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Occupy Everywhere - Sept 17th - Day of Rage Against Wall Street and what it stands for! - Peter Lemkin - 28-11-2011
Naomi Klein, award-winning journalist and author. Her latest book is called The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.
Michael Moore, Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker and activist. His new memoir is called Here Comes Trouble: Stories from My Life.
William Greider, national affairs correspondent for The Nation magazine and the author of several books including The Soul of Capitalism: Opening Paths to a Moral Economy and One World, Ready or Not: The Manic Logic of Global Capitalism. His most recent book is Come Home, America: The Rise and Fall (and Redeeming Promise) of Our Country.
Rinku Sen, publisher of ColorLines, and author of The Accidental American.
Patrick Bruner, Occupy Wall Street organizer.
AMY GOODMAN: Today, a Democracy Now! special broadcast. We spend the hour bringing you the voices of "Occupy Everywhere," a panel hosted by The Nation magazine, "On the New Politics and Possibilities of the Movement Against Corporate Power." You'll hear from the Oscar-winning filmmaker and author Michael Moore; Rinku Sen of Applied Research Center, publisher of ColorLines; we also hear from Occupy Wall Street organizer Patrick Bruner; William Greider, among his books, Who Will Tell the People: The Betrayal of American Democracy; and Naomi Klein, the best-selling author of The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. The Nation magazine's executive editor, Richard Kim, moderated the event, which was held at New School University in New York City. Richard Kim spoke first.
RICHARD KIM: So, how many of you have been down to Occupy Wall Street? All right. So, you know, we've been asked to actuallyto not call it Zuccotti Plaza, because that's its slave name, and we're going to call it Liberty Square, because it's been reclaimed by the people. As those of you who have been down there know, there's just simply no substitute for participating in the direct democratic discussions and actions that take place there. And so I really encourage you to experience it for yourself firsthand. This event is not a substitute for Occupy Wall Street. It doesn't speak for Occupy Wall Street. Nobody can. What we do want to do here, tonight, though, is to shed some light on the political and economic context for the Occupy movements and to reflect a bit on what the possibilities Occupy has opened up.
So, Michael, I want to start with you. You've been going around the country making documentaries for decades now, and about the disappearance of work, about the uninsured, about, you know, the capture of government by Wall Street. And millions of Americans have agreed with you. You won an Oscar. But I could imagine sometimes it was a little lonely out there. And then this comes along.
MICHAEL MOORE: Just when you're winning an Oscar. That's the only time it was lonely.
RICHARD KIM: You know, a couple dozen anarchist types organized the occupation of Wall Street, and then, within a few weeks, we have a global movement. So, I just wanted to ask you, why this? Why now? You know, what's the sort of secret behind Occupy Wall Street's success? And what have you seen as you've traveled across the country?
MICHAEL MOORE: Well, thank you, and thanks to The Nation and the New School for putting this on tonight.
This is one of the most remarkable movements that I've seen in my lifetime, precisely because it really isn't a movement in the traditional sense. And I think that it has succeeded because it hasn't followed the old motifs that we're used to, in terms of organizing. But it has its roots in all the good works that so many people have done for so many years, especially in the last 30 years since Reagan took office and the decline and destruction of the country, and essentially the world, began its modern-day disaster. I think that, you know, so many people have done so many good things, and we've always had different groups and different constituencies of people that have been able to rally behind different causes. But this, from what I've seenand I'velike you said, I've been maybe a half a dozen or more of the different Occupy things. This thing has spread like wildfire. I mean, it isI wish you could have been traveling with me the last few weeks. It has been the most uplifting, heartening thing to see: so many Americans of all stripes deciding that they're just going to occupy. And they don't have to call in to central command for permission. There are no dues to pay. There's no leader to get permission from. There's no meetings, subcommittee meetings, you know, all these things you have to go through. It literally is something as simple as some people in Fayetteville, Arkansas, just decide to create Occupy Fayetteville, and then 400 people show up. I was in Grass Valley, California, Nevada City, 400 people there. You don't hear about any of these, because, well, the media either won't or can't cover it, because they've been so decimated themselves, in terms of reporters and bureaus that don't exist anymore. So it would be impossible to kind of show the breadth and the scope of this movement. But it isit is massive. It is building each week. And everybody feels that they have permission to be their own leader.
And the reason why I think this worksI know a lot of people that say, "Well, you know, it's got to get more organized. It's got to have a plan. Or it's got towhat's the agenda? What's the way forward here? What's the next step?" You know, it's enough right now that this movement justfirst of all, it's already had some important victories. It has alleviated despair in this country. It hasit has killed apathy. It has changed the conversation in a profound way. Seven, eight weeks ago, all we were listening to was about the debt ceiling and the deficit crisis, and [inaudible] nobody's talking about that distraction any longer. They're talking about the real issues now that are facing the majority of Americans: jobs, the fact that millions of homes are underwater, that 50 million people don't have health insurance, we have 49 million living in poverty now, we have 40 million adults who cannot read and write above a fourth grade level, that are functional illiterates. That's the nation that corporate America and the banks and Wall Street have created. And when somebody asked me the other day, "Well, who organized this? Who organized this movement?" I said, "Well, actually, Goldman Sachs organized it. Citibank organized it. BP organized it. They didthey did the organization."
And I think that, you know, it'sif you want to trace the current roots to this, somebodyI was being interviewed the other day. "Well, you know, at the end of your last movie, you were wrapping the crime scene tape around the Stock Exchange, and you called for this uprising." I said, "No. Yes, I did, but, you know, it's not that. It's not a magazine from Vancouver. It's notif you want toif you really want to pin it down to somebody, I would thank Bradley Manning." And here's why. A young man with a fruit stand in Tunis became very upset because he couldn't figure out why he was just getting screwed and why he couldn't make it. And he read a story, put out by WikiLeaks, that exposed how corrupt his government was. And he just couldn't take it anymore, and he set himself on fire. That event, by giving his life to this, created the Arab Spring movement that went across the Middle East and then boomeranged back here to what has been going on in the fall here in North America. But if one courageous soldier hadn'tallegedlydone what he had done, if he hadn't done this, itwho knows? But it was already boiling just beneath the surface, and it just needed somebody to get it going.
And thank God for you and your friends, who went down there on that first day, who endured the ridicule first, then the attacks, and then the attempts to co-opt. But they have held strong. And it's not nowit's not just the people who can camp out overnight. It's 72 percent of the American public who say they want taxes raised on the rich. That's never happened before in this country. It's people taking their money out of Chase and Citibank and Wells Fargo and putting it in their credit unions. And it's taken so many forms thatand it can't be stopped. And it's so great to watch Fox News and the others try to wrap their heads around it, because they can't get their brain quitelike it can't grab onto it, which is great. That's what's great. So, I'm a big supporter of it staying leaderless, with a lack of a certain amount of organization, that it remain in its free and open state. And thank God for all the young people who are willing to not take it anymore. And I've just been inspired by it, and I'm glad that I got to live to see what I believe, or hope, will be the beginning of the end of a very evil system that is unfair, and it's unjust, and it's not democratic. So, thank you.
RICHARD KIM: Patrick. Patrick, you were one of the organizers who has been there from the first day, one of the people that lit this incredible spark, and we're just all, I think, incredibly grateful to you. But you've been there for a long time now, and you've seen a lot of struggles inside the movement, and you've endured first the ridicule and name calling, as Michael said, and there's always the threat of police, and now the threat of winter. So, if you could give some advice, you know, to other occupations, who are maybe starting off a little later, or to students of grassroots movements, who will be studying you and your movement, you know, in generations to come, what would you say? What advice would you give about why this has worked so well?
PATRICK BRUNER: OK. Well, I think there are many reasons why this has worked. You know, obviously, we have a great history behind us. Tahrir Square, the indignados in Spainthese are movements that are, you know, very, very similar to our movement, you know, the way that we are organized: direct democracy, egalitarian values. These are things that we think deserve to be central in every movement, and we think that's a big reason why we have been successful, is that our tactics and our values and our goals, they're all the same.
And, you know, weobviously this has to do with a break in the way that we view the world. Eighty-five percent of the class of 2011 move back in with their parents. That's something that, you know, has never happened before. We have youth who are aware that their future has been stolen, because that's true. That's true. And we have everyone else who's watching that and who sees that the youth's future has been stolen and believes that their future has been stolen, as well. You know, the Tea Party comes from the same mindset as we do, you know, although we have many differences. You know, those are people who had legitimate grievances against this system that they had tried to work for their entire lives, and then it ended up screwing them. And, you know, that's what's going on with my generation. We have kids who have massive amounts of student debt, and they're, you know, going to carry that for the rest of their lives, possiblyyou know, not if we have anything to do with it, but...
You know, and so, my biggest advice would be to, you know, realize that we are a part of something new, but that we come from a long tradition of resistance against this system, resistance against systems of oppression in all forms, because that's what we're really doing. This isn't, in many waysyou know, like you said, this isn't a movement like other movements have been. This isn't a protest. This is a way of making a new space. We have taken Liberty Square. We have renamed it, and we have rebuilt it into something that we believe is a better model. Maybe it's not perfect. Maybe it's not what we'll come out of this with. But it's a way to at least start a discussion, a real discussion, about all of the things that ail us on a daily basis, the things that are never really discussed. Like you said, before this, you know, the biggest discussion in American politics was whether or not to raise the debt ceiling for the 103rd time. You know, now we don't talk about things like that. Now we're starting to talk about wealth inequality. We're starting to talk about greed. You know, we've had fun looking at Google trends and seeing that words like that have gone up, you know, in usage a thousand times. So, you know, these are things thatthere's a real shift in terms of the mentality of people. There's a psychic break that's going on that we're riding, because ofyou know, because of what they did to us.
