Vermont: One Tiny State’s Movement to Ban Private Prisons

Vermont: One Tiny State’s Movement to Ban Private Prisons

Thursday, 24 January 2013 15:51 Jonathan Leavitt

Vermont, the most progressive state in America, spent over $14 million last year to lock up Vermonters in for profit prison like Lee Adjustment Center, located in Kentucky’s Daniel Boone National Forest. Private prisons like Correctional Corporation of America (CCA)'s Lee Adjustment Center offer no mental health, educational or rehabilitational services, but they do post massive corporate profits; CCA posted $1.7 billion in 2011 revenue alone. As best-selling author Michelle Alexander notes in her seminal book The New Jim Crow, more black men are under correctional control now than were enslaved in 1850. A recent New Yorker piece noted more Americans are now incarcerated than there were imprisoned in Stalin’s gulags. Clearly a dialogue about mass incarceration, budget crises, and privatization is unfolding. A group of Vermonters working out of Church basements and living rooms is attempting to build a movement to push this conversation forward by passing a historic law banning Vermont’s use of for-profit prisons.

Behind the Profitable Private Prison Wall

Between 2002 and 2003, according to the Rutland Herald, the number of prisoners in Vermont increased at "nearly five times the national average." The number of teenagers and young adults in Vermont jails surged by more than 77 percent. A racialized "get tough on crime" ideology, mandatory minimums, and harsher sentencing guidelines from the failed war on drugs left then Republican Vermont Governor Jim Douglas at a moment of departure: build new prisons, or start shipping Vermonters incarcerated under these controversial policies into the deep south to be warehoused without even the “rehabilitative” programs found in Vermont prisons.

According to Prison Legal News’ Matthew Clarke, CCA doubled the population of Lee Adjustment Center in three months in 2004 with a massive influx of some of the first Vermont prisoners housed in private prisons. These conditions and what State Senator James Leddy called a "rogue warden" led to an uprising at Lee Adjustment Center involving 100 inmates. The Louisville Currier Journal and The Times Argus detailed how those involved in the riot tore down fences, began “tearing apart” a wooden guard tower with a guard still inside and toppled the guard tower. In addition, fires “heavily damaged the administration building and guard shack.”

"The inmates literally had control of this place, the inner compound," said Adam Corliss, an inmate from Springfield, Vermont. A week and a half after the riot, the Montpelier Vermont daily The Times Argus printed an excerpt of a Vermont inmate’s letter home to his fiancé detailing the uprising: “Inmates chasing guards with 2x4s breaking everything in sight…It was so hostile that the S.W.A.T. team of guards came in, launching tear gas, armed with shotguns.”

When the Assistant Warden summoned the 20-person response team only three responded. Clarke details the precipitating conditions: racial and regional prejudices, overcrowding, poor nutrition, and CCA’s warden undertaking, “a zero-tolerance disciplinary crackdown that gave guards the ability to discipline prisoners without proof of misconduct and even put them in solitary confinement for 60 days without disciplinary charges.”

These conditions and the riot they produced happened in the first months of Vermont’s experiment with private prisons. Rather than serving as a cautionary tale about the hollowed-out services privatization provides, policymakers have since only increased the number of Vermonters housed in Lee Adjustment Center and other CCA prisons.

The Moral Consequences of Privatization

“I could write a book about violations [against Vermonters in private prisons],” says Frank Smith, of the Bluff City, Kansas-based Private Correction Working Group. “I visited Beattyville after the September 2004 riot and I have Open Records Act info on it. In Marion Adjustment Center (a CCA prison in St. Mary, Kentucky) there was sexual abuse by guards. CCA did very little to stop it or to help track down the offenders after they fled to avoid prosecution from MAC and the women's prison -also known as, the ‘rape factory’ – at Otter Creek, Kentucky.”

The same year of the Lee Adjustment Center uprising, The Vermont Guardian reported that Republican Governor Jim Douglas requested corporate bids for the healthcare for (what was then) 1,700 in-state prisoners. Douglas went with the lowest bidder, Prison Health Services, for $645 million over ten years, and Vermonters under their care started literally dying from inadequate care, including Ashley Ellis, a 23 year old woman serving a 30 day sentence.

Prison Health Services broke the contract, not due to concerns related to the deaths, but due to their projected profits never materializing. Prison Legal News editor Paul Wright was quoted by The Associated Press as saying Vermont "cannot contract out the public's fundamental right to know how their tax dollars are being spent and the quality of services the pubic is getting for its money."

Powerful Allies, Monolithic Opponents

According to a bombshell 2008 memo detailing the cost of Vermont’s for-profit prisons use, newly sworn in Vermont Auditor Doug Hoffer wrote, “Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) does not provide mental health services. […] CCA does not provide services related to sexual abuse, substance abuse, or violent offenders.” According to the memo there’s a laundry list of programing provided here in Vermont facilities which are conspicuously absent at the for-profit prisons. “DOC programs not available through CCA include the Cognitive Self Change program for violent offenders; the Intensive Domestic Abuse Program; Batterers Intervention Program; the Network Against Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Programs; and the Discover Program for those with substance abuse problems.”

Suzi Wizowaty, a Democratic Vermont State Representative from Burlington and lead sponsor of H.28 which states “As of July 1, 2013, all Vermont inmates shall be incarcerated in correctional facilities that are owned and operated by the federal, state, or local government (‘public’).“ Wizowaty, in explaining her bill, makes the case that in this time of austerity Vermonters wanting to use these public dollars responsibly means using public oversight. “The idea that private prisons save money is illusory and has been debunked, the most optimistic studies show that they are a-wash in spending, because there are higher rates of recidivism, less job training, therapy and programming. All we are doing is putting profits in the pockets in the prison corporations.”

