My Address to Wall Street: Help Us Fuck Up Staatsfuhrer Rick Scott

Note: If allowed to speak in St. Petersburg or Tampa, proposed occupation zones near Bank of America locations, this is the speech I forwarded to the organization. It's probably not pretty enough a picture, but we're not living in paintings; we're living in digital representations.

"The extent to which the propaganda machinery of a country has been brought under the control of one organization or a group of related organizations is a useful measure of the degree to which absolutism dominates it, of the extent to which democracy has been eliminated." -- New York Times' analysis of Nazi propaganda circa 1937

All of us, right now, are living in what I call the Orwellian shift. We're going from a soft to a hard tyranny, and we're going there fast. The high-speed train to economic fascism is the ownership of the United States government, not to mention the State of Florida government, by corporations like the one before which we stand today: Bank of America, which received $25 billion dollars of our tax dollars and another $100 billion in loan guarantees. And how did it repay us? According to the Huffington Post, "Three days after receiving $25 billion in federal bailout funds, Bank of America Corp. hosted a conference call with conservative activists and business officials to organize opposition to the U.S. labor community's top legislative priority." That bill was the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA). The bill would have simply "allowed workers to form a union either by holding a traditional election or having a majority of employees sign written forms."

And Bank of America cheated its customers again and again and again. Bank of America has been sued over and over again and lost plenty of those lawsuits. They've been charged with delaying transactions to create so-called late fees until a $20 fine turns into a $100 debt before you take your next trip to the ATM. But it's nothing new. Consumer Affairs reported that in 2004, "A San Francisco jury found that Bank of America illegally raided the Social Security benefits of a million customers and awarded damages that could exceed $1 billion."

Bank of America is one wheel on America's death train. There's a thousand others, each bearing a corporate logo. Meanwhile, throughout the Wall Street occupation, the police act as if in service to a U.S. banana fascist government. Many of us fall under the label of surplus labor. We're no longer considered citizens but units of production. We're no longer citizens of a democracy if we ever were; the government now acts as a subsidiary of a corporatist state.

To drive this message home, consider these words spoken many years ago: "Those of us who had interests in private undertakings were excluded from the control of public affairs -- and the simple act of owning shares in a private company would be enough." Guess who spoke those words? Adolf Hitler. The U.S. government is itself ethically substandard to Nazi Germany. Surprised? Why? Great-Grandpa Bush and plenty of other corporatists invested in Nazi Germany. Think about that next time you step in a Ford.

And yet, how many times do we hear from the lips of a government man that we must take personal responsibility for the financial disasters that strike us again and again while politicians and their owners and puppeteers take none? They do it all in the name of America's one true religion: capitalism.

What got us here? Politicians have always been purchased in the United States, but from the mid-20th Century onward we have witnessed a massive acceleration of this process. We might do better to simply place political candidates on the stock exchange.

Who can stop this butchery of whatever shards of democracy remain? The Supreme Court ruled that campaign-finance control violates free speech. Yet the very same Supreme Court allows employers to terminate each and every one of you for absolutely anything you post online. Your employer can virtually stalk you off the clock at will.

Here in Florida, the Governor -- or should I say Staatsführer? -- Rick Scott just signed legislation making it easier for employers to fire employees "with cause," meaning, "See ya, and don't bother filing for unemployment."

I can't help but think again of the Third Reich every time I hear the mantra, "Watch what you post online." When I combine knowing anyone can be fired for anything they post online while politicians accept bribes under the banner of free speech, I say to everyone who doesn't need a job: You have no freedom of speech. You can't afford it. "You're lucky to have a job," right? You've heard it a thousand times. So watch what you post online!

We don't even have the freedom to walk Wall Street without being pepper sprayed. Whether protesting or simply passing by true protestors, you may be viciously attacked or ensnared by nets as if you're starring in an episode of Wild Kingdom. Do you think a single politician will stand up for you?

But I have freedom of speech right now because I have no job. I'm finishing my master's degree. I've published four novels. I have the ability to speak my mind without fear -- until, that is, I graduate and return to the job market. Then I know what's coming. It won't be a job. No one will tell me the reason I'm not hired.

"Hush, hush: It's constitutional anyway."

Yet even when we congregate in unprecedented numbers, in an unprecedented action, the media barely covers the event and, when it does, pays not one word to the mission or the message but only the spectacle of police brutality.

Yes, the spectacle, the spectacle: Spectacles everywhere, like Rome, to deceive and manipulate us. But it's not working anymore. They're coming down hard and they're going to come down harder. Just like Ford Motor Company financed the Nazis, Bank of America will finance a corporatist-fascist state. The Wall Street occupation likely triggered that Orwellian shift I mentioned. Who called fascism nothing but failed capitalism? Mussolini. Everywhere you look, it's fascism in the making.

We're going to have to buy our freedom collectively. We're going to have to purchase it with hard cash. We can no longer trust any existing party to protect a single one of our interests. A Democratic president bailed out Bank of America. A Democratic president skewered Social Security. At least I didn't vote for George W. Bush. And I don't see any reason to vote again, not when I know every candidate is playing pocket pool with his corporate overlords.

So let it all come spilling over the levee, just like it did in New Orleans, where a corporate army fired on U.S. citizens in a U.S. city and without official military authorization. That's the future. Let's see it all. Pull down the curtains, Mr. Wizard, we'll soon jackhammer your yellow brick road of gold out of existence. Goodbye, Oz: See you in the flames.