Framing capital punishment

Posted on September 22, 2011 by David S. Meyer

The execution of Troy Davis, a convicted murderer who proclaimed his innocence to the moment of his death, gave us a window on the practice of the death penalty in the United States.  But Davis was not the only person executed yesterday.

The state of Texas killed Lawrence Russell Brewer, a white supremacist convicted of killing a black man by chaining him to the back of his car and dragging him along a bumpy road.  Brewer didn’t make a statement before his execution, but reporters noticed a tear at the edge of one eye.  Brewer’s execution was in the news, largely as contrast to that of Davis, but the anti-death penalty movement did not trumpet the disturbing facts of his crime.

Advocacy groups pick their examples to dramatize the claims they want to make.  (See our discussion of poster children for the DREAM Act.)  Troy Davis, a black man convicted of murdering a white police officer, Mark MacPhail, helped the anti-death penalty movement make many points sharply.

There was no physical evidence in Davis’s case, and all but two of the non-police eyewitnesses from the trial recanted their testimony, reporting that they were pressured to implicate Davis.  Nine people have sworn affidavits that one of those who did not recant,  Sylvester Coles, was in fact responsible for the murder.

Davis’s case helps advocates raise issues of wrongful conviction, procedural fairness, and race–all in addition to general concerns about the death penalty.

Troy Davis won support from those who oppose the death penalty in general, like Amnesty International and Pope Benedict XVI, but also from those who generally support the death penalty, including former FBI Director William Sessions. The facts in the Davis case were so egregious that one didn’t have to oppose the death penalty to oppose his execution.

The Davis case became a focus for organizing against the death penalty, and groups protested and held vigils, while advocates explored every route for redress offered by the legal system.  They tried to stop the execution, organizing around the slogan, “too much doubt,” but–without doubt–many activists at the core of the campaign would oppose the death penalty in any case.

The advocacy point is that advocates for abolishing the death penalty could build a broader coalition with Davis’s case than with most of the people who are executed each year.  (Indeed, there are likely some people who generally oppose the death penalty prepared to make an exception in Brewer’s case.)

There is a moral case to be made against the death penalty, one that has never commanded a majority of public support in the United States–and indeed, probably not in most of the long list of countries that have abandoned the death penalty (list).  All other rich countries have done so.

Advocates haven’t abandoned the moral argument, but spend more time focused on additional arguments that might win additional support: the high cost of administering the death penalty; the possibility of wrongful conviction; and the racially disparate sentencing of people accused of crimes.

The death penalty has been on its last legs in the United States since the 1970s, when it was banned by the Supreme Court for four years.  (See the Death Penalty Information Center for comprehensive information on the practice of capital punishment in the United States.)  What’s not clear is how many executions will take place in the interim.

Full disclosure: My opposition to the death penalty began when, as a preschooler, I watched an episode of Superman in which Clark Kent, using his clandestine superpowers, conducted his own lie detector test of a man on death row who was, in fact, innocent.  That possibility, of wrongful conviction, was enough for me at 5, to be wary about government executions.  Although I’ve learned a fair amount about the practice of capital punishment since, nothing has shaken this view.

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Roseanne takes it to Wall Street

Posted on September 21, 2011 by David S. Meyer

Roseanne, the comedian, actress, producer, and a sort of populist progressive, dropped in on the Wall Street occupation, and delivered brief prepared remarks, then improvised.   I got the link from someone on Facebook, because her appearance didn’t make much of an impact in national news.

It’s hard to get a sense of just what’s going on in the Wall Street occupation, which has clearly drawn far smaller numbers than the initiators called for.  I got a brief report from a veteran of the 1979 protest, who expressed disappointment with the event and the state of progressive politics in general.  He said the numbers were small, the event disorganized, and the demands completely unclear.  The demonstrators projected entitlement, naivete, and political isolation, he said (I paraphrase).  To the extent the occupation has appeared in mainstream media, this evaluation seems common (Business Insider has published updates.)

