Fire on the Mountain

Occupy In A Transitional Period

2012-05-24T21:59:00.000-04:00

[This article was written by a young 'rade of mine who has been involved in Occupy Boston since its inception for the folks at the Norwegian magazine Rødt, published by the Red Party there. At a time when there is still real unclarity about how to proceed among many Occupy! activists and supporters, it draws some deep lessons from the movement's first phase last fall. It addresses some of the same questions I talked about in this FotM piece last month.]

by Evan Sarmiento

Shortly before 5am on December 10, 2011 Occupy Boston was evicted from the encampment at Dewey Square, a short walk to our main busing and transit hub South Station in Downtown Boston. The raid came after Boston judge Judge Frances A. McIntyre lifted a temporary restraining order prohibiting the police from taking action against Occupy Boston. The terms 'encampment', 'protest' and 'civil disobedience' are protected under the U.S. Constitution. The state of Massachusetts, in it's official judgement, however, considered the term occupation a deliberate seizure of private property.

Ironically, the Massachusetts judiciary understood the occupation better than many of the occupants itself, who considered our encampment at Dewey Square as more of a rallying cry for the 99% than a permanent form. But, perhaps most interesting was that the state of Massachusetts considered Occupy Boston to be ineligible as plaintiffs, as each court witness claimed not to represent Occupy Boston. Occupy Boston, following upon the general rules adhered to by the entire Occupy Movement, practiced horizontalism and consensus in it's operation and therefore, individuals participating could only represent themselves.

Post-eviction, I spoke at a panel at Harvard University entitled "What is the Occupy Movement?" Emmanuel Telez, a young, voracious legal assistant, co-facilitated the panel. Afterward, we discussed this very strange contradiction. Occupy Boston, in itself, was so heterogeneous to the state and its judiciary that, in legal terms, it could not even exist. To the state, Occupy Boston was an invisible, traumatic element which confronted the State as a non-entity enacting and surpassing bourgeois rights. Some would say, "using bourgeois rights in a non-bourgeois way."

What we lost in our eviction wasn't so much the often chanted "We are unstoppable, another world is possible" but an understanding of our heterogeneity versus the State. In Dewey Square, we stood, unprecedented, reclaiming private space and transforming it into a political carnival, a meeting space and a center for all social-movements. In Dewey Square, we objectively served the people. Our food and shelter committee fed and clothed homeless families, who constituted a sizable bloc of occupiers, rendering around $200,000 in vital services the City of Boston slashed or eliminated all together. But, perhaps understandably, many Occupiers saw the encampment as nothing more than a propaganda stunt, an immature activity antecedent to the production of a "real movement." They, too, were perplexed in defining our own accomplishments, unable to consider the extent of our ideological and political victories during our nearly three months at Dewey Square.

Our pre-eviction General Assemblies were centers of ferocious debate. Occupy Boston split down the middle. Many community organizers and activists considered our encampment a hinderance. They argued, successfully, that the cost of maintaining an encampment, protecting it from police raid, and altogether expanding the Occupation territorially appeared an impossibility. They argued for the dispersion of Occupy Boston into different spheres: into coalitions with community groups like City Life/Vida Urbana, a community organization which militantly defends working class home-owners from foreclosure, into alliances with Labor Unions like the Massachusetts Nurses Association and producing localized Occupations through-out the greater Boston metropolitan area. To them, the encampment appeared to prevent sinking deep roots among the most oppressed and exploited in the city. In effect, how can we really provide leadership and organize if we are isolated to a small geographic area?

A substantial minority, including myself, poured our heart and soul into the physical occupation of Dewey Square, serving the people, and the expansion of our forward bases as tantamount to the success of Occupy Boston and the Occupy Movement generally. This trend recognized the importance of what Michael Hardt, Antonio Negri, and Slavoj Zizek called the "Commons," the shared substance of our social being. Public places, housing, food, and the bare necessities of life, all constitute the Commons and underpin our existence as social beings. Practicing a politics of the commons, while not explicitly taken up within Occupy Boston, was central to Occupy Oakland. Occupy Oakland's focus on property spawned heated exchanges around appropriate strategy and tactics, the destiny of the Occupy Movement, and the location of critical fault-lines in our neo-liberal, nearly dystopian, society.

And so, the day previous to our eviction, Occupiers packed up most of their belongings, deciding to "Occupy Winter" as a decentralized, dispersed movement. Occupy Boston, as an encampment and anti-capitalist form, was evicted ideologically long before our police eviction. A deep desire to maintain camp did not exist and together, as a movement, we struggled to expanded into new territory. While I was disappointed by our lack of commitment to camp and perhaps our lack of understanding of what the encampment represented, I remained optimistic. Winter ushered the Occupation into hundreds of unforeseen areas: Occupy Boston formed a committee to prevent cuts in public transportation. Occupations formed in dozens of working class areas and even spawned a permanent encampment at our only public university University of Massachusetts (Boston). Community groups and labor embraced us, but, perhaps most importantly, a debate over what kind of politics is possible became a national focus of our movement: Should we move forward with occupations of private property? Should we push the limits? How should we work with well-established, grass-roots community organizations and unions? Here, I will begin to touch upon these questions, providing a summation of our overall work in these uncertain, but exciting, times.

The Proliferating Communes

"Why shouldn't communes proliferate everywhere? In every factory, every street, every village, every school. At long last, the reign of the base committees!" I have always considered The Coming Insurrection the founding text of the Occupy movement. Whether admitted or not, the Occupy Movement adheres to this exact strategy. The proliferation of communes, organizations, and coalitions after the eviction of Dewey Square reached a high-point, culminating in a number of formations including: Occupy Quincy, Occupy Weymouth, Occupy Somerville, Occupy Allston/Brighton, Occupemos El Barrio (Occupy The Barrio), Occupy the T, Occupy University of Massachusetts Boston, and Students Occupy Boston. But, the most successful occupations have historically not been tied to neighborhoods, but, to resources. In particular, Occupy Our Homes and Occupy the T have discovered a way to intertwine a politics of the commons inside a dispersed movement while also building deep roots among the most oppressed and exploited.

In 2007, housing prices in the United States crashed alongside a general economic recession. Many home-owners ended up owning a mortgage that was worth substantially more than the value of their house. Both the recession and the housing bubble locked home-owners in an untenable situation. Many were both unable to pay their monthly mortgage payment due to unemployment or underemployment while at the same time being unable to sell their house for a profit or even pay off the rest of their mortgage. Between 2007 and 2009, 2.5 million homes were foreclosed. The housing crisis was even more severe on people of color and their communities. Nearly 8% of African Americans and Latinos have lost their homes, compared to only 4.5% of whites. In my state of Massachusetts, the Massachusetts Alliance Against Predatory Lending estimate that in some areas, “over 50% of homeowners who borrowed in the last decade are underwater.” These areas are principally inhabited by people of color. Lynn, Massachusetts – one of the most diverse cities in the Boston metropolitan area, has lost many of its residents from foreclosure. M.A.P.L estimated that foreclosures cost Massachusetts up to $4.1 billion dollars per month.

In the Untied States, accumulation of capital persists, despite the crisis, not by production but by expropriation from predominantly working class, people of color. The British marxist geographer David Harvey calls this “accumulation by dispossession.” Within this situation, Occupy has a specific and urgent political impact. Organizations like City Life/Vida Urbana in Boston have organized militant home defense and occupations for a decade. However, the proliferation of Occupy coalitions has enhanced and transformed this work in some areas, operating like a roving picket line or a popular auxiliary to defend housing, sometimes even transforming foreclosed homes into regional bases for meetings and general assemblies. In East New York, for example, on December 7, 2011, over 400 people participated in re-occupying a vacant foreclosed home for a homeless family of four. In addition, the occupiers restored the home, clearing mould, and performing repairs.

In Boston, the MBTA (Massachusetts Bay Transportation Society) wants to increase the subway and bus fares by 43%, eliminate the frequently used Green Line 'E' train on weekends, which runs from Huntington Ave to Heath St, and either eliminate or reduce bus service and commuter rail service (trains which connect Boston to it's suburbs and adjacent cities). The MBTA estimates these reforms will impact 9 to 13% of total ridership, with a disproportionate impact on communities of color who will lose night-time bus services and entire service routes through their neighborhoods. Occupy Boston, together with the T-Riders Union, organized a rally at the steps of the Boston Public Library on February 13. Over 500 people, a sizable minority high school students, demonstrated and then packed a public hearing on the MBTA cuts.

What is new isn't the defense of public services, but the coalition of un-usual bed fellows. Community organizations like A.C.E. (Alternatives for Community and Environment), The Boston Carmens Union and Occupy the T successfully worked together, although with contradictions, to make this successful. This newly constituted bloc of social forces - community organizations, workers, and occupiers – is what makes our transitional period so unique. But, like any social bloc, contradictions emerge and often the need to maintain one's own turf trumps solidarity. I will describe exactly what is at stake for the Occupy Movement as it navigates the contours of class contradictions with an example from the West Coast in their pursuit of solidarity with the historically militant ILWU, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union.

Occupy The Labor Movement

The Black Orchid Collective, a communist collective formed within Occupy Seattle, maintains the slogan “Rank and File and the 89% Unite!” In the United States, only 11% of the workforce is unionized. The remaining 89% is characterized by highly flexible, precarious terms of employment and typically un-represented within the labor movement. Subsequently, there are two approaches to labor solidarity within the Occupy Movement. One approach, typical of Boston, is uniting the Occupations as the auxiliary to organized labor. Working in common with forces forces like Jobs with Justice, Community/Labor United, the Massachusetts Nurses Association and the Service Employees International Union. A second approach, exemplified by Occupy Oakland, unites not only rank-and-file union workers, but, the mass of contingent workers and unemployed people, whose social power historically remained untapped.

On November 2, Occupy Oakland, with the acquiescence of union leadership but strong support of the ILWU rank and file, shut down the Port of Oakland. On December 12, Occupy Oakland and Occupy Seattle again shut down their respective ports. The IWLU credited the Occupy Movement as central to only recently successfully concluding negotiations with the E.G.T, a multinational shipping corporation attempting to employ non-union labor at the Longview Port in Seattle. Although victorious, the port shut downs were marred with tension.

At a pot-luck before the port shutdown, a member from IWLU Local 19 demanded that Occupy Seattle not go ahead with the blockade because the International did not support it. While some in the Occupy Movement considered the Occupy the Ports action as adventurist, infringing on the hard-earned rights of unions to manage their own turf, they neglected the strong presence of rank and file IWLU workers involved in organizing the campaign from the outset. One Occupier at the meeting spoke out: "I grew up in the 'hood and the union was never there doing anything to support us; the least you can do is to honor our picket line." This alone defines much of the Occupy Movement.

During my continuing work within Occupy Boston, I witnessed the horrified faces of individuals associated with non-governmental organizations and unions as Occupy Boston charted an independent course, often infringing on territory NGOs considered their own. Co-optation is not a proper term. Occupy cannot be co-opted, transformed into the reserve army of the labor movement or the Democratic Party. Occupy can, however, be transformed into an auxiliary: "Occupy for Jobs,""Occupy for Education," or "Occupy for Workers' Rights." Instead, we need to Occupy for Occupy.

The strength of the Occupy Movement lies not only in it's relentless struggle against the 1% but more so in it's unintended deterritorialization of revolution. The Occupy Movement has broken the boundaries between community and labor, between housing and education. Established organizations, even those with a radical history like the IWLU, are grappling with a new social movement that encompasses not only unionized workers but workers who have nothing to lose: Workers who are ghettoized, unemployed, contingently employed, nationally oppressed, and historically saw little to no solidarity from the labor movement. The West Coast Port Occupation wasn't just a solidarity strike, but, a political strike of the 99% against racism, poverty, and police brutality.

The Oakland Commune's theoretical summation of these actions centers on the protagonism of the precarious workforce. The I.W.L.U, alone, was unable to negotiate with the E.G.T. The withdrawl of labor, the traditional strike, proved ineffectual. But, as the Oakland Commune noticed, disrupting the flow of commodities and the tactical use of the roving picket line did. The Occupy Movements on the West Coast not only shut down their respective ports but the functional operations of their cities, confirming the Oakland Commune's theory that the strike can no longer be characterized by the withdrawal of labor, but, the interruption of capital flow.

Alain Badiou, a French post-Maoist philosopher, argues that politics is a meticulous un-binding. And doesn't the Occupy Movement, in it's experimentation with new forms of solidarity and organization, exemplify the crisis in all established bonds, particularly in the union form as we know it? Occupy's politics dissolved the boundaries of unions, community groups, even the Party-Left and forged a popular and voluntary discipline. This does not entail a repudiation of community groups or unions. Solidarity actions must always augment the power of the union rank and file where possible. But, it is a criticism of the primacy of respect. Respect, alone, is not solidarity. Solidarity is a two-way street and uncritical, deferential respect for pre-established organizations cannot be foundational to an emancipatory politics. This is not to say that the Occupy Movement is blameless or politically mature, but, that, the Occupy Movement has uncovered and surpassed the limits of the American Left. Yet, these limits are often encountered within the Occupy Movement itself, not only in it's relationships with other social forces, but in different ways of understanding non-violence.

Violence and Non-Violence

The Occupy Movement was founded explicitly as non-violent. On December 1 in Dewey Square, non-violence and violence were confused, each subject to political scrutiny. At that time, we were unable to wash dishes at camp. This was "The Battle for the Sink."

The City of Boston would not allow any equipment onto camp that required utilities like hot water or electricity. The Logistical Committee built, from scratch, a peculiar sink. This sink was, I would argue, magical. It was fed by massive water jugs and recycled used water in a closed-loop dish washing system. Under our restraining order against the police, any equipment stationed in Dewey Square not violating these rules could not be removed. While I was attending a general assembly on December 1, the logistical committee proudly carried our super-advanced sink directly into the center of our meeting, only to be blocked by two police officers.

The altercation that ensued was emblematic of the confusion around non-violence. One of the leaders of the logistical committee mic-check'd, assuring the police we were not violent and even asked us to "take a step back" as we surrounded the sink. He pleaded with the police to determine why the sink was being confiscated and demanded to speak to a superior officer. But, by that moment, we were confused and disorganized, the police launched the sink into a paddy wagon. Some of us tried to fall into position, surrounding the sink with locked arms, but, the police stepped over us, tackled us, and injured some.We quickly surrounded the paddy wagon. Some Occupiers were hurling insults at the police, becoming aggressive and chanting "Fuck the Police" or, alternatively, "We want to wash the dishes!" Our group split. Occupiers on the sidelines actually heckled us for being “violent” in our words, being violent for attempting to kettle our own kitchen sink and usher the police away, mirroring the actions at UC Davis where Occupiers surrounded the police, chanting "You can go." There was a clear division in our ranks.

At our resumed G.A, with our sink stolen, both sides stepped to the microphone. Nicole K. Sullivan, a young woman active in Occupy Boston since it's inception, gave the most truthful and moving comments:

How is using my body and my voice violence? My body and my voice are the only property that I own. How can you insult me and divide us for using my basic faculties?

In recent times, the issue of non-violence resurfaced. On January 28, Occupy Oakland attempted to secure a new meeting space by marching to the abandoned Kaiser convention center. Occupiers, better prepared after being systematically abused by police in protracted evictions and subsequent re-occupations, carried shields to protect themselves. Some Occupiers considered the act of using shields themselves an "act of violence" or political immaturity, but, they forget that military veteran Scott Olsen nearly died at Occupy Oakland after being shot in the head by a police projectile. Oakland Police assaulted the occupiers, thousands strong, using rubber bullets, tear gas and mace. Some Occupiers returned fire with a volley of "perfectly arced" stones and Anarchists stormed and vandalized City Hall. This situation prompted Chris Hedges, a supporter of the Occupy Movement and well-known liberal, to label Anarchists and radicals of all stripes as a "cancer in the movement." Lines were drawn. Many concurred with Chris Hedges. But, compared with frequent police terror and harassment in oppressed communities, compared to daily hustle most of the 99% endure to just barely survive – what is a few stones and cracked windows?

The Occupy Movement in Oakland, like in Boston, went from being altruistically pacifistic, even considering insults violent, to defending themselves and throwing stones at police. Why? The Occupy Movement, more or less, always considered the police the “99%”. But, after experiencing what the police really do, the idea of the police being a component of the 99%, welcome with open arms into the Occupy Movement no longer held credibility. I would never label the actions of Occupy Oakland ultra-left.They are certainly divisive, in the sense of uncovering contradictions within the 99% and opening up the "two-line struggle," but, they were also timely. Yet, there are surely problems of ultra-leftism and adventurism in Occupy that is much more serious than broken windows or riot police armor scuffed by rocks.

A Local Debate

A difficult discussion erupted in Boston within the Women's Caucus in December, post-eviction. During our encampment, Level 3 sex offenders (those deemed most likely to commit violent, sexual crimes) pitched tents in Dewey Square and assaulted female occupiers. The response of the Occupy Movement was less than swift. The Women's Caucus attempted to pass a resolution barring all Level 3 sex offenders from participating within Occupy Boston. This resolution was blocked by a hand-full of men within the General Assembly. The entire Women's Caucus stormed out. While I would not consider Occupy Oakland's move-in day or protracted strikes symptomatic of "ultra-leftism," this decision was and illuminates some of the problems inherent in horizontalism and consensus where privileged male-bodied individuals can undermine the work of the women's committee.

The resolution to ban level three sex offenders was certainly un-enforceable. It would not be possible and surely unadvisable to conduct criminal background checks on every single person who participated in Occupy Boston. This practical criticism, however, was not the primary criticism of the resolution.

Many in the Occupy Movement considered barring level 3 sex offenders a concession to statism. They considered this resolution as an excuse to bring law enforcement into the movement, also criticizing the very designation “Level 3 Sex Offender” as an arbitrary label imposed on individuals by a completely corrupted state power. Here, many Anarchists and Anti-Capitalists made the mistake of considering, un-dialectically, the State as a uniform, oppressive entity in counterposing the "plebs" to the State. They equated the State with repression, which is surely true, but, neglected to understand how the State itself often shifted politically with rising popular movements like the civil rights movement and women's movements in the 1970s. They saw the "Level 3 Sex Offender" designation as the practice of a panoptic state which criminalizes its constituents, rather than a real concession wrought by women through street-level struggle.

In the United States, one out of every five women is raped. The declaration by the Women's Caucus was nothing more than a demand for respect and safety, something lost in the minds of radical anti-capitalists and anarchists who often erroneously conduct themselves in a spirit of ideological purity, rather than in unity and struggle. This is the real ultra-leftism in the Occupy Movement, a danger more serious than the so-called ultra-leftism of the black bloc, autonomous action, or random and unavoidable acts of property destruction.

The Two-Line Struggle in the Occupy Movement

Our transitional period has brought the contradictions in the Occupy Movement to a head. Should the Occupy movement "occupy" for-itself, or, should the Occupy movement become a popular auxiliary to pre-established organizations? Should the Occupy Movement continue to engage in expropriating property, militant action, and developing a new forms of political organization, or, should it maintain itself as a dispersed symbolic protest?

Some comrades are determined to "Occupy the Left," but, I disagree. The Occupy Movement is a break with the Left. It is a break with a Left whose horizon is liberal democracy, dogmatic prescriptions and territorial disputes. The Occupy Movement has engendered a new Communist current, whose theoretical foundations rest in both Paris, 1968 and the nascent Occupy movement itself. The Black Orchid Collective in Seattle and the Oakland Commune are examples on the West Coast. In Boston, a newly formed Communist group "Red Horizon" works patiently and diligently, asking questions rather than pretending to have all the answers.

The newly emerging Occupy Communist Current has made significant theoretical and practical contributions to the struggle from the understanding of the strike as the restriction of capital circulation to the necessity to build communes everywhere. In the United States, communists often understand the need to conduct refoundation, rebuilding the Communist movement theoretically and practically. We are witnessing an unprecedented refoundation arising not from mergers and conferences, but, from experimental political work inside a mass movement.

Conclusion

The Occupy Movement in this period is characterized by dispersal, the proliferation of communes and coalitions, and deep, dividing ideological conflicts. On one side, the Occupy Movement is seen as nothing more than a pressure group or an auxiliary, which should weave it's strands of struggle together with more dominant and entrenched organizations like the AFL-CIO or the Democratic Party. On the other side, the Occupy Movement is seen distinctly as an occupation,something which practices a politics of the commons, re-appropriating public space, serving the people, and committing a whole lot of mistakes along the way.

While I was disoriented during this transition, it has brought the Occupy Movement deeper into the lives of every-day, working class people. The dispersion of Occupy into different localities, into the public transit system, and even into people's homes has helped cement a new alliance of forces willing to participate when winter ends. The Occupy Movement is still at the very beginning of the beginning and with it's new-found clarity and ability to challenge deeply held political convictions within the 99%, I am convinced it will become a permanent movement.

The Music of OWS! DJ D vs. Detroit Red

2012-04-30T13:47:00.003-04:00

With May Day upon us and the semi-official Occupy! Spring Offensive starting. the two of us--Detroit Red and DJ D--have teamed up to crank out this overview of the music of OWS! Occupy! has no single anthem, no “We Shall Overcome”, no defining musical voice of the movement. Instead there has been a flowering of DIY music videos, Joe Hill-esque re-writing of pop songs, spontaneous rap battles in the encampments, and a parade of established musicians showing up at protests unannounced to lend their songs and support. Hell, even Miley Cyrus made a music video for Occupy Wall Street!

The two of us are stone revolutionaries--and deep-fried music geeks. We are both longtime activists, though from different generations— DJ D is 62, Detroit Red 34. Both of us have been totally jazzed by the transformation that the eruption of Occupy Wall Street! has already wrought in the political life of this country and in the tired, aging US left. Each of us took five songs (with a bit of dickering to avoid duplication) from among scores of worthy possibilities, five which we found particularly deserving of attention and comment. Then we wrote a short introduction and made some comment on each.

[Note: for those unfamiliar with current musical culture, that "versus" in DJ D vs. Detroit Red doesn’t mean we are enemies—it is used to label collaborative projects and mash-ups as well as musical throw-downs.]

[Now crossposted at Solidarity and Daily Kos.]

DJ D drops his five

One of the things that has most pissed me off about the movement against the war in Iraq and Afghanistan was all the folks, admittedly mainly ‘60s types like myself, always grousing about where are the anti-war songs. Damn, Neil Young started a page on his website which now has well over 3400 posted! (At, let's call it 4 minutes per song, that’s more’n two weeks of listening 24/7, just to hear ‘em all once.)

At least anyone with the faintest actual acquaintance with Occupy Wall Street! and the Occupy! movement isn’t about to make that complaint! Even leaving aside the notorious drum circles, OWS! has been awash in music, with visits from famous artists and all kinds of playing and singing, planned and impromptu, at every encampment I know about.

A few days before Crispness, I went to fenced-in, rent-a-cop-ridden Zucotti Park in the middle of the night to show the flag, and of the dozen or so people there holding the fort, one was a guy--Jim, I think his name was--strumming a guitar and working out the lyrics to a song about the struggle. It was he who first inspired me to do a little writing about the music of the occupations.

With that, here are my five.

Rhiannon Giddins—"The Bottom 99"

A remarkable a capella performance by Giddins, who is part of the stellar Carolina Chocolate Drops, a key force in the ongoing revival of the nearly lost tradition of the Black string band. This, however, is based directly on a tune credited to the late Ewan MacColl, and it clearly derives from the old Scots/English folk tradition which constitutes the taproot of country music.

The unaccompanied vocals are reminiscent of Appalachian singers like Almeda Riddle, and the lyrics are sharp as a tack. YouTube also has a video of Giddins doing one called "We Are The 99” in Zucotti Park via the People’s Megaphone, which is well suited to the unaccompanied voice, of course. Still I find this to be richer and easier to follow—and that voice! Note the early date, October 13. She composed and was performing this within weeks of the initial occupation there.

Jasiri X—"Occupy (We The 99)"

Hip Hop has been an integral part of the Occupy! movement from the start. Lupe Fiasco donated fifty tents during the first week and wrote a poem "Hey Moneyman" about his visits to the encampment before it seized national attention. Immortal Technique, too, came down to Zucotti Park early on and denounced police attacks on the occupiers. Mayor Bloomberg, IT pointed out, "is closer to Wall Street than America is to Israel." Boots Riley from The Coup has been a day-to-day leader in the militant Occupy Oakland movement (though my bud Mirk notes that media attention on him has tended to eclipse the central role of other (female) core activists in the struggle there).

I picked this cut by a less well-known conscious rapper, Jasiri X, because he is based in Pittsburgh and has been an active supporter of Occupy Pittsburgh!, because he has stood up to efforts to censor this song out of his paid performances, and because it has a nice anthemic quality to it, with an eminently chantable tagline/chorus. Plus which, his video is one of the best of the collage-of-video-clips style that’s so prevalent here, with a sharp focus on police brutality and the national and global breadth of the Occupy! eruption.

Garfunkel And Oates—"Save The Rich"

This comedy duo has one of the best band names evah and their rip on Pat Robertson--"Sex With Ducks," in case you missed it--may never be topped. A sense of humor is a vital part of any real social movement. Some of the best-known protest songs of the Vietnam era were saturated in this kind of mirthful irony. Phil Ochs’ "Draft Dodger Rag" and Tom Paxton’s "Lyndon Johnson Told The Nation" leap to mind (and that’s not counting the unintentional humor in, say, "Eve Of Destruction.")