Another elite schism which lends credence to Vermont's anti-privatization efforts comes from an unlikely place, Florida's Republican Party. Florida Republican State Senator Mike Fasano led a successful effort to stop the privatization of 27 prisons, saying, "We have a 10 percent-plus unemployment rate in the state of Florida, and the last thing we should be doing is moving prisons that were paid for by the taxpayers into the hands of corporations, that would probably put many of these families out of work, who have mortgages to pay, homeowner’s insurance to pay, food on the table. This would be devastating to—not only to their families, but also to the community they live in.”

One might assume that given these financial and moral arguments policy makers would be feel compelled to discontinue using private prisons, if only because risk-adverse state governments typically dislike courting law suits. However, the prison corporations Wizowaty and Hoffer have critiqued are Wall Street monoliths. CCA send a letter to 48 states, dangling hundreds of millions of dollars in front of the cash strapped, austerity budget-minded governors, if only those states will privatize their prisons for the next twenty years. And, oh yeah, one other tiny piece of fine print: the prisons must be kept at least 90% full for the duration of the contract. Seemingly, this would create a contractual incentive for states to enact harsher sentencing guidelines and policing procedures. Meanwhile as best-selling author and legal scholar Glenn Greenwald writes, “Since there is no well funded lobby advocating for penal reform or promoting the interests of prisoners, the prison lobby goes virtually unchallenged and can buy the ability to shape pertinent laws at bargain basement prices.”

The military refers to mission creep as “the expansion of a project or mission beyond its original goals.” Corporate prisons who only know how to maximize profits for shareholders have expanded their mission to incarcerating 50% of immigrants detained in the US. Perhaps unsurprisingly the number of immigrants detained has exploded during the same period. Which begs the question: to what degree can a $1.7 billion per year prison corporation like CCA shape public policy? As a December 2008 Boston Phoenix article details: “[private prisons] regularly lobby against criminal punishment reforms, and for the creation of new criminal statues and overly harsh prison sentences. While these efforts are cloaked as calls for public safety, they are essentially creating more business for themselves [...] CCA spent more than $2.7 million from 2006 through September 2008 on lobbying for stricter laws.”

Or, as CCA states in plainsong in its 2010 annual report: “Our growth is generally dependent upon our ability to obtain new contracts to develop and manage new corrections and detention facilities. This possible growth depends on a number of factors we cannot control, including crime rates and sentencing patterns in various jurisdictions and acceptance of privatization. The demand for our facilities and services could be adversely affected by the relaxation of enforcement efforts, leniency in conviction and sentencing practices or through decriminalization of certain activities that are currently proscribed by our criminal laws. For instance, any change with respect to drugs and controlled substances or illegal immigration could affect the number or persons arrested, convicted and sentenced, thereby potentially reducing demand for correctional facilities to house them."

The Primacy of Movement-Building

“It is absolutely essential that we raise the profile of this issue. We will not get anywhere without people calling their public officials, we will not get anywhere without that kind of organizing,” says Wizowaty. With that in mind, in a Burlington church basement this Martin Luther King Day, community organizers like Infinite Culcleasure began what they hope to be the first of many conversations about private prisons. “The grassroots component,” says Culcleasure, “is invaluable in overcoming the special interest and apathy that currently exists on this mass incarceration. With all of the competing crises for communities to manage, our greatest challenge in making this a watershed moment for prison reform is to make it a local issue that is directly relevant in people’s everyday lives.” With a network of 145 churches statewide interested in hosting similar conversations, it seems the tiny state of Vermonters are poised to bring forward a very different vision than corporate mass incarceration.

That said, the CCAs of the world are well-versed in utilizing their taxpayer dollars to leverage Vermont’s political elite: they helped finance former-Governor Douglas’ Inaugural Ball and donate to influential state senators’ re-elections. This is an industry which, as Glenn Greenwald notes in With Liberty and Justice for Some, has spent $3.3 million on state political parties and politicians in the 2002 and 2004 political cycles, according to a 2004 National Institute on Money In State Politics report.

Dick Sears, the influential state senator who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee that this bill will have to emerge from, has received more campaign donations from private prisons than any other policymaker in Vermont's Statehouse. CCA's annual reports assume that this rarified historical moment where The New Jim Crow is a bestseller, The House I Live In has won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, and Stop and Frisk has been declared unconstitutional won’t last forever. Certain social and political factors which prefigure a new social movement emerging are appearing: a loss of legitimacy in former institutions and attitudes, elite schisms, and unifying motivations. The question is one of organizing to scale. As with making health care a human right, decommissioning a failing nuclear power plant, and getting drivers’ licenses for migrant workers, if the Green Mountain State is to lead the country forward on the issue of private prisons, it will depend on Vermonters making good on their aspirations to build a statewide movement which will compel  VT senators such as Dick Sears to move this bill forward.

As the first of many Vermont church basement organizing conversations on private prisons unfolds, high schoolers hands are flashing in the air: "How is this moral?" "Why do corporations do this?" and in so many different ways "What can I do?" Infinite Culcleasure and Suzi Wizowaty have skillfully transfigured the church basement of teenagers into eager community organizers. Before the conversation reaches its midpoint the high schoolers are poised to bring this dialogue out into the larger community, to hold their elected officials accountable and draw Vermonters across the state together to share their stories and build a movement which can be a sufficient countervailing force to the influence of Wall Street's private prisons. Afterwards the interstitial space of the Church hallway is luminous with excitement; the Pastor offers Suzi and Infinite the opportunity for similar conversations about for-profit prisons in congregations around Vermont. Just down the corridor a new generation of organizers is sending so many social media appeals to shutter the Lee Adjustment Center, shutter CCA and to shutter the private prison industry. Their prescient questions haunt me as I walk out into the snow: "How is this moral?" "Why do corporations do this?" and in so many different ways "What can I do?"

