false dichotomy by charles davis

Replace 'Iran' with 'Israel'

2012-01-23T14:09:00.003-05:00

That's a tweet sent Monday from the official account of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, noteworthy not only for its cocksure hypocrisy -- it's Israel that continues to produce nukes without so much as a strongly worded email from the alleged international community -- but for its casually bold new charge against the Islamic Republic of Iran: that it not only desires a nuclear weapon, but is already busy making them.

Coincidentally, Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports today:

"The intelligence assessment Israeli officials will present later this week to [top U.S. general Martin] Dempsey indicates that Iran has not yet decided whether to make a nuclear bomb."

Someone ought to send that there assessment on over to the prime minister's office.

'A Decade in the Purgatory Called Guantanamo'

2012-01-12T12:53:00.001-05:00

My report for Inter Press Service on the 10th anniversary of the opening of Guantanamo Bay.

Close Guantanamo, Abolish Authority

2012-01-11T13:35:00.003-05:00

Check out more pictures here from the rally marking the 10th Anniversary of the opening of the prison at Guantanamo Bay.

Obama's Pentagon Strategy: A Leaner, More Efficient Empire

2012-01-06T15:09:00.001-05:00

By Charles Davis and Medea Benjamin

In an age when U.S. power can be projected through private mercenary armies and unmanned Predator drones, the U.S. military need no longer rely on massive, conventional ground forces to pursue its imperial agenda, a fact President Barack Obama is now acknowledging. But make no mistake: while the tactics may be changing, the U.S. taxpayer – and poor foreigners abroad – will still be saddled with overblown military budgets and militaristic policies.

Speaking January 5 alongside his Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, the president announced a shift in strategy for the American military, one that emphasizes aerial campaigns and proxy wars as opposed to “long-term nation-building with large military footprints.” This, to some pundits and politicians, is considered a tectonic shift.

Indeed, the way some on the left tell it, the strategy marks a radical departure from the imperial status quo. “Obama just repudiated the past decade of forever war policy,” gushed Rolling Stone reporter Michael Hastings, calling the new strategy a “[s]lap in the face to the generals.”

Conservative hawks, meanwhile, predictably declared that the sky is falling. “This is a lead from behind strategy for a left-behind America,” cried hyperventilating California Republican Buck McKeon, chairman the House Armed Services Committee. “This strategy ensures American decline in exchange for more failed domestic programs.” In McKeon’s world, feeding the war machine is preferable to feeding poor people.

Unfortunately, though, rather than renouncing empire and endless war, Obama's stated strategy for the military going forward just reaffirms the U.S. commitment to both. Rather than renouncing the last decade of war, it states that the bloody and disastrous occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan – gently termed “extended operations” – were pursued “to bring stability to those countries.”

And Leon Panetta assured the American public that even with the changes, the U.S. would still be able to fight two major wars at the same time—and win. And Obama assured America's military contractors and coffin makers that their lifeline – U.S. taxpayers' money – would still be funneled their way in obscene bucket loads.

“Over the next 10 years, the growth in the defense budget will slow,” the president told reporters, “but the fact of the matter is this: It will still grow.” In fact, he added with a touch of pride, it “will still be larger than it was toward the end of the Bush administration,” totaling more than $700 billion a year and accounting for about half of the average American's income tax. So much for the Pentagon's budget being slashed – like we were promised – the way lawmakers are trying to cut those “failed domestic programs.”

The U.S. could cut its military spending in half tomorrow and still spend more than three times as much as its next nearest rival, China. That’s because China, instead of waging wars of choice around the world, prefers projecting its might by investing in its own country. On the other hand, the U.S. under the leadership of Obama is beefing up its military presence in China's backyard, more interested in projecting its dwindling power than rebuilding its economy.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower once noted that every dollar going to the military is a dollar that can't be used to provide food and shelter for those in need. Today’s obscene amount of military spending isn't necessary if the administration wished to pursue the quaint goal of simply defending the country from invasion. Maintaining “the best-trained, best-equipped military in history,” as Obama says is his goal? That's a different story – for a different purpose. Indeed, as Madeline Albright observed, possessing that kind of military might is no fun if you don't get to use it, as Obama has with gusto in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya and Uganda.

The truth is that the Obama administration's “new” strategy is more of the same—a reaffirmation of the U.S. government's commitment to militarism for the all the usual reasons: to promote American hegemony and, by extension, the interests of politically connected capital. And U.S. officials aren't shy about that.

Indeed, throughout the strategy document the ostensible purpose for having a military -- to provide national security -- repeatedly takes a backseat to promoting the economic interests of the U.S. elite that profits from empire. Repositioning U.S. forces “toward the Asia-Pacific region,” for instance – including the stationing of American soldiers in that hotbed of violent extremism, Australia – is cast not just as a means of ensuring peace and stability, but guaranteeing “the free flow of commerce.” Maintaining a global empire of bases from Europe to Okinawa isn't necessary for self-defense, but according to Obama, ensuring – with guns – “the prosperity that flows from an open and free international economic system.”

Of course, that economic considerations shape U.S. foreign policy is nothing new. More than 25 years ago, President Jimmy Carter – that Jimmy Carter – declared in a State of the Union address that U.S. military force would be employed in the Persian Gulf, not for the cause of peace, freedom and apple pie, but to ensure “the free movement of Middle East oil.” And so it goes.

Far from affecting change, Obama is ensuring continuity. “U.S. policy will emphasize Gulf security,” states his new military strategy, in order to “prevent Iran's development of a nuclear weapon capability and counter its destabilizing policies” — as if it's Iran that has been destabilizing the region. And as Obama publicly proclaims his support for “political and economic reform” in the Middle East, just like every other U.S. president he not-so-privately backs their oppressors from Bahrain to Yemen and signs off on the biggest weapons deal in history to that bastion of democracy, Saudi Arabia.

Obama can talk all he wants about turning the page on a decade of war and occupation, but so long as he continues to fight wars and military occupy countries on the other side of the globe, talk is all it is. The facts, sadly, are this: since taking office Obama doubled the number of troops in Afghanistan; he fought to extend the U.S. occupation in Iraq– and partially succeeded; he dramatically expanded the use of killer drones from Pakistan to Somalia; and he requested military budgets that would make George W. Bush blush. If you want to see what his military strategy really is, forget what's said at press conferences and in turgidly written Pentagon press releases. Just look at the record.

Charles Davis has covered Capitol Hill for public radio and the international news wire Inter Press Service. More of his work may be found on his website.

Medea Benjamin is cofounder of CODEPINK: Women for Peace and Global Exchange.

Love me, I'm a liberal

2012-01-04T08:08:00.000-05:00

(via Nathan Fuller)

Come at me, bro

2011-12-28T14:55:00.005-05:00

In a March 2010 address before the American Society of International Law, Harold Koh, the U.S. State Department's top legal rationalizer, explained why Barack Obama believes he is entitled to kill anyone in the world he chooses.

"[T]he United States is in an armed conflict with al-Qaeda, as well as the Taliban and associated forces, in response to the horrific 9/11 attacks, and may use force consistent with its inherent right to self-defense under international law," Koh patiently explained. And that right enables the U.S. government to carry out anywhere in the world “lethal operations conducted with the use of unmanned aerial vehicles.”

So drones, according to Koh, are essentially the U.S. government's industrial-strenght pepper spray, the inhabitants of the rest of the world its swarthy would-be rapists. Yeah . . . about that, courtesy The Washington Post:

Somalia, where the militant group al-Shabab is based, is surrounded by American drone installations. And officials said that JSOC has repeatedly lobbied for authority to strike al-Shabab training camps that have attracted some Somali Americans.

But the administration has allowed only a handful of strikes, out of concern that a broader campaign could turn al-Shabab from a regional menace into an adversary determined to carry out attacks on U.S. soil.

As it turns out, firing missiles at poor foreigners from unmanned killing machines has nothing to do with Defending America, U.S. officials readily conceding that al-Shabab is but a "regional menace." But firing missiles at poor foreigners from unmanned killing machines could cause said foreigners to strike back, meaning -- god this is good -- that in the future there may actually be something to the U.S.'s claims to be acting in self-defense, albeit only to counter a threat it created.

"Sweet," says every military contractor and general in Washington.

It's a good thing there isn't the same threat of blowback from the U.S. government's broad campaign of drone warfare in Pakistan or Afghanistan, otherwise we might be in trouble!

Occupy North Pole

2011-12-24T14:22:00.001-05:00

Institutional racism: The sine qua non of ethnic cleansing

2011-12-23T12:11:00.000-05:00

"So, if the underlying sine qua non for any acceptable policy proposal is the long-term preservation of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people . . . ."

And if it isn't?

HOLIDAY BONUS: It sure takes a lot of chutzpah to include the following in a piece that calls for ethnically cleansing Palestinians from the West Bank:

This leads to the second element of the proposal: The grave ethnic discrimination against the Palestinians resident in the Arab world where, as I recently pointed out, severe restrictions are imposed on their freedom of movement, employment and property ownership.

But most significant, they – and they alone – are denied citizenship of the countries in which they have lived for decades.

Palestinians overwhelmingly want to acquire citizenship of the countries of their long-standing residence, opinion surveys indicate.