And don’t dismiss this tune and its nifty new video as merely an obvious joke. In two short minutes, Kate "Oates" Miucci and Riki "Garfunkel" Lindhome savage the greed of the 1%, mock their self-identification as 'job creators,' vent some genuine anger at their crimes and close by reminding us what the Occupy movement broke with:

Save the rich
By doing nothing at all
Deny all sense and logic
And just think really small
You should think really small
Or just don't think at all
And save the rich

Dave Lipmann—"Occupation Is On"

Sorry, the live and unplugged at Zuccotti Park version of this seems to have vanished from YouTube, but click right here and a nice folk-rock version’ll play for you. This is in many ways a typical—better, archetypal—OWS! song.

First I’ll deal with the typical part. The legal ban on amplification at Zuccotti Park (and elsewhere) combined with what has long been the cultural norm for protest movements in the US, means that folk-type songs like this, performed on guitar and perhaps other acoustic instruments make up, along with hip hop, the majority of OWS!-related music.

That said, this, like the Rhiannon Giddins number above, is a reworking of an older song. Fittingly, Dave climbs under the hood of an obscure but brilliant Depression-era tune, "The Panic Is On" by Hezekiah Jenkins ("All the landlords done raised the rents/ Folks that ain't broke is badly bent") to do his tinkering. In keeping with the more optimistic theme, he hits the beat a little harder and a little faster. The folk process at work, 70 years after Woody retooled "Wildwood Flower" into "The Sinking Of The Reuben James."

Besides its great rhythm and easy-to-yell-when-it-comes-along tag line, "Doggone, occupation is on," a striking thing about this one is its good humor. Some of this may derive from Jenkins’ amusing record, but it also reflects Dave’s professional role as an lefty singing entertainer—he currently performs his parodies and originals in the character of bankster Wild Bill Bailout. Lastly, the lyrics are both witty and broad in scope:

We communed in Paris in '68
Teamsters and turtles had a fine blind date
Now the bankers are trying to grab it all
After the Arab Spring comes the American Fall
Doggone, autumn is on

Chloe Cornelius—"I’ll Occupy"

This is my own personal favorite Occupy! song. This week, anyhow. Chloe Cornelius is a young woman who has recorded her own songs and song parodies and posted them on YouTube over the last year or so, something untold hundreds of thousands around the world have done, Like most of them, her following has been, shall we say, modest, despite a voice which is as good as those of a number of current pop stars I could name.

This number, which she bills as a "recruitment song" for the movement, has grabbed her widest audience by orders of magnitude, and deservedly so. Cornelius’s master stroke was to rework Gloria Gaynor’s disco era smash "I Will Survive," which rapidly became a feminist anthem upon its 1978 release. Its attitude of gritty determination transfers perfectly into the OWS! setting.

In place of the historical context offered by, say, Dave Lipmann, Cornelius is plugged right into the cultural moment, and thus the features which distinguish OWS! from any movement that’s gone before, as when she defies the po-po:

You think that your batons are going to get us to go home
Go on and hit me, I'll just upload it from my phone.

In fact, right in the lyrics she’s singing, Cornelius appeals to her listeners/viewers, "and it wouldn’t hurt to take/ a minute to repost this song." Damn skippy, I say. Get with the meta, listen and spread it!

Detroit Red rocks his picks

Many folks my age or younger (I'm 34) have barely even heard of unions or seen a protest on the streets of their town. I'm probably not alone when I turn on the TV, see images of general strikes and bubbling class anger from Athens to Seoul, and think, "I wish I lived in a real country."

That was before 2011. That was before Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker—backed to the hilt by billionaire financiers—tried to liquidate Wisconsin public workers’ right to bargain collectively and in doing so filled Wisconsin's capitol city—and the State Capitol building itself!--with union members, students and their teachers, farmers with picket signs on their tractors, and thousands of supporters from across the Midwest. Labor and its friends occupied Wisconsin.

Come Fall, we occupied Wall Street.

No one saw it coming. Not even your most ear-to-the-ground, deep-in-the-movements, finger-on-the-pulse lefty activist friends thought that a vague-sounding, open-ended protest in a tiny park, initiated mostly by internet institutions was going to spark a prairie fire against “the 1%”. But the dry brush was all in place—three years of the Great Recession, record profits reaped by bailed-out “job creators” while unemployment stayed sky high, public outrage against the racist state murder of Troy Davis after years of struggle to free him, and no "hope" or "change" in sight.

Before the media set out to discredit Occupy Wall Street!, it tried to ignore it. But the idea of The 99% versus The 1% traveled across the U.S. faster than a Youtube video of cute cats. However rough and problematic, this meme is class consciousness for beginners, in soundbite form. And thanks to the slogan's elegant simplicity it can be easily gasped and reshaped: homemade signs, pop songs, viral videos, dancing flash mobs. "99%" has made class consciousness culturally contagious.

Here are my 5 favorite Occupy Wall Street songs, although frankly the sound of hundreds of thousands of people voicing their anger at the 1% is in itself music to my ears.

Ry Cooder--"The Wall Street Part of Town"

Divide and rule, that's always been their plan
We're in trouble again, but this time we got friends

Ry Cooder has been a widely respected guitar wunderkind and pan-roots music alchemist since the 1960's. In recent decades his progressive, pro-working class politics have increasingly come to the fore. He bought his guitar magic and production skills to Mavis Staples' reworking on Civil Rights Movement songs on her LP We'll Never Turn Back (2007), recorded a concept record about the demolishing of a Chicano neighborhood in LA in the 1950's (Chavez Ravine, 2006), and wrote a song cycle from the point of view of a house cat who is also a union organizer (My Name Is Buddy, 2007). So it should surprise no one that Ry Cooder sides with the 99%.

Recorded at the height of the occupation of Zuccotti Park in NYC, "The Wall Street Part of Town" absolutely brims with optimism and resolve. The songs narrative brings to mind sun breaking through a rain storm, with rays of solidarity and defiance warming your face. You've been waiting you whole life to stand up to the banksters and CEOs, you've been waiting your whole life to link arms with people in the same sinking boat as you, and now--finally!-- if you can just navigate the canyons of New York's financial district--you'll get your chance. The act of walking to Wall Street with butterflies in your stomach and your fists clenched is both literal and a fitting metaphor.

Cooder sounds relieved and energized. Relieved that corporate rule is finally being challenged in the streets and energized because, well, taking over the streets with the 99% feels pretty good. And of course the song has a loose, country-fried groove with a subtle but infectious guitar riff...because that's what Ry Cooder does.

Ten Ton Shoes--"One Percent"

When it comes to protest songs these days we have come to expect folk and hip hop to lead the pack. Folk music because it's easy to play and is already associated with social change, based on the role it played in the radicalizations of the 1930's and 1960's, hip hop because it is the lingua franca of working class youth and of course has a political tradition all its own. But Occupy Wall Street! has produced such a flowering of protest songs that nearly all genres are represented.

So it is with great delight that I discovered this alt.country/rockabilly screed against the 1%. In the spirit of Mojo Nixon, Dead Kennedys' twangy side, and psychobilly, Ten Ton Shoes gives us a snarling, jacked-up, countrified take on class rage circa 2011. They've watched the rich get richer while their neighbors lost their homes and jobs and, frankly, they're sick of it. So pissed they can barely sing, in fact the vocals here sound more like a laid off worker loosing his cool at a shareholders meeting than those of a Country singer. "Some say tax the rich, I say jail the rich," all sung to a scuzzy rockabilly guitar line that would make The Meteors proud. If you ever wondered what it would sound like if caustic comedian Bill Hicks fronted 1980's cowpunk pioneers Jason & The Scorchers, this song comes wonderfully close.

Rebel Diaz--"We Are The 99%"

For the people, for the teachers, for the students
If we knew that just 1% of these dudes own 2/3rds of the US of A
American way, they lock our youth away
Practice the same crimes, tell the rest to eat cake
In France they burn cars, in London they set it off
Well over here it's time we start building a mass consensus
Your daddy lost his pension, your daughter's school needs fixin, your brother's back in prison
The message here ain't "Kumbaya," like overnight the change gonna come, nah
But what they got?? We got 99, they got 1...problem, and it's us
If we wake up that number makes more sense to us all
Some small group of bankers whose wealth goes back ages
Stage one is enslave us, divide and contain us,
Make us strangers with anger, divide us against our neighbors
But in the face of hatred we're showin' love to change things
The 99, the 99, the 99%
We're here, we've arrived, and we came to represent
For the 99, the 99, the 99%

This song is the perfect snapshot of the energy and spirit of resistance that pulsed through the Occupy Wall Street! encampment and through the dozens of spin-off mobilizations that rocked New York last fall. Rebel Diaz are an incendiary activist hip hop group from the Bronx. The entire reason they formed as a group was to use music to energize and organize radical social justice movements. This is what they live for. So you can expect to see them down at Zucotti Park, in the mix with everyone from unemployed youth to union militants, doing impromptu performances of topical songs that are so new they probably wrote them on the train ride downtown.

"We Are The 99%" was captured live on the street in the financial district. The song itself ties together so many of the themes of Occupy! and the bridges Occupy! could potentially build: class disparity, unemployment, bank bailouts, incarceration of youth of color, and beyond. The song also connects an analysis of white supremacy to the Occupy! message better than Occupy! ever has. It mentions Troy Davis, whose execution generated immense popular disgust and despair, the still-living rebel spirit of Malcolm X, the recent rebellion against police abuse and austerity in Britain, and the urgent need to "de-colonize." The song is fresh as hell, in both uses of the word. You can feel the excitement of a movement being born.

Talib Kweli--“Distractions”

Brooklyn's Talib Kweli was been a political voice in Hip Hop since the mid-1990's. His group with Mos Def, Black Star, helped kick off "conscious" rap. His song for Occupy Wall Street! takes aim at the plethora of ways that our corporate rulers keep us distracted. Celebrity gossip, fashion, status, pop music---anything to keep us from seeing that the 1% are robbing us blind. The aspect of Occupy! that seems to inspire Kweli the most is its ability to tear through the facade of the media and pop culture and present a more true picture of what's actually happening in our society: wars fought for the rich, poor people in prison, opulence for those at the top while the 'hood crumbles. That's what's really happening. All this talk about which sunglasses are hot and what Kim Kardashian is up to is designed to keep you blind and immobile. Distractions.

Like many of the artists profiled here, Kweli shot a video for his song at Zuccotti Park. As he breaks down capitalism's elaborate smoke-and-mirrors tricknology, we see footage of thousands of everyday people with homemade signs that offer proof that the 99% is waking up. Not only is the music video captivating, but readers should search Youtube for amateur footage of Talib Kweli's live performances at Occupy's General Assembly.

Makana--"We Are The Many"

Poor One Percenters. They just couldn't get a break in 2011. When heads of state and CEOs gathered in Hawaii for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation confab in November they were likely expecting a nice weekend of discussing the exploitation of the working class with their fellow kleptocrats. There was even a gala banquet planned with all the fixings, including a Hawaiian folk musician hired to give this thieves' ball a touch of local color.

But that musician had something else in mind. When he took the stage to sing and play his guitar he unbuttoned his shirt to reveal a message. "Occupy Honolulu" it read, but his statement has just begun. Instead of softly singing a Hawaiian folk song, Makana sang a song he had written specifically for the Occupy Wall Street movement, "We Are The Many." Like every other artist on this list Makana took the basic concept of the inherent antagonism between the 99% and the 1% and put it in a song. "We Are The Many" is simple, powerful song about the needs of the many being sacrificed for the needs of the few.

The time has come for us to voice our rage
Against the one who trapped us in a cage
To steal from us the value of our wage.

His voice has a sweet timbre, the guitar riff is airy, but his message is as stark as a clenched fist. Don't let Makana's smooth, acoustic aesthetic fool you. This song is more Rage Against the Machine than it is James Taylor. Like so many of the best protest songs, "We Are The Many" contains both a seething contempt for oppression as well as a steadfast insistence that justice is on it's way.

In a sense, Makana used music to pull a political stunt that made Obama & Co. cringe in their seats. But his real audience was the 99%. With his guitar, his homemade t-shirt, and his unassuming self-penned song, Makana mic-checked the 1%. And if you think that the songs message might have been lost over the clamor of corporate palm-greasing, arm-twisting, and back-slapping, you'd be wrong. Makana sang the song over and over and over, for 45 minutes.

Working Class Music: The US and the UK

2012-04-26T12:57:00.000-04:00

When I published my liner notes here for the sampler CD I prepared for a session of Mark Naison’s class on the American Working Class at Fordham University a couple of weeks ago, I got several comments suggesting other tunes I ought to have included. All were good ideas.

At least two, though--John Lennon’s “Working Class Hero” and the Clash, “London Calling”--are pretty explicitly not American. Yeah, yeah, I know that the proletariat is an international class and all that, but it does have national particularities. And the difference between how class is perceived and acknowledged--and lived--is very different in the UK than it is here.

In fact, I'm gonna post two songs here with similar titles and let them give a give a pocket seminar. “Living In The Love Of The Common People” is a song first recorded by the slick, pre-rock-style vocal quartet the Four Preps, but is most associated with Waylon Jennings, who cut it in 1968.

I like it. For all of its sentimentality, it gives give a sharp depiction of how bad poverty can be in this country, and even starts with a nod to food stamps. But when it gets to the common people, it can only summon up family love and solidarity as defenses against poverty. Nor is there even a hint that another class exists, let alone that the singer’s poverty is a function of their existence. And, in true American style, there’s a hint of better things to come: “Daddy’s gonna give you a dream to cling to.”

An attractive young English fella name of Paul Young took the song higher into the charts in the UK--#2 in 1983--than Waylon Jennings or anybody else ever managed here. That may be where another guy, Jarvis Cocker, got the catch phrase “common people,” not a conventional English usage, His band Pulp had a breakthrough album in 1995. Its very title, Different Class, suggests the distinction I am carrying on about here.

The song starts with a slumming young heiress propositioning the singer and telling him she wants to “live like common people.” Note two things in particular: 1. How aware the singer is about the class privilege inherent in this kind of slumming. 2. There’s no warm fuzzy assurance that we’ll “get by” or praise of dreams.

Instead, the upper class tourist is told:

You'll never live like common people,
You'll never do what common people do,
You'll never fail like common people,
You'll never watch your life slide out of view,
And dance and drink and screw,
Because there's nothing else to do.

This is Pulp’s signature song. The video above shows tens of thousands of English kids pulsing to it at the first large festival the band ever played, Glastonbury in 1995. Today, more than a decade and a half later, they still get tens of thousands singing every word along with the band.

(In passing, let me note that what might be called "revenge hypergamy" (hypergamy being fucking someone higher on the class ladder) is not an uncommon theme in British pop. Check the early Stones, “Play With Fire.” In the US, you’re more likely to get the likes of the 1962 Dickey Lee weeper “Patches” in which the middle class protagonist falls for a poor girl and is forbidden to see her by his pops, who later tells him she has drowned herself.)

OWS & the Hollis 99% Club Link Up To Rock Queens

2012-04-20T21:51:00.001-04:00

[Just a few days ago I posted a piece here on the impact the eviction of Occupy Wall Street! from Zuccotti Park (and the attacks on other encampments around the country) has had on the Occupy movement. Here is another angle--long time Bronx activist Professor Mark Naison talks about Queens and some of the most exciting post-Zuccotti OWS! organizing in NYC.]

How Occupy Wall Street Has Revitalized Neighborhood Based Protest--The Hollis Example

by Mark Naison

In the Hollis Section of Queens, NY, a working class and lower middle class African American community, two blocks of apartment buildings owned by a multi-millionaire real estate operator named Rita Stark have sat vacant for more than 16 years on the community’s major commercial strip. Ugly and decayed, occasionally used by neighborhood drug dealers as a safe haven, they sit across the street from a junior high school and two churches. The local development corporation, elected officials, and ordinary citizens have tried to get these buildings fixed up for years by writing letters, filing petitions, organizing meetings with the owner, all to no avail--but now, all of a sudden, there is hope of action. Why? Because of the Occupy Movement and the example it has set.

Let me explain. During January of 2012, education scholar and activist Ira Shor and I decided to try to create a support group for Occupy Wall Street at a predominantly African American Church in Queens where a dear friend and colleague, Rev. Dr. Mark Chapman was the pastor. The idea was to create an organization for people who supported the general goals of Occupy Wall Street, but felt uncomfortable sleeping in a park or risking arrest on a regular basis. The congregation of Hollis Presbyterian Church, consisting largely of senior citizens who had been civil rights activists, and remained active in community affairs, seemed ideal for this purpose, so with Rev. Chapman’s help, we set up a first meeting. More than 25 people showed up, indicating how much Occupy Wall Street had captured the imagination of people in this Southeast Queens community, and after agreeing a club should be formed, the 99% Club, they began debating what local issues they should take up. After a short discussion, the group decided to take up the cause of the 2 blocks of abandoned buildings on Hollis Avenue whose wealthy landlord had stubbornly defied community pressure to sell them or fix them up.

What gave these long time neighborhood activists hope that they could now finally make headway in solving a festering neighborhood problem was the prospect of bringing the young activists from Occupy Wall Street into the community to shake up the landlord and local elected officials. They saw Occupy Wall Street as a new and welcome force, that could strike fear in the hearts of the wealthy, not only through a language that held them responsible for monopolizing the nation’s resources at the expense of the majority of the nation’s people (the 99 percent), but because of its capacity to mobilize hundreds, sometimes thousands of young people to take to the streets in support of economic justice.

They decided on a step by step strategy to build support for a major protest, beginning with research on the abandoned properties, complaints to the department of buildings to insure violations on the properties were up to date, and the filming of a short video explaining why neighborhood residents were determined to get the buildings fixed up. All of these actions were undertaken, but it was the last one which had the most effect. Someone from Occupy Queens saw the video on Facebook and immediately asked Rev Chapman if they could come to the next 99% Club meeting to support the initiative.

When Rev. Chapman said yes, 15 activists from Occupy Queens came to the meeting, The chemistry between the two groups was extraordinary. Though the Hollis group was mostly senior citizens and almost all Black, and the Occupy Queens groups was mostly young and middle aged, and majority white, they possessed a shared understanding that working class and middle class people were suffering terribly in the current economic crisis and something had to be done about it. When Occupy Queens described how they were blocking foreclosures in the local courts by “singing in the courts”(!) people from the Hollis Group saw an immediate connection to what was happening in their neighborhood, where many homes were foreclosed, as well as the sign of the re-emergence of an energy and courage and tactical flexibility that had marked the civil rights movement in its glory days.

The two groups decided to create a coalition centered on the transformation of the Rita Stark buildings into community space, building up to an April 21 demonstration at the buildings which was aimed to attract Occupy activists from around the city as well as Hollis Residents. The April 21 event will begin with a Forum at Hollis Presbyterian Church, sponsored by Occupy Queens, where speakers will discuss local and national initiatives to transform foreclosed homes and abandoned commercial and residential spaces into housing for the homeless, and to defend tenants and homeowners from evictions by landlords and banks. The participants in the Forum will then join Hollis residents for a six block march to the Rita Stark properties where a rally and demonstration will take place which includes an “open mic” for members of the community to say how they think the properties should be developed. This protest, expected to attract several hundred people, will be the first of many actions taken till the issue has a positive resolution.

What is occurring Saturday is an example of how Occupy Wall street has not only changed the conversation about economic inequality in the United States, but given people around the nation hope that they can do something about it! It has done that not only by popularizing a language that puts the onus for the nation’s economic difficulties squarely on the wealthy and the powerful, but by showing that innovative protests that link new groups of activists to existing ones can win victories large and small, in neighborhoods as well as states, and municipalities, and eventually in the entire nation.

What We Lost Five Months Ago

2012-04-16T21:50:00.007-04:00

Five months ago yesterday, I awoke for some reason in the wee hours of the morning and checked my email—a police raid was underway at Zuccotti Park! Flinging myself onto the A train, I arrived to find the Park blockaded. Arrests, beatings and the police trashing of the Occupy Wall Street! encampment were well underway. Occupiers and supporters tried to regroup nearby.

What I remember most vividly, though, is not that chaotic night (and morning, and afternoon), but my visit to Zuccotti Park the day before. For me, it puts in bold relief just how much we lost when Bloomberg unleashed the NYPD on Occupy Wall Street! We lost a beacon, a base camp, a school of struggle, an experiment in social change and, perhaps most important, a huge intake valve for a broad new social movement.

The Last Day At Zuccotti Park

I showed up on November 14 late to a noon-hour talk my friend Professor Mike Zweig was giving. He spoke to dozens in the northeast corner of the park using the mic check method in explaining how class works in the US, He then delivered advance copies of his book, The Working Class Majority, to the professional and amateur librarians operating the library, 5237 volumes and counting, now in its own tent. The information, food serving and medical operations were all better housed and organized than they had been even a week before, and a Zuccotti Park Fire Department had popped up, staffed by volunteers with real firefighting experience.

Hundreds of people milled around talking or working on some project with a purpose--hard-core occupiers, frequent visitors like myself, folks there for the first time. An unofficial stencil and spray can operation put slogans on shirts on one side of the park and on the other, a full scale silkscreen operation was turning out free t-shirts, raising from donations the money the General Assembly had voted to front to buy shirts and supplies. On line to get one, I chatted with a retired Black clerical worker, 75 years old, making her third visit to the park from New Jersey. She agreed with me that right after actual tents had gone up in the park about a month ago, some of the openness and welcome of the encampment had been lost, and that it was now back.

Before I left, I chatted with a hard-hatted IBEW member and a dude from the Labor Outreach Committee. The three of us talking in our union jackets attracted several others who wanted to discuss potential labor participation on an upcoming November 17 action. We joked about the tour buses which kept driving by, having now added Zucotti Park to their lower Manhattan circuit. On my way out, I paused to join in on “16 Tons” and “For What It’s Worth” with four or five folks around a guy with a guitar. Occupy Wall Street! was in full flower.

That night, the hammer came down

Beacon

One big loss OWS! suffered is obvious: visibility. Once the initial mainstream whiteout of the movement had been broken by the pervasive reach of the Internet and social media (and by the ham-handed early attacks of the NYPD), Zucotti Park and the scores of sister occupations it sparked around the country were all over the news.

Partly it was that the message resonated so clearly with millions across the US (and around the world). As the economic meltdown took a bigger and bigger toll on working people, the banks got bailed out and the rich got richer. Ordinary people told their stories of losing their homes, of being laid off and unable to find work, of being impoverished by medical conditions, of being burdened by massive student debt they have no prospect of repaying. They spoke to--and for—countless others in the same sinking boat.

Partly it was that the scene was so mediagenic. The visual contrast between suited, buttoned down Wall Street brokers and lively young folks had complimentary soundbites—“Get a job, loser!” versus “Ya wanna look at these copies of the 217 job applications I have submitted since I graduated college in the Spring? Not a bite so far.” Drum circles and bemused tourists from rural Finland, anti-capitalist occu-dogs and the busy library, crocheting classes and visiting celebs showing support—there were loads of human interest stories.

And, of course, producers at news shows could always hope that the cops would brain out again and pepper spray some more female undergrads or beat another city council member bloody. Zuccotti Park was on the news every day. The word spread, and interest grew. While the Occupy! memes—the 1% vs the 99% and the concept Occupy [fill in the blank]! survived the shutdown, media interest quickly petered out without the occupations as a focal point.

Base Camp

The principal target of OWS! was clear: the Wall Street banksters who had trashed the financial system and gone on to pocket obscene salaries and bonuses for their efforts, and the political system which did their bidding, most notably providing a government rescue because they were “too big to fail.” Still, there were plenty of other issues that folks there were incensed about. Many of us had histories of activism, going back decades in the case of some of the elders.

What we had a Zuccotti Park was a kind of base camp, in the military sense, located within easy striking distance of our enemy. It was a concentrated pool of hundreds of activists of varying backgrounds who could also be mobilized to support struggles by sections of the 99% around the city. In the early weeks, OWS! protesters headed out from the park to swell postal union rallies defending post offices in poor neighborhoods and to help infiltrate and disrupt ritzy sales of high end art in defense of locked out members of the Teamsters working for Sotheby’s auction house. These actions in turn helped sway the leadership of many NYC and even national unions to throw their support to OWS!

Other important struggles that drew serious support from Zuccotti Park-based fighters were the struggle against racist police violence, including the NYPD’s notorious “stop and frisk” policies, the fight against tuition hikes in the City College system and numerous tenant struggles and anti-eviction fights. Short term mini-occupations of banks, government offices and other targets started becoming common.

And like any base camp, it had a logistical operation, to keep the forces fed, healthy and supplied. It provided reinforcements in the form of medics to tend those injured in clashes with the police and lawyers to make sure nobody stayed in the hoosegow a minute longer than necessary.

School

Another thing any guerilla army worth its salt does is train and educate its combatants. OWS! did this in any number of ways. The library was just the best known. There were non-violence, first aid and legal know-your-rights trainings. There were classes and guest speakers.

