Fire on the Mountain

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!

The Chinese Left Hails Occupy Wall Street!

2011-10-04T10:08:00.011-04:00

[This statement, translated by the worthies of the China Study Group, is extremely important. It has been signed by a crew of intellectuals and activists in China, many of whom are left critics of the Chinese state and its capitalist economy. Its analysis of the economic roots of the crisis and the connection to politics is trenchant and goes much deeper than denunciations of corporate greed by themselves can.

But more important is what it teaches us about the global importance of the movement that started less than three weeks ago. True, the statement may seem to be far too optimistic about the immediate prospects of the upsurge and to make more sweeping claims for the movement than any of us who have, say, actually been down at Liberty Plaza would dare, but consider the meta-message here. People around the world are looking to us in the US for inspiration, courage and ideas about how to fight the system--and to build a global movement to end capitalism and build a new world!

Think about that for a minute before you let cynicism about the movement's very real shortcomings justify your inaction.]

Message from Chinese activists and academics in support of Occupy Wall Street

From the middle of September, a great “Wall Street Revolution” has broken out in the United States. This street revolution, going by the name of “Occupy Wall Street,” has already expanded to over 70 cities and countries in North America, Europe, and other areas. In their statement on “The Wall Street Revolution,” the American people have sworn that this demand for “a democratic country, not a corporate kingdom” mass democratic revolution must spread to every part of the world, and they will not rest until this goal is met. From the anti-capitalist demonstrations that began after the 2008 financial crisis, and which this year have spread across Europe, the Middle East, North Africa and South America, this magnificent global mass democratic movement has finally spread to the center of capitalism’s financial empire–Wall Street.

The eruption of the “Wall Street Revolution” is an historical indicator that the popular democratic revolution that will soon sweep the world is set to begin. It is an especially significant and important event for this movement. Before this most recent action, street protests had virtually been exclusively used as a tool by US elite groups to subvert other countries. Now, however, the “Wall Street Revolution” – with its goals of shared prosperity and popular democracy – has launched protests in the country that is the self-proclaimed defender of democracy. This will inevitably strike a hard blow against the US elite group, itself responsible for the plunder and oppression of people all over the world, and the group that pushed the world into crisis and instability. The protests ring the death knell of the rule of capital. Popular democracy will replace elite democracy in the 21st Century, and the curtain has lifted on the movement from elite politics to popular politics. Using the language of the “Wall Street Revolution,” this is a struggle of the popular 99% against the corrupt 1%, a struggle of the popular 99% against the elite 1%,and is the final struggle of the popular forces against elite capitalist rule.

The world belongs to all of the people of the world. Countries belong to the entire people of those countries. Even moreso, wealth is produced by the entire people, and therefore should be shared by the entire people, it cannot be monopolized by the 1% – or even less than 1% – that is made up of an extremely small number of elites. The demand for common prosperity in economics, and popular democracy in politics has become an unstoppable historical trend! The rapid expansion of a fictitious economy and the massive flow of social wealth has created an amply reliable material foundation for the realization of the common wealth of all people. The development of internet technology and political civilization has created the conditions for human society to make the transition from capitalist democracy to popular democracy. Human society is fully capable of transforming, on the foundation of the past democracy of slaveholders, the democracy of feudal lords, and the democracy of the capitalist class, to make the fundamental shift from the democracy of the elites to real popular democracy. Common prosperity and popular democracy will become the main content of the historical transformation of the 21stCentury. No matter how brutally the American riot police will attempt to suppress the participants in the Wall Street revolution, no matter how much the global elites – especially those in the U.S. and China –try to suppress news of the Wall Street revolution, they cannot stop the vigorous growth and ultimate victory of the democratic revolution of the people of the world.

The violent repression and virtual blockade of news about the “Wall Street Revolution” by elite groups led by the US proves that the fate of oppressed people around the world is the same, regardless of whether they are from developed or developing countries, whether they are from so-called democracies or authoritarian countries. The international elite was the first class to link-up internationally via globalization. Their plunder of public wealth and repression of popular democratic movements is cruel and far-reaching, and utterly lacking in freedom and democracy. So-called freedom and democracy in modern society is nothing more than democracy for capitalism, an elite democracy. Freedom is another word for the elite to plunder, oppress and violently suppress others. Popular forces have been completely excluded from the freedoms and democracy of modern society, and the extent of democratic rights is to choose between presidential candidates that have already been vetted by capital. You can vote once every four years, but you have no way of affecting the people above you who directly determine your fate: your boss or superior. And there is no way of constraining the capitalist oligarchs who can take away the wealth of the majority of the population with the slight of hand of fictitious capital. Freedom and democracy have become a virtual game, nothing more than a tool to subvert other countries. Now the popular and democratic world revolution – symbolized by the “Wall Street Revolution”- demands an end to this political game, and that freedom and democracy be returned to the people. Democracy is not just a check on the president, but a check on government officials; democracy is not just a check on power, but a check on capital. If the rights and privileges of feudal and absolute rulers are understood to be a sin and abomination, then giving those rights to capital is also a travesty.

Securities and computer networks should have been two crucial elements of our shift from an industrial society to an information society, from a material economy to a virtual economy, from capitalism to a human-centered economic system, and from elite politics to popular politics. But the elite class has turned securities into a tool of appropriation akin to the ‘indulgences’ issued by middle-age church functionaries in Europe. In the new securitized economy, all the public’s wealth can easily melt into thin air – including their houses, wages, labor power and even their hope for the future. All these things have become the targets of appropriation by a tiny elite minority. Both the white-collar middle classes in developed countries – owners of fictitious property, and the blue-collar workers in developing countries who cannot afford housing or health care, belong in point of fact to the same class: modern proletariat. When the people protest the unprecedented plunder and vast income gap perpetrated by fictitious capital, they are met with violent repression – both in so-called democracy countries that claim to be defenders of human rights such as the US, and in authoritarian countries that are said to lack freedom and democracy. Faced with street protests erupting from the Balkans to North Africa, President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton have repeated over and over, “The rights of peaceful protest and the occupation of public space should be respected at all times.” Yet when US citizens attempt to exercise this right they immediately are faced with violent repression by armed police, and a blockade by the news media. If this is reaction of the US – the self-proclaimed leader in human rights – then we can imagine what the reaction will be in other capitalist countries. Rule by the capitalist elite is just as described by the “Wall Street Revolution” – everywhere. There is nowhere left were we can live and die as people.

The eruption of the “Wall Street Revolution” in the heart of the world’s financial empire shows that 99% of the world’s people remain exploited and oppressed – regardless of whether they are from developed or developing countries. People throughout the world see their wealth being plundered, and their rights being taken away. Economic polarization is now a common threat to all of us. The conflict between popular and elite rule is also found in all countries. Now, however, the popular democratic revolution meets repression not just from its own ruling class, but also from the world elite that has formed through globalization. The “Wall Street Revolution” has met with repression from US police, but also suffers from a media blackout organized by the Chinese elite.

The same fate, the same pain, the same problems, the same conflict. Faced with a common enemy in an elite global class that has already linked-up, the people of the world have only one option: to unite and in a unified and shared struggle overturn the rule of the capitalist elite, to ensure that everyone enjoys the basic human rights of work, housing, health care, education, and a secure old-age. But we must go further if we are to realize shared prosperity and popular democracy in a new socialist world historical framework, If we are to fully escape and neutralize the crises and disasters that capitalism has brought the human race, and realize harmonious social development.

The great “Wall Street Revolution” and the great popular “Chilean Winter” that preceded it signal that the day when we realize shared prosperity and popular democracy is approaching. It signals that worldwide popular and democratic socialist movement – dormant since the 1970s – is waking up again. But this time, it will be the final battle to put capitalism in its grave. The victory of popular democracy and death of elite rule are inevitable! The embers of revolt are scattered amongst us all, waiting to burn with the slightest breeze. The great era of popular democracy, set to change history, has arrived again!

Resolutely support the American people in the “Wall Street Revolution”!

Resolutely support all street protests pushing for shared prosperity and popular democracy!

Long live the “Wall Street Revolution”!

Long live the global movement for popular democracy!

Long live popular international solidarity!