These days, we don’t have to wait for a newsletter or memoir to hear what the activists say and think.   Occupy Wall Street has been publishing updates at least daily.  (I bet they tweet more frequently.)  And Global Revolution has been providing a livestream feed of events.  The story I’ve gotten is that a few people have continued the occupation, generating numbers in the low hundreds for events during the week, and a few people have been arrested.  Police haven’t allowed the demonstrators to put up anything resembling protection from the elements, like tarps and tents, and a few additional protests have sparked here and there.  Note that both Roseanne and Occupy Wall Street stress that the police, working people not big bankers or capitalists, are not the enemy, but potential allies.  It doesn’t look like that yet.

So, what are we to make of all this?  I’d note the critical importance of old-fashioned organizing, recruiting organizations and people, arguing about demands, and working the media, in getting a coherent event organized and a message out.  The attractive promise of base democracy and spontaneous events that the new media suggests practically means that all kinds of people with all kinds of politics can claim to speak for the protest, and those not yet deeply committed are unlikely to find ready handles to latch onto.  Meanwhile, bloggers working laptops powered by small portable generators can get their word out, reporting events that larger media outlets are well-prepared to ignore, but the audiences they reach are, uh, limited.

Wall Street has long seemed an attractive target for protesters, but it’s hard to go beyond the event.  In 1967, for example, the Yippies asked for a tour of the exchange and threw a few hundred (real and fake) dollar bills over the side of the gallery to watch the traders scramble; some did.  It’s good street theater–and there must be some good photos somewhere–but what was the political demand?  or impact?

It’s tough for activists to figure out a piece of global capitalism to challenge effectively.  (Meetings of supranational institutions like the World Bank, the G-20,  or the IMF have been great for events.)  Wall Street is a tough target, conceptually as well as physically.  All sorts of businesses go to the stock exchange to raise capital, including companies that claim to be green and humane.  Increasingly, with more and more training online and brokers offices scattered out to New Jersey and beyond, even making a show of trying to interrupt the practice of global business is more elusive.  And explaining what you want can seem inordinately vague–which is even worse than utopian.

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Took it to Wall Street

Posted on September 19, 2011 by David S. Meyer

The financial capital of the United States is an attractive and difficult target for activists.  Nearly 32 years ago, on Sunday, October 28, 1979 (the anniversary of the great stock market crash), the antinuclear Clamshell Alliance staged a legal demonstration.  On Monday, activists staged a large civil disobedience action.  I was there.

To my surprise, I found little on the web about the demonstration and civil disobedience event (blog posts, archives, The Harvard Crimson, which was part of an antinuclear campaign which enjoyed significant successes (no nuclear plants licensed in the United States since that time.)  What follows are some recollections.  I welcome corrections from veterans and people who have better files.

Protests at nuclear plants and construction sites became common in the 1970s and, partly as a result, became less visible.  The movement against nuclear power was coordinated largely by regional coalitions, and was based around small local affinity groups of 10-30 people, who trained together and came to trust each other.  There was a radical democratic ethos that prized consensus, which made it very difficult for the movement as a whole to innovate.

The Wall Street campaign, coordinated by a “Manhattan Project” group, was an attempt to do so.  Cindy Girvani Leerer explains the thinking underneath the effort:

The time had come to move toward more decentralized actions that would target the economics of nuclear power and the funding of the Seabrook nuke in order to make the building of nukes less profitable and attractive, to make explicit connections with other movements to combat the “divide and conquer” strategy of corporate capitalism, and to promote conversations about building a nuclear free future and a better society. If money swears, we would swear back. This economic focus occurred on several fronts, including legislative challenges to passing “construction work in progress” charges onto consumers (see article on CWIP) and direct action educational campaigns.

This was the rationale behind the Wall Street Action, a direct action campaign focusing on both nuclear power and weapons as a symptom of an economic and energy system that exploited people for profit.  A group of Seacoast, NH Clamshell activists joined with activists from the War Resisters League in NY to develop the campaign which emphasized educating participants and the public about the economics of the nuclear industry and connections with other struggles. Organizers met with diverse groups to build a coalition for the campaign, eventually receiving endorsements from women’s, labor, Native American, African American, socialist, nonviolent, and anti-nuclear and environmental groups.