Jonathan Leavitt a journalist, community organizer, and teaches college classes about social movements in Burlington, VT Email: jonathan.c.leavitt(at)gmail.com

"Sometimes it Takes a Calamity to Live in the Present": A Photo Essay of Quebec’s Student Strike

"Sometimes it Takes a Calamity to Live in the Present": A Photo Essay of Quebec’s Student Strike

Thursday, 12 July 2012 00:00 Jonathan Leavitt

Montreal's student strike, the longest in North American history, is inseparable from Quebec's larger history of struggle. The so-called "Maple Spring" is the 11th such strike in Quebec since 1968. This history of struggle and students' aspirational demand for free higher education as a human right has secured massive concessions from an oppositional government: the formation of the entire Universite du Quebec and UQAM system, increased higher educational access for Francophone and working class students, and a 22 year tuition freeze despite attempts at neo-liberal tuition hikes. 

In this context, when the Quebec Premier Jean Charest's Liberal government announced a 75% tuition raise in March of 2011, many predicted a grève générale illimitée (unlimited general strike) would result. When 20,000 students marched on Charest's Montreal office in November 2011, as part of a two day strike, it was but a precursor of the austerity-driven social crisis to come.

After a year of the Charest administration's refusal to negotiate with students, Classe (Coalition large de l'association pour une solidarité syndicale étudiante) had come to represent roughly 50% of the students on strike. Classe's "confrontational syndicalism" believes policy makers subservient to corporate interests are "by definition opposed to [students'] interests." Therefore the student coalition works to build "leverage through an escalation of pressure, in order to coerce our political antagonists into negotiations."

In the context of Charest's refusal to negotiate, Classe's political philosophy played out through a series of direct actions and major mobilizations during Quebec's Maple Spring: 36,000 students walked out of classes through clouds of SPVM (Montreal Police) pepper spray on February 17th. Three days later thousands of students blockaded the Jacques Cartier Bridge for twenty minutes, (a tactic utilized during a previous 2005 student strike), only be subjugated again by the SPVM and their pepper spray. In another confrontation on March 8th, 22-year-old Cégep student Francis Grenier's retina was detached by an SPVM stun grenade. On March 20^th, busloads of students closed down the Champlain Bridge. Two days later, in what would be the first of a monthly series of such mobilizations, a 50-block-long march of an estimated 400,000 people paralyzed Montreal's financial center.

By April, Charest was at the negotiating table, albeit offering a larger, 80% tuition increase over the course of seven rather than five years. Charest's government, in a quick succession of contentious moves, tried to exclude Classe from negotiations, break off the talks altogether, and suffer the resignation of Charest's Education Minister Line Beauchamp.

On the May 4th anniversary of the Kent State massacre, police crackdown on a protest in Victoriaville ended with a protester losing an eye, and another receiving a fractured skull from police officers' rubber bullets. In mid-May, Charest attempted to use riot police and court injunctions to break the strike, but few students crossed the picket lines; those that did had their classes disrupted so as to preserve the strike.

Charest then criminalized dissent by imposing controversial Special Law 78: amongst the law’s many provisions, the government imposed a face-saving labor-lockout of sorts, and will attempt to restart the semester in August. In addition, students could be fined up to $125,000, and student unions could be defunded for participating in protests – or even promoting them on Facebook. In the six days following the imposition of Law 78, support for Charest's proposed tuition increase dropped from 68% to 27%, and much of civil society poured into the streets to support the student strikers with the now iconic casseroles, where marchers parade down the city streets banging pots and pans.

<It is a student strike, and a popular struggle>

As with previous social movements, iconic graffiti prefigures the aspirations of Montreal's "unlimited student strike." Though it's made of concrete, the underpass walls marching north from Place Émilie-Gamelin on Rue Berri between Rue Ontario and Sherbrooke reverberates regularly with chants as nightly marches pass through it. Ten stories above, students regularly wave massive red flags from apartment windows. Nearby graffiti reads <Charest! You're fired! We'll get you a job in the north!> It's a reference to what the Globe and Mail referred to this as Charest's Marie Antoinette moment. In an April 20th keynote address, as police unleashed mass quantities of tear gas and truncheons in the streets, Jean Charest told a crowd of business elites at a Plan Nord "Salon," “We could offer the [student protesters] a job in the North, as far (north) as possible.”

So many playful transgressions such as this, Anarchopanda and many more, bring a level of theatricality and joie de vivre to the Maple Spring. This playful defiance and the police's inability to enforce Law 78 expose a regime with a rapidly-deflating mandate. In what has become the most prolonged civil disobedience in Canadian history, the multigenerational protests nightly chant: "Ta loi speciale, on s'en calisse!" (your special law, we don't give a #%$^).

<Law 78 = War>

May 27th: According to the outsized crowd which assembles nightly at Place Émilie-Gamelin, and now throughout the city in defiance of Law 78, Charest's criminalization of dissent was but one of many tone deaf missteps. The backfiring of his administration’s policies toward the activists can be measured by the increased and demographically diverse participation in the Maple Spring. As the graffiti on Avenue de l'Esplanade reads, "Sometimes it takes a calamity to live in the present."

Many in Montreal draw a direct correlation between their own student-led strike and the historic French student-led strike of May 1968, which destabilized the government of Charles De Gaulle. The lower May '68 poster, showing a silhouette of de Gaulle covering a youth's mouth with his hand, has been re-appropriated multiple times by Maple Spring student organizers.

May 31st: The Charest government broke off "negotiations" after a mere 22 hours and having – with a straight face – proposed an even larger tuition increase (an 80% increase over seven years instead of the already controversial 75% increase over five years). In response, the streets of Montreal were transformed into an open sea of carre rougeprotesters peacefully marching and occupying intersections of Montreal's downtown; another tone-deaf misstep by the embattled government, another swell in the social movement.

June 2nd: Following the overreach of Law 78, just as additional sectors of society have plugged into the social movement, demands from protesters have expanded from student debt to broader transformations of Quebec society. This in turn has caused other democratic aspirations to flower including a rejection of other neo-liberal projects such asPlan Nord and new health care user fees, a rejection of bank bailouts, protests against corruption, and demands that Charest step down.