But more than anything else, education came in the ongoing discussions that were at the heart of the OWS! experience. Folks talked and argued—one-on-one, in small clumps, in organized.working groups or at the General Assembly--about immediate issues facing the encampment and larger questions of direction and the goals of the movement. And, through this collective process they learned.

A case in point is the question of the police.

Many, many Occupy! newbies, caught up in the 99% concept, were convinced that the cops were our natural allies. The thousands and thousands of hours young occupiers wasted earnestly explaining to individual officers in the detail surrounding Zucotti Park why they should side with us are enough to make a stone weep. But the tide shifted—police attacks on the occupation probably played the largest role. Direct experience will do that.

Then there was the presence of Black and Latino high school students who were gravitating to the park and explained the facts of life to the naïve. So did the news that JP Morgan Chase just donated $4.6 million to the NYPD, a move they assured everyone had nothing to do with OWS! Nobody was paying to poll occupiers but I‘ll bet a shiny new quarter that understanding of the real social role played by the po-po was far deeper by November 14 than it had been only two weeks earlier. And it took another big jump that night.

Petri Dish

Not only did occupiers, full time and sometime, learn by doing, they learned by doing new things. The creation of a living community and all its institutions, from scratch, by people who not only didn’t know, but often had, at least on the surface, little in common with, each other was an amazing process to experience.

The General Assemblies with their democratic debate and near-consensus decision-making took place very night. Anyone could come, anyone could speak. This gave participants an enormous investment in the project. Yet the social pressure of the collective—and the ban on amplification and the resulting development of mic checking—meant that folks from some outfit with a name like the Proletarian League for the Immediate Reconstitution of the Fourth International (Bolshevik Fraction) couldn’t derail the proceedings with a lengthy explanation of how OWS! should concentrate planning the insurrection.

And the practical problems we faced were, some of them, very deep and involved conflicting interests among the people, like individual power-tripping, factionalism, drug abuse in the encampment and the harassment of women occupiers. The last two were severely exacerbated by the police and shelter personnel, who directed homeless folks and people just released from prison to the Zuccotti Park. I can’t claim these problems were handled impeccably, but for the most part we did a better job than the larger society whose laws and norms we were challenging with our practice.

Some dynamics seemed built in, and in our two month stay in Zuccotti Park were never perceived as grave enough to demand the full focus of the group. One was the question of white privilege: whose upbringing, assigned role in society and assumptions about how the world works, and should work, made it relatively easy to take part. Another was the fact that longtime, fulltime occupiers saw themselves as the movement and, on the other hand, even frequent visitors would talk about OWS! in terms of “they” and not “we.’

Could all this daunting stuff have been worked through? I don’t know, but in the effort a great deal would have been learned—about how to build a different society, where other values than greed and commodity fetishism reign.

Strange Attractor

The most important thing that the encampments did was to provide a steady influx of new people into the Occupy! movement, many of whom had never even thought of engaging in active protest before. Zuccotti Park during the daytime and evening hours was always full of visitors. Sure, some folks came to scoff and a few, the sorry souls, in the hopes of seeing a real live female nipple. Most arrived supportive or genuinely curious, and left apparently little changed. But every single day, folks came for whom their visit was a transformative experience. I know because I spoke with them. Some became full time or sometime occupiers in the shadow of the Wall Street towers, others went home to other cities to get involved there.

Zuccotti Park and the other encampments around the country became a port of entry, the Ellis Island for a New Left in the United States. The constant influx of new folks kept the movement yeasty and vital. They came because they felt that here was an alternative to living in the old way, an alternative they were welcomed to, an alternative they could have a hand in building. They identified with the Occupy movement because it held the promise of a better world,

The constant inflow of new people, frequently very naive and often with odd ideas about the nature and the source of the real problems in this society, also kept the movement inoculated against a very real problem. This is core cadrification—the tendency for leading elements in a social movement, especially in times of high conflict and rapid change, to outstrip their base and jell into a small group with more advanced analysis and more militant tactics. This can easily result in the phenomenon of “slamming the door behind you”—scorning as hopelessly backward folks who hold the same views people in the core may themselves have held not so long ago.

Tactics And Strategy And The Big Question Now

The attack on Zuccotti Park and the nationally coordinated attacks around the same time on other Occupy! encampments in city after city were more than an effort to reinstitute the social order, business as usual. They targeted the encampments precisely to disrupt the effects just discussed.

When you don’t have a strategy, your tactics become your strategy. And Occupy Wall Street! was from the outset a tactic—admittedly the most successful tactic in recent memory. It was simple: occupy a public or semi-public space in a well-traveled area close to the centers of financial and political power and create an alternative center there where ordinary people can gather to challenge the powers that be.

Now Zuccotti Park and most of the other centers have been taken from us. And as various recent efforts to rebuild—Union Square in NYC, the abandoned warehouse in San Francisco—show, the enemy will not make it easy to repeat the tactical triumphs of last fall.

So where do we go from here? I don’t pretend to know, but I suggest that one yardstick by which to evaluate any of the possible futures being discussed and debated for the Occupy! movement is to what extent they can perform some of the functions that the Zuccotti Park encampment and its sisters coast to coast did.

Working Class Music: Playlist Supplement

2012-04-12T21:08:00.005-04:00

A few days back I posted the liner notes of the CD I burned as homework for Professor Mark Naison’s Fordham University course on the American working class, when he invited me to take a session and reflect the course in music. Here’s an addendum, four cuts I hadn’t given the students in advance, but showed instead, projected on the classroom’s large video screen.

First I have to say that, though fun, it was pretty daunting, packing the history of the US proletariat in music from the 1929 Crash to the present into an hour and a quarter presentation, especially since the CD was about that long.

I opened by doing a little categorization, saying that the songs I had picked fell into four categories, rough and over-broad, perhaps, but useful.

Work songs—songs that are sung as part of the labor process itself

Songs about working—songs that are about the labor process itself and/or the social relations in a particular job, often about its hazards

Songs about working class life—this can get pretty broad; I mean, technically, “Maybelline” is a song about working class life and so is “Rockaway Beach.”

Songs about working class struggle—Mark had already spun ‘em some Woody Guthrie, and I didn’t lean too heavy on these

So where I had included a recording of work songs by menhaden fishermen from the Virginia/Carolina coastal waters, I showed this nifty short clip of railroad gandy dancers. The men who heaved the hugely heavy rails onto the crossties and positioned them used songs to enable them to coordinate their collective efforts and avoid any excess in the killing exertion they were putting out.

Later in the talk, I used another visual to underline the point about women making up more and more of the workforce. This trend I introduced on the CD with the wartime “Milkman, Keep Those Bottles Quiet” about the everyday Rosie the Riveters and later followed up with Lorettta Lynn’s “The Pill”—showing how improved (and now threatened) birth control technology permitted fuller participation in paid work.

To cap that point off, I showed the video to an ‘80s disco hit where the heavy duty production doesn’t undercut but rather reinforces the humanistic and feminist message.

Another aspect of the changing face of the working class in this country is the huge influx of immigrants who have taken their places at the bottom of the “pyramid scheme of dirty jobs,” as this song succinctly points out.

I could have done some union song to wind up, but instead I picked this final tune, with its short true-life introduction. It is the story of a ship, a coastal freighter called the Mary Ellen Carter, which sinks. When her owners claim the insurance and abandon her, the crew scheme to raise her and salvage her to sail once more. Stan Rogers’ inspirational song reflects the determination and creative power of the working class and our ability to overcome our exploiters:

And you, to whom adversity has dealt the final blow
With smiling bastards lying to you everywhere you go
Turn to, and put out all your strength of arm and heart and brain
And like the Mary Ellen Carter, rise again.

(P.S. Yeah, I know Stan Rogers is a Canadian. Sue me.)

Success on Many Fronts: POP's People's Daily Campaign for Jobs & Justice shows how to carry out multiple struggles

2012-04-11T11:28:00.000-04:00

A massive turnout from labor and the community made the April 4th march a significant remembrance of Dr. King on the 44th anniversary of his assassination

On Wednesday, April 4, 2012, the People's Daily Campaign for Jobs, Equality, Peace & Justice honored the 44th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s murder in Memphis, TN. But our general demand for 'justice' was specified slightly to highlight the singular example of the murder of Trayvon Martin in Sanford, FL.

"Justice for Trayvon Martin" formed the particular of the justice demand on our Peace, Jobs, & Justice march on April 4, as well as the at special Justice for Trayvon march POP sponsored days before on a rain-soaked Saturday

Last July, shortly after the Daily Campaign for Jobs and Justice began, this blog hailed POP's organizational maturity as we carried out the recently launched daily campaign and successfully held our annual event remembering the victims of police violence during the 1967 Newark Rebellion without interrupting the picket lines that day, the previous day and the day after (see Playing the Piano… People's Organization for Progress ups the ante of struggle in NJ). But during the week of April 4 this years POP proved that we possess true organizational maturity! Not only did the daily campaign continue without missing a beat, we held two large mobilizations of more than 200 activists as part of this campaign, led a campaign that stopped an eviction, and travelled to Raleigh, NC for the Black Workers for Justice's 29th Annual MLK Support for Labor Dinner where POP statewide chair Lawrence Hamm was keynote speaker.

Larry Hamm energized the participants at the Black Workers for Justice banquet

"This march honors the two Martins, Martin Luther King and Trayvon Martin," Larry Hamm, chairman of the People's Organization for Progress noted at the Wednesday demonstration and rally. "Our general demand for justice becomes much more specific in the wake of young Mr. Martin's murder, even as we recall the murder 44 years ago of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr."

Despite the weather, Saturday's march was invigorated by the youthful energy of the Shabazz high School marching band

"Dr. King did not die in bed, in his sleep, he was protesting in the streets, as we are doing today. He was supporting striking sanitation workers in Memphis, TN, planning to go to DC for the Poor People's Campaign. His plan was to build a tent-city of 1 million poor people on the lawn of the US capital, to expand his campaign for labor rights, against the War in Vietnam, and for economic justice at the time of his murder! This is why we remember him today," Hamm concluded on Wednesday, April 4, 2012.

Elders of the people's struggle in Newark, Amina and Amiri Baraka also spoke at the rally after the March 4 march

People's Organization for Progress members who traveled to North Carolina for the Black Workers for Justice banquet were pleased to learn about that similar organization of 30 years, even as we spread the word about POP's nearly three decades struggle.

Ajamu Dillahunt of BWFJ addresses the dinner

This week of activism was also highlighted by the POP Coalition to Save Our Homes ability to turn back the Essex County Sheriff's department in Wells Fargo Bank's attempt to evict Susie Johnson, a 77-year old Orange, NJ woman (see People power stops unjust eviction in Orange, NJ for more information and photos).

To view additional photos from these events, click Justice for Trayvon Martin, April 31 in Newark, April 4 Daily Demonstration for Jobs & Justice, and BWFJ Annual Awards Dinner 2012.

Working Class Music: A Sampler

2012-04-03T19:23:00.007-04:00

Last week I had the opportunity to take over a session of Professor Mark Naison's Fordham University history class on the American Working Class. In advance I prepped a CD of songs and burned a copy for each student to listen to before the class. Most of 'em did, too.

I am posting here the brief "liner notes" I handed out with the tunes. To make it easy on you, I have included links to online versions of most of them, I have linked only the original artists for the versions on the CD I created, either in the originals or or reasonably close alternates--some live. Some of the others you can probably dig up on Spotify or other music sites.

And if anyone wants th' whole damn thing, I'd be glad cut you a CD of yer own. Music wants to be free. Also, it gets lonely when nobody is listening.

Just hit me up with a Facebook message (if we are "friends") or blip me at doneil@freedomroad.org with your snailmail add'y and I'll send it off as soon as I can get around to it.

Hezekiah Jenkins--"The Panic Is On" (1929)

This is not a blues by any means, more of a rag. Jenkins deals with the miseries of the just unfolding Depression—still called after the stock market panic that triggered it—with humor:
All the landlords done raised the rent,
Folks that ain't broke is badly bent,

and a certain grim prophecy:
So if luck don't change, there'll be some stealing done,

The Bright Light Quartet--"Menhaden Chanteys" (1959)

A nifty sampler of work songs, songs sung while working to provide the rhythm for the work process itself. This was not recorded on the small skiffs used to fish menhaden with nets in the coastal waters of Virginia and North Carolina. These guys were a semi-professional gospel quintet from Virginia, who also worked as menhaden fishers. One thing you’ll notice right off is that groups of men working together don’t only sing about the work process.

The Dixon Brothers--"Weave Room Blues" (c. 1935)

This is not a work song, but a song about working. Dorsey Dixon and his brother Howard spent most of their adult lives working in Carolina textile mills, because they made so little money from performances and the dozens of records they cut.

Ella Mae Morse--"Milkman, Keep Those Bottles Quiet" (1942)

Cut with Freddy Slack’s Orchestra, this tune highlights the war production that ended the Great Depression and drew millions of women into industrial production for the first time. A word of explanation: milk used to come in bottles and be delivered right to your home in the wee hours of the morning by a milkman, who also picked up the empties.

Big Bill Broonzy--"Black, Brown And White" (1951)

This blues, one of Broonzy’s best known, was unusual for its blunt depiction of racism:
If you was white, should be all right,
If you was brown, stick around,
But as you’s black, hmm brother, get back, get back, get back"

Often overlooked is that it’s about racism in work—-he sings about discrimination on the job and trying to get one.

The Coasters--"Wake Me, Shake Me" (1960)

Early rock & roll was the music of working class youth. Working class kids made it and they were the market. Can you imagine a million-selling group today releasing and pushing a cut about working on a garbage truck?

Bob Luman--"Poor Boy Blues" (1965)

Luman got his start as one of the rockabilly cohort, like the early Elvis, Gene Vincent, and Jerry Lee Lewis. As rock changed in the early ‘60s, he shifted toward country, but kept a bit of rock’s rhythm and sly humor in this cut, which addresses the Great Society programs which spread the county’s wealth more broadly across the population.

Dick Curless--"A Tombstone Every Mile" (1965)

Truckers’ songs are a whole sub-genre of country music. Any guesses why that might be? This one, like a lot of songs about mining, logging and working on the water, emphasizes the dangers inherent in the work.

Lorraine Lee--"H
ighway Crew" (1990?)

This woman was my baby-sitter when I was in elementary school, but that’s not why the cut is here. This, too, is a look at hard and dangerous work, but it’s matter-of-fact, not overblown, and conveys something of rural working folk in the North.

Joy Of Cooking--"Too Late, But Not Forgotten" (1971)

One o’ them SF hippie bands--and one of the best. Notable for being led by two women, Toni Brown and Terry Garthwaite, in a period where women in rock tended to be pigeonholed as “chick singers.” This is noteworthy for the evocation of working class life for a single woman, and reflected the changes in women’s consciousness as the modern women’s movement caught fire.

The Statler Brothers--"Class Of '57" (1973)

These guys are arguably the finest vocal combo country music has ever produced. Most of their stuff tends to be either comic or sentimental. This leans into both, but never falls in, and presents a good look at life (for white folks, anyhow) during the era when a lot of your grandparents were coming up. Looking back at this high point of the US Empire, the song has a fatalistic undertone, a sense that the American Dream is somehow flawed.

Loretta Lynn--"The Pill" (recorded 1972, released 1975)

By the 1970s, the trend of women entering, and staying in, the workforce was changing the face of the US class structure and gender relations within the family. One of the things that made it possible was the birth control pill, first introduced in 1960. In the very conservative world of country music, this song by the top female star was banned on many stations.

John Mellencamp--"Pink Houses" (1983)

Like “Class of ’57,” this is about the American Dream, but with an even harsher look. I include it, instead of something by, say, Bruce Springsteen, who plays in the same ballpark, because it hints at some answers to a question that has plagued political scientists—and Marxists: Why is there no strong socialist tradition in the US?

The Valentine Brothers--"Money's Too Tight To Mention" (1982)

A soul outfit out of Columbus, Ohio. Unlike the Statlers, and like the Dixons, leaders Billy and John Valentine actually were siblings. This great song observes the Reagan Recession with a mellow vocal and a bitter eye. It also observes the decline of the Black liberation movement, which had been the driving force in social change in the US at least since the early 1950s.

Fountains Of Wayne--"Bright Future In Sales" (2003)

These guys belong in a serious look at class in the US, because they have staked out New Jersey’s suburban middle class as their turf. This, for instance, is a song about guys who have trouble growing up, but it is also about the meaningless and precarious nature of life in middle management. (And it’s a tip of the hat to Timbuk 3’s ironic 1986 hit, "The Future’s So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades")

Afroman--"Graveyard Shift" (2000)

“(Dedicated to all the blue collar workers strugglin', strivin', throbbin', and thrivin'.)” There’s plenty of hiphop dealing with the underground economy of drug dealing, some real as death, some made right up. Afroman goes another route here is one of the best songs so far about legal work in the 21st century in any genre, period. It captures late night, low wage work--and more important, the relations among the workers on the job.

James McMurtry--"We Can't Make It Here (acoustic)" (2004)

James McMurtry is one of the best songwriters working today. This song foreshadows the coming of the Occupy Movement, with its clear look at the collapse of the old industrial economy in this country and the slow burning out of Rust Belt cities and towns. He’s doesn’t bite his tongue when it comes to calling out those responsible either.

Pretty Girls Make Graves--"Parade" (2006)

Ah, hell, I can’t do this without at least a couple of union songs. This one, by a sadly defunct post-punk band out of Seattle, is a rocking tribute to labor organizing and paints a picture of last winter’s Battle of Wisconsin before the fact.

Tom Morello--"Union Town" (2010)

And speaking of the Battle of Wisconsin, here’s Tom Morello (Rage Against the Machine, The Nightwatchman, Street Sweeper Social Club,… that Tom Morello) doing his anthem written during the high point of that struggle. Like "Parade," it looks forward to a revival of the trade union movement.

Leslie Fish--"Curse of the Drinking Class" (1977)

Leslie Fish made her name as a founder of filk music (you do not want to know, trust me on this), but she’s also an anarchist and wrote this modern day version of the work songs I highlighted at the beginning. Oddly enough, she doesn’t limit herself to singing about the work process either…

Dave Lippman--"Occupation Is On" (2011)

And to complete the symmetrical reflection of the first two cuts, here to close things out is a nifty—and timely--update of the Hezekiah Jenkins song this CD starts with.

[A follow-up post to this one appears here.]

The Position Of Women In The US On This IWD

2012-03-08T09:10:00.006-05:00

[Today is International Women's Day and this is the second piece that Fire on the Mountain has published in observance. The first is here. This is an updated version of an article originally solicited for the IWD issue of the Norwegian magazine Rødt, published by the Red Party there.]

by Judith Mirkinson

What are we to make of this moment in the lives of women in the U.S.?

The Republicans are threatening to outlaw abortion and contraception. There are more women than men in colleges and graduate schools. Young women are told (and most believe it) that they are the equals of men, but they’re still underrepresented in government, in the workplace and even in the recognized leadership of progressive movements. There are women in positions of leadership but they’re just as likely to be right wing as not and/or they just serve the interests of those in power.

Violence against women is for the first time not just considered normal behavior, yet violence against women is happening all the time. We’re living in a highly militarized society, which is still involved in one “official” and many other “unofficial” wars. We know violence against women goes hand in hand with militarism (and, in fact, the Department of Defense just said that sexual violence by military personnel is rising precipitously). Still, buses advertise women’s shelters and decry violence on one side, and have recruiting posters for the military on the other.

Occupy movements couldn’t exist without women’s work, yet male voices are the ones mostly heard. Occupy Patriarchy is being built but there’s a fierce debate over the participation of women of color. Women in the U.S. look at what women are doing in places like Egypt and Greece and are inspired by their courage and determination.

So what are we to make of all this, we who consider ourselves part of the progressive movement? What IS the position of women these days?

When we look at the state of women in the United States at the beginning of the 21st century we find ourselves in complicated and contradictory territory. We've made progress and we've stayed the same. The situation for all women has improved, but as always in America, it's all filtered through our race and class. For those of us who are feminists – and that’s already saying a lot these days – we’d have to say we’ve come 5 steps forward and perhaps 4.5 steps back.

After tens of thousands of years, women are no longer just regarded as inferior/second class citizens: we’re not property. This is a transformation of monumental proportions that neither comes easily nor without consequence. In the face of this change, male supremacist institutions and their representatives in politics, business and the media are fighting back – wanting to restore the status quo. There is a war against women both internationally and in the United States and it’s being fought on many fronts.

Culturally, the religious right is telling women to get back into marriage, have babies, be covered up and do what we’re told. But the converse is also true. We’re supposed to be sexy all the time whether we’re 5 or 65, be fierce, be feminine, be independent but ultimately still let men be dominant. We can see this in movies--which routinely have six or seven men and one woman, in music videos, TV, magazines and so on.

And the left or the progressive sector is right there, often doing the same thing. I’ve been doing an informal survey for years. Literary and left magazines: 80% men. Left journals: men overwhelmingly over-represented. Left analysis/programs/panels/events/rallies are majority male (read white males here). [If you want to investigate this further check out the study just done by VIDA.]

This is not to say that women aren’t fighting back, aren’t resisting. We are, but it’s a hard road and one not easily traveled or navigated.

What about the economy?
The "mancession" is just another urban myth!

Under this recession the feminization of poverty has continued. Women are far more likely to be in poverty than men. Add to this the fact that women of color have been the hardest hit. Almost 1/3 of working Black and Latina women and their children are below the poverty line. This is compared to 13% of white women. One in seven women do not have health care insurance. Programs that were once funded by the federal government are now being shifted to the states where budget cuts have slashed childcare, healthcare, drug programs and job training to women and children.

Over the past several years, as the recession deepened in the U.S., there were many articles in the press--both mainstream and alternative--that men were the main victims of the recession. This was based on the fact that manufacturing, construction and other "traditionally male" jobs were being lost at a greater rate than those "traditionally female" jobs in the service sector.

This is the first "recovery" where men gained and women lost. According to a recent Pew study, men gained almost 800,000 jobs while women lost 200,000 jobs. Of the 1.6 million jobs added, 70% went to men. Women are more likely to be part-time workers and more likely to be underemployed. Although women’s wages have increased women still earn 75% of what men do.

One could say that women’s role has not been transformed, just expanded. We’re still expected to be sexual partners, help mates, cleaners, cooks, and mothers and care takers. Women still do more housework, still are more responsible for raising children and taking care of the elderly.

"Supporting Life" from conception to birth! Forget about our lives after that!
Are we still in the 21st Century?

"Contraception is a license to do things in a sexual realm that are counter to how things are supposed to be. Marriage does not exist because people like to hang out together and have fun." Rick Santorum, Republican candidate for president.

Control over women’s reproduction and sexuality has always been a central tenet of patriarchy--and patriarchy is reasserting itself today.

In the 40 years since Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion in 1973, support for abortion has steadily eroded. The majority still support abortion, but pro-abortion, excuse me, pro-choice activists have lost the moral high ground as more and more people think abortion is tantamount to killing. Abortion on TV is anathema or a tragedy. Women won’t admit they’ve had more than one, or even one. Sex is everywhere, but apparently only men are supposed to have it freely.

Since I first wrote this article, the Rush Limbaugh debacle where he called Sandra Fluke a slut and a prostitute for talking about birth control has taken place. There are two interesting things about this. One, that he actually got a lot of support and two, that people, especially women organized against him. At the same time the Blunt bill which would have allowed any employer to deny their female employees contraceptive coverage because of that employer's beliefs, was only narrowly defeated.

The birth rate is dropping for all women, but especially for white women, and birthing and pregnancy are being fetishized as never before. Every time you look at a magazine they’re talking about a woman’s “bump.” Babies, like everything else, are commodities and big business.

It’s not all one way. There’s a real divide out there over sex, marriage, and the notion of family: gay marriage is gaining acceptance, as are gay adoptions. The number of women having children later and outside of marriage has steadily increased. The reality is that about 1/3 of all women will have an abortion in their lifetime and that’s across class and race. So the war against sex flies in the face of the reality that women live every day. Unfortunately, it’s steadily gaining traction.

Over the past year, more anti-abortion and anti-family planning measures have been introduced into legislatures than in any year since Roe v. Wade legalized abortion in 1973. 162 restrictive measures have been signed into law in states throughout the country. Recently a state court upheld a law in Texas that requires women to have invasive ultrasounds “showing the fetus” before being allowed to have an abortion.

Family planning funding for poor women has been slashed. In New Jersey and Montana, it was cut completely. Nationally there is a move to completely eliminate Title X, which is the national program to provide family planning to low income women.

The Obama administration just caved into the right wing by denying young women the ability to obtain Plan B---or the morning after pill--to young women under 17 without a doctor’s prescription.

Even when abortions are legal, they are often not available to those who live outside metropolitan areas. When so-called pro-lifers are asked: "Well, if you don’t want abortion what do you think should happen to provide for all these families?" The answer: "God will provide and women shouldn’t have sex outside marriage." The irony is that abstinence-only communities have some of the highest rates of unplanned pregnancies in the country! And while health insurance companies and legislators debate funding family planning, there is no such debate over pills such as Viagra, which promote men’s sexuality.

Am I sexy? A 10-year-old girl to her mother.