'Israeli drones save lives'

2011-12-18T16:55:00.001-05:00

A couple weeks ago the editors at The Washington Post did something rather out of character: they published a piece by reporter Scott Wilson on the impact Israeli drones have had on the residents of Gaza, noting the hundreds of civilians killed in the past few years and detailing the way it has impacted every aspect of daily life -- you may not want to go over to a friend's house if there's something hovering outside armed with missiles and programmed to eliminate anybody wearing a keffiyeh. Obviously, this is outrageous. Clearly. This is the Post we're talking about: its Pulitzer Prize-winning team of journalists is supposed to be focusing on the quiet, turgid courage of those pulling the trigger, not on the torments of the targeted.

Dan Arbell, deputy chief of mission for the Israeli embassy in Washington, agrees. In a letter to the editor, he writes:

Oddly, The Post devoted a massive front-page headline and two full pages of print not to the tens of thousands of terrorist rockets aimed at Israeli neighborhoods or to the rapidly nuclearizing Iranian regime that routinely threatens to wipe Israel off the map but to Israeli drones over the Gaza Strip.

More inexplicably still, most of the article deals with the drones’ impact on Gaza residents while mentioning only in passing the trauma and devastation wrought by the more than 13,000 rockets and mortars fired at millions of Israeli civilians since 2000. Not one of these Israeli victims was interviewed for the article — in contrast to the numerous quotes from Palestinians — nor was any Israeli government source cited. Rather, the article relies solely on the infamously biased Palestinian Center for Human Rights.

Israeli drones save lives. They protect Israelis from terrorist attacks and reduce the need for large-scale ground operations in Gaza. This fact, too, was overlooked in an article that failed to meet Post standards.

Dan Arbell, Washington
The writer is deputy chief of mission for the Embassy of Israel.

Dude's right about the "standards" thing.

Bradley Manning and the American empire

2011-12-16T14:50:00.002-05:00

My first of what I'm hoping will be a regular bi-weekly column is now up over at Al Jazeera. Read it. Tweet it. Love it.

So free yourself

2011-12-16T07:00:00.000-05:00

I could keep you all for myself
I know you gotta be free
So free yourself
I could keep you all to myself
I know you gotta be free
To kill yourself

Never forget

2011-12-15T08:00:00.000-05:00

Never forget that the war in Iraq and the ensuing occupation, which isn't really ending no matter what the president says, were horrific crimes against humanity -- that hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women and children died horrific, violent deaths because the Washington establishment chose to exploit the horrific, violent deaths of 3,000 Americans in order to carry out a horrific, long-planned "shock and awe" invasion of a country that had nothing to do with it. Anyone who supported that war and hasn't spent the last eight years begging forgiveness should be treated as a pariah, their lives made miserable as every day they are loudly and impolitely reminded that they have the blood of countless innocents on their hands.

It's often said -- by assholes -- that other cultures not lucky enough to be considered a part of the enlightened "West" do not value human life as much as those of us who, through the accident of birth, ended up being raised in the land of hormone-infused milk and tainted honey. But, you know: Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Grenada, Panama, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq again, Yemen, Somalia...

That's the macro level. Here's the micro version courtesy of the New York Times and one of its reporters who found a trove of U.S. military documents in an Iraqi garbage dump detailing an investigation into the 2005 Haditha massacre, in which more than 20 civilians -- including babies and grandmothers -- were coldly and calculatingly murdered by U.S. troops. One might be as struck as I at the, dare I say, almost oriental manner in which American soldiers and their commanders deal with human life. And, like me, one might tremble with rage at the regrettably startling fact that none of the top-level fucks responsible for the Iraq war has to worry about anything more than where their next six-digit speakers' fee will come from:

Iraqi civilians were being killed all the time. Maj. Gen. Steve Johnson, the commander of American forces in Anbar Province, in his own testimony, described it as “a cost of doing business.

The stress of combat left some soldiers paralyzed, the testimony shows. Troops, traumatized by the rising violence and feeling constantly under siege, grew increasingly twitchy, killing more and more civilians in accidental encounters. Others became so desensitized and inured to the killing that they fired on Iraqi civilians deliberately while their fellow soldiers snapped pictures, and were court-martialed. The bodies piled up at a time when the war had gone horribly wrong.

#####

“When a car doesn’t stop, it crosses the trigger line, Marines engage and, yes, sir, there are people inside the car that are killed that have nothing to do with it,” Sgt Maj. Edward T. Sax, the battalion’s senior noncommissioned officer, testified.
He added: “I had Marines shoot children in cars and deal with the Marines individually one on one about it because they have a hard time dealing with that.”

#####

When the initial reports arrived saying that more than 20 civilians had been killed in Haditha, the Marines receiving them said they were not surprised by the high civilian death toll.

Chief Warrant Officer K. R. Norwood, who received reports from the field on the day of the events at Haditha and briefed commanders on them, testified that 20 dead civilians was not unusual.

“I meant, it wasn’t remarkable, based off of the area I wouldn’t say remarkable, sir,” Mr. Norwood said. “And that is just my definition. Not that I think one life is not remarkable, it’s just —”

An investigator asked the officer: “I mean remarkable or noteworthy in terms of something that would have caught your attention where you would have immediately said, ‘Got to have more information on that. That is a lot of casualties.’ "

“Not at the time, sir,” the officer testified.

General Johnson, the commander of American forces in Anbar Province, said he did not feel compelled to go back and examine the events because they were part of a continuing pattern of civilian deaths.

“It happened all the time, not necessarily in MNF-West all the time, but throughout the whole country,” General Johnson testified, using a military acronym for coalition forces in western Iraq.

Given that the same establishment that backed the Iraq war remains in power today -- please, don't be fooled by nominal party affiliations -- chances are it will happen again. And again.

K Street is scared

2011-12-06T12:21:00.001-05:00

Someone forwarded me an email that is apparently being circulated to lobbying firms on K Street. It's long, so I've pasted it after the jump:

Washington, DC is now becoming a focus point for Occupy-related protests now that other cities have cracked down on the tent cities and the criminal mischief associated with the Occupy movement. Other than frigid Boston, Washington is the only City that continues to allow the Occupy tent cities to continue without disruption.

We received a most interesting briefing this morning from law enforcement regarding a series of significant protests that are planned for Washington next week. I will not mention their names or agency because I appreciate their candor, if not their message. At present there is a week of activities that are being spearheaded by the Service Employees International Union ("SEIU"), the AFL-CIO, the Occupy movement, and other left-wing organizations. It is expected that there will be people bussed in from around the country and the event ("Take Back the Capital") is all over the internet. The unions are usually capable of turning out a sizable crowd when they put their minds to it, and this is intended to be a big event. They begin arriving on Monday.

Here is their agenda for the week that is being advertised on the Internet:

* Monday, December 5 - Set up the People's Camp. After checking in, pitching tents, and creating signs and banners, an orientation, dinner, and entertainment will be hosted by OurDC, a local organization of unemployed and underemployed 99%-ers.

* Tuesday, December 6 - Take Back the People's House. From the People's Action Center, we'll form groups and fan out to congressional offices, remind members of Congress that the Capitol is the People's House, and demand that they represent the 99%.

* Wednesday, December 7- "Make Wall Street Pay." We'll swarm K Street, the lobbying center for the world's most powerful corporations, and track down those responsible for crashing the economy and causing millions of 99%ers to lose their jobs and homes-while failing to pay their fair share of taxes.

* Thursday, December 8 - Demand Justice for the 99%. The day's events will include multiple speak-outs throughout the Capitol, a national prayer vigil with unemployed folks and faith leaders, a mass march on key congressional leaders, and a lively jubilee action.

* Friday, December 9 - Take It Home. We'll pack it up and head home, where we need to keep the pressure on our representatives in Congress to do right by the 99%.

The key day is Wednesday, December 7th when the group plans to "swarm" from K Street 14th Street to 22nd Street throughout the day. They intend to enter the buildings (and possibly the tenant spaces) of buildings containing lobbying firms, law firms which lobby or represent corporate interests, Buildings housing healthcare tenants, oil tenants, insurance tenants, bank tenants, or drug company tenants would also be targets of this group. In other words, just about every building on K Street is a potential target. Further, I would not rely on the logistics parameters supplied by the protest organizers. If you have a building with tenants in the target groups anywhere in the City, I would take the same precautions that we are suggesting for the K street buildings. In fact, regardless of your tenant base, if your facility is in the vicinity of the protesters, they may enter your building if they cannot get into their buildings of choice and you present an easier target.

Area CEOs of target companies, or high profile lobbyists, should not be surprised to have protestors show up at their homes in large numbers. That is a favorite tactic of some of the unions that are participating in this event.

Protective Measures: The police have made it clear that their goal is to avoid taking action that will get them sued, even if it means letting the protestors disrupt K Street for the day, and even if building lobbies are invaded by chanting protestors. If things are being broken, and the police actually see the person doing the breaking, an arrest may be made. Otherwise, the protestors in your lobby will be told to leave within a certain period of time, they will be given three warnings during that period of time, and when the time expires, they will be told that they are now subject to arrest if they don't leave. However, that doesn't mean that any arrests will actually take place unless a top official gives the green light. The hope is that the protestors will eventually leave on their own, even if your tenants are virtual captives until that happens. I will let you, the readers, form their own opinion on the adequacy of the police department's tactical plan for protecting your private property and your tenants.