You know, 47 percent of the wealth is owned by the top 1 percent. And that number has gone up since the "Great Recession," or whatever they want to call it, has begun, since this new depression has begun, this new global depression that's affecting everyone. You know, and this idea that we're broke, I think that that's one of the things that really pisses everyone off, because we know that's not true. You know, this is the richest country that's ever existed, with the richest people that's ever existedor that have ever existed. And none of them pay anything. And the idea is that we have to pay for their mistakes, for things that they don't even consider to be mistakes. They think they're winning. And I don't think any of us think that anymore.
RICHARD KIM: So, I want to get back later to that question of austerity, right? Because that is one of the things that Occupy Wall Street has really managed to put on the table. And yet, Washington and the eurozone are still having that conversation. So, maybe we'll get back to that in a bit. But Rinku, to you, Patrick has talked about how this has sort of been built on the shoulders of other movements, and you've been there in other movements, fighting for immigration rights, anti-racist movements
RINKU SEN: I was wondering how far back you were going to go.
RICHARD KIM: movements around homelessness and poverty. You know, in the early days, Occupy Wall Street was criticized by some people for being a sort of white, middle-class, college thing. There was a sort of infamous incident when civil rights activist and congressman John Lewis was prevented from speaking at a Occupy meeting in Atlanta. But since then, you know, I have seen a lot of great collaborations. Occupy Wall Street has gone up to protest many times "stop and frisk" policies in Harlem, putting their bodies on the line. What do you think, you know, is here, in terms of the potential for collaboration? And what are the tensions, right, between this new force in American politics and, you know, those organizations that have been really working for decades in the trenches?
RINKU SEN: So, you know, you know that saying and that thing that people do in families when they want to say how much they love each other, they say, "I love you this much," and they make their arms really big to indicate that there's a lot of love there? There'sa friend of mine has done something different with that, where she says to herthe kids that she takes care of, she says to them, "I love you this much." Can you all see my gesture? And so, instead of putting her arms out, she puts two fingers together, because nothing can come between us. "I love you this much, because nothing can come between us." And contradictorily, I think that the relationship between existing movementexisting organizations and the Occupy movement has to be both. It has to be about love that's this much and has some distance and love that's like this and has no distance, where nobody can come between us. And that's because I think that the Occupy movement hasneeds to have some autonomy. It does. And I really think it was very, very smart not to have demands, you know, right out the gate. It's not a campaign. So, organizations do campaigns, and movements do something else. They shift the public will. And so, the Occupy movement has to retain its ability to do its primary job, as I understand it, which is to keep shifting the public will and making that psychic break happen and supporting that psychic break. And at the very same time, it has to be like this, with all the people in communitiesworking people, unions, homeless people, tenants, immigrantswho have been struggling for so long to make particular things happen and to get back some of the stuff that was stolen from us. So, at the very same time, you have to have this kind of distance and autonomy and be operating like in this way, where nothing can get in between occupiers and all of the people who have been fighting for a long time.
On race and diversity, the main thing I want to say is that diversity, by itself, is not enough. It's not actually enough for the Occupy movement to be racially diverse, which it is. I know many, many people of color who are very invested in their local occupations, who have shown up, who have slept on site, who are bringing food and supplies and water and leading marches and so on. So the people of color, from my perception, whether it started that way or not, we are there now, and we are part of the movement, and we claim the movement. And yet, it isn't enough that there are simply bodies of color and faces of color in the park, in the plaza, in any plaza. The real question is, are those people who are there able to influence the agendas of local occupations? In particular, are they able to help people who are attracted to Occupy Wall Street get moved back out to all of the organizations and campaigns and efforts to really win things? Because I know you're attracting a ton of people, and they're going to do work. They, you know, can't hang out at a park all day long; there must be other things that need to happen. Well, maybe you can all day long. But the next day, it seems like maybe there might be room to make something happen.
And it's like, you know, when you go to a party. You get invited to a party, and maybe you like the person pretty well and respect the person who invited you to the party. You go to the party, and you don't like the music, but you have no ability to change it, and it makes your head pound. So the DJ doesn't take requests, and the iPod is like glued into the system, and you can't get it out. If that's the case, you don't like the music, and you have no ability to change it, you're not going to hang out at that party very long. You're going to leave and either make your own party or go home, I guess. So, the question is not really, can you get the people of color to the party? It's, can they change the music in a way that helps them stay at the party?
And I think that if Occupy Wall Street is going to cause this public shift, a really significant part of that shift has to be the ability to recognize the role that racial discrimination, racial exploitation, racial hierarchy played in getting us to this very depression, not just historically, but 10, 15, five years ago, last month, the ways in which redlining and mortgage theft and predatory lending and long-term employment discrimination and housing discrimination got us to the place where our economic systems do not work for anybody, including struggling white people. That didn'tstruggling white people weren'tmany have always been struggling, but there'syou know, I was saying in the green room that the 99 percent used to be the 98 percent, and somewhere in that 1 percent are some white people, you know? And they would not havethey wouldn't be moving into the 99 percent if in fact there had not been a whole set of mechanisms and structures that were actually designed to take stuff from people of color and to disenfranchise people of color, that then ultimately always, always, always bleed out to affect everybody else.
RICHARD KIM: Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Rinku Sen of Applied Research Center and publisher of ColorLines. Before that, Patrick Bruner, one of the organizers of Occupy Wall Street, and Michael Moore, Oscar-winning filmmaker, as well as author of Here Comes Trouble. Coming up, William Greider and Naomi Klein. Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman, with this special broadcast. "Occupy Everywhere: On the New Politics and Possibilities of the Movement Against Corporate Power." Today we bring you highlights of a panel hosted by The Nation magazine here in New York City at New School. We continue with William Greider. He is a contributor to The Nation magazine, author of Who Will Tell the People: The Betrayal of American Democracy, and most recently, Come Home, America: The Rise and Fall (and Redeeming Promise) of Our Country. William Greider.
WILLIAM GREIDER: The American pulse for democracy, the thirst for equality, for freedom, is a little like an underground river that has run underneath the surfaces of American history from the beginning. And it rarely is visible, at least to the established powers. It gets misled, deflected, stymied in different ways. But it continues these ideals, the original promise of what this country could be. And I told myself, "OK, I don't know if anything changes now. It doesn't seem to be happening. But I'm going toI'm going to be in that stream with the others, the historic stream, and do what I can and at least keep the candle lit and aloft." And that's a good thing to do with your life. Then, sometime, often unpredictably, this underground river gathers force, and it breaks through to the surface, and everything is changed. And you can read American history and find those moments, which changed everything and opened a vista of a different country. I think that's what we're experiencing right now. I literally mean that. And I think it'swe know it's a high-risk enterprise to try to build an authentic social movement. Many arise and fail, or get crushed. And the ideas are literally pushed back out of the public square. But they go backthey continue somehow and maybe come back a generation or two generations later. So we have toI think we have to take that sort of long view of what we're doing.
I feelbecause I know a lot of that history, I see an ironic resemblance between what's happening right now and the Populist movement of the late 19th century1870s, 1880s, 1890s. And I'll tell you some of why I feel that. These were farmers, in the South and Midwest mostly, who were being crushed. I mean, literally stripped of their property and turned into peasants by pretty much the same interests we're up against today: the rise of industrial capitalism, the money trust, the bankers, and just the hard prejudices of American society. And yet they rose among themselves. They knewthey knew this about their situation: nobody was on their side, certainly not the moneyed classes and the economic system, and not the government either. So if they were going to change anything, it had to come out of themselves. And they started having meetings, first in Texas, and the idea spread. And it's a long, wonderful story. I urge you to check out Lawrence Goodwyn's history, called The Populist Moment. I promise you will be inspired about the capacity of American potential, and you will also understand how hard it is to do what we're trying to do. And Larry Goodwyn is a student, a stern student, of social movements. Nothing sentimental about the man. And he understands how hard it is to make this happen. And he's described in great detailI won't go through herethe stages of development that keep a movement centered on what it really wants to be and in fighting off the opposing forces. Think about what we're hearing from these folks in the Occupy zones. It's very similar. We have to do this for ourselves. In fact, we intend to do it for ourselves. Very old American virtue, self-reliance. And it should be the core of what we are building here now. I think the Populist failed in concrete terms, but they set out to solve the problems for themselves, and they built a series of ingenious co-operatives, agricultural co-operatives mostly, but also credit and so forth, which were ultimately destroyed by the moneyed classes, bankers. But out of that, they developed bigger ideasI mean, really bigger ideasabout how to change this country, and then lost politically. But I would askwe should ask ourselveswhat are we building? What is it we can build that's parallel to that co-operative movement? And I think theI think we're already seeing the answer to that in McPherson Square in Washington and on Wall Street and dozens of other places. The paper I worked for many years ago has got a competitor now in Washington called The Occupied Washington Post, and it pleases me greatly to see that. But nowand they had a The Occupied Washington Post has a poster-type headline: "We Stand with the Majority, For Human Needs, Not Corporate Greed." That's a pretty good start on a program, I think. Andbut I think theI think what we're seeing now, in our construction, is beginning, believe it or not, to convince even the Washington Post. They haveif you check it out, in the style section today, they have a marvelous map of the McPherson Square encampment, done by hand with a kind of artist's style and little labels of this and that and so forth. It's quite beautiful. And accompanying it is one of their critics, an architecture critic, with can only be called a sincere appreciation of what he sees in McPherson Square. And it's the model of how this society could be organized. That'sit'speople are going to all say this: "What a powerful teacher! Takes my breath away." Now, in my last book, Come Home, America, oddly titled, I sort of playfully fantasized that what America needs is what we could call clubs for America, lots of them, millions of them, really, people just coming together and having conversations. And one of my young friends, who's a labor organizer, said, "Well, who's going to organize this?" And I kind of shrugged and said, "The people will." And he looked at me and rolled his eyes, like, you know, that's nice. And we moved on to other subjects. But guess what. That's who's organizing this thing: the people.