Bitch, Cunt, Ho. Go on any bus; listen to teen-agers talking to each other at the mall. Watch TV. Go to a demonstration. You’ll hear these words over and over again. Women are being denigrated and are denigrating themselves every day and everywhere. We’re being pressured to have sex and be sexual everywhere we turn. Women’s bodies are still being used to sell everything from cars to beer to building supplies. We’re objectified and commodified as never before and of course we’re an enormous market.

Women of all ages don’t really know how to think about themselves. The image of feminism as un-cool or even wrong is all over the place. Let's face it, the achievements of the women's movement of the past does mean that many women can work hard and get ahead. At the same time, most women do recognize the inequalities that still exist and are really worried and angry about the attacks they see on reproductive freedom. Still, they're in conflict about what to do about it all.

There’s a lot of testosterone out there! History does repeat itself.

"Racism and sexism are a byproduct of capitalism so if you just deal with capitalism they’ll be taken care of."
"Sexism? It’s so divisive! What about class?"
"Yeah, I know he’s abusive but he’s a great organizer."
Excepts from "Shit Manarchists Say" video on Youtube.

I sat down with some women the other day to talk about the dynamics around feminism and sexism and the Occupy movement. All these women are involved in Occupy Oakland and they’re in touch with women from all over the country.

They identified as feminists, although they couldn’t all agree on what that meant. Some identified as queer, some trans, some straight, some white, some women of color. They described going to demonstrations and being forced out of leadership by their men friends. They talked about the fact that a woman had been the main organizer for the Block the Port action in Oakland but that one man had gotten all the credit. They said that after each mass arrest it was women who did all the legal work to get people accounted for and out of jail. They described meetings where they were afraid to voice their opinions and where their opinions were not valued. They described articles coming out of all the Occupies and how women and especially women of color fought the hardest about sex, race and class. The women were smart, engaged and committed and they all felt very frustrated about what to do.

"The thing is, we’re what makes occupy happen. We’re on all the committees and do tons of the work. And then we have no time to do our own work."
"And when we do have time, it all degenerates into what men are doing what to whom. And we can’t agree."
"Yeah, we can’t even agree on what to do to men who are abusive and there are a lot of them."
"And what about our own theoretical work? We have no time for developing our own ideas about feminism."

It all sounded very familiar and very sad. The need for autonomous women’s organizations seemed more important than ever, but unfortunately there are also so many factors against their establishment.

There are literally thousands of women’s NGOS, non-profits, in the US. They organize young women, they advocate for women’s health, they build with women of color, they talk about women in prison, and they advocate for reproductive rights and fight against militarism and war. They talk about violence against women and sex trafficking and the role of women in immigration. Some of them are quite radical in their analysis; some see working to reform the government as their goal. Many do very good work but they, like most non-profits, do not substitute for a radical women’s movement that really challenges society and demands full women’s emancipation.

And despite all the non-profits and organizations feminism still gets a bad rap.

There's a wide spread myth that feminism was just middle class and white. And because dominant sectors of the women’s movement were just that, the fact that women of color and working class women were essential to its being gets eliminated.

Clearly the latest attacks on women’s rights affect working class women of color more than anyone else. Rich women were always able to get an abortion if they needed one--the same goes for contraception, childcare and health care.

Women are still terrified of being seen as anti-male. From mainstream women’s groups to more radical ones, the 'men are welcome' sign is always there. Prizes are given to men on International Women’s Day, and men speakers can be the majority at a women’s rights rally.

Unfortunately, this is rather typical these days.

And what of the left? The left has always seen women’s liberation as a necessary evil at best and downright divisive and secondary at worst. They’ll say they support women’s liberation but question what it actually is. Now that the occupy movement is putting the question of capitalism back in the national consciousness, the issue of Marxism and its relationship to race and class is once again being discussed. Women are so integrated into society that the left just sees us as part of everything else.

Thus, the question of women’s oppression is just not seen as fundamental to capitalism. It’s the result of capitalism not part of its genesis. The question of women’s liberation is not seen as essential to building a democratic society (and let's be clear here: U.S.-style democracy is not democracy at all.). The failure of former socialist countries to really build women's equality is not acknowledged as one of the fundamental reasons these "revolutions" were not ultimately successful.

As we approach another International Women’s Day, we have to question and analyze and argue and debate how to rebuild a vibrant, diverse, inclusive and radical women’s movement. Given the growth of the right we really have no other choice. We don’t know what it will look like: it will probably be completely the same and totally different from those that came before.

The great thing is we’re in a really interesting moment. So many women are excited and organizing. Calling themselves feminists, they're questioning authority, questioning the left, and struggling to understand their situation. They're talking about capitalism and racism. They're talking about patriarchy and how it all fits together. They're building a new vision.

Who knows? It's time to move to six steps forward and no steps back.

Author's note: Clearly this is just part one of this discussion. There is so much more to talk about--and this paper didn’t touch on the issues of women internationally (for instance how women are used to justify military intervention and then are the most abused) or the issues of LGTBQ. I welcome any comments, debates, etc.

Why Would A Woman Want To Be An Ironworker?

2012-03-02T11:55:00.012-05:00

[Next week is International Women's Day and Fire on the Mountain will be publishing a couple of pieces in observance. This is a version of an article originally solicited for the IWD issue of the Norwegian magazine Rødt, published by the Red Party there.]

by Jeanne Park

Ironworkers create the framework supporting the structure of our cities. We place the columns and girders of skyscrapers, the trusses and decks of bridges. We bind the rods holding highways together and roadways arching over the ground. We set the handrails and stair stringers that ascend to lofty tower heights.

Our work with metal puts us constantly on the move and always on the watch for danger. We work with crane operators to swing tons of steel in to place hundreds of feet in the air. When we weld and burn steel, sparks and molten metal fly. We walk on bare steel. We work in the fog, sun, and rain, pounding the steel with beaters, wedging it into place with our sleever bars.

Ironworkers have a reputation for being tough and taking risks. Our nicknames range from “the cowboys of the sky” or “skywalkers” to “ironheads.” Because of the nature of our work, we tend to trust each other quickly or not at all. As hard as we work, we have a notorious reputation for drinking and “partying”. Some take to these things to sustain the adrenaline, others to shake it off.

Working with iron seems a very masculine trade, one by which many men use to judge their manliness. The guys like to say that their job is their life, and their coworkers their brothers. They like the image they convey of being tougher than steel, and much more dangerous than so many other trades.

These are some of many reasons why it’s also tough to be a woman ironworker.

Some believe that women aren’t interested in these jobs--that women can’t and don’t want to work so hard and with such heavy equipment. This is a load of crap. During America’s involvement in WWII, women en masse worked welded and worked with metal. That era demanded a patriotic duty from some. For others, the war created a great opportunity and calling. Women were quickly trained and put to work. Tasks that were awkward were made more ergonomic (in an age before that consideration) to account for the size and strength of women. Safety became a priority. On many jobs women refused work until their concerns were addressed.

To oversimplify: After WWII, factory owners, employers, and unions shut women out of the trades quicker than returning soldiers could take their places. Not all soldiers wanted to go back to factories and many took advantage of the GI Bill. As the need for skilled workers grew, unions found solidarity. They were able to demand better wages, benefits and conditions, even as they shut out their sisters, who had worked so hard to open doors for all workers.

With the strengthening of unions came the realization of workers’ strength. Industrialists, employers and politicians feared the communist and socialist groups, which had helped to inform the unions. The “red scare” of the 50s panicked unions and many quickly cut their ties to their communist origins. Even now, many union oaths to membership and office exclude those with any affiliation to the communist party.

Culturally and economically, women were forced into domestic roles in the home. American markets and advertisers, as well as television and radio producers idealized the homemaker. In this narrative, the homemaker became a willing servant to the male breadwinner and their family. Entertaining at home became a social “must.” Cleaning products, recipes and the newest household gadgets (produced by post-war manufacturers) became social obsessions. The bored housewife was disregarded and de-legitimized. Drugs such as Valium and Percoset and speedy “diet-pills” became regulars in medicine cabinets.

Every woman that I know in the ironworker trade has had to fight for respect at her work and in her union hall. Most of us realize that being a member of the union provides the most rights and protected conditions. Still, it’s a battle to make the many male members realize that once a woman becomes a member of the union, she is an equal member--not a member of an annex or co-union. Prejudices and preconceptions are constantly being addressed. We are so few, that coworkers, bosses, and employers constantly scrutinize each women and judge all by their experiences with one. We cannot make mistakes, as our whole gender is often painted with the same brush.

I’m not trying to say that all of our brothers are so suspicious and unwelcoming. But it is rare to see a respected member take a stand to support a sister on the job. One or two men who don’t speak up against the derisive comments, sabotage, or harassment can ruin a whole jobsite. It takes active leadership and some true courage to undo those wrongs.

Women can also find strength on the jobs by gaining the support of other women who face the same problems. By networking the women that exist in the trade to each other and with the women who are new, we are able to build on our successes and avoid old mistakes. This is my current role.

There are so few of us ironworker women that we rarely learn about the existence of one another, much less work with each other in the same company or jobsite. Less than one percent of ironworkers are women. Because of some limited affirmative action by the federal government, ironworker companies find it beneficial to have a woman on the payroll. The near impossibility of sharing experiences with someone who understands the particulars of your job experience puts us at a severe disadvantage. It’s very tough to be doing such a physically strenuous job, feeling and being told that you are physically inadequate, mocked and molested, and not being sure if this treatment is because of you as an individual, or perhaps something not so personal. Or maybe it’s all in your head--you’re just crazy.

My solution has been to put together the Ironworker Women Calendar. The calendar features pictures of women working in all aspects of our trade. These pictures literally show that women can do the work. Our diverse and capable membership is highlighted. Hopefully this will encourage young women to consider our trade as an option for themselves. By providing the calendar for free to female members and encouraging their participation, the calendar helps to develop a database with which to network our sisterhood as well. [You can order it here. FotM]

The benefits to ironworker women have grown as our network has grown. We exchange advice on basics such as where to get proper fitting work clothes or protective equipment. We all tell stories about our days at work: some amusing, some. Not all of us have the same experiences, but all of us understand our situation. This feeling of not being so alone keeps many of us going even when work gets rough.

Social networking has been a huge benefit to our sisterhood, since we are spread so far and wide. My local union, for example, extends about five hundred miles from the northern boarder of California to the city of Monterey. In all we have roughly twenty women ironworkers. For all of us to meet in person is impossible. Through email and the Internet, we can stay in touch with little effort, which is lovely after a hard day’s work.

Finally, one may ask, why bother? If it is so difficult for a woman to be an ironworker, why fight the current culture inside and outside of the job? The simple answers have to do with the good wages and benefits of a reliable trade. The health insurance and retirement funds, especially in uncertain economic times are very attractive. The benefits of physical work and the variability of tasks and location draw many of us to the trade. Then there is also the feeling of strength, the ability to bend steel to your will and swing it through the air to rest precisely in its place. There is the moment you are able to stand on a structure, look across the skyline, and note which towers, skyscrapers, and bridges you’ve touched the bones of and helped to raise from the ground.

Why wouldn’t a woman want to be an ironworker?

Finance, Food & Force: How We Wound Up In This Mess

2012-02-22T09:13:00.005-05:00

[This is not the first time Stan Goff's name had cropped up at Fire on the Mountain. What was perhaps his single greatest contribution to the anti-war movement is remembered here, for instance. This piece, reposted with Stan's permission from his own Feral Scholar blog gives a masterful overview of the deep roots of the ongoing economic meltdown.]

The Roles of Finance, Food, and Force in US Foreign Policy

by Stan Goff

The Text of a Lecture at Pennsylvania State University-School of International Affairs, February 2, 2012

Before I begin, I’d like to thank Jan Burnett and Casey Hilland of the School of International Affairs Student Government Association, as well as Dr. Tiyanjana Maluwa, Dr. Tineke Cunning, and John G. Hodgson, all of whom I understand were instrumental in organizing this gathering tonight.

It seems important at the outset to make a few disclaimers. First of all, I am by no means qualified as an expert, in the usual sense of that word, on foreign policy. My personal experience of it was as an instrument of policy within the military special operations community. Even within that community, I was an enlisted man who had gone in and out of the service, graduating through five of my pay grades two times each because of breaks in service. I was not a commissioned officer, nor was I ever a member of anyone’s staff. In fact, I can say that I felt about staff positions about the same way most of us would feel about avian flu; and I earnestly and successfully avoided those positions.

Nor am I am academic. I hold a bachelor's degree from an institution that I have never seen firsthand that specialized in awarding non-resident degrees for military people. My degree, moreover, was in liberal studies with an emphasis in English literature. I have looked into foreign policy and a host of other subjects on my own since 1996 when I separated once and for all from military service. But I have not been formally trained as a foreign policy intellectual.

My work since leaving the army has included non-profit organizing, policy research, security consulting, technical advice, writing, some public speaking, grocery bagging, pizza delivery, landscaping labor, stone masonry, and deconstruction. The latter was not in any way associated with post-modern studies, but was literally deconstructing houses--demolishing them by hand to recover building materials for re-use.

So if there is an appeal to authority raised against my remarks tonight, I have no defense that can be based on credentials.

My political genealogy may also raise a few questions, because I have at different times throughout my life counted myself a conservative, a libertarian, an anarchist, a nationalist pragmatist, a liberal, a Marxist, a pro-feminist; and now my political identity is Christian, though in a way more closely associated with Mennonites or Catholic Worker communities than evangelicals. I am neither conservative nor liberal, and I dislike the term “progressive.”

Again, if anyone objects to my remarks, they are welcome to infer that I have an agenda based on any portion of that political genealogy. I probably have several agendas, but I hope by the time I am finished that you will allow that I am not hiding them.

In 1983, I was in Guatemala. I was there when General Mejia-Victores led a coup d’etat against Efrian Rios-Montt’s regime. In 1985, I was in El Salvador, at the same time that President Duarte’s daughter Inez Guadalupe was kidnapped by the FMLN and exchanged for a number of prisoners. In neither case was I involved directly with those most notable events, but in both cases I was working directly out of the United States Embassy. While my actual role in these places is still classified, what I have to say about these experiences does not relate directly to the work but to my observations of the inner workings of a US Embassy, and those observations are general enough to avoid running afoul of the law.

Embassies, I discovered, were not much different than the military staffs I’d avoided. They were bureaucratic, simultaneously authoritarian and conformist, and there was great deal of superficial courtesy that papered over a red-toothed and Hobbesian struggle for career advancement. But more to the point of this talk, I was obliged to check the Ambassador’s itinerary each day.

As it turned out in both cases, Guatemala and El Salvador, where each of these governments was waging war against its own people, the Ambassador’s most frequent visits were not to the chief of state, or the chief of state’s staff, or even to the host nation’s military chief of staff. The most regular and frequent meetings were with the national Chambers of Commerce. This is when--for a soldier who hadn’t thought enough about it--I came to realize that politics is about business, and that the political class serves the interests of the business class.

It was around that time, in the early 80s, that macro-economic forces were shaping a new form of international economy and corresponding changes in US foreign policy.

In 1973, as a protest against the US rescue of Israel from an impending defeat by the Egyptians in the Yom Kippur War, Arab nations implemented an oil embargo against the US, creating day-long gas lines that broke up only when filling stations pumped out their last drop of gasoline.

Oil prices rose dramatically, creating a tremendous windfall profit for oil producing states. Oil was denominated in US dollars, and those additional dollars were invested at Wall Street by the same oil producers who were withholding gasoline from the US.

Wall Street does not sit on money. Wall Street firms are rentier capitalists, that is, they use money to make more money; and so the glut of petrodollars from the Arab oil states was converted into vast development loans for poorer countries, especially in Latin America.

These loans, not unlike the subprime mortgages we know and love today, had adjustable rates. During the latter Carter years, the United States--for reasons we won’t elaborate here--suffered something the economists hadn’t anticipated: simultaneous lack of growth--stagnation--and rapid inflation, which came to be known as stagflation.

Federal Reserve Chair Paul Volcker responded to this with something called the Volcker Shock, that is, since inflation was the greater danger to the rentier capitalists, he raised the interest rate from 7.5% to 21.5%, doubling US unemployment rates, while making large creditors whole. These elevated interest rates were passed along, via Wall Street institutions, to those Latin American countries that had received the aforementioned development loans, creating a crisis in Latin America. This shock doctrine lasted from 1979 to 1982, and when Reagan was in office in 1982, Mexico announced that it was about to default on its Wall Street loans, stranding Wall Street with more than $100 billion in losses.

Not for the first time, and certainly not for the last, the US government stepped in to bail out Wall Street’s finance capitalists. This was a bailout loan to Mexico, but the intent and the urgency was to ensure that Wall Street didn’t take a bath on the Mexican default. The vehicle for loans to cover the previous loans to Mexico was the International Monetary Fund, an international institution formed in the latter years of World War II, in which the US exercises a very dominant role. But this time, the bailout loans had something attached to them in addition to interest, called “conditionalities.”

These conditions included several ultimatums--that Mexico’s internal markets be opened to US-based investors, including US multinational corporations, that labor and environmental standards be rolled back to increase the rate of profit in order to pay back the restructured loans, and that regressive tax structures be implemented – also to assist in the payback of the loans. A structural imperative, though not one of the specified conditions, was also that Mexican enterprises--in particular, agriculture--be converted from production for local consumption to export products to get more of the US dollars required to service the restructured but now vastly expanded external debt.

Using similar crises, the IMF proceeded over the next few years to impose these conditionalities--called structural adjustment programs--on the majority of nations of the global periphery, effectively undermining their national sovereignty inasmuch as the IMF, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization, all US-dominated pre-market institutions that manage the so-called “free” market, came to dictate the economic policies of these structurally-adjusted nations.

While these were originally contingent measures used to take advantage of Mexico’s crisis, the Reagan administration soon realized that they had stumbled onto a model that could be used around the world to open home markets to US investment under conditions that were very advantageous to US investors. Moreover, it was a way to capture the political leadership of debtor nations in a dollar-dominated system, which would come to be known as neoliberalism.

I realize that this is a fly-over at several thousand feet, and that I am overlooking many of the details of this process, but I only want to establish a kind of historical context wherein neoliberalism is intelligible, in order to explain subsequent claims about US foreign policy, which has been largely formed by the imperatives of neoliberal policy.

Neoliberalism itself is now in a bit of a crisis, because the same financial establishment that was turned loose on the world by the emergence of neoliberalism has both worn out its welcome around the world--creating great popular resistance to its diktat--but it has created tens of trillions of dollars of fictional value from runaway speculation, threatening the very currency around which the entire system is based.

The US-dominated financial system, called the “Dollar-Wall Street regime” by Peter Gowan and Susan Strange, also found a way to exercise managerial control over first world economies like Western Europe and emerging market economies like China and Brazil. This power was exercised not in the US role as creditor, but in the US role as debtor.

This story actually begins at the end of World War II and continues to the present. The Soviet Union--itself savagely wounded by the war--attempted to secure a post-war partnership with its capitalist war allies in order to regroup. More than 27 million Soviet citizens had been killed, and cities were in ruins all the way to Stalingrad. When the Truman administration opted for the National Security State as an industrial strategy that could capitalize on the ramp-up for the war, it needed an enemy to justify the expenditures of what Eisenhower would christen the “military-industrial complex.” The overtures from the USSR for a post-war peace were rejected in favor of official hostility by Truman. This provocative posture locked Western Europe into a military alliance with the US, and put an official stamp on the US foreign policy of “containment.”

This inaugurated a long period of proxy war, the first in Korea, later in Vietnam. While the US was enjoying the fruit of post-war dollar dominance, Keynesian high employment, and a robust trade surplus, however, the militarization of US domestic and foreign policy created a mounting national debt. The US was indebting itself to other metropolitan nations. The US was borrowing money from Europeans to finance its military adventures in Asia, then running printing presses to make up the difference. Because the dollar’s value was fixed for redemption at 1/35th of an ounce of gold, the US could print money without fear of draining the dollar of its value, which was being used for capital investment in Europe.

In the theoretical market, the value of a currency is determined by how it balances against an aggregate of commodities. Too few units of currency and prices fall. Too many units of currency and prices rise. The latter is inflation--the nemesis of loan sharks and bankers because it reduces the future purchasing power of collected principle and interest. So the dollar was losing purchasing power on the market, even as it remained exchangeable for European currencies at the same fixed rate.

The US was printing more money, but because the dollar was fixed to gold, the Europeans were watching their markets flooded with overvalued dollars, which they had to accept. The market may have been saying that a dollar should be redeemable for francs or marks or pounds at one rate, but the post-war currency-control regime determined that Europeans had to continue to give away purchasing power with every currency exchange for devalued dollars. The US was exporting its inflation to Europe by repaying its military expansion debts to Europeans in under-valued dollars.

So when the first Special Forces advisors went to Vietnam in 1957, the system that appeared so robust on the surface was already creating the conditions for its next crisis.

The Europeans, later buying gold elsewhere at well above the $35 per troy ounce, held onto their dollar denominated assets, hoping to redeem their dollars at something approaching their initial investment later. But by 1967, with the Vietnam War driving the US deficit to record levels, France started cashing dollars out for US gold, draining the US gold stock. The Keynesian system of tightly controlling finance capitalists, which included fixed currency exchange rates pegged to a gold-backed dollar, began to collapse in the face of the US decision to militarize its domestic and foreign policy.

On March 31, 1968, millions of Americans heard Lyndon Johnson announce on television that he would not run again for the presidency, and that he would not substantially escalate the Vietnam War, despite the strategic setback of the Tet offensive nearly two months earlier.

Unperceived by the public at large, the point finally had been reached at which depletion of the U.S. gold holdings had abruptly altered the country’s military policy. As financial historian Michael Hudson noted:

"The European financiers were forcing peace on us. For the first time in American history, our European creditors had forced the resignation of an American president."

But when the 1968 elections arrived, we saw a scenario that is familiar to us again. Democrats could not publicly argue for an end to the war, because withdrawal would mark the destruction of the myth of US military invincibility. The options available in response to the collapse of the US Gold Pool were (1) withdrawal from Vietnam, (2) continue the war and accept further losses of gold and with it the erosion of US global power, or (3) force the abandonment of the entire Bretton Woods regime beginning with the gold standard. Because the Democrats alienate a huge fraction of their base by refusing to oppose the war, Republican Richard Nixon was elected. In 1971, he selected Option 3. He abandoned the gold standard for the US dollar.

This was a staggering checkmate against the US’s alleged global allies. They had to do something with their trainloads of dollars to prevent their uncontrolled devaluation.

Quoting Hudson, "By going off the gold standard at the precise moment that it did, the United States obliged the world’s central banks to finance the U.S. balance-of-payments deficit by using their surplus dollars to buy US Treasury bonds, whose volume quickly exceeded America’s ability or intention to pay.

Twenty-five years [after WWII], the United States [discovered] the inherent advantage of being a world debtor. Foreign holders of any nation’s promissory notes are obliged to become a market for its exports as the means of obtaining satisfaction of their debts."

As the old saying goes, “if you owe the bank a thousand dollars, you have a problem. If you owe the bank a billion dollars, the bank has a problem.

Nixon had not only erased US debt held by allies and forced perpetual European support for US military expenditures with the threat of tearing everyone’s financial house down, he had opened the way for rentier capitalists to escape the limitations put on it during the New Deal. That is precisely why Peter Gowan referred to Nixon’s risky destruction of the Bretton Woods fixed currency exchange rates as the “global gamble.”

New system: debtor imperialism.

Susan Strange referred to the new system as “casino capitalism.” The rentier capitalists were free to speculate without constraints; but more importantly, the US government, in collusion with Wall Street, had a new weapon to use against recalcitrant nations. Domestic currencies could be speculatively attacked; which is exactly what the US did to several Asian countries in 1998, which unexpectedly almost crashed the world economy. The threat of attack on currencies obliged central banks abroad to hold US dollars--in the form of US Treasury Bonds--in reserve, as a defense against speculative attacks on their currencies. These nations then became US creditors; but they were the banks who--as in the banker joke--had the problem.

To this day, no one--including China, about which there is a great deal of financial fear-mongering--can afford to begin a run on the dollar. Too many nations hold too many dollars to sell the dollar down without cutting off their noses to spite their faces. And yet all these creditor nations know that the US has neither the capacity nor the intention of paying back those loans.

China holds over a trillion dollars in US Treasury Bonds. Japan holds almost a trillion. The United Kingdom holds over 400 billion. Brazil holds more than 200 billion. The list goes on. If China were to initiate--as some China-phobes suggest--a cash-out of its t-bills, and that cash-out caused a run on the dollar destroying half its value, China would lose more than half a trillion dollars in purchasing power. This is a game of chicken that the US has, so far, won every time.

The key to dominance in the world of the late 20th and early 21st Centuries has been dependency... interdependency, but of a very unequal nature. We see this in really bad, really patriarchal marriages. A husband depends on his wife for the management of the household, for a lot of unpaid labor, and for the care of children, and the wife depends on the husband for economic security; but in the event of a divorce, we find that the wife comes out much worse than the husband, giving the husband a threat to hold over the head of the wife. They depend on one another, but that interdependence is not synonymous with equal status or parity of power.

This is how US foreign policy is constructed for the most part, as interdependences in which the US is the dominant partner. And there are few things that human beings depend on more urgently than food; which brings me to a subject that is imbricated with finance, but not the same as finance.

