How
“Occupy” Is Evolving
There can
be no doubt that working Americans from all kinds of backgrounds are
becoming increasingly desperate about their economic situations and
their future prospects. Is it any wonder that this is happening?
Everywhere we look we see jobs disappearing by the millions, homes
being stolen right out from under the owners through fraudulent loan
and foreclosure practices, pension and retirement funds being wiped
out by highly speculative investments of dubious origin by compulsive
gamblers posing as financial advisers and stockbrokers, and the
hijacking of our democracy through corporate “campaign donations”
and “lobbying fees” that are little more than legalized bribery.
Most alarming of all for the overwhelming majority of us is the
increasing lack of access to preventative health care and to higher
education. I experienced this myself a number of years ago when I
wanted to change careers, only to be told that I couldn't get a
student loan because my credit score was too low. If I wanted to go
back to school and learn a new trade, they said, I would have to pay
the tuition out of pocket. Since I was working as a temp at the time
there was no way for me to come up with the tuition to pay for my
retraining, and so I remained stuck in my situation, unable to
improve myself even though I very much wanted to do so. What I have
since learned is that what I went through when I tried to change
careers to alleviate long-term unemployment is very commonplace,
especially for older workers. By now, multitudes of unemployed
Americans who want retraining can't get it for the same reasons that
held me back, and nearly everybody else has figured out that they too
are stuck as far as their professional lives are concerned. Like
myself, they are furious at being backed into a corner by the system,
and they're looking for ways to fight their way out of that corner.
To sum up
our situation as America's work force, we're mad as hell – livid,
actually – and we have collectively decided to take back from the
top 1% what they took from us since what was taken was ours to begin
with. As things stand today, the elites who comprise the top 1%, and
particularly the top tenth of a percent, are in very serious trouble
indeed. From a political and social standpoint, I vigorously maintain
that time has run out for the reign of the rich and powerful. Even
now the elites continue to puzzle over what people want. Where is the
list of demands? Why don't they present us with specific goals? Why
can't they articulate an agenda? The goal can be articulated in one
word – rebellion.
These protesters have not come to work within the system. They are
not pleading with Congress for electoral reform. They know electoral
politics is a farce and have found another way to be heard and
exercise power. They have no faith, nor should they, in the political
system or the two major political parties. They know the press will
not amplify their voices, and so they created a press of their own.
They know the economy serves the plutarchs, so they formed their own
communal system. This movement is an effort to take our country back
as best as it can be peacefully accomplished.
This is a
goal the power elite cannot comprehend. They cannot envision a day
when they will not be in charge of our lives. The elites believe, and
seek to make us believe, that globalization and full throttle
capitalism are natural law which is some kind of permanent and
eternal state of being that can never be altered. What the elites
fail to realize is that our rebellion will not stop until the
corporate state is extinguished. It will not stop until ownership of
entire corporations is transferred from the stockholders and boards
of directors directly to the workers where it belongs. It will not
stop until there is an end to the corporate abuse of the poor, the
working class, the elderly, the sick, children, those being
slaughtered in our imperial wars and tortured in our “black sites”.
It will not stop until foreclosures and bank repossessions stop. It
will not stop until students no longer have to go into debt for life
just to obtain higher education, and families no longer have to
plunge into bankruptcy to pay medical bills. It will not stop until
the corporate destruction of the ecosystem stops, and our
relationships with each other and the planet are radically
reconfigured. And that is why the elites, and the rotted and
degenerate system of corporate power they sustain, are in serious
trouble. That's also why the reason for existence of the entire
capitalist, debt-based economy is now falling into question. And that
is why they keep asking what the demands are. They don't understand
what is happening.
The
occupation of Wall Street, and the Occupy encampments elsewhere such
as at Freedom Plaza in Washington, D.C. in which I took part, has
formed an alternative community that defies the profit-driven
hierarchical structures of corporate capitalism. Even though the
police have shut down the encampments in New York and elsewhere, the
power elite will still lose their grip on society because this vision
and structure have been imprinted into the minds of thousands of
protesters. The greatest gift the “occupation” has given us is a
blueprint for how to fight back. And this blueprint has now been
transferred to cities, parks and families facing foreclosure across
the country.
The
tactic of physical occupation in the case of Occupy Wall Street has
been enormously successful already. We have, at least for a moment,
proven that we can and will bring enormous public pressure on the top
1% in the form of these movements. We are significantly better
positioned than before to make bold demands, as we can now credibly
claim that our values are popular – even that they are common sense
– and connected to a social base. “Occupy Wall Street” is the
tactic that has launched a movement for social justice and real
democracy onto center stage. It has served as the initial catalyzing
symbol for what undoubtedly will become a rejuvenated civil rights
movement. Hopefully ten years from now, when we look back at all
we’ve accomplished together, Occupy Wall Street will be considered
a critical moment that helped to spark and then build a lasting
movement. “We are the 99%” has become a core message of this
burgeoning movement. It emerged in tandem with the deployment of the
captivating tactic of occupation. The framework of the 99%
accomplishes a number of important feats:
[1] The 99%
frames the consolidation of wealth and political power in our society
– the central grievance of this movement and a central crisis of
our times.
[2] The 99%
frames a class struggle in a way that puts the 1% on the defensive,
whereas the common accusation of “class warfare” has somehow
tended to put a lot of people in the middle on the defensive.
