Labels: corporate military industrial government complex, corporatocracy, manipulation, Occupy, Tea Party
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posted by profmarcus at
7/08/2015
The Aftermath of Occupy Will Surpass the Gains of 1960s Activism
A tsunami of citizen activism, initiated by Occupy Wall Street, is poised to wash over American society. The coming battle to correct the grotesquely unequal distribution of wealth and power in this country is likely to have an even more profound impact on our society than what occurred in the 1960s.[...]But the difficulty in actually achieving economic reform leaves many skeptical that a new movement can succeed. Granted, true economic reform is a greater challenge than the battles for political and human rights that we waged in the 1960s. But the other side of that coin is that such a movement can have tremendous staying power because the economic conditions provoking it are unlikely to change and the supply of ready new protesters will not diminish.Skeptics also argue that the activists of the Occupy demonstrations and foreclosure protests are incapable of forging lasting organization, that despite their tactical creativity and their remarkable impact on the national dialogue, they lack leadership and a systematic analysis. True enough, but today's activism remains in the first blush of its growth and is still perfecting its social media organizing techniques. Political movements can mature with blistering speed.[...]A new movement is being born. Jobless young troublemakers being thrown away by society understand that the extreme disparities in wealth and power that are the cause of their problems will not disappear on their own. Behind these young people will be millions of dissatisfied workers pursuing the American dream denied. That is why the coming era of citizen activism is likely to dwarf what my generation accomplished in the 1960s. We altered the country, culturally, socially, sexually and spiritually. The next wave of activism will change it economically.
Biggest Financial Scandal in Britain’s History, Yet Not a Single Occupy Sign; What Happened?
People have written complicated pieces trying to prove it’s not over, but if ever I saw a dead movement, it is surely Occupy.
Has it left anything worth remembering? Yes, maybe. With Bob Diamond squirming before British MPs, and politicians jostling to apportion blame for the Barclays scandal, memories of the 99 per cent and the one per cent are surely at least warm in the coffin.
Everything leftists predicted came true, just as everything hard-eyed analysts predicted about the likely but unwelcome course of ecstatic populism in Tahrir Square also came true. ·I do think it’s incumbent on those veteran radicals who wrote hundreds of articles more or proclaiming a religious conversion to Occupyism, to give a proper account of themselves, otherwise it will happen all over again.
Labels: activists, Alexander Cockburn, Barclays Bank, Bill Zimmerman, Bob Diamond, Counterpunch, economic injustice, Occupy, Occupy Wall Street, social movements, Truthout
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
7/07/2012
Noam Chomsky: 'The Occupy movement just lit a spark'
'If you're rich and powerful you never have enough'. In this full-length interview, Gary Youngetalks to US historian and philosopher Noam Chomsky about why the Occupy movement is so important, where it goes from here, and how it will affect the election.
Labels: 2012 election, brainwashing, Civil liberties, elites, enough is never enough, Gary Younge, greed, Guardian, Noam Chomsky, Occupy, propaganda, protestors, super-rich
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
7/07/2012
Occupy is Alive; So is History
Political leadership in the West has calcified atop a set of existing facts and trajectory that assure rebellion in one form or another until they are reconciled. In addition to the economic divides between wealth and poverty, employment and unemployment, opportunity and the lack of opportunity, there is a generational divide that has left youth around the world on the outside of economic life.
[...]
These conditions were not created by the young or by the multitudes that are likewise on the outside of economic and mainstream political life. They result from decades of ideologically driven policies that assumed that the secular deity of markets removed the need for thought, knowledge, information, and any notion of public life. This ideology supports a predatory economic order that has had disastrous consequences for vast majorities in the West. And yet it still drives economic and political decisions today.
[...]
[T]here are entirely practical reasons why rebellion is here to stay until these problems are resolved. What this rebellion will look like will be a function of material conditions as they develop and the systemic response to them. To date this response has been discouraging and events unfolding in Egypt add new degrees of pessimism. This written, rebellion is both necessary and life affirming.