Money is not theoretically necessary for life. Human life sustained itself before general purpose money. Human life cannot be sustained, however, without its material basis in food.

If I might, I’d like to actually go deeper on the topic of food than we generally do, into the realms of chemistry and biology, for just a moment. I want to say a few things about energy and nitrogen.

If you touch your neighbor in the seats there, appropriately, of course, you will find that they are heaters. You are all warm. That heat is thermal energy that is part of the overall energy system that constitutes your existence as an organism, as a mammal, as a primate, and as an omnivore. You eat plants and animals that have energy stored in them. The plant energy that animals eat comes from the sun, whose energy is stored in the plants by photosynthesis.

One of the chemical components of our world that is necessary for most plant growth, therefore necessary for food, and therefore necessary for our survival, is nitrogen.

Oddly enough, after Timothy McVeigh blew up a federal office building in Oklahoma City, everyone--even non-farmers--came to know that fertilizer is made with nitrogen.

Yet nitrogen is the most abundant element in the atmosphere, so why should anyone have to “produce” it as a fertilizer? We live our entire lives literally swimming in the stuff.

As it turns out, atmospheric nitrogen, like atmospheric oxygen, is a Siamese twin. It consists of two, fused molecules: N2, as it were. Plants have to break this down into single molecules, then mix it with other stuff, in order to turn sunlight into food. The process is called biological nitrogen fixation. Prior to human intervention, this fixation process was accomplished by prokaryotes (or non-nucleated bacteria) and diazotrophs (or ammonia-making bacteria.)

During World War I, the introduction of new technology, i.e. the machinegun, and the adherence to pre-machinegun tactical doctrines, led to huge armies being first mowed down like grass, then trapped facing each other from pestilential trenches. One of the bright ideas for taking advantage of this horror-film stalemate was the idea of killing the enemy with poisonous gas.

During the war, Fritz Haber, a German-Jewish chemist, was appointed director of the Berlin-based Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physical Chemistry.

One of his jobs became the development of chemical weapons. He would eventually invent a gaseous chemical called Zyklon-B, a cyanide derivative, which would be used to wipe out millions of his own co-religionists; but during WWI he was preoccupied with chlorine and ammonia for the development of poisonous gases for the battlefield.

His other preoccupation was nitrogen fixation. He learned how to do that, synthetically, by combining hydrogen and N2 under heat and pressure, along with an iron isotope and aluminum oxide as catalysts. He had already patented this process before the war; but it would take Carl Bosch, the eventual co-founder of I. G. Farben (the company that marketed Zyklon-B) to commercialize the process… which laid the basis for a population explosion from 1.6 billion in 1900 to more than 7 billion today. What he’d made was chemical fertilizer, and it meant that even land that was unfit for agricultural cultivation could be rendered “productive.” The food that feeds that additional 5 billion people is largely produced with the assistance of chemical fertilizers and chemical poisons.

But “heat and pressure” are not some infinite essence like space, nor are they immediately available like atmospheric nitrogen. They are transient phenomena that must be created through some procedure; in this case, using fossil hydrocarbons... lots of them. Haber was looking at a crisis created by the depletion of guano--bat and bird droppings used as fertilizer--mostly collected from the islands off the coast of Chile; so he fell on a system that depended on another exhaustible resource: fossil fuel.

After WWII, American farmers were using prodigious quantities of chemical fertilizer across prodigious expanses of arable land, along with a new chemical weapon itself, nerve gas… or organophosphates, as insecticides, expanding their harvests far beyond the American public’s capacity to consume.

The American manufacturing base had also expanded during the war, and given that the US did not suffer the devastation that Europe and Asia did during the war, the US emerged from the war as a uniquely powerful actor. The other variable in the expansion of food production was the thoroughgoing mechanization of agriculture, another net consumer of fossil energy. The US began to build farm machinery; and as part of its goal of maximizing profit for farm machinery industries, as well as agricultural chemicals, it began to promote something called “developmentalism” for the so-called under-developed nations.

In 1943, the Rockefeller Foundation, Ford Motor Company, and the Mexican government established a joint venture called--in English--the International Center to Improve Corn and Wheat. Standard Oil--a Rockefeller company--was manufacturing fertilizer, and Ford was building tractors. This was the beginning of the organized effort by first world corporations, with the active support of the US government, to push agricultural commodities into these so-called underdeveloped nations. By 1959, they had opened rural development academies in Pakistan, and by 1963 in the Philippines. These academies were performing research and development on high-yielding cultivars of wheat, corn, and rice. By the time of the Nixon administration, 120 of the largest agribusiness multinationals had established a joint program with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.

The transformation in agriculture that followed was called the Green Revolution, a term coined in 1968 by US Agency for International Development Director William Gaud.

If ever there were a revolution from above, this was it. And it did accomplish a great deal. Caloric intake from cereal grains worldwide increased 30 percent per capita by 1990, and the prices of grains fell. The availability of more staple grains also supported a doubling of world population between 1960 and 2000.

Yet these very general statistics don’t tell the whole story. There were a number of qualitative changes that accompanied these statistical quanta. One early condition of World Bank development loans was that recipient nations industrialize their agriculture.

Smallholders were pushed off land to make way for large monoculture fields. Mechanization cut the number of necessary field workers to a fraction, and a process began whereby millions of formerly rural people--who were monetarily poor, but capable of self-reliant subsistence agriculture--were pushed into cities, where they came to rely more directly on the mass-produced staple cereals, which they now had to buy, and where they provided a windfall to urban manufactories of desperately cheap labor.

Peripheral nation agricultural production was being exported, in order to get precious US dollars for use in international markets and to service external debts. The agri-barons of the periphery were not feeding their own countries, but engaging in monoculture for export, like coffee, sugar, and bananas (ergo the term, “banana republic”).

Urban hunger is a specter that most leaders understand only too well.

I witnessed two food riots when I was in Haiti, and I can say they were among the most memorable experiences of my life.

Political leaders know very well that mass urban hunger is a recipe for political destabilization, and they avoid it at all costs. Because many of these nations were exporting crops, they fell short in providing basic nutrition to their own growing urban populations.

The United States, however, was uniquely positioned to take advantage of this situation, because the agricultural subsidies of the New Deal, originally meant to rescue family farms, had been carried forward to the benefit of large agribusiness corporations that were pushing the American family farm into the dustbin of history. Price supports for US grains meant that agribusiness could produce as much grain as possible, and for every bushel produced the government would pay them a subsidy.

This, along with the arable land mass of the American Midwest, quickly led to massive overproduction of US grain in the face of periodic grain shortages around the world, which gave US agribusiness unprecedented pricing power in grain markets.

In 1973, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said that the dominance of US grain production in the world was a foreign policy weapon that was more powerful than nuclear bombs.

Grain was on a lot of political minds those days. Hubert Humphrey, the 1968 Democratic challenger for the presidency, had received an illegal campaign contribution of $100,000--a fact that would emerge during the Watergate hearings. The same contributor would also give the Nixon administration $25,000 to assist in its cover-up of the Watergate break-in. These were not insubstantial sums then, as they seem now.

Not many people had then heard of this fountain of largesse, whose name was Dwayne Andreas. Andreas pushed through a historic grain sale to the Soviet Union for the Nixon administration, worth $700 million, with his company as the middleman. That company was named Archer Daniels Midland.

It was the next year, however, when Green Revolution food production was exposed to another vulnerability, the aforementioned Arab oil embargo.

It is here that we can see how the history of the Green Revolution as an instrument of US foreign policy interweaves with the history of neoliberal finance--which we covered earlier--that began its gestation with the Nixon administration.

By 1973, the US was running not a trade surplus but a deficit of $6.4 billion. Even more momentously and permanently, US domestic production of crude oil had peaked and was now known to be in a permanent and irreversible decline that would increase US dependence on imports of this commodity into the foreseeable future. Oil remained the principle feedstock of American domestic agriculture, and of the Green Revolution that was articulating the decolonizing periphery into a new, neo-colonial order. At the same time, the US would become increasingly dependent on fossil energy imported from abroad, not merely to power its machines and transport, but to eat and to maintain the power of the US over food markets worldwide.

Even the Soviet Union had been pulled into the American grain-trade orbit by Nixon, proving Kissinger’s thesis that food was more powerful than nukes.

The increasing dependency of peripheral nations on American agricultural goods, as well as American support for the industrial capitalist model being adopted for peripheral nation export agriculture, would lead to decreases in national per-capita food production as well as financial and ecological bankruptcy.

Nixon broke up the old order; but the new order was not firmly established except serendipitously by the Reagan administration. In the interim, after a period of three years stewardship of the White House by the immanently forgettable Gerald Ford, the next elected president would have a dual-resume: a Naval officer and an agribusiness CEO.

Jimmy Carter.

Under Jimmy Carter, a southern agribusiness plutocrat posing as a good ol’ boy (a peanut “farmer”), an interesting thing happened. Something we Southern folk used to call “white liquor” or “white lightning” became legal and began magnetizing massive cash flows from US taxpayers in the form of corn subsidies.

Corn liquor has been produced for many years by rural scofflaws. My own father did a short stretch in the hoosegow when he was discovered with a car trunk full of it in the 1930s.

When Nixon was taking money from Dwayne Andreas, the CEO of the sugar and corn conglomerate, Archer Daniels Midland, ADM was concocting a new scheme that would simultaneously justify more “farm” subsidies to agribusiness and claim to address the “energy crisis” of 1973, which was also such a windfall to Wall Street. The scheme was to make massive quantities of corn liquor, which is of course flammable, and re-christen it “ethanol.” This was proposed as an “energy independence” measure for the US. It is made, naturally, with sugar and corn.

ADM found a friend in Jimmy Carter.

Carter called the energy crisis the “moral equivalent of war,” and his administration exempted ethanol-spiked gasoline from a federal fuel tax.

Carter began a loan program to build ethanol plants, which was halted by the Reagan administration… for a while, until farm lobbyists paid serial visits to Capitol Hill, whereupon the Reagan administration recanted.

To this very day, neither party will challenge agribusiness subsidies; and to this day, both parties are avid ethanol boosters.

It was this influence, in conjunction with neoliberal “free trade” policies, that allowed US grain producers to begin a process called agricultural dumping. Dumping is introducing a surplus into a foreign market below market value, which results in local producers’ inability to compete. Taxpayer-subsidized US corn, for example, is still routinely dumped into foreign markets at prices often as little as 30 percent of market value. This leads to bankrupted local markets, and a growing and increasingly poor urban population that becomes hostage to an imperial food market.

A Mexican farmer who grows traditional corn is wiped out by genetically modified, chemical-industrial corn that is subsidized by a foreign power. His family loses their land to debt, moves to the city, where they may or may not find work to get money to feed themselves, and barring that, they may take the risk of illegal migration to the north to find work in the United States. One seldom hears about neoliberalism or agricultural dumping when the subject of illegal immigration comes up in the United States; but the connections are clear. US policies have created the conditions that make mass migration inevitable.

After many NAFTA provisions went into effect that allowed US dumping in Mexico, between 1997 and 2004, taxpayer-subsidized US corn exports increased by 413%, while Mexican corn production fell by 50% based on a 66% devaluation of Mexican corn. In the same period, US soybean production increased by 159%, and Mexican soybean production decreased by 83% based on a 67% devaluation. Mexican pork production fell by 40%, corresponding to a 707% increase in US exports. Pork itself is not directly subsidized, but the corn that feeds industrial pork is. It is not a coincidence that NAFTA corresponds to the most massive wave of Mexican immigration to the United States in history.

So the combination of developmental imperatives to mechanize and enclose agriculture for monocrop production, as well as agricultural dumping by the United States has created a situation where most of the rapidly urbanizing world is now dependent on US grain or US seeds and chemicals in order to eat. US foreign policy pertaining to food has become what the late Ivan Illich called “a war on subsistence.” The androcentric cliché for holding power over others as “having them by the balls,” might better be replaced by “having them by the bellies.”

US international power politics combines the neoliberal debt traps with food monopolization as an effective mechanism of indirect control over a good deal of the globe. This is not, however, sufficient to exercise the kind of total dominance the US would require to halt the very real decay of US power that results from various kinds of imperial over-reach. The debt system is not sustainable. The energy system upon which the current system depends is not sustainable. The material resources upon which economic expansion is based are finite. And the tolerance of others is reaching its limits.

The fallback position of any imperial power, when indirect controls are no longer effective, is direct control in the form of violence. That is one of the reasons the United States--with some of the best naturally defensible borders in the world, and an impossibly large land mass for any would-be invader--maintains a military force that is more expensive than the combined military forces of the rest of the world. Calling the War Department the Department of Defense is perhaps the most ironic example of PR-speak you might encounter The US military is almost exclusively dedicated to missions of aggression abroad.

Moreover, the force component of US foreign policy is not merely the uniformed services, it includes a shadowy and well-financed covert operations component that allows military actions by US-directed surrogates to provide an element of plausible deniability to US actions that might undermine ideological claims of commitment to principles like “freedom,” “human rights,” and “democracy.”

Neoliberal theology asserts the primacy of the private, the value of small government; but neoliberal practice has been massively underwritten by the state. The assurance of the market economy--as Karl Polanyi pointed out almost 70 years ago--requires a network of regulatory institutions. Without the state’s affirmative actions on behalf of the international business class, the system would collapse. Begin by thinking about how six battle groups from the US Navy are required to ensure the flow of fossil hydrocarbons into the industrialized metropolis, and you can extrapolate from there.

The failed attempt to conquer Iraq in 2003, while it certainly involved oil, was also part of an effort to maintain a forward deployed US military capable of strategic intervention far from home. The Cold War had ended, and the disposition of US military forces had become obsolete. They needed to be redeployed from positions that were calculated to contain the USSR into positions that would give the United States more capacity to intervene in energy-rich Southwest Asia, to put the imperial hand--as it were--on the spigots of global energy.

The goal of the Iraq invasion was permanent bases; but instead the Bush administration managed to win the Iran-Iraq war on behalf of Iran. The Obama administration has decided that the next best thing is to forward base near the Middle East and in the Asia-Pacific Theater to prepare to contain China; and the Obama administration has vastly expanded the role of the covert operations forces, as well as armed mercenaries, in its expansion of the Afghanistan War into Pakistan and increased covert operations against Iran. For myself, I believe Obama’s military moves in Southwest and South Asia will prove as disastrous as those of his predecessor.

Obama’s administration was instrumental in the execution and consolidation of the coup against the democratically elected president of Honduras in 2009, just as the Bush administration was in the failed coup against the democratically elected president of Venezuela in 2002, and its successful coup against the democratically elected government of Haiti in 2004. In two cases, the offending parties--President Chavez of Venezuela and President Zelaya of Honduras--were guilty of defying the Washington Consensus, that is, of opposing neoliberalism. President Aristide had merely criticized neoliberalism.

More than strategic interests drive the reliance on military operations. In the United States, the Department of Defense has become a substitute export market for US industries. The reason the taxpayers are not bailing out Lockheed Martin, Northrup Grumman, Boeing, General Dynamics, Raytheon, KBR, L3 Communications, SAIC, Dyncorp, Hewlett-Packard, and a host of other major American corporations, including General Electric, Motorola, Goodrich, and Westinghouse, is that the margin of earnings that ensure their continued viability as capitalist enterprises comes from DOD contracts. If war spending were ended tomorrow, the US would experience a dramatic loss of jobs across a wide spectrum of Congressional districts that have hitched to the DOD pork wagon.

American foreign policy is amphibious. It operates through both the wet depths of public institutions and the dry lands of private institutions, and it has an integrated public-private perception management apparatus.

One of the key advantages of the public-private partnership is that foreign policy is insulated from accountability to those below those institutions on the social hierarchy. The boundaries are blurred, via contracts and memoranda of understanding, between the US public sector--with its administrative apparatus, and its military and intelligence establishment with their vast budgets--and the private sector, composed of publicly funded “non-governmental organizations,” think tanks, foundations, and an army of horizontally-integrated perception managers.

Those perception managers use mass media as a conformity-producing web of influence that reaches right into the living rooms of a US culture that has 2.24 television sets per household, running an average of six hours and 47 minutes a day, 2,476 hours a year. To appreciate the latent power of television, realize that the average college class has a student in tow for three hours a week, approximately 45 hours for an entire course, excluding out-of-classroom study.

The limits of public discourse are established de facto by a media that operates on the same liberal market principles as the people who own them and exercise hegemony within the government and in those sectors sometimes called civil society. The media, the governing apparatus, and civil society are in fact three faces of the same dominant interests in the same epoch.

In saying this, I am obliged to clear up a common misunderstanding of what this means and what I mean to say. It is easy to jump from the very general outline I have presented of three aspects of US foreign policy--finance, food, and force--to the conclusion that I mean to say, or that these facts tend to support the idea that, there is a conscious group of the conspiring powerful who direct the world. On the contrary, I want to emphasize that this system has evolved through a series of contingencies, and that its stability is maintained precisely because it is what some systems theorists call self-organized. It’s most powerful actors are in many ways as constrained, or more constrained, by neo-neo-liberalism – or whatever you choose to call this particular period – than most of us are. President Obama is far less free, for example, to say the kinds of things I can say here as an unemployed grandfather.

I, on the other hand, do not have the legal power to send US troops to war, or to call them home.

We each play our parts, and while some conspiracies have always been part of the terrain of politics, they are generally reactive, and far less determinative of large-scale outcomes than, say, changes in the built environment, demographic shifts, or institutional inertia. Many of the most pivotal events in history emerge unexpectedly from long-standing trends that have gone unnoticed or ignored until they reach a breaking point--the 2008 housing bubble crash being a good recent example.

Remember, in our saga about the birth of neoliberalism, there was no straight line, but a confluence of events and contingent decisions: French buying US gold, Nixon dropping the gold standard, the Egyptian war for the Sinai, the American decision to airlift TOW missiles to the Israelis, the decision of Arab oil producers to embargo oil to the US, the US balance of payments deficit, Nixon drops fixed currency exchange rates, rising oil prices creating petrodollars, the petrodollar tsunami being converted into opportunistic development loans, the Mexican threat of default, and so it goes. These were not plots, but actions and reactions, each producing a number of unintended or unanticipated consequences, which stimulated new actions and reactions.

The belief in a conspiratorial view of history seems to me to be a psychological reaction to the fear of chaos. If the world is not as one would like it, at least a conspiratorial view of history suggests that history as a process is still subject to human control, and that once we wrest control from the unjust conspirators, the world can be made right again.

This unpredictability, this sense of instability that compels some of us to reach for order in chaos with a history of conspiracy, ironically, has been produced by the current political milieu, one wherein neoliberalism has disembedded economies from local control and re-embedded them in national and transnational institutions, and those institutions are themselves now experiencing a loss of control in the face of unanticipated changes.

Structural adjustment programs have become political lightning rods that are igniting mass unrest around the world. Green Revolution agriculture has spawned megacities that are entropic black holes, teeming with desperation and crime. The US military, long considered the guarantor of last instance for the world order, has proven to be both the least cost effective institution on the planet and a perennial source of new resistance and unintended outcomes. In Iraq and Afghanistan, the myth of US military invincibility was shattered; and the costs of the Southwest Asia wars have bled the US Treasury white. Offshoring of US industry and the political empowerment of rentier capitalists--Wall Street--that was accomplished through foreign policy, has transformed much of the US domestic population not merely into wage workers, but debt slaves.

There is a bumper sticker that sums it up: “I owe, I owe, so off to work I go.”

Consumer debt in the United States is above $2.4 trillion. In 2010, consumer indebtedness amounted to $7,800 for every man, woman, and child in the United States. 33% of that debt is in revolving credit, that plastic you carry in your pockets. The rest is in mortgages, student loans, automobile loans, and other non-revolving credit schemes. You students collectively owe $556 billion dollars. Good luck with that.

US household leverage, the ratio of debt to disposable income, was 55% in 1960. By 1985, that number was 65%. Today, household debt is 133% of household disposable income.

Yet when the crisis of fictional value created by Wall Street came home to roost, trillions in bailout money were awarded to Wall Street, while Main Street was left holding its debts. Wall Street, according to the experts who work the Wall Street-Washington nexus, was too big to fail. Generations into the future are now saddled with paying for these bailouts. We are being structurally adjusted, which has always been a euphemism for privatizing the gains and socializing the losses.

Meanwhile, far away, in response to US and EU attempts to form an economic blockade against Iranian oil, rumors have begun to circulate that China and India, both on steep industrialization gradients and thirsty for oil, are figuring out how to pay for Iranian oil with gold. These two countries already constitute 40% of Tehran’s oil market; and they are not prepared to cut back consumption in support of an American belligerence in which neither of them have any vested interest. India flatly refuses to abide by the sanctions, and is working with the Russians to act as middle-men for Tehran to New Delhi oil transactions; and China knows that the efficacy of the sanctions depends completely on whether China participates or not. The US has no capacity as a unilateral actor any longer, still smarting from its defeat in Iraq and its interminable and expensive entanglement in Afghanistan. The threats against Iran’s oil exports, however, are likely to drive up the price of oil, which will drive up the price of grain, which will drive up the price of food. And so we see, even today, the interaction of forces between finance, food, and military force in foreign affairs.

With that, I will say that I have held you hostage quite long enough, and I thank you for your kind attention.

Concerning the Violent Peace-Police: An Open Letter to Chris Hedges

2012-02-17T12:59:00.006-05:00

[A few days ago, Fire on the Mountain published an incensed and incisive response by Puerto Rican Marxist SKS to an article on the Occupy! movement by Chris Hedges calling the Black Bloc and militant resistance more generally "a cancer in Occupy." As the debate on this has not yet died down, FotM is pleased to post another response to Hedges, this one by an anarchist, David Graeber, who gave permission to borrow it from the blog n+1, where it originally appeared.]

In response to “The Cancer in Occupy,” by Chris Hedges.

by David Graeber

I am writing this on the premise that you are a well-meaning person who wishes Occupy Wall Street to succeed. I am also writing as someone who was deeply involved in the early stages of planning Occupy in New York.

I am also an anarchist who has participated in many Black Blocs. While I have never personally engaged in acts of property destruction, I have on more than one occasion taken part in Blocs where property damage has occurred. (I have taken part in even more Blocs that did not engage in such tactics. It is a common fallacy that this is what Black Blocs are all about. It isn’t.)

I was hardly the only Black Bloc veteran who took part in planning the initial strategy for Occupy Wall Street. In fact, anarchists like myself were the real core of the group that came up with the idea of occupying Zuccotti Park, the “99%” slogan, the General Assembly process, and, in fact, who collectively decided that we would adopt a strategy of Gandhian non-violence and eschew acts of property damage. Many of us had taken part in Black Blocs. We just didn’t feel that was an appropriate tactic for the situation we were in.

This is why I feel compelled to respond to your statement “The Cancer in Occupy.” This statement is not only factually inaccurate, it is quite literally dangerous. This is the sort of misinformation that really can get people killed. In fact, it is far more likely to do so, in my estimation, than anything done by any black-clad teenager throwing rocks.

Let me just lay out a few initial facts:

1. Black Bloc is a tactic, not a group. It is a tactic where activists don masks and black clothing (originally leather jackets in Germany, later, hoodies in America), as a gesture of anonymity, solidarity, and to indicate to others that they are prepared, if the situation calls for it, for militant action. The very nature of the tactic belies the accusation that they are trying to hijack a movement and endanger others. One of the ideas of having a Black Bloc is that everyone who comes to a protest should know where the people likely to engage in militant action are, and thus easily be able to avoid it if that’s what they wish to do.

2. Black Blocs do not represent any specific ideological, or for that matter anti-ideological position. Black Blocs have tended in the past to be made up primarily of anarchists but most contain participants whose politics vary from Maoism to Social Democracy. They are not united by ideology, or lack of ideology, but merely a common feeling that creating a bloc of people with explicitly revolutionary politics and ready to confront the forces of the order through more militant tactics if required, is, on the particular occasion when they assemble, a useful thing to do. It follows one can no more speak of “Black Bloc Anarchists,” as a group with an identifiable ideology, than one can speak of “Sign-Carrying Anarchists” or “Mic-Checking Anarchists.”

3. Even if you must select a tiny, ultra-radical minority within the Black Bloc and pretend their views are representative of anyone who ever put on a hoodie, you could at least be up-to-date about it. It was back in 1999 that people used to pretend “the Black Bloc” was made up of nihilistic primitivist followers of John Zerzan opposed to all forms of organization. Nowadays, the preferred approach is to pretend “the Black Bloc” is made up of nihilistic insurrectionary followers of The Invisible Committee, opposed to all forms of organization. Both are absurd slurs. Yours is also 12 years out of date.

4. Your comment about Black Bloc’ers hating the Zapatistas is one of the weirdest I’ve ever seen. Sure, if you dig around, you can find someone saying almost anything. But I’m guessing that, despite the ideological diversity, if you took a poll of participants in the average Black Bloc and asked what political movement in the world inspired them the most, the EZLN would get about 80% of the vote. In fact I’d be willing to wager that at least a third of participants in the average Black Bloc are wearing or carrying at least one item of Zapatista paraphernalia. (Have you ever actually talked to someone who has taken part in a Black Bloc? Or just to people who dislike them?)