1) Based on that information, we recommend that property managers contact their access control companies as soon as possible to arrange to have buildings go into lockdown status earlier in the day (possibly 3 PM) as early as Monday and leave the building in lockdown status all day on Wednesday. That early lockdown could remain in place through Friday. There is no guarantee that some of the demonstrators will not jump the gun and conduct their own rogue operations prior to, or after, Wednesday, but they tend to do these things late in the afternoon. Your security/concierge/building staff should also be prepared to lock your doors on very short notice if protesters are in the vicinity.

2) If your elevators are equipped with card readers or key fobs, we also recommend that the elevators be locked down for the entire week and that all visitors be confirmed by the tenants and/or met in the lobby and escorted upstairs by a tenant representative. These protest groups are known to have protestors dress in business attire in order to get into building lobbies and onto tenant floors. An elevator lockdown would keep them from being able to get onto tenant floors if they do manage to get inside the building.

3) Parking garages can be a point of serious vulnerability because protestors can run down to lower levels, enter the building which may have locked its front doors, and make their way to the lobby from the lower levels. Monday would be a good day to conduct an assessment of the garage vulnerability issue.

4) The concerns applicable to garages also apply to loading docks. Wednesday may be a good day to keep the doors closed as much as possible and to take whatever measures your building may have at its disposal to limit entry to the lobby area from the loading dock area.

Please contact us if we can assist you with these issues.

On Thursday, a mass march is scheduled to Capitol Hill. It is expected that many of the visiting people will be staying at, or meeting at, McPherson Square and Freedom Plaza. The Thursday march will probably move down Pennsylvania Avenue in order to capture the optics of the crowd moving towards the Capitol. That means every commercial office building on Pennsylvania Avenue must be prepared for the same antics as the K Street buildings on Wednesday. If any alternative routes are announced we will get them to you.

The protestors have announced that they will pitch tents on the National Mall and other downtown parks. The Interior Department has told them that they must leave the Mall at night and take the tents with them, but time will tell if that will be enforced. Police expect new tent cities to pop up during the week and they expect that many people will remain in the DC tent cities when the week of activities end. You can already see the growth of the camp site at McPherson Square since the New York and Philadelphia sites have been shut down.

Conclusion

The SEIU element that is involved in this event is a more radical group than the one that represents security officers and janitors in Washington. We are reaching out to the leadership of the 32BJ union that we negotiate with to see if they can reign in their brethren who are involved in organizing the healthcare industry, but they are two different groups. Additionally, there will be so many other different groups in the mix (AFL-CIO, anarchists, "student" activists, Occupy, and union rent-a-mobs, etc) that it will be difficult for anyone to guarantee good behavior by the entire group. When they invaded a lobby a couple of weeks ago at one DC office building, the security team and building staff was spat upon and physically threatened [ed. note: I was there. That didn't happen.]. I don't expect this group to be any more genteel. In fact, I expect the intimidation factor to be ratcheted up as events unfold. It will not take long for the protestors to realize that they are going to be allowed to walk virtually wherever they want to walk, block intersections at will, and cause a major disruption of commerce and movement downtown without threat of arrest unless they go far over the line of criminal conduct and begin destroying property and/or assaulting people within the direct vision of the police. Even then, the police response is likely to be restrained. Wednesday would be a very good day to work from home if that is an option. During much of the day, simply getting a car out of a garage on K Street and trying to travel is likely to be impossible. Downtown traffic is likely to be a mess all day if the protester crowds are of even modest size.

MPD intends to issue updates during the week through the Golden Triangle and Downtown Bids. We will also pass along additional relevant information as we learn it.

'The Democrats are not your friends'

2011-12-02T11:55:00.001-05:00

Salon.com: "Occupy DC distances from Democrats. Or does it?"

A young man named Charles Davis, 27, took to the floor and called out for the group’s attention. Davis told the occupiers he had ridden in an elevator with Rep. Luis Gutierrez of Illinois.

“And he joked that he is the 1 percent,” Davis hollered. Boos all around. “And he called us anarchists!”

“The Democrats are not your friends!”

The group cheered — but not as loudly as they had for Edwards. Davis’ message, meant to reinforce the theme of the night, seemed to fall flat in the excited aftermath of Edwards’ appearance.

*****

Edwards had somehow knocked the group off its message.

“She’s turning this into a campaign stop,” Davis said, after he addressed the group.

Occupy DC’s Action Committee had been at odds lately, he said, deciding two nights earlier to reverse a previous decision to join former Obama green jobs czar Van Jones’ group Rebuild the Dream, MoveOn.org, and SEIU in protests on the Mall. Occupy, the committee concluded, would run separate events.

*****

Davis worries that Occupy DC could become a subsidiary of the Democratic Party, much like the Tea Party was for Republicans.

“It’s been kind of a problem, especially here in D.C.,” he said. “People think the Democrats are their friends, and they’re kind of willingly being co-opted. A lot of the people involved in the Action Committee, for instance, are paid to elect Democrats.”

Such may be the nature of protest in the political city, where most everyone falls into one of two categories. Of course, there aren’t many Republicans living in D.C.’s two Occupy Wall Street encampments.

“I think it’s just the culture,” Davis said. “It’s maybe a little bit more politician-friendly than other Occupies around the country.”

A clarification: I, of course, am an anarchist. But when Democratic politicians use the word, they're using it as a thoughtless slur -- like "nihilist" or "commie" -- not because they think occupiers are just inspired by the works of Emma Goldman and Peter Kropotkin.

We're being heard, but who's listening?

2011-11-30T10:33:00.001-05:00

The concerns about co-option are being heard. But another concern still remains to be addressed: the fact that many of those hearing those concerns are the co-opters.

About two dozen people showed up at the Tuesday night meeting of the Occupy DC action committee, twice as many as were at the first one I attended a couple weeks ago, a sign that people are grasping how powerful the committee is -- it can still approve or reject actions without seeking any form of consensus at a general assembly -- and how important actions are in terms of defining the movement.

Overall, the meeting was positive: the same facilitator who announced at a general assembly earlier in the week that the committee had endorsed a series of actions sponsored and planned by the SEIU, MoveOn.org and Van Jones' Rebuild the Dream -- adjuncts of the Democratic Party all -- at the meeting sought consensus on instead doing an Occupy DC action that would explicitly be separate from those groups.

Conscious of appearances, the de facto leadership of the committee clarified that they hadn't intended to endorse the week of actions those groups are busing people into town for, but rather a single day of action on December 7. Consensus was quickly reached on the idea of doing a separate set of actions that day, with many people talking about specifically targeting Democrats and their allies on K Street as a way of making clear Occupy DC does not endorse the partisan, anti-GOP-only agenda for the week of protests asserted by SEIU President Mary Kay Henry.

Score one for the rabble rousers.

There was, however, some passive-aggressive hostility. One woman angrily spoke of how she didn't like "outsiders" coming in and spreading discord by raising fears about co-option. "Occupy DC can't be co-opted," she said, launching into a diatribe against the folks at the rival camp in Freedom Plaza, which isn't really part of the Occupy movement. We're the real People's Front of Judea. Yawn.

The same woman also spoke out against the need to do an event separate from the SEIU and MoveOn.org targeting the Democrats in particular. And when it came time to discuss an action targeting a $1,000-a-plate Democratic fundraiser this Thursday, she argued that it was unfair to hold the blue faction of the ruling establishment equally to blame as the red faction for the war and welfare for Wall Street status quo, going so far as to say "people will die" if the Democrats lose power.

*cough* Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia . . . *clears throat*

This being DC and all, you're bound to find people here who still believe in the comforting fairy tale of lesser evilism, who think that the problem isn't the institutions of power -- the authority a couple hundred folks in Washington have to start wars and imprison more than 2.3 million Americans -- but those who control them. However, this being DC and all, a higher percentage of these lesser evilers, as well as those who think the Democrats are actually doing ~~Obama's~~ god's work, have certain unique incentives to believe the things they do.

The woman who voiced concerns about protesting the Democratic fundraiser and criticized those damn dirty outsiders raising concerns about co-option? On Friday -- the day after that fundraiser -- she will be a featured "networking professional" at the Democratic GAIN Career Fair, "the place where progressive organizations, Democratic campaigns and consultants will be to collect resumes and talk about what they’ll be doing to help Democrats in 2012." That she would object to Occupy DC doing a day of action separate from the SEIU & Friends also makes a little more sense when you realize she works for the SEIU, a job she took after being a paid organizer for the Obama campaign.

This is a problem. Careerists with an incentive to pursue a Democratic agenda -- in addition to the aforementioned woman I saw the co-founder of the Democratic Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC) -- are weighing in on how, or even whether, to target the Democrats. They are weighing in on questions of whether Occupy DC should participate in events being put on by the organizations that employ them. And they're not disclosing their conflicts of interest.

There's a simple solution: require that disclosure. That's not too much ask. Indeed, Occupy Wall Street already has such a requirement:

We acknowledge the existence of professional activists who work to make our world a better place. If you are representing, or being compensated by an independent source while participating in our process, please disclose your affiliation at the outset.

