Day 2: There must not be blood. An American city confronts peak oil, July 2015

Duke City Commonwealth.com
Saturday, July 4, 2015
9:15 p.m. MDT

Compiled from staff and volunteer reports.

 

1: Downtown Albuquerque, July 4, 2015

22 people are known dead and at least 200 believed wounded in Albuquerque in the last 24 hours, as protesters engage in running street battles with Albuquerque police and elements of the New Mexico National Guard.Casualty estimates come from sources at Albuquerque area hospitals.

All of the dead and injured reported so far are civilians. State government sources have not released casualty figures among police and National Guard forces. Eyewitnesses claim multiple instances of police or Guard personnel being hit by gunfire from street protesters.

Sympathy street demonstrations have broken out in Santa Fe and Las Cruces, although so far the demonstrations there have been peaceful.

New Mexico Governor Susanna Martinez has declared a state of emergency in Albuquerque, effectively placing the city under martial law. By the governor's order, a 24 hour curfew went into effect in Albuquerque at 4:00 p.m. today. Persons other than police, military, or emergency services personnel found to be present outdoors will be fired upon. The Speaker of the New Mexico House of Representatives, Democrat Raymond Lujan of Grants, has vowed to challenge the governor's emergency declaration in court.

Governor Martinez refused to comment on reports that she has asked U.S. President Mitch Daniels to deploy regular army troops to the state. Pentagon sources have suggested in recent months that ongoing combat operations in Mexico, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Venezuela would leave little manpower for suppressing domestic disturbances in the continental United States.

The violence in Albuquerque began yesterday, with a clash between protesters and police at a local supermarket that left five demonstrators dead. The protest was called by community leaders in response to the mounting food crisis in the city.

Street battles in the ensuing 24 hours suggest more than anger toward the police. Signs and slogans among protesters have denounced food shortages and high prices, also accusing local supermarket chains of cronyism in food distribution.

More than a dozen supermarkets were reportedly damaged in today's fighting. The South Valley Albertsen's store where the street battles began yesterday has burned to the ground. Fire department personnel trying to respond at the scene were met with automatic weapons fire from surrounding buildings.  

Gunfire from police during the day's violence was repeatedly met in kind by local residents. Protesters used automatic weapons, Molotov cocktails, and rocks to inflict a so-far unknown number of casualties on police and National Guard forces throughout the city.

 2: New West National Bank, near Coors and Central

One report claimed that an improvised explosive device (IED) destroyed a police patrol car in the South Valley, but the report remains unverified.

A source with an Albuquerque activist organization, speaking only under a guarantee of anonymity, claimed that the violence could soon escalate dramatically. According to this source, meetings of key community members at secret locations spent the day debating a coordinated response to the violence. The meetings apparently failed to reach a consensus.

However, one group favored escalating the so far piecemeal armed attacks on police and Guard units into an all-out armed insurgency. Members of this group include several veterans of the U.S. military, with combat experience in wars spanning the last fourteen years.

One veteran is said to favor massively destructive guerrilla style attacks. These attacks would use car bombs and other techniques faced by American forces in the ongoing global U.S. war to suppress Islamic insurgents and other "assymetric" opposition.

Other activists have reportedly gone so far as proposing an alliance with the city's gangs and drug cartels. 

A larger group, according to the source in Albuquerque's increasingly underground activist community, favors a peaceful resolution to the crisis. Under their proposal, the Archbishop of Santa Fe and other religious leaders would mediate an end to the confrontation. Albuquerque residents would pledge to abandon violence, while state and city authorities would accept formal, face-to-face talks with community leaders to address the ongoing food shortage and economic crisis.

 3: Central Avenue, downtown

The source who described this proposal emphasized the growing desperation of many ordinary citizens. "We've got unemployment over twenty percent. A lot of people are running out of food, and they've got sick family members who can't get care because they got no insurance. And the government is cutting people off from all kinds of help. Medicaid, unemployment, welfare. They're closing the schools. They say there's no water rationing but the utility is cutting people off anyway. And it's a hundred fucking degrees every day. Everybody's tired of it. Something's got to give. When people are desperate they can do anything."

The source who made these remarks self-identifies as a supporter of the peace proposal being discussed by activists. The source agreed to speak about the proposal, and the more violent responses under consideration, in order to head off a worsening of the current situation.