These bartenders support the protest with a casserole and a cheeky sign reading: "just drown your anger." Throughout the nightly marches – in defiance of Law 78 – the potential for a larger social strike hovers over the city. This potential is evidenced not only by the casseroles and marches in many neighborhoods, but also through employees suspending work to join the protest. For brief periods of time business as usual is put on pause as employees transform the social space of restaurants, bars and construction sites into windows of what could be next for the Maple Spring.

The changed social fabric of the Maple Spring has brought a new ethos of solidarity to relationships between students. Concordia University's "People’s Potato" moved their free soup kitchen outside so students would have to cross the strike line to be fed. Many carre rouge protesters report a new found sense of community, a new found ability to dive into conversation with a stranger based solely on seeing the ubiquitous felt red square.

June 8th: The carre rouge protestors chant “Police are everywhere, justice is nowhere.” Gone is the relative calm which appeared after civil society poured into the streets with their now iconic pots and pans to reject not only controversial Law 78, but the largest mass arrest in Canadian history. This calm was shattered in early June by a flurry of batons and pepper spray clouds, as SPVM police turned Montreal into so many green and red zones during the publicly-financed spectacle of the Formula 1 car race. 

June 22nd: As with the 22nd of each month since March, June has seen seen "manifestacións" draw historic crowds to take to the streets around Quebec. Other sectors of Quebec society (workers, professors, seniors, families and more) participated in even larger degrees in simultaneous marches: 100,000 in Montreal and a record 5,000 to 10,000 in Quebec City. These ongoing mass mobilizations in conjunction with neighborhood assemblies highlight the potential of the student strike growing into a larger social strike.

Jonathan Leavitt is a community organizer and journalist, living and teaching college classes about social movements in Burlington, Vermont.

Greenwashing Right Wing Legal Activism: Lockheed Martin and Burlington Vermont

Printer Friendly Version

---

By Jonathan Leavitt

Friday, August 12, 2011

Originally published on Z Net

Change Text Size a- | A+

Would a Progressive Burlington, Vermont Mayor partner with the Koch brothers? Obviously not. Their well-heeled right wing legal activism has been condemned by liberal icons including Burlington's own Bernie Sanders, and anything they did in liberal Burlington would carry a heavy taint. Would the same Mayor partner with a corporation, which like the Koch brothers, defeats progressive change on a state and Federal level? Say that the corporation's work-a-day existence (instead of building Dixie Cups like the Koch brothers), is selling nuclear missiles and cluster bombs, propping up dictators, and doing detainee interrogation at Abu Ghrahib and Guantanamo. Say that the corporation, like the Koch brothers, was instrumental in the notorious Citizens United ruling, and two controversial Supreme Court decisions in recent weeks. Say one of the court cases was the dismissal of a sex-discrimination lawsuit, brought on behalf of 1.5 million women who have worked at Wal-Mart, which likely will drastically complicate the ability of disempowered victims to stand together in class action suits. The other suit, stopping six states from limiting emissions of greenhouse gases under federal common law. One of those six states being prevented from regulating climate change was the Mayor's home state, Vermont. Would Burlington's Progressive Mayor Bob Kiss, partner the City of Burlington with such a corporation? Apparently so.

Corporate Power Versus A Nation's Right to Regulate Climate Change

On June 20th, the US Supreme Court in American Electric Power Co, et al v. Connecticut, et al decided not to let 6 states -including Vermont- regulate the emissions of electric power companies, which the ruling defines several times as "the largest emitters of carbon dioxide in the nation." These corporations' "collective annual emissions of 650 million tons constitute 25 percent of emissions from the domestic electric power sector, 10 percent of emissions from all domestic human activities, and 2.5 percent of all anthropogenic emissions worldwide." As one environmental group stated about the case, "Despite having reasonable ways to reduce their emissions and ample knowledge of their effects on the environment, these five entities have emitted such staggering amounts of carbon dioxide as to set them apart from the vast majority of other emitters." Inside the Supreme Court decision, the dire consequences of not taking action are outlined: "Consequent dangers of greenhouse gas emissions, EPA determined, included increases in heat-related deaths; coastal inundation and erosion caused by melting icecaps and rising sea levels; more frequent and intense hurricanes, floods, and other “extreme weather events” that cause death and destroy infrastructure; drought due to reductions in mountain snowpack and shifting precipitation patterns; destruction of ecosystems supporting animals and plants; and potentially 'significant disruptions' of food production."

A legal brief filed by eight leading environmental law professors claims these mega-polluters are currently unregulated: "No Federal statute or regulation now limits greenhouse gas emissions from the Petitioners’ ["the largest emitters of carbon dioxide in the nation"] and TVA’s existing facilities." According to the the environmental law professors, the Supreme Court's rationale for dismissing the case was grounded in the idea that someday in the future the EPA might take some action, which might apply to current power plants, but likely won't:

"Petitioners’ [the five power companies'] and TVA’s Title V [Clean Air Act] permits likewise impose no obligation to limit greenhouse gas emissions. Petitioners and TVA also identify a potential future EPA action with respect to greenhouse gases from large stationary facilities like Petitioners’ and TVA’s, but again, that still-unrealized action imposes no present limits on Petitioners’ and TVA’s greenhouse gas emissions. The agency has indicated that more than a year from now, in May 2012, it may issue a final rule under Section 111 of the CA If issued, that rule might limit greenhouse gas emissions from new and modified power plants, and it might also require--by a date in the still more distant future--that States impose similar limits on existing power plants. Again, however, no current Section 111 regulation imposes greenhouse gas emissions limits on Petitioners, TVA, or anyone else, and TVA’s brief emphasizes that EPA has reserved the right not to impose any such limits at the end of the rulemaking. TVA Br. at 51 n.25 ("A commitment to complete a [Section 111] rulemaking will not mean that EPA has prejudged the question of what, if any, [greenhouse gas emissions standard] will be appropriate; EPA could ultimately exercise its judgment to find the imposition of such standards inappropriate" (emphasis added). Moreover, some members of the current Congress disapprove of the proposed settlement; they have made legislative proposals that, if enacted, would bar EPA from using funds to complete a Section 111 rulemaking or, more broadly, from regulating greenhouse gases."

