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Occupy Moves Us Into a New Era
When thousands of Egyptian protesters took over Tahrir Square in events widely celebrated as the Arab Spring, I don’t recall anyone being concerned that they were violating local bylaws.
Of course, Egypt was a dictatorship and the only way to protest the lack of democracy was by breaking laws.
Canada isn’t a dictatorship, and so protesters — like the group now ordered evicted from St. James Park — don’t have the same clear moral license to ignore bylaws that their Egyptian counterparts had.
Critics argue that the Toronto Occupiers have made their point; if they want to take it further, they should join a political party — attend all-candidates meetings, put up lawn signs, eat hot dogs at summer barbecues, become backroom operatives.
Of course, Occupiers should join political parties and try to change them. But part of the Occupiers’ point is that democracy has become a hollow shell.
In theory, democracy is one of humankind’s noblest creations — a system in which people govern themselves. In practice, the results have been, well, disappointing.
In particular, as the Occupiers note, the concentration of wealth in the hands of the top 1 per cent undermines meaningful democracy, blocking the will of the bottom 99 per cent.
Or as the late 19th century Republican strategist Mark Hanna put it during another era of extreme inequality: “There are two things that are important in politics. The first is money and I can’t remember what the second one is.”
This is more obviously true in the U.S., but it’s also true here.
The financial elite manages to exert its dominance, not just at elections but at every stage of the political process — from the drafting of party platforms, the financing and organizing of political advocacy campaigns, the writing and amending of legislation, to the shaping of public opinion through the media (which they largely own). The wealthy are adept at influencing every stage of the broader political process.
Given the lopsided influence of the wealthy, those seeking to restore meaningful democracy and a more inclusive economic system can be forgiven for thinking it’s necessary to grab attention through extraordinary measures like occupying more than 1,000 parks across North America.
After all, they’re drawing attention to nothing less than the fundamental dysfunction of our economic system, which massively favors a privileged elite at the expense of the rest and which led to the disastrous 2008 financial collapse, from which millions still suffer around the world (including in Canada).
Despite its radical message, the Occupy movement has attracted some surprising supporters, including a retired Philadelphia police chief who was arrested last week at a New York protest where he told the cops they were just “workers for the 1 per cent.”
Another unexpected supporter is former Canadian prime minister Paul Martin, who as finance minister in the 1990s slashed social spending in the name of deficit reduction. Martin, former CEO of Canadian Steamship Lines, is also very much part of the top 1 per cent.
Yet, in a telephone interview on Monday from Montreal, Martin told me that he sees “considerable value” in the Occupy movement. “Everybody I’ve talked to feels the same way. The question of inequality and the top 1 per cent. That’s not what built North America.
“The fact is (the Occupiers) have touched a chord with Canadians and, I’m sure, with Americans,” said Martin. “Look, there’s something fundamentally wrong here . . . For the last hundred years, certainly in North America, every generation has felt it’s going to have a better life than their parents. For the first time, that’s not there.”
Rather than hanging out at malls or zoning out on Facebook, these young people have endured real hardship in the Canadian near-winter to fight for a more inclusive society. Any inconvenience they’ve caused through their peaceful occupation seems minor in comparison to their contribution to the public good.
As lawyers from the Law Union of Ontario point out: “Some inconveniences to local park users is a small price to pay for the larger price being paid by the 99 per cent worldwide in the face of an economic system that privileges the few over the many.”
Are occupations really necessary to draw attention to their cause? Perhaps not. But I’d trust their judgment over mine. After all, they’ve managed to change the public discourse, putting inequality front and center — something activists and writers, myself included, have failed to accomplish despite decades of trying.
An article last week in the mainstream magazine New York notes that we’re now moving “from the terror era to the income-inequality era.”
Wow. After only two months, the Occupy movement — without backing from billionaires or governments — seems to have moved us into a new era. Not bad for a leaderless group that sleeps in tents and doesn’t even use microphones.
- Posted in
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48 Comments so far
Show AllVery good Article Linda
"...a new era..."
Yes, I think so too.
And I think we all need to re-think democracy.
As Lysander Spooner has pointed out so convincingly, majority rule is just 'might is right' in disguise.
The key is justice - natural justice perhaps - for all - which must include the environment, both its physical aspects and the myriad lifeforms with which we share this planet.