One man who worked for the SEIU did just that. When commenting on the series of SEIU-planned actions, he gave us all a heads up: "Hey guys, just so you know I work for the SEIU." Cool, man. People who work for less-than-perfect organizations have a right to participate in the Occupy movement -- lord knows it's tough trying to find a good anarcho-vegan feminist collective to work for -- but the rest of us have a right to know if they work for the very organizations they are trying to get us to protest with. Or the groups we're actually protesting.

What do they have to hide?

Occupy DC partners with the SEIU and MoveOn.org

2011-11-28T21:56:00.001-05:00

The Democrats and their allies in the liberal establishment are trying to co-opt the Occupy movement. This isn't paranoia: it's what they do (see: the antiwar movement).

Van Jones, who served as “green jobs” czar in the Obama White House and says he'd like to see his former boss serve an illegal third term, openly talks of exploiting the movement for electoral purposes, likening it to the Tea Party. The SEIU has straight up stolen Occupy's language, labeling the same president who told Wall Street bankers that “I'm protecting you” the candidate of the 99 percent. MoveOn.org . . . well, MoveOn.org is doing what MoveOn.org always does: exploiting the movement to build its email list and pocket more money from idiot liberals who think evil Republicans are entirely to blame for the status quo.

Many people within the Occupy movement have expressed fears about this attempted co-option. It's particularly a problem here in Washington, DC, where people paid to elect Democrats are some of the most active participants at the McPherson Square camp. While I was out of town this past weekend, I'm told concerns about co-option and Democratic infiltration were voiced by several folks at this past Saturday's meeting of the action committee – a committee that includes employees of the SEIU's Washington lobbying office as well as the co-founder of the Democratic Progressive Change Campaign Committee.

But were those voices heard? At the Monday general assembly, members of the action committee – which in the name of Occupy DC as a whole can approve or reject actions without seeking any form of consensus from the camp as a whole – announced that they had some news for us. Oh boy: they had agreed to back an upcoming “national day of action” sponsored by none other than the SEIU, MoveOn.org and Van Jones' Rebuild the Dream. The last such "day of action" resulted in the SEIU/Occupy DC rally at the KeyBridge calling on "obstructionists in Congress" to boost infrastructure spending -- by passing Obama's jobs bill, of course.

Same shit, different day.

“Some people think these groups are trying to co-opt the Occupy movement,” acknowledged one member of the committee who I know agrees with that assessment but, for whatever reason, doesn't view that as a reason not to cooperate with them.

“I think we should be co-opting them,” said another member of the committee.

That the issue of co-option is even being acknowledged is, I suppose, progress. But more than anything necessarily nefarious, the decision to embrace the co-opters -- aided, one can assume, by the fact one of the SEIU organizers of the event is on the action committee -- suggests there is some serious naivete at the McPherson camp, or perhaps just on the committee. Just as with the Key Bridge protest, occupiers will not be co-opting a rally they have had no hand in planning. Rather, they will be helping these liberal groups further their preferred narratives about what the Occupy movement stands for. It is their press releases that lazy journalists and pundits across the country will be relying on when discussions "what this all means," not some occupier's clever sign. It is Van Jones who will be invited on CNN to talk about the movement's "next steps.

Participating with such openly partisan organizations can only taint the movement, seemingly confirming not entirely unfounded suspicions that Occupy Wall Street and the occupations around the country it has inspired are but patchouli-infused get-out-the-vote operations for the Democrats. And for what?

The last action with the SEIU at the Key Bridge was a flop. The only message most Washingtonians received was courtesy local news station WTOP: avoid the Key Bridge, commuters, traffic's going to be a mess out there. That and the implication that the Occupy movement is an arm of organized labor and the Democrats.

Groups like Rebuild the Dream and the SEIU need the Occupy movement much more than it needs them. These groups need the appearance of energy and grassroots authenticity th movement can lend them; the SEIU, after all, has to bus people in to chant "sí se puede" at its boring rallies. The Occupy movement, by contrast, has nothing to gain by working with these groups. Indeed, it only stands to lose by associating itself with adjuncts for the Democratic Party and their brand of establishment-friendly, wave-a-sign-from-the-sidewalk activism.

In the comments to my last piece about Occupy DC's action committee, someone from the camp downplayed my concerns about the liberal-heavy makeup of the committee and its infiltration by people paid to elect Democrats. "Since the Key Bridge action, Occupy has not done a horizontal action with SEIU," they wrote, "so I would suggest people get past that issue [co-option] until someone tries to partner Occupy DC with another SEIU action."

Can we admit there's a problem now? Enabling a small group of people on the action committee to endorse events in the name of Occupy DC as a whole isn't working; the best actions, such as the occupation of Franklin School, were carried out by activists who avoided it altogether, while the actions that have come out of it are at best a mixed bag. There's no reason a major action of this nature -- one that need not be shrouded in secrecy -- should not have been presented at a general assembly.

Maybe trying to reach 100 percent consensus is a bad idea -- I'd like to see a requirement that major actions be agreed to by 80 to 90 percent of those attending a general assembly -- but then so is outsourcing control over which actions are "official" Occupy DC events to a committee composed of but 1 percent of the movement.

UPDATE: From The Washington Post's Greg Sargent, who spoke with SEIU President Mary Kay Henry about the planned protest:

One goal of the protests, Henry says, is to pressure Republicans to support Obama’s jobs creation proposals.

*****

“The reason we’re targeting Republicans is because this is about jobs,” she said. “The Republicans’ insistence that no revenue can be put on the table is the reason we’re not creating jobs in this country. We want to draw a stark contrast between a party that wants to scapegoat immigrants, attack public workers, and protect the rich, versus a president who has been saying he wants America to get back to work and that everybody should pay their fair share.”

Born free

2011-11-28T12:29:00.001-05:00

Occupy the action committee

2011-11-26T10:17:00.000-05:00

I was confused. After standing around for three hours in solidarity during the occupation of Franklin School, here I was dining at the finest Indian buffet in the city surrounded by about a half-dozen comrades, all self-described socialists and anarchists whose disdain for the Democrats made me look like a closet Obamabot.

"What gives?" I wondered. After spending the last two weeks fairly disappointed with most of the major actions officially endorsed by Occupy DC -- protesting liberals' very boogeymen the Koch brothers, rallying with the pro-Obama SEIU at the Key Bridge -- I had figured the problem was the folks at McPherson Square as a whole. After all, consensus had to be reached before these big events could be proclaimed "official" Occupy events and the consensus was to focus on targets that fit the standard Democratic agenda. While I longed for a radical movement demanding systemic change, I was surrounded by meek liberals calling for incremental, establishment-friendly reform.

Sigh.

So what about the radicals I dined with -- were they just not attending the general assemblies? Or perhaps the action committee was approving the various rallies and protests without fully explaining them when presenting them to the camp as a whole; I could see many occupiers, for instance, endorsing a rally for "workers" alongside a labor union not knowing the politics behind the SEIU's decision to "call on Congress to create jobs" at the very site that Barack Obama chose just weeks before to call on Congress to pass his jobs bill.

I assumed wrong.

The problem, it turns out, is that the action committee is able to approve protests as "official" Occupy DC events without receiving consensus at any general assembly. That means a small group of people -- there were no more than 10 at the meeting I attended the other week -- have the power to decide what events will be endorsed in the name of the hundreds if not thousands of people involved in the movement here in Washington.

That's a problem. The occupation of Franklin School did not go through the consensus process either, yes, but then those carrying it out never claimed to be acting on behalf of "Occupy DC." Rather -- and I think this is a trend that will continue with respect to direct actions -- they acted unilaterally and essentially used those hanging out at McPherson Square as a feeder group, inviting those who agreed with their action to come two blocks over and show solidarity. Ten or so people claiming Occupy DC as a whole has endorsed an action is a very different thing.

Those doing the endorsing also aren't very radical, which is the bigger problem to my mind. Anyone can join the committee, but attending three meetings a week is a lot to ask of people who have other things to do in their lives, a fact that seems to have led it to be more or less captured by a small group of like-minded liberals.

Indeed, on the action committee listserv, I discovered that some of the most active people are in fact paid not just liberals, but paid to elect Democrats, which subconsciously or not is bound to affect the decisions they make. And we're not talking just low-level staffers just trying to make a buck. That rally with the SEIU? By golly, here we have a member of the SEIU, indeed the head of the very "OurDC" front group occupiers were told they were showing solidarity with in an official Occupy DC press release. And over here we have a co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which seeks to elect "progressive" Democrats -- and only Democrats -- to the halls of Congress.

And oh, hey, over there is a person who works for a company, NGP VAN, that helps "all the national Democratic committees, [and] thousands of Democratic campaigns," fundraise and reach out to voters (and which, god damn it, is placing ads on this site). It was this particular person that, when a friend of mine at CodePink proposed an anti-war action, lashed out with the amazing claim that "Ending the war is a CodePink objective," prompting me to begin my research into those dominating the action committee conversation.

"The co-option of CodePink [sic] is really annoying and it's not cool that it is happening on this googlegroup," she added. "Please stop."

People paid to elect Democrats pushing a Democrat-friendly, war-ignoring agenda on the Occupy movement? Yeah, we're cool with that.

