Occupy Northfield Teach-In
Editor's Note: Before leaving Northfield for Carleton's winter break, Northfield.org student journalist Marika Christofides filed this report on a November 9 teach-in connected with Occupy Northfield.
On Wednesday, November 9, Carleton student Rebekah Frumkin held a teach-in in the basement of the First United Church of Christ in conjunction with MoveOn.org’s How the 1% Crashed the Economy teach-in night.
Rebekah met Northfielder Dorothea Hrossowyc at the Occupy Minneapolis protest on October 7th, where the two decided to host a teach-in night together. She describes herself as a “financial hobbyist,” and wrote and directed a play this spring called Security, which re-imagines the Enron scandal of 2001 as an Oedipus Rex story. At the teach-in, she spoke to a small but passionate and vocal audience of Northfield citizens.
The presentation asked two questions: “How did we get here?” and “where do we go from here?” It revolved around corporate personhood, financial derivatives, and the normalization of a set of what some would call unhealthy character traits in the corporate world.
As Rebekah said, it is easy to lose sight of Frankenstein when we look at the monster. It’s easy to forget that corporations are made up of people from an intellectual aristocracy that self-selects its best, brightest, and most ruthless, because these people only come out of the woodwork when the corporations are put on trial.
Rebekah had the chance to spend time with some of these individuals at Princeton, where they call themselves “I-bankers.” “When I talked to these guys they just couldn’t imagine things not working out for them,” she said. “They were willing to take any risk if they were promised some sort of success or prestige in return. They had this pernicious and simple desire to appear desirable.”
The corporate environment nurtures psychopathic traits. The psychopathic personality is broadly defined as 'callous behavior without normal feelings of empathy or guilt'. Individuals with this kind of charm, fearlessness and "whatever it takes" attitude can win over even experienced interviewers, and with rapid job turnover they can march up the ranks at great speed.
Even worse, the way that corporations make their money – through financial derivates – is fundamentally exploitative. A financial derivative is a deal between two parties the value of which depends on some underlying commodity. It is a difficult concept for the average American to understand, which makes it especially handy in what essentially comes down to exploiting average Americans for money. This video explains financial derivatives in greater detail and connects their use to the financial crisis. “When you start thinking you can create something out of nothing,” said Rebekah, “It’s difficult to resist.”
And thanks to Supreme Court cases like New Hampshire v. Dartmouth which established the idea of corporate personhood, or Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad which ruled that corporations are persons with protection under the 14th amendment – corporations have many of the rights of individuals in America. Because of this, corporations are allowed to police themselves.
And the second question: Where should we go from here? “We need to change the American paradigm of success,” proposed Rebekah. “We have woken up from the American dream in a cold sweat.”
Rebekah draws her hopes from German philosopher Hannah Arendt, who proscribes a non-egocentric individualism which will make it much more difficult for the 1% (a group that could fit in Carleton’s chapel) to manipulate us. If we assert ourselves as a multi-faceted group of individuals, corporations will no longer be able to see us as statistics, and will no longer be able to manipulate us.
Carleton is on Winter Break, but Occupy Northfield events will continue. Closer to Jan 1st (the start of Winter term) Dorothea will host a movie night (date undecided) for a viewing of Rebekah Frumkin’s play, as well as a showing of “Inside Job,” the award winning documentary about the crash of 2008 narrated by Matt Damon. And every Thursday morning you can join a group that “occupies the corner of Woodley and Division,” at 7:39 AM, with breakfast afterwards. For more info, contact Dorothea at hrossowyc@gmail.com.
You can also hear Rebekah Frumkin talking with David Bly on KYMN here.