And responsible people - and corporations - and governments.
"To be a man is, precisely, to be responsible" (Exupery)
Manysummits
=======
Lysander Spooner, if he were alive today, would recommend we read Ayn Rand, vote for Ron Paul, and quit hassling the 1%.
Occupy has reminded the world of an ancient Truth: the first shall be last and the last shall be first.
"In particular, as the Occupiers note, the concentration of wealth in the hands of the top 1 per cent undermines meaningful democracy, blocking the will of the bottom 99 per cent."
Really? In the last federal elections in Canada voter turnout was 61%, the third lowest since 1980. 18-24 old voter turnout was 38% in 2008. So i would not say anyone is blocking their will. They're just to lazy to walk their a$$es to the polling station. I guess texting from Starbuck's (or Timmy's) while sipping a latte beats voting...
The hell with voting. Your strained vitriol against insouciant Canadians is beside the point; even Linda made it clear here that it has become a farce to get involved in mainstream politics.
There may have been a critical point passed decades ago when one could argue that more voters would turn the tide of authoritarian dominance, but now we have to completely forget about changing things though partisan politics.
I suggest you read Walter Karp and get started on your education about what politics has actually become in the last 40 years.
"but now we have to completely forget about changing things though partisan politics..."
That is your opinion, zeofredo, but not a fact.
It is possible that a mass movement into a progressive third party could defeat the Rs and Ds.
It is quite likely that this is more feared by the 1% than the present occupations and demonstrations.
I shouldn't wrangle like this, but it has become impossible to speak delicately: in fact the whole of electoral politics is tightly managed and determined by the machinations of the 1%. Most of the occupiers understand this and are well beyond thinking about third parties.
Unlike someone who airs 'opinions', I only get on here if I feel I have a valuable observation to share. OPINION is something you can have when you don't have much insight or depth into an issue. Opinions are encouraged by politicians because they can be formed and manipulated to their advantage. Someone who comes close to expressing a demonstrable fact, however, is dangerous and not easy to control. Look at many of the signs at these occupations and you will find useful information, not opinions.
I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but you simply have to forget about appealing to convention. It may take you some time (it took me about ten years), but I encourage you to look beyond the standard model that is known to you and consider a different way. The whole problem with our social politics is that it is highly divisive and compromised by oligarchic meddling. It may surprise you to find that leadership races are stage managed and that no one gets near the podium in the first place without initiation into a pool of approved players. Please try to learn more about this...
Please disabuse yourself of the notion that you have taught me anything about US politics, zeofredo. I have realized that the corruption exists for at least a long as you have, probably longer. But I do not think it wise to cede to the 1% victory by virtue of corruption.
If you consider the time, effort and money expended by the 1% to preserve the duopoly's stranglehold on US politics, you might realize how much they fear the threat of a viable progressive third party.
We do them the greatest disservice by presenting them with all that they fear most.
By arguing as you do, for the abandonment of electoral politics, you are playing into the hands of the 1%, either consciously or unconsciously.
[I curse myself for feeling cantankerous today... I know I'm wasting so much time on here... but hey! What else can you do when you're unemployed and considered inessential to this society?]
No, I'm sure I will not teach you anything, pl. Your mind has been made up, and there's nothing more to learn.
I can't speak with total certainty about this, but I have a very strong feeling that the 1% is bothered by very little at this point--including the Occupy movement thus far. Third party options are probably the least troubling for them... they will just drown out any effective campaigns (have done so time and again, up to and including Nader), or else absorb them efficiently into the status quo and continue on their merry way.
I cede no victory to them, however. They are in fact vulnerable, and ONLY in the sense that a movement outside of their control could gather momentum and override the now-useless system we depend on. That is definitely a concern for them.
"By virtue of corruption"-- this phrase is almost touching in its naivety. "Corruption" barely does their injustice JUSTICE. We are beyond simple corruption at this point... such words apply to destitute, IMF-battered little nations. What we have is full on endemic, systemic villainy, absolutely unconcerned with laws and rights. It is still in its early phases, but if you refuse to believe my account, you can talk to someone in Greece or Spain and ask them what they're getting for their troubles. Or you can just wait a little longer to see the scenario unfold right here in North America.
One has to wonder, given your illogical though vociferous objections to the legal and painless process of casting a vote for a truly progressive candidate, whether you are really unemployed.
