My campaign for the office of Mayor of New York City is now in its third month. I am the Green Party nominee, and our 40 voice Life After Shopping Gospel Choir, is fervently faithful. Its as if our whole community is the candidate. We're singing and preaching all over town, and yesterday we campaigned in the train cars of the F Line, out to Jamaica, Queens and then back around to Coney Island by nightfall.
We've always preached that Consumerism is not the way to organize society. This is a panoramic critique, and so our project must focus down on certain battles. Over the years we've opposed retail sweatshop companies like Disney, and companies that aggress against local economies like Starbucks and Wal-Mart. In our film "What Would Jesus Buy?" we fight commercial Christmas, especially its impact on the capacity of wonder in our children.
Now our Demon Monoculture is the bubble economy of Wall Street that Mike Bloomberg champions. The crisis of New York City under the sway of our opponent - he of the $100 million campaign chest - is one of identity. Will New York City remain a city? Or will it become a gigantic suburb? That's a hell of a vote - but the choice really is that clear. The hyper-development financed by the big banks has invaded neighborhoods like they are Third World colonies. The luxury chain stores come with tax advantages and legal clout, so that in many neighborhoods the rising and fall real estate market makes the continuity that you need to raise a child simply impossible. Families can't plan their lives. Shops that have anchored neighborhoods for decades are evicted in a flash. Working artists live in outer Bushwick or Queens. Local manufacturing, local anything - is gone. Vast areas are hushed, cultural dead zones with doormen and idling limos, with no-one making less than $250,000 a year.
As for Bloomberg's try for a 3rd term, after two referendums in which New Yorkers decisively voted a 2 term limit, Bloomberg is acting like an American version of Vladimir Putin. Five months away from November 3, he has spent more than $20 billion. Bloomberg is selling one monolithic product, and he is taking the oxygen out of the air like a good marketing campaign should, and the name of his product is "Democracy." The campaign is killing the freedom that it uses as its label. His opponents can only hope for a free press, but the press is famously in crisis. As for our Green campaign, do we spend 3 years suing the Times for not mentioning 3rd party candidates or do we... what?
We campaigned for 8 hours one day on the F Train (one of the subway lines in our beloved-yet-underfunded mass transit system). The riders first appeared to be Bloombergian consumers - groggy, exhausted, consumed by the city. But Bloomberg's corruption is so famous that it is almost comic. And the preaching and singing in the subways was greeted with laughter, hand-shakes and good luck! At each subway station we ran from the doors and shifted over to the next car. There, a whole new group waited for their interruption. As the hours flew by, we felt the acuteness of the suppression of open political contact between our citizens. The 2 month wait for a permit to "peaceably gather" is where the police do Bloomberg's bidding. If the marketing takes the language out of the air, the cops hound any speaker's corner that might spring up in public space.
We were a step ahead of the police all that subway day. Maybe were lucky. But what an irony! We were fleeing the city to talk to its citizens... If I shouted "Neighborhoods already have the best economies!" - we would get the huzzahs of a political rally. It was breath-taking. How could such ordinary talk be so valued? And then - we sang our gospel version of the First Amendment.