Wilfred Diergaardt, a long-time leader of the Basic Income movement in Namibia, died of Covid-19 earlier this month. One December 22, Claudia and Dirk Haarmann, sent the following announcement of Dieragaardt’s death:
It is with a very sad heart that we have to share with you that this morning Rev. Wilfred Diergaardt passed on.
He has been a dear brother and comrade in the struggle for social justice in the Namibian Basic Income Grant campaign and in the fight against HIV-AIDS. His passing on leaves a devastating gap for his family, friends and society at large, which is currently beyond comprehension.
He was hospitalized with COVID-19 on the 8th of Dezember and was treated the last days in the ICU. His wife Cynthia informed us this morning and asked us to convey this sad news to you as colleagues and friends. Please keep her and the family in your prayers!
Universal Basic Income (UBI) is making significant progress in Brazil, according to the following letter former Senator Eduardo Suplicy sent to leaders of BIEN. (See also: Maricá one step from Universal Basic Income):
my dear friends of BIEN:
Let me inform you what I consider another positive step in favor of the Citizen’s Basic Income, Universal and Unconditional. Yesterday we had municipal elections in all Brazilian cities. As a candidate for being reelected citycouncilman I got 167.552 votes, the most voted candidate for a citycouncilman in the city of São Paulo or in any other city of Brazil.
It is also a very good news for the objectives of BIEN that the Mayor of Maricá, Fabiano Horta of the PT (Worker’s Party), who has started the institution of a Basic Income, has been reelected with 88% of the votes. Since December 2019, ¼ of the population of 162 thousand people, 42.500 inhabitants started to receive a Basic Income of 300 mumbucas per month, a social money (each mumbuca is equal to one real – each dollar is equal to R$ 5.42). By December 2020, ½ of the population will be receiving it and by 2024 the whole population of Maricá will be receiving the Citizen’s Basic Income.
I have already informed you that last July 21st, 220 federal deputies and senators formed the Parliamentary Front in Defense of the Basic Income. The President João Henrique Campos invited me to be the President of Honor due to the fact that I am the author of the Law 10.835/2004 that institutes, step by step, starting with those most in need, the Citizen’s Basic Income.
Therefore, Brazil is moving, step by step, towards UBI.
On September 19, 2020, people marched for UBI all over the world even in New Orleans where a steady rain came down all day. This blog post has videos and pictures from the march. It was an honor for me to be asked to speak to this group of people who came out on the rain and stayed out for several hours even as the rain kept coming. It was great to think that we were one small part of a march that took place all over teh world–on all six of the inhabited continents. Next year: UBI march Antarctica! Meet me there.
First, 6 videos:
Video of the UBI march and some of the accompanying speeches, September 19, 2020
Jeremy Habegger’s speech recorded after the rain subsided
Karl Widerquist’s speech in the rain
Antoine Pierce speaking at the UBI march
Scott Santens speaking at the UBI March
Basic Income marchers join Black Lives Matter to kneel for police reform
Below is the a copyedited version of the speech I delivered at the Basic Income March, New York, October 26, 2019 in the Bronx, New York, October 26, 2019. Pierre Madden ranscribed and copyedited it, in Montreal, Quebec, September 2020. Then I copyedited it again, at St. Elizabeth’s, Napoleon Avenue, New Orleans, September 11-13, 2020
I march for UBI because it’s wrong to come between anybody and the resources they need to survive and that is exactly what we do in just about every country in the world today. Poverty doesn’t just happen. People don’t get themselves into poverty. Poverty is a lack of access to resources. The world is full of resources. The only reason you can lack access to the resources you need to survive is because somebody else controls them whether it’s an owner, whether it’s a politburo or whether it’s a bureaucracy. It doesn’t matter who controls them. If it’s not you and they say you can’t use them unless you do what we say, you are not free.
A video of the actual speech, October 26, 2019
Freedom is independence. Freedom is the power to say no to anybody who wants to give you orders. But we’ve set up the world so it seems so natural that some people should just own the earth. And the rest of us, the 90%, the 99%, we all have to go to them to get our job or we have no resources to keep us alive. And we call that “work.” We act like there’s no other kind. As if the only thing work could possibly mean is going and taking orders from somebody who has more privileges than you do. Working for yourself has become impossible. It’s been impossible since we kicked the peasants off the land and enclosed the commons. Working for yourself has been impossible since we killed the buffalo. Working for yourself has been impossible since we abducted the slaves. And the freed slaves knew this at the end of the Civil War. That’s why they asked for 40 acres and a mule. Unfortunately, their masters knew it too: that’s why they didn’t get it.
Marching from Harlem to the South Bronx October 26, 2019
There’s nothing wrong with a job. Jobs don’t make you unfree. What makes you unfree is when instead of saying I want you to work for me so I am going to pay you enough that you’ll want to work for me, they say I’m going to take everything starve you into submission. A small group of owners took all the resources. They didn’t invent these resources. These resources were here before all of us. And this group of people, this tiny little privileged group of people are going to take all the resources and they are not going to share with anybody until the people who have nothing provide services for the people who already own everything. That’s why when you control resources, you don’t get just the resources; you get to control other people.
The obligation should go in the other direction. Instead of the poor being obliged to work for the rich, the rich should be obliged to work for the poor. The only thing you could possibly do to justify owning resources, to own more resources than other people do, to have more access to resources, to have more control over resources, to use and use up more resources than other people do, is to provide some sort of service for them.