Spot on.
"The hell with voting. "
I guess that's somewhere along the lines of "Revolution now, democracy later"...
Not voting is just a tactical error. Obviously voting has been largely co-opted, and the results of one's votes are severely constrained by the corruption of the system. Obviously, voting is inadequate.
On the other hand, it costs voters next to nothing, and it forces the system's abusers to go to great lengths to hoodwink the populace. And it is in almost every case not mutually exclusive to other action. There may be some occasion in which it makes sense to hold a ballot strike: When the US held sham elections in Iraq under the Cheney constitution there, enough Iraqis recognized the farcical nature of the elections and the importance of that sham to American pro-occupation publicity that they could have a rent strike. In the US, at present, not voting just looks like you gave up and fell into line like the next shlub.
It is also false that no worthy candidates run: few worthy candidates run. Of course, in all but a few districts, they lose. Vote for the worthy candidates, and vote on local ballot measures! Doing so accomplishes several things:
- In the typical eventuality that voting for a good candidate means voting for an obvious lost cause, you mark for your colleagues and for the opposition part of what they lose by not attending to your view. You reframe issues and demand negotiation.
-- In the still somewhat unlikely event that you are in a place that might support an official third party that could automatically place candidates on the ballot, you may help provide enough gravity to get reasonable candidates past a lot of the folderol that is set up to thwart representation, that discourages membership and voters and funds.
- In many areas, voters also get to vote on direct ballot issues. These are frequently way more important than candidates, though they usually get far less press because no corporate-backed candidate stands to gain much by them. Even if one believes that "That government governs best that governs least," oppression cannot be judged by the number of laws on the books, and it makes little sense to allow only the wealthy to write those laws, to whatever extent one does retain some other option.
-- Finally, a few people really are in places where enough people have caught on to allow for worthy and viable candidacy. In any place that can come close to supporting a Kucinich or a Saunders, you help other people to vote their heart and their opinions rather than a "least-worst" washout or worse, a Trojan horse like Obama.
Maybe this does not apply to you personally, Zeofredo, but abstaining from action to maintain purity is not by itself worth squat. That holds even when the action is voting. Those politricians do not go on about getting out the vote because they want people to vote; they do it to look like populists. They are very happy to have the run of the candy store without but their pals watching the door, and that is all anyone accomplishes by not voting. And the results are damning, to the extent that, well, holding out for purity might in many cases be considered impure or self-indulgent.
This might in some case make for an argument to vote for a least-worst candidate, but I certainly do not intend for it to be so reflexively: those least-worsters have to be voted down a lot, and we could hardly have a more appropriate set of heads ready to roll in 2012. On the other hand, even the Democrats may occasionally field someone worthy of a nod. Were I in Ohio, I would vote for Kucinich. Were I in Massachusetts, I believe I would vote for Elizabeth Warren.
Relatively minor reductions in inequality make enormous differences in human lives even though they fall far, far short of justice. Anyone who doubts this should check the evidence assembled by Richard Wilkinson in THE IMPACT OF INEQUALITY and elsewhere and straightforwardly delivered in many podcasts available by going to video.google.com and searching "Wilkinson inequality." Massively broad and immensely redundant evidence shows that greater financial inequality renders people miserable and desperate and kills them young, to some extent even the fairly rich. These are differences between the inequalities of the USA and those of Japan or France or Denmark, not the differences between injustice and justice.
Obviously, someone who participates extensively in OWS or something similar does way more than someone who just casts a vote. But someone who participates extensively in OWS and casts a vote does at least marginally better than either.
From an adaptation of an old papyrus:
Images, living
Heirs among men,
Speak
Funerals unheard
Deeds unseen
Men fight day by day
Forgetting
Year and year
Good unknown
knows no
profit.
..
The struggle may endure, so speak to the ages. Write the better as well as the worse impulses of people into law: vote .
Chameleon perhaps electoral politics are meaningful in Canada but the USA is a fascist controled nation with meaningless federal elections, the Soviet Union had elections,no? We have had two blatantly stolen presidential elections and our presidents are merely playing corporate roles. Federal voting in the USA is an exercise in futility we have a "Catch 22" situation with all three branches of government captured by corporations blatantly ignoring popular will. Oilybomber is defunding Social Security with his payroll tax holiday. We have endless unpopular wars, austerity is being imposed by the bloated 1%. By the way how do your Indigenous enjoy tar sands oil?Today we even have a " Returning Hero Tax Break" for vets Soviet parlance, no? Our elected officials have facilitated the dismantling of our economy and suppresion of our wage earners and poor.