The Sunday demonstration (I recall a quote of 20,000 attendees) was much like other large events, with a stage, entertainment, and speeches.  The tight space made it feel more

Pete Seeger singing at Barack Obama's inauguration

intimate and intense.  Pete Seeger was there, as he often was, playing banjo and singing songs from the labor, peace, and civil rights movements.  (He was an old-timer then, with more than thirty years in cultural activism.  At right, he’s still doing the same thing.)  I remember somewhat better a younger singer, who wrote a song for the Wall Street event.  Here’s the chorus:

Take it to Wall Street, New York Town

Just ride right up in your limousine and sit yourself right down.

Grab a seat on the exchange with the Bulls and the Bears

It’s the Capitol of Capital, the Buck Stops there.

(It was a catchy, easy tune as well; readers will be glad that my technical ignorance will spare them my rendition of it.   I can find absolutely no trace of this clever song on the web. I think the singer/writer’s name was Al Giordano.  If this is right, he’s been an activist journalist for decades now.)

The protesters had all engaged in nonviolence training exercises, but the police were better prepared.  They closed off most access points, but allowed people who looked like they belonged walk through to work.  They filtered most of us out easily, but a few people in suits walked through and sat down on the street, awaiting arrest.  Daniel Ellsberg was one.

Some groups had come with chains and locks.  The police came with bolt cutters and buses.  They carried demonstrators who wouldn’t walk away on stretchers, and put them on buses to arraignment.  Most of the police were focused, purposeful, and polite.  On the buses, some even put on antinuclear buttons.  Over 1,000 people were arrested, and those who cooperated, providing names and contact information, were out of jail by nightfall.  Those who refused to cooperate spent several days in jail.  I believe most charges were dismissed.

The presidential campaign was already taking off, and both candidates announced their support for nuclear power.  Ronald Reagan won in a landslide, and the movement shifted most of its efforts to campaigns against nuclear weapons.

Remember, no nuclear plant has been licensed since.

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Take it to Wall Street

Posted on September 18, 2011 by David S. Meyer

Left activists have decided to target big business, as well as the government. Yesterday, in an event that was  months in the making, (at least) hundreds have attempted to occupy Wall Street.

Announced by the anti-corporate group, Adbusters, the hacktivist group, Anonymous posted a youtube video in support.  Over time, others joined in, organizing around the event.

Claiming inspiration from the Arab Spring, the project’s open source site, Occupy Wall Street, called for sustained mass action in lower Manhattan–and announced that they planned to stay and make a new world:

On September 17, 20,000 of us will descend on Wall Street, the iconic financial center of America, set up a peaceful encampment, hold a people’s assembly to decide what our one demand will be, and carry out an agenda of full-spectrum, absolutely nonviolent civil disobedience the likes of which the country has not seen since the freedom marches of the 1960s.

From our encampment we will launch daily smart mob forays all over lower Manhattan … peaceful, creative happenings in front of Goldman Sachs; the SEC; the Federal Reserve; the New York Stock Exchange … and maybe even, if we can figure out where they’re being held, at the sites of Obama’s private $38,500 per person fundraising events happening somewhere in Manhattan on Sept. 19 and 20.

Our strategy will be that of the master strategist Sun Tzu: “appear at points which the enemy must hasten to defend; march swiftly to places where you are not expected.”

With a bit of luck, and if fate is on our side, we may be able to turn all of lower Manhattan into a site of passionate democratic contestation – an American Tahrir Square.

(Wall Street is an obvious, attractive, and very difficult target for activists.  There was a march on Wall Street against the Federal bailout of large financial firms in 2008, organized by critics on the left, and a large antinuclear power rally and civil disobedience action in 1979 [more on this later].  It’s relatively easy for a large police force to shut off access to the Financial district’s narrow streets, and to clear activists out.  Armed, coordinated, equipped, and better trained police forces can stage mass arrests reasonably quickly, carting demonstrators out in plastic handcuffs or on stretchers.)

Calls for the action circulated on all sorts of social media, including Facebook, Youtube, and Twitter, the event as been widely publicized.  But no one applied for a permit.  As a result, New York police were well-prepared to deny access to most of the area (NY 1 Reports).  As with most large actions, people with many different perspectives are participating.  The New York Times that both anarchists and followers of the proto-fascist Lyndon LaRouche (singing patriotic songs) also attended–with their own plans and purposes.

