Regular politics in Washington now resembles an ecological dead zone where truth perishes in a polluted environment. Democrats and Republicans shadowbox over their concocted fiscal crisis, neither willing to tell voters the truth, both eager to avoid blame for the damage they are doing to the country.
The ugly part of this gimmick is that it punishes most severely the very people who most need help.
The Washington Post's alarming “news” that Social Security has gone cash negative is not true.
Out in the streets, meanwhile, the contrast with brain-dead politics is exhilarating. In Occupy Wall Street, we are witnessing a rare event—the birth of a social movement. Ordinary people are engaging in sustained grassroots protest against the political order and against citizens’ exclusion from the decision-making that governs their lives. They seek to rearrange the distribution of power, and they are doing so by injecting a creative, often playful vitality that has been missing in our decayed democracy. The protesters have slipped around the soul-deadening, high-gloss marketing of mass-communication culture. Instead, they insist that politics starts with citizens talking to one another and listening—agreeing and disagreeing with mutual respect. The open-door, nonhierarchical membership commits people to engage in what historian Lawrence Goodwyn calls “democratic conversation.”
The Occupy protesters are acting like citizens, believing they have the power to change things. Their ambition reflects a core mystery of American democracy—the fact that humble people can acquire power when they convince themselves they can. Warmhearted and broad-minded, these citizens audaciously claim to speak for the 99 percent—and despite initial ridicule and dismissal of them by much of the press, polls show they have strong public support. The Occupiers have even managed to make uptight reporters write about corporate greed.
Authentic new social movements do not appear very often, and most of them fail. Throughout the nation’s history, rebellions have typically been derailed by their own mistakes and divisions or snuffed out by entrenched power. Even when they endure, it can take years, sometimes generations, to overcome the resistance of the status quo. Think of the abolitionists and the civil rights movement, women’s demand for the vote and equal rights, working people collectively asserting their power in unions.
As with earlier movements, governing elites have grasped the radical nature of this noisy intrusion into their privileged domain, and they have attempted to crush OWS with a series of melodramatic police raids from New York to California. But repression has failed to intimidate the rebellious citizens. Indeed, each attack only seems to strengthen the movement.
But will it last? Skeptics are entitled to their doubts, but for important reasons I am confident this movement will endure. First, because it is very unlikely the establishment will respond substantively to OWS’s grievances—and that will only make the protesters more determined. OWS has brilliantly focused its many complaints on the very sector—the megabankers and financiers—on whom the politicians are dependent. In different ways, Republicans and Democrats are aligned with the greedheads and are thus unwilling to punish their crimes or cut them down to size.
This new movement is probably more threatening to President Obama, because many of the young people and minorities who campaigned and voted for him in 2008 might drift away to Occupy’s direct action. If Obama refuses to get tougher on reining in Wall Street, these former supporters may just skip voting in 2012. Yet this new force can ultimately help Obama if he responds to its message. Led by the young, the movement is aligning with the reviving militancy of labor and other progressive constituencies. The spirit is open-armed and patriotic, not negative and divisive. Obama should dare to lead it rather than dodge or oppose it. The Republicans are hopeless, of course, utterly in thrall to banking industry demands.
In any case, this movement is not about electoral politics—not yet, anyway. It is about saving the country, an objective bigger than politics and politicians. Its vision is nothing less than halting the degradation and fostering the rebirth of the nation’s original democratic promise. It is the nature of authentic movements to seek large and majestic goals that seem impossible to pedestrian politicians—and, at first, to most citizens. Standing up requires both uncommon courage and severe provocation.
Another reason I’m optimistic about the Occupy movement is its distinctiveness from other movements. Its horizontal, leaderless quality confuses outsiders but ensures its autonomy as a free-standing force not beholden to political parties or financial patrons that might restrict its behavior. OWS’s creativity depends on its independence.
