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Wall Street Protests: Which Side Are You On?
Wall Street has long been the home of the biggest threat to American Democracy. Now it has become home to what may be our best hope for rescuing it.
People protest during the 'Occupy Wall Street' rally in New York, 17 September. (Photograph: Steven Greaves/Demotix/Corbis)
For everyone who loves this country, for everyone whose heart is breaking for the growing ranks of the poor, for everyone who is seething at the unopposed demolition of America's working and middle class: the time has come to get off the fence.
A new generation has gone to the scene of the crimes committed against our future. The time has come for all people of good will to give our full-throated backing to the young people of the Occupy Wall Street movement.
The young heroes on Wall Street today baffle the world because they have issued no demands. The villains of Wall Street had their demands -- insisting upon a massive bailout for themselves in 2008, while they pocketed million dollar bonuses. The Wall Street protesters are not seeking a bailout for themselves; they are working to bail out democracy.
The American experiment in self-governance is at a moment of crisis. The political system thus far has proven itself incapable of responding to a once in a lifetime economic calamity. With income inequality and unemployment at the highest rates since the Great Depression, it's no wonder that almost 80 percent of the country thinks we're on the wrong track.
But the crisis of American Democracy did not start with the financial collapse. For at least 30 years, the system has been rigged by the wealthy and privileged to acquire more wealth and privilege. At this point, 400 families control more wealth than 180 million Americans.
This great wealth divergence has resulted in an unjust and dangerous concentration of economic and political power in the hands of the few. It has pushed millions -- especially the rising generation and communities of color -- into the shadows of our society. The middle class continues to shrink, and the ranks of the poor have swelled. The political elite has failed to take the necessary steps to provide opportunity to the majority of Americans.
A movement was born after Madison, Wisconsin, to oppose these injustices. It has now spread to every Congressional District. We call ourselves the American Dream Movement. We engaged 130,000 people to crowd-source our own jobs agenda -- the Contract for the American Dream. In August, tens of thousands demonstrated for jobs in rallies across the nation. Next week in DC, we host our first national gathering: the Take Back The American Dream conference.
The Occupation of Wall Street -- and the occupations throughout the country -- are expressions of the same spirit and dynamic. And these particular demonstrations, perhaps uniquely, contain the spark to grow into a movement that can be transformative. They are the first, small step in the creation of a movement that can restore American Democracy, and renew the American Dream.
The hundreds of young people from all five boroughs that camp out every night, in the heart of the financial district, in the rain and the cold, at risk of arrest, are providing the inspiration to draw more and more out of the shadows and into the bright light of the public square. The occupation grows larger and more diverse every day. Young people, the majority of whom are under 25 and have never before engaged in activism, are managing the arduous task of a consensus rules meeting with no sound system. The nightly general assemblies are attracting crowds in the thousands to stand amongst a group of their peers and debate our path forward as a people.
The occupation is a revival of a proud tradition of authentic, people-powered movements that have been dormant -- and that we need now more than ever. It is building into the kind of massive public demonstrations -- like those in Egypt, Madison, and Santiago -- that can shake the foundation of a system of power that has lost sight of the public good.
Now is our time to choose. Will we keep rewarding those whose financial manipulations have brought us to ruin? Or will we stand with those whose democratic innovations are breathing life into our finest ideals? Both groups are within blocks of each other in downtown Manhattan.
For the past 30 years, the country has stood behind the titans on Wall Street and their values. We listened when they said that their banks were too big too fail. Today, there is only one thing that's too big to fail: the dreams of this new generation, finding its voice in Liberty Park. All of America should now stand with them.
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Show AllI stand with the protestors. And don't be in a hurry to state demands. Keep them guessing. Don't give them the opportunity to weild their media and press consultants against the movement, before you are prepared to counter them. It's our turn to call the plays, not their's.
But keep your cameras handy. Document any excesses and abuses you will no doubt illicit. Buddy up so there is always a witness. These guys play dirty.
