By Jake Blumgart,  AlterNet

The American left has been waiting the whole Great Recession for a decent protest movement. Envious of their European counterparts abroad and the Tea Party at home, progressives watched with growing rage as the Obama administration compromised its way through its first term and historic Democratic congressional majorities withered away. Now, as Occupy Wall Street protests spread across the nation, the excitement is evident, despite the sobering circumstances.

Thursday, October 6 marked the opening round of Occupy Philadelphia, just one facet of a widening movement. Hundreds of protesters massed in front of City Hall and promptly began settling in for a long stay. The crowd immediately began organizing itself, creating everything from a “Welcoming and Comfort Committee” to a “Security Committee.” The encampment soon rang with the familiar chant “This is What Democracy Looks Like” and the theme of the occupations: “We Are the 99 Percent.” People erected tents, lofted signs, and debated each other ceaselessly. The mood was electric.

“This is one of the most amazing turnouts for an event I’ve ever seen and I’ve been organizing for 10 years,” said Amanda Geraci, organizer and participant.

As the day wore on, the crowd waxed and waned; swelling at the noon lunch break, receding at quitting time, and growing steadily again throughout the evening. The food committee set tables for eating, water and coffee. The family area, complete with No Smoking signs, provided room for children to play. Lawyers gave “Know Your Rights” talks. In the coming days, Mental Health Association of Southeastern Pennsylvania staffers will be on call to provide crisis intervention and emotional support, as needed.

Philadelphia isn’t alone. Similar protests modeled on the famous Occupy Wall Street actions are spreading all over the nation. Occupy Philly lagged behind other large cities including Boston (September 30) and Seattle (October 1). Chicago, Atlanta, Portland, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New Orleans, which also began its occupation on Thursday, are among the many other host cities. While it is hard to get an exact total, the website Occupy Together has a list of 865 participating cities, including solidarity rallies on every continent, save Antarctica. Chris Bowers at Daily Kos is charting the expansion of the movement in the U.S., although hismost recent post (from Tuesday) on the subject showed over 200 occupations.

Each occupation sports a regional flavor. One Philadelphia protester gave passersby an animated lecture on the city’s “corrupt politics” and argued for City Council term limits. The march that kicked off the New Orleans march began at the notorious Orleans Parish prison, an institution the Department of Justice has critiqued for violence against inmates.

But all the occupations focus on the same core issues: unemployment, corporate welfare, foreclosures, and crushing personal debt.

“There is no longer the guarantee that if you work hard you will succeed,” says Ben Webster, an Occupy Philadelphia participant who hopes to see the movement use direct action to prevent foreclosures, as protesters have in Spain. “The only thing many people come out of college with is debt. All we have is austerity and crisis.”

“The big corporations are getting richer and richer, while working people every day are getting poorer,” says Alfonso Pulido, a former machine operator in Chicago who was laid off as a result of the recession.* “In the face of unemployment and in this economic landscape we need to mobilize at every level to get jobs to return so that we can provide for our families. I’ve been here 23 years and never been unemployed before. I’m not interested in handouts, I’m interested in working.”

“Things are looking real bleak,” says Norris Simon, veteran and member of New York Steamfitters Local 638 (he left the Wall Street occupation to bolster Occupy Philly). “When I was young, you bought a house. That was the American dream. Now it’s the American nightmare.”

The ideology of the protesters varies dramatically. The Occupy Philly protests were home to social democrats (“Responsible Capitalism: Healthy Workforce, Healthy Economy”), anarchist anti-capitalists, and some libertarians. In Boston, media volunteer Joshua Eaton reports that Ron Paul-boosters, among others, can be found among the largely leftist occupiers. “Our motto is the 99 percent, not the 30 percent of Americans who are liberal Democrats,” Eaton said in a phone interview.

But despite these divisions, the focus remains on common discontents. “Ideology is left at the door,” Geraci says. “The diversity of viewpoints is being used as a strength instead of for infighting. We are all in this together.”

