Jerry Brown On Changing the System
When you measure the discontent of the public, the cynicism,
the crisis of confidence, the changing priorities over the last 15 years,
you find a major shift in the relative priority of schools and prisons to
the detriment of learning, brought about by a one-third reduction in spending
for higher education and a increase of 500% in the percentage of state spending
that goes to prisons.
There are real threats to our well being by changes in the marketplace,
devastating effects on the environment, the growing gap between rich and
poor, and the continuing and increasing racial and ethnic separation.
We need to move to a system of proportional representation so that the diversity
of the population can be represented. It certainly can't be represented
by the two-party system, not when you have such incredible differences in
philosophy, in background, in world outlook. That has to show up if it's
going to be honestly represented. In a proportional system, the Greens could
get 5 or 10 or 15 percent or more, and the right to life party, conservative,
liberal, radical, etc. would be heard. Instead of the winner-take-all, two-party
system, where a person wins by say 51 percent, in proportional representation
that person doesn't get 100% of the vote but gets just that percent that
they win by. There would be a very close calibration within the chambers
of government of the actual sentiment of the people. The electorate-that
is, the people who go in and vote-are a very different kind of people from
the population at large, because people of color, people of lower income,
people that are not as advantaged, tend to vote much less. That could easily
be changed by mandatory voting or some other way of making sure that everyone
is able to cast a vote.
We have this image of democracy in this country, but we don't have a great
debate like in the Federalist period as to what charter of power we wish
to grant to the United States-a charter that could be emulated by states-to
deal with the prison system, the education system, the way the environment
is impacted, and most important of all, the corporate structure- the real
source of power today. The issue of re-allocating power, increasing accountability,
has to focus on the power of corporations, whose power is derived from the
charter granted by the states to accumulate power and capital, which is
then the basis for owning the media, providing the employment, controlling
people's lives, affecting communities either to prosper or decline. That
structure needs to be examined. The main engine of control, the corporate
structure itself, depends on legislative enactments at the state level.
It could also be at the federal level, but that isn't even being discussed.
We have to take the next few years to re-examine the basis of how we want
to be governed. Corporations govern us the way they govern themselves-hierarchically,
autocratically, secretly, along the single criterion of maximizing shareholder
values. There's nothing to stop California or New York or any other state
or the federal government from demanding that corporations serve the environment,
the community, the principle of equality, and family values as well as shareholder
values. But such legislative or congressional enactment isn't on the agenda.
Is there a way that we can actually change the system of representation
so that it represents the nuance, the diversity which we each feel in our
own individual lives and in our community? The government is so constrained
within the two-party hustle, the winner-take-all system, that the Green
Party or the Peace and Freedom Party or any other party can't have representation.
By a simple structural change we could get to a coalition government where
people could come to the table who are now cynical, alienated, and eventually
will express their frustration in the rage and explosion that comes from
being long denied their rights.
Democracy is not just a spectator sport. We've got to go back to the basics-mature,
intelligent, free people taking power into their own hands. People of means
and power are scared to death that new forces-feminists, African Americans,
Latinos, environmentalists-are assaulting their hegemony. Their counterattack
is to stomp out, stifle, smother these new initiatives. That's the cultural
war that Pat Buchanan was talking about. I say, join the combat, join the
war, respond!
The new president of Haiti visited the White House and got the royal treatment.
He promised to privatize faster, take the bank away from the country of
Haiti and give it to private hands. What an incredible arrogance! Our own
system is rendering millions of people surplus, fit only for incarceration,
it is overseeing the rip-off of the environment, yet through the World Bank,
through our foreign policy, we go to a place like Haiti and say, "If
you don't privatize and embrace the market system which is undermining our
own country, we're not going to give you any money; we're going to put pressure
on you; we're going to isolate you diplomatically; and we're going to squeeze
your credit." We have to wake up from the self-induced delusion that
the market is going to make everything great because it makes tools and
cars and digital TV and all the rest. The welfare issue, the crime issue,
the breakdown of the family-that's all connected! Unless we can change the
rules, we're not going to get the freedom, the liberty, and the creativity
of a free society, which is the birthright of every human being.
The present game doesn't work. Farmworkers in California of Mexican background
are picking the food, doing the work that makes it possible for the people
in America to eat fresh fruits and vegetables, about two-thirds of which
come from California. These products get there by the hands, the sweat,
the labor, the commitment, and the fidelity of people who also serve as
the scapegoats of politicians like Governor Wilson, who claim that we are
being overwhelmed by people coming across the border. The truth is that
farmers in California are employing illegal people who don't have a proper
citizenship, green card, or other authorization because they can be exploited,
can be pushed around. If millions of people in Mexico are driven off the
farms by mechanization, by growth in population, and are pushed up across
the border into Arizona and California and Texas in large numbers and don't
have unions, don't speak the language, they will work for $4.25, sometimes
$5 or $6 an hour, sometimes less, sometimes without any benefits, and often
under very dangerous circumstances. In one incident a couple of workers
were electrocuted as one of the irrigation pipes they were lifting into
place touched a high tension wire. No one was penalized, no one was punished.
This is an inhuman use of human beings because of the coincidence of two
countries, two languages, a desperate need to work, and such a surplus of
people. The question is: Can these people join in the community and have
their wives and kids be a part of the society and look forward to a stable
future and real opportunity? Or are they speaking another language, separated,
apart, and therefore we get this apartheid?
The money trail explains how it all happens. Farmers have given over a million
dollars to Pete Wilson and his campaigns in the last four or five years.
