Democracy is now going forth on a crusade against imperialism.
I’m not an activist or a protester. Aside from working on a few campaigns, I’ve never stood somewhere and held a sign for or against something. I’ve never been arrested–something many of my friends 15 years older than I am can proudly not say. The time may come when I can and will take to the streets, but like others of my generation, I won’t know much about what I’m supposed to be doing or accomplishing. We’ve lost the art of protest, and for the most part, we are, as a people, yet to realize that we have been colonized by the top one percent of our population and those who cater to them. The only reason we are not at war is because we have yet to recognize that we have already been conquered. We live in an imperialist country. We have been colonized by an elite that sets policies for its benefit at our expense.
OWS protests are the beginning of recognizing our condition,but they are only the beginning. Public protest is an act of public conversation; without a coherent message, conversation dies. And so far, Occupy Wall Street and related movements have yet to articulate anything more than dissatisfaction. The 1% is the target. What should be done is not very clear. At some point, OWS will either focus or peter out. It’s one thing to demand attention; it’s another to sustain it. What’s happening now is necessary, but not sufficient. It’s time to start thinking about what comes next.
With three protesters being hit by a car in Washington, DC, JimC has suggested that it’s time for the Occupy protesters to go home.
It’s time to go home. The point is made (that is, people have made of it what they will), and someone is going to get hurt. Some celebs got arrested (but they are home now, aren’t they?).
Most importantly, once done, it can easily be done again.
Go home, get warm, live to fight another day. Please.
Conversationally, that’s like clearing your throat to speak and then leaving the room. Our country is at an existential crossroads: what we want to be is at stake. If our problems are worth fighting for, we have to be willing to fight. OWS doesn’t need to resort to violence, but protesters can’t flee or go home when faced with governmental violence inflicted on protesters. Physical harm should be avoided, but it’s not a reason to quit. Civil rights marchers didn’t quit when Medgar Evers was assassinated or when Cheney, Schwerner, and Goodman were lynched in Mississippi or when Bull Connor turned fire hoses on marchers. Vietnam protesters didn’t quit after the Ohio National Guard shot and killed students at Kent State. If Occupy is serious, there is no quitting, changing perhaps, but not quitting. If and when the ruling class feels threatened, the violence will come. It’s already happening in other parts of the country.
Occupy is starting to reveal the infrastructure of the governing elite. From the right-wing noise machine that disparages the Occupy movement to the police who break the law preventing unsanctioned speech, we’re seeing our governments’ repression. This is nothing new. We’ve seen how free, unsanctioned speech has been curtailed by state and federal governments in Minnesota (where anti-terrorism laws provided the justification) and New York City. We are now seeing Oakland police gassing and beating Occupy protesters. Veterans who escaped our imperialist war in Iraq risk their lives to be heard.
The second veteran injured by riot-clad police during Occupy Oakland protests in Oakland is recovering from surgery to repair his spleen Friday after suffering what he said were repeated blows by police batons.
Kayvan Sabeghi, 32, of Oakland, remains in the Highland Hospital ICU where he was taken directly from jail Thursday evening, friends said.
Sabeghi is a partner in the Elevation 66 Brewing Company in El Cerrito, and a former Army sergeant who saw two tours of duty in Iraq and one tour in Afghanistan before leaving the service in 2007, friends said.
Oakland police and Alameda County Sheriff’s departments will say only that they have started investigations into the incident. Oakland police are also investigating an incident where Scott Olsen, a former Marine, suffered a fractured skull when he was struck by a tear-gas canister or some other projectile fired by police during protests in downtown Oakland the evening of Oct. 25, following a predawn raid to clear the Occupy Oakland encampment.
Sabeghi participated in a march to the Port of Oakland on Wednesday evening as part of a largely peaceful daylong general strike attended by as many as 7,000 people. Sabeghi said that after the march he and a friend went to dinner, and then tried to walk home, said David Goodstal, Sabeghi’s friend and business partner. Goodstal said he was not there.