Labels: capitalism, common good, free markets, ideology, Occupy, poverty, predators, rebellion, repression, unemployment, youth
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
6/21/2012
The Quebec government, which like the United States’ security and surveillance state is deaf to the pleas for justice and fearful of widespread unrest, has reacted by trying to stamp out the rebellion. It has arrested hundreds of protesters. The government passed Law 78, which makes demonstrations inside or near a college or university campus illegal and outlaws spontaneous demonstrations in the province. It forces those who protest to seek permission from the police and imposes fines of up to $125,000 for organizations that defy the new regulations. This, as with the international Occupy movement, has become a test of wills between a disaffected citizenry and the corporate state. The fight in Quebec is our fight. Their enemy is our enemy. And their victory is our victory
.
This sustained resistance is far more effective than a May Day strike. If Canadians can continue to boycott university classrooms, continue to get crowds into the streets and continue to keep the mainstream behind the movement, the government will become weak and isolated. It is worth attempting in the United States.
[...]
The importance of the Occupy movement, and the reason I suspect its encampments were so brutally dismantled by the Obama administration, is that the corporate state understood and feared its potential to spark a popular rebellion. I do not think the state has won. All the injustices and grievances that drove people into the Occupy encampments and onto the streets have been ignored by the state and are getting worse. And we will see eruptions of discontent in the weeks and months ahead.
If these mass protests fail, opposition will inevitably take a frightening turn. The longer we endure political paralysis, the longer the formal mechanisms of power fail to respond, the more the extremists on the left and the right—those who venerate violence and are intolerant of ideological deviations—will be empowered. Under the steady breakdown of globalization, the political environment has become a mound of tinder waiting for a light.
The left in times of turmoil always coughs up its own version of the goons on the far right. Black Bloc anarchists within the Occupy movement in the United States, although they remain marginal, replicate the hyper-masculinity, lust for violence and quest for ideological purity of the right while using the language of the left. And they, or a similar configuration, will grow if the center disintegrates.
Labels: Arab Spring, Black Bloc, Chris Hedges, indignados, Montreal, Obama administration, Occupy, police brutality, Quebec, repression, student protest, Truthdig
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
6/04/2012
This episode of the Al Jazeera English show "The Stream" features an interview with rapper Immortal Technique about Occupy Wall Street, his lyrics and career, hip hop activism and more. He is posed questions from The Stream's online community live from Twitter and Google Plus, and discusses his views towards gay marriage and his work in Afghanistan.
Labels: activists, Afghanistan, Al Jazeera, gay marriage, Immortal Technique, Occupy
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
5/31/2012
Julian Assange and the Occupy movement have much in common. They both criticise governments and are often condemned by the mainstream media. So now for the first time, the world's most famous whistleblower and the leaders of the global protest movement come together - on RT. In the latest edition of Assange's very own interview programme, they discuss the spread of the Occupy demonstrations.
Labels: democracy, hypocrisy, Julian Assange, Noam Chomsky, Occupy, protestors, Russia Today, whistleblowers
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
5/29/2012
The US government is the second worst human rights abuser on the planet and the sole enabler of the worst–Israel. But this doesn’t hamper Washington from pointing the finger elsewhere.
The US State Department’s “human rights report” focuses its ire on Iran and Syria, two countries whose real sin is their independence from Washington, and on the bogyman- in-the-making–China, the country selected for the role of Washington’s new Cold War enemy.Hillary Clinton, another in a long line of unqualified Secretaries of State, informed “governments around the world: we are watching, and we are holding you accountable,” only we are not holding ourselves accountable or Washington’s allies like Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the NATO puppets.Hillary also made it “clear to citizens and activists everywhere: You are not alone. We are standing with you,” only not with protesters at the Chicago NATO summit or with the Occupy Wall Street protesters, or anywhere else in the US where there are protests. (ref)The State Department stands with the protesters funded by the US in the countries whose governments the US wishes to overthrow. Protesters in the US stand alone as do the occupied Palestinians who apparently have no human rights to their homes, lands, olive groves, or lives.Here are some arrest numbers for a few recent US protests. The New York Daily News reports that as of November 17, 2011, 1,300 Occupy Wall Street protesters were arrested in New York City alone. Fox News reported (October 2, 2011) that 700 protesters were arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge. At the NATO summit in Chicago last week, 90 protesters were arrested (Chicago Journal).
