Occupy Everywhere - Sept 17th - Day of Rage Against Wall Street and what it stands for!

[Peter Lemkin]

From Russell Simmons to Ben and Jerry: The Would-Be Sponsors of Occupy Wall Street
Mar 1, 2012 9:55 AM EST
Occupy Oreo? Revolutionary Rocky Road? Moneyed patrons plan to subsidize the fight against predatory capitalism, whether OWS likes it or not.

After months of behind-the-scenes discussion, the latest moneyed group looking to patronize Occupy Wall Streetin implicit exchange for its "blessing" and the valuable naming rights that go with itcame out publicly this week.

A crowd of about 100 gathered at the West Park Church on the Upper West Side Sunday for an open meeting dedicated to the unveiling of the newly renamed Movement Resource Group. The 501©(3) is the latest incarnation of a group of wealthy donors who have been trying to plug into OWS for months. Originally called the Business Affinity Group, then the Occupy Money Group, before settling on its current name, MRG is essentially Ben Cohen of Ben & Jerry's, whose foundation raised the bulk of the $300,000 the group has put together so far (along with ambitions of raising $1.5 million more), and a handful of rich liberal alliesalso including former Nirvana manager Danny Goldberg and famed television producer Norman Lear (who wasn't there Sunday).

The group seems to think it can purchase a piece of the occupation. Of course, it could give out the money it's raised, like any other nonprofit, but it's looking for some sort of seal of approval from the movement, and to speak for it in a sense. As it says on its just-launched website, "Due to the horizontal structure of Occupy, it is difficult for funders to connect with this nascent movement." It's volunteering to fix that perceived problem, and to provide donors with a "single point of contact." On Sunday, the group read directly from the sanitized language on its website; its version of the occupation looked like a corporate PowerPoint presentation.
Occupy NYC

An Occupy Wall Street protester at a march in Manhattan on Wednesday, John Minchillo / AP Photo

While the messages of "the 99 percent" and "economic justice" were fairly conventionalthus their broad appealthe underlying structure of the movement has always been radical. Like so many critics and would-be friends of the occupation, MRG has mistaken OWS's leaderless structure for a posture or negotiating position, rather than a principle that can't be compromised without corrupting the whole enterprise. In place of that structure, MRG aims to support "replicable" actions and clear "messaging," to use its money to help define what isand what is notpart of this movement. This would presumably be decided by a paid staff, in consultation with Cohen.

"Essentially this is a group of very wealthy people who have picked a handler to deal with Occupy Wall Street," academic administrator and veteran occupier Ravi Ahmad told The Wall Street Journal. "They've re-created what's wrong with nonprofits and philanthropy structures." (The Journal story was inaccurately titled "Occupy Groups Get Funding," suggesting that OWS has reached an arrangement with MRG, which it has not.)

The questions continued, with occupiers expressing disdain for the funding plan alternating with those looking for a piece of the pie.

The presentation began with the group's board (all white, just one woman) seated in a row of chairs facing the people in attendance. This is not the normal set-up for OWS, which operates in a circle with independent facilitators. Even before the presentation began, the group had made clear it either did not understand or did not accept horizontalism, one of OWS's very few dogmatic principles.

For an hour, the members regaled the occupiers with their bios and backgrounds: how they got rich and stories of their activist "cred." The crowd, made up largely of dedicated and longtime movement members, wanted to get to the meat of the matter: the money.

Six months after OWS began and three months after the NYPD violently "cleaned" Zuccotti Park, there are a lot of occupiers struggling to make ends meetespecially those who are new to activism and are relying on the money coming through the New York City General Assembly, which has nearly run through its remaining funds. (Occupy Wall Street, I should note, has never actively fundraised.)

The protesters are hungry. And when these latest moneymen moved in, it felt like a two-way con. The rich people were trying to buy a piece of OWS on the cheap. Desperate protesters were there to see if they could get one over on the rich guys by taking their money without sacrificing anything of value, namely their values.

In exchange for them, MRG is offering a few national grants of up to $25,000, with proposals submitted to a board made up of five rich people and five occupiers selected by those rich people. They've also set aside $100,000 for "other projects," any loose funds for "stipends" for "core activists," with MRG determining that paid "core." The biggest budget item, at $150,000 fully half of the money they've raised so far, would go to the "national office" in New York.