FAIR USE NOTICE

FAIR USE NOTICE

A BEAR MARKET ECONOMICS BLOG

OCCUPY THE REVOLUTION

OCCUPY THE REVOLUTION OF CONSCIOUSNESS

This site may contain copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in an effort to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. we believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law.

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml

If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

FAIR USE NOTICE FAIR USE NOTICE: This page may contain copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This website distributes this material without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for scientific, research and educational purposes. We believe this constitutes a fair use of any such copyrighted material as provided for in 17 U.S.C § 107.

Read more at: http://www.etupdates.com/fair-use-notice/#.UpzWQRL3l5M | ET. Updates
FAIR USE NOTICE FAIR USE NOTICE: This page may contain copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This website distributes this material without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for scientific, research and educational purposes. We believe this constitutes a fair use of any such copyrighted material as provided for in 17 U.S.C § 107.

Read more at: http://www.etupdates.com/fair-use-notice/#.UpzWQRL3l5M | ET. Updates

All Blogs licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Monday, November 28, 2011

The Paradigm Shifts

In these times.
With liberty and justice for all...

Occupy Wall Street protesters pass the World Financial Center on November 9, 2011, in New York. The group began a two-week march to Washington D.C. that day. (Photo by Don Emmert/AFP/Getty Images)

The Paradigm Shifts

Occupy protests have focused the nation’s attention on inequality. But how can this movement be sustained?

Though the Occupy movement is only a starting point, it has already animated our political discourse.

The Occupy protesters have quickly altered the political landscape of the United States. They are standing up for all those who find themselves in thrall to a grasping and ever-more powerful oligarchy, aka "the 1%." In its December 2011 issue, In These Times explores the terrain of this all-American revolt—an uprising that may be the most formidable challenge to neoliberalism yet. —The editors

BY James Thindwa

The day after “Occupy Wall Street” began on September 17, GOP budget chief and austerity ideologue Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) warned on Fox News: “Class warfare will simply divide this country more, [it] will attack job creators.”

The two events were not related (the media was ignoring the protesters), but their contrasting messages reaffirmed a reality of American life: The elites–the real instigators of class warfare–inhabit a different universe than the rest of us. In that universe, they have gorged on ill-gotten riches while skillfully blocking serious debate about rising inequality and worsening poverty.

What worries Ryan and the 1% is that “divide-and-conquer” might be running its course, and the majority class might unite around some dangerous ideas–like tackling inequality; taking on banks; bringing Wall Street criminals to justice; taxing the rich; privileging job creation over deficit reduction; removing big money from politics; and boosting government investment in infrastructure, healthcare, education and anti-poverty programs.

The establishment is worried not about the absence of clarity of message, as media elites insist, but rather the movement’s potentially broad reach. Occupy is a vessel for a spectrum of grievances that could unite heretofore divided struggles.

Though the Occupy movement is only a starting point, it has already animated our political discourse. It is now common knowledge that in 2010, 400 individuals possessed more wealth than 155 million of their fellow citizens.

Given such reality, Americans are weary of the stultifying obsession with deficits–a canard embraced by a Democratic leadership tone-deaf to popular will–and want strategies to revive the economy by taxing the rich and ramping up public investment.

Social movements can correct injustices through consciousness-raising and mobilization. They also create the space and impetus needed for policy responses. Thus, through executive fiat in October, President Obama announced new measures to mitigate home foreclosures and modify the terms of student loan payments–small measures, to be sure, but the right policy trajectory.

The Occupy uprisings assure that policy initiatives will now take place within a climate of public hostility toward elite-coddling economic policy–a condition favorable to progressive reform.

This new focus on inequality presents an opportunity to beat back a 30-year discourse that blames societal problems on the individual. This has prevented a deeper examination of causality and led to policies that emphasize punitive sanctions rather than prevention and social reform. A national consensus that inequality affects every aspect of daily life could reframe the national debate. For example, instead of bashing teachers, we might craft policies that recognize the role of poverty in undermining education.

The question is: How can this movement be sustained? Part of the answer lies in the willingness of traditional progressive organizations–labor, environmental, women’s, civil, human, gay and disability rights movements and faith-based organizations–to coalesce around it, to turn people out and to provide resources.

It’s too early to tell, but these early victories, the steely determination of protesters and high public support for agitation, bode well for progressive politics. We could be witnessing the most formidable challenge to neoliberalism yet.

Editor’s note: This editorial was written prior to the police raid and eviction of the Occupy Wall Street camp in Zuccotti Park that took place in the early hours of November 15.

James Thindwa is a member of In These Times' Board of Directors and a labor and community activist.

More information about James Thindwa

Saturday, November 26, 2011

The shocking truth about the crackdown on Occupy

The Guardian on Facebook

The shocking truth about the crackdown on Occupy | Naomi Wolf

The violent police assaults across the US are no coincidence. Occupy has touched the third rail of our political class's venality

Naomi Wolf · 25/11/2011 · guardian.co.uk

Occupy Wall Street protester Brandon Watts lies injured on the ground after clashes with police over the eviction of OWS from Zuccotti Park. Photograph: Allison Joyce/Getty Images

US citizens of all political persuasions are still reeling from images of unparallelled police brutality in a coordinated crackdown against peaceful OWS protesters in cities across the nation this past week. An elderly woman was pepper-sprayed in the face; the scene of unresisting, supine students at UC Davis being pepper-sprayed by phalanxes of riot police went viral online; images proliferated of young women – targeted seemingly for their gender – screaming, dragged by the hair by police in riot gear; and the pictures of a young man, stunned and bleeding profusely from the head, emerged in the record of the middle-of-the-night clearing of Zuccotti Park.

But just when Americans thought we had the picture – was this crazy police and mayoral overkill, on a municipal level, in many different cities? – the picture darkened. The National Union of Journalists and the Committee to Protect Journalists issued a Freedom of Information Act request to investigate possible federal involvement with law enforcement practices that appeared to target journalists. The New York Times reported that "New York cops have arrested, punched, whacked, shoved to the ground and tossed a barrier at reporters and photographers" covering protests. Reporters were asked by NYPD to raise their hands to prove they had credentials: when many dutifully did so, they were taken, upon threat of arrest, away from the story they were covering, and penned far from the site in which the news was unfolding. Other reporters wearing press passes were arrested and roughed up by cops, after being – falsely – informed by police that "It is illegal to take pictures on the sidewalk."

In New York, a state supreme court justice and a New York City council member were beaten up; in Berkeley, California, one of our greatest national poets, Robert Hass, was beaten with batons. The picture darkened still further when Wonkette and Washingtonsblog.com reported that the Mayor of Oakland acknowledged that the Department of Homeland Security had participated in an 18-city mayor conference call advising mayors on "how to suppress" Occupy protests.

To Europeans, the enormity of this breach may not be obvious at first. Our system of government prohibits the creation of a federalised police force, and forbids federal or militarised involvement in municipal peacekeeping.

I noticed that rightwing pundits and politicians on the TV shows on which I was appearing were all on-message against OWS. Journalist Chris Hayes reported on a leaked memo that revealed lobbyists vying for an $850,000 contract to smear Occupy. Message coordination of this kind is impossible without a full-court press at the top. This was clearly not simply a case of a freaked-out mayors', city-by-city municipal overreaction against mess in the parks and cranky campers. As the puzzle pieces fit together, they began to show coordination against OWS at the highest national levels.

Why this massive mobilisation against these not-yet-fully-articulated, unarmed, inchoate people? After all, protesters against the war in Iraq, Tea Party rallies and others have all proceeded without this coordinated crackdown. Is it really the camping? As I write, two hundred young people, with sleeping bags, suitcases and even folding chairs, are still camping out all night and day outside of NBC on public sidewalks – under the benevolent eye of an NYPD cop – awaiting Saturday Night Live tickets, so surely the camping is not the issue. I was still deeply puzzled as to why OWS, this hapless, hopeful band, would call out a violent federal response.

That is, until I found out what it was that OWS actually wanted.

The mainstream media was declaring continually "OWS has no message". Frustrated, I simply asked them. I began soliciting online "What is it you want?" answers from Occupy. In the first 15 minutes, I received 100 answers. These were truly eye-opening.

The No 1 agenda item: get the money out of politics. Most often cited was legislation to blunt the effect of the Citizens United ruling, which lets boundless sums enter the campaign process. No 2: reform the banking system to prevent fraud and manipulation, with the most frequent item being to restore the Glass-Steagall Act – the Depression-era law, done away with by President Clinton, that separates investment banks from commercial banks. This law would correct the conditions for the recent crisis, as investment banks could not take risks for profit that create kale derivatives out of thin air, and wipe out the commercial and savings banks.

No 3 was the most clarifying: draft laws against the little-known loophole that currently allows members of Congress to pass legislation affecting Delaware-based corporations in which they themselves are investors.

When I saw this list – and especially the last agenda item – the scales fell from my eyes. Of course, these unarmed people would be having the shit kicked out of them.

