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Occupy Wall Street on the Move
The question confronting the Occupy Wall Street encampments and their offshoots in scores of cities and towns around the country is quo vadis? Where is it going?
This decentralized, leaderless civic initiative has attracted the persistent attention of the mass media in the past five weeks. Television cameras from all over the world are parked down at Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan, two blocks from Wall Street.
photo: Todd Blaisdell
But the mass media is a hungry beast. It needs to be fed regularly. Apart from the daily pressures of making sure the encampments are clean, that food and shelter are available, that relations with the police are quiet, that provocateurs are identified; the campers must anticipate possible police crackdowns, such as that which has just occurred in Oakland, and find ways to rebound.
There are enough national polls showing broader support for the Occupy people than for the Tea Party people. Additional communities are installing their own Occupy sites right down to small towns like Niles, Michigan (pop. 12,000) and Bethel, Alaska where Diane McEachern is occupying the tundra. But, there is trouble ahead.
First, police departments in other cities will be observing the nature and reaction of mass arrests in places like Denver, Chicago and Atlanta. The plutocrats’ first response is always to push police power against the people. The recidivist violations of the ruling class are rarely pursued, yet the rumbles of the lower class are often stifled. With the onset of colder weather and looming police pressure, the protestors need new venues for their demonstrations
Activists need to vary their tactics. I suggest citizens surround the local offices of their Senators and Representatives. The number of Americans fed up with a gridlocked Congress, beset by craven or cowardly, both marinated in corporate campaign cash, can motivate an endless pool of activists who want their voices to be heard.
We know that the Occupy people want to keep their opposition on a general level of informed outrage and not get to the specific policy level. Fine. The 535 people in Congress, who put their shoes on every day like we do, are quite susceptible to a fast rising rumble from the people. They don’t need specifics. They know all about the savagely avaricious corporate paymasters and their swarming lobbyists on Capitol Hill wanting ever more varieties of goodies and less corporate law enforcement. What they need to know is that you’ve got their number and that people are fed up and on the move.
More members of Congress than one might expect, with their finger to the wind, start readjusting their antennas when they sense voter agitation. It is just that for years, there has been nary a breeze from that crucial source, while the corporatists have had their party year after year with their governmental toadies on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.
Make no mistake; support for the power shift espoused by the 99 percent movement is now only a breeze but a windstorm is coming. The protesters are feeling their way – demonstrating before big banks and closing out their accounts in favor of smaller community banks. Protests in front of the Manhattan mansions of the superrich from the big media and the big hedge funds also make sense.
Each new protest gives the protesters new insights. The protestors are learning how to challenge controlling processes. They are assembling and using their little libraries on site. They are learning the techniques of open, non-violent civil disobedience and building personal stamina. They are learning not to be provoked and thereby win the moral authority struggle which encourages more and more people to join their ranks.
In the Arab Spring of Cairo, Egypt earlier this year, it was said that a million people in Tahrir Square lost their fear of the dictatorship. It can be said that in this “American Autumn,” some 150,000 people have discovered their power and rejected apathy. They have come far in so little time because the soil for their pushback is so fertile, nourished by the revulsion of millions of their countrypersons moving toward standing up and showing up themselves.
This vanguard of larger protests to come is building on the personal stories of desperate but failed attempts to find work; stories of heart-breaking inability to pay for healthcare for themselves or their families’; stories of being defrauded of their pensions, their tax dollars, their savings and their rights. They demand accountability for the culprits who lied, stole and got away with it destroying the economy. And they want Congress to never bailout the Wall Street crooks, swindlers and speculators with taxpayer dollars.
Shining the light of the 99 percenters on the operations base of the corporate supremacists and their Congressional minions in one location after another both empowers and further informs those Americans who are seeing that showing up is half of democracy.
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123 Comments so far
Show AllYou're on a roll, Abbybwood! I agree!
Go to their website and you'll see what they stand for.