"Chameleon perhaps electoral politics are meaningful in Canada but the USA is a fascist controled nation with meaningless federal elections,"
Wrong. It's voter apathy and/or laziness. There's two ways to view this:
1. You are a majority and show up to vote, get your candidate elected. If you do not show up you STFU for the next 2 or 4 years as you did not participate and forfeit your right to whine.
2. You are a minority, and you fail to get your candidate/party elected. You suck it up and live with the will of the majority, right or wrong.
BTW, voter turnout in the US has been below 60% for elections in major election years and in the high 30%s for off year elections. So I say para 1. applies.
Go and pick random people off the street (It has been done several times) and most of them have no idea who their representative is and what party he/she belongs to. But most of them are ready to give their opinion on how to run the country.
VERY well stated. The only way to make change is to have power and you won't take power unless you elect in your people. No voting, no change. When less than 50% regularly vote, then you have to hope your partisans are the ones voting.
You ignore the simple blatant fact that voting is meaningless when the vote counts are fraudulent, or have not you noticed this. Again Florida and then Ohio? Vote all you want but he who controls the tabulators and counts the votes decides the election. Even beyond that operatives like Mike Collins ( Roves operative can hack the returns of one state like Ohio and decide the presidential election). Please go deeper and stop blaming an electorate that is generally aware that voting is a fixed proposition. Leave the naive and jointhe realists.
You are completely out of touch with the truth. The Black vote in Florida, you know, like 30,000 supposed felons who were NOT felons, was NOT counted. The record is very clear on the shenanigans that went on in this state, and Ohio; and NOTHING was ever done to fix the mess... as a matter of fact, when the facts WERE becoming better understood, 911 suddenly came down. And no president will be recalled during war-time, even if his own insider club made sure to set that war into motion with their own faux Pearl Harbor style trigger.
You want to make this about voters when posters much smarter, and far better informed than you are, have already made it clear that the process itself is a fraud. What difference does it make if people show up to vote for A or B if the entire process, and the system that's extended it, is a fraud?
"The financial elite manages to exert its dominance, not just at elections but at every stage of the political process — from the drafting of party platforms, the financing and organizing of political advocacy campaigns, the writing and amending of legislation, to the shaping of public opinion through the media (which they largely own). The wealthy are adept at influencing every stage of the broader political process." (Linda McQuaig)
THAT is the truth. Your convenient version of it, and demand that others validate it, is the stuff of a high school C student.
You can fake a couple votes here and a couple there. You can move the needle, but you can't move it much. In both cases, the votes were within 1% of each other and TPTB did a number on them, but the point is that if it hadn't been so close, there would never have been the chance to wiggle that needle. The problem is that most people do not care enough to vote and if they did, then these percentages would not be so close.
Just so you know, I take you for a "plant" on this site. With that out in the open, you've endlessly posted your negative opinions about the futlity of the OWS movement like someone purposely taking the air out of every balloon; and now you're validating the FALSE posts of someone (tasked with working with you) who also wants people on C.D to trust in "their" vote and "their democracy."
You should read what Beverly Harris documented about the touch stone screen voting, and the fact that the vote count is under proprietary ownership. Yep. That means the vote is effectively PRIVATIZED in those states that use the easily program-fixed machines.
And you must have missed the essay by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. as he documented AT LENGTH what went on in Ohio.
So you and Chameleon, are both pushing a FALSE meme to suggest that the vote counts are fair and viable. Bull shit!!!
What do you get paid for selling your souls? I know it's a tough job market out there, but maybe prostitution carries more honor. Give that proposition some thought... you'll sleep better at night, once your conscience comes out of hibernation.
I don't believe John is a "plant", Sioux. He may be a bit harsh on the OWSers (who I think are doing a great job ) but he is right in that a progressive 3rd party push at the polls is necessary.
A two prong attack on the 1% is needed. The OWSers wake the people up, the mass of voters swamp the Rs and Ds at the polls.
