Ask Not What Occupy Can Do For You…
Via Open University of the Left:
With more than 1,400 Occupy sites in the U.S., the success of Occupiers as a social movement and as a force for challenging austerity on the ground — supporting labor union struggles, reversing home foreclosures, opposing deportations, and raising awareness of education cuts and college loans — has raised the inescapable question of “which way forward?”
Mainstream and independent media have been quick to offer the Occupy movement an endless stream of advice. Yet, even when offered with the best intentions, much of this counsel is misguided.
OUL welcomes a panel of Chicago Occupiers to demystify the actions and experience of this creative and vital movement; demonstrate that the movement remains most connected to the needs of its immediate communities, rather then external guidance; and discuss the ways in which Occupy remains open to all levels of commitment by individuals and communities, as these panelists will introduce and outline. Participants were: Joe Macare, Brit Schulte, Rachael Perrotta and Natalie Wahlberg.
The “99% Spring”: Co-Opting Occupy or Helping Spread its Message?
Jake Olzen writes on Alternet:
Next month, activists and organizers across the country are planning to train 100,000 people in nonviolent direct action for what they call The 99% Spring. But despite borrowing one or two of the Occupy movement’s favorite slogans, The 99% Spring hasn’t been called for by any general assembly.
Rather, this massive and controversial effort is coming from the institutional left — a diverse coalition of labor unions, environmental and economic justice groups, community organizations and trainers’ alliances. While some celebrate what appears to be a mainstreaming of resistance thanks to Occupy, others are crying co-option.
“This spring we rise!” write 99% Spring organizers in a letter to “America.” “We will reshape our country with our own hands and feet, bodies and hearts. We will take non-violent action in the spirit of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Gandhi to forge a new destiny one block, one neighborhood, one city, one…
Tempus Omnia Vincit
Charles II, known as El Hechizado ("The Hexed")
“Time Conquers All”, in Latin. A pithy little meditation on the transience of this vale of tears, paradoxically immortalized by being phrased in a dead language.
My pal Pete found it written on the bottom of a half empty beer can around closing time at the local beer garden, as we basked in Wisconsin’s recent and unusually mild late March weather. Or rather, I suggested he’d find it there.
I told him it was the lucky password the bar’s owner had written on the bottom of a randomly selected can as part of a free promotional giveaway contest. Turns out in actuality there was only an expiration date written there. And by the time he’d flipped the can over to read, it was completely emptied. Mostly onto Pete himself.
I laughed, but the barkeep seemed a little annoyed, as some of the beer had spilled on…
Police Violence Against Occupy the Midwest
Image via Twitter @OccupiersFilm
Natalie W writes at Diatribe Media:
An Open Letter To The St. Louis Mayor, Chief of Police, and Media
Dear Mayor Slay and Chief Isom,
My name is Natalie and I’m a member of Occupy Chicago. Please know that I only speak for myself and am not claiming to represent the opinions of Occupy Chicago or any other Occupations. I am however a sister in the global revolution of citizens united to restore power to the people and remove corporate influence over the state, among other initiatives.
On Thursday, March 15, 2012, I watched a livestream feed of Occupy the Midwest and saw my Occupy family was smashed with cold police batons as they attempted to comply with illogical regulation of public land, the space specifically bought and maintained with public dollars. Simply, I watched the footage of senseless violence wrought against as they crossed the street, attempting to obey police…
Go Left, The Season Has Changed: Time for an OWS Spring Offensive
For years, in the last century, when I was in School and learning about the early days of journalism, we were taught that author Horace Greeley who founded the New York Herald Tribune, was famous for saying, “Go West Young Man And Grow Up With The Country.”
One problem, as we learned recently, he didn’t coin the phrase but only popularized it. (Another media mistake involving a top dog in the media!) Indiana newspaper writer John Soule actually gave the advice in 1851 and, it would serve as the mantra for 19th century “action” in the form of Westward migration.
These days, those good and the great men and women who won their struggle stripes in the civil rights and anti-Vietnam war movements have a new mantra for action.
Some, who recently appeared at New York’s annual Left Forum, were sharing it with younger people, “Go Left.”
They would probably agree with Mitt Romney…
NYPD Scanning The Irises Of Arrested Occupy Protesters
There’s no law requiring an iris scan if the police cuff you — it’s just “policy.” From the Village Voice:
But protesters and their legal advisers were surprised yesterday to learn that the size of their bail was being affected by whether defendants were willing to have the distinctive patterns of their irises photographed and logged into a database.
The idea of the state collecting distinctive biometric information from people who haven’t even been charged with a crime yet, much less convicted of one, makes civil libertarians nervous. Unlike fingerprints, no law was ever passed to require iris photographs — it’s just a policy.
