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Blowback on Wall Street?
Last weekend, in Washington Square Park in downtown Manhattan at a giant mill-in, teach-in, whatever-in-extension of Occupy Wall Street’s camp-out in Zuccotti Park, there was a moment to remember. Under what can only be called a summer sun, a contingent from the Egyptian Association for Change, USA, came marching in, their “Support Occupy Wall Street” banners held high (in Arabic and English), chanting about Cairo’s Tahrir Square (where some of them had previously camped out). The energy level of the crowd rose to buzz-level and cheers broke out. 
Standing in Washington Square Park watching what could only be called the festivities (if you ignored a police lock-down in the vicinity more appropriate for Kabul, Afghanistan), it wasn’t hard to believe that the very idea of American exceptionalism was expiring right in front of our eyes. (photo: a c o r n)
And little wonder. After all, it was a moment for the history books. An American protest movement had taken its most essential strategic act directly from an Egyptian movement for democracy: camp out and don’t go home. It had then added (as one of the Egyptians pointed out to me) a key tactic of that movement, the widespread and brilliant use of social media to jumpstart events. And keep in mind that some of the Egyptian organizers at Tahrir Square had been trained in social networking by organizations like the International Republican Institute and the Democratic National Institute (created and indirectly funded by the U.S. Congress).
Now, the American version of the same is being re-exported to the world. Try to unravel that one if you will -- and while you’re at it, toss out the great myth of American non-protest of these last years: that going online, Facebooking, and tweeting were pacifiers that suppressed in the young the possibility of actually heading into the streets and doing something.
By the way, the Egyptians weren’t the only ones there. As reporter Andy Kroll points out, from the beginning there were Greeks, Spaniards, Japanese, and others involved in Occupy Wall Street, all representing a new era of global activism. And better yet, the growing American movement isn’t denying these foreign influences; it’s hailing them, it’s cheered by them!
If that isn’t myth-busting, what is? Think of it as blowback as neither the CIA, nor even Chalmers Johnson, ever imagined it. Or maybe it’s some kind of modern export-import-export business. In any case, standing in Washington Square Park watching what could only be called the festivities (if you ignored a police lock-down in the vicinity more appropriate for Kabul, Afghanistan), it wasn’t hard to believe that the very idea of American exceptionalism was expiring right in front of our eyes. It had, of course, already worn desperately thin, or all those Republican presidential candidates and our president wouldn’t be insisting on its reality every five seconds. All I can say is that when the neoliberal globalizers of the 1990s first proclaimed the world to be one, this was surely not what they had in mind!
And yet, consider something else as well (and for those of you who don’t feel comfortable holding two seemingly contradictory thoughts in your head at one time, stop here): Foreign influences or no, Occupy Wall Street couldn’t be a more homegrown or traditionally American movement. As our preeminent historian of Wall Street, Steve Fraser, author of Wall Street: America’s Dream Palace, points out in “The All-American Occupation,” the young occupiers of Zuccotti Park caught the zeitgeist of the moment by mainlining directly into the central vein of American oppositional movements for more than a century before the Great Depression ended. No wonder their movement is spreading fast. They may not have known their history, but they sensed it and so went right for that essential strand of American protest DNA: the “street of torments” (as it was called by similar protesters more than a century ago) at the bottom of Manhattan Island.
Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project, runs the Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com. His latest book, co-authored with Nick Turse, is Terminator Planet: The First History of Drone Warfare, 2001-2050. His other most recent book is The United States of Fear (Haymarket Books). Previous books include: The End of Victory Culture: a History of the Cold War and Beyond, The American Way of War: How Bush's Wars Became Obama's, as well as of a novel, The Last Days of Publishing. To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.com here.
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Show AllFinally we are in the streets of our nation demanding justice and fairness. While praising these protests elsewhere in the world and deploring the methods sometimes employed to stifle dissent, how will our media portray this movement and the eventual harsh methods used to discourage it by our law enforcement agencies ? Dissent is indeed the highest form of patriotism and it may offer something down the line for us 99 %'s that are struggling and not being heard or served by our elected officials. This movement promises change I can believe in and not the empty words offered by Obama and his ilk for the last three years. Power to the people !!!
DN this morning talks about release of the new book "News for All the People" - the history that has been expunged about blacks, latinos and indigenous peoples in the development of media in the US. Fascinating interview and important for another example of how racism has informed policy and impacted - particularly interesting - policy re: US postal service.