Even those on the committee who aren't paid to elect the nominally "left" faction of the political establishment come from essentially the same perspective, it having all the appearance of a clique that represents a range of opinion from liberal to center-left. When I linked to the above woman's public LinkedIn page, a "Senior Field Organizer" for the left-liberal group Public Citizen who appointed himself captain of the committee booted me off the list after I refused his unilaterally declared ultimatum to:

- Delete the tweet with the Linked In profile link

- Apologize over Twitter for taking a private conversation online and violating a fellow Occupier's personal boundaries

- Email the group promising to keep matters of internal discussion internal to this list? There are too many reasons to name why an action committee list should be kept private.

- Apologize to the group in person at an upcoming action committee.

As I wrote in response to the above: Besides there never having been a stated rule that conversations on the list could not be taken off of it -- the very nature of many of the conversations would seem to demand they be discussed with others -- I never revealed anything about upcoming actions, sensitive details of which I was initially told to never share because the list is literally open to whoever wants to join it (if you're in DC, subscribe by sending a request to action@occupydc.org).

Since the action committee has so much power to shape the Occupy DC agenda and its public perception, the broader movement beyond the professional Democrats and liberal think tankers on the list I believe has a right to know that actions are being approved and rejected based on the input of a small group of people, many of whom are paid to pursue a partisan agenda. No one, not even the Guardian of the Sanctity of the Listserv, I venture to say, would have objected had I tweeted about a member of the Koch-funded Club for Growth infiltrating the committee.

That's not to say paid partisans should be outright prohibited from participating in the Occupy movement, which would be hard to do in DC anyway -- although, frankly, if you're paid to elect Democrats and you want to help the movement, your best bet would be to stop helping elect Democrats. But if professional partisans have nothing to hide, there's no reason they should fear transparency, especially given the legitimate fears of many that Democrats are trying to co-opt the Occupy movement for electoral gain.

As it is now, those on the action committee aren't even informing the rest of those at Occupy DC of their decisions. Take the following email about one now-past event:

It has failed to go in front of GA due to facilitation not responding to my emails and no one from Action at the park during GA that is bringing it up. I told _______ to just go ahead and send it out. Its already on our website and being spread around. GA has been allowing us to just report actions during our committee reportbacks so that is what I hope will happen soon. How we are supposed to actually be getting things approved by GA is no longer really clear. If someone else wants to step up to help me figure this out, awesome, but I say we just go forward with this action.

I actually agreed with the action in question. But the problems with allowing the committee to instruct people to "just go ahead" and claim events are in Occupy DC's name without even announcing them should be obvious, particularly when said committee is stacked with numerous people paid to pursue an explicitly Democratic agenda.

Instead of banning me over a rule that was never stated, I replied to Mr. Ultimatum that maybe we ought to be considering, not just informing new members of the alleged rules of the list the moment they sign up, but a new rule requiring people to state up front whether they work to elect Democrats (or Republicans) so as to avoid conflicts of interests and the appearance of impropriety. And why not specifically ask people to state whether they're participating in the movement as part of their jobs?

This is the response I received.

Unhappy with the direction of the Occupy DC action committee? Attend one of their meetings, held every Saturday at 4pm and every Tuesday and Thursday at 8pm.

Baby, I'm an anarchist

2011-11-26T07:00:00.000-05:00

More of this, please

2011-11-23T07:00:00.000-05:00

The Franklin School in downtown Washington, DC, has been sitting dormant for years now. A historic building situated right next to a park filled every night with homeless people that have nowhere else to go, the city-owned property could be put to a number of important uses that would benefit the community around it. But, alas, it sits empty.

Until this past weekend. In a break from the sort of timid, SEIU-backed protests that the folks at Occupy DC have had an irksome habit of embracing as of late, a group of 11 activists without -- oh no! -- the endorsement of the McPherson Square general assembly decided to occupy the building and declare it under "community control." Though they certainly couldn't have had much expectation of being allowed to stay -- they were removed within a matter of hours -- as a symbolic gesture it was poignant.

Local anarchist blogger BroadSnark, who snapped the photo above and who I finally met at Occupy DC after years of cyber-stalking, has more details:

The building was being used as a homeless shelter until 2008, when the city closed it down just before winter. The plan was to sell it to a developer who would turn it into a boutique hotel. Homeless advocates, including Eric Sheptock, fought like hell to stop the closure. You can read his story here.

It took about three hours for the police to pull the occupiers out of the building and haul them off. Until then, supporters did what they could to rally the crowd, document what was going down, and block the exits to make it a little more difficult for the police to get them out – at least not without witnesses.

A passerby, who asked us to explain what was going on, agreed. He was “one of the lucky ones” who was able to get a home voucher before they cut the local rent supplement program. He commented that, in other cities, people said occupiers were violent, inferring that was not the case tonight.

The move wasn't without controversy. One middle-aged man walking a dachshund hysterically yelled at those of standing outside the building in solidarity with the occupiers that we had "just fucked" the Occupy movement by embracing "vigilantism." At back at McPherson Square, dozens of people chose to hang out over joining their comrades two blocks away.

Judging by the media coverage, however, the occupiers succeeded in drawing attention to the controvery surrounding the closing of Franklin School and the broader issue of governments privatizing community space for corporate gain -- certainly more attention than any number of confined-to-the-sidewalk exercises in protesting self-gratification could have ever hoped to achieve.

Obama loves war and Wall Street

2011-11-18T11:35:00.001-05:00

For days I bitched about Occupy DC's participation in a rally for infrastructure spending with the SEIU, a bitching that hit a fever pitch after the latter endorsed Barack Obama as the candidate of the 99 percent. But I'll tell you what: I can't give up a good opportunity to protest and a chance to open a few minds -- or at least piss a few off.

So, with pushing back against co-option on my mind, I decided I'd head down to Georgetown and the Key Bridge after all, but armed with a sign speaking for the 90 percent of the 99 percent who don't believe the president represents their interests. I tend to prefer signs calling out the institutional problems with the system, not the personnel, but the SEIU kind of forced my hand.

The response was interesting.

From actual occupiers, the people I recognized from camping out at McPherson Square this past week, the reactions were universally positive, which should assuage some fears that the Occupy movement will turn into a Democratic get-out-the-vote machine. I also got a few honks, in addition to some angry shouts, including the ever-so clever "get a job."

At one point as I held the sign out to traffic crossing the bridge, a Circulator bus full of commuters stopped, the driver opening his door to tell me "that's not true, he doesn't love war," as he shook his head. I then explained that he had in fact doubled the troops in Afghanistan, killing thousands of civilians and -- knowing my audience, this being America and all -- more U.S. soldiers than in the eight years George W. Bush oversaw the occupation. I also mentioned the drone wars in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.

A funny thing then happened. "Is that true?" the driver asked. A fellow occupier interjected: "Yeah, it is." With a look of having genuinely learned something, the driver nodded his head.

Wait, I thought, did I just have a successful political conversation with someone who started by hollering at me from his vehicle? Weird.

The conversation I had earlier with a suit-wearing, self-described private contractor for the State Department was a bit more . . . tense. Demanding to know what my sign "meant," which I thought was pretty clear, said contractor proceeded to reaffirm every caricature of a mindless, subservient supporter of state I ever held. What follows are, I swear to the gods, verbatim excerpts from of our conversation:

Me: Obama's foreign policy is the same as Bush's. He has just expanded the war on terror.

Dude: That's not true.

He doubled the number of troops in Afghanistan.

No, he surged the troops in Afghanistan. Just like Bush.

*****

He has authorized more drone strikes in Pakistan than Bush did in eight years, killing thousands of innocent civilians.

You're wrong. He killed Osama bin Laden.

*****

He's also killed U.S. citizens with drone strikes.

They were traitors.

Well, under the Constitution even traitors are supposed to have trials to determine they are traitors. Should we really trust one man to decide who lives or dies?

I trust my government.

*****

So what would you have us do?

I would have us pull all our troops out of every country and bring them home. Something like 95 percent of suicide attacks are the result of foreign occupations. You don't see terrorists going after Switzerland.

Well, that's because they don't have a military.

As Upton Sinclair said, it's difficult to get someone to understand something when their salary depends on their not understanding it.

Declaring what Occupy DC stands for

2011-11-17T08:52:00.001-05:00

I was prepared to be disappointed. I was prepared to escalate from a simple downward twinkle fingers to an outright block, you “progressive” Democrat, willing-being-co-opted mother fuckers. But, gosh darn it, I was pleasantly surprised.

After being disappointed in some of Occupy DC's choice of actions, including a rally for more infrastructure spending sponsored by the same SEIU that just endorsed Barack Obama as the candidate of the 99 percent, I was expecting the worst when the time came at Wednesday's general assembly to read the McPherson Square chapter of the occupy movement's long-awaited draft declaration of grievances. Perhaps a line about the Koch brothers “corrupting” our long corrupt democracy. Maybe something about a certain someone failing to deliver the change he purportedly promised.

To my chagrin, even my black anarchist heart was rather impressed.

Typically, works written by a committee of people with diverse backgrounds and interests tend to be watered down, unreadable pieces of garbage. So it's actually something of a miracle that a protest movement composed of people whose pet personal issue ranges from the tyranny of “fiat money” to the evil of institutional racism were able to produce a document that was even coherent. While the draft declaration wasn't read aloud by a burning bush, miracles do sometimes happen.