5. “Diversity of tactics” is not a “Black Bloc” idea. The original GA in Tompkins Square Park that planned the original occupation, if I remember, adopted the principle of diversity of tactics (at least it was discussed in a very approving fashion), at the same time as we all also concurred that a Gandhian approach would be the best way to go. This is not a contradiction: “diversity of tactics” means leaving such matters up to individual conscience, rather than imposing a code on anyone. Partly,this is because imposing such a code invariably backfires. In practice, it means some groups break off in indignation and do even more militant things than they would have otherwise, without coordinating with anyone else—as happened, for instance, in Seattle. The results are usually disastrous. After the fiasco of Seattle, of watching some activists actively turning others over to the police—we quickly decided we needed to ensure this never happened again. What we found that if we declared “we shall all be in solidarity with one another. We will not turn in fellow protesters to the police. We will treat you as brothers and sisters. But we expect you to do the same to us”—then, those who might be disposed to more militant tactics will act in solidarity as well, either by not engaging in militant actions at all for fear they will endanger others (as in many later Global Justice Actions, where Black Blocs merely helped protect the lockdowns, or in Zuccotti Park, where mostly people didn’t bloc up at all) or doing so in ways that run the least risk of endangering fellow activists.

All this is secondary. Mainly I am writing as an appeal to conscience. Your conscience, since clearly you are a sincere and well-meaning person who wishes this movement to succeed. I beg you: Please consider what I am saying. Please bear in mind as I say this that I am not a crazy nihilist, but a reasonable person who is one (if just one) of the original authors of the Gandhian strategy OWS adopted—as well as a student of social movements, who has spent many years both participating in such movements, and trying to understand their history and dynamics.

I am appealing to you because I really do believe the kind of statement you made is profoundly dangerous.

The reason I say this is because, whatever your intentions, it is very hard to read your statement as anything but an appeal to violence. After all, what are you basically saying about what you call “Black Bloc anarchists”?

1) they are not part of us

2) they are consciously malevolent in their intentions

3) they are violent

4) they cannot be reasoned with

5) they are all the same

6) they wish to destroy us

7) they are a cancer that must be excised

Surely you must recognize, when it’s laid out in this fashion, that this is precisely the sort of language and argument that, historically, has been invoked by those encouraging one group of people to physically attack, ethnically cleanse, or exterminate another—in fact, the sort of language and argument that is almost never invoked in any other circumstance. After all, if a group is made up exclusively of violent fanatics who cannot be reasoned with, intent on our destruction, what else can we really do? This is the language of violence in its purest form. Far more than “fuck the police.” To see this kind of language employed by someone who claims to be speaking in the name of non-violence is genuinely extraordinary. I recognize that you’ve managed to find certain peculiar fringe elements in anarchism saying some pretty extreme things, it’s not hard to do, especially since such people are much easier to find on the internet than in real life, but it would be difficult to come up with any “Black Bloc anarchist” making a statement as extreme as this.

Even if you did not intend this statement as a call to violence, which I suspect you did not, how can you honestly believe that many will not read it as such?

In my experience, when I point this sort of thing out, the first reaction I normally get from pacifists is along the lines of “what are you talking about? Of course I’m not in favor of attacking anyone! I am non-violent! I am merely calling for non-violently confronting such elements and excluding them from the group!” The problem is that in practice this is almost never what actually happens. Time after time, what it has actually meant in practice is either a) turning fellow activists over to the police, i.e., turning them over to people with weapons who will physically assault, shackle, and imprison them, or b) actual physical activist-on-activist assault. Such things have happened. There have been physical assaults by activists on other activists, and, to my knowledge, they have never been perpetrated by anyone in Black Bloc, but invariably by purported pacifists against those who dare to pull a hood over their heads or a bandana over their faces, or, simply, against anarchists who adopt tactics someone else thinks are going too far. (Not I should note even potentially violent tactics. During one 15-minute period in Occupy Austin, I was threatened first with arrest, then with assault, by fellow campers because I was expressing verbal solidarity with, and then standing in passive resistance beside, a small group of anarchists who were raising what was considered to be an unauthorized tent.)

This situation often produces extraordinary ironies. In Seattle, the only incidents of actual physical assault by protesters on other individuals were not attacks on the police, since these did not occur at all, but attacks by “pacifists” on Black Bloc’ers engaged in acts of property damage. Since the Black Bloc’ers had collectively agreed on a strict policy of non-violence (which they defined as never doing anything to harm another living being), they uniformly refused to strike back. In many recent occupations, self-appointed “Peace Police” have manhandled activists who showed up to marches in black clothing and hoodies, ripped their masks off, shoved and kicked them: always, without the victims themselves having engaged in any act of violence, always, with the victims refusing, on moral grounds, to shove or kick back.

The kind of rhetoric you are engaging in, if it disseminates widely, will ensure this kind of violence becomes much, much more severe.

Perhaps you do not believe me, or do not believe these events to be particularly significant. If so, let me put the matter in a larger historical context.

If I understand your argument, it seems to come down to this:

1. OWS has been successful because it has followed a Gandhian strategy of showing how, even in the face of strictly non-violent opposition, the state will respond with illegal violence

2. Black Bloc elements who do not act according to principles of Gandhian non-violence are destroying the movement because they provide retroactive justification for state repression, especially in the eyes of the media

3. Therefore, the Black Bloc elements must be somehow rooted out.

As one of the authors of the original Gandhian strategy, I can recall how well aware we were, when we framed this strategy, that we were taking an enormous risk. Gandhian strategies have not historically worked in the US; in fact, they haven’t really worked on a mass scale since the civil rights movement. This is because the US media is simply constitutionally incapable of reporting acts of police repression as “violence.” (One reason the civil rights movement was an exception is so many Americans at the time didn’t view the Deep South as part of the same country.) Many of the young men and women who formed the famous Black Bloc in Seattle were in fact eco-activists who had been involved in tree-sits and forest defense lock-downs that operated on purely Gandhian principles—only to find that in the US of the 1990s, non-violent protesters could be brutalized, tortured (have pepper spray directly rubbed in their eyes), or even killed, without serious objection from the national media. So they turned to other tactics. We knew all this. We decided it was worth the risk.

However, we are also aware that when the repression begins, some will break ranks and respond with greater militancy. Even if this doesn’t happen in a systematic and organized fashion, some violent acts will take place. You write that Black Bloc’ers smashed up a “locally owned coffee shop”; I doubted this when I read it, since most Black Blocs agree on a strict policy of not damaging owner-operated enterprises, and I now find in Susie Cagle’s response to your article that, in fact, it was a chain coffee shop, and the property destruction was carried out by someone not in black. But still, you’re right: A few such incidents will inevitably occur.

The question is how one responds.

If the police decide to attack a group of protesters, they will claim to have been provoked, and the media will repeat whatever the police say, no matter how implausible, as the basic initial facts of what happened. This will happen whether or not anyone at the protest does anything that can be remotely described as violence. Many police claims will be obviously ridiculous – as at the recent Oakland march where police accused participants of throwing “improvised explosive devices”—but no matter how many times the police lie about such matters, the national media will still report their claims as true, and it will be up to protesters to provide evidence to the contrary. Sometimes, with the help of social media, we can demonstrate that particular police attacks were absolutely unjustified, as with the famous Tony Bologna pepper-spray incident. But we cannot by definition prove all police attacks were unjustified, even all attacks at one particular march; it’s simply physically impossible to film every thing that happens from every possible angle all the time. Therefore we can expect that whatever we do, the media will dutifully report “protesters engaged in clashes with police” rather than “police attacked non-violent protesters.” What’s more, when someone does throw back a tear-gas canister, or toss a bottle, or even spray-paint something, we can assume that act will be employed as retroactive justification for whatever police violence occurred before the act took place.

All this will be true whether or not a Black Bloc is present.

If the moral question is “is it defensible to threaten physical harm against those who do no direct harm to others,” one might say the pragmatic, tactical question is, “even if it were somehow possible to create a Peace Police capable of preventing any act that could even be interpreted as ‘violent’ by the corporate media, by anyone at or near a protest, no matter what the provocation, would it have any meaningful effect?” That is, would it create a situation where the police would feel they couldn’t use arbitrary force against non-violent protesters? The example of Zuccotti Park, where we achieved pretty consistent non-violence, suggests this is profoundly unlikely. And perhaps most importantly at all, even if it were somehow possible to create some kind of Peace Police that would prevent anyone under gas attack from so much as tossing a bottle, so that we could justly claim that no one had done anything to warrant the sort of attack that police have routinely brought, would the marginally better media coverage we would thus obtain really be worth the cost in freedom and democracy that would inevitably follow from creating such an internal police force to begin with?

These are not hypothetical questions. Every major movement of mass non-violent civil disobedience has had to grapple with them in one form or another. How inclusive should you be with those who have different ideas about what tactics are appropriate? What do you do about those who go beyond what most people consider acceptable limits? What do you do when the government and its media allies hold up their actions as justification—even retroactive justification—for violent and repressive acts?

Successful movements have understood that it’s absolutely essential not to fall into the trap set out by the authorities and spend one’s time condemning and attempting to police other activists. One makes one’s own principles clear. One expresses what solidarity one can with others who share the same struggle, and if one cannot, tries one’s best to ignore or avoid them, but above all, one keeps the focus on the actual source of violence, without doing or saying anything that might seem to justify that violence because of tactical disagreements you have with fellow activists.

I remember my surprise and amusement, the first time I met activists from the April 6 Youth Movement from Egypt, when the issue of non-violence came up. “Of course we were non-violent,” said one of the original organizers, a young man of liberal politics who actually worked at a bank. “No one ever used firearms, or anything like that. We never did anything more militant than throwing rocks!”

Here was a man who understood what it takes to win a non-violent revolution! He knew that if the police start aiming tear-gas canisters directly at people’s heads, beating them with truncheons, arresting and torturing people, and you have thousands of protesters, then some of them will fight back. There’s no way to absolutely prevent this. The appropriate response is to keep reminding everyone of the violence of the state authorities, and never, ever, start writing long denunciations of fellow activists, claiming they are part of an insane fanatic malevolent cabal. (Even though I am quite sure that if a hypothetical Egyptian activist had wanted to make a case that, say, violent Salafis, or even Trotskyists, were trying to subvert the revolution, and adopted standards of evidence as broad as yours, looking around for inflammatory statements wherever they could find them and pretending they were typical of everyone who threw a rock, they could easily have made a case.) This is why most of us are aware that Mubarak’s regime attacked non-violent protesters, and are not aware that many responded by throwing rocks.

Egyptian activists, in other words, understood what playing into the hands of the police really means.

Actually, why limit ourselves to Egypt? Since we are talking about Gandhian tactics here, why not consider the case of Gandhi himself? He had to deal with what to say about people who went much further than rock-throwing (even though Egyptians throwing rocks at police were already going much further than any US Black Bloc has). Gandhi was part of a very broad anti-colonial movement that included elements that actually were using firearms, in fact, elements engaged in outright terrorism. He first began to frame his own strategy of mass non-violent civil resistance in response to a debate over the act of an Indian nationalist who walked into the office of a British official and shot him five times in the face, killing him instantly. Gandhi made it clear that while he was opposed to murder under any circumstances, he also refused to denounce the murderer. This was a man who was trying to do the right thing, to act against an historical injustice, but did it in the wrong way because he was “drunk with a mad idea.”

Over the course of the next 40 years, Gandhi and his movement were regularly denounced in the media, just as non-violent anarchists are also always denounced in the media (and I might remark here that while not an anarchist himself, Gandhi was strongly influenced by anarchists like Kropotkin and Tolstoy), as a mere front for more violent, terroristic elements, with whom he was said to be secretly collaborating. He was regularly challenged to prove his non-violent credentials by assisting the authorities in suppressing such elements. Here Gandhi remained resolute. It is always morally superior, he insisted, to oppose injustice through non-violent means than through violent means. However, to oppose injustice through violent means is still morally superior to not doing anything to oppose injustice at all.

And Gandhi was talking about people who were blowing up trains, or assassinating government officials. Not damaging windows or spray-painting rude things about the police.

The Psychopathology of a Liberal OWS! Baiter

2012-02-10T11:08:00.009-05:00

[Since Chris Hedges, a columnist at the website truthdig published the provocatively titled, "The Cancer in Occupy" four days ago, there has been boocoo Internet debate and some vigorous responses, for example, this one at Counterpunch. Occasional Fire on the Mountain essayist SKS, who wrote a widely read piece on this blog on the problems of infiltration and provocateurs in OWS!, posted this angry reply to Hedges on Facebook. FotM republishes it with his permission to help it get the wider circulation it deserves.]

The Stockholm Syndrome of Occupy:
Chronicle of a Death Foretold

by SKS

I do not want to repeat what many have said, more eloquently or timely. Any repetition will either be unconscious or inevitable--but I do try to bring some fresh perspectives, or at least accents. So bear with me.

Ever since the Oakland Commune came into national consciousness with their successful strike in November, liberals who initially became infatuated with Occupy Wall Street! as a possible liberal Tea Party have been launching increasingly virulent attacks against OWS!, and in particular, its most militant element.

Naomi Wolf launched perhaps the first notorious salvo of the liberal commentariat, when, going all in with her arrest cred, she called OWS! protesters against NBC (a corporation) "fascists".

While debate is healthy, and diversity of opinions and views is both inevitable and one of the refreshing things of OWS! as a movement, the interventions from the liberal camp have been increasingly totalitarian, undemocratic, and full of factual and historical inaccuracies.

They have moved from honest, concerned, disagreement within the movement, to dishonest hit pieces worthy of the worse dirty politics.

And this is something we predicted: we knew that the primary contradiction within this movement would be the need of liberals and the Democratic Party machine to turn this movement into a huge astroturf project to counter the successful co-optation by the Republicans of the Tea Party--of huge importance if Obama is to be re-elected.

This has been done with a carrot and stick approach. The carrot has been the apparently open arms of labor unions and non-profit organizations, not to mention several elected officials of the Democratic Party.

The stick has two sides: one is represented by poster child of all-that-is-wrong-with-the-Democrats, Oakland Mayor Jean Quan and her Swine Corps of the brutal and brutalizing Oakland Police Department--an OPD she ran on an unfulfilled promise to reform and transform.In fact, it is in Democratic cities were the police repression and police action have been the strongest--Chicago even took the opportunity to institute surveillance and free-speech limitation ordinances worthy of 1984. Of course, aside from a few feeble protests from the ACLU, this largely has happened with the silent consent of the liberal commentariat, and when not silence, with ineffective chatter coupled with "critical" support for the elected officials promoting these things.

The other side of the stick is the concerted effort of the liberal commentariat. At first rather benign, starting with the mantra--a sheer lie--that the movement had no goals, and with disingenuous criticism of liberal We foretold this: even at the very earliest most committed Occupy! activists knew this was coming.

We did not know how, but we had an idea, which is why we refused giving these commentators special status in the movement--we knew instinctively that they would turn on us come 2012 and the presidential election. Now it is upon us. Chronicle of a death foretold. None of this should come as a surprise, but buyer beware: you might think you agree--after all, the black bloc can be insufferably cocky and elitist, but you do not. Your legitimate tactical concern and strategic considerations are quite different from Chris Hedges'.

Pathologizing the Other: what abusers and repressive regimes can tell us about Chris Hedges

Nazis knew the value of pathology in politics.

As a large body of literature demonstrates, repressive regimes throughout history have used this very technique to throw political opponents into jails called "mental hospitals". Abusers--be they bullies or domestic--routinely try to smash the self-esteem of their victims by questioning their mental health. "You are crazy" is a favorite phrase of the abusive spouse or partner, of the abusive boss, of the abusive authority figure. Fear of being labeled "crazy" is in fact one of the most powerful ways of social coercion and social discipline know. Even good parents tell their kids they are being "crazy" when they do things they are not supposed to do.

Chris Hedges, in his hit piece, does several things of this sort: first he pathologizes "violence"--using prose worthy of a pulp novel with Fabio on the cover, the kind they sell in supermarket checkout lines. Then he claims the black bloc is "hypermasculine"--a ridiculous term pulled out of the same kindergarden infantislism that gives you a whole range of funny, yet unnecesary, superlatives. Without getting into this rather old and extensive debate, many feminist voices have eloquently countered the presumption--gendered and sexist in itself--that violence has a gender, let's just say that this confuses an important discussion on tactics with an ad hominem intended not to discuss, but to rally the liberal troops for an attack. In other words, exactly what he describes as "hypermasculinity".

Unlike Hedges, I do not have a romantic, nihilist violent self buried inside. My views on violence are rather conscious--do not initiate aggression, but defend yourself from it. This basic human instinct seems beneath the elevated Hedges, whose superior god-like peace elevates him above us mere mortals.His god-like powers allow him to bury his violent instincts deep in his psyche.

(See what I mean about pulp prose?)

In pathologizing the political, Hedges is re-establishing the patriarchal and racial supremacy of white male hetero-normativity: those who disagree with him are not normal like him, they are crazy, they must be excluded from normal society.

He is calling out his wayward children, like all good patriarchs do. Very hypermasculine.

Interestingly, his pathologizing doesn't stop at mental health. It gets even worse.

As the title "Cancer of Occupy" explicitly tells us, the crazy children are not just crazy, they are a cancer.

Well, the use of "cancer"--and other body diseases--in political speech has a rather interesting origin that Chris Hedges either overlooked, or consciously deployed: Nazi eugenics and racial hygiene. "Jewish bacillus," "the Bolshevist poison," "the Jewish plague," "the Jewish parasites," and the "Jewish cancer.

These are the ripped from the headlines terms of Hitler and the Nazi propaganda machine. Unlike Naomi Wolf, I only call fascists those who are actually fascist--I do not cheapen the word by using it to attack everyone that irks me--but it is indeed telling about the way Chris Hedges' mind works that he chose this term.

What is the cure for cancer? Chemotherapy, radiation, extirpation, all which are extremely violent--and much less successful than what we would like them to be.

So Chris Hedges implies--in contradiction with his argument--that this cancer must be cured. He leaves the question open--but the emotional response in the reader, and this is by choice, is to respond as we all do: kill it with violence. No one loves cancer. No one thinks of the feelings of cancer. You try to kill it, or it kills you.

That is one from the Nazi playbook: it's how a whole country was mobilized to destroy the "Jewish cancer". Hitler did not need to order them what to do. We all know, intuitively, what to do with cancer. Hedges joins a proud tradition.

(Ironically, in the channer culture that gave birth to Anonymous "cancer" is also used to describe newbies to the culture--and if there is a hypermasculine place in the world, it is channer culture--Hedges does have a lot of self-hating to do.)

And it is ironic, too, that in purporting to be part of this movement, Hedges has no article calling the Democrats cancer. After all, the black blocs have yet to kill someone, but the Democrats have killed millions--often at the push of a button.

So let's pathologize--just to not combo break!

That brings me to my title. A little flair of my own pathologization. In my defense, it is the game field Hedges presents.

So why Stockholm Syndrome? Well, as you might know, this syndrome is the apparently paradoxical psychological phenomenon in which hostages express empathy and have positive feelings towards their captors, sometimes to the point of defending them*.

A lot of the response to so-called "black bloc violence" smacks precisely of this phenomenon. Chris Hedges is either a victim of this syndrome, or an enabler of its suffering.

He makes a storm in a teapot on so-called "black bloc violence"--justifying the violence of the OPD, of the State, of our captors--of the very State and repressive forces of the dictatorship of the 1%. He is not one of them, yet defends them and justifies and covers their crimes.

A few broken windows are nothing compared to the hundred of extrajudicial killings on the part of police, or dozens of executions, not to mention overseas.

Let's have a sense of proportion. Let's break out of the Stockholm Syndrome. The violence that matters, the true violence, is that of the State, not the black bloc. We do not need to be uncritical of the black bloc--but to hide behind their actions to call for inaction when much greater crimes are being committed, on a daily basis and using your tax money, is to cower in fear in front of power.

Just like a hostage in front of his or her captor.

We are hostages to the 1%. Do we justify them or do we fight for freedom?

Violence, non-violence, and disingenuousness

Are we the 99% or are we Democrats?

For liberals of the Naomi Wolf and Chris Hedges brand, revolutions are something that happens elsewhere. Regimes that need changes are overseas--preferably in countries with long histories of "authoritarian regimes". In their twisted worldview--and one that gets fed to us as somehow radical--what problems exist in the USA can be resolved in the framework of civil liberties provided by the Constitution, the institutions being neutral servants of the common good. Such lofty ideals fly in the face of the actual realities of life in the USA, in particular for the 99%. The USA has, for example, one of the highest rates of extra-judicial killing and death penalty in the world.

A significant percentage of this country's population express support for this appalling situation. So did, for that matter, a significant percentage of Egypt's population before the Revolution threw the doors open to true dissent, rather than fear. Transformation is about critical masses, not simple majorities.

We cannot be both for regime change and for the Democrats, who are part of the regime.

The Democrats' main funder is, consistently, Goldman Sachs--one of the worse criminal gangs of the 1%.

In Chris Hedges' view, Goldman Sachs is an upstanding citizen that makes mistakes, a person worthy of our democratic respect. The black bloc is cancer.

He serves his masters well.

Curiously, the way that he speaks of violence vs non-violence echoes the same way that the current regime in Egypt speaks of the Revolution--and we see this world-wide: the "good" protester versus the "bad" protester. Even in Syria, there is the opposition that meets with the Regime, and there is the Free Syrian Army. It is not a new argument.

Now, I also have a sense of proportion--we are far from living in a situation where we need a Free America Army. But the black bloc is not that. Its worst violence is a few broken windows--if that.

To begin with, there is much conflation here: the black bloc is not responsible for all the so-called vandalism or violence. The poster child for the liberals, the Whole Foods vandalization in Oakland, was by all accounts the work of a few individuals against which even black bloc members intervened.

The black bloc however, has been responsible for successful evasion, even de-arrest, of activists - of protective, defensive, non-violent tactics, such as the use of shields, the lighting of bonfires (which clears tear gas quickly), and providing first aid and medevac. They have intervened against sexual and criminal predators in Occupations, serving as stalwarts of discipline in a chaotic environment. This is the reality of those of us who actually are the boots in the ground. Yes, there is much to be critical of in them--but let's leave that for another time: much better commentary is floating around in this respect. They are not cancer--they are part of the body that is maturing, and causes growing pains.

So why the fuzz?

There seems to be a problem of definition in which non-violence is equated with non-resistance. This flies in the face even of Gandhi's and Dr. King's tactics: non-violent resistance is still resistance. It is non-compliance with orders from the powers that be. "We shall not be moved". All those water cannon that Dr. King endured were a result of his movement's steadfast refusal to obey orders from above--to force change.

We can agree that throwing a rock at someone is violent. But is throwing a paint bomb (which obscures police visors) violent? Are shields and grenade nets violent? I do not think so. They are forms of non-violent resistance, practiced by the black bloc--that protect the movement from the inevitable onslaught of the police.

This is not trivial: I understand the need to be non-violent as a tactic, but when non-violence gets reduced to picketing in circles in a "free speech zone," there is no resistance--we are not following Gandhi or Dr. King, we are following the instructions of the regime. No regime has fallen when people obey it. They only fall when people cease to obey it.

Hedges and co-commentators miss this point. Entirely. They equate any resistance with violence.

And without resistance, how can we Occupy? It says it right there in the name!

Diversity of Tactics and Unity of Strategies

What will kill OWS! is not violence, but the people who want to have meetings and voting drives instead of actions of resistance, occupations, and protests. Do not get me wrong, we need meetings--but with a purpose. As for voting, I voted for Obama and all I got was a lousy t-shirt, which I had to pay for.

With protests and occupations, with masses of people out in the street, will come repression. And on the edges, some will want to fight back by means we might not agree with.

It's worth the price, no matter what the anti-resistance commentariat tells us. That is the lesson of Tahrir Square.

It's time we stop lying to ourselves, and realize that this regime--regardless of what party is in power--is repressive regime, based on war profiteering, a racist prison-industrial complex, extrajudicial violence, and destroying the ability of people to achieve their dreams by concentrating wealth and power on the 1%. Dictatorships do not fall on their own.

We live in the dictatorship of the 1%. The time for regime change is long overdue.

That is the stark reality that faces us. If, for you, a few broken windows are too much to oppose the regime, then it means that for you, windows are more important than the millions who have their lives destroyed and extinguished by this regime--in the ghettos, in the prison-industrial complex, overseas, and in the soul-killing petty dictatorship of the workplace.

We need to have real solidarity--the more militant of us need to consider that not everyone is willing or able to, emotionally and physically, to deal with the outcomes of militancy. Those who advocate non-violence out of true principle, need to understand that the deep emotional commitment this requires, while noble, is not for all.

Honest diversity of tactics is a strength, not a weakness.

But we need to be united on the strategic goal of regime change--of transforming the dictatorship of the 1%. And there are those, Chris Hedges and his ilk, who hide behind the language of non-violence to bamboozle and split the movement: he is pretty happy supporting a government that breeds war--while he can speak against it and sue it in court, supporting real violence perpetrated by this regime. He remains silent as police murder people extrajudicially--the very real violence of the State.

What is worse, as argued, he uses the age old tactic of abusers and repressive regimes throughout history: he pathologizes those he disagrees with, calling into question their mental health and treating them as a public health issue that needs a hygienic response--in the tone of the Nazi racial hygiene. Chris Hedges and his ilk, defend the regime in deeds and words--they are at best a loyal opposition content with commenting rather than transforming. Do not join them.