Matt Taibbi: Bank of America is a “Raging Hurricane of Theft and Fraud”
Via F The Banks:
Matt Taibbi speaking at an Occupy Wall Street day of action, February 29th, 2012. He wrote this article for OWS, and passed it out to the crowd. It’s an informative and urgent call to action for Americans from all walks of life. We are happy to be the first to publish it.
There are two things every American needs to know about Bank of America.
The first is that it’s corrupt. This bank has systematically defrauded almost everyone with whom it has a significant business relationship, cheating investors, insurers, homeowners, shareholders, depositors, and the state. It is a giant, raging hurricane of theft and fraud, spinning its way through America and leaving a massive trail of wiped-out retirees and foreclosed-upon families in its wake.
The second is that all of us, as taxpayers, are keeping that hurricane raging. Bank of America is not just a private company that systematically steals…
Constitutional Amendment Proposals That OccupyWallStreet Should Consider
Our current constitution which was written during the summer of 1787 and implemented in 1789 needs, at the very least, to be updated and written in simple and clear words that empower today’s citizen. Much of our current constitution deals with matters that are no longer relevant, such as the embarrassing references to any slave as being counted as 3/5 of a person.
Before I propose my Twenty-Eighth Amendment which simplifies and revises Article V of our current Constitution, I will print Article V immediately below, so that you can be reminded of its tortuous, vague, and confusing words:
The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as part…
Occupy or Just Some Guy? Occupy Philly Opposes July 4th “Occupy” Convention
Daniel Denvir writes in the Philadelphia City Paper:
“We do not support the 99% Declaration, its group, its website, its National GA and anything else associated with it,” Occupy Philly voted in December.
Recent articles in the Associated Press and NPR nonetheless falsely stated that the Declaration is “affiliated” with Occupy Wall Street. OWS says “the 99% Declaration and its call for a national general assembly in Philadelphia in July is not affiliated with or endorsed by Occupy Wall Street, and the organizers’ plans blatantly contradict OWS’ stated principles.”
The origins of the 99% Declaration, which will “elect” two delegates from all US states and territories to draft a “petition for a redress of grievances” and then run candidates against politicians who don’t support it, are strange ones: the lawyer who is organizing this conference, Michael Pollok, represented two dozen liberal arts students arrested during an Occupy march across the Brooklyn Bridge. He…
Direct Action In Action: Occupy Piccolo
Aaron Cynic writes at Diatribe Media:
A group of parents, students, teachers and activists occupied an elementary school in Chicago over the weekend to protest what the city calls a “turnaround,” which would shake up the staff and put the school under the authority of the Academy for Urban School Leadership, a private organization opponents say fails to produce results. Parents of students at Piccolo Elementary School in Chicago’s Humboldt Park neighborhood voted overwhelmingly against the proposed turnaround measures and developed a counter proposal, but their voices were ignored by City and Chicago Public Schools officials.
About 15 people stayed inside the school, while more than 100 helped to set up tents out front to show solidarity. Despite the cold, a few dozen stayed in shifts throughout the night, and well more than 100 supporters came back the next day to show their solidarity. Despite being denied food and in one person’s case,…
Anonymous Attacks Chris Hedges Online Panel Discussion
Illustration: FFox
Via Infoshop News:
On Wednesday, February 15, we launched several concurrent denial of service attacks against a website hosting an online panel discussion entitled “Occupying Beyond Divisions: Anarchy, Black Blocs and Protests” with Chris Hedges. After initially only creating a few minor disruptions, it was during the second half of the talk that we were finally successful in taking down the entire website, which remained offline further into the night.
We carried out this action because we regard this sort of institutionalized dialogue with the bourgeoisie’s hatemongering journalists about the nature of revolutionary violence to be a worthless diversion for any movement striving for the complete liberation of the oppressed. Having abandoned all pretensions of providing the public with socially responsible criticism, the once distinguished men and women of letters have reduced themselves to hacks: mechanically churning out one article after another in sycophantic defense of their corporate sponsors. While journalists…
The Movement To Teach The Economy What It Is Doing
In an essay penned over a decade ago titled “In Distrust of Movements”, farmer, author, and critic Wendell Berry beautifully summed up the nature of and need for an Occupy movement. Via the irrisistible fleet of bicycles:
One way we could describe the task ahead of us is by saying that we need to enlarge the consciousness and the conscience of the economy. Our economy needs to know — and care — what it is doing. This is revolutionary, of course, if you have a taste for revolution, but it is also a matter of common sense.