There was a strong denunciation of the collusion between the state and the financial sector. A call to end the wars. An attack on the two-party electoral system. A condemnation of a criminal justice (sic) system that persecutes the least privileged communities in America rather than protect them. While not perfect, by any means – it conspicuously avoided the words “empire” and “imperialism,” for one, and did not adequately stress the disproportional negative impact the status quo has on the poor and people of color – it was, all in all, pretty good.

And then we got to people's grievances with the statement of our grievances. Oh goodness.

Personally, while I would have liked the statement to have a bit more teeth when coming to war – and to have the statement about its impact on “American soldiers and innocent civilians” inverted in accordance with those who actually bear the bulk of its evils – my only real, somewhat nitpicky objection came to a line that declared the government had “failed in its duty” to protect the rights of Americans. At the general assembly, I politely noted that, historically, states haven't been established by people to protect rights, but rather to infringe upon them, namely to enable the economic exploitation of one class, the workers, by another, the owners. The stuff about protecting freedom and all that jazz? It's propaganda from the exploiters.

The U.S. government's founders, I noted, talked a pretty solid game about human rights and personal freedoms – at the same time they were propping up the institution of slavery and carrying out the genocide of indigenous peoples. The founding fathers didn't establish a state to protect the rights of anyone and everyone, I pointed out, but of themselves: the white, landed aristocracy.

Go me.

But I was one of many – about 30 – people that had issues with the declaration, too many to address in the context of a general assembly during a rain shower. So a declaration committee hearing was called, a three-hour lesson in the sometimes unbearable tediousness of consensus.

At the meeting, held in the unbearably ironic setting of a 24-hour McDonald's, people objected to the use of the word “occupation.” Others said, I agreed, that racial injustices weren't adequately highlighted, though the self-righteous, emotional blackmailing way one woman made her case – complete with a claim the majority of the declaration was written exclusively by and for white males (it was actually based on a consensus process involving anyone who wanted to join in at McPherson Square) and a wavering statement she was “scared” because race was only referenced in three of the eight or so clauses – had me groaning a bit.

Another man – a very strange man – said the declaration ought to include references to discrimination against height-disadvantaged people and the plight of men forced to pay child support. Later, when prevented from speaking out of turn to voice his objection to the indisputable fact that the top 1 percent are predominately white males, he got up and very aggressively confronted the female facilitator, standing about six inches away from her face. We all understood why he was divorced.

A man originally from El Salvador then brought up the issue of empire, pointing out that he was only in the United States due to a civil war funded by the Reagan administration. “Here we are in the most powerful city in the world, where the people in the buildings around us literally decide who lives and who dies, and we don't even mention imperialism?” I twinkle-fingered the hell out of that shit.

When it got to be my turn, I reiterated by object to the stuff about the government's “duty” to protect our rights, saying it implied that the state had ever done so, when in fact its purpose is to exploit, not protect. I suggested simply truncating the sentence so as to say that the government had “not protected our rights,” leaving aside the question of whether it was ever intended or capable of doing so. That way, I figured, the language could be inclusive of both anarchists, who compose a not insignificant part of the Occupy movement, and non-anarchists (statists! *boo, hiss*).

See? Even radicals can compromise.

Unfortunately, a lot of people were confused. Many appeared to think my objection was simply that the line didn't make clear that the government has been failing to protect our rights from its inception; the implication it's a recent phenomenon that we're only now noticing because middle-class white kids have read the Wikipedia page about the PATRIOT Act. But no! I replied: it's the idea implied by the word “duty” that the state has the responsibility to protect our rights, that that is what it was established to do.

Let's say you have a spoon. You're trying to cut a steak with this spoon. It doesn't work. So you get more and better spoons. Hell, you even get a spork. Still no luck. Maybe, you might conclude after a few fruitless hours of spooning, a spoon isn't intended to cut a steak – that maybe it's intended to do something entirely different.

Likewise, if the U.S. government has never proven itself capable of protecting the rights of those who live within its borders, as evidenced by slavery to genocide to mass incarceration, then maybe, one might fairly conclude, it was never meant to protect those rights – that references to its “duty” to do so are like referencing the “duty” of a butcher to protect the lives of cows and pigs.

One woman did get what I was saying. But she also uttered the single most upsetting thing of the night: Sure, she said, you might not think the state has a “duty” to protect our rights, but most people in mainstream America do. And we're trying to appeal to them, comrade.

By reinforcing their dangerously mistaken dogma? I might have asked had my alloted anarchist time not been used up. The same objection – appealing to “mainstream” America – was raised by people opposing the use of the terms “empire” and “imperialism,”

“Do you feel your voice has been heard?” the facilitator asked. “Yeah, whatever,” I mumbled.

By the time three hours had passed, we were no further along than when we started, having not gotten past the mere restating of the grievances we originally aired at the general assembly, much less gotten to the point of actually addressing them by way of changes to the draft.

And so we now have to do the whole thing again. And probably again. And again. And . . .

Occupy everywhere, but maybe not the Key Bridge

2011-11-15T12:03:00.001-05:00

Shaking from the cold at 3 in the morning on a park bench a few blocks from the White House, warmed only by a paper-thin prison blanket an empathetic passer-by had gifted me, I couldn't help but think: man, am I a bad ass or what?

Well, not really. Mostly I thought about being cold and whether my overwhelmingly witty sign – American Dream = Park Place, American Reality = Park Bench – made it all worth it. And then I thought about how this is what homeless people in the imperial capital go through every night. And how no one cares. And then I was kind of sad.

I had arrived at the Occupy K Street camp in Washington's McPherson Square earlier that Sunday afternoon with high hopes of crafting a slew of strongly worded protest signs and obtaining some much-need winter gear (I usually don't wear shoes in Nicaragua).

Only my aforementioned perceived wit came through. So make signs I did.

“What's that one going to say?” asked a smiling older woman as I worked my magic in the official sign-making tent. One of the decidedly more respectable, bourgeois-looking crowd that shows up on the weekends, she would not have been out of place at your Aunt Judy's Christmas dinner in an anonymous, upper-end suburban development.

“It's going to say, 'Don't Vote for Change (TM), Make Change,'” I replied. Her smile disappeared. A blank stare took its place.

Such is the tension at Occupy DC: Judging by the socialist papers and anarchist symbols I see, there are quite a few radicals on hand at McPherson Square. But there are also quite a few – probably a plurality – who would identify as “progressives,” the sort that see their participation in the movement as a means of countering the Tea Party and building support for the banal, Democrat-friendly reformism embodied by the likes of Elizabeth Warren.

As it happens, the same woman who blank-stared me over my sign had hung about a half-dozen of her own around the fenced in statue at the center of McPherson Square, all of them concern-trolling her fellow – but dirtier – protesters. So-and-so never used the “F-word,” said one. So-and-so called his judge “brother.” Martin Luther King Jr. never referred to the police as “pigs” – the latter one I couldn't help but modify with a sign of my own noting that Fred Hampton, a leader of the Blank Panthers who was assassinated by the police, sure did.

But it is this Respectable Liberal segment of Occupy DC that I believe is more or less running the show, which is no more apparent than in the actions that have received the official endorsement of the DC camp. While I was down with protestingthe Koch brothers and their reactionary brand of faux-free market libertarianism earlier this month, there's no denying they are a liberal bogeyman, a useful distraction for the good, Obama-fearing Democrat from their own party's complicity in the tyranny of the corporate state.

More troubling, though, is Occupy DC's participation in the November 17 day of action organized by labor unions and Democratic front groups like MoveOn.org and Van Jones' Rebuild the Dream. As the SEIU's description of the event, circulated by Occupy DC, makes clear, the call is not for radical change, but for – get ready to groan – passing Obama's jobs bill and standing up to “obstructionists in Congress [who] refuse to create jobs by investing in public workers and infrastructure and refuse to make the richest 1% pay a little more in taxes.”

In DC, the event takes place at the Key Bridge into Georgetown, the very site Barack Obama used to highlight the infrastructure spending aspects of his latest stimulus bill. It's also the same bridge Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood pointed to – or rather, one of his staffers – as reason to pass the legislation.

In other words, by engaging in a protest at the Key Bridge, Occupy DC will be helping further an Obama administration talking point, which will not only will give the movement a sickly blue partisan hue, it's on behalf of a substantively questionable proposal.

Now, repairing dangerous bridges is all well and good. But infrastructure spending in general? What's good for the construction worker is not necessarily good for the rest of us. While I sympathize with the out-of-work road builder, I can't bring myself to endorse a boost in infrastructure spending that would undoubtedly mean expanding existing highways and building new ones, further cementing a car culture that has resulted in environmentally and culturally destructive suburban sprawl and the fact that the transportation sector accounts for a third of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.

Indeed, the action itself will be taking place on the sidewalks of the key bridge, with protesters under strict orders not to obstruct traffic, meaning they will be obstructing pedestrians but not Hummers. Pragmatically, I get that: it's a felony to block traffic on a bridge in DC If you're protesting outside a military base housing drones? Sure, lay down in that road. But if you're protesting for something as lame as more spending on highways, I'd have to agree it's not worth the risk.

But then, neither is the protest itself worth the risk to the Occupy movement.

Unfortunately, those planning the actions don't seem to think so. Like those who facilitate the general assemblies, the action committee is disproportionately white and male compared to the surrounding community rest of the camp at McPherson (full disclosure: I'm white and male too, just observing is all). Based on my initial firsthand impressions, it also leans progressive, not radical, its members seemingly less fearful of co-option than the prospect that others at the camp will not abide by their instructions to not block traffic on the bridge.