It words like these that add layers of cynicism to the Supreme Court ruling.

This Sweeping Victory for Corporate Polluters is Brought to You By...

Representing corporate mega-polluters, the US Chamber of Commerce's activist law firm called the National Chamber Litigation Center (NCLC) filed a legal brief asking for the case's dismissal. Though the Chamber refuses to disclose the identity of those members which fund it (and the NCLC), the powerful ties between the Lockheed and the Chamber are numerous: Lockheed's Vice President of Washington Operations sits on the Chamber's board. Additionally, according to a 2009 press release from the Chamber "The Board of Directors of the U.S. Chamber's National Chamber Litigation Center (NCLC) elected James B. Comey as Chairman of the Board today. Mr. Comey is currently Senior Vice President and General Counsel of Lockheed Martin Corporation and has been a member of NCLC's Board of Directors since 2005." Maryanne Lavan was named by the National Law Journal as one of "Washington D.C.'s 20 Most Influential In-House Attorneys." According to Corporate Counsel Lavan "cruised like a Hellfire missile up the corporate chain of command," so perhaps it's no surprise the the NCLC chose her to help the Chamber defeat climate legislation, racial, racial, age and gender discrimination lawsuits.The Chamber's NCLC proudly touts itself as The NCLC describes itself as “the voice of business in the courts on issues of national concern to the business community,” and having "become more aggressive in challenging anti-business measures in court, setting a new record for cases entered in each of the last six years." Inside a December 2010 New York Times expose, "Carter G. Phillips, who often represents the chamber and has argued more Supreme Court cases than any active lawyer in private practice, reflected on its influence. 'I know from personal experience that the chamber’s support carries significant weight with the justices,' he wrote. 'Except for the solicitor general representing the United States, no single entity has more influence on what cases the Supreme Court decides and how it decides them than the National Chamber Litigation Center.'”

According to the liberal watchdog group the Center for Constitutional Accountability, the NCLC "prevails in 68 percent of the cases heard by the Roberts court, compared to a 56 percent success rate over the last 11 years of the Rehnquist Court." In practice this means that the National Chamber Litigation Center frequently goes to bat for its favorite war profiteer, filing legal briefs, providing legal council, and eventual victory in employment discrimination cases, sex and age discrimination cases, whistleblower retaliation cases, discrimination under the Americans with Disabilities Act and much more.

To No Lockheed community organizer Anna Guyton, Burlington partnering with a corporation which engages in such legal activism is, "a grave hypocrisy." Guyton says Lockheed "is well-known for their 'revolving-door' with the Pentagon, Department of Defense, and other major corporations. Although it is riddled with conflicts of interest, Lockheed's 'legal activism' extends widely and deeply into our representative democracy. The only way to combat this corruption in our system is to decentralize power and put it back into the hands of small, local business owners, local governments, and the citizens themselves. The more we place our confidence and our dollars in the hands of major corporations, the more power they will wield over our elected officials."

Activism Causes Corporations to Say "the US Chamber Doesn't Speak for Me"

The Chambers', and thereby its members', legal activism has been drawing increasing scrutiny from a coalition of businesses and climate change activists, judicial watchdog groups, corporate watch dog groups, and more. According to a January New York Times expose, the NCLC, the Chamber's activist legal arm, has helped reshape corporate power in the judicial system for its largest members like Lockheed Martin:

The Roberts court, which has completed five terms, ruled for business interests 61 percent of the time, compared with 46 percent in the last five years of the court led by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, who died in 2005, and 42 percent by all courts since 1953. [...] The chamber now files briefs in most major business cases. The side it supported in the last term won 13 of 16 cases. Six of those were decided with a majority vote of five justices, and five of those decisions favored the chamber’s side. One of the them was Citizens United, in which the chamber successfully urged the court to guarantee what it called “free corporate speech” by lifting restrictions on campaign spending.

Investigative journalism and grassroots organizing which calls out the Chamber's chilling effect on climate legislation has caused a succession of corporate defections. Enter "Apple iPhone" and "worker suicide" into Google, and the portrait painted isn't exactly one of a socially responsible company. Yet Apple quit the US Chamber over its successful lobbying which helped defeat Congress' 2009 Federal climate change legislation (Waxman-Markey). Catherine Novelli, vice president of worldwide government affairs at Apple said in a statement, "We strongly object to the chamber's recent comments opposing the E.P.A.'s effort to limit greenhouse gases. ... We would prefer that the chamber take a more progressive stance on this critical issue and play a constructive role in addressing the climate crisis." Similarly Nike's brutal labor practices are so well known, that its Swoosh logo is almost synonymous with sweatshops. Yet Nike pulled no punches in the statement it issues as it quit the Chamber's Board over it's efforts to block climate change legislation, stating, "We fundamentally disagree with the US Chamber of Commerce on the issue of climate change and their recent action to challenge the EPA is inconsistent with our view that climate change is an issue in need of urgent action." Even Excelon, a massive $18.6 billion a year energy utility corporation which owns and operates 17 nuclear reactors, including Three Mile Island, announced they are "so committed to climate legislation" that "Exelon will not be renewing its membership in the U.S. Chamber of Commerce due to the organization’s opposition to climate legislation."

Vermont based climate change author and founder of climate change non-profit 350.org, Bill McKibben, says of how this legal activism of the Chamber's effects the proposed partnership between Burlington and Lockheed, "The fear that [Lockheed] could be just greenwashing is real -- for instance, these guys belong to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has opposed every single good idea on energy and climate for decades; to me, that's a sign they're willing to make money on climate, but still work in Washington to prevent meaningful progress."