Labels: Human rights, hypocrisy, Israel, NATO, Occupy, Palestine, Paul Craig Roberts, protestors, Secretary of State
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
5/27/2012
Occupy's Spiritual Quest
Dear occupiers, jammers, dreamers,
Three years after the May 1968 uprising that swept the world, the great French philosopher Michel Foucault observed that a key strategy of power is to “appear inaccessible to events.” Power, Foucault argued with a nod towards 1968’s failed insurrection, acts to “dispel the shock of daily occurrences, to dissolve the event … to exclude the radical break introduced by events.”Forty years later, in light of Occupy, Foucault’s observation still strikes home. Despite achieving the impossible at unprecedented speed – sparking a global awakening, triggering a thousand people’s assemblies worldwide, and giving birth to a visceral anti-corporate, pro-democracy spiritual insurrection – Occupy is now struggling through an existential moment. Our movement has been dealt a blow: our May 1 and follow-up events have been dissolved by power; the status quo has shown itself to be far more resilient than many of us expected.
Now a passionate debate is emerging within our movement. On one side are those who cheer the death of Occupy in the hopes that it will transform into something unexpected and new. And on the other are patient organizers who counsel that all great movements take years to unfold.
[...]
The fire in the soul of Occupy burns from Oakland to Quebec, Barcelona to Chicago, Wall Street to Moscow and Frankfurt… the question now is which fork in the road will our movement take?for the wild,
Culture Jammers HQ
Labels: Adbusters, Barcelona, Chicago, economic collapse, Frankfurt, house of cards, Montreal, Moscow, Occupy, powerlessness, Quebec
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
5/25/2012
TACTICAL BRIEFING #32 – Occupy’s Turning Point
We innovate spontaneously – we play jazz
Hey you nimble dreamers, occupiers, believers,
Last May 15, a hundred thousand indignados in Spain seized the squares across their nation, held people’s assemblies and catalyzed a global tactical shift that birthed Occupy Wall Street four months later. Our movement outflanked governments everywhere with a thousand encampments in large part because no one was prepared for Occupy’s magic combination of Spain’s transparent consensus-based acampadas with the Tahrir-model of indefinite occupation of symbolic space. Now exactly a year later, a big question mark hangs over our movement because it is clear that the same tactics may never work again.
Spring re-occupations have largely failed here in North America. The May Day General Strike was stifled by aggressive, preemptive policing that neutralized Occupy’s signature moves. In light of these challenges, Saturday’s May 12 rebirth of the indignados could be a tactical turning point.
Across the world, authorities are using “lawfare” to piecemeal outlaw any tactic that we used last year. In Spain, there is an attempt to criminalize the use of the internet to catalyze nonviolent protests and occupations. The International Business Times reports that this is part of a larger European move to “punish those who use social media and instant messaging to organize and co-ordinate street protests.” Canada wants to ban wearing masks at “unlawful assemblies,” a legal designation often used to disperse nonviolent protesters. Meanwhile Germany is taking a more direct route: they have simply issued a decree “banning” the Blockupy anti-bank protest in Frankfurt. As in the U.S., when outlawing free speech and the right to assembly doesn’t work, authorities are increasingly using brutal, paramilitary force.
The power of Occupy lies in its ability to harness the collective intelligence of our leaderless movement to tactically innovate. We move at viral speed – always one step ahead. “Fight, fail, fight again, fail again, fight again… till victory.” When one tactical constellation fails, we innovate spontaneously – we play jazz.