RICHARD KIM: Yeah.
WILLIAM GREIDER: And isn't thereI mean
RICHARD KIM: So, Bill?
WILLIAM GREIDER: There's something miraculous about that. And Larry Goodwyn, who's taught me so much, says this is hard to do. Movements fail. Most do not reach their goals. But they begin in what he likes to call democratic conversation. And I don't even ask him what he means by that, because he has said to menot always, but on a couple of occasions "We have just had a democratic conversation." And I think, "Goddamn"
RICHARD KIM: So, Bill, I want to askI want to ask Naomi about building that different future. And, you know, in your Nation story, you argue that how we respond to climate change is fundamentally an economic issue, it's not just an environmental one. And you write that, quote, "the real solutions to the climate crisis are also our best hope [of] building a much more enlightened economic systemone that closes deep inequalities, strengthens and transforms the public sphere, generates plentiful, dignified work and radically reins in corporate power." And you end with quite a, you know, beautiful section about how the occupiers themselves are already modeling that kind of work. What do you see here as some of the potentials? Because it's one thingwe were discussing this the other day. It's one thing to sort of stop something or to overthrow a dictator. It's quite another to build an alternative to neoliberal capitalism, also one that's going to be a solution to climate change. So what do you see here as the tools to build, right, this new economy and new society?
NAOMI KLEIN: OK. I will answer that question, Richard, but first I just want to say how wonderful it is to be here and just what a fantastic panel this has been so far. There's such just incredible richness of experience here. And, you know, for me, there is a real mix of emotions in it. I mean, it's so incredible to hear thisto hear Michael Moore say he's never seen anything like this in his lifetime, or to have Bill Greider draw these parallels with transformative movements of the past. But at the same timeI don't know if you feel this, tooit's also frightening, because itI mean, it isit underlines the awesome responsibility of this political moment, that this is the "no kidding around" moment. So much is riding on it, and we have to succeed. And that is thrilling, as well as terrifying. But I think these are wonderful emotions.
I think we are winning. We are starting to win. And I feel that particularly keenly today. And this relates to Richard's question about climate change, because I've been processing this thing that's happened, and I don't quite recognize it. It's a strange feeling for me. But we actually won something today. And I'm really not used to that. Just a few hours ago, the White House announced that it is going to have a new environmental review for the Keystone XL pipeline. That review is going to take at least a year. And the company that wants to build the Keystone XL pipeline, TransCanada, has said that it can't handle another delay, that their investors will lose faith. You know, investors don't like economic uncertainty. And they've already dealt with a lot. The review is going to be looking at rerouting the pipeline around the Ogallala Aquifer. And TransCanada has also said that they can't reroute it around the aquifer and still have this project be economically feasible. So, OK, it's the victory that we wanted. We wanted Obama to kill the pipeline, because of what the pipeline is carrying, which is tar sands dirty oil, which is catastrophic, no matter how you pipe it, for the planet, for the climate. But we knew we weren't going to get that. We knew we weren't going to get that in an election year, because the right would have gone to town on Obama as a job killer. But we believe that this delay will kill the pipeline. And if it doesn't, if this pipeline re-emerges after the election, people have signed pledges saying they will put their bodies on the line to stop it and that civil disobedience that I and 1,200 others engaged in outside the White House with the arrests in this fall, that this will become actions in front of bulldozers. I mean, people are ready to take that type of action. And so, we put them on notice.
But when we started this campaign, weand this was just three months ago that the first protests happened outside the White Housewe thought we had a very slim chance of winning, like a kind of a 1 percent chance of winning. And when Occupy Wall Street happened, I had a conversation with Bill McKibben, who has just been the powerhouse behind this campaign, just a hero. And I said to Bill, "I think this is helping us. What do you think?" And he said, "I think it's helping us, too." And the reason we believe this is becauseprecisely for what Patrick was talking about. The ground has shifted. The climate has shifted. And what it would mean for Obama to cave in to this corporation, especially after we exposed all the cronyism going on between TransCanada and the State Department and TransCanada and the White House, this kind of corruption is precisely what's on trial in parks and plazas around the world right now. And now that it's been exposed, this has become the ultimate example. You know, as Bill said, we're occupyingwe're occupying Wall Street, because Wall Street is occupying the State Department. So there is athere's been a clear connection between and a conversation between these campaigns. I don't think we would have won without Occupy Wall Street. I reallyI can't imagine how we could have. And this is what it means to change the conversation. And that's why this whole ideayou know, what are their demands, and, you know, what are they trying to accomplishthere are already victories happening. And this is just one example of it.
So, coming back to your question, Richard, yeah, I think there has been an ecological consciousness woven into these occupations from the start. I mean, you see that in the greywater system, the permaculture training, the composting, the fact that the food is coming from organic farmers. The food movement has been very involved from the beginning. NowI just learned this todaytheoriginally, it was traditional generators that was powering Occupy Wall Street. And then, some people had the idea that they don't actually want fossil fuels to powerto power the laptops and the other energy needs of Liberty Square, so there was a move to bring in bicycle generators. This was starting, and then it got kind of expedited, because the police came in and seized the generators. So when I arrived at the park just on Monday, I went over to the sustainability table and checked in, and they had one functioning bicycle generator. And I just left today. They have 14 functioning bicycle generators.
What's even more exciting is the way in whichI mean, one of the thingsyou know, I always compare this moment to Seattle, and this was the last time we were putting corporate capitalism on trial. And as we know, September 11th kind of wiped that movement off the map in this country, and the anti-corporate movement went dormant after 9/11. And we started fighting wars and torture and the whole Bush agenda. But the movement didn't disappear. A lot of people put their heads down and started building the economic alternatives to that model that we were protesting in Seattle, in Washington, in Genoa and around the world. And so thatso we've seen the explosion of farmers' markets. We've seen the explosion of community-supported agriculture. We've also seen a lot of cities and towns seriously try to relocalize their economy, so that they were not dependent on a single corporation that could just pull out and do to Flint, Michigan, what Michael documented. And now there's a track record. So whenand we've seen another example of this is the track record of community renewable energy, which is just phenomenal, in creating real jobs, in providing real energy. So, 10 years ago, when they said to us, "What is your alternative?" that was the way they tried to discredit us 10 years ago. It wasn't "What are your demands?" It was "What are your alternatives?" You know, we didn't have a great answer to that question. We didn't really have articulated alternatives with a track record to point to, certainly not close to home. You know, maybe we could talk about Mondragón in Spain or something like that. Now we have 10 years of those experiences. You know, Cleveland's green co-ops, things like this.
So, what I find exciting is the idea that the solutions to the ecological crisis can be the solutions to the economic crisis, and that we stop seeing these as two problems to be pitted against each other by savvy politicians, but that we see them as a single, single crisis, born of a single root, which is unrestrained corporate greed that can never have enough, and that is that mentality that trashes people and that trashes the planet, and that would shatter the bedrock of the continent to get out the lastthe last drops of fuel and natural gas. It's the same mentality that would shatter the bedrock of societies to maximize profits. And that's what's being protested. We need to have a coherent agenda here. We need to have a coherent narrative. And then, we need toas the discussion moves forward, to whatwhat do we want to build in the rubble of this failed system? I think that's the conversation, not "What are your demands?" but "What do we want to build in the rubble of this failed system?" Then, obviously, the solutions have to have the ecological crisis front and center, once we realize that this isthis is the same crisis. And these are where the jobs are. I mean, where else are you going to get millions of jobs but in building massive public transit systems and a smart energy grid and green co-operatives? I mean, where else is this going to happen? So, I'm hoping that this will emerge. And I think it is starting to emerge, and I'm seeing thisyou know, there are calls to occupy the food system, to occupy the rooftops for solar energy. So, you know, it's dispersed right now, but it's starting to weave together. And I think that willI think that will take this movement to the next phase beyond outrage, because we're in the outrage phase, but we need to get into a hope phase of being able to imagine another economic model.
AMY GOODMAN: Naomi Klein, best-selling author of The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. When we come back, more Klein and more Moore. That's Michael Moore. If you'd like a copy of today's show, you can go to our website at democracynow.org. Back in a minute.
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AMY GOODMAN: Welcome back to Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman, as we bring you this special broadcast, highlights of a Nation magazine event held here in New York at New School University, called "Occupy Everywhere: On the New Politics and Possibilities of the Movement Against Corporate Power." We hear first from Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine, then Oscar award-winning filmmaker and author, Michael Moore. The event's moderator was Nation magazine's Richard Kim.
RICHARD KIM: Isn't there some point, right, where this movement makes a demand and engages the state? And so, Naomi, I want to start with you specifically about climate change, but then maybe we could loop it back to Michael and just kind of go down the line on that question of what this movement's relationship is to the federal government or to the state.
NAOMI KLEIN: Yeah, I mean, I don't know what this movement's relationship is, but I certainlyI certainly believe that we do need strong state action and strong state intervention. But at the same time, I think that thatthe kinds of action that we want from the state can systematically devolve power to the community level and decentralize it. I mean, that's what's exciting about theseall of these examples, whether it's economic localization, community-based renewable energy, co-operatives, what they share in common is that they decentralize and devolve power, and, I mean, by their very nature. I mean, renewable energy, if you compare it with fossil fuels, you know, it's everywhere. That's the point. That's why it is less profitable, because anybody can put a solar panel on their roof and have energy. And that's why there's such momentum against it from corporate America, because they want huge, centralized solutions, because they're way more profitable, which isn't to say that you can't make a profit. You just can't make a stupid profit. You just can'tand so, I think, you know, if we look at what there's so much outrage over, it is that concentration of power, that vertical power. And so, yeah, I do think the solutions have to disperse power, but that we won't get there without very strong intervention, national, international, local.