Signed by,

1. 马宾（中共老一辈无产阶级革命家，对鞍钢宪法有重要贡献）
2. 张宏良（北京学者）
3. 孔庆东（北京学者）
4. 张勤德（中共中央某机关退休干部）
5. 司马南（北京资深主持人）
6. 左大培（北京学者）
7. 苏铁山（北京学者）
8. 贾根良（北京学者）
9. 韩德强（北京学者）
10. 韩中（电视剧《毛岸英》中饰演毛泽东主席的演员）
11. 刘毅然（电视剧《毛岸英》导演）
12. 顾秀林（昆明学者）
13. 赵磊（成都学者）
14. 刘长明（济南学者）
15. 孙锡良（长沙学者）
16. 郭松民（北京学者）
17. 杨思远（北京学者）
18. 徐亮（北京学者）
19. 范景刚（北京左翼网站乌有之乡网站负责人www.wyzxsx.com）
20. 吴国屏（江苏无锡红色文化大讲堂负责人）
21. 戴诚（江苏常州红色合唱团负责人）
22. 葛黎英（郑州红色事业活动志愿者）
23. 任羊成（河南林州，修建红旗渠的特等劳模）
24. 袁金萍（河南安阳，林州市红旗渠精神学习会理事）
25. 赵东民（西安红色法律工作者）
26. 桑文英（西安红歌会负责人）
27. 李忠（太原红色事业活动志愿者）
28. 聂晓萍（北京老中医）
29. 吴泽刚（四川理县，藏族农民，中共党员）
30. 苏群（深圳红歌会志愿者）
31. 朱超（重庆红色事业活动志愿者）
32. 刁伟铭（上海红色事业活动志愿者）
33. 李欣（天津红色事业活动志愿者）
34. 曹文质（北京景山红歌会负责人）
35. 吴凤藻（北京首钢退休干部）
36. 薛云（北京红色企业家，点石金校校长）
37. 杨晓陆（北京反转志愿者）
38. 马婷娜（北京反转志愿者）
39. 吕霙（北京，退休科技工作者，当年红卫兵）
40. 刘英（广西桂林学者）
41. 陈红兵 (郑州当年红卫兵)
42. 石恒利（辽宁社科院退休研究员）
43. 熊炬（男，中共党员，诗人，作家，重庆出版社退休干部）
44. 谢明康（男，中共党员，重庆市垫江县城乡建委退休干部）
45. 邬碧海（女，浙江红色事业活动志愿者）
46. 王庆人（天津学者，南开大学教授）
47. 司马平邦（中国名博沙龙常务副主席）
48. 王左军（资深媒体人士、绿色环保人士）
49. 曾有灿（工程师）
50. 陈晶（北京红色事业活动志愿者）

(list of signees awaiting translation, please contact chinastudygroup@gmail.com to help!)

Tactics (3): "Leaderless Resistance" & Cop Tactics At Wall Street

2011-10-02T23:05:00.009-04:00

[This fascinating reflection on the significance of yesterday's (!) arrests of over 700 Occupy Wall Street protesters on the Brooklyn Bridge for the prospects and strategy of the movement are published with the writer's permission, as the third in FotM's occasional series on tactics.]

Some Thoughts On Leaderless Resistance And Occupy Wall Street

by SKS

I will go out and say it outright: the "Occupy" movement in itself is a snowclone, viral movement with a lot of promise - regardless of the many valid critiques others have engaged regarding its many short-comings. I do not intend to add to the chorus, but provide a fresh perspective, hopefully thought provoking, on a key aspect of the movement: the claim of "leaderless resistance". (While I am cognizant of the fascist origins of the strategy and tactic, in particular Louis Beam as a voice of the far-Right, I am ignoring this for the time being: the truth is that in practice in the last 20 or so years it has become widely used in the left and in the animal rights and ecological movements, and hence as a practice, divorced from the right - however, the theoretical underpinnings are indeed elitist)

My intent, in this note, is to raise context and observations on the nature of "leaderless resistance" as a strategic outlook, and as a tactic. I am particularly motivated by the counter-intelligence coup the NYPD achieved in the Brooklyn Bridge kettle (which echoes a similar one in London nearly a year ago). That is, my intent is a strategic and tactical observation of the "leaderless resistance" concept as applied to "Occupy Wall Street", its problems, its roots, and more importantly, alternatives that increase the effectiveness, security, accountability, and survivability of this movement. I do so as a veteran of the anti-colonial struggle in Puerto Rico, and in particular both the relative victory against the US Navy in Vieques Island in 1999-2003, and the relative defeat of the 1998 anti-privatization strikes - as well as the student and community struggles there. Also, as a red diaper grandchild, having the dubious honor of being exposed to the worse excesses of counter-intelligence and State repression since before birth. As an active student of these matters, I do not claim authority, but I do not claim ignorance either.

I. Starting from the end

The Brooklyn Bridge kettle is a historic event: it represents both the first time in living memory that a mass disruptive action has happened in New York City that was pro-active in form: there is no RNC convention, there is no WTO meeting, there is nothing to fight for other than the atrocious malfeasance of the State and Wall Street.

It is also historic in that in represents a conscious shift in police tactics. For those who remember the "Guantanamo-on-the-Hudson" during the RNC protests in 2004, it is clear: while mass arrests did happen, they were the usual random snatching operations in a large scale street isolation. As such, violent tactics, such as the use of pepper guns and baton charges were the norm. Perhaps the most recent example in a mass movement of this set of tactics was the Pittsburgh G-20 protests in 2009 in which even sonic weapons were used. However, in those protests, already the first change of tactics was visible: two of the most dramatic events of the protest were the identification of passive plainclothes police among the protesters (not active provocateurs) and the preemptive dismantling of a media center, including the arrest of those behind one of the main Twitter accounts used for organizing (which was part of a months long intelligence operation).

This "kinder and gentler" approach has its roots in contemporary policing theory, and had its first essay in the London kettles in fall of 2010. Some of the same tactics first used there were clear in the Brooklyn Bridge kettle.

Let's give a short overview of the ones I find significant:

1) Tactical assumption of a lack of leadership in the protest. While politically and even on terms of prosecution they wouldn't admit this, the police didn't try to snatch particular leaders from the protest as they would normally; this pragmatic approach to dealing with the situation is novel and proved very effective to their ends. In London, this allowed easier kettling by tricking naive and idealistic people into moving in the direction the cops wanted, to then kettle them. In the Brooklyn Bridge incident, this was semi-successful: apparently the majority of the people saw the obvious trap and side-stepped the police. Still, hundreds fell for it. In effect, since there are no leaders, the police become the leadership, de facto.

2) Use of high-ranking officers in the front-lines. One of the origins of the Police Riot, which is what often leads to the most violent actions on the part of the Police in mass situations. In the Brooklyn Bridge kettle, nearly all the front-line officers present were "white shirts" or officers of Lieutenant rank and above. While Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna earlier provided a one-man Police Riot, he is indeed a rotten apple: white shirts are often the cooler heads under pressure, and in the videos you can see open chastising on the part of these white shirts to even lower rank white shirts. This also a pragmatic recognition on the part of the Police of the non-violent, yet provocative, nature of the protest: they do not expect violent actions on the part of the mass - they do expect a few cops to lose their cool and riot, with the consequential spectacle in the media. This robs the mass action of the provocative intent of civil disobedience: since the State's reaction is pedestrian and "acceptable", there is no message transmitted. The medium of mass civil disobedience is robbed of its only effect. The cops win, not the movement.

3) The measured proportionality of action. Until recently, the tactics of mass policing in the western world were based on intimidation and control via overwhelming force. The use of non-lethal weaponry, the massed deployment of physically imposing riot police on exotic steroids, the use of provocateurs and active counter-intelligence. This has given way to a more proportional and surgical utilization of what they call "the quiver": all of the options previously available are still available, but not deployed. In the recent English riots, this perspective gave way to much criticism on the part of right wing elements who sustained that the police intervention was ineffective. However, a careful look at the arrest and convictions show they doth protest too much. All of the people allegedly involved in murders during the riots have been indicted. Nearly all active participants, including those involved in minor crimes, have been arrested, indicted, and for the most part convicted. Turns out that the Police were not asleep at the wheel, or even overwhelmed: they switched from a tactic of direct control and intimidation to one of post-facto enforcement: essentially hitting participants when they least expected it. Rather than street fighting and running battles, the police chose CCTV video, and intelligence operations to get the participants. The result is even more effective than that of a running street battle from the perspective of the state.

With all this in mind, and with some further elaboration below, I think it safe to conclude that the Brooklyn Bridge kettle had a particular intent, all related to counter-intelligence:

1) De-articulation of the main base of the "Occupy Wall Street" camp. By successfully depopulating the main base, the police were able to isolate the committed participants in the infrastructure of the camp, the unaccountable true leadership of the movement. Like sifting sands for gold, the identification of the logistical leadership is priceless to future intervention. Those targeted should be very vigilant: they are no longer Anonymous. Leaderless resistance claims to solve this by allowing any compromise member to be taken over by another anonymous member, but the false egalitarianism promoted that we are all willing, able, and equally effective in any capacity is a lie. If this were true, we wouldn't need surgeons or pilots because we would all be able to do it, without a need for skill, talent or willingness. If, say, Lorenzo, gets arrested, who will take over him? A model of leadership that identifies, protects, and prepares people for accountable leadership is less vulnerable in this respect.