Across the world, indignados are preparing for a big blast on Saturday, May 12. Some, like Occupy London, are planning to retake the squares and set up encampments. Others have totally new tactics in mind. Whatever happens, let’s learn from the indignados with an eye towards our Camp David inspired May 18 #LAUGHRIOT and the global convergence on Chicago to confront NATO …
Let’s be humble … let’s “fall in love with hard and patient work” – and keep in mind that this is all just the beginning.
for the wild,
Culture Jammers HQ
Labels: Adbusters, consensus, indignados, lawfare, May Day, NATO Summit, Occupy, Occupy London, Spain, Tahrir Square
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
5/11/2012
There has always been a gap between public policy and public will, but it just grew astronomically. You can see it right now, in fact. Take a look at the big topic in Washington that everyone concentrates on: the deficit. For the public, correctly, the deficit is not regarded as much of an issue. And it isn’t really much of an issue. The issue is joblessness. There’s a deficit commission but no joblessness commission. As far as the deficit is concerned, the public has opinions. Take a look at the polls. The public overwhelmingly supports higher taxes on the wealthy, which have declined sharply in this period of stagnation and decline, and the preservation of limited social benefits.
The outcome of the deficit commission is probably going to be the opposite. The Occupy movements could provide a mass base for trying to avert what amounts to a dagger pointed at the heart of the country.
For the general population, the 99% in the imagery of the Occupy movement, it’s been pretty harsh -- and it could get worse. This could be a period of irreversible decline. For the 1% and even less -- the .1% -- it’s just fine. They are richer than ever, more powerful than ever, controlling the political system, disregarding the public. And if it can continue, as far as they’re concerned, sure, why not?
[...]
[T]he Occupy movement is the first real, major, popular reaction that could avert this. But it’s going to be necessary to face the fact that it’s a long, hard struggle. You don’t win victories tomorrow. You have to form the structures that will be sustained, that will go on through hard times and can win major victories.
[...]
We’re really regressing back to the dark ages. It’s not a joke. And if that’s happening in the most powerful, richest country in history, then this catastrophe isn’t going to be averted -- and in a generation or two, everything else we’re talking about won’t matter. Something has to be done about it very soon in a dedicated, sustained way.
It’s not going to be easy to proceed. There are going to be barriers, difficulties, hardships, failures. It’s inevitable. But unless the spirit of the last year, here and elsewhere in the country and around the globe, continues to grow and becomes a major force in the social and political world, the chances for a decent future are not very high.
Labels: 1%, climate change, dark ages, Deficit Commission, elites, empire in decline, Noam Chomsky, Occupy, plutocracy, stagnation, super-rich
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
5/08/2012
TACTICAL BRIEFING #31 – GUT CHECK
Hey you nimble dreamers, believers and jammer tacticians out there.
Three challenges Occupy must overcome
Our movement has reemerged from winter hibernation to find that this spring we are different but so too is the political and tactical situation. Occupy now faces a series of existential challenges that will define the month of May and set the tone for our long-term future.
#1 challenge: Jump over the corporate media
It took the New York Times two weeks last year to wake up to the insurrection percolating in their own backyard. This May Day, we saw an insidious attempt to ignore and discredit us right across the mainstream media. Time to jam the corpo-commercial lie machine and shift the way information flows and meaning is produced. Here is occupier Charles Young’s take on the blackout:
“I know. It’s just a coincidence. Or conspiracy theory. The .01% who rule the United States would never stoop to such stunts to knock Occupy Wall Street off the front page and surround it with mentions of terrorism… But Occupy wasn’t on the Times’ front page, online or in print, either.” Read more at Counterpunch.
#2 challenge: Block the co-optation of our movement
Last September, the old left didn’t want to touch us. Then Occupy captured the world’s imagination and now they are jumping in to channel our energy into electoral politics and symbolic actions. Founding Zuccotti Marisa Holmes warns that the co-opters are a deep threat to our movement:
“This is an election year. Everything is at stake. There will be many more attempts like The 99% Spring to come. The 1% … seek to manage social movements via foundations thru resource allocation, top-down structures, and co-opting language. In the past this strategy has proven effective at dividing, conquering, and integrating movements into respectable forms of activism, and it’s starting to take hold… We must not be pacified!” Read more in the Occupy! Gazette #4.