And don't allow those damn hypocritical democrats to turn this into another partisan politics movement. My fear is that if and when this starts to be successful the dems will step in as the 'leaders' and attempt to co-opt the movement and turn it into a 'vote for us' movement.
GIABO!
Van Jones is one of those "hypocritical democrats". He is doing all he can to gather people that are upset with our government to get them to stick with the Democrats. WRONG! The Democrats are just as corrupt as the Republicans. Both of our major political parties are bought and paid for, and working for, the very wealthy. Their purpose is to keep the rich rich and help them get richer. Can't you see that? There is no lesser evil. They are both corrupt to the core. Both the Dems and the Repubs vote for the wars, for tax cuts for the rich, for the loss of our civil rights, and banking deregulation. The damn banks own the nation and are running it for their greater profit. Our corrupt elected officials, both Dem and Repub, are not concerned with the working people of this nation. It is time for us to rebell and toss these corrupt politicians out of our government. You must not vote for either a Dem or a Republican ever again! Join the rebellion now, or suffer austerity in pain and silence.
Thanks for pointing out that the Democrats will try to weaken this movement by co-optation. They will try to shove some pre-packaged message on the movement, as though it were a new product being rolled out by the Marketing Department of a Fortune 500 corporation. Remember this: The unraveling of our economy and our freedoms has occurred with the support and enthusiasm of the Democrats every bit as much as the Republicans. Both parties have been and are enemies of the people and allies of the oligarchs.
Exactly. The question here is: Which side is Van Jones on? He can't be on the side of the protesters and still be sticking up for Goldman Sachs's beautiful black hand puppet.
@wantrealdemocracy - I agree that democrats and republicans are two legs supporting one body, however, there are good people in each leg and that is who we should be voting for. (imo) Jones here is a senior fellow with an organization who's biggest donor is none other than George Soros. Need I say more?
The Blue Party will certainly TRY to co-opt this movement.
I think we can prevent them from actually succeeding though.
Your fears are important to that prevention.
The Blues can't "step in" as easily if there is already a vanguard standing in their way. :)
I hope you are joking about a Leninist Bolshevik"vanguard," the anarchist kids can defend themselves very well against Dimocrap cooptation without murderous Commies help. :(
You are red baiting with your "murderous commie" rhetoric.
Nearly as cliche as "bomb throwing anarchists."
Pfffft tall that to the decedents of the Ukrainian Kulak peasant farmers liquidated and starved by Stalin by the quite literal millions Bolshevik Communism is the one ideology with more blood on it's hands than Nazism. And left anarchists like me are the first to get murdered Lenin, and Trotsky murdered thousands of anarchist sailors, trade unionists, and peasant farmers at Kronstadt when the Russian Revolution was only a couple years old, before even Stalin's tyranny. Read Emma Goldman excellent "My Disillusionment in Russia," to see what the "vanguard," and "military industrialism," REALLY look like on the ground.
Did I mention fuck the Commies?
Is Stalinism or communism to blame? I know the history, sport.
Regarding Lenin & Krondstadt, the bolsheviks had just finished fighting a revolution, a civil war and a defensive action against a multi-national foreign invasion. The repression of the Kronstadt rebellion looks different when seen in this light.
You claim "Lenin & Trotsky murdered thousands of anarchist sailors, trade unionists, and peasant farmers at Kronstadt," but Krondstadt was a military revolt and the Krondstadt rebels can hardly be considered to have been murdered. They died in the final battle of a long civil war.
Also, you portray Krondstadt as a communist vs anarchist battle, when in fact many who considered themselves communists were actually rebels.
Your indiscriminate use of the term "Murderous commies" supports capitalist propaganda, and is a slur on many communists who sacrificed much in the name of social justice and the class struggle.
Likewise, don't let those "damn, hypocritical Republican".....@Giabo - Doesn't that sound a bit ridiculous? Seriously, let's not make this a "Dem vs Repub" thing. It's a much bigger issue affecting all of us.