For the terrible insight to take away from news that the Department of Homeland Security coordinated a violent crackdown is that the DHS does not freelance. The DHS cannot say, on its own initiative, "we are going after these scruffy hippies". Rather, DHS is answerable up a chain of command: first, to New York Representative Peter King, head of the House homeland security subcommittee, who naturally is influenced by his fellow congressmen and women's wishes and interests. And the DHS answers directly, above King, to the president (who was conveniently in Australia at the time).

In other words, for the DHS to be on a call with mayors, the logic of its chain of command and accountability implies that congressional overseers, with the blessing of the White House, told the DHS to authorise mayors to order their police forces – pumped up with millions of dollars of hardware and training from the DHS – to make war on peaceful citizens.

But wait: why on earth would Congress advise violent militarised reactions against its own peaceful constituents? The answer is straightforward: in recent years, members of Congress have started entering the system as members of the middle class (or upper middle class) – but they are leaving DC privy to vast personal wealth, as we see from the "scandal" of presidential contender Newt Gingrich's having been paid $1.8m for a few hours' "consulting" to special interests. The inflated fees to lawmakers who turn lobbyists are common knowledge, but the notion that congressmen and women are legislating their own companies' profitsis less widely known – and if the books were to be opened, they would surely reveal corruption on a Wall Street spectrum. Indeed, we do already know that congresspeople are massively profiting from trading on non-public information they have on companies about which they are legislating – a form of insider trading that sent Martha Stewart to jail.

Since Occupy is heavily surveilled and infiltrated, it is likely that the DHS and police informers are aware, before Occupy itself is, what its emerging agenda is going to look like. If legislating away lobbyists' privileges to earn boundless fees once they are close to the legislative process, reforming the banks so they can't suck money out of fake derivatives products, and, most critically, opening the books on a system that allowed members of Congress to profit personally – and immensely – from their own legislation, are two beats away from the grasp of an electorally organised Occupy movement … well, you will call out the troops on stopping that advance.

So, when you connect the dots, properly understood, what happened this week is the first battle in a civil war; a civil war in which, for now, only one side is choosing violence. It is a battle in which members of Congress, with the collusion of the American president, sent violent, organised suppression against the people they are supposed to represent. Occupy has touched the third rail: personal congressional profits streams. Even though they are, as yet, unaware of what the implications of their movement are, those threatened by the stirrings of their dreams of reform are not.

Sadly, Americans this week have come one step closer to being true brothers and sisters of the protesters in Tahrir Square. Like them, our own national leaders, who likely see their own personal wealth under threat from transparency and reform, are now making war upon us.

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

10 Best 'Pepper-Spraying Cop' PhotoShops



10 Best 'Pepper-Spraying Cop' PhotoShops


Categories: Cops, Lists!, Memes, Protest

snoopycop.jpg
peppersprayingcop.tumblr.com

If you haven't seen the video of campus police officer Lt. John Pike pepper-spraying peaceful protesters at UC-Davis campus this weekend, we encourage you to watch--the satisfied expression on the campus police's face, amid audible student cries, is fairly harrowing. In addition to the video Runnin' Scared posted this weekend, there's another video here, shot from another angle, where in the first few seconds, you can actually see Pike brandishing the pepper-spray canister to the assembled crowd before he starts spraying, as if he's about to perform a magic trick. A still from the incident became the focus of a meme, as our resident OWS shoe-leather reporter Rosie Gray told you yesterday. And in the last 24 hours, the PhotoShop jokes over at peppersprayingcop.tumblr.com have gotten even funnier. See Pepper-Spray Cop get medieval on Super Grover's ass! Witness Pepper-Spray Cop handle a noisy Bush protester! Watch the Pepper-Spray Cop get some damn hippie Brits loitering in a crosswalk! Our 10 faves.

fraggle.jpg

550-pinkfloyd.jpg

scream-pepperspray.jpg

sesamestreet-cop.jpg

bobross-cop.jpg

rsz_1waldo-pepperspray.jpg

bush-baby-cop.jpg

.jpg

hawking-cop.jpg

peppersprayingcop.tumblr.com

[Cdodero / @camilledodero]

Go to Runnin' Scared for all our latest news coverage.

Monday, November 21, 2011

Occupy Thanksgiving: #RadicalizeYerRelatives




Occupy Thanksgiving: #RadicalizeYerRelatives

Mickey Z.

“Pass the gravy.”

“How ’bout them Packers?”

“I wonder how much of this food is genetically modified.”

Hmm…which line doesn’t belong? The table talk at many holiday gatherings often fluctuates between strained and superficial at best—as most folks try to keep the family peace. This reality can leave the radicals in quite a quandary: maintain proper etiquette or exploit a golden opportunity to spark a crucial conversation?

Then, as you sit there agonizing over the right way to broach a touchy topic, the person next to you suddenly blurts out something that makes your blood boil. Do you react or do you “mind your manners”?

Can I get a “Mic Check”? It just may be time to…

#OccupyDialogue&Debate

When Aunt Betty sez: “If the planet is heating up, why is it so cold today?”

What you want to say: “Listen, you old bat, if you stopped tuning in to right wing radio long enough, you might realize how ignorant you sound.”

Another approach: “The term global warming can be confusing. If we perceived it as climate change instead, it’d make more sense because shifting weather patterns often result in unusually cold weather in certain areas.”

Link for Aunt Betty: Changing the climate…of denial

#OccupyDialogue&Debate

When Grandpa sez: “You eat what you like and I’ll eat what I like. What we eat is a personal choice.”

What you want to say: “I’m sure Jeffrey Dahmer would’ve agreed.”

Another approach: “On the surface, Grandpa, that sounds logical and fair, but reliable evidence shows that our food choices have a major global impact like, for example, 51% of human-created greenhouse gases being produced by animal food industries. Lifestyle changes like avoiding GMOs, supporting organic farms, eating local, and going vegan can enable us to make the ‘personal choices’ that benefit all life on the planet.”

Link for Grandpa: Your cheeseburger causes deforestation

#OccupyDialogue&Debate

When Uncle Ray sez: “I’m so sick of all those lazy Occupy Wall Street protesters. Why can’t they just stop complaining and get a damn job like everyone else?”

What you want to say: “I’m curious, Uncle Ray, what’s it like to live your entire life as a brainwashed drone?”

Another approach: “If they were lazy, they wouldn’t be working so hard to change the system and if they could find meaningful work, they might not be protesting. Did you that even the New York Times admits that 100 million people—one in three Americans—live ‘either in poverty or in the fretful zone just above it’.”

Link for Uncle Ray: Declaration of the Occupation of New York City

#OccupyDialogue&Debate

When the niece who just started college sez: “My Environmental Science professor has gotten me totally into the green thing. Now I drive 40 miles each way just to shop at Whole Foods.”

What you want to say: “Your Environmental Science professor could use a swift kick in the ass.”

Another approach: “Part of the green lifestyle involves remaining aware of food miles. By choosing locally grown food, we can drastically reduce the carbon footprint of our eating habits. I’d be happy to help you find an organic market closer to your campus.”

Link for your niece: Living La Vida Locavore

#OccupyDialogue&Debate

When your second cousin (once removed, on your spouse’s side) sez: “I eat whatever I want and I’ve never been sick a day in my life.”

What you want to say: “Well, there’s still time.”

Another approach: “I was just reading an article that explained how the meat-based diet can lead to cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and more. Would you like me to send you the link?”

Link for your second cousin: 101 Reasons Why I’m Vegetarian

#OccupyDialogue&Debate

When everyone’s favorite sister-in-law sez: “I don’t care what you say. I love my SUV and I’m never giving it up.”

What you want to say: “I hate you. I really fuckin’ hate you.”

Another approach: “It’s not just what you drive individually but how much the car culture is damaging the eco-system that matters. For starters, if you tried participating in car pooling, using the public transportation option, and riding your bike whenever possible, you just may find yourself loving these options even more.”

Link for sis-in-law: Why cars suck

#OccupyDialogue&Debate

When dear ol’ Dad sez: “Ah, the planet was here before us and will be here long after we’re gone. It all doesn’t matter so let’s just enjoy ourselves while we can.”

What you want to say: “Father, are you out of your denial-loving mind?”

Another approach: “I also think Earth will exist long after humans are gone but what concerns me is how much our lifestyle is negatively impacting so many other species. It seems unfair—even selfish—to not change our habits when animals and plants are going extinct at such an alarming rate.”

Link for Dad: Extinction is forever

#OccupyDialogue&Debate

When your precocious but sometimes whiny nephew sez: “Can’t we please just focus on Thanksgiving and all the great traditions?”

What you want to say: “What traditions might that be, Little Timmy? Slaughtering indigenous people, perhaps?”

Another approach: “Sometimes it’s exciting to create new traditions or maybe even discover other traditions we’re not familiar with.”

Link for your nephew: The annual unThanksgiving on Alcatraz Island

#OccupyDialogue&Debate

When everyone complains that you’ve served Tofurky and waxes poetically about the joy of eating a charred turkey corpse.

What you want to say: “You’re nothing but a bunch of murdering zombies!”