"But the government's got to give, too," the source emphasized. "They can't keep doing this shit to people. They've got to talk to us, about ways to start helping people. Organizing neighborhoods to start living a different kind of life. Because the old days, they aren't coming back. Wal-mart and partying on payday and going to the mall. That's done. The government's got to start helping people deal with that."

The source wouldn't offer a precise prediction of what will happen next. Nor would the source speculate on how the debate in Albuquerque's underground will go. The activist only repeated the need for action amidst growing economic collapse. "If this keeps up," said the activist, "things are going to get bad. We won't be a community no more. We'll be the resistance."


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Public domain images from Wikimedia Commons:

1: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dec2008-riot-komotini-1.jpg

2: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Commercial_Bank_(closer_shot)_(Athens_riots_December_2008).JPG

3: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Thess-riot-barricade-2.JPG

They say Albuquerque is dying: an American city confronts peak oil, July 2015

Duke City Commonwealth.com 
Friday, July 3, 2015
11:55 p.m. MDT

Albuquerque police opened fire on a crowd of demonstrators outside a supermarket early this evening, killing five people and wounding at least 11 others, according to police and hospital sources.

Incidents of rioting, vandalism, and arson have erupted throughout the city following the shootings at the supermarket. At least two police officers are known dead in the city-wide violence and four others wounded, according to a police spokesman. The number of dead and injured among civilians in the hours after the supermarket clash remains unknown, but numerous eyewitness reports say police have used deadly force repeatedly throughout the evening.

Today's outbreak of mass violence was believed to be the worst civil disorder in the state since New Mexico was occupied by U.S. military forces during the Mexican War of 1846-48.

Numerous, extensive fires have been reported throughout the Albuquerque metro area, affecting commercial and residential buildings as well as vehicles. The glow from the fires was visible as far away as Los Alamos, fifty miles to the north. 

1: Downtown Albuquerque, July 3, 2015

At 10:00 p.m. this evening, Albuquerque Mayor Darren White issued a directive establishing a near-total dusk-to-dawn curfew throughout the city, effective immediately. In a written statement, the mayor officially authorized police to use deadly force at their discretion to enforce the curfew. Police and emergency services personnel are exempted from the curfew. The mayor's office and police have ordered all other city residents to stay in their homes or businesses for the duration of the curfew.

The mayor has reportedly asked New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez for National Guard assistance. Information to that effect comes from sources with the City Council who asked to remain anonymous. Eyewitness accounts of troop carriers moving south on Interstate 25 between Santa Fe and Albuquerque could not be immediately confirmed.

The demonstration and shootings which triggered violence across the city took place at the Albertsen's supermarket on Isleta Blvd SW. At about 6:00 p.m., several hundred local residents began to gather in the parking lot outside the store. South Valley community groups had called for the demonstration the previous day, in response to accusations of hoarding, price gouging, and favoritism against the store's corporate management. The crowd size soon swelled to 2,000 or more, according to eyewitnesses.

Police appeared on the scene at about 7:00 p.m. At least two dozen patrol cars and several SWAT teams were reported gathering on the fringes of the demonstration. Two police helicopters patrolled the airspace in the neighborhood as police ordered the protesters to disperse via loudspeaker. The police warnings came at about 7:15 p.m. The sound of gunshots was heard soon thereafter, according to eyewitnesses. Police and community leaders each accused the other of firing first.

Organizers of the Albertsen's protest say police opened fire indiscriminately, without provocation, pouring dozens of rounds of live fire into a dense crowd of demonstrators. "They just started shooting at anything," said Albert Romero, President of the South Valley Coalition of Neighborhood Associations.  "There was no cause for it, none at all," Romero said, his voice breaking. "These were peaceful people going hungry. What the hell are we supposed to do?"

Deputy Police Chief Joseph Vigil said in a statement to media that police were fired upon by gunmen within the crowd and "used legitimate, appropriate force to defend themselves and stabilize the situation."

Emergency room personnel at University of New Mexico Hospital confirmed five deaths by gunshot wound among victims treated at that facility. Eleven other victims of the Albertsen's violence were treated for various injuries. Four of these are said to be in critical condition. Officials at university hospital and other medical centers reported scores of additional victims as violence spread across the city. Health care providers say precise numbers of dead and wounded are impossible to estimate, owing to "the fluidity of the situation," as one hospital administrator put it. 