It's not the job of the Republicans to co-opt the Left; that's the Dems' job. The Rethuglicans job is to attack the Left and its ideas. The Dems pretend that they understand the people's issues raised by the Left, but that the solution is to join the Dems, who will never get around to actually doing anything for the People.
So "much bigger issue" is that neither party represents the interests of the People. If the Dems are allowed to co-opt #occupy, then it will no longer represent the interests of the people either.
Exactly everyone will try to grab credit for this, from this Oily Bomber minion "he served as the green jobs advisor in the Obama White House," who was later throw under the bus, to the Ron Paul people. This is a peoples grass roots movement that is incredibly diverse don't let it be co-opted, let everyone be heard.
My post must be brief today. You are right regarding the threat.
I note especially the numbers. We always ought to look at the
numbers. They bring us to an alarming clarity of perception.
We all are in danger of being "peripheralized". The question is:
What shall we do?
The Occupy Wall Street and others have done a lot of good.
But the few who OWN the Federal Reserve, and who nearly
own some politicians, will not be pried apart from their possessions
by demonstrations only. At some point people have got to vote.
Yes, VOTE, that action that some consider superfluous. [Not so!]
But vote for someone whom you have reason to believe will work
FOR US. As a simple rule: Vote those who're in OUT. By such a
rule we will at least shake up congress. (And the presidency?)
Agreed: "… the few who OWN the Federal Reserve, and who nearly own some politicians, will not be pried apart from their possessions by demonstrations only.
However -- and this will probably get me flamed -- having dropped out of one-standard-deviation America in 1970, it looks to me like the so called "revolution" of the '60s was brought to a close by the rise of available credit for the middle class. Thus not only did banks and bankers run their credit up beyond belief, so did many ordinary folk and they are having trouble being pried apart from their possessions as well.
"The Occupy Wall Street and others have done a lot of good.'
Like?
Who they are they going to vote FOR, some corporate owned politician? The republic is beyond saving, all the smart young people know it, get used it. Your "vote" is a meaningful in the U.S. as it was in Stalinist Russia.
I am short on time this morning, but yesterday, the numbers at Zuccotti Park, and OCCUPY WALL STREET, here in NYC, were the biggest yet. We marched to Police Headquarters. The park was so crowded, people couldn't walk through the park, and the sidewalk surrounding the park was 3-deep with people. So far, I haven't read an estimate of the numbers, except that we were "in the hundreds."
This was my sixth day, and today will be my seventh day, going into the third week of the occupation. Some people I spoke to have been in Zuccotti Park every day -- my hat is off to them. After speaking to a number of them, they told me, unanimously, Friday's numbers were the biggest yet!
This article by David Harvey is circulating at Zuccotti Park:
http://newleftreview.org/?view=2740
I'm off to OCCUPY WALL STREET!
Keep up the good work!
And remember that you folks are the sharp edge of an immense blade that is cutting to the heart of the current system.
For every person on the streets in NYC -and elsewhere- there are hundreds and thousands at home, work, or wherever that support you and will be with you as this escalates.
My question to Van Jones: Which side are YOU on?
We the People's or the democrats and Obama's side - Because they are diametrically opposed.
Are You on the side of the Obama Admin and his crony 2 party capitalist klepocrats or on the side of the Rule Of Law?
They are also diametrically opposed.
Are You Van Jones gong to use your new group to raise funds for the dems or do you support True Change - cause True Change ain't coming from either politically bought off party - as you should know as they threw you under the bus.
So Which Side are you on Van Jones - where's your $ going?
Mtdon, well said. Van Jones and his Rebuilding the Dream movement via Moveon.org is Dems looking to cash in on Populism . Black Agenda Report's Bruce Dixon wrote a good article about this in July .
http://blackagendareport.com/it-movement-building-or-it-marketing-rebuilding-dream-rebranding-van-jones.