"Sustainability Is Another Word for Justice"

Burlington, Vermont is a liberal college town of 42,000 overflowing with CSA farm shares, bike lanes, and grassroots responses to climate change. From award-winning Efficiency Vermont to AgRefresh, from the University of Vermont's Gund Institute to Burlington Walk/Bike Council, from Carshare Vermont to 350.org, from Permaculture Burlington to the Localvore movement. Even Burlington's Department of Public Works is involved, installing rainwater gardens which serve as traffic calming measures and capture storm runoff in Burlington's Old North End. Local organic farmers play soul music as they make the rounds giving out free produce in low income neighborhoods from their solar powered veggie delivery van. At the Sustainability Academy, an elementary school on North Street, children enter the building under the words "Sustainability is another word for Justice."

Yet despite seven and a half months of protest, No Lockheed community organizers have found no justice. Mayor Bob Kiss is still pushing forward with a climate change partnership with Lockheed, despite its intimate relationship with defeating climate change regulation. In an open letter, community organizers called on Lockheed to "quit the US Chamber of Commerce" to "prove [their] commitment to addressing climate change to the citizens of Burlington so someone other than Mayor Kiss might be a little more supportive of this proposed partnership." The Burlington controversy has garnered national media attention from the likes of The New York Times. Despite his constituents, Mayor Kiss has plowed ahead, using staff time to move forward with Lockheed, seemingly in violation of City Councilor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak's February 7th City Council resolution. The resolution called for "one public meeting at City Hall before the City agrees to proceed with a proposal involving Lockheed Martin," "establish[ing] community standards," and CEDO [the city's Community Economic Development Office] "report[ing] to the City Council CD&NR Committee on any proposal developed by the City or Lockheed Martin for possible collaboration." In a tense June 6th City Council committee meeting, Councilor Mulvaney-Stanak (who's a member of Mayor Kiss' Progressive Party) delivered a stinging rebuke: "Given the attention on this issue' I'd hoped things would be a little more public, or at least the Council would be informed about discussions that were still happening with Lockheed in any sort of public way. [...] I think given the interest the public has shown on this it would have been nice if the Mayor had --and nice is not even the appropriate word-- it would have been I think more appropriate for the Mayor to mention it in the public comments or have something that go out, so people have a chance to weigh in. Knowing that this process [drafting community standards] is still going on."

To Lockheed's critics, if Burlington's Mayor moves forward with Lockheed, it will not only provide a fig leaf for $44 billion a year in war profiteering, legal efforts to stop climate change legislation and more. 350.org's Vermont Steering Committee member Keith Brunner, compares the local struggle against Lockheed to a larger, global fight to keep money for climate change solutions in the public sphere. "One might ask: 'How could one of the largest weapons manufacturers on the planet be invited to join our community discussion on climate change mitigation and adaptation?' The answer partly lies in the framing of the story. Through the pretext of a crisis of epic proportions, Mayor Kiss has decided to go forward by working with anyone and everyone- regardless of their role in actually creating the crisis. Instead of questioning its ties to a corporate-led world-economy which is busily dismantling the ecological infrastructure of the planet, the City of Burlington has seized upon the narrative of climate chaos as merely an excess of CO2 in the atmosphere, and hired as a consultant one of the largest and most powerful of those corporations. It shouldn't be especially surprising that this “problem-solution” framing of the problem leads to techno-fixes which only require capital investment to solve- and hence, the search for the deepest pockets begins."

To Brunner, who participated in UN 2010 climate conferences in Cancun, Burlington's local struggle against Lockheed is representative of a larger fight to keep money for climate change solutions in the public sphere. "So what do we want? Just as global civil society and the dissenting nations call for a global climate fund that is housed within the relatively transparent, accountable, and (in theory) democratically governed UNFCCC, concerned members of the Burlington community are demanding a democratically-governed climate action and energy descent plan, which is free of corporate influence or involvement, and tailored towards meeting the needs of the poorest in our community. Market-based “solutions” (read: corporate profit opportunities) that leverage the atmosphere of crisis surrounding climate change have no place in this town, no matter how many “tons of CO2e” they purport to reduce. A participatory and locally-controlled process sited firmly in the public realm- now this is real progress."

The Big Showdown: The People of Burlington v. Lockheed

After grassroots-powered victories with the February resolution and in City Council committee earlier this month, Burlington activists are attempting to bring a record number of citizens to flood Burlington City Council's public comment August 8th. The City Council is poised to decide whether to Burlington will approve a precedent-setting community standards resolution, calling for the City to not partner on climate change with a corporation which, "Earn the majority of its profit from the production and/or marketing of weapons or warfare technology, including but not limited to nuclear/chemical weapons, land minds, or cluster bombs, as determined by the corporation’s most recent annual report."

Anna Guyton says, "On August 8th, the full Burlington City Council will come together to review and vote on a resolution for community standards for municipal partnerships with corporations around climate change. Citizens have been working closely with city councilors for the past 6 months to carefully draft a set of standards -many of which are already in ordinance for other types of contracts-, which passed unanimously out of committee last month. A binding resolution or ordinance could stop the Lockheed deal in its tracks; but the mayor has already shown little concern for non-binding resolutions, after he failed to honor one passed 10-4 on February 7th, so there is concern that a non-binding resolution will not be enough."

Mayor Kiss "dismisses much of the opposition to the Lockheed partnership as 'theater' designed to simplify and polarize discussion. 'It’s a theater I’m familiar with, because I was in it in the ’60's." In a City Council committee meeting Thursday, Mayor Kiss, lashed out at the resolution, saying it was "politically motivated" and "not helpful," and describes his partnership with Lockheed as "swords into plowshares." Local business owner and art director of the No Lockheed campaign counters Liza Cowan counters, "There is no indication that Lockheed Martin has any intention of beating their enormously profitable and polluting swords (aka cluster bombs, fighter jets, and nuclear weapons) into plowshares." Anna Guyton says "The biggest human sources of the climate problem are war and unsustainable business practices - the two areas that Lockheed Martin has exploited for decades in return for astronomical profits. We have no basis for faith that the corporation will cease these operations as it tries to get its fingers into other markets (like climate solutions) that they view as potentially profitable. It's a hypocrisy that the climate movement cannot afford."