Join the resistance: the path is long, the path is painful, but the path is righteous.

Refuse and resist!

The Superbowl, the People's Daily Campaign for Jobs & Justice, and the African-American Freedom Struggle

2012-02-05T22:44:00.000-05:00

While the media attempts to make major news out of the small size of the labor demonstration at Lucas Oil Stadium protesting Indiana's new so-called "right to work" law, this entirely misses significance of the National Football League Players Association statement opposing this legislation.

The NFLPA wrote:
“‘Right-to-work’ is a political ploy designed to destroy basic workers’ rights. It’s not about jobs or rights, and it’s the wrong priority for Indiana. It is important to keep in mind the plight of the average Indiana worker and not let them get lost in the ceremony and spectacle of the Super Bowl."

As Jamilah King noted in the online journal Colorlines:
"The statement was hugely important, considering what’s at stake for Indiana’s workers, particularly black ones. Black workers are disproportionately union members. They’re more likely than whites, Asians, and Latinos to be in public-unions, and make up 15 percent of total membership, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Historically, unions have been crucial gateways for black workers to earn higher wages and break into the middle class.

While supporters of Right to Work argue that the laws are needed to foster a “pro-business” atmosphere that helps generate desperately needed jobs, research has shown that the laws can have disastrous effects on workers. The Economic Policy Institute released a report in January showing that workers employed in Right to Work states makes less money and are less likely to be offered health care."

DeMaurice F. Smith, executive director of the player’s union, pressed the point even further in an op-ed published a week later in one of Indiana’s most widely read newspapers. ” An indisputable lesson of our American history is that none of those workplace protections came as a gift from corporations,” wrote Smith, who’d previously made a name for him self as a hard-nosed litigator. “Rather, all of them resulted from the ability of workers to stand united and demand change when it would have been easy to fire or silence the voice of a single worker.”

But what does this have to do with the New Jersey-based coalition for jobs and justice that has sponsored daily demonstrations for the past 225 days? When the People's Organization for Progress proposed this campaign last July, we understood the need to defend union jobs. But more than that, we also understood that elected officials who claimed to support the right to organize (like our own NJ governor, Krispy Kreme Christy) while insisting that this right to unionize shouldn't apply to state workers, weren't simply attacking union workers, they were attacking the living standard of African-American workers in particular.

Just as school vouchers are not simply attacks on public education, statements challenging public-sector workers' right to unionize are directed at Black and other minority workers in particular.

As we celebrate the Giants exciting victory over the Patriots, we must appreciate what the players of both teams (and all NFL players) recognized before the game, what was at stake at the Lucas Oil Stadium had nothing to do with a NY-NJ team vs a New England franchise. The challenge in Indiana was (and is) about our very right to survive…

WWJD about Income Disparity?

2011-12-25T20:59:00.001-05:00

Does the 1% versus the 99% mean it's time to throw the moneychangers out of the temple of finance?

"What would Jesus say about corporate greed?" Larry Hamm, NJ state chairman of the People's Organization for Progress, challenged motorists passing the Essex County Court House on Christmas afternoon.

For nearly six months, the People's Daily Campaign for Jobs & Justice has met challenges and grown, as more than 130 community-based, union-affiliated and religious organizations have join the campaign that People's Organization for Progress initiated last July. We haven't missed a single day of protest in the past 182 days. Through hurricane, flood, torrential downpour, and a pre-winter ice storm, the picket line/demonstration has rallied POP members, supporters and community residents every day.

Today however, POP and the Campaign for Jobs & Justice may have weathered our greatest test in the past six months. Christmas is traditionally a day folks feel compelled to spend at home with the family. To continue the campaign through this holiday constituted a serious challenge to the coalition. But, to some activists' surprise, today's rally drew more participants than many others days. Starting with about twelve pickets, the rally quickly grew to nearly fifty activists. As one veteran coalition member observed, "today may have been cold and windy, it might have been a day I'd have prefered to spend with my children, but it we had a great time!"

As much as the massive march and rally this past December 6th represented a turning point for the coalition and the campaign (see the People's Daily Campaign Honors Rosa Parks), the Christmas Day picket line proved the staying power of the People's Coalition for Jobs & Justice!

(to view a handful of additional photos from the Christmas Day demonstration click here)

People's Daily Campaign for Jobs & Justice Honors Rosa Parks

2011-12-08T11:49:00.004-05:00

When physicists refer to "critical mass" (the transformative moment when "the smallest amount of fissile material needed for a nuclear chain reaction" occurs), it is a potentially violent and nearly invariably ugly moment. But when the people's movement reaches this level of activity it is beautiful!

It can be truly glorious, like when Christian Egyptians formed a protective line of defense so their Muslim brothers and sisters could observe Azzan (the call to prayer) during the Arab Spring uprising at Tahrir Square. It can be awe-inspiring, like when the NYC municipal unions joined Occupy Wall Street and that youth-led movement became truly mass in scope, or when folks replicated OWS in city-after-city (and small towns as well) across the US! It is fantastic, like the day People's Organization for Progress chair Larry Hamm recalls from the divestiture movement at Princeton when the daily demonstration against apartheid South Africa grew from tens of participants to hundreds!

Young Occupy Newark activists marched from their Military Park occupation site to rally with the People's Daily Campaign at the Essex County Courthouse.

And Newark's People's Daily Campaign may have hit this "transformative moment" on Tuesday, December 6 (a day so rainy that many activists feared the planned demonstration might flop) when more than 200 marchers, representing approximately 130 churches, labor union locals, students from Essex County Community College, school kids from Science High, activists from the recently begun Occupy Newark encampment, and many, many more joined the regular daily picket line near the Essex County Courthouse (see the Star Ledger article, here).

Youth participation is key to the future of popular movements.

The People's Daily Campaign for Jobs, Peace, Equality & Justice chose December 6 for this march and rally to honor Mrs. Rosa Parks who was arrested on December 1, 1955 when she refused to vacate her seat on a public bus for a white passenger and sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955-1956. The People's Organization for Progress and the Daily Demonstration Coalition took our inspiration from that boycott which began on December 5th when the Women's Political Council of Montgomery and labor activist E.D. Nixon (a Pullman Porter who worked with A. Philip Randolph) began the Montgomery Bus Boycott. That boycott continued for more than 380 days, and it is POP's intent to continue the daily pickets for at least the identical length of time.

Unionized hospital workers represented by 1199SEIU join the People's Daily Campaign.

The role of both movement elders and young activists was critical to the success of this transformative rally and demonstration. Stalwarts of local community and national activism Amiri and Amina Baraka joined us on this difficult rain-drenched evening as they marched along-side their son Ras Baraka (South Ward Councilman and principal of Newark's Central High School).

Poets and activists Amina and Amiri Baraka march with their son, City Councilman Ras Baraka, as well as Newark Public School Advisory Board member Richard Cammerieri.

The importance of new and younger organizers was highlighted by the presence of Occupy Newark, high school students from Science High, young teachers from Teachers as Leaders in Newark, and an impressive number of other young people.

For additional photos from this important demonstration see pictures by my friend Jon Levine here.

A Kind Of Elegy For Zucotti Park

2011-12-06T05:28:00.002-05:00

A few days back, I arrived at Zucotti Park at about ten in the morning. It was not a happy moment. Occupy Wall Street! is like a prison camp, the old partial line of interlocking police barricades on the outer edge of the block now filled in and supplemented by an inner circle of shiny new barricades courtesy of park owners Brookfield Property. Inside the Park are a bunch of "security" people hired by Brookfield in yellow reflector vests and a Crispness tree behind its own additional, third, ring of shiny barriers.

Given that there were fewer than two dozen occupiers present, and that any time someone so much as put down a newspaper or soda can on a bench, a rent-a-cop would dart over and throw it away, I was pretty bleaked out. When I told one long-time occupier I know that there were more pigeons than people in the park, he pointed out that the pigeons had made no specific demands, refused to appoint a leader and had been accused of shitting inside the park. We agreed that they had to be numbered among the OWS! supporters present.

Still, even as the movement continues to debate what path forward now that most of the large urban encampments have been broken up by state intervention and police attacks, I think it important to remind ourselves just how much we have lost with these attacks. I was in Zucotti Park for the afternoon on November 14, the last day before Bloomberg's middle-of-the-night assault on the camp. Here are some comments I made for an article explaining OWS! to folks in Norway:

Returning after 10 days away, I saw the self-organization of Liberty Plaza, as it was also known, had advanced notably from the previously high levels, let alone the more primitive structure of the early weeks. My friend Mike Zweig gave a tight noon-hour talk on how class works in the US to dozens in the northeast corner of the park via the Mic Check method, then delivered advance copies of his book, The Working Class Majority, to the professional and amateur librarians operating the library, 5237 volumes and counting, now in its own tent. The information, food serving and medical operations were all better housed and organized and a Zucotti Park Fire Department had popped up.

An unofficial stencil and spray can operation put slogans on shirts on one side of the park and on the other, a full scale silkscreen operation was turning out free t-shirts, raising from donations the money the GA had voted to buy shirts and supplies. On line to get one, I chatted with a retired Black clerical worker, 75 years old, on her third visit to the park from New Jersey. She agreed with me that right after actual tents had gone up in the park some weeks before, some of the openness and welcome of the encampment had been lost, and that it was now back.

Before I left, I chatted with a hard-hatted IBEW member and a dude from the Labor Outreach Committee. The three of us talking in union jackets attracted others who wanted to discuss potential labor participation on the upcoming November 17 action. At last, on my way out again, I paused to join in on "16 Tons" and "For What It's Worth" with four or five folks around a guy with a guitar. Occupy Wall Street! was in full flower.

That night, the hammer came down.

Two last points. First, watch Michael Zweig's video! At 15 minutes, it serves as a microcosm and a particularly stellar example of the kind of education that was taking place in the Zucotti Park. Despite the challenging conditions, Michael helped unpack the whole question of class in the US for an avid audience. Individual discussions continued for more than half an hour after his talk concluded.

Finally, I write this not to bum myself out, or you, dear reader, but to remind us what we were capable of building and what was such a threat as to demand scores of brutal raids, over 5000 arrests have taken place around the country and untold millions in police overtime to disrupt. And the struggle continues.

People's Daily Campaign for Jobs & Justice Honors Rosa Parks Dec. 6 in Newark

2011-11-26T23:38:00.005-05:00

The People's Daily Campaign for Jobs, Peace, Equality & Justice, initiated by the Newark-based People's Organization for Progress this past July, has built a coalition of over 110 organizations holding daily demonstrations at the Essex County Courthouse. On Tuesday, December 6 (the 163rd consecutive day of the campaign), commemorating the 56th anniversary of the beginning of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, will hold a major demonstration and teach-in. Because the People's Daily Campaign takes its inspiration from Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the date is significant. POP and the daily demonstration coalition plans to make this a catalyst to keep the campaign active through the winter months.

The community groups, labor unions, churches, street organizations and others that have signed on as endorsing co-sponsors include:

The A. Philip Randolph Institute, Essex County Chapter; the A. Philip Randolph Institute, Union County Chapter; Abyssinian Baptist Church; Africa-Newark International, Inc.; African Arts Festival; Afrikan Poetry Theatre; American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey; American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees-Local 979; American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees-Local 2211; American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees-Local 2216; Bail Out the People Movement; Baptist Ministers Conference of Newark and Vicinity; Bethany Baptist Church; Black Administrators, Faculty, and Staff Association-SHU; Black Agenda Report; Black Cops Against Police Brutality; Black is Back Coalition; Black Telephone Workers for Justice; Board of Education for People of African Ancestry; Central Jersey Coalition Against Endless War; Christian Love Baptist Church; Coalition for Peace Action; Coalition to Save Our Homes; Communications Workers of America-Local 1037; Communications Workers of America-Local-1040; Community Awareness Alliance, Community Unity Leadership Council; Concerned Citizens to Revitalize Communities; December 12th Movement; Enough Is Enough Coalition; Essex Times; Essex-West Hudson Labor Council, AFL-CIO; Faith Christian Center; Friends of Marquis Aquil Lewis; Greater New Point Baptist Church; Greater Newark Alliance of Black School Educators, Inc.; Green Party of Essex and Passaic Counties; Independent Workers Movement; International Action Center; International Concerned Family & Friends of Mumia Abu Jamal; International Longshoremen's Association-Local 1233; International Longshoremen's Association-Local 2049; International People's Democratic Uhuru Movement-African People's Socialist Party; International Youth Organization; Kwanzaa Collective; Martin Luther King Birthday Committee of Bergen County; Metropolitan Baptist Church; Mothers of Murdered Sons & Daughters; Muhammad Mosque #25; My Father Knows Best; National Association for the Advancement of Colored People-Irvington Branch; National Association for the Advancement of Colored People-New Brunswick Area Branch; National Association for the Advancement of Colored People-Newark Branch; National Association of Kawaida Organizations; National Black United Front; National Council of Negro Women-Newark Section; National Organization for Women-New Jersey Branch; National Religious Leaders of African Ancestry; National United Youth Council; New Black Panther Party; New Hope Baptist Church; New Jersey African American Political Alliance; New Jersey Black Issues Convention; New Jersey Chapter-National Action Network; New Jersey Citizen Action; New Jersey Environmental Justice Alliance; New Jersey Immigrant and Worker Rights Coalition; New Jersey Jericho Movement; New Jersey Labor Against the War; New Jersey Millions More Movement Coalition; New Jersey One Plan One Nation Coalition; New Jersey Peace Action; New Jersey State Industrial Union Council/Solidarity Singers; New Reform Caucus of the Newark Teachers Union; N.J. Monitors; New York State Freedom Party; Newark Anti Violence Coalition; Newark North Jersey Committee of Black Churchmen; Newark Teachers Association, NJEA-ECEA; North Jersey Local Residents Work Force; Occupy Newark; October 2011 Movement; Omega Psi Phi Fraternity-Upsilon Phi Chapter; Parents and Families of Murdered Children; Pat Perkins-Auguste Civic Association; Philadelphia Innocence Project; Pro-African Purpose, Refal, Inc.; Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union (UFCW), Local 108; Ronald C. Rice Civic Association; Roots Revisited; Saint Peter Sounds of Praise Church; Senator Ronald L. Rice, Chairman-New Jersey Legislative Black Caucus; Service Employees International Union-32BJ, Service Employees International Union-Local 617; Service Employees International Union 1199 NJ-UHE; StreetDoctor; The Art of Survival Corporation; The Black Forum of Passaic; The Coalition for Effective Newark Public Schools; The Committee to Eliminate Media Offensive to African People; The Kasim Washington Group; Utility Workers Union of America-New Jersey State Union Council; United Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League; United Parents Network; Universal Hip-Hop Parade for Social Justice; Voices of Change and Liberation; West Ward Collective; World African Diaspora Union; Women in Support of the Million Man March; and many others…

The coalitions aims and demands include:

A national jobs program!
The end to wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya!
Preserve workers' rights and collective bargaining!
A moratorium on foreclosures!
The end to privatization schemes and other attacks on public education!
A national healthcare program!
Affordable college education!

The People's Organization for Progress and the People's Daily Coalition invites everyone who shares our aims to join us at Market Street and Springfield Avenue on December 6, 2011 at 4:30 PM and to join the coalition. Please call (973) 801-0001 for more information.

A Thought On The Aesthetics Of OWS!

2011-11-17T15:26:00.006-05:00

At first, one of the things I found least appealing about OWS! was the new convention for signage, torn pieces of cardboard box inscribed in magic marker or sharpie. By early October, as the encampment took root and drew more and more folks, some moving in, others coming when they could, these signs were everywhere.

Literally. People would hold theirs up in front of them to try and get conversations started about the contents, or just to put their views before the world. The section of Zucotti Park bordering on Broadway had dozens neatly laid out on the sidewalk where passersby could read them. Further back, they were haphazardly displayed or piled up where those who might show up without sleeping gear, like me, could pick up some for some insulation against the night cold of the pavement.

The content varied wildly. Some were politically acute, some so naïve they made you wince, some intensely personal, some cosmic, some incoherent, some longwinded, some funny, some sharp. My favorites were funny and sharp, like “I won’t believe that corporations are people until the State of Texas executes one.”

In a movement chock full of creative people, in an era of inexpensive printers and color transfers, I thought they looked pretty shabby, and a little studied, like ateen who spends hours making sure the rips in her jeans are just right--or the gel in his hair makes it look just the right kind of mussed up.

Obviously this was a conscious aesthetic choice. Though I’ve never heard that it was debated at an early General Assembly, there has been an obvious consensus that cardboard and marker serve as a signifier of authenticity. And that aesthetic does reflect the strengths of our movement, grassroots, diverse, and above all open.

I’ve changed. I am now genuinely fond of them. There are, of course, all styles of signs at Occupy Wall Street, but marker on cardboard remains iconic. Partly I’m sure, it's that familiarity has bred fondness, but also, as the movement has swelled, I’ve recognized two additional strengths this approach brings with it.

First, it has been an easy entry for newbies to the DIY ethic of OWS! This is very important in a movement whose central tactic, physically occupying space in public, 24/7, tends willy-nilly to divide people into two camps, the serious occupiers and everybody else. Like the 99% vs. 1% framing, it can bridge that divide, help folks think "we" instead of "I support them." Anyone coming to the encampment can pick up a hunk of cardboard, and write something on it and carry it with them (or could before Bloomberg’s assault). Presto, You’re part of Occupy Wall Street. And kids love doing it.

Second, it vaccinates the movement against cooptation or bogarting by forces not at the center of it. How many demonstrations have you been at where preprinted signs with a boring slogan are pushed on everyone by a union or a group like MoveOn.org or perhaps something with a name like the Proletarian League for the Reconstitution of the Fourth International (Bolshevik Faction) and people took the damn things? If anybody tried something that blatant now, it would be painfully obvious to everyone how bogus it was.

That’s why, on Tuesday morning, approaching a rallying point for forces just dispersed from the park hours before, I was distressed to see looming a cluster of very tall bright yellow signs. “Aw, shit,” I thought, “who the hell got those printed?” Getting closer, I was relieved to find that they were homemade, the slogans on them stenciled in black. And I was even more impressed to see that they were not on poles, but longer than I had thought. And they were pretty solidly constructed and appeared to be carried by handles fastened to the back.

And thinking about the need to defend against or blunt the kind of baton attacks the po-po have launched against Occupy! encampments in recent weeks, I decided I could adjust to this new school of poster art pretty damn quick if it catches on.

A Poem For Brecht

2011-11-11T18:13:00.010-05:00

A word of introduction. I found this poem today on the wall of a new "friend" on the Facebook social networking site. I know almost nothing about the author except that she (I suspect) or he appears radical and, at least for the moment, fascinated by the works of the German communist playwright and poet Bertolt Brecht. I reprint this, with permission, under the nom du blog suggested by the author.

QUESTIONS TO A WRITER WHO PREYS
(for Bertolt Brecht)

by Soci O'Logy

Who wrote the Threepenny Opera?
On the books you will find the name Bertolt Brecht.
... Has not Elisabeth Hauptmann composed the first manuscript?
And Mr. Puntila, many times revised –
Did not Hella Wuolijoki tell his story?
On which ship did Margarete Steffin go to America?
Why, after the evening that Brecht staged her play,
Did Marie Luise Fleißer cut her wrists?
The Caucasian Chalk Circle is full
of soft chants. Did not Ruth Berlau help
with their creation? Even the legendary Mahagonny
has to be conceived of as a co-production.
The young Brecht conquered Berlin.
Was he alone?
Did not Marie Hold light the oven for him in the morning
And emptied the ashtray in the evening?
Brecht wept when one of his mistresses
Wanted to leave him. Was he the only one to weep?
Brecht fathered many children.
Who raised them?
So many questions.
So few reports.

Now, a word of explanation. Those who've read Brecht may well note that this is written in parallel to his great poem about history and class "Questions From A Worker Who Reads" (posted directly below). A probably smaller group will recognize that it reflects the scholarship of John Fuegi, an American historian. His 1994 book Brecht & Co., makes the claim that the acknowledged collective nature of the cultural works turned out under the signboard of "Bertolt Brecht" hides a pattern of exploitative relations with women who collaborated with him and indeed did the bulk of the work on many of his best known plays and other writings. This claim, controversial when it was made, is now either accepted as true, although perhaps exaggerated, and/or ignored. Soci O'Logy's poem insists that we must think about this when we think about Brecht, his work and his importance.

And here's the model, a poem I dearly love (in the translation favored by Soci O'Logy):

QUESTIONS FROM A WORKER WHO READS

by Bertolt Brecht

Who built Thebes of the seven gates?
In the books you will read the names of kings.
... Did the kings haul up the lumps of rock?
And Babylon, many times demolished,
Who raised it up so many times?
In what houses of gold glittering Lima did its builders live?
Where, the evening that the Great Wall of China was finished, did the masons go?
Great Rome is full of triumphal arches.
Who erected them?
Over whom did the Caesars triumph?
Had Byzantium, much praised in song, only palaces for its inhabitants?
Even in fabled Atlantis, the night that the ocean engulfed it,
The drowning still cried out for their slaves.
The young Alexander conquered India.
Was he alone?
Caesar defeated the Gauls.
Did he not even have a cook with him?
Philip of Spain wept when his armada went down.
Was he the only one to weep?
Frederick the 2nd won the 7 Years War.
Who else won it?
Every page a victory.
Who cooked the feast for the victors?
Every 10 years a great man.
Who paid the bill?
So many reports.
So many questions.

Occupy! and the Cops

2011-10-29T06:54:00.005-04:00

When I started drafting this a few days ago, my lead sentence was “It’s probably too early to say that the issue of police violence in the US has been transformed by Occupy Wall Street! and the associated actions around the country.”

Maybe it’s not too early. The savage cop attack Tuesday night on Occupy Oakland! has intensified this change in climate, and changed the way the issue is being looked at and debated within the movement itself.

Videos of the tear gas and flashbang grenade attack on the encampment plus the skull fracture that put Iraq vet Scott Olsen on the critical list have also changed the calculus of repression for the enemy, but that’s not really what I am talking about here.

Direct targeting by the police is only one of three ways the gravitational field generated by the amazing and unexpected Occupy! movement is reshaping the issue of police violence in this country.

1. Most directly, the Occupy movement has posed the most powerful political and symbolic challenge in generations to private property and the day-to-day workings of the capitalist system. Inevitably, this has meant that the paid guardians of that system, the pigs, would be brought to bear to crush that challenge. So far, that has helped build the movement.

During one rainy graveyard shift stint at the information table at Liberty Plaza last week I talked to two fulltime occupiers, young white guys. Both said that what got them to the encampment (Brian from semi-rural North Carolina and James from Queens) was the Internet. More specifically, neither had been more than peripherally aware of OWS! before the notorious video clip of NYPD Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna pepper spraying already penned-up young female protesters went viral.

(It’s okay, even important, to note that this echoes on a small scale the widely-noted Missing White Woman Syndrome (MWWS) in the mainstream media. Shock and horror at cops imposing pain and humiliation on conventionally attractive young white women at a level experienced on a daily basis in communities of color around the country reveals something about the working of white privilege. But it also provides what some call a “teachable moment” if we choose to make that happen rather than sneer at those less directly affected or less enlightened than ourselves.)

That “Tony Baloney” pepper spray incident was the first big, well-publicized attack on the protests. Scores more have occurred around the country, and the arrests now number in the thousands. Every day’s news brings new reports of police evicting occupiers from parks. The threat of attack hangs over even peaceful, permitted occupations, where those following closely know that mayoral pledges to let us stay have been violated in New York, Oakland, Nashville and other cities.

2. Meanwhile the diverse and largely locally-based movement against police violence and terror has been looking hard at the new opportunities before it. For anti-cop activists, just as for folks from other social movements, like union strike supporters or environmental protesters, the Occupy! movement has become a kind of funnel into which particular struggles are poured. For instance, several of the earliest Occupy! encampments saw participants taking part in protests of the police-union-demanded execution of Troy Davis in Georgia. Occupy Oakland! named their base area Oscar Grant Park after the young Black man murdered by Bay Area Rapid Transit cops on New Year’s Day, 2009.

Here in NYC back-to-back demonstrations a day apart last week were each associated with Occupy Wall Street. Only blocks from my apartment, a group of mainly Black activists and religious figures headed by Professor Cornel West, who firmly declared himself part of Occupy Wall Street!, sat in at Harlem’s 28th precinct to protest NYC’s “stop & frisk” laws, racial profiling at its most naked. (City figures show that 85% of those rousted under this policy are Black or Latino)

The next day was October 22, the annual National Day of Protest to Stop Police Brutality, Repression and the Criminalization of a Generation. This year’s march was over 800 strong, larger than it has been in recent years, and as militant as always. Folks who came up from Liberty Plaza made up a sizeable minority of the crowd.

There before me was the transformation made possible by this teachable moment. Scores among the young occupiers who had come out for the demo rolled through the Lower East Side, hollering “NYPD KKK” and other chants about “pigs”–formulations I suspect might never have crossed their lips, or maybe even their minds a month ago.