Demands at Occupy Philly range from the clearly sensible (“Tax Wall Street”) to the recklessly misguided (“End the Fed”). Despite the constant fretting of pundits, the protests don’t have a coherent set of universally agreed upon goals. But that doesn’t separate Occupy Wall Street from other social movements in American history.Mass movements aren’t good for pushing technocratic fixes or complex policy mechanisms. They are meant to demand the world and propel issues into the national conversation.

The reactions of the local establishments are as varied as the demands of the protesters. New York City authorities have been ham-handed in their treatment of the occupiers. Without the brutish (ongoing) efforts of the NYPD, it is very likely the initial protests wouldn’t have gained mainstream media attention. In Seattle, Mayor Mike McGinn also cracked down on the protesters. The police made multiple arrests in the process, although they were relatively restrained, for the most part. San Francisco’s occupations experienced similar treatment.

By contrast, police presence was minimal on the first day of Occupy Philly. The crowd even cheered for the police. (The night before the occupation began, several veteran activists shared less than fond memories of the Philadelphia Police Department, mostly dating from the Republican Convention of 2000.) Occupy Boston enjoys similar good relations with law enforcement. “The police have been absolutely wonderful and no arrests have been made, to my knowledge,” Eaton says, although he made clear that he only spoke for himself.

In Philadelphia, organizers told the general assembly that Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter “wants you to know that he too is a member of the 99 percent.” [He said] “We are welcome to set up tents and be here to express our opinions for as long as it takes,” organizers said, informing the crowd of their meeting with the mayor, the chief of police, and other city officials. According to The Stranger, Washington State Democrats have offered their halting support to the movement too, while numerous progressive Congressional Democrats have expressed full-throated solidarity .

But the occupation movement and the Democratic Party mostly circle each other warily. Since the late-1960s, many left-wing activists have had a less charitable analysis of electoral politics than their conservative opposites and are consequently less inclined to work with established institutions. A strong strain of this skepticism can be found in the Occupy protests, which include many anarchists and other confirmed-reform skeptics, along with disillusioned Obama voters. Generally, much greater enthusiasm is shown for the support provided by labor unions and other progressive advocacy organizations.

But the Occupy movement doesn’t have to get along with the Democratic Party. Social movements work best when they don’t directly synch up with established political interests. Politicians and policymakers need to feel unrelenting pressure that doesn’t ease up until they do something substantive. But there must also be political actors who have the power and the will to make those changes. And therein lies the Occupy movement’s chief weakness: This isn’t a politically advantageous moment for their demands.

If these protests had begun at the beginning of Obama’s term, with strong Democratic majorities in both houses, they could pushed stronger progressive policies. But today Congress is divided and a majority of states are controlled by Republicans, who will not be responsive to the Occupy movement’s goals. They have their own social movements to react to.

This isn’t to say that the Occupy movement is hopeless. There are still plenty of fixes they can push toward at state and local levels. But major change on the national level (outside, perhaps, some monetary stimulus) is unlikely in the near term. Even the Civil Rights movement, and its years of radical actions, had to wait until the Democrats held the presidency and massive Congressional majorities before they achieved their goals.

Jake Blumgart is a freelance reporter-researcher based in Philadelphia. Follow him on Twitter.

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By Black Agenda Report editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley

It is great that the Occupation “movement” exists, but unclear where it is going. Its leaderless nature may help to avoid cooptation and media manipulation, but there are equally serious drawbacks. “The movement may be doomed to become a permanent gripe session against an obvious villain, but with no means of planning how to end the system that increases income inequality, debt peonage and unemployment.” Most importantly: can the 99%ers bring themselves to abandon the Democrats?

“Do they know and are they ready to state that they must dump the Democrats if they are to have any opportunity to save themselves and what is left of democracy?”

The Occupy Wall Street/99% movement has succeeded in demonstrating one important fact. There is a great deal of anger and frustration directed at the financial services mobsters and the political system that gives them such great power. Any mass effort directed against the prerogatives they now enjoy is a positive indication that there is still something left of what we call democracy.