Your first sentence only notes that you have not done your due diligence. The Greens have a platfom and a web site. Your lack of knowledge is easily altered by going there and reading their positions
I suspect the movement will begin squatting buildings, not just parks. It's been the tried and true technique of revolutionaries of the past.
Does anyone think that to get actual change the OWS movement will have to become a peaceful general strike?
The OWS movement is from coast to coast and cities in other countries. Some unions are involved and they would have the knowhow to set it make it happen.
we own those who have suffered in our name from police brutality - we should send them to all legislative local bodies, so they can open the space for normal, friendly society
what if we stopped looking to the elected officials to help us out? what if the Occupy movement put up their own candidate for President instead of participating in this charade? someone who cares about people. Then do the same with senators and congress people. Maybe we can stop looking to the Democrats and Republicans to change. We need other candidates?
The 99% FOR PRESIDENT!
Direct democracy
Yes, jood. Two, three, many 99 percenters should run for public office as independents, raising all the critical issues and encouraging public discussion and debate, WHETHER OR NOT THEY THINK THEY CAN WIN.
Informing the populace so they can make good decisions in critical at this stage. When issues have been aired locally/regionally so that most people know what they are, then people could vote where they stand on the ISSUES. Only then would people be elected to carry out the voters wishes. Issues first, then candidates and elections.
Then, whatever body of government comes out of this, that representative would be standing for what her/his constituents want, and there would be means for instant recall if the representative strayed from what the people voted for.
I and others been calling for Direct Democracy for decades. But not everyone can get to a General Assembly, nor help carry out what has been decided. So we need to ensure we have honest, truly for the people representatives - - in whatever form of government we create.
That's why I've supported Nader in all his runs for public office, knowing that the D/R money would swamp him. It's a matter of PRINCIPLE TO DO WHAT'S RIGHT, not a game of who has the best chance to win.
I do wish he would do it again, but he's said he won't because - and we all know why - the D.'s who knew he was right and said they'd support him chickened out and instead caved under pressure of lesser-evilism and ended up supporting the Trojan Horse, Barack Obama.
I like his idea of encircling Congress, which has been the enabler of Wall Street's gluttony and theft of all that's good. The American "culture" is now dark and foreboding, not bright and optimistic, which it used to be, although it was never perfect or good for everyone.
Still, there used to be plenty of jobs. I could always get another job anytime, and the corporations knew this which is why unions made so many good gains over several decades.
So the corporations off-shored our jobs to make us poor so we would accept any tiny pay they offered. Well, people have caught on and so we shall see where this goes.
Just the beginning, of course, It took the First American Revolution (and the Russian Revolution, see the book "1905") years and years of starts and stops to engage the populace such that they were willing to take huge chances to get FREEDOM from tyranny.
Wonderful and brave work by the Occupiers.
Those of us who were heavily involved in the 60's and 70's (and still today) in the struggles for a Better World mostly cannot camp out on the ground anymore, but we can provide material support, which many of us are already doing.
Hasta la Victoria Siempre! - Che
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"Activists need to vary their tactics." Absolutely! Of course, remaining nonviolent is key. But, yes, get even more creative and effective. I'm glad that the Occupy movement is getting some media attention. AND really glad those veterans are giving people pointers on how to deal with police brutality.
Yes. This is why I voted for Nader, and will never apologize for it. To hell with the Democrats, equally as the Republicans. I can't wait to see where the Occupy movement will go, and I'll be there all the way, doing whatever I can.
Occupy Wallstreet has been efffectively finished by the arrest and eviction from a park in my MidWest city. They begged their local Council members not to unleash police on them but the Council gave the order to clean the park.
Most of those were young people with no jobs and homeless, and I wander how many of them vote in elections...they often don't have nothing to do so that they can hang around together. Voltaire said that "Democracy is counting noses" and that is what we have become in US. People have a government that they deserve. Americans are all brainwashed into the belief that they too can become rich and thus accept this TEA party mania of cutting all reasonable services, while military keeps growing leaps and bounds...