And, you know, what I argue in the piece, as you know, is that I think that the rightthe reason why the right is denying climate change now in record numbersthere are parts of this country where 20 percent of Republicans don't believe20 percent of Republicans believe climate change is a hoaxsorry, 80 percent. Twenty percent believe it's real. So you have this completethis complete split, where 70 to 75 percent of Democrats and independents believe climate change is real, and almost no Republicans believe that it's real. And so, why is there this ideological split? If you listen to the climate change deniers, they believe this because they have looked at what science demands, they've looked at the level of emissions cuts that science demands, 80 percent or more by 2050, and they have said, "You can't do that within our current economic model. This is a socialist plot." We would havetheir entire ideology, which is laissez-faire government, attacks on the public sphere, privatization, cuts to social spending, all of that, none of it can survive actually reckoning with the climate science, because once your reckon with the climate science, you obviously have to do something. You have to intervene strongly in the economy. You have to invest massively in the public sphere, along the lines that I was just talking about, these huge investments in infrastructure. But at the same time, just because you're investing in infrastructure doesn't mean that you can't say that the transit system should be accountable to the people who ride it, right?
RICHARD KIM: Right.
NAOMI KLEIN: Because I think that, you know, this has been one of the great failures of the left, is not understanding that state power can be just as alienating and just as corrupt as corporate power. And we have to have learned those lessons of the past.
RICHARD KIM: I mean, a similar question to you, Michael. You've made about the most compelling case for single-payer healthcare that I could imagine. You know, why isn't that a demand that Occupy Wall Street should make? I mean, what is thatyou know, what do you see that role of this movement in fighting for these things that will require, you know, federal government, massive federal government intervention?
MICHAEL MOORE: I think that'll happen. I think we're watching thewe're in the infancy of this movement, and it will grow, and that will happen. I have no doubts about that. I think the majority of the people in America would like that. And healthcare, in the same way that Naomi was talking about the environmental issues, in terms of how that impacts the economy, I think that thatI think that that'sI think that'sI just think this is all going to happen. But Iand you can play this tape back in about two years, because this is going to move very fast. This is one of these things where, you know, part of the discussion we're having tonight is trying to figure it out. And I think Malcolm Gladwell's point was well taken in his book, The Tipping Point, that you can't create a tipping point. It just happens. And people have tried to figure out how to do that, and they put their marketing head together, and it doesn't work.
So I think that thisyou know, if I remember the Adbusters call, one of the things that they said was that the movement had to have one demand, just come together withjust get together in the park and then come up with one demand. And that was such a crazy idea. It was likeit would have killed the whole thing. It would have absolutely killed it, because they're so frightened about this movement nowI mean, the Republican debate last night, it was brought up two or three times. The Republican presidential candidateone of the candidates had to say, "I'm part of the 99 percent. I'm for the" I mean, they're even using the language now. They're so frightened by this, Bank of America had to get rid of their [bleep] $5 debit card fee. They're likethey're running so fast, they don't knowtheyyou know, because they created this, you know, they created all the pain and suffering, because it's their boot that's on the necks of the American people and the Canadian people and most of the people of this world, it's that they know thatthey feel now that people want that boot off of their necks.
And when you say there'sright, there's 400 that have more than 150 million, but they only have 400 votes. And that just has got toevery night when they go to bed, go, "Holy [bleep]! This is likethere's 150 million of them, and there's only [ 400 ] of us!" "But we can buy candidates. Yes, we can buy candidates." "I know. But we can't go in the booth and put our hands on everybody's lever." "I know. I know. I know. OK, well, we'll justwe'll feed them a lot of nonsense on TV, and that'll get them afraid. And we'll make their schools like so crappy that they'll be ignorant, and they won't know when we're trying to manipulate them with fear. And that'syou know, this is how we'll do it." AndI just loveI just wish I could be in their bedrooms tonight. They're justmany of them are in Connecticut. And they're not far away. If anybody's watchingI would just love to just be in one of their bedrooms tonight, justthey just have got tothey're just sogot to be so frightened by this
RICHARD KIM: Occupy Greenwich, right?
MICHAEL MOORE: because it'syeah. Well, it's ouras longyou know, Bill is so right. You know, Bill has been such a warrior for trying to keep the bare threads of our democracy that are still there intact, and there aren't many left. We are really just hanging on by a few of these threads. And ifone of those threads is one person, one vote, and so they can't really do anything about that. And we canyou know, you can say, "Oh, they could buy the votes." But listen, everyto take our lessonsyou mentioned all the previous movements and the historical implications of this. I mean, the women's suffrage movement, that started in this state in the 1840s, I mean, imagine the mountain that they had to climb. You know, people didn't sit around going, "Oh, how are we going to get this amendment passed, because we can't vote?" I mean, seriously, no woman was ever going to be able to vote for their right to vote. I mean, that's justthat must have seemed like the most impossible task. So, wewhat's great about this movement iswhat's great about this movement is, is that we have to get out of our victim role.
You know, this is why the word, the concept of occupy, because "occupy," until seven weeks ago, was really a dirty word, because we knew what it meant. Those lands that are occupied by us in the Middle East, the West Bank and Gaza by another country, you know, I mean, it's like that's occupation. "Occupation" is a dirty word. And you have taken this, and you have justall of us, everybody who's part of this, we've turned it on itson completely on its ear. And now we've owned the word, and it's not likeit's not like, "Oh, what are we going to do?" You know, it's like, no, we've occupied you now. We've occupied the Washington Post. We've occupied the Wall Street Journal. We'reand that's howthat's how this is going to go.
But I just please want to second what Naomi said, that this is the "no kidding around" moment. My friends, please, the ship has sailed in. The ship will leave. As Bill said, many of these things that have happened in our 200-plus-year history have failed or been crushed. And this is our moment. This is the moment for it to happen. It will only happen if every single person in this room, tonight, when you leave, and you go home, you have to say to yourself, "What am I doing? What can I do to be part of the occupation? What am I going to do to occupy Wall Street?" Everybody watching this at home, on The Nation's website, anybody watching this right now, every one of youdoesn't matter, you're living in Boise, you're living in the most faraway reaches of Upper Minnesota, no matter where you areI've seen Occupies that are two-people big. And this is where it's got to start. And it always starts that way, right? I mean, Marx, he just had Engels. They were justthat's all he had. I mean, it was like they were justthey were just two old farts, sitting around keeping their hands warm over the fireplace in London, talking to each other. And theyyou know, they came up with this idea. And J.C. J.C. had 12 fisher guys. Look what happened with that. Whoa! So, if you're at home and you're watching this and you're in some out-of-the-way place, you already own it. This is already your country. Youyou have been occupied by Wall Street. Your homes have been occupied by Wall Street. Your government has been occupied by Wall Street. Your media has been occupied by Wall Street. And it's OK for you to say, "Not anymore. Those days are over. End of story."
Occupy Everywhere - Sept 17th - Day of Rage Against Wall Street and what it stands for! - Peter Lemkin - 29-11-2011
Worth looking at and pondering......
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Occupy Everywhere - Sept 17th - Day of Rage Against Wall Street and what it stands for! - Peter Lemkin - 29-11-2011
Can an Occupation Movement Survive if it No Longer Occupies a Space? Lessons from Across the Land
Protesters around the country have been cleared out of their occupied public spaces, but some of the smaller occupations could hold lessons for next steps.
November 27, 2011 |
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The post-occupation movement is taking shape across America. In New York, Occupy Wall Street is mulling next steps now that Zuccotti Park has been politically cleansed. Oakland, Calif., and Portland, Ore., have been evicted. And other occupations are staring at imminent police action, including New Orleans, Detroit and Philadelphia.
In Chicago, which has been unable to secure a public space, the Occupy movement is trying to figure out how to sustain a public presence through a harsh winter while staging creative actions that capture attention. And while Occupy Mobile in the conservative stronghold of Alabama was shut down two weeks ago without much attention from the national news media, the local movement has not gone quietly into the night, providing one answer to the question: Can an occupation movement survive if it no longer occupies a space?
The answer, based on my visits to occupation sites around the country, is: "Yes, but …"
Mobilized in Mobile
In Mobile, a group of young, mostly white activists initiated one of the country's shortest occupations recently. After holding weekly demonstrations for a month, Occupy Mobile set up an encampment in the city's downtown Spanish Plaza on Nov. 5. After voluntarily moving to nearby Memorial Park days later the occupation was broken up close to midnight on Nov. 8 with police arresting 15 people and protesters alleging police brutality.
We arrived in Mobile on a Saturday night after enjoying a grilled shrimp dinner at Ed's Seafood Shed and an outrageously beautiful fuchsia sunset over the Gulf Coast. Chelsy Wilson, a university student studying anthropology, had invited us to a modest home secreted in the suburbs to meet members of Occupy Mobile. We were curious about an occupation that had taken root in a small city in the Deep South, and when we talked with some of the 20 members they seemed just as surprised, describing a conservative city hostile to most anyone to the left of Michele Bachmann.
Jason Carey, a 28-year-old IT specialist who's lived in Mobile for 10 years, said an emergency room doctor told him his ribs may have been fractured when he was arrested the final night of Occupy Mobile's encampment. He claims he was dragged down stairs and felt "someone stomping on me." A good-looking nerdy type and aficionado of extreme sports, Carey is the seasoned activist and mentor to political neophytes in the organization.
Three days after being evicted Occupy Mobile was back on the streets. It staged an action at ArtWalk, a monthly event in downtown where galleries open their doors and artists peddle their work on the streets.