2: Barelas neighborhood, Albuquerque, July 3, 2015

Tonight's riot at the Albertsen's supermarket, and subsequent violence, comes amidst an acute worsening of the national economic crisis in recent weeks. Local food prices have spiked dramatically, as they have across the nation. Economists blame poor agricultural output in much of the world and the latest explosion in global oil prices. After declining to $110 per barrel late last year, oil closed today at an average price of $272 on global commodity exchanges. Gas at the pump in Albuquerque hit a new record this week, according to the American Automobile Association, averaging $9.61 per gallon.

A seemingly endless litany of national economic woes has worsened the picture. Relentlessly increasing unemployment has fueled an eruption of mass poverty unseen in the United States since the Great Depression of the 1930s. The nation's official unemployment rate stands at 19.7%, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, with the New Mexico jobless rate reported at 22.3%. Meanwhile, draconian fiscal austerity at the local and national level has cut social services such as food stamps, Medicaid, and unemployment relief.

The crisis has exacted a grim toll in Albuquerque and around the state. Food shortages, once unthinkable, have become a fact of American life in the last year. Skyrocketing oil prices have driven up costs for fertilizers, pesticides, tractor fuel, and other petroleum-based essentials of industrial farming. Soaring transportation costs have bankrupted trucking companies and kept food from reaching supermarket shelves in sufficient quantity to keep up with demand.

Meanwhile, New Mexico's drought emergency enters its twenty fifth consecutive month. Governor Martinez has repeatedly urged voluntary residential and commercial water conservation measures, to little apparent affect. Today's high temperature of 111 degrees Fahrenheit marked the eleventh time in the last thirteen days that the temperature has broken the century mark.

So far, authorities in Washington have warned state governments to expect little in the way of federal assistance. President Mitch Daniels says other national needs must take priority, including the ongoing U.S. budget crisis and military operations in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Vice President Mike Huckabee, speaking at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque last week, promised that essential national security facilities in New Mexico would remain untouched by the nation's fiscal emergency.

Democratic Senate Minority Leader Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico has called on the Daniels administration to institute food rationing and subsidies for the middle and working classes. So far, White House officials remain cool to any such move toward what a National Economic Council staffer called "failed big government policies our nation can ill afford in the present situation."

Albuquerque citizens have reacted with growing anger and frustration to food shortages at local stores. Albertsen's, in particular, has faced accusations of favoritism. Community activists say the supermarket chain continues to sell food at bulk discounts, directly from wholesale distribution centers, to corporations, government officials, and wealthy individuals. "It's outrageous and it's immoral," said Miranda Begay, a neighborhood coordinator for the Albuquerque Transition Network. Referring to Albertsen's management, Begay declared, "We've got families on the verge of starvation everywhere in this city and they're selling food at cost to people who have everything they could ever want."

Albertsen's representatives have denied those charges. They say the ongoing shortage of food staples results purely from high fuel prices and global market conditions in recent months.

An investigation by Duke City Commonwealth.com, published in a series of reports in April and May this year, documented at least five apparent instances of bulk discount sales to corporate customers by Albertsen's employees.

Mayor Darren White's office has indicated that maintaining order will be his top priority in responding to the economic emergency. "People have to know that the government's going to keep the peace," he told worshipers last Sunday at New Hope Evangelical Church in Albuquerque's Northeast Heights. "Without law there can be no liberty," the mayor declared. "And liberty is one thing we're going to keep in this hour of our country's greatest peril."

Community activists have taken a different tack, emphasizing grassroots engagement for social justice as the key to a prosperous future. Environmental, labor, and religious groups have organized an array of grassroots, non-governmental efforts for economic relief over the last three years. Governments at the city, state, and national level face bankruptcy, but local initiatives have tried their best to fill what seems a growing gap between public resources and public needs.

Albuquerque Transition Network's Melissa Begay tried to sound a note of hope about the future. "There's so much good that we could do," she said, as television coverage of this evening's violence unfolded in her Barelas area home. At an an impromptu meeting with fellow activists in her living room, Begay said, "Neighborhoods are starting to come together, to help each other. We've got teams of master gardeners teaching the basics of urban farming. We've got teachers passing on real trades and real skills that people are going to need to take care of their families. Carpentry, mechanics, you name it. We can do so much. The city could help, if they wanted to. They should be helping us instead of killing us."