2) The de facto Red Squad needed to update the databases. This movement has attracted lots of people who are new activists, unknown to the State. They needed to round them up and identify them, and in particular those willing to be arrested for the movement. Rounding them up in a diffuse open plan like that of the camp, or tediously using CCTV and on foot video for no crime cannot be justified. However, the process of booking is an intelligence coup. Not only are the databases updated, but new items added, biometric data collected, network analysis made. In effect, 700 arrests mean, 70,000 data routes for the average person, who knows 100 people or so. There is overlap, so obviously the number made vulnerable is not 70,000, but it will still be in the five figures. This is a counter-intelligence coup. Yes, we are Anonymous, we never forgive, we never forget. Neither does the State - and its power is underestimated. One of the claims of leaderless resistance is that since people do not actively conspire in cells or pyramids, it protects the independent cells. But as the Federal de-articulation of the North-west USA eco-cells (the Elves of the Earth Liberation Front) shows, there is no need for active conspiracy to connect the dots via social network analysis (and I do not mean Facebook: social networks are not a technology, it is how humans connect socially everywhere). In effect, the movement has provided the State with an intelligence head-start of great value - and did so because the leaderless resistance's directionless approach failed to notify people of this consequence.

3) Separate the "hardcore" from "softcore" and from "nocore" activists. A key goal of counter-intelligence is to de-cohere movements so they implode. One of the methods used in the past is to take advantage of the inherent wedges within movements. The leaderless resistance model claims to solve this by eliminating hierarchy - but this is also a lie. The elimination of formal hierarchy doesn't eliminate informal hierarchy of will, charisma, economic/racial/gender privilege and other such background hierarchies. In effect, counter-intelligence hoists the movement on its own petard in a pragmatic approach. This wedging is formally addressed in "leaderless resistance" theory as "weeding out the weak", a sort of social-Darwinist process - but this is anathema to a true mass movement. The inherent elitism of "leaderless resistance" with the onus of dedication and self-sacrifice is exploited effectively by the state.

4) Criminalization. This is the most political of the goals. By criminalizing the movement, in other words, by equating active participation with the possibility of being processed criminally, the same "preventative" logic of policing is imposed on political speech. The idea, however, is not to prevent gang violence or other crimes, but to prevent political speech that questions the groundwork of the State. Leaderless resistance in this sense doesn't figure at all: no matter what strategic and tactical method is uses, this response will happen. However, leaderless resistance has a specific weakness in this respect: the inability to protect participants from State criminalization. No team of lawyers, no bail fund, no clarity to participants on what can criminalize you or not. The kettling exploits this: by criminalizing behavior that normal citizens assume to be legal, and because leaderless resistance is unable to provide clarity to participants that kettling can happen, participation is limited to those willing and able to be subjected to criminalization. This has concrete effects: in many jobs, even a misdemeanor can get you fired, and definitely having to serve time and pay a fine is an economic hardship to the bulk of people.

II. The Law of Unintended Consequences

Another problem is that even the strategy and tactic of leaderless resistance is not actually being followed as prescribed by its creators. One of the most important aspects of the leaderless resistance concept is the aspect of direction: it is "leaderless" in so far as it puts the onus on acting on the principles, rather than organizing anything around them, but it is not "directionless".

So, one of the fundamental problems of "leaderless resistance" as carried out by the "Occupy Wall Street" movement, is not the concept itself, but a lack of clarity and education on what the concept means, and furthermore, an irresponsible assumption that not having leaders means that a decision is a good idea by the sheer power of numbers. As those in the Brooklyn Bridge kettle will now find out, a lack of leadership that devolves into a lack of direction.

There is a difference between wanting a non-bureaucratic, open, transparent, participatory, decentralized, and accountable leadership, which can provide direction to the movement and not having leadership and direction at all.

One of the unintended consequences is that in the context of a lack of leadership and direction is that the State, and their enforcers, the police, become the leaders and directors of the mass. As happened at the Brooklyn Bridge, by all accounts.

The abandonment of any pretense of leadership also signified the abandonment of any pretense of direction, with nefarious unintended consequences.

III. Mass movements require mass leaderships

All of this means that the concept of "leaderless resistance" needs to be reformulated to the actual mass movement as it exists.

As we see, "leaderless resistance" is a theory that applies to vanguardist, elitist struggle: it is perhaps a viable alternative to direct resistance (that is, defensive) politico-military situations, such as occupation by a foreign power, or as a way to mobilize direct action around narrow, single issue campaigns, such as ecology or animal rights. It is, at heart, a politico-military theory that requires each member to become a soldier. This is anathema to any mass movement: not even in hunter-gatherer societies do all members of the group engage directly in warfare or even military affairs. In effect, leaderless resistance theory is elitist: it calls only upon the most dedicated, the most "clear", the most capable - all while seemingly advocating egalitarian participation.

However, it is not applicable to a movement that aspires to be a mass movement: the mass movement needs a mass leadership, a mass direction.

Personally, I view the development of a broad united front of the different affinities is needed: far from the NGO model of bureaucracy, it needs to be based on actual active participation, not simply endorsing a proclamation. This will of course accept and respect the existence of multi-polar and pluralist politics: false unity is always false. Differences of opinion and of direction are healthy if they are in good faith. The need for poles of leadership to emerge is not to be feared, but recognized and embraced: let only those forces and affinities willing to be accountable and responsible emerge. We shouldn't be little children hedonistically acting upon our whims: real action in real life has real consequences, only those willing to grapple with those consequences, to protect the movement, to advance the movement, and to engage the movement with wider society should take leadership, but leadership shouldn't be a bad word. With leadership also comes direction: in particular, is this movement for true revolutionary political and economic change, or simply aimed at extracting reforms that "return" to a mythical "better" past? These are questions others address, but the fact is they need to be addressed by the mass itself: the "leaderless resistance" claim is in itself a leadership and direction that seeks to exclude, implicitly, the addressing of these questions.

The alternative, quite frankly, is to continue to let the cops be the de facto leaders of the movement, surely a way to de-articulate any potentiality it has to effect actual change - and surely a way to cause more harm than good to future movements of resistance. The struggle for peace, justice, jobs, equality is not a short or direct one. We shouldn't kid ourselves into thinking there won't be bends in the road, or one in which leadership is irrelevant. Those defending the status quo certainly recognize the immense value of leadership, and have effectively used that against the movement.

Participants in Occupy Wall Street, and the other viral snowclones that emerge for it, would be doing themselves a service by critically approaching this central question: there are no shortcuts, there are no easy victories. The Financial-Industrial complex that rules the USA, the crumbling Empire that feeds it, the nuclear deterrent that holds the world hostage is not easy to beat. And it cannot be beaten, no matter how hard you will it to be, without leadership and direction. Leaderless resistance is a self-kettle, a straight-jacket that will keep the movement from acquiring the true mass, political, basis that can enable actual change to happen.

Those who want a wide-tent should understand that a free-for-all is not the answer: the enemy of my enemy is not always my friend. This a strategic and tactical consideration, a politico-military one, if you will: the ability of the movement to resist, grow, and triumph against the present odds require that it doesn't straight-jacket itself into what doesn't work anymore. Be realistic, do the impossible...

[Earlier Tactics installments can be found here and here.]

Reflecting on the murder of Troy Davis

2011-09-28T22:58:00.043-04:00

After Troy Anthony Davis was murdered last week by the State of Georgia, a close friend who has been active in both the labor movement and the struggle for civil & human rights for many decades shared her observations. Her heartfelt examination, her humanity, these are the elements of any capital murder case that are missing in in what some folks insist on calling the "justice system." I invite both long-time and new readers of Fire on the Mountain, to ponder this and share their thoughts…

The Troy Davis Execution

On the Wednesday night of the Troy Davis execution I was glued to the television with my 30 year old son, at his home. We were both holding our breath waiting for the Supreme Court decision, and could not hold back tears when they refused to give him a stay of execution.

We have not lived together for 7 years, so we rarely watch TV together. So on this night we reverted to a much younger version of ourselves with him asking me for assurance that would I come save him if he was on death row; like any mother wouldn’t want to be able to say “yes” to that question.

I thought the NAACP was at its best. Executive Director, Ben Jealous was totally sympathetic and respectful of the family of the police officer who had been killed. At the same time he was a staunch advocate for Davis saying that justice had to be “precise”; that executing Davis when there were so many doubts was not justice for either Davis or the victim.

As remarkable, were the scores of people who agreed with the NAACP---Desmond Tutu, and Jimmy Carter included. There was even a letter from past and present executioners talking about the horrible psychological toll executing a person takes on a “person of conscience”, only made worse when that person maintains their innocence and their guilt is in doubt. Davis’ last words were to the officers’ family declaring that he did not have a gun the night their son or brother was killed.