#3 challenge: Occupy the future
Our most difficult task of all is to describe, build and sustain the post-capitalist future we want to live in. Here is Slavoj Žižek’s stab to get your juices flowing:
“It is not enough to reject the depoliticized expert rule as the most ruthless form of ideology; one should also begin to think seriously about what to propose instead of the predominant economic organization, to imagine and experiment with alternate forms of organization, to search for the germs of the New. Communism is not just or predominantly the carnival of the mass protest when the system is brought to a halt; Communism is also, above all, a new form of organization, discipline, hard work.” Read more at the Guardian.
Hey occupiers: the old world has no future; their leaders have no solutions. Now everything from how we live to how we love and how the world is governed is up for grabs. Can we rise to the challenge? Let the tactical brainstorm begin.
for the wild,
Culture Jammers HQ
Labels: Adbusters, Chicago, corporate military industrial government complex, NATO Summit, Occupy
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
5/04/2012
People seem to know about May Day everywhere except where it began, here in the United States of America. That’s because those in power have done everything they can to erase its real meaning. For example, Ronald Reagan designated what he called, “Law Day”—a day of jingoist fanaticism, like an extra twist of the knife in the labor movement. Today, there is a renewed awareness, energized by the Occupy movement’s organizing, around May Day, and its relevance for reform and perhaps eventual revolution.
If you’re a serious revolutionary, then you are not looking for an autocratic revolution, but a popular one which will move towards freedom and democracy. That can take place only if a mass of the population is implementing it, carrying it out, and solving problems. They’re not going to undertake that commitment, understandably, unless they have discovered for themselves that there are limits to reform.
[...]
Perhaps sometimes the system will accommodate to needed reforms. If so, well and good. But if it won’t, then new questions arise. Perhaps that is a moment when resistance is a necessary step to overcome the barriers to justified changes. Perhaps the time has come to resort to coercive measures in defense of rights and justice, a form of self-defense.
[...]
If you get to a point where the existing institutions will not bend to the popular will, you have to eliminate the institutions.
Labels: elites, financial reform, jingoism, May Day, Noam Chomsky, Occupy, revolution, super-rich
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
4/30/2012
The May 2012 InsurrectionTactical Briefing #30
Hey you dreamers, strikers and new left redeemers out there,
For thirty-one magical days beginning this Tuesday, May 1, we take the plunge and Strike! We block the Golden Gate Bridge; occupy a Manhattan-bound tunnel; seize the ports. In 115 cities, we march into banks, erect tents and refuse to leave. We disrupt financial institutions forcing thousands to preemptively close. Five thousand of us pray, dance, sleep on Wall Street and in front of the Fed and if the Bloombergs of the world bring out paramilitary police to intimidate us, we use our social media fire to call out 50,000 more occupiers.
In the week before the G8 and NATO summits, we light the spark globally. We occupy hundreds of squares in cities on every continent – from Paris to Berlin, Toronto to Athens, São Paulo to Bucharest and beyond – we up the ante with direct actions that paralyze capitalism. For a few days, maybe for a full month, we act as if we already live in a world run by people, not corporations.
Our movement goes geopolitical later in May. We swarm Chicago and confront NATO. We tell the military elites there to stop their saber rattling against Iran, halt the global arms race and get behind what the majority of the people on Earth want: a nuclear-free world starting with a nuclear-free Middle East that includes both Iran and Israel.
And then when the G8 leaders meet in Camp David, we create a global spectacle the likes of which the world has never seen before … millions of us … individually, in flash groups and en masse, we burst out laughing at the lunacy of the eight most powerful political leaders on the planet thinking they can dictate the people’s business from behind closed doors and barbed wire fences. For one day, we take over the global mindspace with a whirlwind of #LAUGHRIOT jokes. (Like: Why did the G8 chickens cross to Camp David? / Cuz they’re on the other side. haha!) We laugh our heads off on every news broadcast in the world.