It seems clear that it will be very difficult for any group to control the message that comes out of this event, and for this reason, the larger groups have stayed away.

United for Peace and Justice, for example, has announced a broad anti-corporate campaign, kicking off next week, which lists many events–but not the Wall Street demonstration.

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Ronald Reagan sold out conservative movements

Posted on September 15, 2011 by David S. Meyer

Successful politicians exploit, buy off, and sell out the movements that animate their campaigns.  And Ronald Reagan was a successful politician.  He came into the presidency as the embodiment of a conservative movement coalition, and left, dismissed by movement leaders as a “useful idiot,” by Howard Phillips, chair of the Conservative Caucus.

As aspirants for the Republican presidential nomination invoke President Reagan’s name, and seek to outflank each other on the right to claim his mantle, it’s worthwhile to remember how (and how severely) his presidency frustrated the conservative movements of the time.  (Although it certainly didn’t please people on the left.)

Candidate Ronald Reagan, a two-term governor of California (where he presided over the largest tax increase in California history), tried to ride and unite several conservative movements to the Republican presidential nomination, in a challenge to incumbent Gerald Ford (who employed Dick Cheney as his chief of staff) in 1976.  The effort failed, but damaged Ford.  By 1980, Reagan had the strongest claim among the Republican hopefuls as the conservative movement candidate.

Candidate Reagan pledged fealty to the religious right, promising to bring back prayer in the schools and end legal access to abortion.  He rode the then-rising tide of anti-tax advocacy, promising to reduce taxes and the size of government, and to eliminate the federal budget deficit.  He campaigned for massive increases in military spending and promised a tougher line against the Soviet Union, in adherence to the conservative movement’s line on foreign policy.

In office, Reagan continued to pay lip service to the movements that made his candidacy successful, but he also, increasingly as his term went on, trimmed his agenda to what seemed politically possible.

Putting prayer in the schools and outlawing abortion depended upon the Supreme Court, and two of President Reagan’s appointees (Sandra Day O’Connor and William Kennedy) consistently supported court precedent on those issues, demonstrating an institutionally conservative approach to social change–rather than a movement conservative approach.  Reagan regularly addressed the anti-abortion crusaders at the annual March for Life demonstrations–by telephone hook-up, but pursued their agenda in a more moderate way than they demanded.

President Reagan cut income taxes dramatically when he entered office and, contrary to supply side dogma, revenues decreased and the deficit ballooned.  Reagan presided over several substantial tax increases over the rest of his term.  Federal spending increased dramatically, as did the size of government.  Part of this was the result of unprecedented peacetime military spending, but President Reagan flinched at the idea of harsh cuts to most federal programs (see budget director David Stockman’s memoir of the period).

Increased military spending snaked through the Pentagon for the rest of the 1980s, but President Reagan’s confrontational stance toward the Soviet Union abated before the end of his first term, partly a reaction to the nuclear freeze movement.  Incoming Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev received a note from Reagan, hand-delivered by Vice President George Bush, just as he took office.  Reagan agreed to cuts in strategic nuclear weapons, and was ready to trade away even more nuclear weapons if the Soviets would accept his dream of space based anti-missile weapons (“Star Wars”).  His conservative supporters were appalled, and questioned his lucidity on the matter.

Ask about immigration reform.  President Reagan signed a comprehensive immigration bill that legalized millions of undocumented immigrants.

My point?  I’m not seeking to reconstruct the Reagan presidency as moderate.  Ronald Reagan governed as a conservative, and was the prime target for movements of the left at the time.

Rather, I mean to  point out how successful politicians are willing to compromise on their movement supporters’ vital matters of principle.  Republican presidential hopefuls are terrified of even acknowledging this as a possibility, preferring a plaster saint as iconic hero to the real two-term president.

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Obama backburners the environmental movement

Posted on September 9, 2011 by David S. Meyer

Darryl Hannah arrested outside White House

Successful politicians exploit, buy off, and sell out the movements that animate their campaigns.  And Barack Obama has been a successful politician.