And finally, I am optimistic about Occupy because I see similarities with earlier movements that led to significant reforms. Odd as it may seem, Occupy’s situation resembles in some ways the agrarian revolt of the late nineteenth century. I say odd because the Populists were poverty-plagued farmers; but like today’s protesters, they were getting crushed by the banking system and monopoly capitalism. For an inspiring portrait of what ordinary Americans can accomplish in adversity, read Lawrence Goodwyn’s epic history The Populist Moment. The Populists well understood that nobody was on their side, neither the government nor the bankers. As industrial capitalism advanced, the brutal credit system was converting yeoman farmers of the South and Midwest into landless peasants (a bit like the foreclosure crisis impoverishing homeowners in our time). In deep crisis, the Populists had to save themselves. They launched agricultural cooperatives and developed farsighted reform proposals, many of which were ultimately embraced by the New Deal. The Populists lost in their own time, but they planted seeds for the future and changed the nation in the long run.
Like the Populists, the Occupiers are acting in the American spirit of self-reliance, doing whatever they can to counter a destructive system and force change upon it. In the absence of serious financial reform from Congress, for example, the “move your money” campaign uses direct action to take money and power away from the megabanks. But Occupy is also demanding a new kind of government, one not captured by corporate power and rigged against ordinary people. Occupy DC, for example, has proposed a humane plan for deficit reduction. Others urge a constitutional amendment that would disarm the money power’s capture of democracy. OWS can bring about a change in laws, but first it must cleanse our degraded political culture. This is a staggering challenge, of course, but radical reform will originate only from ordinary citizens—not policy experts and their Wall Street supporters, who led the nation into ruin. The movement can inspire the people to become creative citizens again. Are we up to it? Let us find out. Let the democratic conversations begin.
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Why should the treacherous corporate shill be nominated, much less elected?
Anyone who didn't vote for war or the Patriot Act would do. For further reading:
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Obama-s-Legacy-Of-Shame-by-Stephen-Lendman-111102-123.html
OWS is an authentic social movement in the same way that the SDS and the People's Coalition for Peace and Justice were. They are the same demographic. They are college students today, and they will grow up to become professors of sociology, anthropology, psychology and gender studies.
aimswanson: Your differentiation between President Obama and Luddites is exactly backward. The President said flat out on television that one of the reasons for high unemployment is ATMs and other automation - an explicit statement of the essential Luddite argument.
" A tempest, unprecedented in its violence, unpredictable in its course, catastrophic in its immediate effects, unimaginably glorious in its ultimate consequences, is at present sweeping the face of the earth. Its driving power is remorselessly gaining in range and momentum. Its cleansing force, however much undetected, is increasing with every passing day. Humanity, gripped in the clutches of its devastating power, is smitten by the evidences of its resistless fury. It can neither perceive its origin, nor probe its significance, nor discern its outcome. Bewildered, agonized and helpless, it watches this great and mighty wind of God invading the remotest and fairest regions of the earth, rocking its foundations, deranging its equilibrium, sundering its nations, disrupting the homes of its peoples, wasting its cities, driving into exile its kings, pulling down its bulwarks, uprooting its institutions, dimming its light, and harrowing up the souls of its inhabitants. " - Call to the Nations. -The Baha'i Faith
OWS is the spirit of the new world being born. Peace be with us all.
This OWS is a fantastic grassroots movement. This movement is good because it hits at the core of the problems we face as a nation, in many ways, first and foremost, the grave economic conditions most people, the 99%'ers, face every day. It also attacks the disparity in the justice system in that working class people are being jailed every day for things such as excercising their first amendment rights, which is wrong to begin with, and the 1%'ers, banksters, are being shielded by government from being indicted and prosecuted for crimes they have commmitted against the everyday working class citizen, first in the fraudulent foreclosure crisis and secondly in rigging the MBS securities market by having Moody's and the other analyst fix the system so that these securities were rated Triple A when in fact they were no better and most likely worse than junk bonds. They, thus, have deceptively stolen hundreds of millions of dollars from the people and are not in jail! This is a travesty of justice to the highest degree. The OWS Movement is the greatest thing since your last piece of good old APPLE Pie!!
"Out in the streets, meanwhile, the contrast with brain-dead politics is exhilarating. In Occupy Wall Street"
The OWS look more stoned than exhilarating.
