities in PA have been set up in similar fashion as CRIZ's (Community Revitalization and Improvement Zones) If we want to have a Left in this country, a real Left like the rest of the world has, then we need a new New Deal to clean out the establishment. We need to get rid of centrists like the Democratic Leadership Council (that later merged with the Clinton Foundation.) We need to elect people like Bernie Sanders, people like John Fetterman.

Only if we clean the Democratic party of these Tammany Hall types can we truly go back to having a democracy of the people.