Not only is this theoretically possible, it has actually been done in several countries.
I agree, John.
A mass movement into a 3rd party that represents our views could overwhelm the corruption.
I agree. If the voters don't turn out, then they don't get what they want. If this 99% we all talk about exists, then why aren't they are all voting against the 1%? Answer is that enough of them identify with the 1% that they are not on our side.
Texting while drinking a latte is not the reason why people don't bother to vote. The system is rigged. Only the people in the pay of the top 1% can get their names on the ballot. Then the top 1% hires the best of the PR boys to make TV ads that play to the emotions of the voters with no facts included. The well trained candidates have carefully scripted catchy phrases to repeat to further confuse the voters. You only get to choose between two major parties or you 'waste your vote'. Add to that the corporately owned computers used to cast votes and then there was the ruling by the Supreme Court to stop counting the ballots. This leads many voters to the conclusion that is it a waste of time to vote and so they have a latte insteadl
"of course, Occupiers should join political parties and try to change them." This is bad advice. We need to get rid of political parties and vote on the basis of knowledge of the moral integrity of the candidate. This is simple in the case of an elected member of Congress coming up for re election. That person is obviously corrupt. He/she has voted for the wars, for the bankster bailout, for tax cuts for the rich, for banking deregulation, and did not vote for Single Payer, Medicare for all. The people in Congress now back austerity for the working people while the top 1% control our economic system and don't pay their fair share of taxes.
The occupiers and the rest of the working people of this nation need to kick the corrupt out of Congress. We need a clean sweep and a new start. The first task of our new Congress should be to call for a Constitutional Conventions to rewrite and up date our Constitution.
Voting out the corrupt will make room for new candidates who are not members of a corporate political party and who are honest and have ethics and morals. We need candidates who understand we are all in this together and they know how to care and share---for each other and with love for our mother the earth.
.
Why encampments are superior to merely demonstating.1) Demonstrating has accompanied and accomadated USA's decent into Fascism and visa versa.2) Encampments seize power and commons whereas Demonstrations result at best temporary incremental changes with a negative trend in general for the last thirty years.3) Encampments have captured an International Dialogue that Demonstrations lack.4) Encampments force a solidarity between Bourgeios and Homeless, a great strength and absolutely necessary for a new improved society.
I agree the encampments certainly moved us into a new era, but they have they're limitations as were seeing. We can still reap some great benefits from them going forward and adapt our tactics. For one thing the GAs and the working groups turned out to be the heart and soul of these camps. We should be setting up GAs everywhere in every town, every neighborhood etc. Marching around has its limitations as the last 30 yrs. have shown. The GAs do not need encampments to exist , they can OCCUPY public space during the days legally and carry on the business of the Revolution in the open. They can also be held inside if need be in colder places. We shouldn't let this die because the authorities are going violently disrupt our encampments. Adapt is the message and we either do that or it will die. The job now is to OCCUPY the POLITICAL SPACE , we don't need to OCCUPY Physical Space 24/ 7 to do that. The truth is we already are Occupying the Physical space of the country 24/ 7 because we are the 99% that live in it.
That's actually a very good point. Your logic is perfectly simple. It is also inspiring for future tactics.
I am reminded of the term for civil disobedience in other lands: 'manifestation'. These can be quick and surprising assemblies or disruptions happening spontaneously in key spots, evaporating as suddenly as they appear. I've seen mild forms of these in Barcelona and elsewhere... some of them quite fun. One time a sound system materialized and a full on dance rave broke out for about half an hour! It disappeared within minutes just as wondrously.
People need to experience these actions, these manifestations, more and more before they can start thinking clearly and piece together a network that will produce a more effective system than electoral politics. Once we get something that is not commandeered by distant ruling interests, I would welcome voting to an extent, but with the understanding that the voters be more active and participatory than they are now. This is no less true of Canada where I am than US or anywhere else.
The GAs are the thing. They are the future. They are "We the People" forming THEIR OWN congresses. I no longer trust the 1%ers rigged voting system. I'm very glad the Occupy movement never submitted a list of demands to the 1%ers rigged system. Let's take the public's business (res publica?) to the 99ers' GAs and working groups, and figure out how to proceed, after the downfall of the 1%ers & their rigged system. They'll fall, like old rotten trees, and the "undergrowth"(the 99er GAs) will rise up and take in the now-available sunshine, where before they had to endure the shades.
