What Happens When Angry Citizens Crash the Gates of America's CEO Class?

By Mark Ames, Playboy.com. Posted May 2, 2009.

The bus stopped and let us out at the corner of Mine Hill Road and Golden Pond Lane. Last out of the bus were the showdown’s two stars, both African-Americans. One was a middle-aged pastor named Mary Huguley, and the other was Asaad Jackson, a 24-year-old ex-boxer-turned-activist sporting dreadlocks down to his beltline. They were going to confront the rich white AIG executive, Douglas Poling. He was the one who took the largest bonus, $6.4 million. Poling apparently was so unnerved by the scenario that he returned his bonus a day earlier, while Poling's fellow AIG exec neighbor up the street, James "Jackpot Jimmy" Hass, blubbered to reporters that he had also given back his multimillion-dollar bonus and couldn't people just look into their hearts and show him some mercy.

Huguley and Jackson deliberately and dramatically marched down Golden Pond Lane towards Poling’s mansion, while about 50 members of the media elite jostled and swarmed around them like worker bees with the queen. This scene unfolding was every American plutocrat’s worst nightmare, once unimaginable, now a reality that could be viewed from Poling’s second-story window: Two poor, pissed-off black people, surrounded by a phalanx of the liberal elite media, marches up to my hard-earned mansion in broad daylight, banging on my front door, demanding a cut of my wealth. On the deepest-fears scale, Willie Horton rates about a 2 compared to this class-war nightmare.

As we got closer to 177 Golden Pond Lane, we saw some uniformed policemen standing at the edge of the cul-de-sac with three healthy-looking white men in weekend sweatshirts and baseball caps, and two undercover cop cars -- sporty SUVs --in the driveway of Poling’s neighbor. A regular Fairfield cop car slowly tailed our crowd from behind -- just want to make sure nothing happens here, folks…. Two menacing bodyguards patrolled Poling’s front yard: a shaven-headed guy in business casual wear with a goatee and shades, who tried giving the impression of a relaxed, experienced veteran; and a gorgeous Latino woman in a Ninja jumpsuit, who paced the lawn like a caged she-lion just begging for one of us lowlifes to stick our hand into her range, where she’d tear it off with some jujitsu move. Poling was apparently gone that day --I imagine he was scouting out citizenship opportunities in plutocrat-friendly autocracies like Kazakhstan or Liechtenstein.

So here we were: the big Class War showdown. Pastor Mary and Asaad Jackson gave the TV cameramen time to adjust their positions, then the mob moved forward right up to Poling’s driveway. This was it: we were at the North Bridge in Concord, at Harper’s Ferry, at Sproul Plaza with the cop car surrounded… the moment when it could have broken into open warfare, the moment when others crossed the line they could never go back on. It was amazing to think how vulnerable America’s elite are: they don’t use high walls and security fences and armed goons to guard their wealth, the way they do in so many countries. Instead, they just rely on our sense of shame, something innate that tells us, we don’t belong here, we’ll be leaving now, sorry…This was the moment to smash that peasant sensibility. Now that we’d smashed through that barrier and found ourselves facing a robber-baron class that only bothered pitching two security goons against 50 or so of us, the Great Class War was about to begin, right here, on Golden Pond Lane.

The security goons blocked the two African-Americans from delivering a letter they were carrying to Poling. They had been instructed not to confront the bodyguards or anyone, so they didn’t. As reporters jostled for the money photo, the security goons started to threaten the rest of us if we so much as crossed over Poling’s gutter. They were feeling confident. The tide was turning. And this was the moment when it all fizzled, and the peasants melted back into the villages. We had the gun, and we were in control -- but right at that moment, we opened the door and let the Edmund Kemper plutocrats back into the car. The security goons instructed Pastor Mary and Asaad to put their letter into Poling’s mailbox. Pastor Mary did. Then she said some sort of prayer, and started walking back. CNN asked what she thought of Poling’s house, and she replied that the house was “lovely.” And then we walked back to the bus.

What began as the promised opening shots in the Great Class War instead turned out to be something like a field trip for a high school civics class, with everyone learning the importance of being responsible. The organizer, John Green, deemed it a success, and since then his group has never flirted with anything remotely as incendiary again. By the time we got back, the news was already announcing the end of the Class War: “Outrage Over Bonuses Wanes.” Congress backed off from its posturing, news pundits backed off, and we, the people, returned to doing what we do best: getting screwed. Just when we held our fates in our own hands, we went Aiko Koo: unlocked the door and handed the gun to the Kemper-crats.

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Read more of Mark Ames at eXiledonline.com. He writes the Backstabber column for Playboy.com. He is the author of Going Postal: Rage, Murder, and Rebellion: From Reagan's Workplaces to Clinton's Columbine and Beyond.

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