By contrast, the criminal justice committee I attended is about 80 percent black and Hispanic and, from what I heard, more interested in direct action against. Specifically, people were discussing protests outside branches of Wells Fargo, which just took over all the Wachovia locations here in DC, highlighting to the local community its role in the mass incarceration of poor minorities by way of its investment in private prison company GEO, of which it is the third largest shareholder.

That sort of protest, I think, could unite all the various Occupy factions while bringing in new members and admiration from the local community. The problem is: the criminal justice committee is not the action committee, through which all “official” Occupy DC events need to go.

But it's a problem that can be fixed. Because of the non-hierarchical structure of the Occupy movement, its domination by the more timid variety of progressive Democrat can be countered. Instead of just complaining about it on the Internet, one can show up at the next action committee hearing and, if something objectionably timid and partisan comes up, try and change some minds – or block it. And radical nuts like me can just walk up and join the action committee and suggests more radical, nutty actions.

I also hope the passage of time will improve things, by which I of course am referring to the process of radicalization. While, like others, I was skeptical of the value of simply creating a living, community space by way of a camp – we ought to be protesting, damn it, not laying around playing drums – after spending some time there I see it as a way of demonstrating that communities can in fact be built on consensus, not coercion.

At McPherson Square, there is free food, basic medical care and an impressively stocked library full of everything from radical literature to Michael Crichton. In the middle of the nation's capital, there is an admittedly flawed but nonetheless functional community not dependent on the use of force that is providing services, to both occupiers and the homeless that were there before, that the city itself refused to adequately provide.

And these sorts of communities have been replicated across the country. How can that not at least open a few minds to the possibility of radical change and, dare I say, the practicality of anarchism?

Yet, despite its overwhelmingly peaceful nature, the Occupy movement from Oakland to Wall Street exists under the perpetual threat of at-a-moment's-notice eviction. If that doesn't show that the system only fears radical challenges to its authority – as opposed to reformist calls embodied by online petitions and confined-to-the-sidewalk protests brought to you by MoveOn.org – I'm not sure what will. And that's why, though I think the movement is currently flawed, I remain hopeful about its future.

Some Veterans Day reading

2011-11-11T10:50:00.001-05:00

One thing you learn after living outside the United States for awhile is that other countries do not fetishize soldiers and military service quite like Americans do, their cultures being nowhere near as militarized. Televised sporting events, for instance, do not begin by saluting the brave men and women abroad helping kill poor foreigners for Our Freedom. Uniformed military personnel aren't used to sell shitty beer at half time. The armed forces aren't billed to potential recruits as a more glamorous version of ITT Tech.

In the land of the free, by golly, we sure do love The Troops, don't we? We Americans salute their service even as a solid majority of us concede that the war in Iraq was, if not a grave crime, at least a mistake -- oops! we just killed a couple hundred thousand A-rabs -- and agree that the occupation of Afghanistan is a waste of (American) lives and money.

This love is curious for a nation that likes to bend over and blow itself for being the world's most free and ruggedly individualistic. And it's dangerous: how many people have chosen to become the American empires hired guns because they were led to believe it was a just and honorable profession?

It's not, mind you, that I think we ought to shout "baby killer!" and hock a loogie at anyone in uniform -- generals and recruiters, sure -- but neither should we heap praise on those who have chosen a profession that just in the last couple decades has asked them to kill people in at least a half-dozen unjust wars from Panama to Pakistan. That decent, upstanding men and women sometimes join the military and become part of the evil enterprise of empire should be lamented, not lauded, lest other impressionable young people come to the conclusion that there's any honor in mass murder.

But I've said this before. Humor me this holy Veterans Day and check out some of my past writings on the topic of America's wars and the saluting of the rank-and-file soldiers who make them possible:

-- "That anti-patriotic feeling": It is said that soldiers don't decide the policy, they just follow orders. Fair enough. But is suspending one's conscience in the service of an immoral act a praiseworthy move?

-- "On 'supporting the troops'": The U.S. women's soccer team took time during a recent match to, literally and rather creepily, the American troops in attendance for their "service." But their service isn't an abstraction, so shouldn't the decision to salute them be based on the reality of what it actually entails?

-- "'Unconditional' allegiance is for machines, not people": Liberal blogger Adam Serwer says we "should support servicemembers unconditionally because their service is unconditional." I call bullshit.

From no occupation to occupying K Street

2011-11-09T10:53:00.001-05:00

A week earlier I was in Nicaragua soaking up sun and generally doing things that would make my mother cry. Now I was marching down K Street in downtown Washington, DC, during evening rush hour traffic, surrounded by a crowd of hundreds of protesters and dozens of cop cars, the sirens and flashing red-and-blue lights of the police filling the brisk, autumn air around me as the dim light of the falling dusk sun lit up the shimmering yellow and green leaves above.

I was also tripping pretty hard on acid, so there was that.

politicians and bankers

liars and thieves

we're taking these streets

and we're not saying please

Before relocating to my beach-side lair of dissent in Central America, I spent my first four impressionable years after college pugnaciously Fighting the System by asking members of Congress strongly worded questions. Eventually I tired of this, in part due to the sheer mundaneness of talking to banally evil lawmakers about amendments to appropriation bills, but also because of the limited range of stories my employers would allow to be published; when Jay Rockefeller, at the time the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told me in 2007 that he was powerless to investigate media reports that the Bush administration was engaged in a covert war against Iran designed to evade congressional oversight, the public radio company I worked for refused to even let me pitch the story to a local affiliate in the senator's district, saying airing it could upset Mr. Rockefeller.

Ah, journalism.

After burning out, I decided to flee to a warmer climate where I could survive as a freelance writer. Naturally, as soon as I left, the American public – of course – started to show signs of waking up. So it goes.

When I returned to the nation's capital for the first time in year late last month, I was eager to check out what the whole Occupy movement was all about, so I headed down down to my local revolutionary chapter where I was prepared to get my consensus on. There I was mostly impressed with the diversity of the protesters I saw, the focus on root causes – meaning corporate personhood as opposed to fiddling with tax brackets – and the absence of any explicitly partisan messages, though a bit disappointed with the rather conspicuous lack of any mention of the current president of the United States, something I could not imagine happening when that other guy was in the White House.

But checking out the Occupy DC base camp at McPherson Square did not satisfy my revolutionary zeal. I wanted to actually protest something, damn it.

That's how I eventually found myself occupying an intersection and chanting slogans about economic justice next to the Washington Convention Center, where inside some Republican bigwigs like Mitt Romney and Herman Caine were addressing the “Rebuild the Dream” conference sponsored by the right-wing Americans for Prosperity, a Koch Brothers front group.

the banks got bailed out

we got sold out

Initially I was bit worried about doing any action related to the Koch Brothers. That's not because I have any love for them and their brand of hyperventilating right-wing libertarianism, mind you; I loathed them before it was cool and those who equate state-backed property and the exploitation of the commons for private gain with Freedom and Liberty annoy me more than Obama fanboys. Most days.

Too often, though, the brothers Koch seem to fill the same role for partisan Democrats that George Soros and union “thugs” serve for idiot Republicans: as catch-all evil, James Bond-style villains whose nefarious doings are to blame for all that is wrong with the world – which have the added bonus of absolving one's preferred faction in the ruling establishment of their share of the blame for the status quo.

So I had some fear beforehand that I would be participating in a liberal Democrat wank fest, a cathartic two-minute hate of the Kochs and the evil Rethuglicans they fund that would conspicuously avoid any mention of the man, Barack Obama, responsible for handing trillions of dollars in public wealth over to the very sorts of rich people the Kochs play golf with every Sunday. But, despite the occasional, panging urge to run off to a field and stare up at the sky, I decided to engage in the action anyway because, hey, they are awful people who do bankroll an important, awful part of the governing class, so it's worth calling them bad names every once in a while – so long as we remember they are but one part of a bigger, bipartisan problem.

Unfortunately, my initial wariness did not prove to be entirely off base. After taking over K Street during rush hour traffic and hiking over to the site of the conference, those leading the march – meaning the people with the loudest drums and the biggest banners at the front – tried to corral protesters in a parking lot near the conference where there was a giant, inflatable pig decked out in a business suit and a green belt that said “Koch Bros: Fatcats for Prosperity.” Here we were told to “have fun” and, like, party!

The crowd, as I was made well aware in my hyper-sensitive state, did not like this. And I did not like that.

Those who came to the protest, after all, did so, not to “party down,” bro – keg stand! – but to protest the actual (not inflatable) fatcats next door. Shaking one's booty to house music might have been appropriate for the Occupy DC base camp, but it was a definite mood killer at a protest.

Refusing to heed the desperate pleading of the would-be organizers, who might have had better luck had they explained their intentions during the pre-march general assembly, people soon started to turn around and head back to where the center of action ought to be: the conference center full of assholes.

Wait 30 minutes and then we'll march, the people with the pig said. That soon turned to 10 minutes. Then, “Hold on one minute and we'll be right behind you.” The disgruntled masses complied, disgruntledly.