Another approach: “Did you know that domesticated turkeys cannot fly but wild turkeys can soar at speeds up to 55 miles per hour? If we stopped eating turkeys and turkey farms became unnecessary, eventually all turkeys would be able to fly. I don’t wanna restrict anyone’s flying freedom, do you?”

Link for everyone: Celebrate turkeys, don’t eat ‘em

#OccupyMilitantManners

Whenever someone suggests I should mind my manners, I can’t help but wonder: When does it become more rude to be polite? Our overburdened planet is crying out for help but some of us are too concerned about offending to speak up and act up?

On the grand scale of offensiveness, I submit that being forward and informed about social change displays far more etiquette than ignoring, say, 29,158 kids under the age 5 dying each day from preventable causes.

Of course, if all else fails…inhale deeply, collect your thoughts, calm your mind, and let loose with a thunderous: MIC CHECK!

#OccupyDebate&Dialogue. #OccupyYerVoice. #OccupyThanksgiving.

Mickey Z. is the author of 11 books, most recently the novel Darker Shade of Green. Until the laws are changed or the power runs out, he can be found on an obscure website called Facebook.

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Why the Occupy Movement is Good for Our Health

November 16, 2011 at 10:28:43

Why the Occupy Movement is Good for Our Health

By (about the author)

byJulie Matthaei and Neil Wollman

Recently, the Congressional Budget Office released a report on income inequality which found that the incomes of the top 1% nearly tripled between 1979 and 2007, whereas those of the middle class increased by less than forty percent. In his 2007 study, Jared Bernstein found that the after-tax income of the top 1% was 21 times higher than that of middle income families in 2005, compared to "only" 8 times higher in 1979. Indeed, inequality has been on the increase.

The burgeoning Occupy Wall Street movement, and its slogan, "We are the 99%," is drawing critical attention to the grossly unequal distribution of income and wealth in the U.S. Critiques include the injustice of the high incomes (and lack of incarceration) of Wall Street executives, given that their illegal actions caused the unemployment and homelessness of millions; the corrupting influence on the democratic process of the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few; and the basic indecency of the top 1% having much more than they could ever spend, while millions of Americans lack housing, health care, even food.


But there any many other serious societal problems associated with inequality which are not so obvious, and which have received little attention from the Occupy movement or the media. According to researchers Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, more equal societies outperformed less equal ones in fifteen key ways:

  • PHYSICAL HEALTH: People in more equal societies live longer, a smaller proportion of children die in infancy, and self-rated health is better.
  • MENTAL HEALTH: People in more equal societies are far less likely to experience mental illness.
  • DRUG ABUSE: People in more equal societies are less likely to use illegal drugs.
  • EDUCATION: Children do better at school in more equal societies.
  • IMPRISONMENT: Unequal societies are harsher (in that) they imprison a higher proportion of people.
  • OBESITY: Obesity is less common in more equal societies.
  • SOCIAL MOBILITY: There is more social mobility in more equal societies.
  • TRUST AND COMMUNITY LIFE: Communities are more cohesive and people trust each other more in more equal societies.
  • VIOLENCE: Homicide rates are lower and children experience less violence in more equal societies.
  • TEENAGE BIRTHS: Teenage motherhood is less common in more equal societies.
  • CHILD WELL-BEING: UNICEF measures of child well-being are better in more equal societies.

In sum, income inequality is bad for our health, and for our society. This finding greatly strengthens the case for policies aimed at making our income distribution more equal.

The Occupy Movement's call for greater income equality also receives support from another finding of Wilkinson and Pickett. They found that reductions in the level of inequality improve social well-being more than do increases in GDP. This finding runs counter to a basic tenet of our economic policy -- that GDP is the best measure of well-being. It suggests that pro-growth policies which lead to increased inequality may in fact make people worse off, even if they increase GDP. Conversely, increasing taxes on the rich would not only increase fairness, but also could increase well-being, even if they were to reduce GDP by discouraging capital investment.

It is time that we the people, and our representatives in Washington, realize how unhealthy inequality is for us and for our society. We should all applaud the Occupy Movement for bringing this problem to public attention, and we should join them in demanding that public officials act decisively to reverse this unhealthy trend. While the top 1% can use their economic advantage and associated power to further enhance their wealth, we encourage them instead to join the 99% in pushing for more equality--as Warren Buffet has--and, perhaps, also improve their health and well-being in the process. We should all seek the redistribution of income -- to "spread the wealth around' as put by then candidate Barack Obama to Joe the plumber -- with more benefits then either likely considered a t the time.

See http://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/ , the web site associated with the work of Wilkinson and Pickett. It gives all relevant statistics, citations, various implications of their work, and so on.

Julie Matthaei is a professor of economics at Wellesley College, and a co-founder and board member of the U.S. Solidarity Economy Network; jmatthae at wellesley dot edu

Neil Wollman is Senior Fellow, Bentley Alliance for Ethics and Social Responsibility; Bentley University. He is concerned with issues of corporate responsibility; NWollman at bentley dot edu

Neil Wollman; Ph. D.; Senior Fellow, Bentley Alliance for Ethics and Social Responsibility; Bentley University; Waltham, MA, 02452; NWollman@Bentley.edu; 260-568-0116;

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author
and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.


Tuesday, November 15, 2011

This Is What Revolution Looks Like




November 15, 2011 at 15:34:44

This Is What Revolution Looks Like

By (about the author)


Welcome to the revolution. Our elites have exposed their hand. They have nothing to offer. They can destroy but they cannot build. They can repress but they cannot lead. They can steal but they cannot share. They can talk but they cannot speak. They are as dead and useless to us as the water-soaked books, tents, sleeping bags, suitcases, food boxes and clothes that were tossed by sanitation workers Tuesday morning into garbage trucks in New York City. They have no ideas, no plans and no vision for the future.

Our decaying corporate regime has strutted in Portland, Oakland and New York with their baton-wielding cops into a fool's paradise. They think they can clean up "the mess" -- always employing the language of personal hygiene and public security -- by making us disappear. They think we will all go home and accept their corporate nation, a nation where crime and government policy have become indistinguishable, where nothing in America, including the ordinary citizen, is deemed by those in power worth protecting or preserving, where corporate oligarchs awash in hundreds of millions of dollars are permitted to loot and pillage the last shreds of collective wealth, human capital and natural resources, a nation where the poor do not eat and workers do not work, a nation where the sick die and children go hungry, a nation where the consent of the governed and the voice of the people is a cruel joke.

Get back into your cages, they are telling us. Return to watching the lies, absurdities, trivia and celebrity gossip we feed you in 24-hour cycles on television. Invest your emotional energy in the vast system of popular entertainment. Run up your credit card debt. Pay your loans. Be thankful for the scraps we toss. Chant back to us our phrases about democracy, greatness and freedom. Vote in our rigged political theater. Send your young men and women to fight and die in useless, unwinnable wars that provide corporations with huge profits. Stand by mutely as our bipartisan congressional super committee, either through consensus or cynical dysfunction, plunges you into a society without basic social services including unemployment benefits. Pay for the crimes of Wall Street.

The rogues' gallery of Wall Street crooks, such as Lloyd Blankfein at Goldman Sachs, Howard Milstein at New York Private Bank & Trust, the media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, the Koch brothers and Jamie Dimon at JPMorgan Chase & Co., no doubt think it's over. They think it is back to the business of harvesting what is left of America to swell their personal and corporate fortunes. But they no longer have any concept of what is happening around them. They are as mystified and clueless about these uprisings as the courtiers at Versailles or in the Forbidden City who never understood until the very end that their world was collapsing. The billionaire mayor of New York, enriched by a deregulated Wall Street, is unable to grasp why people would spend two months sleeping in an open park and marching on banks. He says he understands that the Occupy protests are "cathartic" and "entertaining," as if demonstrating against the pain of being homeless and unemployed is a form of therapy or diversion, but that it is time to let the adults handle the affairs of state. Democratic and Republican mayors, along with their parties, have sold us out. But for them this is the beginning of the end.

The historian Crane Brinton in his book, "Anatomy of a Revolution," laid out the common route to revolution. The preconditions for successful revolution, Brinton argued, are discontent that affects nearly all social classes, widespread feelings of entrapment and despair, unfulfilled expectations, a unified solidarity in opposition to a tiny power elite, a refusal by scholars and thinkers to continue to defend the actions of the ruling class, an inability of government to respond to the basic needs of citizens, a steady loss of will within the power elite itself and defections from the inner circle, a crippling isolation that leaves the power elite without any allies or outside support and, finally, a financial crisis. Our corporate elite, as far as Brinton was concerned, has amply fulfilled these preconditions. But it is Brinton's next observation that is most worth remembering. Revolutions always begin, he wrote, by making impossible demands that if the government met would mean the end of the old configurations of power. The second stage, the one we have entered now, is the unsuccessful attempt by the power elite to quell the unrest and discontent through physical acts of repression.