Interestingly, the resolution's sponsor, City Councilor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak, is a member of Mayor Kiss' Progressive party. She explained the need for community standards in a December statement:

"When any municipality considers partnering with a corporation there needs to be some sort of conversation around a set of standards and principals that reflect the community. With Burlington those standard would need to include language to reflect issues long enshrined in the fabric of the City's life: human rights issues, equality issues, peace and war issues. Any agreement or discussion needs to be guided by these community standards, be it on a project level or a policy level. Sometimes the money involved in a potential deal or partnership is not enough to compromise these principals. This deal, frankly, considering Lockheed's long track record would violate any reasonable community standards for the City of Burlington."

Community organizer Anna Guyton says that just like the global struggle to keep money for climate solutions in the public and not corporate sphere, climate change activists are "committed as ever to keeping power in the hands of Burlington citizens." She's optimistic about the CIty Council showdown: "We're hoping many people will come on August 8th to give a short public comment of encouragement and witness the proceedings. We're also helping citizens get in touch with their city councilors to talk about why they feel certain standards are important for the city. These guidelines will give responsible, local businesses the opportunity to partner with the city for future projects, rather than limiting contracts to a major corporation that has shown no signs of legitimate concern for our city, the climate, long-term sustainability, or responsible business practices."

Tiny Vermont's history is a steady march of bold precedents for the remainder of the United States: the first state to outlaw slavery; the first state to institute civil unions (which prefigured several states' marriage equality bills); the first state legislature which voted to shutter its nuclear reactor and the first state to grant single payer health care. Whichever the direction Burlington chooses inside City Council Monday, again a precedent will be set, this time for public-private partnerships on climate change, be it a vote for corporate greenwashing or a vote for sustainable climate solutions which are just.

Jonathan Leavitt is a writer and community organizer based in Burlington, Vermont. He can be reached at jonathan.c.leavitt(at)gmail.com

Burlington Mayor Kiss Using Staff Time to Move Forward with Lockheed Martin "Partnership." by: Jonathan Leavitt Originally Published on Green Mountain Daily Fri Jun 10, 2011 at 12:31:37 PM EDT

Despite a City Council resolution which was passed in February, 2011, Burlington Mayor Kiss is using staff time to move forward with a Lockheed Martin "Partnership" without notifying the public. Burlington Community Development and Neighborhood Revitalization Committee Meeting 6-7-11 from Arthur Hynes on Vimeo. Burlington Community Development and Neighborhood Revitalization Committee Meeting 6-7-11 from Arthur Hynes on Vimeo. The last clause of Councilor Mulvaney-Stanank's February 7th resolution states, "Let it be further resolved, that CEDO shall seek public input through at least one public meeting at City Hall before the City agrees to proceed with a proposal involving Lockheed Martin." Inside a controversy filled meeting Tuesday, Larry Kupferman, director of Burlington's Community Economic Development Office (CEDO) informed the City Council's Community Development and Neighborhood Review committee that CEDO, at Mayor Kiss' direction, has been moving forward with plans for a project with Lockheed Martin. The plan involves a conference to be held in conjunction with Lockheed Martin, University of Vermont and University of Maryland, to be hosted in August at UVM. In describing the conference, Kupferman referred to a "partnership" with Lockheed, but when questioned, declined to define the amount of time or details of the CEDO involvement.

These revelations drew strong criticism not only from a room full of constituents, but City Councilors too, including one from the Mayor's own Progressive Party. Ward 3 Progressive City Councilor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak said "Given the attention on this issue I'd hoped things would be a little more public, or at least the Council would be informed about discussions that were still happening with Lockheed in any sort of public way. [...] I think given the interest the public has shown on this it would have been nice if the Mayor had, and nice is not even the appropriate word, it would have been I think more appropriate for the Mayor to mention it in the public comments or have something that go out, so people have a chance to weigh in. Knowing that this process [drafting community standards] is still going on." Burlington residents joined the City Councilors in voicing their displeasure with Mayor Kiss actions. Ward 2 Burlington Progressive Jonathan Leavitt said, "It just seems like a real affront to democracy for the Mayor to move forward with Lockheed Martin as this process is still unfolding, as City Councilors and citizens are partnering in good faith to craft thoughtful legislation. For the City to move forward, with corporate sponsorships just like this, for the Mayor to have CEDO staff using staff time as you just said, to move forward with this in total contravention of [Councilor Mulvaney-Stanak's] early February City Council resolution. Why are we here? Why do we have City Councilors drafting legislation if it isn't going to be followed? Where does that leave the citizens of Burlington who are partnering in good faith disregards those good faith gestures. What does that leave us to do?" Burlington lawyer and activist Sandy Baird questioned CEDO Director Larry Kupferman, saying "I was surprised at the words you used, a 'partnership.'" Baird continued, "I thought there was a letter of intent to continue negotiations. And that's really of concern to me. I thought this was going to be more of a public process before you continued." Peggy Lurs opined, "Our climate change problem isn't just about technicalities, but a lack of democracy." In a charged exchange with Kupferman, Liza Cowan said, "So in other words CEDO broke the resolution, they broke the public faith." South End resident Jay Vos appealed to the CEDO director to explain the seeming contradictions of the Mayor's policy, "Can you explain this? Because it's beyond me." In six months since Mayor Kiss' dealing with the world's largest war profiteer leaked in the media, Burlington residents concerns about Mayor Kiss' actions have received nation attention. Perhaps you saw The New York Times coverage of your neighbors' community organizing against Mayor Kiss' controversial proposal to tie Burlington's reputation to the world's largest weapons maker, Lockheed Martin. Perhaps you saw Bill McKibben promoting No Lockheed community organizers' work on Twitter. Beyond the basic questions about responsive government that were raised at Tuesday's committee meeting, the larger question remains: why is Mayor Kiss is partnering on climate issues with a corporation that actively blocks climate legislation. Lockheed sits on the board of the US Chamber of Commerce which sues entire states to stop them from regulating climate change and lobbied against Congress' 2009 climate bill. Bill McKibben in a recent Burlington Free Press article says of Lockheed, "The fear that they could be just greenwashing is real -- for instance, these guys belong to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has opposed every single good idea on energy and climate for decades; to me, that's a sign they're willing to make money on climate, but still work in Washington to prevent meaningful progress." Perhaps that's why, in the New York Times article, the head of a local sustainability company expressed serious concerns to his company's brand if this proposal moves forward. Many citizens also wonder why Mayor Kiss, who supposedly thinks Climate Change is so urgent that he needs to partner Burlington with one of the worst corporate polluters on the planet, hasn't convened his Mayoral Task Force on Climate Change since November 14, 2007. When Mayor Kiss was on the re-election trail in 2009 he frequently invoked the words of former Burlington Mayor Bernie Sanders, saying, "Burlington is open for business but not for sale." The disclosures of Tuesday night be serious questions of that pledge. Web Resources for further reading: Resolution regarding private-public partnerships and the Lockheed Martin agreement Burlington City Council Deliberative Agenda: Feb 7 https://www.facebook.com/notes... http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05... http://twitter.com/#%21/billmc...

