Law and Order for the Working Class
By: Marc Dann and Leo Jennings III
Originally published by Center for Working Class Studies | Georgetown University
Donald Trump has positioned himself as the “law and order” president, because the term provides a positive framing for the racially-tinged rhetoric he uses to divide members of the white working and middle classes from people of color. The Guardian’s Tom McCarthy explains the tactic as “convincing voters that crime is a threat – scaring them into such a belief, if necessary – and then convincing them only you can stop it.” For decades, American politicians have used it “to play on racist fears, using code language – ‘crime’, ‘inner cities’, ‘quiet neighborhoods’ – in an attempt to connect especially with white voters.”
Pundits continue to debate how large a role Trump’s explicit and implicit racism and his promises to crack down on crime and criminals—particularly those with dark skin--played in his 2016 victory. He’s now directing his hate-filled oratory at the Black Lives Matter movement and the protests that started after the killing of George Floyd and have ramped up again last week after the officers who shot Breonna Taylor were not charged with her murder. Such rhetoric seems more effective than ever at motivating his hardcore supporters and some white suburbanites who are appalled by the violence they see in the news every day.
Trump frames the issue as a binary choice: you’re either for law and order or you’re with the anarchists, rioters, and police-haters. His success with this tactic has painted Democrats into an uncomfortable political corner. How can they stand for racial justice but not be seen as weak on crime?
Fortunately, a new report issued from a group of international journalists could help Joe Biden and his party make the case that they stand for law and order in a way that will unify rather than splinter the working class. The report, presented as a five-part podcast “Suspicious Activity: Inside the FinCEN Files,” documents how the world’s most powerful banks facilitate the worst of humanity: Citing evidence from “a huge trove of secret government documents,” the report traces “how the giants of Western banking move trillions of dollars in suspicious transactions, enriching themselves and their shareholders while facilitating the work of terrorists, kleptocrats, and drug kingpins. And the US government, despite its vast powers, fails to stop it.”
While many of the activities uncovered by the journalists are shocking, readers of our past Working-Class Perspectives entries about corporate criminality will not be surprised by this key revelation: not one banking executive involved in this massive money laundering scheme has been charged with a crime -- despite the fact that officials at the U.S. Department of Justice, Department of the Treasury, and members of Congress know exactly what is happening.
As Marc wrote in recently in the Akron Beacon Journal, executives blithely break the law because they don’t fear being charged with a crime. This lack of consequences combined with billions of dollars in profits has fueled corporate misbehavior of all kinds. As Martin Woods, a former suspicious transactions investigator for Wachovia, notes, “Some of these people in those crisp white shirts in their sharp suits are feeding off the tragedy of people dying all over the world.” Like the masterminds of the mortgage crisis that nearly cratered the world economy, the makers of Oxycontin who have killed hundreds of thousands of people, and the First Energy executives who paid the largest bribe in the history of Ohio politics, not one of those white shirt, sharp suit-wearing executives has been perp-walked out of their palatial office. Instead, on the rare occasion when a big bank was prosecuted, it simply paid a fine -- and continued to engage in illegal activity.
And that gives Democrats a “law and order” opportunity of their own. Biden and a Democratic Congress could ride to the rescue of the millions of people who have been repeatedly victimized by corporate America’s total disregard for both the consequences of their actions and the rule of law. Soon after the release of “Suspicious Activity,” Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders renewed their call for enactment of the “Ending Too Big to Jail Act.” If Joe Biden and other more moderate Democrats express full-throated support for this much-needed and long-overdue reform legislation, they could reunite the factions of the working class and focus their collective ire on the real common enemy: the corporate criminals who have yet to be held accountable for murdering major components of the American Dream.
It might not be easy for Biden to renounce decades of support for the finance and banking industry, especially because the Obama administration failed to prosecute any of the major players responsible for the collapse of the housing market. But we believe he must do this in order to win in 2020 and rebuild the working-class and blue-collar coalition that Trump has torn asunder.
That possibility makes perp-walking some bespoke suit-wearing corporate criminals off Wall Street and into jail the absolute right thing to do.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Marc Dann has devoted his entire legal career to fighting for homeowners, consumers and small businesses beginning with his tenure as the Antitrust Director in the office of the West Virginia Attorney General in his service as Ohio Attorney General and continuing today at DannLaw, the consumer protection law firm he founded and manages. The firm, which maintains offices in Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, Westwood, New Jersey, and New York, New York, is a national leader in utilizing the provisions of the Real Estate Settlement Act (RESPA) and the Truth in Lending Act (TILA) to bring legal claims against and secure monetary damages from banks and mortgage loan servicers that abuse, cheat, and or defraud borrowers.
Dann has launched a new firm Advocate Attorney LLP dedicated to training and deploying an army of consumer protection lawyers to stand up for working class and middle class homeowners and consumers in the coming pandemic recession. Advocate works with legal services plans to expand access to experienced legal counsel to consumers throughout the United States.
In addition to his work as an attorney, Dann served the people of Ohio as a member of the Ohio Senate where he introduced numerous consumer protection bills including a comprehensive predatory lending law that was rated among the best in the United States. He also led successful efforts to lengthen the statute of limitations for victims of child sexual abuse, expand the rights of crime victims, and extend the reach of the Ohio Consumer Sales Practices Act and the Federal Telephone Solicitation Act.
Elected Ohio Attorney General in 2006, Attorney Dann became a national leader in the effort to hold banks and predatory lenders accountable for victimizing homeowners. He initiated securities fraud claims against the Wall Street speculators who created the worthless mortgage-backed securities that nearly cratered the global economy, developed and implemented the Save the Dream program which assists Ohio homeowners facing foreclosure, mobilized Mortgage Fraud Task Forces in Ohio’s major cities, challenged the standing of mortgage servicers to foreclose in cases to which the State of Ohio was a party, and worked with Former Ohio Chief Justice Thomas Moyer to recruit, organize and train more than 1,200 lawyers to represent homeowners facing foreclosure on a pro bono basis. Today, Dann is an active member of the Society of Attorneys General Emeritus (SAGE) .
Upon leaving office in May 2008, Dann volunteered to represent people who were about to lose their homes. In the course of that work, he became convinced that many loan servicers lacked the standing necessary to foreclose on his clients. Motivated by the injustices he saw and recognizing that the incidence of fraudulent foreclosure practices had reached epidemic proportions in Ohio, he decided to establish The Dann Law Firm and began representing clients in every corner of the state.
Dann has represented thousands of borrowers in disputes with his mortgage servicers throughout the United States. Dann and Dann Law have been appointed class counsel in major litigation involving mortgage servicing, data breaches impacting consumers and government abuse and misconduct.
Marc Dann, his wife Kathy and their two dogs Buddy and Augusta reside in Lakewood, Ohio. Marc enjoys spending time with his adult children Mavilya, Charlie, and Jessie, reading, writing, hiking, and traveling.