I have seen my share of revolts, insurgencies and revolutions, from the guerrilla conflicts in the 1980s in Central America to the civil wars in Algeria, the Sudan and Yemen, to the Palestinian uprising to the revolutions in East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Romania as well as the wars in the former Yugoslavia. George Orwell wrote that all tyrannies rule through fraud and force, but that once the fraud is exposed they must rely exclusively on force. We have now entered the era of naked force. The vast million-person bureaucracy of the internal security and surveillance state will not be used to stop terrorism but to try and stop us.

Despotic regimes in the end collapse internally. Once the foot soldiers who are ordered to carry out acts of repression, such as the clearing of parks or arresting or even shooting demonstrators, no longer obey orders, the old regime swiftly crumbles. When the aging East German dictator Erich Honecker was unable to get paratroopers to fire on protesting crowds in Leipzig, the regime was finished. The same refusal to employ violence doomed the communist governments in Prague and Bucharest. I watched in December 1989 as the army general that the dictator Nicolae Ceausescu had depended on to crush protests condemned him to death on Christmas Day. Tunisia's Ben Ali and Egypt's Hosni Mubarak lost power once they could no longer count on the security forces to fire into crowds.

The process of defection among the ruling class and security forces is slow and often imperceptible. These defections are advanced through a rigid adherence to nonviolence, a refusal to respond to police provocation and a verbal respect for the blue-uniformed police, no matter how awful they can be while wading into a crowd and using batons as battering rams against human bodies. The resignations of Oakland Mayor Jean Quan's deputy, Sharon Cornu, and the mayor's legal adviser and longtime friend, Dan Siegel, in protest over the clearing of the Oakland encampment are some of the first cracks in the edifice. "Support Occupy Oakland, not the 1% and its government facilitators," Siegel tweeted after his resignation.

There were times when I entered the ring as a boxer and knew, as did the spectators, that I was woefully mismatched. Ringers, experienced boxers in need of a tuneup or a little practice, would go to the clubs where semi-pros fought, lie about their long professional fight records, and toy with us. Those fights became about something other than winning. They became about dignity and self-respect. You fought to say something about who you were as a human being. These bouts were punishing, physically brutal and demoralizing. You would get knocked down and stagger back up. You would reel backwards from a blow that felt like a cement block. You would taste the saltiness of your blood on your lips. Your vision would blur. Your ribs, the back of your neck and your abdomen would ache. Your legs would feel like lead. But the longer you held on, the more the crowd in the club turned in your favor.

No one, even you, thought you could win. But then, every once in a while, the ringer would get overconfident. He would get careless. He would become a victim of his own hubris. And you would find deep within yourself some new burst of energy, some untapped strength and, with the fury of the dispossessed, bring him down. I have not put on a pair of boxing gloves for 30 years. But I felt this twinge of euphoria again in my stomach this morning, this utter certainty that the impossible is possible, this realization that the mighty will fall.

Cross-posted from Truthdig

Chris Hedges spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He has reported from more than 50 countries and has worked for The Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio, The (more...)

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author
and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.

7 Revolutionary Occupations That Changed US History

AlterNet.org


comments_image 18 COMMENTS
With the spread of political occupations to all 50 states today, lessons can be gleaned from past occupations for a movement that shows no signs of going away.

Photo Credit: edenpictures on Flickr

Political occupations have a storied history starting with the first recorded labor strike. Some 3,176 years ago in Ancient Egypt royal tomb builders from the desert village of Deir el-Medina repeatedly occupied temples following the failure of Pharaoh Ramses III to provide wages consisting of wheat, fish, beer, clothing and other provisions.

In the centuries since, other movements have stamped their mark on history by occupying spaces, such as the Diggers who formed a utopian agrarian community on common land in 17th century England, and the workers, soldiers and citizens who established the ill-fated Paris Commune in 1871.

American history is rich with examples of political occupations that left a lasting impact. Sometimes the 99% pushed progress forward, as with Rosa Park’s occupation of a bus seat that propelled the Montgomery Bus Boycott and ended with Alabama’s bus segregation being declared unconstitutional. Often the 1% of the time – slaveholders, robber barons and merchants of war – re-asserted control with new methods of domination such as after the Great Upheaval of 1877. But each event proved that true democracy lies in collective act of taking space public and private, while corporations and the state are just two arms of the same beast.

With the spread of political occupations to all 50 states today, the most dynamic democratic movement since the 1960s, lessons can be gleaned from past occupations for a movement that shows no signs of going away. Here are seven of the most important occupations that changed American history.

1) The Great Upheaval of 1877

In his magnificent work Strike!, Jeremy Brecher describes how railroad men sparked the first general strike in U.S. history. Following a second pay cut in eight months, workers for the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad seized the train lines and roundhouse in the small town of Martinsburg, West Virginia on July 16, 1877. The strike spread along the B&O line and workers halted freight traffic while continuing to move passengers and mail. Brecher argues that to succeed, the strikers had to “beat off strikebreakers by force [and] seize trains, yards, roundhouses.”

Thousands of miners, industrial workers, unemployed and youth rallied to the cause blocking and sabotaging trains protected by federal troops from moving in much of Maryland and West Virginia. Railroad companies enlisted state militias, but they inflamed sentiments by gunning down scores of strike supporters. In other instances guardsmen deserted, mutinied or handed over their weapons to the crowds.

The strike snowballed into an insurrection between as workers joined from every possible industry. Train yards were occupied in Buffalo, civil authority collapsed in Pittsburgh, strikers assumed policing, the telegraph and railways in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, and general strikes flared in cities throughout the Northeast and Midwest. Mass actions and strikes cropped up in Texas, Kentucky, Missouri and California.

While federal troops, corporate goons and police eventually broke a strike movement that lacked organization and strategy, and the massive national guard armories in the center of American cities is one enduring legacy, Brecher argues “the power of workers to virtually stop society, to counter the forces of repression and to organize cooperative action on a vast scale was revealed in the most dramatic fashion.”

2) 1930s labor movements

The Flint sit-down strikes that began in December 1936 and won union recognition for hundreds of thousands of industrial workers are legendary. But more than two years earlier, workers flexed their militancy through forms of occupation that won wage increases and union representation. Prior to this, argues Frances Fox Piven, co-author of Poor People’s Movements, workers were usually thwarted by intransigent capitalists who relied on vigilantes, police, government indifference and the self-interested leaders of the American Federation of Labor.

By 1934 the winds began to change. In Toledo, a faltering strike at the Electric Auto-Lite Company was bolstered by the radical Unemployed Leagues and local Communists. Defying court injunctions and mass arrests, more than 10,000 people shut down the Auto-Lite plant in May 1934. The crowd held their ground even after 900 Ohio National Guardsmen killed and wounded nearly 20 people. “With the threat of a general strike in the air,” Piven writes, the corporations agreed to a wage increase and limited union recognition.

At the same time, deadly battles raged in Minneapolis between vigilantes retained by the businessmen’s “Citizen Alliance” and workers led by the Teamsters and the Socialist Workers Party. Panic spread among the ruling class as more than 20,000 people joined the street fighting on the workers side, giving them effective control of the city. With the state government taking more of a neutral stance than usual, a settlement was reached that led to collective bargaining agreements with 500 Minneapolis companies by 1936.

The Longshoremen’s strike in San Francisco was less successful. In May 1934 a Communist-led union helped shut down most of the ports and teamsters honored the picket line. In July the police assaulted pickets, killing two and hospitalizing 115 others. Anger and sympathy swelled support for a general strike, but the AFL undermined it and it folded four days later.

It was the sit-down strike that changed the game, aided by government protections. In 1937 more than 500 sit-down strikes took place, building the United Automobile Workers and the Steel Workers Organizing Committee to more than 650,000 strong by 1938.

Piven describes why the sit-down strike was so effective: “With workers controlling the plant, employers could not import strikebreakers. In cases like General Motors, where many specialized factories depended on each other, a few sit-down strikes could, and did, stop the entire corporation. … Moreover, in the climate of the time, the sit-down strike, itself nonviolent, did not usually precipitate police action. And so the tactic spread, from factory workers to salesgirls, to hospital workers, garbage collectors, and watchmakers, to sailors, farmhands, opticians, and hotel employees.”

3) Harvard Building Women’s Takeover

On International Women’s Day in 1971, March 6, hundreds of women began a 10-day occupation of a Harvard-owned building in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The Boston Phoenix reported at the time, “The idea originated with some members of Bread and Roses, a self-avowed socialist organization …. However, the plan was carried out by independent women from a least six different women’s organizations.” In the fall of 1970 Bread and Roses had circulated a call for a Women’s Center that could provide space for counseling on healthcare, abortion and birth control, legal aid, day care, activities for high-school girls and other community projects, and a place for lesbians.

There were many feminist organizations, collectives, consciousness-raising groups and communes with different politics and purposes at the time, but almost all supported the takeover. Once the occupation began many women who saw it on television or read about it in the newspapers joined or donated food, bedding and other supplies.