The only way we can win is to go off the grid and become independent of fossil energy generators and their car industries, water industries etc. Once we collect energy that falls free from the sky (solar thermal and photovoltaic and wind) and rain water, our utility bills will evaporate and we will not need much money to live well, while replacing our lawns with vegetable gardens. Tune out and become sustainable...then all those virtual reality corporations will go out of business, since nobody will buy their stuff of "financial products".
So you oppose OWS, and are seeking a personal solution and are disavowing any connection to or interest in the rest of the people in the country?
You cannot seriously believe that if we all put organic vegetable gardens in our front yards that those in power would relinquish their power.
The assault on all of us by those in power may seem to just be "virtual reality" to you, seem to be something that you can simply walk away from, but don't project that fantasy onto the rest of us.
Over the years, a small number of people - mostly white, mostly from upper middle class backgrounds - have been able to simply withdraw and create their own alternative lifestyles and communities. Good for them. When people of color or poor people try to do that, they are often met with massive assaults by the police.
If you think that this nightmare is all in your mind, that freeing your own mind is the primary concern, and that you can simply drop out and walk away, and if you think this is a constructive or useful thing to recommend to others, you are either extremely fortunate, extremely deluded, or both.
Clearly what constitutes being "on the move" for Nader is working within the current two-party capitalist system (along with their unions) that serves the 1%
For Nader, the idea of working to overthrow that system is unimaginable.
As a result, Nader can only keep recommending more push, pressure or protest politics for reform.
And oh yeah, boycotts too.
That was Nader's recommendation when the CWA shut down the Verizon strike last August.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/08/23-5
How's that boycott action been workin' out for Verizon workers? Nader's not talking about Verizon anymore.
He's on the move.
"Two and a half months later, the CWA’s Master [Bob Master, CWA District 1 legislative/political director, who told Occupy Wall Street protesters that their movement was “what democracy looks like.”] admits to the Nation, Verizon officials are maintaining “pretty much the same position they had when we went on strike,” and who could blame them, considering the unions have already given up their only serious weapon, strike action?! The misnamed Socialist Worker makes no mention of the sell-out of the August strike, nor does it warn Verizon workers about the rotten deal the CWA and IBEW intend to impose on them."
-Occupy Wall Street: The ISO promotes the unions against workers’ interests
http://wsws.org/articles/2011/oct2011/unio-o28.shtml
"Where is it going?" is the crucial question.
#OWS can go, as long-time reformist Nader recommends, toward making demands of Congress (begging the master) to throw a bone to the middle class and working class, or it can educate itself and the fed-up American populace in the inherent inequity and injustice of the current political/economic system and orchestrate a true revolution of values and governance - as the Arab Springers hope to do.
The Arab revolts are first step revolutions against tyranny and towards democracy. In America, we have the opportunity - but, by no means, the certainty - of a second-stage revolution from false democracy (plutocracy) toward an egalitarian decentralist and populist self-governance.
Wither @OWS?
Goals are more a contrivance of someone elses mind than mine. Needs are what I feel. I need more income to help my children. Working to right the theft of my tax dollars for war, the Fed, investment banking and the corruption that implies is just dignity and self esteem. ...and our children are watching.
What if we each wrote our own 'demand', mission stmt, or needs, a one page story of how you see what needs to be done based on your own knowledge and experiences. And we send these to the NYT, WP, or WSJ maybe, or all three. Or maybe your state cap newpapers for a more regional touch. They want to know what we want...tell them, each and every one of us.
We are INTHESTREETS, now we need to get INTHEIRHEADS.
OWS SHOULD HEAD SOUTH FOR THE WINTER.
HOW ABOUT CHARLOTTE NC?
NO POINT FREEZING TO DEATH AND GETTING FRUSTRATED WITH SMALLER AND SMALLER TURNOUTS. FOLLOW THE MONEY TO NC.
OR BETTER YET BOCA RATON/ WEST PALM BEACH FL. WOULD BE HIGHLY RECOMMENDED AS IT IS ONE OF THE WEALTHIEST AREAS IN THE USA. THEN YOU WILL BE NICELY REFRESHED FOR NY IN THE SPRING.