I’m sure there are many police who oppose the Occupy Movement. I’m sure most just doing their jobs. For better and worse, they are part of the system. What happens between them and protesters is a measure of how our government treats our freedom of speech, not how the police treat the freedom of speech. To focus on individual police or police departments is to miss the point. Protesters are only allowed to be heard as long as our governments tolerate it. Blame Menino, Bloomberg, and Quan and the powers they serve governments for restricting free speech; the police are just their tool. The Occupy Movement is right now exposing the connection between our governments and their limits on our freedoms. This is also a necessary stage in the movement’s development.
As a colonized class of people, we have been lulled into accepting the economic and political status quo as a given. That status quo must be challenged before it can be changed. If protesters quit, if the Occupy movement doesn’t spread, it will only have been a historical oddity. The conversation has begun. We have no idea where or when it will end, but it must continue if there is to be hope for our country.
Somewhere along the way, “government of, by, and for the people” was lost. Somewhere along the way, although I have never heard it said the way you said it in this post, ordinary americans became the colonized residents of a plantation owned by others.
And there is no just “going away” if government of, by, and for the people is to be restored.
Also, I believe you are correct that the restoration of a true representative democracy, of the Republic itself is very likely to be messy.
n/t
I would like it noted that I never said “quit.” I said go home to fight another day.
Violence doesn’t have to be the end game. And if it does come down to violence, who’s going to win?
If OWS wants to create martyrs. I can’t stop them. But I’d rather they created activists.
for whatever reason. Occupying (as distinct from Occupy!) is a tactic, not a strategy; a campaign, not a movement.
All tactics reach their limits and all campaign need to end. Strategy knows those limits and movements, if they are to succeed, bring their campaigns to a close on their terms rather than having terms forced on them.
I do not presume to know that now is the time to redeploy, but that time will surely come. The test for the Occupy movement is whether it will be able to recognize and act whenever that happens.
As Occupy has unfolded I have read, and heard from friends, many critiques. They should have demands, as follows. They should be trained in nonviolent direct action. They should work for Liz Warren. They should do it this way. They should not do that.
These are kindly meant and I agree with lots of it. But here is what I have said to all comers. Occupy has already done what the rest of us have failed to do. Nobody knows for sure what “works.” We should all be humble about that.
I offer that response now to Mark. I do not want this movement to fail, but if folks need to go home at some point they should. Meanwhile best not to be locked into a posture that would make such a move into a defeat rather than the successful conclusion of a campaign.
There are many miles, many years to go on this thing, and to everything there is a season.
n/t
And each must follow his or her conscience. I agree with you, Trickle Up.
Like I said, I’m not out there. OWS could morph into other movements. It could start and restart. How many anti-war groups were out there back in the day? Plenty that never really made the paper. My post’s title was more a response to Jim’s post.
As non-protesters, there are limited roles people can play. In this post, I offer my analysis (for what it’s worth). It strikes me that we lack a theory for political action and how it’s supposed to work. In the 1960s, they used Marxist theory for better and worse. But they had a framework. I don’t fault OWS for lacking a framework or ideology. I think we’re culturally and politically lacking one. As a result of the colonialism we’re living under, we lack a clear and coherent view of the status quo. To hold OWS responsible for this ideological lack is to blame them for our collective memory loss.
For those of us not out there, it’s important to talk and discuss and analyze. A protest needs to be heard.
This movement is about the future my children will inherit. We cannot serve both G*D and Mammon in this country, or as a people. We are our brother’s keepers. Now that 400 Americans own as much as 156,000,000 other Americans, our country looks more and more like a plantation populated by indentured servants. I want my children to live in a democracy, not a fascist state owned by a plutocracy.
I am not naive enough to believe that our country will reclaim government of, by, and for the people with ease. Nor do I believe that everyone at Occupy Boston is a saint, a perfect human being, or fully self aware. In fact, this is a movement that is only 30 days old; expecting the wisdom of the ages is at best foolish – and at worst a dishonest way of detractors setting up a straw man to slam.