The spread of the Occupy Wall Street movement around the country should be the beginning of a much needed political movement, but at the moment it isn’t clear that will take place. While the righteous and justifiable indignation is evident, organizing and the analysis which it should be based upon are not.

It isn’t really difficult to be angry with the bankster class which has ruined not just the American economy, but which has also devastated the lives of people around the world. It is much more difficult to think outside of the paradigm of the two parties which are both in fact servants of the plutocracy. Collapsing markets and rising unemployment are but symptoms of a larger and more worrisome disease.

In all likelihood the Democratic Party has benefited most from the votes cast of demonstrators at Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan. Do they know and are they ready to state that they must dump the Democrats if they are to have any opportunity to save themselves and what is left of democracy?

“Collapsing markets and rising unemployment are but symptoms of a larger and more worrisome disease.”

If the “spectrum of thinkable thought [6]” is not done away with, some of these same protesters who are now so valiantly acting in opposition, will one year from now return Barack Obama and his policies of bailing out Wall Street, back to the White House.

The cry for change must include a cry in opposition to the Democratic Party. When Congressman Charles Rangel visited Zuccotti park, he was shouted down by one protester, but then received words of apology from others.

Certainly Charles Rangel is not himself the cause of all that ails American politics, but Democratic members of Congress and the Congressional Black Caucus have time and again been subservient to the dictates of their leadership and to the career trajectory of Democratic presidents. This subservience almost always takes precedence over the needs of the people. If protesters apologize for the righteous anger of one of their members, it is an indication that this movement is not quite ready to look outside of the thought spectrum which allows the economic elite to control both Democrats and Republicans.

The leaderless, mass-led nature of this action presents both benefits and problems. It is good that the corporate media cannot personalize these activities and designate any one person or group of people as leaders. Inevitably, those people are scrutinized in ways that render them useless or in the worst case scenarios are co-opted and bought off.

“They must not succumb to fears about the latest Republican bogeyman or woman.”

The down side to this non-organization is that there may not be anyone able to direct the mass action in any effective way. The movement may be doomed to become a permanent gripe session against an obvious villain, but with no means of planning how to end the system that increases income inequality, debt peonage and unemployment.

Make no mistake, Occupy Wall Street should be the beginning of fundamental changes in the political landscape. Whether it will be or not, will depend upon the willingness of activists to stand up for those changes. They must not succumb to fears about the latest Republican bogeyman or woman. Rick Perry or Michelle Bachman or Sarah Palin or Mitt Romney will be mocked as a fascist, charlatan, idiot who doesn’t believe in gay marriage/evolution/global warming and who is therefore unfit to serve as president.

But it is Barack Obama, a man no doubt supported by many of the occupiers, who backs offshore oil drilling and the wholesale resurrection of the nuclear power industry. It is Barack Obama who has forestalled efforts to require cleaner air standards. It is the constitutional law professor who decides that Anwar al-Awlaki or any other American citizen can be marked for death.

Some commentators have likened Occupy Wall Street to the actions at Tahrir Square in Cairo, Egypt which brought down president Mubarak. The Egyptian protesters had a clear demand, that Mubarak had to go. What is the clear demand in Zuccotti Park, that Obama and the Democrats go? That is to say, are they committed to end their support for them?

Right now this site has become a magnet for celebrities and gawking tourists. It ought to become the place where Democratic Party control of the left dies once and for all.

http://freedomrider.blogspot.com. [7] Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgandaReport.com.

Source URL: http://blackagendareport.com/content/freedom-rider-occupying-wall-street

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By Black Agenda Report executive editor Glen Ford

They are very young, very white, and largely inexperienced in organizing. But the Occupy Wall Street crew has picked the right target: finance capitalists, the class that is the common enemy of the human race. In that sense, “the Zuccotti Park campers are eons ahead of the faux radicals and ‘progressives’ who, in terror of the Tea Party and Republican presidential clown candidates, will soon return to the Obamite fold in their eternal search for lesser evils.” Obama was, and will remain, the candidate of Wall Street.

“99% to 1% is encouraging odds, and an accurate reflection of reality.”