The New York Basic Income March, October 16, 2019
That’s why we need to tax the owners of property. All property is made out of resources. Every single piece of property, even on the internet. You need a place to stand when you make the internet. You need energy to make that internet work. All property is made out of resources.
They’ll tell you they’ve paid for those resources. No, they paid the last guy who owned them. They didn’t pay all of us who don’t own any resources. If you want to take a part of the earth that was here before you, you’ve got to pay back, provide a service for those who own nothing. That’s why you have to pay a tax on resources and the distribution of the revenue from that tax has to be unconditional.
But they’ll say, that’s something for nothing. No, that’s exactly backwards. The system we have now is something for nothing, where people who own the Earth don’t pay anything to those of us who therefore must do without. That’s something for nothing.
The South Bronx, October 26, 2019
We pretend we’re free because we have a choice of which one of these property owners we can work for. A choice of masters is not freedom. Freedom is independence. Freedom is the power to say no to anyone who would want to be your master. When you establish that, everybody gets some of the value of the resources of this earth, enough to live in dignity, enough to survive, enough that you don’t have to work unless somebody makes it worth your while. Oh, but they will say: All those lazy workers won’t work if you do that.
Notice how it’s always lazy workers and never cheap employers. No, that’s never said. So what we’re really doing when we say this, is we’re taking sides in a dispute. When somebody offers a job and somebody else doesn’t want it, that’s a dispute about wages and working conditions. Everyone has their price, right? So, if there’s a good price, people will take it: Good wages, good working conditions. Someone will take that job. But if we say whatever the wage is, if you don’t take that job you’re a lazy worker. Never a cheap employer. It’s like we’re looking at a dispute and pretending it’s not even a dispute. We’re pretending that only this side counts. We’re taking sides in a dispute, and we’re siding with the most privileged person. We’re morally judging the weakest, the least powerful person, the most vulnerable person, and leaving the privileged people beyond reproach, as if they’re not even a party to a dispute.
A video documentary of the Basic Income March, Harlem to the South Bronx, Ching Juhl, October 26, 2019
That’s the way the system works today.
And that’s based on a ridiculous assumption that the privileged people of the world, whether they’re in government or whether they’re private resource owners, they get to judge everybody else. They get to judge the weak and the vulnerable. They say: you deserve to live; you don’t. You go be homeless, you go eat out of dumpsters or do whatever else you have to do to keep yourself alive. That is the ridiculous assumption that there is anyone who doesn’t deserve the basic resources that they need to survive. And they decide who’s deserving on the self-serving assumption that privileged people have the right to judge whether unprivileged people deserve to survive. Those assumptions are self-serving to begin with. And look how self-servingly they use that power! In practice, the number one thing that we ask of the poor is, “if you’re truly needy, are you willing to work for the rich?”
Are you willing to work for people who own property? That’s what you’ve got to do to prove that you’re worthy. That’s so self-serving on the part of the privileged. And for almost all of us, it’s self-defeating, because most of us don’t have enough property to work for ourselves. The vast majority of us have to work for someone who owns enough property to hire us. By creating the situation where the more privileged to get to block the less privileged from the resources they need to survive, we’ve created a situation where just about everybody has to work either directly or indirectly for the wealthiest of us.
Marching from Harlem to the Bronx, October 26, 2020
And that creates this terrible work incentive problem. When they talk about incentives, they only talk about the incentives for those lazy workers to work. What about the incentive for those cheap employers to pay good wages? That incentive problem doesn’t just affect the people at the low end. 41 years ago, real per capita income was half of what it is now. That means we could all be working half as much and consuming the same or we could be working the same and consuming twice as much as we did 41 years ago. But most people are working just as much as their parents were 41 years ago and consuming little if any more than their parents did 41 years ago. We’ve had all this economic growth all this automation in the past 41 years and the benefits have all gone to the top 1%. Basic Income is not just for those other people at the low end, it’s for everybody who has no other choice but to work for a living.
We have owed each other a Basic Income since we enclosed the common lands, since we abducted the slaves, since we killed the buffalo not because some long-dead person stole something from some other long-dead person but because they created a system that privileges some, impoverishes others, and corrupts us all. We all owe each other a Basic Income now. That’s why I’m marching today and thank you for joining me. –Karl Widerquist, the Bronx, New York, October 26, 2019, final edits St. Elizabeth’s, Napoleon Avenue, New Orleans, September 13, 2020
A video interview of Karl Widerquist, by Ching Juhl, June 22, 2020
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All the images and videos above are by Ching Juhl of Juhl Media.
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Pierre Madden, transcribed this text, did some of the copyedting.
March for Universal Basic Income in at least 40 cities worldwide, Saturday 19 Sep. 2020, from the upper left of a world map: Edmonton, Canada Calgary Kawartha Lakes, ONT Montreal Seattle, USA Tacoma Portland Oakland Los Angeles Los Vegas Phoenix Salt Lake City Dallas Austin Des Moines Kansas City New Orleans Louisville Nashville Atlanta Orlando Parkersburg, WV Raleigh Washington, DC Woodstock, NY New York, NY Montpelier, VT Boston Bogotá, Colombia Akureyri, Iceland Reykjavík London, UK Amsterdam, the Netherlands Haugesund, Norway Norderstedt, Germany Berlin Stockholm, Sweden Helsinki, Finland İstanbul, Turkey
If there’s no UBI march near you, please start one. A march of one person is better than a march of zero. Let’s get some more pictures on the map.