The officer’s mother could not bear to watch the execution but she was interviewed by TV reporters. She insisted she needed Davis killed so she could get closure. Though I truly felt sorry for her that she had lost her son, and the indignity of him being killed while trying to protect a homeless person, I found her statement incomprehensible. If my son, were to die before me, I do not think I would ever get closure. Its so against nature for a child to die before their parents. And clearly this poor mother had not gotten closure in the 22 years since his death. For her to think she would get closure by the execution of Davis is against all reason. Studies show that victims families do not get relief from these executions; and certainly the doubt raised about Davis being the killer had to undermine any satisfaction.

In Texas, that same night, another execution was going on. It was the execution of a young white man who had purposely killed a Black man-James Byrd- by chaining him to the back of a truck until his body was totally mutilated to the point that the highway police originally thought he was a dead animal run over by many vehicles. That family put out a statement that said: They were not advocating that this killer be executed. He could not harm their family from the prison; that violence in response to violence only perpetuates it; and finally that executions historically in this country had been of Black men, and this execution of a white men did not take away that history, or make it fairer by evening the score.

To me, the difference in consciousness between the 2 families was stunning. From the ugliness of the centuries of discrimination and lynchings, the Black family had emerged with a generous spirit and a historical perspective. The white family had not gotten past the Barbaric “an eye for an eye”. Its this difference in consciousness; that regressive consciousness that has defined this country since its inception, this ongoing legacy of slavery and Jim Crow that keeps this country socially backward, despite all our riches.

Black NJ: POP's Labor Day March for Jobs in Newark

2011-09-05T19:17:00.001-04:00

POP's September 5th March for Jobs took to Market Street in Newark without a permit

On Monday, September 5, the People's Organization for Progress marched and rallied for jobs in Newark, NJ. Though this was a special Labor Day event, it was also the 71st day of POP's "Daily People's Campaign for Jobs, Equality, Peace & Justice," which began this past June 27 (see POP Begins Daily People's Campaign for Jobs, Peace, Justice & Equality, and People's Organization for Progress "Daily People's Campaign," Part II).

As Larry Adams, N.J. POP's vice-chair for external affairs observed, "around the world, workers celebrate Labor Day on May 1st."

"A September 'Labor Day' celebration is nearly unique to the United States," he continued. "the US capitalists want us to celebrate with beer and cook-outs, to forget labor's struggle for a better world; but we chose to use today holiday to demand jobs at a living wage!"

Larry Hamm listens as community activist Sharon Hand speaks about her experience since losing
her job, meeting POP, and joining the "Daily Campaign"

Or, as Lawrence Hamm, chairman of the People's Organization for Progress put it, "there are more people unemployed today than during the Great Depression. Currently we are one percentage point away from what is officially called 'depression-level' unemployment. We need a 21-century WPA (Work Projects Administration, the Roosevelt-era government body that many hold responsible for lifting the US out of the Great Depression)."

Rallying in front of the Essex County Courthouse

Unfortunately, though a significant number of churches and labor union locals came forward over the last two weeks, these organizations did not participate in any serious numbers. Union workers from Rutgers University, Newark Teachers, and SEIU 1199 participated as individuals. While the NJ Industrial Union Council was represented (and promised to bring out its membership one day a month for the Daily People's Campaign), the majority of participation came from community groups. Newark City Council member-at-large, Mildred C. Crump, was the only government official who attended.

Labor Day, with its backyard barbecues and Local Union cookouts and parades, is a day that doesn't lend itself to mass action. For those who rallied at the courthouse and marched downtown from there to the Broad & Market and back, it was the best People's Daily picket yet. The loud and boisterous honks of support from passing motorists more than made the day.

Perhaps the most exciting recent development in POP's relations to the labor movement was Larry Hamm's speaking engagement to the Bermuda Industrial Union's Labour Day Banquet this past Friday (click on the banquet link for a news report from Bermuda's Royal Gazette).

To view additional photos from the Labor Day march & rally (and a special thanks to my friend Jon who snapped these shots), click on this photos link.

Martha Cameron Takes A Bust: A Tar Sands Followup

2011-09-04T06:21:00.005-04:00

Last week I posted a sharp-as-hell piece by my old friend Gary Goff on why he was heading to DC to get arrested in the Taz Sands Protest. Today I follow up with a report from my old friend Martha Cameron, Gary's partner, who evidently decided, while in DC, to put her body on the line as well! They were two of the 1252 people arrested in the two week protest at the White House.

As a post-arrestee of the Tar Sands Action Project, I urge you all to take 5 minutes to do two things:

1. Watch this video by Josh Fox -- it will give you a glimpse into the magnitude (and scariness) of the Tar Sands project.

2. Call the White House. Urge President Obama to reject the Tar Sands proposal and start building renewable energy, which will generate far more permanent jobs and help mitigate the disaster of global climate change: 202-456-1111.

There's a lot more information at Tar Sands Action Project, and photos of each day's sit-ins on Flickr. My husband Gary Goff and I were with the August 24 group. Here's one photo from the Flickr set for our day. That's me in the red hat, hiding from the sun, holding the sign I made for the sit-in.

The two people in the foreground, Bryan and Cherri, came up with a group from the Gulf area. Bryan is an environmental justice organizer from Manchester, Texas, the neighborhood in Houston where Keystone XL oil is scheduled to be refined. Manchester, aka "Petro-Metro," is already the site of numerous other dirty industries.

Cherri was with a group from Louisiana, still recovering from Katrina, but also now suffering severely from the effects of the BP oil spill and cleanup. She told stories that are familiar to anyone who has heard the stories of the 9/11 First Responders -- the rush to clean up the mess, the promises of support, and now the sicknesses resulting from exposure to the oil and the massive use of highly toxic dispersants. As in New York, cleanup workers were barred from using protective coverings. As in New York, compensation is slow to come or nonexistent. Locals try not to eat the fish, which are frequently covered with lesions and tumors.

Fritzie, another woman from Louisiana, blamed her daughter's miscarriage on the cleanup chemicals, which were liberally sprayed over residential areas. Her daughter is no longer able to work; she now suffers from extreme fatigue, horrible skin eruptions, and other symptoms consonant with toxic chemical poisoning. Again, I thought of the First Responders, but also of the cleanup workers from the Exxon Valdez spill, the soldiers with Gulf War Syndrome, the Vietnamese people and U.S. soldiers sickened by Agent Orange...

I also learned that much of the energy used to process the tar sands oil will be derived from fracking. So we are destroying the Northeast's freshwater and land resources in order to perpetuate the destruction of the boreal rain forest in northern Canada and threaten the Ogalla Aquifer in the western United States. We are burning money in order to burn money in order to burn the planet even faster. This is insane. We have to stop this. So please, take 5 minutes. Watch the video. Call the White House. Demand jobs. Demand renewable energy. Demand an end to the oil wars being fought in our name in Central Asia, the Middle East, Northern Africa, in South America, and here at home.

Gary Goff Is Going To Jail!

2011-08-22T15:28:00.007-04:00

Gary Goff has been a good friend of mine for more than a quarter of a century, as has his partner Martha Cameron. We have strategized together, marched on Washington together, picketed red-lining realtors in his Brooklyn neighborhood together and protested too many wars and occupations undertaken by this country's rulers together. We have never been arrested together, though.

So when Gary told me that he was planning, at age 64, to go to Washington and take a bust doing civil disobedience, I was a bit surprised. Lately, much of his activism has been as a NYC employee and elected officer of his local in District Council 37 of AFSCME, at a time when civil servants are very much in the system's crosshairs.

Naturally I wanted to know what the hell he'd be facing arrest for, and why he thought that the situation demanded it. As he and Martha (who will be right there, doing logistics and media tasks in DC for Gary and other protesters) head for Washington, I am honored to publish this powerful and cogent answer to my questions.

Gary Goff: Why I'm Going to Get Arrested Next Week

I'm going to Washington, D.C., next week so I can get arrested. "Why?" you may ask.

The short answer is that I want to do what I can to prevent an environmental disaster. The long answer is a little more complicated. Here’'s what it'’s about.

TAR SANDS

As we run out of easy-to-reach oil and gas, we are turning more and more to high-risk extraction methods:– deep-ocean drilling, hydraulic fracturing (fracking) and tar sands refinement. Fossil fuels from conventional sources are bad enough. These are so much worse. Extraction is riskier, dirtier and infinitely more costly to the environment. Soil, oceans and freshwater are routinely contaminated.

The BP blowout in the Gulf of Mexico exposed the dangers of deep-water drilling. The Oscar-winning documentary Gasland has opened our eyes to the dangers of fracking. But tar sands? Most of us in the United States don't even know what they are.

The world’'s largest deposits of tar sand--naturally occurring soil that is saturated with a sludge-like form of petroleum--are located in northern Alberta, Canada. For every barrel of crude oil extracted, four tons of tar sands are strip-mined and four barrels of freshwater are contaminated. According to Friends of the Earth, “during tar sands oil production alone, levels of carbon dioxide emissions are three times higher than those during conventional oil.” About 400 million gallons of freshwater are used daily. The residue--a toxic stew loaded with cyanide, ammonia and other dangerous substances--is stored in “tailing ponds” that are so large they can be seen from space. Indigenous communitiesliving near these ponds have high rates of renal failure, lupus, hyperthyroidism, and rare forms of cancer.