Z Magazine Feature!

Hello national distribution: Just published a feature in Z Magazine!

Bill McKibben on Burlington's Letter on Understanding with Lockheed by: Jonathan Leavitt Green Mountain Daily Sun Mar 06, 2011 at 12:11:07 PM EST

(Jonathan writes, "Using the very real climate crisis as a fig leaf for getting in bed with Lockheed to deal with his leading political liability is beyond the pale." I agree. - promoted by Maggie Gundersen) Noted environmental author and founder of 350.org Bill McKibben on Burlington's Letter on Understanding with Lockheed: "As someone who thinks a lot about local economies, one of the things we're really good in Vermont at, better than Lockheed are these kind of solutions. [...] We probably don't have to go to find that outside help. I take seriously the idea that people can change, it's harder to see how corporations as deeply enmeshed in one way of doing business and looking at the world as Lockheed is can change. [...] Some of the stuff Lockheed or anyone else would advise us to do would happen automatically if we did the necessary political work at the national level that we need to do. If Lockheed was willing to pull out of the US Chamber of Commerce and say 'they don't speak for us, we don't like the way they deal with climate energy,' then that strikes me, then I'd be willing to give them a look at what they wanted to do here in Burlington. I don't think that's going to happen and until it does I would be disinclined to get too deeply in bed with them."

Jonathan Leavitt :: Bill McKibben on Burlington's Letter on Understanding with Lockheed

McKibben's 350.org just launched a new campaign 'The US Chamber Doesn't Speak For Me' to "show that when it comes to climate and energy, the US Chamber of Commerce represents the interests of big polluters, not everyday American business." According to a recent New York Times article, ("Justices Offer Receptive Ear to Business Interests" 12/18/10) "[The Chamber of Commerce] board includes executives from some of the nation's biggest companies, including Lockheed Martin." The Chamber of Commerce filed a brief in a Supreme Court Case stating, "a suit by eight states against power companies over carbon dioxide emissions, 'has potentially disastrous implications for the U.S. business community.'" The New York Times article links to the Supreme Court brief which illuminates the lengths the Chamber of Commerce and its corporate partners including Lockheed will go to, to block carbon reductions: "The Chamber works to discourage ill-conceived policies and measures which could damage the economic security of the United States and instead encourages long term technological innovation and long term clean technology development. The Chamber believes that nuisance suits such as this one which seeks to impose caps and reductions on carbon dioxide emissions in piecemeal fashion on an arbitrary subset of U.S. industry are an especially ill-conceived and constitutionally illegitimate response." For Burlington to work with a corporation which According to William Hartung's Prophets of War performs drone bombing in Pakistan, buys scandal plagued companies interrogating prisoners in Abu Ghraib, lobbies against nuclear weapons treaties and performs warrantless wiretapping on Americans is bad enough. Discovering Lockheed via its seat on the Chamber pushes the Supreme Court to not regulate carbon emissions on a state and Federal level begs serious questions about the Kiss administration's commitment to addressing climate change. In Seven Days recent cover story ("Up In Arms" 2/9/11), Mayor Kiss invokes crisis and urgency saying "There's enough urgency to this issue of climate change that we need to look for all the partners that are out there." So it's deeply disappointing that according to its website Mayor Kiss hasn't convened his Mayoral Task Force on Climate Change (E2C2) full of award winning local climate change talent since November 14, 2007. Now that City Council has overwhelmingly passed a resolution rebuking the lack of transparency and public comment which Mayor Kiss would attach Burlington's sterling reputation to Lockheed; now that Burlingtonians have spoken out unanimously at City Council in overwhelming number, including green engineers and sustainability leaders; now that UVM Student Government has overwhelmingly passed a similar resolution critiquing this most unlikely of bedfellows; one would hope Mayor Kiss would listen. One would hope Mayor Kiss would do the moral, just and right thing and end this corporate PR job of a deal, quickly re-convene his long dormant Mayoral Task Force on Climate Change, and find more appropriate and just ways to incentivize Burlington's already award-winning responses climate change. When discussing the Lockheed Letter of Understanding Mayor Kiss mentions potential Burlington Telecom financing from Lockheed. Using the very real climate crisis as a fig leaf for getting in bed with Lockheed to deal with his leading political liability is beyond the pale. When I supported Mayor Kiss on the re-election trail in 2008, he invoked in debates the words of former Burlington Mayor Bernie Sanders': "Burlington is open for business but not for sale." If Burlingtonians keep organizing and speaking out against the Lockheed Letter of Understanding, hopefully we can help Mayor Kiss live up to those words.

Cover Story!

And here's the digital version: http://www.vtcommons.org/journal/2011/02/jonathan-leavitt-burlington-kisses-lockheed-just-say-no-feature