May 1968 was the first wildcat general strike in history … it lasted two weeks and was a grand gesture of refusal still remembered, but then it fizzled … maybe this May we won’t?
for the wild,
Culture Jammers HQ
OccupyWallStreet.org / Tactical Briefing #26, #27, #28 and #29 / Find out what your local Occupy has planned for May 1, May 12, and the #LAUGHRIOT then join the movement in Chicago
Labels: Adbusters, Camp David, Chicago, G8 summit, NATO Summit, Occupy, Occupy Wall Street
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
4/27/2012
Noam Chomsky on America's Declining Empire, Occupy and the Arab Spring
Labels: Alternet, Arab Spring, empire in decline, Joshua Holland, Noam Chomsky, Occupy
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
4/25/2012
TACTICAL BRIEFING #29 – Battle for the Soul of Occupy
Alright you jammers, occupiers and Springtime dreamers,
First they silenced our uprising with a media blackout… then they smashed our encampments with midnight paramilitary raids… and now they’re threatening to neutralize our insurgency with an insidious campaign of donor money and co-optation. This counter-strategy worked to kill off the Tea Party’s outrage and turn it into a puppet of the Republican Party. Will the same happen with Occupy Wall Street? Will our insurgency turn into the Democrats’ Tea Party pet?
It’s up to you to decide if our movement goes the way of Paris ’68, the dust bin of could-have-been-insurrections, or something more daring, more inspiring, something not yet dreamed.
Will you allow Occupy to become a project of the old left, the same cabal of old world thinkers who have blunted the possibility of revolution for decades? Will you allow MoveOn, The Nation and Ben & Jerry to put the brakes on our Spring Offensive and turn our struggle into a “99% Spring” reelection campaign for President Obama?
We are now in a battle for the soul of Occupy… a fight to the finish between the impotent old left and the new vibrant, horizontal left who launched Occupy Wall Street from the bottom-up and who dreams of real democracy and another world.
Whatever you do, don’t allow our revolutionary struggle to fizzle out into another lefty whine and clicktivist campaign like has happened so many times in the past. Let’s Occupy the clicktivists and crash the MoveOn party. Let’s #DEFENDOCCUPY and stop the derailment of our movement that looms ahead.
for the wild,
Culture Jammers HQOccupyWallStreet.org / Tactical Briefing #25, #26, #27 and #28 / Check out Oakland occupier Mike King’s take on MoveOn’s 99% Spring
P.S. For Adbusters #102, we’re looking for intimate portraits of life inside art/activist/visionary communes worldwide. Also, a lucid, incisive critique of the continuing anti-Palestine bias at the NY Times. Plus inspiring, strategic takes on the future of Occupy. Send to editor@adbusters.org.
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Labels: Adbusters, co-optation, Democrats, MoveOn, Occupy, Tea Party
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
4/12/2012
The US Department of Homeland Security and the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement Office have placed a massive order for ammunition. The two departments are asking for 450 million rounds of bullets to be delivered in a time-frame of five years. The contractor, Alliant Techsystems, was awarded the contract and will produce .40 caliber high-performance bullets to the agencies. The order has many wondering why would DHS and ICE need so many bullets.
Labels: Alliant Techsystems, ammunition, Homeland Security, ICE, Occupy, TSA
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
4/02/2012
Occupy Wall Street: Surviving the Winter
Fault Lines follows key Occupy organisers through the winter as they continue to build a movement even after violent evictions across the country.
Labels: Al Jazeera, Fault Lines, Occupy, OWS
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
3/31/2012
Labels: Al Jazeera, Fault Lines, Occupy
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
3/21/2012
On March 14, 2012, over one hundred people from Occupy Wall Street and other groups rallied against corporate tax breaks, against corporate spending in politics, in support of the Dream Act, and AGAINST Mitt Romney (because he is on the wrong side on all those issues).
Mitt Romney was holding a $2,500-a-plate fundraiser at the Waldorf Astoria for his presidential campaign.
Labels: Mitt Romney, New York City, Occupy, OWS, Republican fund-raisers, Reverend Billy, The Church of Stop Shopping
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
3/14/2012
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