Scientists say the safe limit for CO2 in our atmosphere is 350 parts per million (ppm). We are currently at 392 ppm. The Alberta tar sands will likely add an additional 200 ppm. “If the tar sands are thrown into the mix it is essentially "game over,"” says Jim Hansen, NASA'’s leading climatologist.

The TransCanada Corporation plans to build the Keystone XL Pipeline to carry crude oil from the Alberta tar sands to refineries nearly 2,000 miles away on the Gulf Coast of Texas. This pipeline will cross 71 rivers and streams (including the Missouri, Yellowstone, and Red Rivers), the Ogallala Aquifer (which supports agriculture throughout the Midwest), any number of delicate ecosystems, and an active earthquake zone. One person has called the whole scheme a bomb with a 2,000-mile fuse.

Leading environmental organizations point out the real danger of pipeline leaks: tar sand oil is much more acidic than conventional oil, and therefore much more corrosive. TransCanada says the risk of pipeline leaks is minimal--one leak every twenty years at most. But since the Keystone Project began two years ago, the pipeline has already had 12 major spills!

JAIL

At this point you might be thinking,

"“Okay, I get it. The tar sands are a bad idea. That pipeline is a really bad idea. But why go to Washington during the hottest, stickiest time of year? Why go out of your way to get arrested?”"

Here’'s the deal: Any pipeline that crosses the U.S. border needs a special Presidential Permit. If we are going to stop the expansion of the Keystone XL Pipeline, we have to convince the Obama administration not to issue the permit. Several weeks ago an impressive group of scientists, activists. and indigenous leaders put out a call for people opposed to the pipeline to engage in peaceful civil disobedience in front of the White House. (Click to see the Invitation.) This will not be a one-day action; it will take place every day from August 20 to September 3. So far, over 2,000 of us have signed up.

The older I get, the more I find myself thinking about the world I will leave my children and grandchildren. The race to the bottom, the juggernaut of greed that is bringing on global climate change, is truly frightening to watch. I don't know if getting arrested at the White House will stop it, but I have to try.

That’'s it. I've covered the basics of the issue and my thinking about why I'm doing what I'm doing. Below are some things you can do to help and some additional information.

HOW YOU CAN HELP

Spend Some Time in the Slammer

If you would like to join the actions in Washington over the next couple of weeks, here'’s how you too can get arrested. And just think of the benefits: when the teacher asks how you spent your summer vacation, you'll have something interesting to say. (Click here to register.)

Tell President Obama: Stop the Pipeline!

I know, I know, another online petition. But petitions do matter: this one does, for sure. It will help support people like myself protesting in Washington, but more important, it will put Washington on notice that the American people are aware of--and oppose--this looming disaster. So do it; it only takes a minute. (Click here to sign the petition.)

Help Out the Folks Who Live on the Front Lines Every Day

Working-class communities, communities of color, and small farmers are disproportionately affected by environmental problems. The Keystone XL Pipeline is no exception. Indigenous communities in Alberta are already suffering: in Fort Chipewyan, with a predominately First Nation and Metis population, 100 of the 1,200 residents have died of cancer. If the pipeline is built, working people and people of color all along the way will be hit hard. Many of these people would like to be part of the Tar Sands Action, but they can't afford to make the trip. Tar Sands Action has set up a special fund to defray their costs. (Click to see donation page.)

LABOR AND THE PIPELINE

The American Petroleum Institute claims that the pipeline will create “hundreds of thousands” of new jobs--as many as “465,000 jobs,” according to one API official. Union leaders representing the Teamsters, Plumbers, Operating Engineers, and Laborers have endorsed the pipeline, stating that it will “spur the creation of 118,000 jobs.” In hard times, the importance of jobs cannot be denied, but we need to be wary of such claims. Jeremy Brecher and Brendan Smith, who often write on labor issues, examined these figures closely and found them to be grossly inflated--a combination of wishful thinking and flimflam. The U.S. State Department'’s own estimate? Somewhere between 5,000 and 6,000 new jobs over a period of three years.

And it'’s not just about jobs. The labor movement needs to represent workers in all aspects of their lives. As the late labor leader Walter Reuther once said, "“What good is a dollar an hour more in wages if your neighborhood is burning down?" What good is another week’'s vacation if the lake you used to go to is polluted and you can't swim in it?” What good is a union job if all we’'re doing is building our own gallows.

LINKS

Tar Sands Action is the website developed by the protest’'s organizers.

One excellent source is Keystone XL Pipeline from the environmental group Friends of the Earth.

The Guardian newspaper in Britain generally has good coverage of environmental issues, including several useful pieces about tar sands and the pipeline.

The Global Energy Crisis Deepens by Michael Klare is an in-depth look at how the end of conventional oil has lead to the development of more dangerous fuel sources. Klare has written extensively about the global impact of resource scarcity – specifically regarding war and politics.

For an excellent labor perspective on this issue, see Pipeline Climate Disaster: The Keystone XL Pipeline and Labor by Jeremy Brecher and Brendan Smith.

Labor activist Joe Uehlein is one of the original signers of the Tar Sands Action Invitation. As a young man he had a union job constructing the Three Mile Island nuclear plant. See his piece, Joining the Labor Movement and the Sustainability Movement: Together We Can Stop the Tar Sands Climate Catastrophe.

Tactics (2): Nailing Presidential Hyprocisy

2011-08-18T14:13:00.008-04:00

Tactics in the struggle come in all sizes and shapes, and I’m undertaking to post an occasional commentary on one or another that has struck my fancy. (First one's here. Suggestions for future articles are most welcome.)

This tactic is the Watchfire For Freedom, set alight in an urn directly opposite the White House on January 6, 1919 and kept burning day and night by members of the National Women’s Party in support of the demand that women be granted the right to vote.

Some background first: The Watchfire For Freedom came after the considerable momentum for women’s suffrage won in the first 15 years of the 20th century. At that point, the National Women’s Party, the militant wing of the suffrage movement, had decided to target President Woodrow Wilson, demanding that he actively support the passage of a national women’s suffrage amendment.

Even the patriotic fervor surrounding the US entry into World War 1 didn’t stop their 24/7 pickets at the White House. Neither did the arrests, jailing and, when they began hunger strikes, brutal force-feeding of NWP leaders like Alice Paul. Broad popular anger at this mistreatment swelled and Wilson caved in. While the war was still raging in early 1918, he pledged to push through Congress the vote for women as soon as combat ended.

Here’s where the Watchfire comes in. With the war over in November 1918, and the presidential promise of support in hand, how could the movement keep up the momentum? The Watchfire For Freedom urn was set alight, and kept alight, as the focal point for organizing and not merely as an abstract symbol. Wilson had led the US into the war in order, he claimed, to “make the world safe for democracy.” Every time he made a speech or issued a statement proclaiming or calling for democracy and freedom in war-torn Europe, Women’s Party leaders would take a copy of Wilson’s words and solemnly burn it in the urn, denouncing any talk of democracy when more than half the population was denied its most basic trapping in the US.

The Watchfire For Freedom stayed right in front of the White House until June 4, 1919, when the 19th Amendment passed the Senate.

So what are the particular merits of this tactic?

It provided a central focus for the suffrage movement when pressure needed to be increased to clear the final blockades of male supremacy in Congress and in state legislatures. It kept the focus concentrated on Wilson, the head of the Democratic Party, rather than dispersing it. It provided regular news to be reported when newspapers were the sole form of information (every big city boasted numerous papers and even small towns had one) and many of those papers were pro-suffrage.

It used the enemy’s weaknesses against him--the hypocrisy of proclaiming a new and democratic Europe while denying democracy to women here was clear and easy to understand.

It drew on the strength of the movement--the mainstream suffrage association had more than a million members and the National Women’s Party over 50.000. While maintaining a permanent vigil at the White House took resources, women were willing to travel from around the country and do their stints--like the Minnesota contingent headed by Berthe Moller, who brought pine boughs from their home state to burn in the urn, and who wound up in the hoosegow, evidently because they also added an effigy of Wilson to the flames!

Might imitating this tactic work today?

Probably not, but there are things to be learned from the reasons why it would likely fall short. First, most issues today are not as tightly focused as winning a single Constitutional Amendment, and few have a movement in the millions united around such a single political goal. Second, tactics pioneered by the National Women's Party have become ho-hum--their protests during the war were arguably the first mass civil disobedience protests at the White House.

And speaking of ho-hum, what about calling an elected official a hypocrite? It's universally understood today that politicians are lying double-talkers who will say and promise anything to advance their own interests, and those of their backers. Publicly charging them with hypocrisy usually gets from their most ardent defenders, whether Republican or Democrat, not indignant denials but tortured explanations of why political realpolitik demands that they fudge things so much.