[3] The 99%
casts an extraordinarily broad net for those invited to join the
movement. Most everyone is encouraged to see their hopes and dreams
tied to a much bigger public issue. Thus it frames a nearly limitless
growth trajectory for the movement.
[4] The 99%
even leaves room for the 1% to redeem itself. There are many striking
cases of “1%-'ers” speaking out as defectors – such as former
or current military and law enforcement personnel – who are as
vocal as anyone that the system is broken and in dire need of
replacement.
The 99%
meme is a real winner. It points the way toward a necessary expansion
that is ongoing as I write this. It encourages us to not just act on
behalf of, but alongside of, the 99%; to look beyond the forces
already in motion, to activate potential energy, to articulate a
moral political narrative, and to build up and strengthen our
culture. The Wall Street protests must grow and spread across this
country because they are the only realistic hope for change remaining
for the 99% of Americans falling behind in this permanently broken
economy. Sad to say, but democracy in the land of the free and home
of the brave simply no longer works as it is currently being
administered. Big corporations and the wealthy have hijacked the
political system for decades now with their hefty donations to
political campaigns and other pet projects. Their contributions
guarantee that bought-off politicians pass laws and tax breaks to
their benefit. It is no secret, everyone is aware of how the system
works, and it must be called for what it is: legalized bribery.
With
traditional democratic political methods useless, what recourse do
ordinary Americans have left? We are now witnessing the only real
avenue left: ordinary citizens taking to the streets and demanding
change to the rigged political and economic systems that leaves 99%
of us behind. It is only a start, but a vital one. Every day more
people are awakening to the stark realization that the political and
economic system in this country is stacked against them and getting
worse. During
the Vietnam era, because they were directly affected, young people
took to the streets to protest the war. America's young males were
subject to a draft, and the prospect of being shipped off to die in a
war they didn't believe in angered them a great deal. And so the war
planners wised up and did away with the draft, but look at what has
replaced it. America now has perpetual wars for oil, using a
"volunteer" military, many of whom have enlisted due to
lack of other economic opportunities. Seemingly unaffected by
post-Vietnam wars, students and other young people have been
politically inactive since the early 1970s.
But
that has come to an end, and I think it's about friggin' time, too.
Young people are finding few jobs awaiting them when they get out of
college (assuming they are fortunate enough to afford the high
tuition). They graduate with no income coming in, but years of
student loan debt to pay back. Those without a college or high school
degree are even worse off. All of them see the sad reality, that the
“American Dream” is only for the privileged few. If these
demonstrations and protests continue to grow and expand, both here
and abroad, the big banks, oil companies, billionaires and
politicians will have to pay attention and give some ground. Either
that, or face the prospect of violent revolution.
How all
this will play out is uncertain as I write this. The road to
reversing several decades of unfair and corrupt politics and
excessive greed promises to be a rocky and difficult one. Things
could get a lot worse before (and if) they get better. But a
revolution, preferably a bloodless one such as the Civil Rights,
Occupy and 99% Movements, is necessary to restore democracy and
economic fairness in America and around the world. With traditional
methods of political change proving useless, mass protests, strikes
and other public demonstrations are the only realistic strategy left.
Which is why the Wall Street occupiers and their brethren across the
country (and the world) cannot quit, why they must continue to grow
and expand to a point that the powers-that-be realize they must give
the rest of their fellow Americans a seat at the decision-making
table and at least some semblance of democracy and economic fairness.
The occupiers and protestors cannot and will not quit, of that you
can be sure. If the protests wither and die, so will what is left of
America's hopes and dreams. So we will not let this movement quietly
fade away.
On the
contrary, we will continue to grow and consolidate in preparation for
our next offensive. As we do so, we will continue to remind one
another of why we occupy, and why we're not going away. The
Occupy Movement and the 99% Movement, together with a host of other
related social and political movements of the American people, will
continue to get larger and better organized over the rest of 2012 and
well into 2013, using primarily the Internet and social media to
accomplish their goals.
Congress,
the President, the Supreme Court, corporate America with their armies
of lobbyists on K Street in Washington, and the
military/prison/industrial complex are justifiably afraid of this
movement and what it represents. More importantly, they all remember
where this movement got its start, which was in North Africa, and
then the Middle East, followed by the riots in Britain and Spain last
summer, and the Syrian civil war. Now it has arrived on American
shores and firmly established a beachhead from which a worldwide
movement has been launched that has captured the hearts, minds and
imaginations of countless billions. And this movement of the people
is only this – that we are sick and tired of working for
subsistence wages that amount to economic slavery while the
stockholders and the boards of directors of these giant multinational
corporations, not to mention all the cash-rich privately held
companies, get to control much of America's cash flow while keeping
all the profits for themselves. As I wrote in my previous book, “It's
steak for them and beans for the rest of us”, and since then the
plight of the middle class has continued to slowly get worse just as
I predicted it would. All these problems and issues are indicative of
a broken system that is beyond fixing. The time has come to replace
it all. The only remaining question is, will the American people be
able to accomplish this peacefully? That depends completely on how
the 1% respond to the peaceful protests, public demonstrations and
wildcat strikes of the 99%. If they respond with violence, there will
be another American civil war, and the USA will turn into another
Syria, Libya or Greece (only 10 times worse). Let's hope the solution
can be a peaceful one.
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