The occupiers did not realize there was already a struggle over the building, which was located in an African-American working class community. Harvard's expansion into the community had wiped out some 500 units of affordable housing due to the subsequent rise in property values and rents. The community wanted Harvard to replace that building and an adjacent one with affordable housing. When the women who took over the building learned that they had stumbled into this fight, they adopted the community's demand as one of their own. The women received an anonymous $5,000 donation from a female trustee of Radcliffe. In 1972 they purchased a house for use as a women's center that continues to provide services for the community and which acts as a base of activism for the women's movement.

Some of the women involved in the takeover went on to form the Boston Women's Health Collective, which wrote the groundbreaking” Our Bodies Our Selves,” They also helped found City Life/La Vida Urbana which is fighting home foreclosures today and is active with Occupy Boston.

4) Free Speech Movement

If you value freedom of speech, then thank an anarchist. Facing an extremely hostile political structure and media a century ago, the “Wobblies” (Industrial Workers of the World), Emma Goldman and other anarchists honed their soap-box speaking to effectively promote their causes and build their ranks. They believed in the power of workers as producers, and put their hope in the general strike and street politics.

Margaret Kohn, author of Brave New Neighborhoods: The Privatization of Public Space, writes that street speaking “confronted ‘respectable’ citizens with a visible reminder (and powerful critique) of poverty and deprivation. IWW orators tried to transform the figure of the hobo from a symbol of moral deprivation into an indictment of the capitalist economy and its exploitation of itinerant workers.” Kohn argues that “a democratic society requires public forums,” and that while public space today is controlled by monied interests, a century ago it was government that severely limited political activity in public space.

On the West Coast, the Wobblies were trying to organize miners, loggers, farm laborers and other migrants who worked at privately owned camps in rural areas. During the off-season the Wobblies would set up soap boxes in front of the office of “sharks,” agents who would extort fees for jobs at these camps – jobs that sometimes did not exist, leaving workers penniless and homeless once they arrived at the work site. Businessmen colluded with politicians, courts and police to try to smash the free speech campaign by banning street speaking, mass arrests, jailings, beatings and vigilante attacks.

The press weighed in with opinions like this San Diego Tribune editorial from March 4, 1912: “Hanging is none too good for them. They would be much better dead, for they are absolutely useless in the human economy; they are the waste material of creation and should be drained off into the sewer of oblivion there to rot in cold obstruction like any other excrement.”

Even when the courts ruled in favor of free speech, local police would arrest street speakers who would be convicted by local courts of charges like disorderly conduct or conspiracy. In Spokane, Washington, the Wobblies successfully used the tactic of filling the jails to force the city to relent. As one speaker would be arrested, another would mount the soapbox. Kohn writes, “Often these inexperienced orators simply climbed up and began to read the United States Constitution, barely completing a few sentences before they were arrested.” Arrested Wobblies described jail conditions that included “beating prisoners, confining 30 men in an eight-by-six sweatbox, housing them in freezing conditions without blankets or cots, and turning cold hoses on them in freezing conditions.”

After more than 500 arrests and the failure of brutality to cow the protesters, the city of Spokane agreed to recognize the Wobblies right to free speech, assembly and press. Similar battles were waged in Seattle, Fresno, British Columbia and Kansas City. In San Diego the Wobblies were defeated systematic police violence and “armed vigilante squads” who kidnapped Wobblies arriving by train, and hauled them to the town limits “where hundreds were badly beaten, stripped, tarred and feathered, and run out town,” according to Kohn.

Despite this setback, the Wobbly campaign to open public space to political speech was eventually enshrined in constitutional law.

5)The Stono Rebellion

During the 1730s organized slave rebellions and conspiracies occurred in the Bahamas, Jamaica, Antigua, St. John and Guadalupe. On the morning of Sept. 9, 1973, up to 100 black slaves who had covertly gathered at the Stono River in South Carolina launched the largest rebellion in pre-Revolutionary War America. Slave revolts are by their nature a secretive affair, but Stono’s Rebellion involved the occupation of public space: a procession of liberated slaves who marched toward Florida where the Spanish had promised freedom. The leader of the group was a literate slave named Cato, who “wrote passes for slaves and do all he can to send them to freedom,”according to a descendant. After killing a handful of whites, seizing weapons and freeing other slaves, the growing group continued south, “with drums beating and banners flying, in some show of military order.”

Eventually a militia of some 100 whites caught up with the insurgents, “who fought well and bravely, but the armed militia won the fight,” with 20 whites and 40 blacks killed in total. Many slaves escaped from the battlefield, but captured rebels were shot and some decapitated with their heads mounted on posts.

As a result, South Carolina’s slaveholders imposed draconian measures prohibiting slaves from gathering in groups and learning to read, while also doubling tariffs on new slaves to try to slow the growth of the Black population. Nonetheless, accounts from Georgia indicate freed slaves had managed to escape that far, while Stono’s rebellion presaged even more dramatic uprisings led by Nat Turner and John Brown in the 19th century.

6) The Battle in Seattle

The immediate pre-cursor to the Occupy Wall Street Movement is the alter-globalization movement that caused the collapse of the WTO ministerial in Seattle in late 1999. Horizontalist and anarchist, the movement occupied areas around conclaves of the ruling elites: the WTO, IMF, World Bank, World Economic Forum and NATO.

While heavily influenced by Mexico’s Zapatista movement, which itself used occupied public spaces to advance its political agenda, the alter-globalization movement built upon other movements that used occupation to advance political and social goals. While many of these began abroad, they found a ready audience in the United States. This included Reclaim the Streets, which began in England in 1995 as a “disorganization” devoted to liberating public roadways – and blocking the construction of new ones. Much of the goal was fun, roving street parties, but it was layered upon a resistance to the socially atomizing and ecologically destructive effects of a car-centric society.

Related to this was Critical Mass, the international movement of bicycles reclaiming public space by organizing a mass rides through streets. An explicitly leaderless movement, the first Critical Mass was staged in San Francisco in 1992, but was inspired by one filmmaker’s experience in China where bicyclists would have to wait until there was a critical mass of bicyclists to cross through major intersections. Rides now take place in thousands of citieswhere bicyclists, roller bladders, skateboarders and others take over the streets for a few hours. In New York City, thousands of bicyclists would occupy the streets in a peaceful procession, changing people’s perception of how the roadways and public space could be used. Starting in 2004, however, the NYPD started arresting riders and seizing their bicycles to deflate the movement, but it still continues strong in hundreds of other cities around the world.

A third occupation movement that heavily influenced the Seattle movement was tree sitting, which took root in the Pacific Northwest in the 1980s. By setting up camp in trees, often 100 feet off the ground, ecological warriors stymied logging industry and U.S. Forest Service from felling unique old-growth forests. Supporters on the ground popularized many nonviolent tactics used by subsequent protest movements such as tripods, arm tubes, bicycle locks and concrete lock-ons to passively impede business as usual.

While the alter-globalization fell apart in the United States after the September 11 attacks, the worldwide movement helped to make the IMF irrelevant, while many veterans are playing critical roles in the Occupy Wall Street Movement today.

7) Lunch Counter Sit-ins

On Feb. 1, 1960, four freshmen from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College sat down at a whites-only lunch counter in a Woolworth store in the city of Greensboro and asked to be served coffee and doughnuts. They stay until the store closes. The next day the four return with other students, and by day four the number of protesters is nearly 300.

As planning began at two historic Black colleges in the area the prior fall, the students responded to the refusal of service by activating phone trees. Word quickly spreads throughout Black colleges and students in the South as does the tactic.

Tactics of nonviolence and returning to the lunch counter while refusing to be provoked by police and violent white mobs broadens the movement and gains it national support and sympathy. In Nashville, the student movement targets lunch counters as well as bus stations and department stores. In Savannah, Georgia, a widespread boycott movement forces some stores into bankruptcy and the next year the city agrees to desegregate buses, swimming pools, parks, restaurants and other public facilities.

In less than two weeks sit-ins, boycotts and pickets take place throughout North Carolina and South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia as well. Within a few months, sit-ins have occurred in every Southern state, and by year’s end an estimated 70,000 people have participated, resulting in more than 3,000 arrests.

The student led sit-in movement sparks the modern civil rights movement, leading to the formal dismantling of American Apartheid.

Arun Gupta is a founding editor of The Indypendent newspaper. He is writing a book on the decline of American Empire for Haymarket Books.

Sunday, November 13, 2011

Five Reasons Why Veterans Are Part Of The 99 Percent

Think Progress
The 99% Movement

Special Topic

Five Reasons Why Veterans Are Part Of The 99 Percent

By Lee Fang on Nov 11, 2011 at 11:30 am

Veterans protest with the 99 Percent near Wall Street

The 99 Percent Movement has attracted students, labor unions, unemployed workers, teachers, artists, singers, writers, former real estate brokers, political activists, people who have given up on the traditional political system, and thousands more. But a growing contingent seen at Occupy Wall Street solidarity protests all across the country are veterans.