People in movements…often become too specialized, as if finally they cannot help taking refuge in the pinhole vision of the institutional intellectuals. They almost always fail to be radical enough, dealing finally in effects rather than causes. Or they deal with single issues or single solutions, as if to assure themselves that they will not…
Student Protests For A New Society In Chile
Al Jazeera’s Fault Lines visits Chile to look at the student uprisings that have been going on for months. Students have taken over and occupied schools and universities — in opposition to the prohibitively expensive, poor-quality education system and politicians who say that their main priority is to provide “certainty for investors”. Does Chile’s extremely privatized, class-segregated education system provide a warning of where the United States could be headed?
The A-Z Of Occupation
Every social movement I have been involved with, or covered as a journalist, develops its own language of liberation, its own alphabet, and its own buzzwords, rhetoric and discourse.
Here are some of the key words I heard/retained in covering the Occupy Wall Street movement. I am sure there are many words, phrases, and slogans I overlooked, never heard or forgot. Send your favorites to: dissector@mediachannel.org.
These are words that power a struggle and speak to the internal processes that attracted so many to take part, as well as the issues that drive it and the obstacles that face it. They are some of the phrases, terms, sayings and expressions that the occupiers use in their conversations to define themselves and discuss their mission.
A. Adbusters, Anarchy, Arrest, Activist, Action, Anger, Angry, Atrium, Assembly (Freedom of,) Arab Spring, Autonomy, Anonymous. All Night, All Week, Austerity, Autumn Awakening.
B. Bloomberg, Billionaire, Banker, Bank Transfer, Bankster,…
D17: Protests Mark The Third Anniversary of OccupyWallStreet Movement Puts On A “Why I Occupy” Show in Times Square
Saturday marked the third month anniversary of Occupy Wall Street. It was also Bradley Manning’s Birthday. It was one of those days that confirmed the validity of the chant: “All Day, All Week, Occupy Wall Street”.
Ok, maybe, it wasn’t a whole week but Saturday felt like a week in one day. The plan for the day, as announced, was to gather at Duarte Park at 6th Avenue and Canal Street to attempt a RE-Occupation of vacant land owned by Trinity Church, more of a real estate company than a house of worship.
For a few weeks, the Occupy Movement had been demanding that the church allow the movement to take “sanctuary” on that land. There were earlier protests and even a hunger strike that made page one of the New York Times. Police in riot gear had ousted the occupiers the last time they tried to take over the space a…
Occupy Wukan? or A Chinese Spring
The village of Wukan in Guangdong province has staged a massive protest over local officials seizing land without compensation for development projects. This type of issue has been sticky in China for quite some time, similar to eminent domain in the U.S. but without much recourse or a court to appeal to. Here is a video posted on YouTube, its in Mandarin but the images are worth it:
The Financial Times also has a decent article and video.
Nation’s Worst Mayor, Oakland Mayor Jean Quan, Has Disabled Her Facebook Page
Because there is nothing better than a politician who can’t take the heat. Hey internets, why not make her leave Twitter too. Or better yet resign.
Worker-Owners of America, Unite!
Gar Alperovitz chimes in on the re-evolutionary convergence of capitalism and socialism into a hybrid paradigm in a recent article in the NY Times:
The Occupy Wall Street protests have come and mostly gone, and whether they continue to have an impact or not, they have brought an astounding fact to the public’s attention: a mere 1 percent of Americans own just under half of the country’s financial assets and other investments. America, it would seem, is less equitable than ever, thanks to our no-holds-barred capitalist system.
But at another level, something different has been quietly brewing in recent decades: more and more Americans are involved in co-ops, worker-owned companies and other alternatives to the traditional capitalist model. We may, in fact, be moving toward a hybrid system, something different from both traditional capitalism and socialism, without anyone even noticing.
Some 130 million Americans, for example, now participate in the ownership of co-op businesses…
OccupyWallStreet Economics
Photo: David Shankbone (CC)
J. D. Suss writes on Stories, Essays, Detritus:
Economics 101 teaches that the quantity of a product or service is determined by the demand, which is reflected by its price and is a function of its quality.
The Occupy Wall Street (OWS) Movement might be deconstructed using this same analysis:
The number and size of Occupations worldwide can be determined by the demand, reflected by the price we pay for sympathizing and participating—a direct result of discerning the quality of the values it promotes.
The individual making such a discernment wants an assurance of its quality before committing to the OWS Movement. He or she does not want to be bamboozled by some phony color revolution sponsored by a hidden power elite, or a false flag operation carried out by its governmental minions. An individual requires a solid basis upon which to make a reasoned choice that this Movement is in…