Like any other endeavor, Occupy will become what those involved make of it. Come on in – the water may be cold, the currents are blending from many different direction – but as Alexis DeToqueville said so long ago, “Americans will have the worst government they tolerate” and it is time to stop tolerating government of, by, and for the ruling 400 and their billions.
As a child of FDR Democrats who are now in their 90s, I accept the risks in my involvement because the risks that would come from doing nothing are just not acceptable.
As to what form the spontaneously multiplying Occupy encampments will take, that is a work in progress that has not “used up its oxygen” and varies, in fact, from city to city.
IN Washington, DC the “oxygen” is about “getting the vote”. In Detroit, their “oxygen” is about foreclosure and public transportation – each site has local issues in addition to the reality that a certain group of billionaires with extreme egos has taken over the vast majority of economic power.
My challenge to you (which you are, of course, free to ignore) is to take the word “Occupy” and put a city after it, and then google the combination for at least 10 cities in different parts of the USA and at least 5 countries.
Jimc – whatever “occupy” is, it is neither out of oxygen nor fully matured. If you have such deep experience that you are comfortable sitting in judgment, why not become a local advisor and take responsibility for sharing your deep knowledge and assisting this movement to become more what you think it is not now, and should become?
While “organizing” to “win elections” has been around for a while, many of us look around and say, “so, and the results have protected my children’s futures and democracy itself, just how?”
NO – it is time to step up and decry the centralizing of power, wealth, and position into a more and more hereditary elite, an aristocracy that really does think it is better and more deserving than the rest of us. Trading off which members of that group hold office or power is just not good enough.
Did you know the combined new worth of the members of Congress is now over 2 billion (see all the zeros, why don’t we look at them: 2,000,000,000).
And again, the occupy phenomenon (may well be a more accurate term than movement, given its regional difference) only sprang into being on 9/17/11. Pretty amazing growth curve.
Occupy Las Vegas. Occupy Biloxi. Occupy France. Occupy Springfield, MA. (We already know the famous ones). Pretty amazing and decentralized (or maybe regionalized) is a better word. It’s refreshing.
You’re right, I need to get more involved. I’ve never actually been involved in a protest. My involvement in political campaigns and public office are relatively modest. And this is a part of political life I’ve never tried.
I’m sorry, I can’t reply to this. I’m losing patience with having words or intentions put in my mouth today. What I said was pretty straightforward. I would LIKE to see then go home, and I said please. I said they need to think about the end game. I think that’s a pretty basic principle, of anything.
But I did respond to the dismissive and condescending message I received, and thought you intended to send. Have you taken the time to meet, greet and listen at Dewey Square? Maybe that would be of use, and maybe you should teach a class at the Occupy Boston Free University on the political process. You never know – planting seeds can lead to a grand, giant beanstalk – at least potentially whereas simply criticizing from afar, won’t.
“the point is made,” I though it sounded like you were saying “Mission Accomplished.”
You didn’t say “quit,” but what is the implication of what your’e saying? Go home and protest again when its warmer and until someone almost runs you over?
I’m not calling for martyrs. But I’m not trying to draw the line of acceptable risks for others either. Intellectually, I’d like to think about what level of risk, if any, is acceptable. But is it worth risking a police beating? Teargas? COINTELPRO? How should we think about this?
Trickle Up pretty much says below what I would add to my post were I to rewrite it. If work or cold or whatever drives protesters home, this might be better considered a tactical retreat, rather than as my title suggests, a surrender.
The Occupiers need to get involved in electoral politics IMO, organize for candidates, and for some maybe even BE the candidates. Now that we are at the one-year-out mark from the next election anybody who wants to run needs to start getting their acts together as deadlines for things like nominating papers start coming quickly.
However, there is a vibrant, active Free University. You could schedule a class in running for office – teach the deadlines, the how tos and why you think folks could and should do this. Like planting seeds. I am meeting people, listening to life stories, and more and more coming to the conclusion that for almost all of those in Occupy, Occupy is their first protest and first venture in a political act. I often feel like a sort of village eldress, when on site, explaining how things work, or what could be done. Also, core issues are not the same for most, there are different constituencies working together, often for the first time. I am not sure many are even registered to vote, and have gotten the go ahead to bring down and explain voter registration materials. This is an awakening, as I keep saying. We as big “D”emocrats ignore awakening practitioners of democracy to our future peril, I believe.