The signs of a veterans movement are everywhere, from new groups dedicated to supporting veterans in the occupy movement, to thousands of veterans showing up at street actions. And despite condescending rhetoric from the right-wing media, veterans have every reason to be there:


1.) Veterans Deserve Economic Justice: Thousands of veterans returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are finding a grim job market. Veterans who served since 9/11 experience a 12.1% unemployment rate, which is higher than the national average, while one in three male veterans are jobless. Recent reports have showed that the number of homeless veterans is surging, while there are insufficient job placement programs.

2.) Veterans Embrace Occupy Wall Street Out Of Love For Country: A growing number of veterans groups are enthusiastically embracing the movement. Although some are demonstrating against a terrible economic conditions, many are doing so out of simple patriotism. Thousands have marched near Zuccotti Park and at other occupy encampments with a message about taking their country back from the grip of lobbyists and predatory financial institutions. One iconic sign, held by a veteran at Occupy Wall Street, summed up the sentiment: “Second time I’ve fought for my country. First time I’ve known my enemy.”

3.) The Banks Are Preying On Veterans: Big banks have found ways to rip off and ruin the men and women who placed their lives on the line for this country. According to a recent whistleblower lawsuit, some of the nation’s biggest banks, including Wells Fargo, Bank of America, and J.P. Morgan Chase, “defrauded veterans and taxpayers out of hundreds of millions of dollars by disguising illegal fees in veterans’ home refinancing loans.” Fly-by-night scam for-profit universities, many of which are owned by Wall Street investment banks, heavily target veterans with fraudulent educational programs. While military families struggle to get by all over the country, defense contractor CEO’s earn as much as $19 million a year.

4.) K Street Domination Of Government Means Defense Money Goes To War Profiteering Corporations Over Veterans: America spends more on the military than most of our rival nations combined. Yet much of that money, because of the influence of defense contractors and other private military interests, is spent on expensive weapons we never use instead of on rank and file soldiers. Revolving door lobbyists, who go from the Pentagon to K Street firms, have secured over a trillion in wasteful spending to companies like Lockheed Martin.

5.) During The Economic Downturn, Veterans Programs Are Being Cut And Privatized As Well: As Republicans and their allies have succeeded so far in pushing an austerity agenda of massive government cuts, veterans have also been targeted. According to a recent analysis by Military.com of a CBO study outlining suggested cuts, Congress is debating proposals to cap military basic pay and limiting veterans health benefits. Notably, the Defense Business Board is also considering a move to privatize the military pension program, swapping it out with a 401k system. If there is another crisis on Wall Street, veterans could lose see their retirement benefits wiped out if such a system is put in place.

In many cases, veterans have been the most visible victims of police brutality: like in Boston, where police violently raided a group of peaceful veterans occupying a city plaza, and in Oakland, where police fractured the skull of Scott Olson, an Iraq veteran, with a shot from a projectile aimed at protesters.

Occupy Wall Street solidarity protests will hold Veterans Day events to stand with veterans in cities across America, from Colorado Springs to San Diego, to Syracuse, to Chicago, to Denver, to Missoula, to Sacramento, to Gainesville, and beyond.

Occupy Wall Street Is Not a Spectator Sport: 5 Ways the 99 Percent Can Contribute to the Movement Right Now

AlterNet.org


OCCUPY WALL STREET

How can the rest of the 99 percent demonstrate our outrage? Here are five things we can do, without parking a tent in the street.

Photo Credit: sashakimel on Flickr

Let’s take a look at where we are right now. There is battle royale underway between inhabitants of two entirely different universes over what’s wrong with our nation and what should be fixed.

On the one hand, the entire political establishment, blessed by Wall Street, wants the conversation to be all about debt and “entitlements." We are told 24/7 that we’re living over our heads, that our social safety net is too expensive, and that we need to cut, cut, cut trillions of dollars from public budgets so we don’t become the next Greece.

In that framework the only question is how much to cut and how much we should sacrifice. The so-called liberal position is that the rich should pay a bit more while the rest of us suffer cuts in education, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. (Please note that taxes on Wall Street are not on the table.) The “grand bargain” is all about how much we will have to pay for the economic collapse caused by Wall Street. It's also a loser because the more we cut, the longer unemployment will last, and the more fiscal distress we’ll face as tax revenues stall.

On the other side is the framework that Occupy Wall Street successfully put into play. It argues that Wall Street should pay for the mess it created. It suggests that the issue is employment for the many, not debt repayments for the few. It also gets us to face up to myriad of ways that income inequality is hollowing out our society, destroying the middle-class and increasing poverty. It points the finger at those who crashed our economy and it demands reparations. And it does all this without making any specific demands. It doesn’t have to. It just needs to be the living embodiment of the many versus the few.

That’s the fight. So how can we enlist? Sure, some of us can go down to our local encampment and join the party. But if you’re old like me, or if you have a job and a family, you’re not likely to head out to your local town square and sleep on the concrete. So that raises the critical question: How can the rest of the 99 percent demonstrate our outrage?

Here are five things we can do, without parking a tent somewhere:

1. Get Your Non-Profits into Gear

If you work for a non-profit of any kind (like a labor union, an environmental group, a church organization, etc.) then insist that your organization devote at least 10 percent of its resources to protesting against Wall Street. There are probably 500,000 full-time staff working for unions, community organizations and environmental groups all across the country. Imagine if each week, each of those staffers put in two hours protesting at an Occupy Wall Street site. Combine that with a little organizing to bring out the rank-and-file, and we’re talking about a quantum leap in the size of the anti-Wall Street presence.

Of course, you might get stiff opposition from progressive non-profit leaders. After all, their organizations are set up to press important issues that might not seem to have any direct connection to the Wall Street mess. But it shouldn’t take much to show that the Wall Street crash is a game-changer. It should be clear by now that we can’t make progress on our individual issues unless we join together to reclaim our country from the Wall Street elites.

2. Organize Teach-ins about Wall Street’s Casino Economy

If you are affiliated with any academic institution or high school, this is the perfect time to organize teach-ins that target financial elites. We need large forums where information can be shared about our dismal distribution of income, how Wall Street took down the economy, how money is influencing politics, and how jobs can be created. And be sure to invite the community. Americans are just waking up to how much they’ve been ripped off. The educational task is just beginning and teach-ins can push it along in a hurry.

3. Terminate Your Bank Accounts in Public

If you’re going to withdraw your accounts from the major banks, then do it with gusto. At the very least we should try to use our new social media to pick a common time and location to close out our accounts together. We could even have a card-burning event in plain view. (Unlike burning your draft card in the old days, it’s perfectly legal to burn your credit card…outdoors, that is.)

4. Start a “99 Percent Club”

Americans lead the world in setting up new civic organizations. How about launching “99 Percent clubs” in your neighborhood and town? For starters, your club could brainstorm public actions to demonstrate anger at Wall Street. A silent vigil every Friday afternoon at one of the local banks would be a good start. (“Honk if you feel ripped off by Wall Street!")

Each group could develop imaginative actions that could grow in size, and that could gain the attention of the local media. Our social media could easily spread the best actions to other groups. And once you do get the ball rolling, build up your events by talking with your neighbors. I don’t think many doors will slam in your face. Instead, you’ll probably find a lot of angry people looking for ways to contribute.

5. Convince Yourself That You Can Make a Difference

Perhaps the most important act of defiance starts in our heads. We need to believe that real change is possible and that each of us can contribute. We’ve got to get over the idea that someone else – a political knight in shining armor -- is going to do it for us. We have to face up to the fact that very few politicians have the guts to challenge Wall Street. So it’s on us. This doesn’t mean that each of us has to be a superhero and lock ourselves to the gates of Goldman Sachs or JPMorgan Chase. But each of us needs to do something concrete. At the very least we need to show up from time to time at our local Occupy Wall Street site.

Why would that matter? Because the currency of a populist movement is feet on the street. We need to publicly display our support in any way we can. As long as there is something called free will, each of us has the opportunity to go somewhere and publicly show that we are part of the irate 99 percent. We need to publicly display our anger at rule by a faction of the 1 percent.

Add to this list: Those of us trying to build up a new populist movement don’t have the answers. Our most useful role is to provide information, make the frameworks clear and push the discussion. The really good ideas seem like they magically appear. In fact, they are produced by the clash and exchange of ideas involving tens of thousands of people. We all need to dream them up, share them and bat them around until something clicks.

All we know for sure is that something is clicking right now. We have America’s attention….for now. And if we want this moment to last and develop, then each of us needs to add to this list. What can we do to show our support for the 99 percent? What can we do to protest against rule by financial elites? How do we build up this fledgling movement?

It’s your turn. Let ‘er rip!

Les Leopold is the executive director of the Labor Institute and Public Health Institute in New York, and author of The Looting of America: How Wall Street's Game of Fantasy Finance Destroyed Our Jobs, Pensions, and Prosperity—and What We Can Do About It (Chelsea Green, 2009).

Saturday, November 12, 2011

Occupy Our Core

Dissident Voice: a radical newsletter in the struggle for peace and social justice

Occupy: Finding our Core

The Occupy Movement is an amazing phenomenon. In less than two months it’s has aggregated into a global movement, taking a strong stand again the financial forces that have taken over the U.S. and so many other governments. There are no indications of us going away.