There’s some talk in veteran left circles about the need to politically “educate” the adamantly leaderless, mostly white young people who have made Zuccotti Park in Manhattan’s financial district the center of the U.S. lefty world since September 17. Although there’s a large portion of Yippie-like mush in the Zuccotti mix – the kind of activism that seems more like aroma than substance – the core is clearly comprised of serious people [9] determined to end the rule of the “One Percent.” The 99% versus 1% formula is quite powerful, directing the people’s anger towards the class that conducts its oppressive business on Wall Street: finance capitalists.

The Occupy Wall Street (OWS) crew has identified the beast in his lair – which is a very big deal in the United States, a nation that is the most politically backward and confused in the industrial world due to the endemic racism that is its birthright and that has always thwarted the growth of a strong Left. The Zuccotti Park campers are eons ahead of the faux radicals and “progressives” who, in terror of the Tea Party and Republican presidential clown candidates, will soon return to the Obamite fold in their eternal search for lesser evils. Given that so many of the “old heads” of the Left only a few years ago put themselves at the service of Wall Street’s presidential candidate – a talented and attractive Black man who would become the far more effective evil in facilitating the dismantling of the New Deal – it may be best that they keep their political education classes to themselves.

“Obama Democrats and the Republicans, alike, facilitate the pillaging, captives of the hegemon.”

In identifying finance capital as the common enemy, the supposedly “apolitical” park occupiers are in some ways more advanced than a lot of folks that call themselves scientific socialists but have not come fully to grips with what it means when finance capital achieves absolute political hegemony – the reality that is central to how U.S. imperialism ultimately collapses. It is a class that produces nothing; that exists solely through rigging and armed coercion of markets and the destruction of all that cannot be monetized; that actively suppresses and makes war against human productive potential, worldwide; and that has now turned, like piranhas, against the state structures they themselves helped build in Europe and North America.

The political rule of finance capital is the end game. In the early stages of the Great Depression, banking baron Andrew Mellon urged President Herbert Hoover to “liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate farmers, liquidate real estate” in order to solve the crisis. Mellon didn’t get his wish because, even then, the finance capitalist class did not wield hegemonic power in U.S. society. They do now. With all the other capitalist sectors totally subservient to Wall Street – including mass communications – they are financializing the State, seeking to convert many of its components (Social Security, health care, public education, and much more) into profit centers, and discarding much of the rest. This is of necessity, because finance capital can no longer preserve itself in any other way.

Nothing is left standing in the capitalist sector to resist them. For that reason, there is no Hoover, much less a Roosevelt, to articulate an alternative capitalist vision, a new compact, an accommodating “reform.” Finance capital rushes forward, creating conditions in which its own imminent destruction can only be temporarily averted by frenzied predation on the real economy and the State, itself. Obama Democrats and the Republicans, alike, facilitate the pillaging, captives of the hegemon.

“They are financializing the State, seeking to convert many of its components (Social Security, health care, public education, and much more) into profit centers, and discarding much of the rest.”

To live in the age of finance capitalist hegemony is different than when Vladimir Lenin said “the capitalist will sell you the rope to hang him with.” Wall Street daily invents and plays fire with its own form of money: derivatives that are notionally valued at $600 trillion to $1,000 trillion (no one really knows!), many times the yearly Gross Planetary Product of Earth. The finance hegemon is disconnected from, yet a parasite on, the real economy. He is not in the business of selling or making ropes, or anything else. He is about transforming the world into capital, to feed capital, for the reproduction of capital. He can no longer coexist with human life.

Therefore, the righteous demonization of Wall Street, the symbolic and literal headquarters of the class that is the primary threat to human existence, is a great place begin a mass movement. 99% to 1% is encouraging odds, and an accurate reflection of reality.

The occupation of Freedom Plaza [10] in Washington, DC, starting Oct 6, should showcase the national government as the domestic and international superpower servant of finance capital – and Barack Obama as Servant-in-Chief. The United National Anti-War Coalition’s [11] (UNAC) October 15 rally at the OWS encampment marking the tenth anniversary of the U.S. war on Afghanistan, proclaims that “Wall Street is War Street.” And the November 5 national conference of the Black Is Back Coalition [12] for Social Justice, Peace, and Reparations, in Philadelphia, will remind us that the European war against the rest of the world that began more than five hundred years ago is till being waged for the benefit of a predatory class whose primary address is right next to Zuccotti Park.