Instead of encampments, maybe switch to sunup-to-sundown meetings of the GAs & their working groups, 7 days a week?
I don't think so. Demonstrations in the street have never moved America to action. Never. The only times America moves forward is when an elected leader moves them there. No elections, no progress.
How do a bunch of people in tents get the legislature to vote for anything? Answer is they don't.
There's always a first time for everything. Besides, demonstrations are only the beginning. Manifestations are chances to engage the population, not merely plead with masters for a little more soup.
If you think leaders make the nation move forward, I pity you. Things move forward almost always IN SPITE OF leaders. The real deal behind FDR, to take the most holy example, is that he thwarted as much reform as he 'supported'. His oligarch backers allowed only as much change to take place as was expedient for their interests. It is a shame more people don't know the details... again, I recommend Walter Karp: "Indispensable Enemies", an excellent breakdown of electoral politics and misrule in America.
This isn't your grandma's world anymore... lots has changed; the elites have made sure of this.
What hasn't changed Zeo is that crowds in the streets "educating" people doesn't make TPTB do jack. You can effect change with votes or ... well... you can't effect change. No matter how many people show up at a camp, there are a thousand or more that are not there and those that are not there are buying gas and food and clothes. They are going to work or waiting for work... For them, nothing changes and those are the people that the 1% count on. The stable middle.
Really, if we want to be truthful, OWS doesn't represent the "99%", they are the 1% of the 99% that even care enough to do anything. The rest just aren't that upset.
You're not JUST playing the Devil's Advocate in post after post, you're planting the idea that this movement is futile. You must have posted 20 or more comments reinforcing this self-defeating (were you identified with the 99%) idea.
You know something, you're so full of shit that you could probably make the stock for "Depends" go up single assedly.
What events took place when "Don't Tread On Me" was unfurled?
"Canada isn’t a dictatorship"
I'm sorry to say but Canada really is a defacto dictatorship, like the USA, but not quite as intensely. The USA is a great dictatorship of the mind. We know we can have universal enlightenment/solidarity/equity/justice. And yet the dictatorship of the mind that we slave under requires us to pretend that that is impossible, and that we should instead merely indulge in the giant river of petro-opiates/conveniences. The great dictatorship of the mind requires that we fight/kill foreigners in defense of an economic system intent on enslaving not only Merkans but the whole planet, allowing no alternative, no moderation or balance, much less a completely different focus on those completely different ideals of universal enlightenment/solidarity/equity/justice.
I opened a book of T. Jefferson's letters over the weekend and there was a letter to Madison where Jefferson articulated his famous philosophy describing banks, corporations and standing armies as things he strongly felt needed to be kept down and out of the loop of public policy. Today, Jefferson would meet ferocious opposition from the Merkan elite establishment, as would Ghandi, M.L.King, et al. Even the author of das kapitalist's "magnum opus", Adam Smith, based his ideas on the premise of production serving the true better interests of the people. Smith would be booted. Use the basic hypocrisy exhibited by the "deciders" of today in choosing your words to describe their system.
The great dictatorship of the mind welcomes diversity of ideas, including spirituality, only as long as the dominant contenders retain the title of king, dictator, dominator, ruler. I think that any protest against this basic factual summary of the Merkan Condition would be a protest based on pride/ego of investment in the dictatorial system. Now the ironic thing is that universal enlightenment/solidarity/equity/justice is also dictatorial in that you can't have your cake and eat it too. You can't be good and bad both. You do have to choose, if you want to do no harm. The Hippocratic Oath is kind of a dictatorship. But it's a dictatorship of enlightenment over the lie, solidarity over conflict, equity over inequity, justice over injustice. The little dictators understand that the laws of nature offer them no space. That the truth offers no floor to their lies. And their pathetic, dead-end reaction to try to dominate nature, and dominate the life force, the power of the people, is highly predictable to the enlightened. Call a spade a spade, choose your ideal, and let your activities reflect that.
The USA today is as much a democracy today as the Soviet Union was, but some uninformed people think votes are honestly counted.
Having spent time in the USSR and in other Soviet socialist countries, I have to say, you statements are un-informed and really quite foolish. The US is NOTHING like a Soviet Socialist government in any way, shape or form.