Still, there are issues. The corporate media insists we don’t have a clear message, with good reason since we threaten their stranglehold on truth. The Wall Street robber barons insist we are anarchists and lazy hippies, whose only interests are avoiding work and causing trouble. Again it sounds like someone is feeling threatened. Politicians are holding their fingers up to the wind, trying to decide whether it helps or hurts them politically to support us. Such poor leadership.

Regardless of such opinions, those of us who are Occupiers know what is going on. We’ve had enough of a world of lies. We’ve had enough of a world where money rules the political system. We’ve had enough of a world torn by war and globalization. And so we choose a new way forward.

When those heroes decided to Occupy Wall Street on September 17th, they began something extraordinary. They began to create a new culture based on ethics instead of the power of money. They started a process of consensus, where 90% is the minimal threshold to establish principles, areas of focus and policy. They started a process that continues in this moment, a process we Occupiers all share in, though much of this process is not yet explicit.

Yet it is clear we operate by new rules. We accept everyone, regardless of the meager distinctions of looks, color, race, religion or sexual preference. We even accept those without a home, agitators and just-released felons presented to us, so long as they honor our process and principles. We choose peace and solidarity as keys to our process. We choose the power of Love over the power of money.

These new rules are principles that can generally be described as peace, love, integrity, justice and balance. A system of ethics. And these ethics create a space of peace, compassion and friendship unavailable to most of us in the old system.

What we’re seeing, then, is the birth of a new consciousness among us, where our priorities are these principles of ethics, where we rely on truth instead of falseness, abundance instead of greed, and where we intend to get big money out of our political system. And this code of ethics brings us a sense of trust unavailable to the old world.

Curiously, there is a name for this new consciousness. A name for this new cultural operating system. A name for a culture based on principles instead of the power of money. The name is World 5.0.

The name is derived from applying the idea of an operating system to culture. We’ve previously been hunter/gatherers, agrarian, medieval and most recently industrial. Indeed, it is the Industrial Age, World 4, collapsing around us from the weight of its own corruption.

The central tenant of World 5.0 is that Life Is This Moment, an idea that finds harmony among many of us. The past is gone and tomorrow never comes. We stay Here. Our intent only functions Here. We move from Here.

I see this pretty clearly as I’m the founder of World 5.0. There is a book and a website on the topic. While the book was written before this movement sprang into being, it reminds of the same things the movement does. We must get money out of politics. We must put an end to war. We must rebuild our communities and ecologies. We must have honest government and a transparent financial system. We must create a culture where globalization, a system based on profit, is replaced by World 5.0, a system based on health and ecology.

In the coming days, weeks and months we are going to find each other far more easily. We’re building new coalitions with like-minded people and organizations each day. We’re learning process and more effective ways to create this new world. We’re learning that ethics, the power of Love, is bigger and better than the power of money. And we’re loving it.

In spite of the many situations where occupations are threatened by police action and unfriendly government, we stand, peaceful and strong. In spite of the many internal squabbles and difficult decisions, we are growing. In spite of wildly diverse backgrounds, ages and interests, we are Here together.

And now we’re finding our core. An operating system based on the power of Love instead of the power of money. An operating system that says armchair citizenry no longer cuts it. An operating system that focuses us on localism, organic food, sustainable energy and peace, regardless of the challenges to it. Along with the tremendous power and energy of the Occupy Movement, it is holding our core, living World 5.0, that assures us we can never be co-opted, usurped or otherwise turned into something we do not intend. Humanity is finally, through the Occupied Territories and its supporters, finding our home in Life.

Read other articles by Jim, or visit Jim's website.

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Occupy the Polls and Politicians




Occupy the Polls: Tuesday's Critical Tests of Political Power

Columbus—Americans who are frustrated with the broken politics of the moment will have plenty of opportunities to Occupy the Polls on Tuesday.

That’s what happened in Boulder, Colorado, last week, when voters shook things up by backing a referendum proposal that calls on Congress to enact a constitutional amendment to overturn the Supreme Court’s decision that corporations can spend as they choose to buy elections. The same election saw Boulder voters endorse a plan to end the city’s reliance on private power companies and replace them with a public utility.

There are big issues, big races and big tests of the political potency of organized labor, social movements and progressive politics playing out this Tuesday, on the busiest election day of 2011. In some cases, voting offers an opportunity to make an affirmative statement on behalf of a change in priorities. In other cases, there are opportunities to push back against bad politics and bad policies. In still others, there are signals to be sent about the politics of 2012.

Here are some of the big races to keep an eye on Tuesday:

1. OHIO REFERENDUM TO RENEW LABOR RIGHTS

The biggest vote comes in Ohio, where 1.3 million citizens signed petitions to force a referendum vote on whether to implement Governor John Kasich’s assault on collective bargaining rights for public employees and the ability of unions to represent workers on the job and in the political process. Tuesday’s vote, on Ohio Issue 2, has the potential to send a powerful signal about the ability of working people to challenge corporate power. If Ohioans vote “yes” to implement the Kasich’s law, corporations and their conservative allies win. If Ohioans vote “no” on Issue 2, it will be a win for unions and their progressive allies.

If union forces win big in Ohio, the message from that traditional battleground state will be two-fold:

First, Republican governors who attack collective bargaining, labor rights and public education and services will face political fights. Losing on Issue 2 would be a huge setback for Kasich. And that will encourage Wisconsinites who launch their drive to recall and remove Governor Scott Walker on November 15.

Second, Democrats at the national level will be challenged as well. If Ohioans send indicate that voters are determined to defend labor rights and public spending, Democratic governors and President Obama will face pressure to step on and take a stronger stand on those issues.

2. NEW JERSEY VOTE ON CHRIS CHRISTIE’S AGENDA

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is the darling of the Republican right, the candidate conservatives wish was running for the GOP presidential nod. But Christie has problems at home. His approval ratings have fluctuated wildly, as he has attacked teachers and public services. Christie would like verity much to flip control of both houses of the state legislature from the Democrats to his Republican Party. He has campaigned aggressively, recruiting candidates, raising money and framing the election as a test of his agenda.

If Republicans take control of the state Senate, where they need to win just five seats to gain a majority, Christie will get bragging rights. The governor is suggesting it will happen, predicting a “historic” result Tuesday.

But unions such as the Health Professionals and Allied Employees (AFT) have pushed back, hard, not just against Christie but against legislators of both parties who have failed to stand up for public employees and public services. If progressives such as state Senator Barbara Buono (a possible Christie challenger who is popular with unions) are re-elected as part of solid Democratic majorities in the state Senate and the state House, it will be a setback for Christie and the right.

3. WILL THE REPUBLICAN WAVE CRASH IN KENTUCKY?

Was the Republican wave of 2010 the beginning of a permanent shift, or was it a tempest in a teapot? The best place to answer that question will be in the border-state of Kentucky, which voted for Republican John McCain in the 2008 presidential race and for Republican Rand Paul in the 2010 US Senate race. If the Republicans are still on the march across the border states and the mid-South, where the party showed so much strength in 2008 and 2010, the home state of Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell is where the evidence of GOP’s staying power should be most evident.

But polls suggest that Democratic Governor Steve Beshear, a relative moderate (who is, frankly, too friendly with the coal industry) in a region of Tea Party extremism, is running well ahead of a serious and well-funded Republican challenger, Kentucky Senate President David Williams. Democrats are also running strong in down-ballot races, with newcomers such as 32-year-old Secretary of State candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes stirring talk that the party is looking stronger than it has in many years.

Coupled with the Democratic win in an October special election to fill the governorship of West Virginia, another state that voted for McCain in 2008 and saw Republican gains in 2010, a strong showing for Kentucky Democrats would suggest that—even in states where President Obama’s approval numbers are weak, the Democrats can still win state races. This does not mean Democrats will win everywhere, of course; the party is likely to continue to lose ground in the states that made up the old Confederacy, such as Mississippi and Virginia. But few pundits would have predicted just a year ago that Democrats would be on an upswing in border states such as Kentucky.

4. PUSHING BACK AGAINST VOTER SUPPRESSION

Republican governors and legislators, working closely with the corporate-funded American Legislative Exchange Council, backed a number of initiatives this year to make it harder for voters in swing states to cast ballots. Restrictive Voter ID laws, shifts in early-voting and same-day registration rules and a host of related assaults on access to the polls advanced in dozens of states. On Tuesday, however, there will be a push back. In Maine, citizens collected 70,000 petition signatures to qualify a referendum that seeks to overturn a law—signed by conservative Governor Paul LePage’s—that bar voters from registering on election day. Maine has historically allowed same-day registration, but LePage and his legislative allies moved earlier this year to end it. That inspired Mainers to petition for Tuesday’s vote, which will allow citizens to veto LePage’s initiative and restore same-day registration.

This is a big deal, not just because Maine is a swing state but because it will send an important pro-democracy signal. As Steven Carbo of Demos (which has made the Maine vote a high priority) says, “States with same-day registration consistently lead the nation with voter turnout.”