Here is how Bruce Dixon of Black Agenda Report describes his recent experience with electronic media:
http://blackagendareport.com/content/occupying-financial-districts-occupying-goods-our-hoods
"Late Sunday night I sat across the table from the friend I stayed with while in Chicago, both of us on our laptops. He asked if I received the two emails he'd sent earlier that day.
“Here's one,” I told him. “I don't see the other. Can you send it again?” He did. When it hadn't showed up a full five minutes later, he sent it again a second time. I told him to copy my Gmail address too, and he did that, and sent a third time. Nothing. No message on my end, no error messages on his. I was able to send to him from that email account, though.
“I'm gonna try something....” he told me. A moment later, he asked if I'd received an email from him. “Yeah, here it is right here,” I said. He jumped up from the table laughing and went to pour himself a drink. The subject of the vanishing message was “Occupy Chicago” something or other. He had removed the word “occupy” and the message went through. I checked my Gmail account, and they were not landing there either. In the next half hour I had him send to my yahoo, hotmail, gmail, aim.com and godaddy webmail accounts from a variety of addresses, with the word “occupy” present, absent, and misspelled. Gmail rejected all messages with the correct and incorrect spellings of “occupy,” whether sent from hotmail, yahoo or AOL, while letting the control messages through. GoDaddy webmail let the control messages through and those in which “occupy” was spelled “ocuppy.” But with the word spelled correctly, those messages vanished too. I checked another GoDaddy webmail account, not mine, to which I had access. The “occupy” messages were showing up just fine there.
We both had a drink, and went to sleep."
So the protest is fecund and a new era of prosperity comes to be shared in the USA.
Then do we get more of the wars out here; more of the duplicity; more of the Democracy that comes out of the barrel of a gun; more of the heavy rip-off all over the world as in so many parts of Asia such as in Indonesia, Vietnam and elsewhere; more of the same again?
This has to be different if it is going to be successful. This means it has to change the USA.
I fondly hope so.
Will I be disappointed?
Yes, for Brand 'America' is dead.
USA is going to have to ended for this to be successful and replaced with direct democracy local self rule, and lots of co-ops, communal spaces, Credit Unions, windmills, bike lanes, etc.
"Democracy is coming to the USA." (Leonard Cohen)
Many will concede that it is past time for the "American Spring," but will it, can it produce meaningful "regime change" without "shock and awe"?
Hey, suprise, Tom sorta' gets it.
My, my, what a smart little prick you are!
A note of history:
doesn't anyone on this forum remember the Women's Peace Camps in Great Britain and in the US? Women camped in tents & makeshift shelters next to the corporations (Boeing was one) who were manufacturing the cruise missle and other nuclear weapon parts and we "didn't go home"!!
I give lots of credit to the Egyptian movement for the tactic, but it's not new.
when do the t-shirts go on sale?
(edit: I just googled "occupy tshirt" and found that I'm a bit late...)
OCCUPY in the sky, buy and buy.
"And keep in mind that some of the Egyptian organizers at Tahrir Square had been trained in social networking by organizations like the International Republican Institute and the Democratic National Institute (created and indirectly funded by the U.S. Congress)."
Occupy Wall Street and "The American Autumn": Is It a "Colored Revolution"?
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=27053
As multi-colored as the leaves on an ornamental pistache tree in the fall. Those brightly colored leaves have a brief moment of glory, then fall to the ground and are raked up, allowing the trunk and roots to rest and grow without having to support the "leaves" over the winter.
The color revolution spooks are more potential co-opters but the most active participants are left anarchists from what I can see. The color revolution sopoks are represented by the foundation grant funded Adbusters IMO, which is a late comer and a very small part of the action compared to the authentically grassroots Anonymous, and other independent anarchists organizing cooperatives like the kitchens and process like Consensus. The Optur spooks don't like truly open processes like consensus as it subverts neo-lib control of the agenda.
Mayor Bloomberg has been posturing that he will remove the protesters from Wall Street.
Most of us probably have enough disappointments with Moveon.org to last a good while, but they do have a petition to tell Bloomberg to back off:
http://civic.moveon.org/defend_ows/?rc=c4_defend_ows_letter.fb.v3.g0
Look at these people---they're all lean....
Hold it right there! This movement isn't just about young people, it is about ALL those (regardless of age or gender) who are suffering because of scrupulous (government sanctioned) criminal actions by the 1%ers.