Occupy Wall Street needs to make the conection with XL tar sands pipeline. Lobbying monies; that the oil is for export, the failure of due process, so many cases like this - give the world the examples .
"My question to Van Jones: Which side are YOU on?" -- mtdon
I am asking the very same question! Yesterday, when I was in Zuccotti Park, I spoke with quite a number of people. And, most get it -- the Democrats are as culpable as the Republicans. Yesterday, too, the Transit Workers Union was very visible in the park. I also saw some iron workers.
I am also asking, has Van Jones been down to OCCUPY WALL STREET?
Which brings me back to Phil Ochs:
Which Side Are You On?
Come you ranks of labor, come you union core,
And see if you remember the struggles of before,
When you were standing helpless on the outside of the door
And you started building links on the chain
On the chain, you started building links on the chain.
When the police on the horses were waitin’ on demand,
Ridin’ through the strike with the pistols in their hands,
Swingin’ at the skulls of many a union man,
As you built one more link on the chain, on the chain,
As you built one more link on the chain.
Then the army of the fascists tried to put you on the run,
But the army of the union, they did what could be done,
Oh, the power of the factory was greater than the gun,
As you built one more link on the chain, on the chain,
As you built one more link on the chain.
And then in 1954, decisions finally made,
The black man was a-risin’ fast and racin’ from the shade,
And your union took no stand and your union was betrayed,
As you lost yourself a link on the chain, on the chain,
As you lost yourself a link on the chain.
And then there came the boycotts and then the freedom rides,
And forgetting what you stood for, you tried to block the tide,
Oh, the automation bosses werre laughin’ on the side,
As they watched you lose your link on the chain, on the chain,
As they watched you lose your link on the chain.
You know when they block your trucks boys, by layin’ on the road,
All that they are doin’ is all that you have showed,
That you gotta strike, you gotta fight to get what you are owed,
When you’re building all your links on the chain, on the chain,
When you’re building all your links on the chain.
Amd the man who tries to tell you that they’ll take your job away,
He’s the same man who was scabbin’ hard just the other day,
And your union’s not a union till he’s thrown out of the way,
And he’s chokin’ on your links of the chain, of the chain,
And he’s chokin’ on your links of the chain.
For now the times are tellin’ you the times are rollin’ on,
And you’re fighting for the same thing, the jobs that will be gone,
Now it’s only fair to ask you boys, which side are you on?
As you’re buildin’ all your links on the chain, on the chain,
As you’re buildin’ all your links on the chain.
"Don't forget you are representing many that aren't close enough to be there. You are more than one." -- Ollupsutit
I won't forget! And, thanks so much for your response!
KAY: You represent a lot of us who are too far from NY to join in. Thank you for marching for me, and others here at C.D (and also letting us know about developments from "the front lines,").
If I still lived in NYC I'd be there. Thanks for participating ...
Van Jones was a real fighter in the struggle in the past, this Movement may make him one again.
The "American Dream" has been a well known nightmare for the overwhelming numbers of Black and Native Americans. DISMANTLE THE CORPORATE STATE rather than resuscitate this american mirage. Looking forward to Van Jones being radicalized.
Van Jones and his Rebuild the Dream are hijacking the work of those in the Occupy Wall Street event for their own purposes without even participating in the event. How low can you go?
Attempting to hijack. Attempting. :)
The left has long had a tradition of attacking its own. The wall street protesters are courageously fighting the good fight. Let's invite all the help we can get. There's strength in numbers.
But the Blue Party WILL try to co-opt this thing.
And I've been convinced by the arguments made that Jones and his Dream Movement co-opted the Wisconsin uprising in a similar way.
Not everybody offering help is really looking to help.
I say let Jones et al PROVE their intentions through their actions.