And, of course, there's the problem that changes in military doctrine over the last hundred years mean the word, or even the concept, "watchfire" never crosses the average American's mind today, unless he or she is for some reason singing the second verse of "The Battle Hymn Of The Republic."

Tactics: Chumping Nazis With Tee-Shirts

2011-08-15T07:57:00.007-04:00

I'm a sucker for innovative tactics, always have been. It's worthwhile to go beyond "Hey now, that's cool...", though, and try and figure out what makes some tactics seem to deserve our appreciation.

I ran across one the other day. Seems that the lucky kids at a fascist skinhead music festival in Thuringia in what was East Germany got a free t-shirt, with a snazzy white on black skull and crossbones and, below it, the proud proclamation "Hardcore Rebels."

The only thing is, when they launder their new acquisition (or their mommies do), that stuff will all wash out, revealing a new message from the donors. This is an outfit called Exit Deutschland, whose aim is to help "young people transition out of militant right-wing lifestyles." The new message: "What happened to your shirt can happen to you. We can help you break with right-wing extremism."

Okay, let's contemplate this tactic--as a tactic. Me, I'm an ocean, a culture and two generations away from having much right to speak in the debate over whether trying to convert li'l Nazis-with-training-wheels into "normal" German kids is the best approach to fascist currents there.

The tactic, however, is elegant. Its strengths reveal themselves on minimal reflection. The kids take the tees because, duh, they're free.

Sooner or late, depending on individual hygiene standards, they learn that they have been chumped. That humiliation, and the larger-scale display of their movement's vulnerability, may be more even important than the penetration of the message that there is a specific alternative for those uncertain about their course, especially newbies.

Then there's the megaphone effect--the German media picked up the story, at least in passing, and spread the word that attendees at the show had been made fools of. This also raised the profile of Exit Deutschland and thus its potential reach and effectiveness.

As with any tactic, it's also important to look at the limitations. The scale of the tactic was necessarily limited. The concert, run by the ultra-right National Democratic Party, had only 600 of the fash in attendance. I have no idea what the group's finances are like, but for a real grassroots outfit, handing out 250 specially-printed shirts would be a significant expenditure.

Whoever did the actual infiltration and distribution may well have been captured on video and likely marked for retaliation by those who were played. And of course, it can't be expected to work twice in the same milieu.

No surprise. Tactics are by their very nature limited and can be countered by an enemy who understands them. But when a tactic is rolled out like this one was, it's a people's victory and worthy of contemplation as an aesthetic object in its own right.

Norway: A Warning Amidst The Mourning

2011-07-25T13:43:00.007-04:00

[This important warning is posted with the author's permission--Jimmy Higgins]

Anders Behring Breivik is not a fundamentalist Christian, he is something worse

by SKS

The New York Times has repeated the lie that Anders Behring Breivik, the butcher of Oslo and Utøya, is a fundamentalist Christian. He is not.

The New York Times' thesis is that he is somehow a mirror image of Al Qaeda, a disaffected Christian turning the tables on Islamic fundamentalism. He is not.

He is the vivid, brutal, expression of a bubbling right-wing political movement of the post 9/11 era, emerging not from fascism or neo-fascism or from "revolutionary nationalism", but from the unholy marriage of Austrian School economics and paleo-conservative cultural identity Romanticism--think Goethe, Scifi/Fantasy novels, and von Mises spawn a child.

To those of us who follow the right, the real right, the ideological right, not the administrative right or the hooligan right, not a single word of what Breivik wrote in his manifesto or his video comes as a surprise. It is part an parcel of this world-wide scene of pan-nationalists, who decry "hate ideologies" like Nazism, Islam, and Marxism, while speaking of a common, mildly anti-racist, pro-Zionist, politically incorrect world of "European tolerance in isolation"--yet harboring violent fantasies of retribution and domination. Fantasies Breivik has merely acted upon, but are not unique to himself.

A well known, and not by coincidence Norwegian, blogger by the pseudonym of Fjordman has been giving expression to these ideas since the early part of the last decade. He was widely read in those circles, and even quoted by "respectable" figures of the right. His preoccupations were the same as Breivik (multiculturalism, imperialism, islam), and a chilling fact emerges: Breivik's manifesto's title is "2083 A European Declaration of Independence", while a widely circulated Islamophobic article by Fjordman from 2007 is titled "A European Declaration of Independence". I know the connection is hard to make, but give it some thought...

Glenn Beck, in the United States, has used formulations from this scene, in particular when he decries "progressives of both parties" and talks of "political correct multiculturalism" and "cultural marxism" and adopts the liberal-left's misguided ideas on totalitarian equivalencies of Fascism and "Communism" to use them against neo-liberal globalization, "cultural suicide" and multi-cultural nanny states.

The difference between the populist libertarianism of Beck and the ideology which Breivik represents is that in the United States, this movement is indeed fundamentalist Christian, populated by sects of millions that would seem strange to an Europeanist of the sort Breivik is. Those people are the actual mirror image of Al Qaeda, or more correctly the Taliban, and they don't need to go around putting car bombs and driving planes into buildings because they have the US Armed Forces do that for them.

They do find themselves allied against the common enemy of Islam and share economic values to an extent, but are very much different ideologically.

(When going incognito on the right-wing IRC channels and message boards a few years ago, a regular told me that he loved European anti-Islamic sites because "they were liberal[meaning left-sounding] but not pussies against the hajjis" and so "they made for great stuff to go for Christian moderates", when I commented they had nothing against gays, I got a smug "nobody is perfect".)

This is what the New York Times misses, even if it has it right in their face: Breivik self-describes as a moderate Christian.

In this terminology, what this mean is that while he is a believer, he is not a theocrat. The concept would be familiar to Catholics world-wide, because it is the tradition of being a sinner knowing full well that your sins will be forgiven. It is was what allowed Central American death squads to murder a Bishop and then go to mass the next Sunday, for example.

This is a clear break with fundamentalist Christians, steeped in Calvinist theocratic values as they are. Breivik's preoccupation with Christianity is as a force against Islam, who he sees as the main enemy. His Christianity is contingent to its ability to deliver Europeans (and he widely construes the European identity, including Jews and Browns - unthinkable in most neo-fascist circles) from the new horde of Eurabia.

In his video and manifesto, he clearly identifies with the figures of the Crusades, in particular the early figures that actually fought a Muslim invasion of Europe. That is why, even being a Protestant, he calls for Catholicism, not out of religious fervor, but because, last time, the Church of the Pope stopped Islam in its tracks (unlike, say, the Orthodox patriarchs).

He doesn't use fascist imagery, nor does he use any source commonly identified with the far-right. His sources are pedestrian conservative and small business capitalist. He even used the infamous Economist "Eurabia" cover.

This is him telling us: I am not a facist. I am normal. I am you. I have brown friends. I have gay friends. I defended them from bullies. But I am mad as hell, and I can't take it anymore.

He is the crisis of the neo-liberal state and its imperialist project, in its reactionary terrorist expression. He is the voice of the white male who finds himself a minority, and losing not just the perceived privileges of gender and race, but the very real privileges of being in the center of an imperial world.

The New York Times' declaration exposes the failure of social-liberal thought to explain the contradictions of the world. When we need to describe someone as something he is telling us he is not, it usually means that there is not space for that identity in our carefully constructed worldview. The New York Times needs to tells us he is a "Christian fundamentalist" to avoid the real questions his action raises.

Questions such as the emergence of a new reactionary wave in Western countries, the effects of the moving of the centers of economic growth and development from the West to the East and the North to the South, the peril of the White supremacist empires of the 20th century... more importantly, the boogie-man Islam, that sedative that the international bourgeoisie feeds as placebo to its formerly well-fed and pacified working classes so that they don't realize that capital has pulled the rug from under their feet, and all these mythologies about patriotism and common struggle against foreign perils were all lies--the bosses are quitely shipping their capital to what we are told are our mortal enemies.

When a lie cracks open, you can either see it and respond against it knowing it a lie, or we can zealously embrace it against all evidence. Breivik embraced the lie: clearly a smart person, he willfully ignored any other explanation for the ills of the world than Islam and its "Cultural Marxist" enablers, and he embellished this lie with a mythology of knighthood, literally quixotic, and more tragically into a justification for his murder.

And the lie he believes in is no different than the lie many of his generation have killed, maimed, and been killed and been maimed for in Iraq and Afghanistan. Even the embellishments are not unique.

Breivik is fighting for the clash of civilization ideas that same system he attacked fed him. The New York Times is, not surprisingly, unwilling to accept its responsibility in that system--in their view only a "fundamentalist" could do such an atrocity in the name of politics--it seeks to continue framing the debate in a modified version of the clash of civilization, one were us moderates have to fight "fundamentalists" of both religions. Yet, Breivik's heinous crime is no different than what the New York Times asked that American soldiers do in Iraq when it beat the loudest drums of war in its history. He is not the chicken coming home to roost. He is the chicken who never left home.