"About 15 people did a silent protest," says Carey. "Some people had dollar bills taped over their mouths. I taped a sign over my mouth, First Amendment? Not in Mobile!' There are well over a thousand people walking around at any time." Carey says that people usually come to ArtWalk in groups and while "a few people were assholes … dozens of groups initiated discussions with us."
Emily Schuler, a Mobile native and college student, says the Occupy movement made her rethink her place in society, calling it "one of the best things that has ever happened to me." Schuler says, "I love Mobile, but it's ultra-conservative." She explains, "I always felt like the black sheep because I sensed that the way the world was working was not good … There is a lot of pain and suffering. I think it has a lot to do with the way the system works. Because right now it's profit over people. And it should be people over profit."
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Occupy Wall Street, Beyond Encampments
As winter arrives and police crack down, how can occupiers keep their movement aliveand help it grow? Veteran activists share lessons from Spain's Indignados.
by Luis Moreno-Caballud, Marina Sitrin
posted Nov 21, 2011
November 17 Day of Action celebrated the two month anniversary of OWS as well as the reoccupation of Zuccotti Park.
Marina Sitrin and Luis Moreno-Caballudparticipants in the Occupy Wall Street movement and Spain's May 15 movementshare their advice for Occupy Wall Street's next step.
We write this letter as participants in the movements, and as an invitation to a conversation. We hope to raise questions about how we continue to deepen and transform the new social relationships and processes we have begun … to open the discussion towards a common horizon.
The evictions and threats to the physical occupations in the United States have again raised the question of the future of the movement. The question isn't whether the movement has a future, but what sort of future it will be. For example, should our energy be focused on finding new spaces to occupy and create encampments? Should we be focused more in our local neighborhoods, schools, and workplaces? Is there a way to occupy public space with horizontal assemblies, yet also focus locally and concretely?
A look at the recent history of a movement similar to Occupythe Spanish indignados or May 15 movementcan shed some light on the opportunities and urgency of this new phase. It is a moment that we see as a potential turning point, and one with incredible possibilities.
There are three key elements that have made the global movements of
2011 so powerful:
The extraordinary capacity to include all types of people;
The impulse to move beyond traditional forms of the protest and contention, so as to create solutions for the problems identified;
The horizontal and directly participatory form they take.
Let's look at the first element. Unlike other movements that have strongly identified with particular social groups (workers, students, etc.), both the indignados and Occupy are movements that anyone can join, just by choosing to do so. Again and again, in Madrid as in New York, we have heard the demonstrators chanting solidarity slogans to the police: "they've also lowered your salary" and "you too are the 99%". In both places the movements have been able to bring out many people who had never been to a demonstration before, and make them feel welcome and useful. It is a culture and politics of openness and acceptance of the other.
The second element, the capacity to create solutions, is consistent with this non-confrontational aspect of the Spanish and American movements. Like their predecessors in Egypt and Greece, both movements began with the occupation of a public space. Rather than reproducing the logic of the traditional "sit-in," these occupations quickly turned to the construction of miniature models of the society that the movement wanted to createprefiguring the world while simultaneously creating it. The territory occupied was geographic, but only so as to open other ways of doing and being together. It is not the specific place that is the issue, but what happens in it. This is what we could call the first phase of the movement. Solutions began to be implemented for the urgent problems, like the absence of truly representative politics and the lack of access to basic necessities, such as housing, education, food, and health care. In Spain and in the United States, this first phase saw the creation of two problem-solving institutions: the general assemblies and the working groups.
The participants in these movements create spaces of sociability, places where we can be treated as free human beings beyond the constant demands of the profit motive.
The ways in which we organize in these spaces of assemblies and working groups is inextricably linked to the vision of what we are creating. We seek open, horizontal, participatory spaces where each person can truly speak and be heard. We organize structures, such as facilitation teams, agendas, and variations on the forms of the assembly, from general assemblies to spokes councils, always being open to changing them so as to create the most democratic and participatory space possible.
The very existence of the encampments, together with the general assemblies, was already a victory over the increasingly desperate battle of all against all that the neoliberal crisis has imposed on us. The participants in these movements create spaces of sociability, places where we can be treated as free human beings beyond the constant demands of the profit motive. In a city like New York where debates about our society tend to occur only in government institutions, and expensive spaces of limited access (universities, offices, restaurants and bars), the assemblies at Zuccotti provided a public forum that was open to anyone who wanted to speak. In addition, from the very beginning the movement created working groups designed to directly address problems related to basic human necessities. On the first day of the occupation of Zuccotti, the loading and unloading of shopping-carts full of jars of peanut butter and loaves of bread, an initiative launched by the already-functioning food committee, was the first sign of this effort to provide solutions. By the 5th week of the Occupation in New York the food working group was feeding upwards of 3,000 people a day.
In these working groups the dynamic of the second phase of these movements was already implicit. In Spain this phase began over the summer; in the United States it is beginning now. This phase is characterized by the gradual shift from a focus on acts of protest (which nonetheless continue to have a crucial role, as we must confront this system that creates crisis) to instituting the type of change that the movements actually want to see happen in society as a whole. The capacity to create solutions grows as the movements expand in all directions, first through the appearance of multiple occupations connected among themselves, and then through the creation ofor collaboration withgroups or networks that are able to solve problems on a local level through cooperation and the sharing of skills and resources. For example, Occupy Harlem is using direct action to prevent heat from being shut off in a building in the neighborhood (this action has been coordinated with OWS and Occupy Brooklyn).
In the case of Spain, this expansion began in June, when the movement decided to focus its energy more on the assemblies and the working groups than on maintaining the encampments themselves. To maintain the miniature models of a society that the movement wished to create did not necessarily contribute to the actual changes that were needed in the populations that needed them the most. Which is why the decision to move away from the encampments was nothing more than another impulse in the constructive aims of the movement: the real encampment that has to be reconstructed is the world.
Of course, it is true that the encampments continue to have a crucial function as places in which the symbolic power of the Occupy movement is concentrated. It is also true that the efforts to defend them have produced moving displays of solidarity. But the viability of a movement is not only defined by its capacity to withstand pressure from the outside, but also in its ability to reach and work together with people outside the space of the plaza or square. It is thisthe going beyond the parameters of the plazawhich the assemblies and the working groups have already started to put into effect.
In the U.S., this might take the form of assemblies in neighborhoods, workplaces, universities, and on street corners working concretely together with neighbors and workmates, as well as then relating together in assemblies of assemblies or spokes councils in parks, plazas, and squares, sharing experiences from the more local spaces. All the while, the occupation of space and territory would continuebut with the vision of territory as what happens together, with one another, in multiple places, and then coming together to share in another geographic place. This could take places from neighborhood to neighborhood or city to city, all networked in horizontal assemblies.
While the indignado movement no longer has encampments, its presence is felt everywhere.
In any case, to return to the example of Spain, what is certain is that while the indignado movement no longer has encampments, its presence is felt everywhere. It's a culture now, composed of thousands of micro-institutions that provide solutions through the common efforts of people affected by the same problems. There are cooperatives addressing work, housing, energy, education, finance, and nutrition, and many other things, as well as a web of collaboration that connects these cooperatives. Catalunya and Madrid already have "Integral Cooperatives" whose function is to coordinate the different services offered by various cooperatives within a particular locale, to the point that in some places in Spain it is almost possible to live without having to depend on the resources hoarded by the one percent. The movement has made it possible for these institutions, which used to be dispersed and limited, to grow and grow connected, and it has provided them with a visibility that has led to much more interest, respect, and support for their functions.
Also, the movement keeps coming back to the streets every so often in big demonstrations and assemblies that display its force and allow all of those working in the many projects associated with the spirit of May 15th to see each other, network together, and welcome more people.
The creation of alternative institutions and solutions has already begun in the United States. With or without encampments, the constructive phase of the Occupy movement is here.
The creation of alternative institutions and solutions has already begun in the United States. With or without encampments, the constructive phase of the Occupy movement is here, and all indications are that it will not slow down, as it has not slowed down in Spain. Every day on the news and on YouTube, we see the police removing the occupiers from parks and plazas, but the movement continues to growand to grow outside of these places. While the tumult of raids and returns jolts occupiers and the public alike, thousands of working groups around the world meet weekly in libraries, community centers, churches, cafes, and offices to share their extraordinary abilities and resources. They are already creating the schools, hospitals, houses, neighborhoods, cities, and dreams of the 99 percent.
This is the beginning of the occupation of an encampment that will never be dislodged: the world.
Luis Moreno-Caballud is a participant in the Spanish May 15th movement and the Occupy Wall Street movement. He collaborated in the formation of the NYC General Assembly before the beginning of OWS, and works with both the Outreach and Empowerment and Education working groups. He is an assistant professor of Spanish literature and cultural studies at the University of Pennsylvania.
Marina Sitrin is a participant in the Occupy Wall Street movement, and was a part of the NYC General Assembly that helped organize OWS. She is a postdoctoral fellow at the CUNY Graduate Center Committee on Globalization and Social Change, and the author of Horizontalism: Voices of Popular Power in Argentina.
Occupy Everywhere - Sept 17th - Day of Rage Against Wall Street and what it stands for! - Peter Lemkin - 29-11-2011
Occupy L.A. protesters to seek court order to block eviction
November 28, 2011 | 10:08 am
Protesters plan to file for a federal injunction that would prevent police from dismantling the Occupy L.A. encampment around City Hall.
The complaint, which was to be filed at 10 a.m. Monday in federal court, names the city of Los Angeles, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and LAPD Chief Charlie Beck, alleging that the protesters' civil rights were violated. The three protesters who planned to file the suit would be seeking a court order to prevent the city from evicting the camp from the City Hall lawn.
The complaint accuses the city of engaging in "arbitrary and capricious action in violation of the 1st and 14th Amendments by first approving the Occupy presence for 56 days before suddenly revoking permission through the unilateral action of defendants."