Partly because of his soaring campaign rhetoric, partly because of his personal background, and partly because of his rather limited record in American politics, social movements of the left organized around Barack Obama’s candidacy as a gain all by itself.  (When he and his primary opponent, Hillary Clinton, detailed specific plans, Clinton’s were consistently more liberal.)  The election of a president named Barack, rather than George or Bill or John or James symbolically promised a great break with the past.  Activists imagined a similarly dramatic break with the past on policy matters.

And they were disappointed.

Supporters of health care reform lamented the absence of a public option in the president’s bill; civil libertarians continue to wait for President Obama to make good on his promise to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay.  Gay and lesbian activists steamed when he put the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” on a slow track; immigration activists mobilized while he failed to offer any comprehensive reform bill, and seemed to invest little in the DREAM Act.  Peace activists watched the dollars and casualties roll on up in Iraq and Afghanistan.  And environmentalists have seen little progress on the greener economy candidate Obama promised.

Once in office, like most politicians, Barack Obama has focused more on the voters he thinks might stray than those he assumes he can take for granted.  He tacked back to push for policy reforms on gay and lesbian rights and immigration, because he saw the prospects of gains in policy or politics.  But he’s left environmentalists hanging, on issues big and small.

And what are they to do?  President Obama, in contrast to almost all of the Republican presidential aspirants, says that he believes that human activity is contributing to climate change, and that human action can help ameliorate the adverse impact of changing climate.  Will the environmentalists desert him?  For whom?  The environmental movement is largely comprised of the educated middle-class, who tend to vote, but they’re unlikely to defect to anyone who can get the Republican nomination.  Obama seems to count on this.

So, some have begun to protest, to try to exert pressure and to keep their issues alive.  More than 1,000 activists have been arrested outside the White House so far, pointing to climate change in general as they oppose the specific authorization of a pipeline from Canada to Texas that would carry crude oil.

The Tar Sands Action group has staged repeated civil disobedience actions on the President’s doorstep, deploying celebrities in the movement, like writer Bill McKibben and NASA scientist, James Hansen, who have been crusading for action on climate change for years, and celebrities whose fame sometimes extends beyond the movement, like actress Darryl Hannah, above.

Meanwhile, with the environmentalists being hauled away outside, President Obama announced that he had ordered the EPA to abandon efforts to tighten controls on ozone in the air, even as his administrator, Lisa Jackson, had announced that current standards were inadequate and legally indefensible.  Al Gore has endorsed the civil disobedience action, criticizing the president along the way:

Instead of relying on science, President Obama appears to have bowed to pressure from polluters who did not want to bear the cost of implementing new restrictions on their harmful pollution—even though economists have shown that the US economy would benefit from the job creating investments associated with implementing the new technology. The result of the White House’s action will be increased medical bills for seniors with lung disease, more children developing asthma, and the continued degradation of our air quality.

Explicitly, the President has announced that he will postpone regulating environmental pollution to focus on short-term gains in jobs, a trade-off Republicans have been unwilling to make on the deficit.

Environmentalists have yet to find a way to exert effective political pressure.  As the campaign intensifies, absent a primary opponent for the president, they are unlikely to be able to do so.

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A day for Labor

Posted on September 7, 2011 by David S. Meyer

Successful politicians exploit, buy off, and sell out the movements that sometimes buoy their campaigns.  This American story is an old one, and it’s one that leaves activists disappointed, wary, and cynical, even especially about the politicians who do the most for them.

[Recall that candidate Abraham Lincoln promised to put the preservation of the union higher on his list of priorities than ending slavery, and that abolitionists criticized President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation (issued after two years of war), which ended slavery only in the territories that had seceded.]  And many do far less.

So, why is the American day to commemorate Labor held at the end of the summer, months after May Day, the workers’ celebration day virtually everywhere else in the world?  How do you turn a movement by creating an occasion for a cook-out?

President Grover Cleveland, a hard-money Democrat, and generally no friend to organized labor, signed a bill making Labor Day a national holiday at the end of June in 1894, at the height of the Populist movement, and just after the American Railway Union, led by Eugene Debs, had launched a boycott and strike, starting in Pullman, Illinois.  Protesting the Pullman Palace Car Company’s treatment of its workers, including harsh wage cuts, railway workers across the country refused to handle any train hauling a Pullman car.