Have you ever wondered how they rig the Wall Street Casino ?
check out `Financial Warfare: "Sheared by the Shorts". How Short Sellers Fleece Investors` at http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=26857
"The American experiment in self-governance is at a moment of crisis. The political system thus far has proven itself incapable of responding to a once in a lifetime economic"calamity. With income inequality and unemployment at the highest rates since the Great Depression, it's no wonder that almost 80 percent of the country thinks we're on the wrong track."
===========
He he he...funny. The Romans faced exactly the same challenges. But, of course, unlike the great and exceptional United States of America, they were an empire not a "democracy."
Even the best and the brightest of the lot live in complete denial of reality. It's kind of amusing watching the so called Progressives, Left Wing or whatever self-gratifying label they slap on themselves, refuse to acknowledge and accept the truth and face the fact that theirs is an empire that is collapsing. So, go ahead, geniuses, keep on telling yourselves that your empire...errrr...I mean your "democracy" can be saved. Ignore reality and cheer for the couple hundred nouveau disenfranchised camping out on Wall Street that will stop the inevitable. The Romans didn't try that approach but I seriously doubt that the outcome had been any different had they camped out in front of the Pantheon or the Coliseum for a few weeks with signs making demands of their emperor. Yeah, reality bites!
I live in California. I moved here from Seattle about the time of the WTO protests. I became a member of the California Green Party and not long after a member of the State Coordinating Committee of the Green Party of California, the equivalent of what the two capitalist parties call their "Central Committees."
The Green Party is saddled with the impossible structure of consensus decision making. How many agents provocateurs or just plain ornery people would it take to completely torpedo an organization which requires consensus for any decision?
The answer is ONE! Consensus decision making might sound good, but it is a very bad idea. I finally dropped out of the Green Party of California after the third year of spending money to go to the State convention only to see the party deadlocked because of the consensus rule on the adoption of an agenda and the consequent failure of the Party to be able to hold their annual meeting. Yes, that is what I said, the Green Party of California was unable to adopt an agenda because of the requirement of a 100% consensus vote and therefore those of us who traveled to the site of the meeting completely wasted our time and money. California is a big state geographically as well as population wise, and when the meeting is a 12 hour drive from your home you incur travel expenses that are significant to a working class person just to attend.
My point is that Van Jones is wrong to celebrate the idea of consensus decision making at the Wall Street protests. I don't know if the secret government agents provocateurs are that intelligent, but giving them more credit than they probably deserve, it would not surprise me to learn from a wikileak that they were the source of the idea for consensus decision making. I would prefer to see majority vote decision making and leave the consensus decision making to the Tea not really a Party Party.
You should reflect upon the fact that the core of the Occupy Wall Street movement are young kids who are the product of a degenerated public education system and an entrenched corporate mass media propaganda system. These events are very much a learning process for them and given the ugly failures of the Baby Boomer and Gen X generations who helped create the present national and global messes, we older Americans owe it to them to let them carry out their own learning process the way they want to.
What those of us on the ground in NYC (and other cities where this movement is spreading) can offer the young folks is to participate in their rallies, marches and, especially, in teach-ins on the periphery of the general assembly consensus building to inform participants in it with our historical knowledge and insights to some degree. But this is their generation's attempt at revolution and it needs reflect that to preserve its own historical integrity. They are bringing new ideas to their consensus building from a younger, fresher set of perspectives and may positively and delightfully surprise us all.
What we need to do is give them the generational encouragement and labor union numbers and muscle to support them in their brave endeavor.
What we also need to do is offer them our advice and the knowledge of our experience.
SOMEONE in these consensus discussions needs to bring up the idea that consensus-decision-making is NOT useful in more cases than it is useful.
The Green Party experience recounted by the OP is an excellent demonstration of this.
At a certain point, Occupy Together is going to need to form a consensus that majority-decision-making is needed in certain organizational-critical areas.
The unions will also have much experience and advice in that area.
They are not consensus-based, and one reason is the one cited by the OP.
If Boomers, Gen-Xers or post-1980 unions had a track record of success in terms of building a more socially just, economically fair society or union membership numbers respectively, then our advice and the knowledge of our experience might be more useful to those kids in their consensus discussions.