Others in the community reacted to tonight's events with disbelief and despair. Only blocks away from the meeting of activists at the home of Melissa Begay, a bleeding man comforted his two children while their family-owned hardware store burned nearby. The man, who asked not to be named, said he'd been wounded by gunfire from Albuquerque police. A bloody wound to his shoulder had been patched with a makeshift bandage.

"I never seen the like," he said. "Never here, anything like this. I fought in Waziristan for this country," he said, referring to service in the Pakistan war with the United States Army. "I thought this kind of stuff only happened in other places."

Where does he think we go from here?

The man paused, watching the fire burning across the street. "They say this is the end times, you know? That maybe this is it. They say Albuquerque is dying. And the world too, you know? But if this is the way it's going to be, then maybe I don't want it all to go on, right? Maybe it's all better to just let it go."

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Public domain photos from Wikimedia Commons:

1: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:School_burn.JPG

2: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Riots_Paris_2007.jpg

Local currency: getting things done when things fall apart

When the established institutions won't help you, you go around them. You seek help from the people you know. Because there's no other choice. Economic collapse isn't the only time this is true. It's just life.

* * * * * 

In the late 1980s, Frank Tortoriello had a problem. His world wasn't falling apart, but he faced a real problem none the less. He ran a deli in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. He wanted to move his business to a larger location, and to do that, he needed $4,500. So he did what you're supposed to do. He applied to the local bank for a loan. They said no. Normally, that would have been the end of it. The other banks would probably say no as well. Maybe Mr. Tortoriello could have turned to family members for a helping hand.

He decided to do something else. Something I never would have thought of in that situation. He printed his own money.

I'm not kidding.

I am, however, oversimplifying. Frank Tortoriello had his new location all picked out and ready to go. He just needed money for the move. So, he issued "Deli Dollars" to pay for it. He issued notes -- printed slips of paper just like currency -- with a face value of ten dollars. But they weren't dollars, because that would have gotten Frank thrown into the rape dungeon archipelago of the U.S. prison system. Instead, his Deli Dollars were designed by a local artist, emblazoned with the image of Frank and his deli staff being carried by town citizens to the new deli location, cooking all the way. Frank signed each note himself to prevent counterfeiting. He planned to distribute them to his customers; each ten dollar note would be redeemable in ten dollars worth of products at the deli's new location when that location opened. Here's the brilliant part. Frank sold these notes over a 30 day period to his customers, for eight U.S. dollars each. In other words, he gave his customers in Great Barrington, Massachusetts a 20 percent discount on deli products, to be applied once his new location opened.

In the 30 day sale of Deli Dollars, Frank raised $5,000 in U.S. currency. Customers bought his notes happily, because of his local reputation for being an insanely hard worker. And a good man. His neighbors knew that the deli would rise again and they'd get to redeem their Deli Dollars in deli food a few months hence. During the sale of Frank's temporary local currency, the town went nuts with excitement. How could it not? What he was doing was so inherently cool, people couldn't help being excited. They won't give me a bank loan? Fine! The hell with 'em! I'll make my own money! Hah! As it turned out, the bankers who had turned down Frank's original loan request were among those who bought his Deli Dollars. Sometimes, justice does indeed triumph. Not by force, but by the ridiculous, Field of Dreams-y power of hope. And of Cool.

Frank successfully moved to his new deli location. And he paid back all of the citizens who had loaned him money. As one description of Frank's endeavor put it: "Frank repaid the loan, not in hard-to-come-by federal notes but in cheese-on-rye sandwiches."

Frank Tortoriello's Deli Dollar note

(from the E.F. Schumacher Society, via the National Science Foundation)

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My tendency as a writer is to ramble on about sweeping global events, pondering gigantically large physical and social trends. It all points toward the big picture getting very dark. But again and again, I keep asking myself the question once posed to me by a friend: even if you're right, what the hell am I supposed to do about it? 

What are we, as individuals, supposed to do? What can we realistically accomplish, not only on our own but with the help of family, friends, neighbors, coworkers, churchgoers, local business owners? These are the people who matter most in our lives. They aren't headlines or video images from far away. They are people with names we know, faces we see every day.