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com [13].

 [14]

• Black Is Back finance capital hegemony Occupy Freedom Plaza Occupy Wall Street October2011 UNAC Zuccotti Park

Source URL: http://blackagendareport.com/content/wall-street-public-enemy-number-one

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William T. Hathaway

CROSSPOSTED WITH PEOPLES VOICE
It costs 50 million dollars to kill each Taliban, but when dead he becomes a martyred hero to recruit new replacements, so the numbers of Taliban are increasing. In Iraq the terror our invasion unleashed still rages unabated, with hired mercenaries and local soldiers unable to stop it, as our troops before them were unable to. Yet we continue the fighting, and Obama the peace candidate has morphed into a war president. We are trapped in endless war.

To break out of this death trap, peace activists have turned to radical tactics. They’ve moved beyond demonstrations and petitions into direct action, defying the government’s laws and impeding its capacity for mass murder. Some of them have become domestic insurgents, helping soldiers to desert, destroying computer systems, trashing recruiting offices, burning military equipment, and sabotaging defense contractors. As criminals for peace, they are defying the Patriot Act and working underground in secret cells to undermine the US military empire. They are convinced the only way to bring peace now is to bring the system down.

They tell their first-person experiences in a new book, Radical Peace: People Refusing War, just published by Trine Day. Noam Chomsky called it, “A book that captures such complexities and depths of human existence, even apart from the immediate message.”

The book profiles several saboteurs. Trucker is the code name of a man who burns military vehicles. He sees his sabotage as nonviolent because it doesn’t harm human beings, only things. He states, “It’s only because our culture worships property that we see destroying war machines as violence. What I’m doing is depriving the military of their tools of violence. I’m decreasing their ability to harm people. Since they refuse to disarm, I’m doing it for them. I’d never set fire to a building because someone might be inside. I even look inside the trucks to make sure no one is sleeping there.”

RADICAL PEACE also profiles a janitor who has destroyed computers at a defense contractor with electrical surges. “I’m sure the lost work and equipment has set back the war effort,” he states, “and I’m looking forward to my next surge for peace.”

A college student relates how she threw a rock through the window of an army recruiter after her friend returned from Iraq crippled. She plans to do it again but says, “I wouldn’t throw a rock at the recruiter. I don’t have anything against him as a person.”

Other domestic insurgents are cutting phone and electricity wires into recruiting offices, slashing their tires, painting over their billboards. At universities they are attacking military research projects and ROTC offices: stealing their mail, squirting glue into their door locks, hacking into their computers. An autonome tossed a log under the wheels of an arms train and derailed it, but he was careful to do it in the middle of the train so no one would be injured.

The saboteurs in the book agree that such resistance must be nonviolent, that it not injure living creatures. Setting bombs and burning buildings where people could be inside can’t achieve anything worthwhile. It just reproduces the same mentality that we’re trying to change.

Rather than randomly smashing windows and torching autos, they restrict their activities to institutions that support or profit from the war. Their goal is to make the war too expensive to continue. A few acts of sabotage won’t do that, but thousands can. Government and corporate resources are limited. Taxes and the deficit are already so high that they’re crippling the economy. Every dollar the government has to spend keeping things running here is one they can’t spend killing people overseas.

The militants believe that direct actions like these aren’t a substitute for traditional organizing, but in critical situations like the present they can supplement it. Sabotage won’t build a new society, but it can help weaken the old one so the new one can be built.

-###-

Chapters of RADICAL PEACE are posted on the publisher’s website athttp://media.trineday.com/radicalpeace.

William T. Hathaway’s other books include A World of Hurt (Rinehart Foundation Award), CD-Ring, and Summer Snow. He is an adjunct professor of American studies at the University of Oldenburg in Germany. A selection of his writing is available at www.peacewriter.org.

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