We are yet to see if this iceberg means something world-changing, or if it will remain in the sub-surface only to give us a murderous jolt. After all, I am sure Geert Wilders abhors this crime as much as the next person. What is clear is that the same problems that affect and preoccupy the radical left in the Western world are being felt by the ideological right, and that their response will not always come packaged in the usual packages of State collusion, fringe parties and street hooliganism, but might take forms such as Breivik's, and perhaps even other forms of violence. It is too early to tell if this action will have a cooling effect in this particular ideological space - similar to what McVeigh unwittingly did to the then exploding militia scene - or if it will be a spark that lights a prairie fire. What is clear is that we have to sit down and think long and hard about how to respond to these movements, now that they have shown their teeth...

Sources:

NYT Article (behind paywall if you have reached your free limit)

2083 A European Declaration of Independence (Breivik)

"Fjordman" - A European Declaration of Independence (2007)

(There are unsubstantiated reports that Fjordman is indeed Breivik, but this is in doubt and wouldn't harm my point, as Fjordman has been given so much credence, he even has a long-standing wikipedia page in both English and Norwegian Bokmål.)

Playing the Piano… People's Organization for Progress ups the ante of struggle in NJ

2011-07-17T14:25:00.006-04:00

POP members, supporters, and community residents honor the 1967 Newark Rebellion at the site of the monument to 1967 at the intersection of Springfield Ave., Irvine Turner Blvd., & 15th Ave.

Updated 8/1:
There was a time some years back when "playing the piano" was the phrase folks would use to describe carrying out multiple revolutionary campaigns simultaneously. We could, it suggested, have one hand doing one thing while the other did another. With the People's Organization for Progress organized Daily People's Campaign for Jobs, Peace, Equality & Justice, POP has upped the ante. But with the past week's 44th annual We Remember the Newark Rebellion & its Victims" event, we proved we POP can "play the piano"…

The People's Organization for Progress has held this annual event for more than 25 years, sometimes at the precinct house where the rebellion initially began and often (since the monument to the citizens who died was first placed on the 30th anniversary in 1997) at the monument itself (to see a slide show of Ingrid Hill's excellent photos from this year's remembrance, please click on this link).

On July 12, 1967, Newark erupted in a rebellion against the scourge of police brutality and oppressive racially-biased living conditions. The rebellion prompted a massive police riot and a brutal armed crackdown marked by the National Guard and other police forces occupying the city for several days. It would lead to 39 people, overwhelmingly unarmed Black civilians, getting killed in that dramatic upheaval.

The next (and subsequent days this week) the People's Organization for Progress was back at the Lincoln statute in front of the Essex County Court House for our ongoing campaign for Jobs, Peace, Equality & Justice.

POP's ability to sustain and carry out multiple campaigns simultaneously is a testament to the organization's maturity, both politically as well as structurally!

Thanks to the reader who suggested we track down brother Hamm's speech at CEMOTAP. to view Larry's presentation click on this link. Then go to Drums in the Global Village to see the full speech.

People's Organization for Progress "Daily People's Campaign," Part II

2011-07-10T18:23:00.002-04:00

People's Organization for Progress daily demonstration attracts community residents
as well as POP members.

Monday, July 11 will mark the third week of daily demonstrations since the People's Organization for Progress launched our bold "Daily People's Campaign for Jobs, Peace, Equality & Justice" on June 27! As POP state-wide chairman Lawrence Hamm noted, “There have been times in history when the people have been faced with grave challenges, and they have met those challenges with profound, sustained actions that have made a difference, and we believe that this is one of those times.”

Among the issues the campaign will address are a need for a national jobs program, a call to end military actions in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, a call to stand against police brutality, a call to preserve workers rights and collective bargaining, a call for a moratorium on foreclosures, a call for national health care and for affordable higher education, and more.

POP is calling on a broad range of organizations to endorse and participate in the campaign. This is in an effort to contribute to the forging of a progressive united front for social justice for this area. This is a bold and audacious effort in this period, but the response from motorist driving past the Court House shows without a doubt that the campaign reflects the sentiment of the community. Other organizations are beginning to commit themselves to participation. This past weekend, members on NJ Chapter-21 of Veterans for Peace responded excitedly to a call to join the daily pickets in front of the Lincoln Monument at the intersection of Springfield Avenue & West Market Street.

Michael McPhearson, a longtime POP member and former Executive Director of the national Veterans For Peace, interviewed Chairman Hamm about this campaign (click on the video image above or the linked "INTERVIEW" before the parenthesis to watch video).

The daily actions continue daily from 4:30p.m. to 6:00p.m. at West Market Street and Springfield Avenue, near the Lincoln Monument and will take place their everyday for an indefinite period of time.

On Saturdays the actions take place from 12noon to 2:00p.m on corner of Broad and Market Streets in Newark.

On Sundays the action is from 2:00p.m. to 3:00p.m. back on West Market Street and Springfield Avenue, near the Lincoln Monument.

For more information, please call (973) 801-0001.

Special thanks to our POP Corresponding Secretary, Ms. Ingrid Hill, for her

excellent photography

POP begins Daily People's Campaign for Jobs, Peace, Justice & Equality

2011-06-26T17:56:00.000-04:00

Tomorrow, Monday, June 27 the New Jersey-based People's Organization for Progress will begin daily demonstrations throughout the state. As POP's press release announced…

THE PEOPLES ORGANIZATION FOR PROGRESS

PO BOX 22505

NEWARK, NEW JERSEY 07101-2505

973 801 0001

Contact:Lawrence Hamm

PEOPLES ORGANIZATION FOR PROGRESS

TO LAUNCH DAILY ACTION

FOR PEACE, JOBS, JUSTICE!

On Monday, June 27^th, the Peoples Organization for Progress (POP) will launch what it is boldly and proudly calling a ‘Daily People’s Campaign’ for ‘Jobs, Peace, Justice and Equality!’

The campaign is an effort to dramatize the impact of draconian public policies on ordinary people.

Among the issues the campaign will address are a need for a national jobs program, a call to end military actions in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, a call to stand against police brutality, a call to preserve workers rights and collective bargaining, a call for a moratorium on foreclosures, a call for national health care and for affordable higher education, and more.

POP will initiate the campaign alone on Monday, but they are calling on a broad range of organizations to endorse and participate in the campaign. This is in an effort to contribute to the forging of a progressive united front for social justice for this area.

“There have been times in history when the people have been faced with grave challenges, and they have met those challenges with profound, sustained actions that have made a difference,” said Lawrence Hamm, chairman for the People’s Organization for Progress.

“We believe that this is one of those times,” he finished pointedly.

The daily actions will begin on Monday at 4:30p.m. at West Market Street and Springfield Avenue, near the Lincoln Monument and will take place their everyday for an indefinite period of time.

For more information, please call (973) 801-0001.

As the campaign gets underway and grows to the groundswell it undoubtably will become, we may need to rely on photos and coverage from many individuals. If you attend daily actions and want to forward report to Fire on the Mountain, please contact Rahim at FotM at dockwallaper@gmail.com

May '70: 12. The Forgotten Dead Of Augusta [Updated]

2011-05-18T10:20:00.007-04:00

There were six of them, gunned down by the armed force of the state.

I could be talking about the four students murdered at Kent State just seven days before plus the two who would would die later in the week at Jackson State.

But I’m not. I’m talking about six Black men killed in Augusta, Georgia, 41 years ago this week. Each was shot in the back by police shotguns, and their deaths were woven into the fabric of struggle and repression that was growing day by day in May, 1970.

Like many an urban rebellion in the ‘60s, it started with the cops. On May 9, Charles Oatman died in the Augusta city jail. He was 16 and mentally disabled. The police announced that he had died in a fall from his bunk. At the funeral home, his body was discovered to have fresh cigarette burns and bruises all over it. Open wounds from a whipping marred the corpse’s back. His skull was caved in. Changing their tune, the cops moved to charge his cellmates with murder.

On May 11, community activists who had been dealing with police brutality issues for a long time met with officials and left the meeting to find 500 furious community residents outside demanding action. A march was called on the spot and soon erupted into rock throwing and looting which went on into the evening.

The governor of Georgia, a foam-flecked racist named Lester Maddox, swung into action. He ordered out the state police to deal with the citizens he called “communists” and Black Panthers. He gave the cops orders to shoot to kill and even to raze “any building they’re in to its very foundation if necessary to get them out.” Maddox followed up by mobilizing 1,200 troops of the Georgia National Guard, who reached Augusta about 1:00 in the morning on the 12th.

By dawn on the 12th, the “Augusta riot” was over and over 80 people were wounded. Six Black men were dead. Most were young. None had been armed. All were hit in the back by shotgun blasts consistent with police riot guns.