Chief Deputy City Atty. William Carter said the city attorney's office was reviewing the complaint and was ready to respond or appear if necessary.
Carter said the city was prepared to file three declarations in opposition to a restraining order. One is from a Los Angeles Police Department officer relating to enforcement of the city ordinance that bans people from being in parks overnight.
The protesters' complaint points out that the City Council passed a resolution of support for the protesters and states that an aide to Villaraigosa told two of the plaintiffs, protester Mario Brito and Jim Lafferty of the National Lawyers Guild, that the municipal code section prohibiting overnight camping in city parks would not be enforced.
The complaint also pointed out that the city has made other exceptions to the anti-camping provision, including for people waiting at Exposition Park to be eligible for free medical services and for an estimated 500 fans of the "Twilight" vampire movies who "camped out on the sidewalks of Westwood Village for several days to be first in line for the midnight showing of the first 'Twilight' sequel."
The city was also prepared to submit a letter from Jon Kirk Mukri, general manager of the Department of Recreation and Parks, about the condition of City Hall Park, where protesters have been camped since Oct. 1. The third letter is from Carter himself, alleging protesters did not give the city due notice of their intention to seek the restraining order.
Earlier this month, protesters did give notice that they would seek an emergency restraining order on Nov. 18. But the issue was put on hold when protesters failed to show up in court to file for the request.
On that day, civil rights lawyer Carol Sobel, a legal advisor for Occupy protests across the country, appeared in court and said she planned to argue that the protesters seeking the injunction did not represent Occupy L.A. Sobel is listed as the attorney on the new complaint.
Protesters had expected to be forcefully evicted after the mayor announced that the park would be closed at 12:01 a.m. Monday.
Instead, after a night of largely peaceful protests, police arrested four people who refused to clear the streets. Overnight, about 1,000 protesters blocked the intersection of 1st and Main streets until about 5 a.m., when police issued an order to disperse.
Most returned to the encampment at City Hall Park, but a few were arrested.
Villaraigosa and Beck said that the 12:01 a.m. deadline marked the time when the encampment became illegal, not when eviction would occur.
Although protesters said they were happy with the outcome, officials stressed that the encampment cannot continue.
"We will enforce the park closure," Villaraigosa said in an interview with KTLA-TV. "We thought talking through this was the best way to proceed and we've done that. But it's become crystal clear … that it wasn't sustainable to be there indefinitely."
Villaraigosa praised the protesters for shining a light on problems facing the middle class and forcing people to listen.
"My hope is that we will be able to conclude this chapter peacefully," he said.
Occupy Everywhere - Sept 17th - Day of Rage Against Wall Street and what it stands for! - Peter Lemkin - 29-11-2011
No to Co-Option: MoveOn is the Opposite of the Occupy Movement
November 28, 2011
MoveOn's History of Undermining Progressive Causes in Support of the Corporate-Dominated Democratic Party
While most of the comments about my article on Van Jones and our General Assembly's call for independence from the Democratic Party and Democratic Party front groups were positive, a few people don't seem to know the history of MoveOn.
Please do not misunderstand my criticisms of MoveOn and other organizations in this article as criticism of the many good people in these organizations. We have some people from MoveOn and other groups working with us at Occupy Washington, DC. It is the leadership of these groups that misdirects people into the Democratic Party, supporting Democratic candidates and weak and often counterproductive Democratic Party positions. We welcome MoveOn members to the Occupy Movement, but we do not want their leadership misdirecting the movement into the Democratic Party which is dominated by Wall Street and other big business interests.
Many occupiers are growing increasingly concerned about the attempted co-option of the Occupy Movement by Democratic Party operatives. I focused on Van Jones because he has been appearing in the media talking like he is occupying somewhere. I don't think he is sleeping in a tent in any Occupy, but he sure gets a lot of attention from the corporate media as if he were an occupier. The corporate media seems to want to anoint him as the leader of the Occupy Movement. And, his Rebuild the Dream website makes it look like it was the Occupy the Highway Movement, even though no one from Rebuild walked the 220 mile journey from New York to Washington, DC.
But, I am equally concerned about groups like SEIU a union that has already endorsed President Obama and has been described by Glenn Greenwald as attempting to co-opt the Occupy Movement. Also of concern is Campaign for America's Future which holds annual conferences that seek to spotlight Democratic candidates and get people to spend their time and resources electing Democrats. If therir strategy is to elect Democrats that is fine, just do it somewhere else. The Occupy Movement is the opposite we are independent of the two parties. We the system as corrupt and working to elect people in that system as joining the corruption rather than stopping it.
Regarding MoveOn, which has done mailing after mailing using the Occupy Movement, it consistently supports the Democratic Party and undermines progressive causes. They started as an advocacy group for the Democratic Party and have remained such. It began seeking to end the impeachment of President Clinton for lying under oath about sexual harassment. They work hard to keep liberals and progressives inside the Democratic Party so that they will not form an independent movement to hold Obama and the Democratic Party, as well as Republicans, accountable. MoveOn refuses to acknowledge their constant betrayals of the people by the Democratic Party.
Using non-profit front groups to undermine progressive movements is consistent with the tactics of the Democratic Party. In return for big funding from Democratic Party donors these groups are told what they can do and say by Democratic Party operatives. During the health care reform debate MoveOn was part of a coalition called Health Care for America Now. The name of the coalition was eerily similar to the long-established single payer advocacy group, Health Care Now. But rather than advocating for an end to insurance-dominated health care as single payer would do, the well-funded Health Care for America Now (spending at least $50 million to support ObamaCare) advocated for the Obama health law, which more deeply entrenched insurance industry domination of health care. A law that even forces Americans, for the first time in history, to buy a corporate product and in this case a seriously flawed product.
Rebuild the Dream, a MoveOn Project, continues to undermine real health care reform by using the new language of the single payer "Improved Medicare for All" in their issue demands. But, Rebuild waters down this demand to protect the insurance industry. When you read the details rather than a real improved Medicare for All system that eliminates health insurance they merely advocate that people be offered the opportunity to buy Medicare as another insurance policy. Their last paragraph makes all the arguments for single payer, but then pulls back to merely offering Medicare as one insurance option. Their language is essentially the public option using single payer language. No doubt the vast majority of MoveOn and Rebuild the Dream members support single payer (two-thirds of Americans do) and real progressive change, but Van Jones's Rebuild uses similarities in rhetoric to fool them and keep progressives inside the Democratic Party rather than developing the kind of unified independent movement that is needed to push for real change. We need to challenge the insurance industry, not work with Democrats who take millions in donations from them.
MoveOn did this to the peace movement in 2007 after an anti-Iraq War vote gave the Democrats control of the House of Representatives. The anti-war movement was in full force pressuring members of Congress. The Democratic leadership put forward a bill to end funding for the war unless "benchmarks" were met and allowed war funding for four big exceptions that would allow the war to continue, such as fighting terrorism, protecting American interests, and training the Iraq military. Twenty peace groups united to oppose the Democratic plan to continue war funding. Every vote was needed by the corporate-Democratic Party leadership to continue war funding. At the last minute, MoveOn came out in support of the weak Democratic plan and provided cover to Democrats, relieved constituent pressure, and allowed the war funding to continue.
Not surprisingly, there is confusion among liberals and progressives who support the common agenda of ending the wars, economic justice and environmental protection. We're sometimes asked if Rebuild the Dream is part of Occupy Washington, DC. The answer is an unequivocal NO. Occupy Washington, DC is an independent movement that will hold the system, big business and both parties accountable for corporatism and militarism. And we will not go away or be absorbed by MoveOn, Rebuild the Dream and its Democratic Party allies. We are critics of the machine, the corrupt, dysfunctional system, which the Democratic Party has always been and continues to be part of. We welcome Dream supporters. We would even welcome the leadership all they need to do is renounce the Democratic Party and President Obama:
MoveOn and Rebuild the Dream can prove us wrong if they come forward with a non-partisan statement saying they will fight against any elected official, of any party, in any office, who has not lived up to the anti-militarism and anti-corporatist agenda, especially the president.
Until that statement is made Democratic Party operatives and their allied groups should back off the Occupy Movement. You have a different strategy working inside the Democratic Party, working inside the limits of the corrupt machine while we want to transform American politics.
Get out of our way.
Occupy Everywhere - Sept 17th - Day of Rage Against Wall Street and what it stands for! - Peter Lemkin - 29-11-2011
Occupying Society: How the Movement Hashes Out Race, Class and Privilege in Real Time
When encampments are shut down, it's not just the physical turf that's lost; a social experiment in working out the issues that have divided people for centuries gets crimped.
November 25, 2011 | AlterNet / By Latoya Peterson
Since Occupy Wall Street lost its stronghold in Manhattan's financial district last week, thanks to a long-threatened raid by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, discussion swirls about the fate of the movement -- especially in light of similar evictions of Occupy encampments in other cities.
But the loss of encampment space is about more than the movement's physical presence; it threatens the loss of the most compelling story, a hybrid of breaking news and reality TV show. This couldn't have been dreamed up by MTV, but the premise feels familiar: An organic, ad hoc society springs from encampment village, hashing out in real time tensions around class, race and competing priorities that have gripped the progressive movement for decades -- essentially the early seasons of "The Real World" for change agents and social activists. (The comparison wasn't lost on MTV producers, who created a special called True Life: I'm Occupying Wall Street, which aired earlier this month.)
Occasionally, the competing priorities of the movements made headlines, but the stories aired and published usually focused on tensions that arise when resistance to the state meets the need for police authority, as evidenced in ongoing battles over dealing with sexual assault in some encampments. Matters of diversity, homelessness and conversational direction draw less attention from media, but are fiercely debated in the Occupy communities -- and those conversations are instructive in the quest to create a new type of society.
