Here we go - using the populist-fueled defeat of the collective bargaining law in Ohio as a way to co-opt OWS

our establishment folks can only see things in terms of elections, voting and candidates... using yesterday's rejection of the effort to revoke basic worker rights by ohio voters, cfa's robert borosage calls for a ramped-up effort to get progressive candidates running for offices at all levels across the country in 2012...

Two years ago, the Tea Party turned protest into political power, fielding right-wing challengers to office holders of both parties. Public dismay with the failed economy enabled Republicans to capture the House of Representatives, and state houses and legislatures across the country. They captured 675 state legislative seats, the largest sweep since 1938. Shock-doctrine conservatives then used the crisis to cut taxes on corporations while savaging public services. They moved to roll back worker rights to weaken unions, their most organized opposition. Realizing they represented a minority position, they passed a range of laws seeking to constrict voting rights, requiring photo IDs, limiting early voting, etc. Then they went after women's rights, environmental protections and the poor while doing most of what the business lobby asked of them.

Now from Madison to Wall Street and across the country, the new populist uprising is challenging the failed conservative ideas and corporate interests that have dominated our politics to devastating effect. The question now is whether that uprising will generate progressive challengers to conservative office holders in both parties. That will take not just inspiration but organization as well.

To supply that, Progressive Majority has joined with Moveon.org, US Action, the Center for Community Change, Rebuild the Dream, the New Organizing Institute and other partners in the emerging American Dream Movement to set the goal of recruiting and supporting 2,012 candidates in 2012.

the old saw has it that the definition of insanity is doing the same things over and over and expecting different results... our electoral, two-party and campaign finance systems are so profoundly broken, i, for one, can no longer delude myself into thinking that "more and better progressives" (to paraphrase the daily kos mantra of "more and better democrats") will fix anything... it's the system that's broken, not individual office holders, and that's precisely what the occupy movement has forced us to look at...

i succumbed to my eternal and unrelenting desire to get my country back when i voted for obama, only to be rewarded with a president who has taken the national security state well beyond the excesses of george bush, who sanctions the remotely-controlled, targeted killing not only of foreign innocents but also of american civilians, who has populated the closest ranks of his advisers with wall street elites, and who is now taking a populist tack to try to win me back...

so, please don't try to crank up my enthusiasm and co-opt my energy and money for getting 2012 progressive candidates to run in 2012... ain't gonna happen...

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5 key points that weigh heavily in favor of Occupy Wall Street

one thing that becomes readily apparent in all the reading i've been doing about occupy wall street is just how badly people want it to succeed and just how desperately people have been waiting for something just like this to come along...

robert borosage...

1. Moral clarity

Occupy Wall Street has no policy agenda, but it has utter moral clarity. The demonstrators have built an island of democracy in the belly of Wall Street. The bankers looking down on them would be on the street had not taxpayers bailed them out. And now they are confronted with students sinking under student debt with no jobs, homeowners who are underwater and can't find mortgage relief, workers desperate for work.

No one is confused about the message. Wall Street got bailed out; Main Street was abandoned. The top 1% rigs the rules and pockets the rewards. And 99% get sent the bill for the party they weren't even invited to.

2. Non violent discipline

That moral clarity was dramatized when the demonstrators stayed disciplined in the face of police provocation, including pepper spray in the face. The movement did not begin to sweep the country until people saw the police protecting Wall Street's banksters by assaulting peaceful protestors. Suddenly this wasn't a disorganized, rag tag gathering. These were citizens under attack for exercising their rights. That struck a powerful moral chord.

3. A Rising Protest

Across the country, people have responded to this clarity. Unemployed kids rallied to their side. White-collar workers stopped by for lunch. Suburbanites came in to share. On Wall Street, Liberty Square became a tourist center.

Unions and national progressive organizations marched in support, without pretending to speak for the demonstrators. For progressives, this surge of protest began building months ago, when thousands of people rallied to take over the capitol building in Madison, Wisconsin to protest Gov. Scott Walker's attempt to crush worker rights. It built over the summer as thousands turned up at town meetings and sobered legislators with their demand for jobs, not cuts. The Washington Post suggested that unions and national organizers were resentful of Occupy Wall Street, but in fact most were buoyed by the energy unleashed, the moral challenge posed.

4. Political Steamroller

Pundits dismiss Occupy Wall Street for not having a clear agenda. They are told to turn their protests into political demands. Some offer suggestions of what they should advocate -- "infrastructure investment" says Paul Krugman, a speculation tax on banks, home mortgage relief. The press wonders if Occupy will become the left-wing Tea Party and run candidates in elections, as if left-wing Koch brothers were orchestrating the protests.

But this is silly. Occupy Wall Street is already a political steamroller. Without an agenda, without an electoral operation, without a slate of candidates, if it continues to grow, it will force every national politician to decide whose side he or she is on. Are you with the banks or with the 99%? And prove it. Reporters will insure the question gets posed; voters will be interested in the answer.

[...]

5. It's Only Just Begun

No one can predict what happens to Occupy Wall Street, but the public protests have just begun. When the Civil Rights Movement took off, it too faced many of the same criticisms. It had too many demands. Its priorities were unclear. Did it want only to overturn legal segregation? Why was King going to Chicago? Why was he talking about poverty, and not just about equal rights? How dare he talk about the war?

[...]

Movements aren't tidy. They aren't organized. They unleash energy. They inspire ordinary people to leave their daily routines and do extraordinary things. They inspire; they insult; they mortify. They disrupt business as usual. And if they touch a chord, they grow, and they force politicians and citizens to decide.

[...]

Will this movement be a factor in the 2012 elections? It already is. Will it make clear demands? It already has. Whose side are you on? Wall Street or kids in the street? The top 1% or the 99%? It doesn't get clearer than that.

i'm eager to see it continue and grow...

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