3. Forces within the Occupy! movement are consciously using it to deepen the movement’s ties in the 99%, to do outreach in and build ties with communities of color and to educate the more clueless of the white newbies in the movement. Police violence remains, for obvious reasons, a major issue in communities of color, an open wound that can trigger an eruption of local struggle at any time.

In raising it, these movement activists are coming up against various ingrained white supremacist assumptions, or more exactly, blindspots among some participants. In Philly, an October 22 action came spontaneously out of Occupy Philadelphia! An excellent journal entry describes how it evolved and wound up with 17 protesters arrested for civil disobedience at Police HQ. Another fascinating piece on the Occupy Philadelphia media website points out some of the contradictions the Philly action stirred up in the encampment:

Many support the sit-in, but some are criticizing it. After all, the police have been very accommodating of Occupy Philly--why provoke them with this action? Don't police officers, who are often overworked and underpaid, belong to the 99%? Most of all, shouldn't we stay focused on corporate greed instead of getting distracted by secondary issues?

Among those working to break through this unclarity and resistance are those of us who are revolutionary socialists helping to build OWS! We’ve got a twofold task before us.

First is to be a part of the effort to undermine white privilege within the movement. Promoting understanding of how the police operate as an occupying army in oppressed nationality communities is a good tool to do that. Several Occupy! nodes have had useful workshops/meetings in which folks have testified about their own personal experience with cops. With a decent pool of people participating and egos kept in check, it soon becomes clear that a. yep, white folks get vamped on, too, and b. nope, nowhere near as comprehensively as people of color.

The other part of the job for reds is to spread a little class analysis. I suggested, in a previous piece about OWS!, that using 99% and 1% as our only categories for determining friends and enemies was not adequate. The question of the police, the bottom line defense of capitalist rule, is probably the biggest single reason why. True enough, cops come from working class and middle class communities. Nor are they paid enough to qualify them for that top 1%. That does not mean they are our friends.

A leaflet distributed at October 22 by Ignite!, a revolutionary collective of students and youth in New York, is an example of what I’m calling for here, as this excerpt shows:

The police are not a democratic organization; they are not directed or controlled by the community in any way. The police answer to the city officials, who answer to the politicians, who answer to the wealthy campaign donors who put them in power. A perfect example of this occurred just a few weeks ago (October 1st) when JP Morgan Chase bank gave the NYPD a massive and unprecedented $4.6 million "donation," just days after the mass arrests of protesters at Occupy Wall Street. This is the bankers reminding their NYPD guard dogs who they are truly hired to protect and serve: the interests of the capitalist class.

(That last bit is a true fact, incidentally. Morgan put out a press release bragging about it.)

In short, we appear to find ourselves in one of those amazing historical moments when a social tornado shakes the old order. Cracks and fissures suddenly appear in accepted wisdom, revealing glimpses of how things really work. Those who plunge into the whirlwind, especially, are learning more about how the world in weeks than they might in years of ordinary times.

Tens of thousands are already learning the kind of lessons that that previous upheavals like the ‘60s have taught. That cannot help but retool and refuel the struggle against police violence in this country.

One Key Weakness of Occupy Wall Street!

2011-10-24T06:59:00.007-04:00

When you don’t have a strategy, your tactics are your strategy. And the tactic of occupying Zucotti Park in the heart of the downtown financial district of Manhattan has been a stunningly successful one.

The collapse of the Bloomberg administration’s bid to oust the Occupy Wall Street! encampment on Friday, October 14, was a major milestone in the development of the movement. It insured that the flagship occupation would remain intact for weeks to come, as the movement continued to spread and sink roots in cities around the country.

About 600 or so of us spent the night there, amid intermittent rainstorms, a larger than usual overnight crowd. I had planned to be there anyhow, but when the eviction deadline was announced the day before, it set that plan in stone. My computer's inbox before I headed downtown Thursday was filled with unusually short and unusually urgent emails from a variety of lists I am on—-labor, anti-war, community and so on. The messages all boiled down to this:

Get your ass down to Wall Street by 6 ayem tomorrow to stop the eviction of Occupy Wall Street! This is important!

Starting at about 5:00 in the morning, the incredible happened. From every direction, people came walking into the plaza we had spent the night scrubbing and started listening to the discussion of resistance taking place in the General Assembly.

By 6:30 or so, we had quadrupled in size. The word came that the city and Brookfield Office Properties, the corporate owner of the park, had folded like a cheap suit. Folks still pouring in joined our celebration.

We were Too Big To Jail!

The victory was temporary, of course (and also reflected additional factors beyond just our numbers). Bloomberg keeps proclaiming his determination to drive us out, and you know the NYPD has been studying the sometimes brutal police attacks on Occupy! encampments in Chicago, Atlanta, Seattle, Orlando, Oakland and too many other places.

The victory highlighted the greatest strength of the movement, the responsive chord it has struck deep in millions who have found a voice for their anger, fear and sense of powerlessness as the ultra-rich use bought-and-paid-for politicians to offload the economic crisis onto us.

It has also revealed a very serious weak point--the distance or even disconnect between the occupying core and the hundreds of thousands who are actively supportive.

You could see this in the very emails that mobilized those hundreds and hundreds of people to rise at some revolting hour of the morning to come down to the park. Their tone was: it’s time for US (union members, liberals, environmentalists, whoever) to rally in support of THEM (the protesters), those splendid young people down there.

It’s pretty simple. If you aren’t actually in Liberty Plaza (or some other occupation site), you tend not to think of yourself as an active part of a movement whose very name declares the centrality of that tactic, Occupy Wall Street!

Even some old friends who’ve gone down several times to bring food, or take part in other ways (let alone those who’ve haven’t but have donated money or called Bloomberg or publicized it to neighbors and family) speak of the core group of ongoing occupiers as if it were the movement.

It’s built into the structure of the occupation. The core is mainly young people who have the freedom to spend extended periods of time and a smaller number older folks who can hack sleeping on concrete for days. They help shape them the grooves of daily life which define the occupation so naturally they fit into them most easily. More formally, they are able to take part in the committees and even the general assemblies with a greater sense of how things have been going and how they work. Often, the other stuff people point to as barriers, like cultural differences and the loosey-goosey horizontal structure, are in part manifestations of this structural factor.

I think it is instructive to look for a moment at the Tea Party. Now, cool your jets. I am not, repeat, not, equating OWS! with the teahadists. There are, however, things to be learned by looking at the two side by side. The point I want to make here is that when the Tea Party thing was starting to rip, people who responded found no structural barrier to considering themselves teabaggers. If you went to a rally, or heckled a Congressperson’s town meeting or just liked what you saw of them on Fox News, you were by God in the Tea Party. Buying a cardboard tricorn hat and stapling a bunch of Lipton teabags to it was optional. (Of course, that stage lasted about 45 minutes before rival groups with dues and pricey paraphernalia and minders from the Koch brothers and the Republican National Committee took things in hand.)

We can’t wish our obstacles out of existence and it would be unwise to pretend that they aren’t there. Better to recognize them and deal with them. The more people who think of themselves as part of OWS! and its offspring, as US, the stronger the movement will be, and the harder to attack.

One major step has already been taken--framing of the issue as a conflict between the 99% and the 1%. This is becoming one of the main memes of the movement. From a Marxist standpoint, this is of pretty limited utility as a class analysis, to be sure (though it is in the spirit of Unite All Who Can Be United To Defeat The Real Enemy). In terms of the movement, however, a lot of people are going to find it easier to declare "I’m the 99%" than to assert "I’m a part of Occupy Wall Street!" if they’ve never been to an occupation site.

There are smaller, but very significant things that can be done as well. A single example: There are two stenciling/silkscreening sites in Liberty Plaza. Vistors, whether supportive or merely curious (a lot of tourists come through the encampment), bring a shirt or a jacket or just take their own off, to get it adorned with a slogan—-Occupy Wall Street! seems to be the favorite though several choices are available.

Folks have told me--and I have found myself--that when you are out and about wearing one, on your own turf or just in public, people will definitely come up and ask you about it. I’ve had some heartening and fascinating conversations with neighbors and people on the subway alike which tend to confirm the recent spate of surprising pro-OWS! poll results. "Been there; done that; got the tee shirt…" is, in this case a battle cry, a declaration of involvement in the struggle!

In an upcoming post, I plan to return to this topic, focusing more on what policies and practical steps we can undertake to reduce these structural obstacles. Your thoughts are more than welcome.

"Jobs Now… Jobs at a Living Wage! " says Local 108's Charlie Hall, Jr.

2011-10-23T16:56:00.002-04:00

November 1 Storm Update (scroll to end of post for update)

Black NJ: RWDSU Local 108 Joins POP Daily Pickets!

On Wednesday, October 19, the 116th day of the Daily People's Campaign for Jobs, Peace, Equality & Justice, Local 108 of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, AFL-CIO (RWDSU) joined the People's Organization for Progress and other community-based organizations, individuals and Newark residents at the Lincoln monument in front of the Essex County Hall of Records between Springfield Avenue and Market Street.

Local 108's participation was an important development in the proposed 381-day campaign. While many individual union members have participated over the past months, while labor organizations have sent out members, this was the first time an endorsing union local has come out in force with their leadership.

"We must grasp Newark's unique situation," Charles Hall, Jr., President of RWDSU Local 108 said. "While national unemployment figures hover around 10%, Newark's numbers are 22%, double-depression levels!"

"In this situation, politicians' promises fail to spark hope among the city's unemployed," Larry Hamm, NJ Chairman of the People's Organization for Progress added. "When unemployment among minority youth approaches 75%, Mayor Booker's claimed 'concern' about jobs looks more like a campaign slogan than an actuality."

The Daily People's Campaign's goal of at least 381-days of continuing picketing was conceived by the People's Organization for Progress to recall the length of the Montgomery Bus Boycott 0f 1955-56, but as this momentous movement enters its fourth month, local residents …and supporters far beyond Newark's boundaries… are linking it to the many Occupy! actions (Occupy Wall Street!, Occupy Chicago!, Occupy Boston!, Occupy London!, etc., etc.) that are drawing national and international attention.

Perhaps, as the Black Agenda Report's Glen Ford has noted (see People's Organization for Progress protest), POP's Newark "demonstration marathon" shares a community of interest with Occupy Wall Street. To me it appears that by uniting labor and the community against the failed banking and government policies that reduce the vast majority of Newark's citizens to poverty, the People's Daily Campaign is Occupy Newark!

Update:

This past weekend, during the late-Fall blizzard (which plunged most of the Newark-area into almost a pre-electronic age situation as it brought down trees and power-lines all over Northern NJ) the People's Organization for Progress kept our daily picket active, sent a delegation to Wall Street and issued the following statement in support of Occupy Wall Street:

Statement of Solidarity from POP

and the Daily People’s Campaign Coalition

To the Occupy Wall St. Movement: October 2011

The Peoples’ Organization for Progress (POP), the statewide social justice organization, based in New Jersey and rooted in the Black Freedom Movement, extends greetings of Solidarity to the Occupy Wall St. Movement (OWS). We too are part of the 99%...who are victims of the current vastly disparate distribution of economic and political resources and power in the U.S. social system. With you, we are the “have nots,” who are resolved to fight back against the effects and the roots of the economic downturn and the accompanying political repression that is necessary to maintain the status quo.

The “Great Recession” in the rest of Americas is full blown Depression in Black America and the communities of other oppressed nationalities: Latinos and Native Peoples. We suffer double national levels of unemployment. The sub-prime predatory mortgage attacks by robber financiers have been exposed as intentionally targeting Black and Brown borrowers. Foreclosure and eviction are epidemic in our already impoverished communities; accelerating social decay and generational setback in already minimal wealth accumulation. The devastating effect of Government withdrawal from social service and safety support is exponentially magnified in these neediest of communities. The diversion of national treasury to wars of plunder and occupation and the historically unprecedented concentration of trillions of dollars of private wealth in the hands of the 1% deprive the U.S. Working Class, the Oppressed Nationalities and the small capitalists and support strata, who constitute, the Middle Class, of necessary resources for national reconstruction, necessary in the wake of the crisis. The 1% is at war against the 99% at home abroad.

Like you, POP is resolved to Fight Back! In response to the ruling class, the 1% efforts to burden the 99% with the ill effects and costs of the meltdown of their monopoly capitalism, while preserving their domination of society’s economic and political resources, we have put forth “The Daily Peoples’ Campaign for JOBS, PEACE, EQUALITY and JUSTICE.” Inspired by the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the campaign projects 381 days of daily protests against fundamental aspects of their war on us, demanding:

•A government sponsored national jobs program like the WPA of the 1930’s Depression,

•End the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and wherever U.SD. military is projected abroad; and, repatriation of the wasted treasury for national reconstruction,

•Preserving and strengthening workers’ rights and collective bargaining,

•A moratorium on foreclosures and evictions,

•Opposition to privatization of public education and guaranteed availability of university education without indentured servitude to finance capital,

•A national single-payer health program for all residents,

•End to police brutality and state repression of our fightback

The campaign is endorsed by in excess of 50 community, labor, faith-based and student organizations, who mobilize their constituents to join the picket line for at least one day of the 381, which was the duration of the 1957 Montgomery Alabama Bus Boycott, which jumpstarted the modern Civil Rights Movement. Like the MBB, POP and our Coalition strive to organize allies in the Fight Back; to generate a political climate of resistance among the inactive masses of victims and; to advance the movement against Imperialism and for transformation of the U.S. social system to one that serves the 99%, rather than the1%.

Wall St. Occupiers and Occupiers across the country and around the world, POP and the Daily People’s Campaign Coalition unite with your resistance to the dictatorship of the Imperialism, led by U.S. Imperialism over our world. To novices to the Struggle, we extend welcome! Every fight for freedom and liberation requires the exuberance, idealism and energy of youth that young soldiers of OWS bring to the struggle. Your courage in standing up and fighting back is inspirational. Your fight against Wall St. greed and for the interests of the 99% are the right thing to do, placing you on the right side of history, for in spite of sacrifice and setbacks inevitably we shall win. As you are part of the historic continuum of resistance, we say: “Occupy Wall St. Live Like Them; Dare to Struggle and Dare to Win!”

POP and the Peoples’ Daily Campaign Coalition look forward to opportunities for joint work in building the Peoples’ resistance to oppression and exploitation.

(to view this statement as a reprintable leaflet, click HERE, on leaflet)

[Thanks to sister Ingrid Hill, POP's Corresponding Secretary, and Angenetta Robinson, POP's Treasurer for the excellent photographs in this FotM blog]

Occupy Wall Street!? I Say It's Like Slime Mold!

2011-10-15T05:38:00.006-04:00

[I didn't write this. My 'rade Meizhu Lui did, for some folks in the organization we both belong to, the Freedom Road Socialist Organization / Organización Socialista del Camino para la Libertad. Whether or not you currently consider yourself a red, you will, I think, enjoy and benefit from reading this. Meizhu is co-author of the indispensable The Color of Wealth: The Story Behind the U.S. Racial Wealth Divide.]

By Meizhu Lui

The Occupy! moment brings me back to one of my favorite topics: slime mold.

The individual slimes just wander around doing their own thing - until there is a catalyst, like a really great food source, and then they slime together and move as one. It's another form of social organization, different from, say, the traditional communist mode, which historically has seen organization as hierarchical, or with action generated from "centers."

Some of the biggest moments in recent US history have been more in the slime mold category, taking us all by surprise: Seattle, the immigrant rights marches of 2006, now Occupy!. People are doing their individual thing, and then bam! something catalyzes them into action. Of course, once the catalyst dissipates, as it will, the slimes all wander off again. Clearly that's what's going to happen here. I do not mean anything derogatory about slime. It is a legitimate and natural form of self-organization.

So what does this amorphous mass moving as one look like closer up? There are a few free floaters on the periphery swept up in the tide, but there are also many nodes within the mass, connected to the rest by the desire to follow that great smell!

I don't think we should worry much about the Democrats or whomever, who will try to do what they do, and frankly do what we also want to do: capture the movement and become its center and get more people following their line. It's not going to work for them, it's not going to work for us. And it is a victory of sorts that this is a movement the Democrats want to co-opt! If those in the streets have woken up the Dems to the massive anger at their coziness with the major players of the capitalist class in the financial sector who have now put their own short-term interests above their long-term ability to defend the system, that's a good thing.

So what do we, as revolutionary socialists, do? We concentrate on strengthening our "node." Since there is no wheel with a hub, nor will there be, our actions must be within the context of network organization. We should not get derailed by showing how wrong the other people in the Occupy movement are. We must recognize that for the foreseeable future, any mass movement will likely be like this. Over time, we will need to continue to stay in touch with those other sections, even those that are not fully anti-capitalist, and work and play well with them.

Part of becoming stronger is achieving a position of being respected and influential within a broad array of forces. It also means putting forward some clear demands that speak to the anger of the people. Ones that bail out those who got sunk by the latest crisis of capitalism.

Of course, we will concentrate on demands for those those sunk the lowest: people of color and those in the bottom rungs. We must make the case that a victory for 50% is not a victory. There's a difference in being in the first percentile and being in the 99th percentile, even if 99% are not in the same league as the top 1%. Many of those new to Occupy! are middle class, surprised and angry to find that they will not cash in on the American dream. Perhaps this is why people of color were not as excited; they've known that all along. If there is a victory for 50%, it would just be the same old.

Our demands must be ones that not only close the gap between the 1% and the 99%, but that close the vast racial gap. Given Freedom Road's position on oppressed nationalities, this can be a way we distinguish ourselves yet again. But this time, it's not that far off before our nation is majority of color, only a few short decades (2042 is the magic number). Can we be part of a node that can, as MoveOn does for liberal white folks, have the cred to put out a call that can be a catalyst for mass action among people of color? Let's take a long view, and let's not get disappointed when Occupy! stops occupying the public imagination.

Damn, Was I Wrong About Occupy Wall Street!

2011-10-06T21:18:00.005-04:00

I was wrong.

And just how wrong I was still remains to be seen.

When the Occupy Wall Street! action was announced and even after it started, I thought it had FAIL written all over it. The core was a few score young, mainly white, activists from the radical youth milieu with plenty of demonstration experience but limited ties in the people's movements and communities of NYC. The messaging was vague, the tactical implications of the call to Occupy! even vaguer. This, I thought, was bound to be a nothingburger.

Now just three weeks later, it is clear that Occupy Wall Street! has slapped the defibrillator paddles to a constellation of social movements which have been on the critical list since at least the run-up to the 2008 election and is drawing thousands new to activism into motion. The spirit, determination and self-organization which characterized the Wisconsin uprising of last winter have gone nation-wide. And this time the struggle is not a desperate battle to turn back an ambush.

Because it has roared into existence so quickly, has spread so spontaneously and is still evolving so rapidly--new slogans and memes supersede the old almost daily--almost everybody I’ve talked to who identifies with OWS! feels that all of us 99%ers are playing catch-up ball, trying to relate to our own upsurge.

Here are three brief points roughed out during hours at Liberty Square (or Zucotti Park or whatever we are calling it today) and then refined at yesterday’s mass march. I offer them for orientation purposes as we attempt to figure out what’s going on--and where to go next.

1. This is fucking broad. Everybody has seen the reports, Over 200 Occupy! actions are underway or planned around the country. School walkouts are spreading. Endorsements are piling up. The media whiteout of the first couple of weeks is gone, and we have entered the "then they laugh at you" phase.

One of my first clues that this had real legs was the attention it was getting from the start on the influential left liberal Daily Kos website. An aggregated site with hundreds of bloggers, thousands of commenters and tens of thousands of readers every day, Daily Kos’s declared mission is to elect Democrats and, where possible, better Democrats. Yet overall it is a fairly left site with many self-identified socialists and a visibly high level of dissatisfaction with the Obama administration. By the end of September, it was not uncommon for a third or more of the top posts (“diaries” as they are known) recommended by member vote to be about the Occupy movement. This is as spontaneous a development as the movement itself, and demonstrates clearly how disgruntled many of the Kossacks, who think of themselves as very political people, are with a purely electoral, “politics of the possible” approach to society and government at this juncture.

An analogy: Probably high schools no longer can afford sodium acetate for their science teachers to demonstrate supersaturated solutions, but older readers may remember this one. The idea is simple. Dissolve in heated water more of a chemical than it can absorb at room temperature. When it cools down, drop in a single crystal and watch the liquid rapidly crystallize into a solid.

Occupy Wall Street! has acted like a seed crystal. It has not caused the mass anger at the way things are going in this country, but it has provided a focus around which that anger can crystallize, mobilizing both folks who have historically been active around issues like the war or the environment and regular folks who have been hard hit by the economic crunch and are both mightily pissed off about it and extremely cynical about about a "democracy" which is so permeated with corporate cash.

Because of this, the occupations also serving as a funnel through which various social movements can take action and respond to attacks. When the State of Georgia carried out its legal lynching of Troy Davis, the protest rally marched from Union Square to the encampment and then headed down Wall Street itself. There the first in a series of escalating police attacks on Occupy Wall Street! took place when the cops busted some young activists near Federal Hall. Last Sunday, several dozen teachers and college faculty showed up for an inspired action. They held a Grade-In, sitting quietly and marking tests and homework, and graphically refuting the anti-union, anti-public education lies of the right wing about how overpaid teachers are and how easy they have it.

Then came yesterday when a wide array of unions and community and student groups mobilized upwards of 20,000 people to march from the seat of city and federal government at Foley Square down to the OWS! Encampment and Wall Street itself.

2. This is a return to the Seattle moment. Pretty much everybody over 25 will remember the heady days of the upsurge against globalization and neo-liberalism as the new century began. It was famously captured in the slogan handwritten on a sign by one demonstrator, "Teamsters And Turtles, Together At Last"! Organized labor and youthful environmentalists and solidarity activists began to unite under the slogan “Another World Is Possible.”

That upsurge was derailed by 9/11, the changed focus of political discourse in the US to discussion of terrorism and what's "American" and the need for a massive anti-war movement. The economic meltdown which began in 2007 started shifting the tectonic plates of US society again, making possible this new thing we are seeing.

The working class majority in this country, and communities of color in particular, are sharply aware of having been screwed, blued and tattooed by the banks and are disgusted with the role their elected officials have played in that. The economic pinch is the unifying factor here--from college grads enmeshed in debt and unable to find jobs, to homeowners facing eviction to 99ers who have fallen off the end of unemployment insurance, to workers facing demands for monstrous givebacks, to poor people threatened by the erosion of basic civil services. That is the foundation for Occupy Wall Street!.

But it is very much to the credit of the folks at the encampment that they realized that workers are key allies they must unite with, and that it was up to them to take the initial steps. Thus, within days of opening the camp, nine activists stood, one after another, and disrupted a sale at the high-tone Sotheby's auction house in support of Teamster union members locked out by the hugely profitable firm. The following week 100 people from the encampment showed up at a rally called by postal unions (including my old local, NY Metro) to defend Saturday delivery and post offices in poor neighborhoods threatened with closings.

The unions too, battered by a decade of losses in membership and influence, facing savage union busting attacks, and painfully aware that there's precious little they are going to get from the Obama administration or a divided Congress, see an opportunity to be part of a broader fight back against corporate power. And so the first steps toward rebuilding the Seattle united front are being taken.

3. This has a profound global impact. Think back to the early months of this year and how we watched when first the Tunisians and then the protesters in Cairo’s Tahrir Square launched, then maintained and defended occupations that challenged longstanding entrenched undemocratic regimes. People around the Arab world and the globe watched, transfixed, and tried to figure out how to replicate these magnificent uprisings. Even here, it provided massive inspiration and something of a template to the working class and its allies in Wisconsin.

Well, trust me, the US is far more visible on a global scale than Tunisia. From pure self-defense, people across the planet keep one eye on this country at all times. And now they are watching very closely indeed, They want to see what we, the 99%, can do against such a powerful and deadly enemy, one with claws sunk in their own countries, and with their junior versions of our 1% in power at home.

Tbis is very clear in the message from left wing Chinese activists and intellectuals in support of Occupy Wall Street! published here at Fire on the Mountain a few days ago. Describing the repression we face here, they mention how much worse it is elsewhere, like in China, then matter-of-factly say, “There is nowhere left where we can live and die as people.”

We must not turn our heads away from what this implies. The battle launched by Occupy Wall Street! is one in which the stakes are the future of the planet. No wonder Occupy! actions have broken out in more than a dozen other countries, in which contradictions had not yet reached the intensity they have in Spain and Greece, where far more massive battles have raged for months.

This means that what we do in the coming months as the movement unfolds is a contribution to the people of the world. Stepping up is our internationalist duty. To stand aside from this unfolding movement or critique it at a remove is to abdicate that duty, to settle for being Americans, instead of standing with the world’s people.

In closing, I have only argued here the importance of Occupy Wall Street and the movement it has spawned. I have not commented on its shortcomings--like the weaknesses of "leaderless resistance," the chasm between the relative handful of full timers and the millions who will want to be part of the action but whose lives do not permit them to set up camp on a city street indefinitely, the replication of hierarchies of privilege under the banner of horizontalism. I have not addressed the challenges--like doing outreach, preparing for more violent repression, avoiding suffocation in the embrace of the Democratic Party and its allies and fronts, I could write a basic list of things that need consideration as long as this article itself.

Well, these are the kind of questions all of us need to grapple with, and the starting point should be involving ourselves as deeply as possible in this wonderful, contradictory, unexpected eruption. See you at the Occupation!