As I write for this blog, I find a theme emerging in my thinking: we can't rely on established power structures to help us get through mounting economic and ecological stress. By "established power structures" I mean: governments at all levels; the two major political parties; large corporations and financial giants. These entities should all be regarded, I'm coming to believe, as obstacles and adversaries first, helpful instruments in everyday life second. We should begin looking for local alternatives to them, for services and resources we've long obtained from huge national and international institutions like Wal-Mart, Bank of America, the federally-funded state highway department, and the political parties that run the whole mess (mostly according to the dictates of corporate campaign donations).

We will continue dealing with all of these entities, because in many cases we have no choice. If you really need to help yourself or your loved ones by getting a much-needed cheap electric gizmo at Megalo-Mart, or standing in line at a Big Government office to sign up for unemployment checks and food stamps, go for it. But we shouldn't delude ourselves that the institutions pulling the strings on those services have our best interests at heart. Neither should we expect big box stores and government programs to continue forever. In all likelihood, economic and ecological stress will worsen within a decade, and perhaps much sooner, to collapse on an epic scale (even more epic, I mean, than what we see today). As the collapse unfolds, big institutions dominating the U.S political, legal, and economic system will have little interest in helping what used to be the middle class, which by then will be reduced to vast legions of the unemployed, debt-ridden, poverty-stricken, sickness-addled, and homeless. Government and big business will not help them. And remember: "them" will be us.

Or so the signs indicate to me. Perhaps I'm wrong. Maybe, as conditions worsen, the U.S. economic and political elite will rediscover social conscience and activist government in the service of economic equality and opportunity. It's happened before. The cruel robber baron capitalism of the late nineteenth century eventually yielded to technocratic progressivism and the New Deal, both sterling twentieth century examples of capitalism saving itself. I'm betting this will not happen today. Corporate funded Democrats are planning to dismantle Medicare and Social Security while allowing basic public services, like bridges, roads, schools, libraries, electric power stations, and public health facilities to rot. This happens in large part because Democrats rig the economic game to favor their corporate benefactors, while waging a metaphysically expensive global war that yields precisely zero material benefit to American society, except for those with jobs or investments in the military-industrial complex. Republicans follow the same policies even more ruthlessly, fueling merciless economics and perpetual war with the fires of race hatred and religious extremism.

Maybe these two parties and their gigantic, system-spanning institutions left over from prosperity will turn out to be helpful in the coming era of collapse. More likely, though, we'll be on our own.

Like Frank Tortoriello and his deli in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, back in the day. 

* * * * *

Today, Great Barrington is home to a thriving local currency, the BerkShare, which far surpasses Frank's humble Deli Dollars in scope and ambition. Berkshares are real money. They are printed locally, on wallet-sized paper notes, in face values up to 50 dollars. More than 365 local businesses accept them as legal tender for goods and services. More than two million dollars worth of BerkShares circulate in the community. They are redeemable in U.S. dollars at 13 local bank locations, at an exchange rate of one BerkShare equal to ninety five cents in federal currency. This last point is what makes BerkShares -- or any local currency -- perfectly legal. In the 1970s, the U.S. Treasury Department was asked about the legality of an experimental local currency begun by a New Hamsphire economist. Said a Treasury bureaucrat: ""We don't care if he issues pine cones, as long as it is exchangeable for dollars so that transactions can be recorded for tax purposes."

Since Berkshares are redeemable only in the Great Barrington area, they promote local spending and local jobs. Experience and empirical evidence suggest that local businesses promote healthy local economies, much more so than giant Megalo-Mart box stores and national chains. This article in Time magazine provides a good overview of how the process works. Local businesses keep money in the community, where it can provide for the community's real needs. Spending money at Megalo-Mart, by contrast, goes mostly for the well-being of distant owners of a vast corporate behemoth. And they, it is well documented, have spent many a decade trying to strangle local businesses around America. To a large extent, they succeeded. But don't worry, what goes around comes around, at least in this case. In a few years, crippling oil prices will strangle global supply chains and just-in-time delivery. Brachiosaurus-sized box stores will not be quite so feasible to operate under those circumstances. Local businesses will have to step into the void left by their extinction. Local currencies can help them do it. 


We're going to need such creative, unconventional, local responses as the larger economy disintegrates. They are possible, and they are already underway. Time to pick up the pace, though. The hour is getting late.