They are Americans behaving exactly as our forefathers did when faced with injustice.
The Boston Tea Party Revisited They come from many different backgrounds. About one-third of them are skilled craftsmen, and a much smaller number are professionals, doctors, educators, lawyers, merchants, and the like. Although we do not know the occupations of all the participants, the majority are students and from the working class. About two-thirds are under 20; few are over 40. Most are locals, but some came from great distances. They have one thing in common, their committed opposition to a government which ignores the needs of the people in favor of the rich and powerful. Regardless of their financial or social origins, they work as a team of self-sacrificing patriots against an oppressive and seemingly all powerful enemy. Although the words were yet to be written, they stood for "the Right of the People to alter or to abolish any Form of Government that becomes destructive of inalienable rights of men such as Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness". This describes the majority of both the Occupy movement and the modern Tea Party, but in fact, it paraphrases the words of the Boston Tea Party Association's description of the participants in one of America's proudest moments. Like the rank and file members of the Tea Party, the "Occupiers" have the same central agenda; fairness, equity and opportunity. They don't have a Robin Hood complex and do not want to steal from the rich, they just want the crimes of the powerful punished and their plunder returned to those they stole from; this is not theft, it is justice. They want the opportunities enjoyed by their parents and grandparents. Their common goal is the return to a world where there was a vibrant and growing middle class where anyone who was willing to do the hard yards could improve their lot, and that of their families; they are not seeking a redistribution of wealth through conscription. Neither ascribes to the mean spirited rhetoric of those at their extremes. Nor would they knowingly yield to what appears to be the divide and conquer tactics of those amorphous individuals at the highest levels of power. In the end, these modern American patriots are following in the footsteps of our forefathers; those which led to the creation of our democracy, and they are doing it in ways that would have made them beam with pride. If they can set aside the voices of their most radical leaders while sharply focusing on their commonalities & band together to bring their core values to reality, all Americans triumph. If they don't, they will simply cancel each other out while the bad guys win once more.
"Out in the streets, meanwhile, the contrast with brain-dead politics is exhilarating. In Occupy Wall Street, we are witnessing a rare event"”the birth of a social movement. Ordinary people are engaging in sustained grassroots protest against the political order and against citizens' exclusion from the decision-making that governs their lives."
Uh, that already happened. It was called The Tea Party. Guys like you first ridiculed it, then wanted to co-op it. You're late to this party.
Mr. Greider, we'll see how many men and women OWS gets elected to public office, vs. how many women were raped/sexually assaulted, how many cops were assaulted and injured, how many streets were trashed, how many seaports were closed (and for how long) and how many members of OWS were arrested.
3. posted by: amacd2 at 11/28/2011 @ 9:39pm
Thanks. I wish The Nation were progressive like OWS D.C. but as long as The Nation has to pretend to be democratic, then perhaps we can continue to get the truth in via these comments even among the noise from the neolib phonies and neocon fascists. Keep it up.
William Greider understands OWS better than any media analyst I have read. I too am hopeful that this new approach to democracy succeeds but worry that some on the left will abandon Obama and lose the election to Luddites who will seriously dismantle our entire social safety net.
Anyone remember the first time you stood up for what you believed in, because you were so outraged you couldn't keep quiet? I do. I also remember being totally stunned that we would be anyone's target, or that we would be infiltrated, we were labeled names that never came close to our beliefs. MAYBE we shouldn't buy every piece of propaganda that's flying by. MAYBE we should quit whining and start doing. AND life has shown me, when there is no option, and nothing has helped change realities, then do this really tough thing, and learn HUMILITY, toughest lesson you'll ever face. My only advice to OWS is simple, SING. National Anthem; We Shall Overcome; God Bless America; Amazing Grace; something full of hope. This old gray broad is praying for you OWS. The best thing you have going for the movement is you are not the village idiot with a short attention span. So HOW long before OWS becomes OWSt?
"American spirit of self-reliance". Is this author serious. He must be using some of the same drugs some of the OWS'ers are dying from. I heard one OWS protestor say he wanted the Government to pay of his student loan debt .... Self reliance huh?