Busting a Stereotype
Back in October, responding to Bloomberg's first threat of eviction to the OWS camp, I found myself prepping to head down to Manhattan's Zuccotti Park at dawn. (Bloomberg said that the park needed to be cleaned.) The night before, I had gotten lost and ended up on Wall Street, gawking at the police brigades, barriers and officers on horses. I wasn't planning on getting caught in any kind of sweep (and I wasn't, though there is a disturbing pattern of journalists being arrested covering OWS protests), but as a life-long resident of Washington, DC, I know protests can go from peaceful to nuclear in seconds.
So, I took to Twitter, asking folks who had been down to Zuccotti to help me decide between a business-casual hybrid outfit (sneakers, professional dress) or the I-may-end-up-incarcerated gear of sneakers, jeans and multiple layers.
Overwhelmingly, the answer was business. One person tweeted, "We're already smeared in the media as a bunch of smelly hippies, break up the stereotype."
Another stereotype went hand in hand with the "smelly hippies" smear: hand-wringing over the numbers of homeless people coexisting with the occupiers. Media coverage began focusing on tensions within the Occupy movement over the growing number of homeless people who found shelter, food and companionship within the camps.
Through the space that Occupy provided, the conditions under which the homeless in America live under each day were illuminated. The rough camps attracted enough people carrying their possessions on their backs that, back in DC, I soon found myself playing the "Homeless or Occupier" game in my head, as I observed the people wandering Farragut Square, near the Occupy K Street encampment, around lunchtime. While this blended reality could be chalked up to a silly quirk, the fact that the well-run camps (which managed to provide a steady supply of food and relative safety on a skimpy budget) soon became a beacon for people in distress, pointed a damning finger at the failure of our society to care for all its members.
Tensions increased when the New York Times interviewed a young activist named Hero Vincent in Zuccotti Park, who said in exasperation, "It's bad for most of us who came here to build a movement. We didn't come here to start a recovery institution."
Occupy Everywhere - Sept 17th - Day of Rage Against Wall Street and what it stands for! - Peter Lemkin - 29-11-2011
Buy Nothing Day: Adbusters' role in the global Occupy movement
Next Saturday is global Buy Nothing Day, the brainchild of Kalle Lasn, co-founder of 'Adbusters' and the man behind this year's Wall Street and St Paul's anti-capitalist protests. Lena Corner meets him
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It's a little over a month until Christmas and next weekend is traditionally when the annual shopping frenzy kicks off. But not everyone will be hot-footing it to their nearest mega-mall, because next Saturday also marks the annual Buy Nothing Day. Launched in the mid-1990s by the Canada-based anti-capitalist publication Adbusters, it's an idea in which people are encouraged to stay out of the shops for 24 hours to make a small stand against rampant consumerism. And this year they are thinking bigger than ever.
The plan, says Adbusters co-founder Kalle Lasn, is to stretch it out and turn it into a Buy Nothing Christmas. He wants us to bypass the tinsel, the tree and the tat and go cold turkey on consumerism for the whole festive period. "We are," he says, "going to try and take back our Christmas season from the commercial forces that have hijacked it."
If you think this sounds like the rantings of a deluded Bolshevik, it's worth noting a few things about Lasn and his cohorts at Adbusters, who have been producing the bi-monthly magazine from their Vancouver office since 1989. Lasn, an Estonia-born, former high-flyer in the advertising industry, now pushing 70, started Adbusters as an antidote to corporate greed, and what he saw as an aggressive pro-consumerist message that was being rammed down our throats. "We felt back then that there was a dark side to consumerism but no one ever talked about it," he says.
Lasn's background in advertising shows. Rather than being a ranting left-wing rag, Adbusters is slick and full of smart graphics and insightful critique. His ideas, so pertinent now in the global financial chaos of today, have always been ahead of their time. And it was he who, in last July's issue of Adbusters, ran a one-page poster which simply read "Occupy Wall Street, September 17th, bring tent".
What happened next sparked one of the most successful protest movements of recent times, one that has gone on to dominate the global news agenda for weeks. That one small page was responsible for hordes of disgruntled people congregating at Wall Street's Zuccotti Park and London's St Paul's Cathedral to express their fury at the world's extreme economic inequality, and many of them are still camping there to this day. And it was responsible for a further thousand or so other Occupy protests that sprung up in solidarity the world over. Lasn, it seems, has chanced upon a formula to harness global support.
"We were inspired by events in Egypt and Tunisia earlier this year," he says, "by that fact that a few smart people using Facebook and Twitter can put out calls and get huge numbers of people on to the streets to give vent to their anger. I always thought I would die a disappointed leftie, but now I have been redeemed. The idea that we, the people, can go into the iconic heart of global capitalism and take it over, and the fact that we can do that from an office staffed with 10 people and then sit back and watch the whole thing catch the imagination of the world that gives me hope for the future." k
Lasn believes the success of the Occupy movement is down to the fact we have reached an impasse, a kind of critical moment where our future has now become so bleak, people have been driven to act. "We have reached a tipping point," he says. "Our economic system has been run like a global casino and is teetering on the brink of collapse. None of our political leaders seem to know what the hell they are doing any more and there are now seven billion of us facing ecological crisis, too. Young people are looking at a future that doesn't compute. We have reached a moment where, unless we fight for a different kind of future, we're not going to have a future at all."
Lasn saw it all coming back in 1989 when Adbusters started out as a humble newsletter. It was born out of an epiphany Lasn had after seeing an advert on TV for the Canadian forestry industry. "[The advert] was hugely misleading," he says. "They basically said, 'Hey you people of Canada, we are doing a fantastic job of managing your forests, you have nothing to worry about, you will have forests forever.'" Lasn who left advertising to make documentaries decided to make his own 30-second advert to tell the other side of the story: the dangers of deforestation. However, when he took his advert to the TV station, they refused, point blank, to sell him airtime.
"That was a devastating moment for me," he says. "In my home country of Estonia you weren't allowed to speak up against the government. Fifty years later, I found myself in the heart of the democratic world suddenly totally unable to speak out because of one company's advertising money.
"It made me realise how all our media and information delivery systems are infiltrated by pro-consumption messages, and that basically every aspect of our lives is controlled to some degree by this consumer machine. Consumption patterns in America have increased by 300 per cent since the Second World War, and the average American now consumes three times more than they did 50 years ago. It was time to rage against the machine."
Adbusters now has a dedicated worldwide circulation of 70,000 (with 20,000 more online readers), and all this has been done without the company ever publishing a single advert. "We have broken all the rules of all the business models," says Lasn, "In this day and age to run a magazine without any advertising sounds moronic." Costs are covered by the slightly higher than usual cover price (£5) as well as donations.
From the beginning, Lasn and his team took a lead from the Situationist movement and, alongside the magazine, pioneered a series of interventions, pranks or "culture jams" as they like to call them. There is Digital Detox Week, for example, a campaign which runs every April and is aimed at challenging our over-reliance on technology. There is also an endlessly expanding gallery of spoof adverts poking fun at our big brands, which kick-started the trend for subverting corporate logos and defacing advertising billboards. (There's a whole gallery devoted to Nike, including one poster featuring a group of sheep which reads "I'm sick of just doing it.")
And there was the fabulously successful launch of the Blackspot sneaker, a fair-trade, environmentally friendly, logo-free shoe sold only through independent retailers; "An experiment in grassroots capitalism and an attempt to demonstrate you can change the way the world does business," says Lasn. Currently, the Blackspot is sold in more than 100 shops worldwide.
And, of course, there is Buy Nothing Day, which is now observed in countries from Sweden to Hong Kong and Japan to France. "When we started it we had all these people saying, 'Buy nothing? You're telling us to buy less? Isn't that bad for the economy? You guys are crazy.' But it had a spark about it right from the start and spread quickly, particularly in the UK and Australia. A lot of people had profound epiphanies when they tried it. Many found that half-way through the day they were like, 'I've got to buy that Mars bar, I've got to buy that cup of coffee.' People really suffered and sweated. It was like giving up an addiction."
Whether we are ready to start trying to kick this addiction remains to be seen. Ways in which Lasn suggests we start trying to get off the consumer treadmill include walking into a shop and asking ourselves, 'What would Jesus buy?', or giving a "gift exemption" card to friends and family although what my six-year old son would say to that definitely isn't thank-you. And, he says, if it's all too much for our greedy consumerist hearts to contemplate, there are other options to try, such as a Buy Local, Buy Fairer or a Buy Indie Christmas.
Whether or not Lasn successfully manages to harness the support he has mobilised through the Occupy movement remains to be seen. He is optimistic. "This year feels different. Hopefully we will get some of the occupiers to have fun subverting the global commercial system in the month leading up to Christmas. It feels bigger and better than ever before. It feels like there are millions of people around the world all ready to play a cat-and-mouse game with the agents of capitalism."
Finally then, after more than 20 years plugging away with the Adbusters message, Lasn is allowing himself a moment of gratification. "Of course it feels good that after all this time people are finally starting to get it. But there is also a darkness underpinning that good feeling. It sounds apocalyptic, but I have a horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach that the economic pain people are going through is just the beginning. If that's right, then we will really see the young people of the world stand up in a way that is many times bigger than they have up until now. We need to find ways to capture the imagination of the rest of the world. If we can do that then I believe this movement may well pull off some incredible radical transformation that needs to happen to make the future of our planet work."
buynothingday.co.uk
Occupy Everywhere - Sept 17th - Day of Rage Against Wall Street and what it stands for! - Ed Jewett - 30-11-2011
Department of Homeland Security Adviser Helped Coordinate Police Crackdowns on Protests in 18 Cities
Posted on November 29, 2011 by WashingtonsBlogFurther Evidence of Coordination of Police Crackdowns on Occupy Protests
Rich H. writes:I know this is supposed to be a dead subject, but look what I found in ten minutes of research today.