The Federal government used an injunction, then troops, to battle the union and get the trains moving.  In July, just after announcing a national day to celebrate the contributions of American workers, President Cleveland ordered federal marshals–along with 12,000 Army troops, into Chicago to break up the strike.  Workers fought back, and 13 workers were killed, and at least several dozen injured.  Debs was tried for violating an injunction, and went to prison, where he discovered the writings of Karl Marx.  Clarence Darrow provided a vigorous, but unsuccessful, defense.

Debs would go to prison again, most notably for his opposition to US entry into World War I, and would run for president five times as a Socialist.

But I digress.  President Cleveland created a distinctly American Labor Day, explicitly not on May 1, which had already been the occasion for vigorous and disruptive workers’ activism.  (Read about the Haymarket affair.)  May Day remains the day for international workers mobilization.  Instead, our Labor Day is a time to mark the end of summer by cooking outdoors and shopping for school supplies.

The  US Department of Labor’s website gives credit for Labor Day to the American worker, but makes no mention of the Pullman Strike or the Haymarket demonstrations.

So, commemoration can actually be a way to neuter the historical memory.  See our discussions of commemorative days for Martin Luther King, Cesar Chavez, and Fred Korematsu, all significantly more difficult characters than what they’ve come to represent.

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Suppose they held a protest, and no one saw

Posted on August 26, 2011 by David S. Meyer

A little follow-up on our last item about a few Republican members of the House returning to their districts and holding public events only for paying customers, uh, constituents.  In addition to raising money, the members of Congress were trying to avoid exactly those embarrassing youtube moments that recirculate in the e-ther.  I said that activists would look to find other places to make news, but it would probably take even more dramatic, loud, and disruptive action to break through into the news.

Over at Slate, David Weigel has found both successes and failures in reaching the news when the member of Congress won’t provide a spotlight and microphone.

Self-described “gay barbarians”have flashmobbed Marcus Bachmann’s clinic, protesting the Christian therapist’s comments about gays specifically, and Michele Bachmann and

Gay Barbarians

conservatives more generally.  It’s theatrical and entertaining stuff, and it’s made some news reports.  The name and the color and the confrontation make news.

Of course, Michele Bachmann is in Iowa, running for president, and not available in her district.

Constituents boo Rep. Ryan

In Wisconsin, Rep. Paul Ryan, who has declined a run for the White House, has been in the district, but constituents say it doesn’t make him any more accessible.  Rep. Ryan, who has been burned before by a videotaped confrontation at a town meeting,  scheduled no open events with constituents, and apparently refused to meet with constituents who have a problem with his political stances.  Weigel’s posted video that shows how hard it has been for political opponents stalking Rep. Ryan to make it into the news.  Here, they are banned not only from their representative’s office, but even the building in which it’s located.

I’d expect that they’ll find some way to make news, and it will look pretty silly and/or dangerous.

The point: authorities have a great deal of control over the sites in which they meet opponents, and therefore, the kinds of tactics that their opponents can use.  People who can’t be heard when talking in a conversational voice are likely to start to yell–or, at least put on costumes.

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Politics driven outdoors

Posted on August 19, 2011 by David S. Meyer

Several Republican members of Congress have stopped holding open meetings or taking questions from constituents who don’t pay for the privilege, Politico reports.  In addition to raising money, they are working to spare themselves embarrassment and to keep their opponents from a useful forum.

We remember that Liberty Belle (Keli Carendar) helped launch her public career as a Tea Partier by confronting Democratic Congressman Norman Dicks (Washington) about health care reform at an open town hall event, waving a $20 bill and daring him to come take it.

Coherence aside, Carendar (a one-time improv comic) understood how to create a theatrical moment.  From the grassroots, she now works as a professional organizer with Tea Party Patriots.

Well, more than one can play at this game.  After the House of Representatives passed his budget, featuring large spending cuts and take cuts for the wealthy, Representative Paul Ryan was met by angry protestors at his town meetings in Wisconsin (below).