Seriously, you think OWS is a good thing? I seem to recall the tea party being vilified by the media. The tea party that got the permits necessary cleaned up after themselves, were respectful to law enforcement. The tea party we "can't abide", but OWS is something to be admired? Give me a break, this country is in worse trouble than anyone thought. The media is completely corrupt.
"Like the Populists, the Occupiers are acting in the American spirit of self-reliance"
Your joking right?
shadowknows,
Here's a good video of Zeese and Occupy DC also.
http://october2011.org/fb_cb/157849590953202/sitecontent/video?page=8
About 1:55 into either "One Demand" videos Zeese expalins the importance of publicly 'outing' the Empire.
Best, Alan
There's nothing worse than a left that keeps fighting the same battle the same way and every time expecting to win, much like the most deluded civil war reenactor. Some are unaware of the reenactment and others rewriting history to think they almost won and memorializing failure and eulogizing the coming defeat. Occupy doesn't deserve any eulogy or memorial if it fails, just like May 68' which absolutely failed in France, the US (Nixon and Cambodia?) and the Czech Republic. The story was sexy, romantic, and full of tragic heroes (situationist poets, YIPPIES, and the 7). None of these people or anything about those movements deserves ransacking for best tactics. I'm sure documentaries are already being completed. Occupy Wall Street is still in the stage of the first few days of the Arab Spring. They're but the first few protesters and we must light a new torch from theirs and keep running to the finishline. They're greatest contribution was being a good guard dog barking so loud as to alert the family (99%) upstairs captivated by corporate TV, budgets, and Tea Party celebrities, so they can come down and discover there's a burglary in progress (Wall Street). It's the family's job to do something about it and call the cops, not our best friend (they are and thankful for it).
What so many leftists and mostly middle class liberals have always done is count on someone else to change their world till they got disillusioned: "USSR, Maoist, 68 (helped Steve Jobs); the other/ 'third world', and Occupiers." The point is how passive, lazy, and sidelined most American lefties are while engaged by these spectacles. We should not continue behaving like stereotypical characters in same play; it makes it easier for people to lose their attention and media to scrutinize the actors and stage production more than the meta-story. We're not Egypt, as bad as our country can be, there's no naked tyranny like that in America, and we live in the most powerful country in the world, so we must do this civilly, mostly through our corrupt political system. However, since we're not lazy we can also afford to protest and peaceful civil disobedience, which will actually make the public cheer. We have to drop some of our utopian goals, which for some is an excuse to do nothing and for others it demands they get out of their own heads and actually respect the needs of their target audience (99%) voiced by themselves. We should all vote, it always matters to somebody in times like this whether its 1, 2, or 3 wars or one social program (women's shelter). Some people's very survival dependents on even this system running, if no other takes its place till later. Collective farming was dreamed up in someone's head and took years to work at all, but was a death sentence right away for millions of Ukrainians. Radical legislation both national and local (amendment to end corporate personhood, eliminating all private money in politics, tax on financial transactions, criminal indictments of some traders and bankers, and so on...) is welcomed as soon as possible, so are bailouts and public work projects for the people.
Good read:
http://october2011.org/fb_cb/157849590953202/blogs/kevin-zeese/no-co-option-and-misdirection-democratic-party-operatives
The Democrats lost the House in 2010 because they abandoned the base that put them into power in 2006 and 08, not because the country lurched to the right. This is happening worldwide, whenever the fake liberal/left party goes full tilt corporate, voters balk and the right wing takes over.
In the US, the right wing has overreached so far that should they take the Congress and WH in 2012, we will see a reverse Chile 1973, where the GOP will win office with an equivalent of 33% of the vote, Dem base stays home, and will try to implement libertarian capitalism in the US the way that Allende tried to nationalize everything.
Such an approach will only exacerbate the material conditions which provide OWS with its political lift and will instigate a resistance the likes of which the US has never seen before. There is consensus that retirement security and health care are priorities for which the economic system must provide.
As to 07rescue, LGBT did not just get our civil rights handed to us on a platter. In fact, we have no federal civil rights to speak of and still suffer under DOMA.
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