The Protect Maine Votes campaign adds: “Since 1973, Election Day registration has worked. Maine’s elections are efficient and the system has had few problems. We have had same-day voter registration for almost 40 years now, and it works well. We have one of the highest voter participation rates in the country, and no significant problems with voter fraud. The politicians in Augusta should not be trying to get rid of it.”

There will be other democracy tests Tuesday, including a referendum on whether to require Voter IDs in Mississippi. There are also local referendums in San Francisco on issues of transparency and whether to allow elected officials to overrule citizen-sponsored initiatives.

Not all democracy fights take the form of referendums, however. In Kentucky, Democratic Secretary of State candidate Grimes has rejected proposals for a Voter ID law in that state and argued for allowing ex-felons to vote. While her Republican opponent has demagogued these issues, Grimes has maintained a steady commitment to democratic procedures and practices.

5. A NEW SHERIFF IN TOWN

San Francisco Sheriff Mike Hennessey has, over the past three decades, proven that it is possible to protect public safety while maintaining progressive values. Now Hennessey is retiring. So how does San Francisco replace the man the San Francisco Bay Guardian describes as “the most progressive sheriff in the state, maybe the nation”? With San Francisco Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi, a veteran campaigner for social and economic justice who has focused on public safety and criminal justice so effectively that Hennessey says: “Ross is the person I want to see in the job.” The Bay Guardian says of Mirkarimi: “In seven years on the Board of Supervisors, he was not only a leader on environmental and public safety issues but was an utterly reliable progressive vote. He represents part of the next generation of progressive leadership in San Francisco, and we’re proud to endorse him for sheriff.”

It matters that progressives hold law-enforcement positions. And Mirkarimi has the potential to emerge as a national leader on issues ranging from capital punishment to real rehabilitation to voter rights for ex-felons to challenging “the new Jim Crow” crisis of massive incarceration. Mirkarimi takes risks; he talks about the wisdom of giving tax breaks to businesses that hire ex-cons, knowing that will cause him to be attacked, but knowing as well that new ideas are necessary.

Mirkarimi has a real chance to win the sheriff’s job in San Francisco. But he is not the only progressive bidding for a law enforcement post. In Philadelphia, Green Party candidate Cheri Honkala, a longtime campaigner for the rights of the poor and the homeless, is running to be “the people’s sheriff.” Honkala’s blunt about what that means: “I’m running for Sheriff of Philadelphia to keep families in their homes. Every 7 seconds in this country a family is going into foreclosure. The banks received billions of dollars in taxpayer bailout money and yet they refuse to help out struggling homeowners and continue to increase blight and homelessness in our communities. Well, I’m here to act as the people’s bailout! When I’m elected Sheriff, I will refuse to throw anyone out of their home. We live in the richest nation in the world and there is no reason why we can’t house every man, woman, and child.”

6. CHALLENGING ARIZONA’S ANTI-IMMIGRANT POLICIES, AND POLITICIANS

Wisconsin is not the only state where progressive forces are fighting to recall Republican extremists. Arizona State Senate President Russell Pearce, who as a member of the state House wrote legislation intended to deny state services to undocumented immigrants and that required picture identification to vote, and who as a senator wrote Arizona’s notorious Senate Bill 1070, which requires police to investigate the immigration status of people who are detained, faces a serious threat to his position as one of the state’s most powerful political players.

Citizens for a Better Arizona, a labor-backed group co-founded by savvy activist Randy Parraz that has worked with local and national groups such as Progressive Democrats of America, collected 18,315 signatures earlier this year—more than twice the required number—on petitions that demanded that Pearce face the voters. That will happen Tuesday, when the senator is challenged by another Republican, Jerry Lewis, who complains that, because of Pearce and his allies, “people outside of Arizona see us as something akin to 1964 Alabama.”

After a brutal campaign that featured accusations that Pearce supporters recruited a political neophyte to try and attract Hispanic votes from Lewis, Parraz says: “Our movement to recall Senator Pearce has surpassed the expectations of many of our supporters BUT now we have entered the final push to successfully remove and replace the 1st Senate President in the history of the United States.”

7. R-E-S-P-E-C-T

Mississippi will vote on an anti-abortion measure that defines human personhood as beginning at the moment of fertilization. But, for the most part around the country, social issues have taken a backseat to economic concerns. There are a few key tests to keep an eye on, however.

In Iowa, a special election to fill an open state Senate seat could decide whether the state will reopen the issue of same-sex marriage. Iowa allows gays and lesbians to marry (thanks to a 2009 state Supreme Court ruling), but conservatives have been trying to overturn the provision. They have failed because Democrats retain control of the Iowa Senate and Democratic leader Mike Gronstal has refused to allow debate of to amend the state constitution to ban same-sex marriage. Gonstal says he doesn’t wish to “write discrimination into the state constitution.” Tuesday’s special election will decide whether Gronstal continues to lead a Senate with a 26-24 Democratic majority of one where a 25-25 split forces power-sharing with the Republicans. That’s made the race for the Marion, Iowa, area Senate seat a fierce battle, with Democrat Liz Mathis receiving support from progressives who want Iowa to continue to bar discrimination.

In the nation’s fourth-largest city, Houston Mayor Annise Parker—the first elected gay mayor of a major US city—is expected to be re-elected with ease. In San Francisco, Bevan Duffy, an openly gay supervisor (whose TV ads are the best of the season), is one of the leading candidates in a crowded race for mayor. In Holyoke, Massachusetts, Alex Morse, the founder of Holyoke For All, the city’s first LGBT nonprofit organization, has attracted broad support for his mayoral run.

8. THE OCCUPY CANDIDATE

San Francisco Supervisor John Avalos started his run for mayor with far less money and name recognition than many of the other contenders. And he still faces an uphill run. But Avalos has attracted endorsements from the Bay Guardian, the Service Employees and the San Francisco Democratic Party. And he has upped his profile immensely by joining “Occupy San Francisco” protests, defending the movement in national television appearances and bringing key issues to the forefront.

In particular, Avalos has highlighted financial issues, arguing that San Francisco should take steps to create a municipal bank similar to the publicly owned and managed State Bank of North Dakota. Says Avalos: “We need to create a bank for Everyday Giants, and not Corporate Giants. San Francisco has a budget of over $6.5 billion, which is currently held at Wells Fargo and Bank of America. Instead of lining the pocket of corporations who created the current economic crisis, the residents of this city should be able to choose where their tax dollars go, and whom they benefit. We can create our own local bank, one that serves our local economy. With our own municipal bank, we will be free from the tyranny of big banks whose fraudulent mortgage practices have caused suffering for our families and a disaster for our economy. We can leverage our tax dollars to provide loans for our small businesses, generate new revenue, and keep families in their homes.”

9. DECLARATIONS OF INDEPENDENCE

For indications about how independent and third-party political movements are making an impact, keep an eye on the vote for Kentucky independent gubernatorial candidate Gatewood Galbraith, a frequent candidate who made a name for himself as a critic of misguided drug laws. This year, Galbraith is running with the backing of the United Mine Workers union and Willie Nelson, among others. And he has run an innovative campaign that has talked about funding public education and awarding each high school graduate a $5,000 voucher for books, tuition and fees to any institution of further learning within Kentucky that can train them for employment, whether it be college, vocational school or workplace training. “This is not a bank account and can not be spent on pizza, rent or beer,” says Galbraith’s campaign. “It is solely for the direct educational expenses meant to further train all of our graduates for future employment and gives them 10 years to use it. It is a very precise investment into education and employment.” Polls suggest put Galbraith in third place, but with credible numbers

Philadelphia sheriff candidate Cheri Honkala is one of a number of Green candidates making serious bids in communities across the country, from Portland, Maine, to San Francisco. Honkala recently won the endorsement of the National Organization for Women. Like Avalos in San Francisco, she has embraced the “Occupy” message and the politics of protest in the streets and at the polls.

It is notable that in a number of cities, such as San Francisco, Portland and Seattle, ranked-choice voting will give voters more opportunities to back candidates who are not running on the Democratic or Republican lines.

10. NEXT STEPS

Wisconsin will hold a special election for an open state Assembly seat Tuesday, and La Crosse County Supervisor Jill Billings, a Democrat backed by labor, is expected to win, dealing another setback to Governor Scott Walker’s agenda. But the real action begins next week, when Wisconsinites will begin passing petitions to force the recall of Governor Scott Walker. If labor and progressive forces win big in Ohio Tuesday, the Wisconsin campaign will get a boost in the days leading to next Tuesday’s launch of the drive to collect more than 540,000 valid signatures demanding that the anti-labor governor face the voters. Rallying Ohio activists in Columbus on the eve of Tuesday’s vote, Wisconsin AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Stephanie Bloomingdale said, “We are here because your fight is our fight and our fight is to reclaim the middle class.”

“Not surprisingly,” added Bloomingdale, “we are seeing the same corporate front groups involved in Issue 2/SB 5 that are defending Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and his extreme political allies. This is a coordinated effort to destroy the middle class to further enrich the wealthy. But we can set them back…”