Millions more have come from other employers of illegal workers, and in
terms of fines for these criminal violations, there are only slaps on the
wrist, pennies on the dollar. Because of the money, nothing is really done.
So a conservative, right-wing, selfish establishment, who go to the same
country clubs, belong to the same political party, support the same governor
and legislators and candidates, and are biased toward the stranger, are
supporting efforts to weaken the law. How? Number one, Wilson cut back on
inspectors, so you can't find out if there's anything wrong. These same
interests and their political handmaidens fight against any kind of serious
fines, any kind of heavy enforcement. Instead, they call for securing the
border, doubling the INS there, hiring more border guards, installing infrared
cameras, bringing in helicopters. They want a police state along the border.
These people-and Clinton is in this crowd-are all the while making sure
that hundreds of thousands of people are brought into California and hired
by the campaign contributors of Pete Wilson and other politicians, both
Republicans and Democrats. This is a perfect hypocritical propaganda campaign.
They violate the law, they are criminals, but they blame the illegal, demand
more border guards, build up the police state, yet at the same time insure
that the undocumented people get through and are hired and when discovered,
which they very rarely are, the employer is never penalized. The undocumented
worker is put in a truck and sent back. His life is disrupted, he's treated
like dirt, all the while the people, you and I, eat the vegetables, the
broccoli, the lettuce.
In Mexico the standard of living, the wages, is much lower, an eighth or
a tenth of what it is here-if one can find work. In this country four or
five or six dollars an hour is not enough to support a family, though a
single migrant worker living in certain conditions can save money. The real
question is: Is it right that we depend on that kind of cheap labor for
our own food? Isn't it more moral, more just, that people who work under
those conditions achieve the same kind of money that people get who go to
an office or teach in a school or work in a factory?
People say, "Pay what the market can afford." The market is not
a person. The market is a system of rules. If we're going to say that wherever
we can get something made or done or produced-even with child labor or prison
labor, like in China, with little kids like in Pakistan or Bangladesh-we're
going to go out and grab it, then people competing in our own country will
have to reduce to the same level, or not compete at all. We're basically
being pushed to a level that is inconsistent with being in America because
Mexico or Pakistan or Spain has a different social structure, different
family structure. A lower wage there is a very different thing from a lower
wage in Fresno or Tulare, so to mix the two by this notion of free trade
is creating an injustice.
If you leave the market the way it is and depend on exports, then the market
says you've got to go to the lowest possible price, even if it means kids
and prisoners and 50¢-an-hour people somewhere out there. That is one
of the significant factors undermining the family and the social fabric
in our own country. Unless we can implement some modification or restrictions
on free trade or compensate people with some kind of income maintenance,
our two-tier society will get worse and we're not going to be safe. That
is not the highest and best arrangement from the point of view of any moral
philosopher in history.
The real challenge here is not to ignore the plight of a farmer who's caught
in the competitive bind, but rather to ask yourself what changes in the
rules of the marketplace are needed so that we can live with ourselves,
so we can live with justice? There's a reason why the Farm Bureau is giving
a million bucks to the Governor of California. You can be darn sure the
farmworkers aren't giving that kind of money. If they did, you'd have a
different situation. The market can't afford it? Wait a minute! The people
who gave Wilson millions and millions of dollars and then broke the law
to hire people illegally weren't waiting for the market; they were rigging
the market, and they add insult to injury when they point to the hordes
of people coming across the border and say how bad that is when they facilitate
the very policies that bring them here-cheap wages, a predatory marketplace,
and a race to the bottom in standards, environment, and working conditions.
That is wrong. That is no way to run a country, a community, a farm, or
relationships with our neighbors to the south.
The S.F. Chronicle said that by some estimates half of the 700,000 farmworkers
in California are undocumented. A Chronicle computer analysis of INS records
obtained through the Freedom of Information Act found that only 45 farm
operators or shippers or packers in California were fined in the last five
years for immigration violations, yet there are an estimated 350,000 illegals-rampant
criminality linked to campaign donations.
The new anti-terrorist bill will make it very easy for the FBI and the government
to infiltrate any migrant group that wants to organize. Now the crossing
of a border or the destruction of a stop sign can designate you as a terrorist,
and trigger all sorts of infiltration, wire-tapping, deportation under special
kangaroo-type proceedings, and all the rest. The anti-terrorist bill is
another response to the failure to deal with this problem.
Meanwhile, the economics is such that the majority of people are not seeing
real gain. The top 20% have been doing quite well, the top 10% have been
doing extraordinarily well, and as you move up toward that rarefied small
minority at the very top, you witness the greatest redistribution of wealth
in my lifetime. This kind of current status quo society is on the brink
of real chaos, real eruption, and moral despair.
The dream of America is on the cusp of change and you and I can do something
about it only if we understand and diagnose the ills, the cancers, the social
pathologies that are affecting us. The utter absurdity of the lack of choice
in a two-party system will pave the way to real choice. The choice is being
generated by discussion in the neighborhood, in the streets, and over the
Internet. In order to prop up the system, you need a sense that it's working,
that if you vote it makes a significant difference. More and more of us
don't perceive any difference.
Material for this article was excerpted and edited by Doret Kollerer,
with permission, from Jerry Brown's "We The People" radio broadcasts.
Jerry Brown broadcasts live on non-commercial radio FM(Pacific Standard
Time: 4-5 p.m., M-F, KPFA, Berkeley, 94.1, & KFCF, Central Valley, 88.1;
Eastern Standard Time:7-8 p.m., New York, WBAI, 99.5). Contact "We
The People" in Oakland, 1-800-426-1112, or 200 Harrison St., Oakland,
CA 94607 for more information or to join We The People.