Notice that BMG’rs are now talking about what WE can do to help create the change we know is needed. The Occupy Movement is what’s making us sit up and take notice. Hail the Occupiers for forcing the conversation, forcing us all to begin to Think Different.
I understand there’s been talk of finding some shared community space and moving indoors (how seriously and to what extent, I’m not certain) , then having folks do shifts in Dewey Square. Sounds reasonable to me. I’d frankly love to see this tent city endure, and even grow, but as it is, I think it’s serving as the nexus of a movement in a way that no other group has managed to to achieve. I’m thinking back on some of the groups that have tried to serve as “umbrella organizations” for the various advocacy groups involved in the issues they’re trumpeting; somehow, OWS has touched a nerve and provided a spark they simply couldn’t.
On one of the nighttime marches–there’ve been enough that I can’t even recall which one it was–my wife turned to me and said, “this has SO much more energy than the antiwar marches!” I responded: “look around–at those, even at our age, we were among the youngest. Here, we’re freaking old-timers.” I’ve seen Occupy sites in about a half-dozen places now, and it’s the age and socioeconomic diversity that’s so striking to me. And geographic–not only are all the big cities participating, but the Globe has been reporting on the Needham group that’s formed, and MoveOn (ahem) is doing teach-ins in town like Sharon (home to at least a few one-percenters) on “”How the 1% Crashed the Economy.” “Re-localize Occupy”may be the next step. No reason we cant all be hosting similar events. In any case, this thing is not slowing down.
So that while I’ve been deliberating on these matters for weeks and have to say I’ve reached no hard-and-fast conclusions whatsoever, OWS being something of a greased pig itself, I’m not certain it needs a “strategy.” It may be the springboard for all manner of actions, from street marches and demonstrations to the ongoing Free University amberpaw cites to support for specific legislation to events like “Move your Money Day.” Throwing support behind specific actions from groups ranging fromSlow Money to MassCann–groups whose agenda the two mainstream political parties would scoff at–could well be one direction the movement takes. I’d welcome that.
I’m with christopher, above: I’d love to see this morph into electoral action. But the skepticism within the movement is palpable, and I’d be vey loathe to wander around Dewey Square wearing anyone’s button. I DEFINITELY would not even bother promoting ANY candidate who accepts corporate monies–pretty sure you’d be laughed right out of the tents. They definitely get that.
If you are going to help “create the change,”as hubspoke puts it, you–we–are really going to have to put our own house in order on that count before anything else. You can explain ad nauseam that here in the world of realpolitik Scott Brown has ten mill in Koch-and-friend money at his disposal, but they’re reality-based themselves, and a lotta folks down there have been burned too many times to consider getting involved on behalf of establishment candidates. They understand that corporations and lobbyists bearing bundled monies do not contribute out of the goodness of their hearts. They’re buying something.
Nor do I see OWS focusing one many of our wish-lists. I don’t see the movement as pragmatic as many might wish; there’s a whiff of Paris ’68 in their manifestos and slogans: “Be realistic–demand the impossible,” as the Enrages put it. They understand the need for systemic change–from how we grow our food to how we power our infrastructure to how we privatize everything from water systems to our penal colonies. This ain’t simply about repealing Glass-Steagall or about cosmetic changes to the tax code or a handful of regulations that will simply be repealed a few years down the road. None of us, myself included, can really define the movement, any more than anyone can claim to speak for it; but my experience to date suggests that it’s aimed at resisting an awful lot of what passes for business-as-usual. That’s my caveat. And I’d be very careful about claiming to have provided the foundation for the movement unless you get that.
Meanwhile, they do have have a wish-list posted on their web site, and those of us not camping out can bring blankets, sleeping bags, a nice cauldron of hot soup, boxes of coffee and bagels, whatever. It’s going to start looking like Valley Forge out there: we’re today’s Continental Congress.