Rep. Ryan, chair of the House Budget Committee, was the first to stop taking town meetings.  When in the district he represents, he will speak only to audiences that have paid to see him.

So what do the disgruntled among Rep. Ryan’s constituents do? Maybe some will pay $15-50 to ask a question.  (I doubt many will.)  I expect to see protests outside the events, where it’s harder to make a scene and harder to get coverage. To break through, they’ll have to be more than a little louder and generate larger crowds.

By limiting the space available for his constituents, Rep. Ryan (and several other Republican members of Congress) are pushing politics outdoors, where his opposition may wither.  Or it may get bigger and angrier.

Absent the sloppy ugly vigorous dialogue of democracy, politics will not get more civil.

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Buffett moment, Buffett movement?

Posted on August 17, 2011 by David S. Meyer

Billionaire Warren Buffett (at right, with ukulele), renowned for his investing acumen, claimed space on the Op-Ed page of the New York Times to call for higher taxes on the superwealthy, like him–and even less wealthy–everyone who earns more than $1 million a year (not so many people).  Buffett says that government is coddling the superwealthy, and it’s completely counterproductive.  He reports that he and his superfriends are doing just fine; they can afford to pay more, and they should.

What’s more, Buffet says, none of the justifications offered by anti-taxers hold true.  He claims that higher tax rates won’t discourage investment or prevent the super-rich from hiring.

Buffett’s piece zinged around the e-world, the subject of news stories, blogs, and thousands of comments.  His proposal was newsworthy not because it was original–many others have made the same arguments, nor because Buffett is smart; plenty of very smart people say the same things.  (Some are, however, professors, argh.)  Instead, Warren Buffett’s call for taxing the superrich made the Times and the blogosphere because it seemed at odds with his interests, at least narrowly as narrowly defined.

The “dissident identity” (the term is from Kelsy Kretschmer, a sociology professor at Southern Illinois University) generates attention because it’s unexpected and seems to have more credibility and resonance than those who take the expected positions.

Social movements love to promote such dissenters.  Peace activists push forward supporters with strong military credentials in the spotlight.  Conservative activist David Horowitz reminds his readers that he was once Maoist, suggesting that his subsequent conversion to right wing politics is all the more meaningful.  Abortion rights activists trot out the Catholics for Choice and anti-abortion advocates promote Feminists for Life, emphasizing the rhetorical power of the dissident identity.  Their critics claim, of course, that those dissidents aren’t real Catholics or real feminists.

But it’s hard to argue that Warren Buffett isn’t a real capitalist.

Of course, he could be wrong on the merits.  But his position doesn’t raise immediate concerns about corruption and dishonesty the way that, for example, Charles and David Koch’s funding of efforts to discredit science on climate change.  The billionaire Koch brothers have large holdings in oil and gas, and regulation to limit greenhouse gases could cost them money.  (They might be right, as well as self-interested, but 99+ percent of scientists working on the issue don’t think so.)

But an op-ed, even from Warren Buffett, doesn’t make a movement.  It is, however, an investable asset, however, as Chuck Collins, at Huffington Post, notes:

We now need ten thousand more like Warren Buffett to speak up, people with incomes over $250,000 that know in their hearts that they should pay more.

Of course, we need an engaged public — people in the bottom 98 percent — to mobilize and press for tax increases on the wealthy before any further budget cuts. But enlisting the voices of wealthy people for the common good is a key part of the strategy to change the political dynamics.

The good news is there are already several thousand who have stepped forward and spoken up. Several hundred business leaders and wealthy individuals have joined Patriotic Millionaires for Fiscal Strength, a joint initiative of the Agenda Project and Wealth for the Common Good. On June 7, the tenth anniversary of the Bush Tax Cuts for the wealthy, they issued a powerful video calling on Congress to let the tax cuts expire.

Chuck, a founder of Wealth for the Common Good, has been working for years to organize and publicize the efforts of the more affluent to promote a more fair and more effective taxation and budgeting.  (Check out his books.)

As the list of “patriotic millionaires” grows, perhaps it will no longer seem dissident when the very rich embrace pay for a government that has served them very well.

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