I am sure some citizens in the USSR thought their votes were meaningful. You both are unaware as to the extent of the fraud in Florida and then Ohio so you believe the MSM propaganda. The fraud in both states changed the national election, most thoughtful people know of Florida but fewer are aware of the Rove operative who flipped a massive number of Ohio votes and then died in a "Wellstone Event" just as he was confessing during "legal discovery". By the way the reason he cooperated in stopping Kerry from being elected was because he was pro-life. But please cherish your Polyanna view of USA elections for as long as you may.See there is a revolution occurring now precisely because there is no electorial integrity, lack of choice causes revolutions to arise. Do you two really people would choose to be pepper sprayed if they thought voting was meaningful. Of course deluding oneself frees one from difficult decisions and allows the timid Bourgeois complacency of voting.
This story is a good one. But we progressives have to remember that Paradis Lost of the secular version from John Milton or the Garden of Eden in the more theological version were way back, and from there all went down. We are going to have a better society when we recapture Milton's "paradise lost" or the Biblcal Garden of Eden not by any new anything socially. Egalitarianism is traditonal and egalitarian societies which exists today are constantly referred to as traditional ones or even "primitive" ones as apposed to Western socieites with their "civlization."
It's the most unhappy people who most fear change.
Mignon McLaughlin
If you want to change the culture, you will have to start by changing the organization.
Mary Douglas
Without change, something sleeps inside us, and seldom awakens. The sleeper must awaken.
Frank Herbert
I was now resolved to do everything in my power to defeat the system.
Oskar Schindler
I have been inspired by Occupy.
I think it is time to think something that before was unthinkable.
The thinkable before was to reform the current system. I don't think it's reformable. The other thinkable before was to tear down the current system, which requires violence, and then create a new one. I reject that, as does Occupy.
So how do we create a non-violent revolution?
Here's the new thinking the unthinkable.
We don't try to reform the old system. We don't try to tear it down first so we can later create a new one.
We just create the new one beside the old one and ignore the old one. This is what Occupy has been doing. It's just a beginning. It's just a birthing.
Vote or don't vote. Go to a caucus or don't go to a caucus. Support a candidate in the existing system or don't. It doesn't matter. But join an Occupation, even if you can't stay over night, and participate in an General Assembly. It's the future. Imagine and you will find you're not the only one.
Martin lost moral credibility as has his successor in their continued genocidal policies toward Six Nations Peoples. Politicians are no more than caustic corruption in shoes.
I saw LM on CBC - Lang/O'Leary Exchange a few months ago... after discussing her book 'The Trouble With Billionaires' (income inequality in Canada), Kevin O'Dreary slagged her for being a Left Wing nutbar - whatever- just like his dismissive to Chris Hedges a while later.
On the topic of income inequality, LM was a voice in the wilderness before OWS came along - the public was just not 'getting it'...
No bigger idiot in the world exists then that O Leary
This guy actualoly reamed a woman out comparing her to a mass murderer because she "murdered money".
the woman had a business that was losing money and he equated her to serial killer.
Regardless of OWS, not because of, we ARE coming into new times. New times and a new society forced upon us by the wholesale betrayal of the people by politicians and the theft of the common wealth by the banks.
We will be learning to live differently because we will have no other choice .
Politics will change because there won't be anything left for politicians to sell to big business. Politicians may, for a while, be considered irrelevant.
Until it's remembered that there is more to the governing of a country than wealth creation and wealth redistribution.
Then politicians might remember such things as community and society, justice and freedom.
"Of course, Occupiers should join political parties and try to change them.
....The financial elite manages to exert its dominance, not just at elections but at every stage of the political process — from the drafting of party platforms, the financing and organizing of political advocacy campaigns, the writing and amending of legislation, to the shaping of public opinion through the media (which they largely own). The wealthy are adept at influencing every stage of the broader political process."
So without the 99% having equal free time, financing, media access, and all the avenues for democratic participation sewn up, they have given up the party system/political process.. and well they should. It is a wasted effort.
The OWS movement is JUST SAY NO to the whole corrupt mess. THANK YOU OCCUPY. The political parties are in an embarrassing position, having no clothes on, and now in a bright national spotlight of real questioning, and with real solutions to real problems glaring at them. We could never have accomplished this without the OWS movement to remove the fecal plug within the political process.