I think those older groups have a role to play in teach-ins on the periphery of the general assembly of consensus building, but at this early formative stage in the growth of this movement I think the kids should be left alone to gain confidence.
If the unions start showing up in significant, sustained numbers then more folks should start talking to the movement's young originators about majority decision making in organizational & mission critical areas.
If the majority decision making systems used by the unions were so successful, they would be in a hell of a lot better shape, but their percentage in the workforce has dropped from 30% down to 7.6% and falling last I heard. Their leaders are mostly corrupt in the big unions and I'm counting on the rank & file to buck their leaders to help build the OWS movement.
While a majority of the people at the Occupy Wall Street locations are probably under 30, it does not follow that everyone there is under 30. While I am a "Boomer" in age, I wouldn't feel out of it or unable to participate in discussions if I was participating in the action. And I would certainly give examples of my experiences with trying to make decisions by consensus that would, I would anticipate, create doubt in it being a panacea or even a reasonable idea. Just think how much harder it is to pass a tax bill in the California legislature with the 2/3rds requirement of Prop 13, or how much more difficult it is to get a bill through the Senate because of the 60% filibuster closure rule. Expecting 100% soon equates to complete inaction and paralysis. And once you get a crazy rule like that in your bylaws, you need either to start over with a new organization or complete agreement to change the 100% rule, which is unrealistic at best.
At this critical early stage while those young people are gaining confidence to go up against harsher realities, it's not about how we Boomers feel about participating in their discussions. Right now it's about them and how they feel about their movement because THEY were the first ones to put themselves on the line and take the heat.
If there is one characteristic about most American Boomers it is that they are self-entitled control freaks, largely because they are the most spoiled generation in human history. We Boomers have screwed up enough. I think it's time to give the younger generations their turn.
If armed Tea Partiers joined the protests, would the police brutalize them?
Armed Tea Partiers would only join these protests to shoot actual protesters, and the police would likely only start cracking a few of their heads AFTER they'd maimed or killed a few protesters to put the fear of the White Right into them.
I remember Nader saying that it was a big mistake for progressives not to have allied with Tea Party and letting the Kochs coopt them. We share some major gripes with Tea Party.
I'm a big admirer of Nader but I think his age and lack of success in moving this country into a saner more intelligent and compassionate direction in the post-Clinton era made him desperate to build coalitions against the prevailing corporatist partisan duopoly. There were some early Tea Party groups that were loudly anti-corporate welfare and pro-restoration of the Constitution that I think he thought might be ripe for coalition building, but what time revealed was that once the Koch-ian money sources and Dick Army's staged "Tea Party" PR/media events (featuring shills like Newt Gingrich and Sean Hannity) dried up, a lot of the little scattered Tea Party groups dried up and blew away with them and only the pluto-libertarian financed astro-turf ones have remained.
Umm, the Kochs didn't co-opt the Teabaggers. The Kochs FOUNDED THEIR MOVEMENT IN THE FIRST PLACE.
At first I wanted to hear more clear demands from the Occupy Wall Street kids. But now I think they are smart to keep the powers that be guessing while this movement picks up steam in NYC and around the country. Once that movement has 3 to 5 million dedicated members willing to put numbers in the streets for the long haul, then their demands will ring with much stronger resonance and command both corporate media and political attention.
Van Jones makes a few good general points, but if he was really not still an outlying tool of the failed DLC Democratic Party he and his organization would've already been on the street with the NYC Occupy Wall Street protesters en masse instead of him using that event to try to draw attention to his own, frankly, un-creative, un-innovative organization events. We need guys like Jones who have developed green urban enterprise initiatives, but not as tentacle tips from the treacherous neo-liberal Dim Party.
But any big push behind this movement, in NYC and nationally, must come with large scale union support in the streets--not just at a few quick big events, but for weeks and months--as long as it takes.