Soon we were backing marching again. And then, 20 seconds later, we weren't. The pig people – apparently part of a group called “The Other 98%” – had more plans for us. Bags of popcorn began appearing in the hands of those around me as video began to be projected onto the side of the convention center, beginning with a slick – too slick – satire of the Kochs starring the gosh-isn't-he-funny? Jack Black.

The majority of the protesters weren't laughing. Worse still, the energy of the protest was visibly dissipating. Instead of chanting and marching, we were being asked to passively consume.

“Fuck TV,” someone started chanting. Others joined in. I did too.

Now the pig people weren't happy. They started pleading: We are here in “solidarity” with our allies at The Other 98%, they belatedly explained. The action will follow the screening, they belatedly informed the crowd. So as to not splinter the group – power in numbers and all that – everyone stayed, even as a possible agent provocateur (or, probably, just an asshole) who I recall thinking looked a lot like Kanye West ran through the crowd urging everyone to “fuck this shit” and break off from the party.

I'm pretty sure it was Kanye.

But why were we milling about and “partying” rather than protesting in the first place? Whose bright idea was that? John Sellers, a co-founder of The Other 98% – whose reformist, Democrat-friendly agenda centers on a call for the rich to pay their “fair share” of taxes – explained his reasoning in an interview with the Raw Story later that night:

“We didn’t want to throw a protest. I, for one, am tired of being called a protester. We wanted to throw a demonstration of what America could be like, the America we want to live in. One where people are welcome to come into the streets and boogie down and speak their minds.”

“Often times, progressives get seen as self-righteous or shrill, a little too literal. And we wanted to show America that we’re fun, that we’re having a blast, and that we need people to join us.”

I don't want to be too harsh, but given the reality of America today – mass unemployment, a war budget that takes half the federal discretionary budget at a time social services are being slashed and a gap between rich and poor that makes the country's class divide seem more like a caste system – what the United States needs is more protests, Mr. Sellers, not lame parties. Playing overly-produced videos mocking the Koch Brothers on the wall of their own conference might seem edgy, but you know what? Leave that for the Internet. I might even “like” it on Facebook.

That wasn't the worst of it.

As I stood there in an increasingly disoriented state of solidarity, I heard a voice – a familiar voice – being amplified behind me. My stomach churned as I looked at the image being projected above me: the gigantic face of adorable consumer advocate and Democratic candidate for Senate, Elizabeth Warren, giving giving her you-tell-'em! speech about the businessman and the social contract that all of your liberal friends have posted on your wall. This was the climax of The Other 98%'s protest and what I was most afraid of: an attempt to exploit the discontent with the status quo embodied by the Occupy movement on behalf of

the liberal rhetoric-spouting, Wall Street-beholden Democratic Party, and in particular a candidate – Warren – who hasn't found it in herself to say nary a bad word about a president who admits his co-opting administration is the last thing standing between Wall Street “and the pitchforks.”

Quite without thinking, I found myself for the first time in an over an hour yelling something that didn't rhyme: “Fuck Elizabeth Warren.” Not the most eloquently stated sentiment, to be sure, but solidarity only goes so far: when you try to push a Democratic Party candidate on a protest based in no small part in opposition to the policies enacted by a Democratic president and a Democratic Congress, vulgarity, I think, is not an inappropriate response.

But a man with an uncanny resemblance to Michael Caine, wearing a top hat and a sash that said “Republicans are addicted to Koch,” wasn't pleased. “No!” he exclaimed. “She's one of the good ones!”

When I regained lucidity, I found myself half way through explaining that Warren was a “tool of the military-industrial complex.” Taking a breath, I realized that, particularly given my sudden burst of profanity, that might sound a bit crazy protester-y, so I got specific. Namely, I pointed to Warren's recent statement that, when dealing with Iran, “we should take nothing off the table,” Washington shorthand for missiles and bombs. I even provided a citation.

“That's disappointing to hear,” a genuinely disappointed-looking Michael replied, a reminder, at least to me, that education – not condescension or expulsion – is the best way of dealing with those in the Occupy movement who still have faith, however misplaced, in the Democratic Party. Many people still want to believe that a good person in politics, a kind-hearted, do-gooding Reformer, will save us. And given the narrow range of permissible debate on TV and even in supposedly leftist publications, it's not surprise a lot of people can't think outside of electoral politics and the futility of electing more and better politicians.

The goal of the radical should be to educate people, to show them how those determined to work within the system of electoral politics – within a stacked system designed by and for those who with the most money and power – are more often than not destined to be subsumed by it, with the occasional reformer who does get into office and doesn't lose his or her way destined to have as much power and influence as, say, Dennis Kucinich.

My attempt at education was cut short, however. We were moving again – and this time not to another party, but to an actual direct action: occupying the intersection of 7^th and L St. NW in order to prevent convention-goers from going home. This is when things got more interesting – and not just because, later that night, a car would drive through the human chain of protesters blocking the intersection, sending three people to the hospital.

occupy wall street

occupy k street

occupy everywhere

and never give it back

In contrast to the passivity spurred by the co-opting, let's-watch-TV! 98 percenters, those occupying the intersection were encouraged to participate, namely by getting up and using the human mic to explain why they had come out – and why they had woken up. Everyone from unemployed and anti-war Iraq veterans to teachers to transgender individuals gave their reasons, their words being repeated by the rest of the crowd – a fact that thrilled me when it came time to say “I am an anarchist.” While each person's reasons differed, and while there was some groan-inducing complaints about not being able to go to law school – albeit coupled with a fair point that its exclusivity helps maintain class divides – it was empowering for those involved. And, to me, encouraging.

Unlike some of the anti-war protests I've attended in DC, this one wasn't just aging hippies and soap-box Trotsykists. And those involved weren't content protesting in their properly permitted free speech zone. Indeed, the diverse crowd of mostly 20- and 30-somethings embraced direct action, occupying streets and intersections. And despite the partisan potential of the protest and the efforts to co-opt it on behalf of the likes of Elizabeth Warren, there were no partisan speeches blaming all the words problems on John Boehner and the Kochs.

In fact, I get the feeling – an admittedly wishful one – that the longer these protests go on, the less folks like Michael Caine will be receptive to the tired politics of the two-party system. These types of actions expose people to radicals, to real-life, decidedly not-scary anarchists and socialist; at the very least, I can't help but think some will go home and read a few eye-opening Wikipedia articles. At the main base of Occupy DC, one can already find a “radical info shop,” where, for perhaps the first time, many will be exposed to political ideas that don't find their way into Newsweek or MSNBC. Talking to one guy with a pretty sweet beard, he – not I – name dropped friend-of-the-site Peter Kropotkin.

I can confidently say that's never happened at any protest I attended during my four year stint in the nation's capital.

Your days are numbered!

It's also encouraging how young most of those participating in the Occupy movement are. Some of them may be naïve, to be sure, but I'll take naivety over the affected hipness of apathy.

By contrast, those at the Koch conference were, frankly, old as fuck. Like walking with a walker old. One of the few exceptions was an extremely self-satisfied, middle-aged blonde woman who seemed to really enjoy yelling back at the dirty hippies banging on the front doors to the convention center as she and others tried to make their exit.

A smile on her face as she made her way down the ramp to the street, the relatively young woman made eye contact with a defiant protester holding a sign that said “No Fear.”

“And no job either!” the counter-revolutionary bellowed, clearly pleased with herself.

“I bet that makes you feel really good about yourself,” I found myself telling her as she walked away. She snapped around.

“Are you a communist?” she sneered, putting her iPhone up to my face to record my response. Maybe I'm on YouTube.

“Do you have to be a communist to object to the status quo?” I replied, not confident that I could, given the context, adequately explain the finer tenets of anarcho-communism.

She quizzed me further, needing to reduce me to a label so she could hate me without reservation.

“Well, what are you?”

“I'm an anarchist,” I said, a response produced a hearty round of fake belly laughter.

“Well, what are you?” I prodded.

“I'm mocking you!”

Shit, I thought, that wasn't half bad.

Leaving the steps, I headed back to the intersection I had earlier occupied. As it turns out, just minutes before a driver in a Lexus had driven through the human chain of protesters that I had earlier been a part of, and which my lady friend still was. As multiple eyewitnesses told me, including the aforementioned lady friend, protesters had stood firm in the intersection just as they had for several hours before when the driver simply drove through them, only stopping a block later when police pulled him over.

Rather than arrest the driver, though, police let him go without charge, claiming – contrary to every account I heard and the behavior I witnessed earlier when other cars tried to pass through – that protesters had hit the car first. The police also said the light was green, which apparently makes it okay to purposely run over human beings.

Presumably under orders not to do any attention-grabbing mass arrests – when we marched back to the Occupy DC encampment by going through the center of Chinatown and by the White House, cops dutifully blocked off traffic without uttering a word to any of us protesters – the cops were able to passive-aggressively get their revenge: if they couldn't put any of us in a paddy wagon, they would ensure those who did their work for them and clear us out of the intersection by way of running us over could do so without consequence.

Bienvenidos a America, occupiers, where the law is designed by and for the powerful and enforced at the arbitrary discretion of their enforcers. I trust many protesters around the country have experienced similar injustices, which are daily perpetrated against the poor and powerless in this country. And I trust that when it comes to how the system really works, they're receiving an education.

See more photos from the action and Occupy DC.