The man acknowledged to be the facilitator of the mayor's conference calls is one Chuck Wexler. Chuck is the Executive Director of PERF, of which we were informed. What wasn't included is Mr. Wexler is also a member of the DHS Advisory Council. You'll find his name second to the bottom.
http://www.dhs.gov/files/committees/editorial_0858.shtm
If it's not good enough that Mr. Wexler was speaking with the mayors, don't take my word for it, there's probably dozens of links. Here's one that may be considered valid. CBS.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57325562/mayors-talk-strategy-on-occupy-protests/
In Mr. Wexler's interview with The Boston Phoenix he has the following to say. It's as interesting for what's said and what isn't.
"No purpose aside to simply exchange information." "This was just information sharing."
"There hasn't been an issue we haven't been involved in." When speaking of other policing issues he's dealt with.
"We are pulled in to help when things happen, and we'll keep doing that when it's the right thing." Apprently the OWS movement doesn't count as "when things happen."
Oh, and let's not forget about the arrests in Portland or what Wexler's boss had to say about this.
"(We) have to be careful not to allow this movement to get any legitimacy. I'm taking this seriously in that I'm old enough to remember what happened in the 1960′s when the left-wing took to the streets and somehow the media glorified them and it ended up shaping policy. We can't allow that to happen."
Congressman Peter King, Head of the House Homeland Security Subcommittee.
Rich H's characterization is a little over the top, since the Department of Homeland Security's Advisory Council is an outside advisory group, and isn't directly part of DHS:The man acknowledged to be the facilitator of the mayor's conference calls is one Chuck Wexler. Chuck is the Executive Director of PERF, of which we were informed. What wasn't included is Mr. Wexler is also a member of the DHS Advisory Council. You'll find his name second to the bottom.
http://www.dhs.gov/files/committees/editorial_0858.shtm
If it's not good enough that Mr. Wexler was speaking with the mayors, don't take my word for it, there's probably dozens of links. Here's one that may be considered valid. CBS.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57325562/mayors-talk-strategy-on-occupy-protests/
In Mr. Wexler's interview with The Boston Phoenix he has the following to say. It's as interesting for what's said and what isn't.
"No purpose aside to simply exchange information." "This was just information sharing."
"There hasn't been an issue we haven't been involved in." When speaking of other policing issues he's dealt with.
"We are pulled in to help when things happen, and we'll keep doing that when it's the right thing." Apprently the OWS movement doesn't count as "when things happen."
Oh, and let's not forget about the arrests in Portland or what Wexler's boss had to say about this.
"(We) have to be careful not to allow this movement to get any legitimacy. I'm taking this seriously in that I'm old enough to remember what happened in the 1960′s when the left-wing took to the streets and somehow the media glorified them and it ended up shaping policy. We can't allow that to happen."
Congressman Peter King, Head of the House Homeland Security Subcommittee.
The Homeland Security Advisory Council (HSAC) provides advice and recommendations to the Secretary on matters related to homeland security. The Council comprises leaders from state and local government, first responder communities, the private sector, and academia.
So Wexler's role in coordinating police crackdowns does not provide direct proof of Rick Ellis' claim that "each of [the police] actions was coordinated with help from Homeland Security".But since actions and decisions are often made through informal liaisons, by people wearing several hats, DHS could have played a role in coordinating the crackdowns even if no DHS official was directly involved.
Occupy Everywhere - Sept 17th - Day of Rage Against Wall Street and what it stands for! - Ed Jewett - 30-11-2011
No to Co-Option: MoveOn is the Opposite of the Occupy Movement
MoveOn's History of Undermining Progressive Causes in Support of the Corporate-Dominated Democratic Partyby Kevin Zeese / November 28th, 2011
While most of the comments about my article on Van Jones and ourGeneralAssembly's call for independence from the Democratic Party and Democratic Party front groups were positive, a few people don't seem to know the history of MoveOn.
Please do not misunderstand my criticisms of MoveOn and other organizations in this article as criticism of the many good people in these organizations. We have some people from MoveOn and other groups working with us at Occupy Washington, DC. It is the leadership of these groups that misdirects people into the Democratic Party, supporting Democratic candidates and weak and often counter-productive Democratic Party positions. We welcome MoveOn members to the Occupy Movement, but we do not want their leadership misdirecting the movement into the Democratic Party which is dominated by Wall Street and other big business interests.
Many occupiers are growing increasingly concerned about the attempted co-option of the Occupy Movement by Democratic Party operatives. I focused on Van Jones because he has been appearing in the media talking like he is occupying somewhere. I don't think he is sleeping in a tent in any Occupy, but he sure gets a lot of attention from the corporate media as if he were an occupier. The corporate media seems to want to anoint him as the leader of the Occupy Movement. And his Rebuild the Dream website makes it look like it was the Occupy the Highway Movement, even though no one from Rebuild walked the 220 mile journey from New York to Washington, DC.
But I am equally concerned about groups like SEIU a union that has already endorsed President Obama and has been described by Glenn Greenwald as attempting to co-opt the Occupy Movement. Also of concern is Campaign for America's Future which holds annual conferences that seek to spotlight Democratic candidates and get people to spend their time and resources electing Democrats. If their strategy is to elect Democrats that is fine, just do it somewhere else. The Occupy Movement is the opposite we are independent of the two parties. We see the system as corrupt and working to elect people in that system as joining the corruption rather than stopping it.
Regarding MoveOn, which has done mailing after mailing using the Occupy Movement, it consistently supports the Democratic Party and undermines progressive causes. They started as an advocacy group for the Democratic Party and have remained such. It began seeking to end the impeachment of President Clinton for lying under oath about sexual harassment. They work hard to keep liberals and progressives inside the Democratic Party so that they will not form an independent movement to hold Obama and the Democratic Party, as well as Republicans, accountable. MoveOn refuses to acknowledge their constant betrayals of the people by the Democratic Party.
Using non-profit front groups to undermine progressive movements is consistent with the tactics of the Democratic Party. In return for big funding from Democratic Party donors these groups are told what they can do and sayby Democratic Party operatives. During the health care reform debate MoveOn was part of a coalition called Health Care for America Now. The name of the coalition was eerily similar to the long-established single payer advocacy group, Health Care Now. But rather than advocating for an end to insurance-dominated health care as single payer would do, the well-funded Health Care for America Now (spending at least $50 million to support ObamaCare) advocated for the Obama health law, which is a more deeply entrenched insurance industry domination of health care. A law that even forces Americans, for the first time in history, to buy a corporate product and in this case a seriously flawed product.
Rebuild the Dream, a MoveOn Project, continues to undermine real health care reform by using the new language of the single payer "Improved Medicare for All" in their issue demands. But, Rebuild waters down this demand to protect the insurance industry. When you read the details rather than a real improved Medicare for All system that eliminates health insurance they merely advocate that people be offered the opportunity to buy Medicare as another insurance policy. Their last paragraph makes all the arguments for single payer, but then pulls back to merely offering Medicare as one insurance option. Their language is essentially the public option using single payer language. No doubt the vast majority of MoveOn and Rebuild the Dream members support single payer (two-thirds of Americans do) and real progressive change, but Van Jones's Rebuild uses similarities in rhetoric to fool them and keep progressives inside the Democratic Party rather than developing the kind of unified independent movement that is needed to push for real change. We need to challenge the insurance industry, not work with Democrats who take millions in donations from them.
MoveOn did this to the peace movement in 2007 after an anti-Iraq War vote gave the Democrats control of the House of Representatives. The anti-war movement was in full force pressuring members of Congress. The Democratic leadership put forward a bill to end funding for the war unless "benchmarks" were met and allowed war funding for four big exceptions that would allow the war to continue, such as fighting terrorism, protecting American interests, and training the Iraq military. Twenty peace groups united to oppose the Democratic plan to continue war funding. Every vote was needed by the corporate-Democratic Party leadership to continue war funding. At the last minute, MoveOn came out in support of the weak Democratic plan and provided cover to Democrats, relieved constituent pressure, and allowed the war funding to continue.
Not surprisingly, there is confusion among liberals and progressives who support the common agenda of ending the wars, economic justice and environmental protection. We're sometimes asked if Rebuild the Dream is part of Occupy Washington, DC. The answer is an unequivocal NO. Occupy Washington, DC is an independent movement that will hold the system, big business and both parties accountable for corporatism and militarism. And we will not go away or be absorbed by MoveOn, Rebuild the Dream and its Democratic Party allies. We are critics of the machine, the corrupt, dysfunctional system, which the Democratic Party has always been and continues to be part of. We welcome Dream supporters. We would even welcome the leadership. All they need to do is renounce the Democratic Party and President Obama.
MoveOn and Rebuild the Dream can prove us wrong if they come forward with a non-partisan statement saying they will fight against any elected official, of any party, in any office, who has not lived up to the anti-militarism and anti-corporatist agenda, especially the president.
Until that statement is made Democratic Party operatives and their allied groups should back off the Occupy Movement. You have a different strategy working inside the Democratic Party, working inside the limits of the corrupt machine while we want to transform American politics.
Get out of our way.
Kevin Zeese is executive director of Voters for Peace. Read other articles by Kevin, or visit Kevin's website.
This article was posted on Monday, November 28th, 2011 at 8:00am and is filed under Activism, Democrats, Obama.
Occupy Everywhere - Sept 17th - Day of Rage Against Wall Street and what it stands for! - Magda Hassan - 30-11-2011
http://www.ustream.tv/occupyoakland
1300 police in LA about to bust Occupiers. Helcopters, rubber bullets ready. Talk about over kill....:hobbyhorse:
:noblesteed::poke:This is not going to end well.