Even at 7% of the workforce, America still has enough union members (plus union supporters among their dependents) to apply some SERIOUS counterweight against the fascists now running the economic, political and mass media Roman Circus--at the State and Federal levels in much of the country.
The AFL-CIO alone has 11 million members. Throw in the UAW, AFSCME, the teachers unions, the nurse's unions, the skilled trades unions (electricians, plumbers, masons, etc.), the Hollywood unions, etc., plus their supporting dependents and you begin to see what could come together.
America's unions just need to realize and organize that power across multiple unions and throw off their fat, overpaid, corporately co-opted leadership where it exists. Only the unions working together with the rest of left-of-DLC America can put MILLIONS in the street in Washington D.C., NYC and around the corporatist, militarist mass media HQs--and keep the pressure up for as long as it takes. And that's EXACTLY what we need.
We need to be able to create the logistics (food, water, sanitation, critical protest shelter in sympathetic citizens' homes and elsewhere, medical care for protesters brutalized by rogue cops, bailout & legal defense funds for protesters, etc.) to put, in my opinion, close to two million protesters at every major event we focus upon and keep them there for months at a time if need be.
We need clear, short, easily understood lists of demands for each event attended by over a million people--three to five demands. We need to simultaneously develop and use, to the greatest extent possible as soon as possible, OUR OWN MASS MEDIA to get our messages out without having to go through corporatist, militarist, blindly pro-Wall Street mass media filters & censors. Low power FM radio station licenses for non-profit organizations will be opened up by the FCC for the first time in 30 years next summer.
Get your non-profit organization ready now to get those licenses and snap up those LPFM radio stations before the right-wingers and "Christian" fundamentalists do. Start building the local grass roots funding and wealthy donor lists for those stations ahead of time. We've got to truly hit the movement's own mass media ground running next year.
We should replicate the DemocracyNow/WRFG indie radio/online streaming model ten thousand fold across the country as soon as possible. I mean blanket medium & large cities with these stations with contiguous broadcast ranges that penetrate the same mass audience market footprints as the corporate FM Big Boys as soon as humanly possible. I believe this is urgently important to give the Occupy Together movement long-lasting wings. Without our own media the corporatist militarist media will ultimately divide and conquer us again. That is what it is designed to do in Orwellian perpetuity. That is why we need our own truly grass roots public affairs mass media in perpetuity to act as a counterweight against their endless 24/7/365 infotainment propaganda stream.
Lastly, the surveillance/Police State that treacherous Republicans and Democrats have assembled over the last 20 years in anticipation of rising civil suffering and civil unrest that their policies deliberately set in motion is designed to fully exploit Americans' over-dependence on electronic communications. Critical protest-related communications should be person-to-person between at least reasonably well-known (and preferably very well known) fellow activists and union members.
We need to get off our asses and start meeting each other face to face in small and large meetings like the old union organizers did in the days before telephones--you know, to actually get to know each other as intelligent, sensitive, flesh and blood human beings to raise our level of commitment. We need to publicly reassert the old but effective tactic of public speaking in public spaces with plenty of muscle to protect the speakers--especially outside areas were lots of non-unionized labor go to work. We need pamphleteers and folks to walk with and protect them, too.
One of the most wonderful aspects of the Occupy Wall Street micro-movement has been the EXCELLENT posters that have been created in support of it. I already have a collection of about 25 of them.
AMERICAN ARTISTS, MUSICIANS AND PLAYWRIGHTS AWAKE! NOW IS YOUR TIME TO FIGHT THE GOOD FIGHT USING ALL YOUR CREATIVITY WITH ALL YOUR MIGHT!
"Don't fear the media; BECOME the media!"
-- Jello Biafra
Before I read or comment on anything else:
That placard is KILLER!
Wall Street IS our street just like all the others, dammit!
Ignore the gatekeepers that would corral us back into the Democratic Party.
Ignore them at our peril!
They need close watching and we need those they have already led astray.