Why do these ugly police murders belong in a series of articles about the campus uprising of 1970? To us at the time, it was obvious. These kids were murdered just like the kids at Kent State. Augusta was, in fact, one of the last of the great urban rebellions against racism that shook the US to its foundations in the ‘60s. Those rebellions had helped form our understanding that of the oppression of African Americans was far broader and deeper than a question of Jim Crow segregation in the south. Around the country, leaflets and posters about the Augusta murders started to appear within hours.

Sure, the riot wasn’t on campus, but the folks in Augusta’s segregated inner city knew that colleges around the country were erupting in protests and had in one case been met with bullets. And how was the Guard able to mobilize so quickly, if they were not already on alert to deal with campus unrest?

But even our steps in solidarity with the Augusta rebellion wound up butting up against the ugly realities of life in a society built on, and shot through with, white supremacy and white privilege. If you went through the month of May in 1970, you will probably always have a visceral response to the names of Sandy Scheuer, Bill Schroeder, Alison Krause and Jeffrey Miller. You may even recall that Philip Gibbs and James Earl Green were the two slaughtered at Jackson State. I hope this piece has jogged your memory about Augusta.

When this was first written in 2010, I was unable to find the names of the six whose lives were snatched from them by the cops forty years before. Now, thanks to filmmaker Banks Pappas, who is working on a documentary on the Augusta Six (video trailer here), I offer for your respect and remembrance:

Mack Wilson, Jr.
John (Johnnie) Stokes
William Wright, Jr.
Charlie Mack Murphy
Sammie Larry McCullough
John Bennings

They deserve to be recalled with the others as young people whose lives were taken in May ‘70 at one of the historic peaks of the long struggle to bring into being a better world...

Click here to read this series from the beginning.

Click here to read the next installment.

Why Life in High School Is More Absurd Than Ever

2011-05-08T10:11:00.001-04:00

New York City high schools have been crazy for the 22 years of my employment as a school social worker. But recently, the convergence of No Child Left Behind, the continuing economic meltdown and “managerial fetishism” have plunged them to new depths of absurdity, despair and destruction of human potential. (Being open-mined and un-doctrinaire, I picked up the term “managerial fetishism” from an op ed by John Podhoretz in Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post, which is happily provided free at school to enrich everyone’s intellectual development.)

My own post for the past nine years is a small high school in the Bronx —the borough which, except for a few counties on the Texas/Mexico border, is the poorest large county in the U.S. The school is art-themed, so stipulate that for us, the admissions process doesn’t select the book-ish, academically inclined kid but rather the spacey one who likes to doodle or graffiti, and our proportion of teens with special needs is high, around 25%. Over the years, guided by dedicated teachers, our students have produced some excellent art, a few graduates develop real passion and skill and annually go on to art colleges with full scholarships. However, we also have to cover the standard New York state curriculum and as the emphasis on test scores has ratcheted up, student engagement has plummeted.

Over-Testing and Disengagement

For many working class and poor students of color in NYC, disengagement begins with the third grade citywide tests. Children learn that these arbitrary exercises are something they will be judged on and that success on them is, in fact, the whole point of school. Most conclude after a couple of rounds that this is not a game they can win.

So by the time they get to high school, it’s already a recovery mission to interest and motivate them. Many students tell me, “I don’t do homework” and/or “I don’t study.” With study, they’ve concluded that they don’t remember the material anyway when the test comes, so why bother? With homework, they don’t see the return on it, they’re sick of school by 2:30 and don’t want to go home and think about school.

Besides, once puberty hits, their own world of interpersonal drama is so intense that nothing can compete with it—except possibly something that would lead to a job, an income and a future. Parents are often at work, if they have jobs, and overwhelmed and depressed if they don’t. A fair number have failed at school themselves, so don’t enforce homework completion.

Despair About Earning a Living

If the U.S. economy is improving, it sure hasn’t reached the Bronx yet. The effects of this are predictable but nonetheless tragic—and mainstream discourse never seems to draw a link to how young people perform (or don’t) in schools. Students tell me about relatives who had stable jobs, lost them from 2008 onward, and haven’t found another job since. One student reported of his mother, “She hasn’t found a job since she finished college.” More people are losing houses that the family once owned, or apartments that they rent, doubling up, becoming homeless. It’s been well documented that increases in parental income and financial stability positively affect student academic performance, so I’ll go out on a limb and suggest that decline in parental income and stability might have the opposite effect.

Just in the past couple of months, more students are reporting deaths of friends, usually 16- and 17-year-old young men, in gang violence, as paths to prosperity, achievement and social acceptance are extinguished. These are small and very locally based crews, not the nationally known ones, with shocking levels of violence—like taking a young man’s body out of the casket, in church, and shooting it up again.

A few years ago, when I’d ask students what kind of jobs they saw themselves doing as adults, I’d often hear stuff like veterinarian, forensic pathologist (obviously CSI, NCIS, Bones etc. are big), lawyer, architect--jobs that were not perhaps the most realistic possibilities for teens with low grades and reading levels. But at least they represented aspirations, and an opening for discussion, and one could get other jobs in those fields. Now I hear a sullen “I don’t know,” “ I never thought about it.” Making it more concrete, asking “Is there anybody you know, like in your family or friends, who have a job that you could see yourself doing,” I get “No.” Colleagues in other schools report similar conversations. In freshmen advisories, when teachers raise questions of college or careers, students now often say: “What’s the point of even getting a diploma? There’s no jobs out there.”

Terrorized Teachers

If students are not doing school work (because they don’t see school success leading to jobs), their teachers are working like maniacs-- because teachers have jobs and don’t want to lose them. Beyond their daily extra hours of planning lessons and grading papers, teachers are constantly bombarded with data (usually scores on various tests) that they are supposed to be reading on all of the 32 students they have in most classes. This is supposed to enable them to “differentiate instruction” for kids with various learning disabilities, and widely divergent reading levels etc.

This all intensified a few years as principals agreed to be judged on statistical indicators such as number of courses passed and four-year graduation rates, and transmitted that performance pressure to teachers. The managerial fetishism comes in with rising numbers of principals and even heads of school systems who have no prior experience working in public schools, based on the notion that a good manager can manage anything. A bunch of retired NYC teachers summed up the absurdity of that when they showed up at Hearst Publications to apply for the job vacated by Bloomberg’s chancellor appointee, Cathie Black (now, happily, resigned).

Note that I haven’t mentioned superintendents, the previous leaders of school districts in NYC. One reform under Chancellor Joel Klein was to separate the functions of supporting school development (i.e. professional development for staff at all levels) from monitoring/accountability, which are now based primarily on performance measures. So the presence of superintendents is not very evident and it’s not clear to most staff what they do. Principals complain that there’s no one organizing gatherings of principals to share best practices, and therefore principals are more isolated than ever. I heard of one principal saying to his secretary, upon hearing that his superintendent was on the line, “Take her name and number and tell her I’ll get back to her.”

Demoralized and Passive Students

Incidents of principals pressing teachers to raise Regents scores, or teachers giving test answers to students, have been documented. But what’s not well known is the perverse effect that the pressure on teachers and administrators has on students. Sensing that the staff are doing the worrying about whether they pass, students seem less motivated than ever. This is understandable on a human level, since there are few positive consequences (like job prospects) attached to doing well in school and, for students who are already used to school failure, no real negative ones. I was told by a 9th grader who received special education serves and had failed several classes: “I failed three classes but then I had credit recovery after school and the success academy at the end of the semester. I never thought high school would be so easy.”

This culture of declining student effort is also fed by the increased presence of 18- and 19-year old super-seniors who have actually given up on school, but often can’t admit this to themselves. In a better job market, they would have dropped out of school and gotten some kind of job. Now, they come to school but don’t go to most classes, get their free meals and Metrocard, hang out in hallways and bathrooms, and generally model bad behavior. They spend the day socializing with their friends. It sure beats hunting for non-existent jobs every day, or sitting around home getting yelled at by parents to go out and get a job.

What Is to Be Done?

It’s hard to talk about solutions for all this stuff, because they go way beyond the school system. I don’t believe that most public school officials and reformers have consciously elitist intentions. But structurally, in a hierarchical society, school failure serves to justify or legitimize why some people are jobless, or relegated to wage levels that nobody can actually live on. The almost universally acknowledged growth of inequality in income, wealth and life chances is a problem that pervades US society and permeates schools. Only in Lake Woebegone can all the children be above average.

So meaningful school reform, for the average urban student of color with whom I work, has to be tied to creating more jobs at a living wage. It’s unrealistic to expect 14-year-olds who have long turned off to school to become motivated to acquire knowledge for its own sake. School work has to have some connection to a future job and income. Creating those living wage jobs will require self-organization and mobilizing on the part of students, parents, communities--all of us.