Are you listening?

As the wind gusts outside I find myself experiencing a peculiar kind of fatigue. Over the last couple days we’ve made a few trips round the neighborhood stocking up on supplies to prepare for this year’s big storm. The panic driven consumer frenzy that surrounds these storms always has me shaking my head. It’s only common sense to get prepared with a storm on its way, but I can’t help but note how this consumer reflex is becoming our response to everything. On the surface this consumption looks like preparedness, but is it really? Like so many other things in our culture, isn’t this just another way to cope with a situation we feel powerless to control? It reminds me of our current health care model: wait till it breaks, then attempt to fix it. If it’s too late to actually fix it (which it is more often than not) - medicate it so that the symptoms are at least tolerable. Today I heard one of “our” Senators explaining all of the different ways that people would be compensated for damages they suffer from the storm. There were even programs to cover lost business revenue. Here again, we respond to damage after the fact, accepting the outcome as inevitable rather than addressing the underlying cause. Perhaps the Senator is just trying to make us feel more secure, explaining that the government has our back when times are tough. Hey this is what you pay your taxes for right? This is one of those moments when we recognize the benefits of having a safety net, when something REALLY BIG happens and we can all feel... um... safe. So then what is my fatigue about? Buying emergency supplies wasn’t all that stressful. Yes, the lines were loooooong, but we are lucky enough to have food to buy. I have a roof over my head that will in all likelihood withstand the wind. I am fortunate to live in an area high enough to avoid the flooding. I’ve got the electricity to write this blog entry...

But I can’t shake this feeling. I’m tired. I’m tired and honestly, I’m a bit frightened. I’m tired of people not listening. A historic storm by all accounts, days before a presidential election, large enough to threaten the entire Atlantic coast - I feel like I’m living in some sort of Bizarro World vacuum. I want a bit more from “my” politicians than an explanation of how I can get compensation for damage done. Three debates and not one mention of climate change? Campaign ads airing between hurricane updates? Katrina. Irene. Sandy. She's raising her voice. How loud does she have to get before you listen?

Binders full of women - a debate stage full of men.

Today I am reading Romney’s “binders full of women” quote everywhere. While the issue brought up is clearly more substantive than Big Bird, does it really surprise anyone? I read article after article leading up to last night’s debate bemoaning the president not bringing up women in the first debate, and prioritizing the importance for both candidates to play specifically to women voters in the second. Well it would seem that Romney fulfilled expectations putting his foot firmly in his mouth last night saying, “We’re going to have to have employers in the new economy, in the economy I’m going to bring to play, that are going to be so anxious to get good workers they’re going to be anxious to hire women.” I imagine Ryan might say that Romney was “obviously inarticulate” in making this point, if he himself was capable of recognizing the problem with it. Perhaps Mitt is simply trying to say that employers are going to be anxious to hire good workers and women are good workers, but the statement comes off sounding like it says that employers are going to be “so anxious to get good workers” that they will even hire women.

So Obama gets points for Lilly Ledbetter, defending Planned Parenthood, and he has two daughters he wants to make sure “have the same opportunities that anybody’s sons have.” He sounds like he cares. And maybe he is being sincere, but watching two women (who are running for the same office) being manhandled and arrested by a bunch of burly officers outside the debate gives me pause. The Obama campaign is not simply complicit here, it is the Democrats and Republicans acting in concert through the false flag of the Commission on Presidential Debates that have excluded these women’s voices from the debates. The “Nonpartisan” Candidate Selection Criteria For 2012 General Election Debate Participation, Adopted on October 20, 2011, sets forth three specific “nonpartisan” criteria for selecting candidates to participate in the 2012 general election presidential debates: (1) constitutional eligibility, (2) ballot access, and (3) electoral support. Though I personally believe both the second and third criteria need redress, the candidacy of Jill Stein and Cheri Honkala actually meets criteria one and two. The third criteria, however, is a self-validating circle of nonsense:

INDICATORS OF ELECTORAL SUPPORT

The CPD's third criterion requires that the candidate have a level of support of at least 15% (fifteen percent) of the national electorate as determined by five selected national public opinion polling organizations, using the average of those organizations' most recent publicly-reported results at the time of the determination. 

"Electoral support” is simply not the same thing as “indicators of electoral support," in the same way that “votes” are not “opinion polls.” Under these criteria, a candidate needs to have enough support to be selected to debate to get enough support to be selected to debate... nonsense. A debate is at its heart about finding out where the candidates stand on the issues that matter to us; and five selected national polling organizations, the CPD, and the two parties that run it should not be allowed to determine which voices we get to hear and which get to go to jail for showing and speaking up.

One other thing stands out to me about the debate and it’s critique: I’m seeing some very talented people that I respect taking Romney to task for his comment, “Government does not create jobs. Government does not create jobs.” But why not also take Obama to task for saying, “I think a lot of this campaign, maybe over the last four years, has been devoted to this notion that I think government creates jobs, that that somehow is the answer. That’s not what I believe.” I wrote a bit in an earlier post about mobilizing the American people to support legislation that they actually want, rather than simply adopting Republican talking points in some kind of hopeless crusade to out Republican the Republicans. When Obama declares “I believe that the free enterprise system is the greatest engine of prosperity the world’s ever known. I believe in self-reliance and individual initiative and risk takers being rewarded,” and tempers this with his fair shot, fair share, play by the same rules refrain; is he offering us the necessary vision to move beyond this win/lose competitive paradigm, or is he simply strengthening it? With the concepts of independence and competition so central to our core identity as Americans, is it even possible to address “fairness” without it being viewed as an affront to those very same ideas? If you insist on fairness aren’t you just making excuses for your own lack of success? Perhaps you are just too lazy, or unwilling (to work harder), or maybe you’re just not smart (educated) enough. Are we truly “free” if we cannot freely choose not to participate in this game?
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Mark Halperin at Time Magazine posted the leaked Memorandum of Understanding between the Obama and Romney campaigns Monday, a 21 page legal document delineating the rules governing 2012 presidential and vice presidential debates. I read it this morning. And then I made a cup of coffee to try to wake myself back up. It did of course contain specifics regarding who gets to debate, the topics that will be “debated,” and the format of the debate (as I wrote in an earlier post); of the many restrictions here are a few that set off some bells for me:

1. (d) The parties agree that they will not (1) issue any challenges for additional debates, (2) appear at any other debate or adversarial forums except as agreed to by the parties, or (3) accept any television or radio air time offers that involve a debate format or otherwise involve the simultaneous appearance of more than one candidate.

So not only does the agreement restrict who can debate, but it also restricts the two candidates to only debating one another, and only in these CPD sanctioned debates.

3. Participants
If one or more candidates from the campaigns other than the two (2) signatories are invited to participate pursuant to those Selection Criteria, those candidates shall be included in the debates, if those candidates accept the terms of this agreement.

This effectively says IF you meet the criteria to be invited to debate that you still have to agree to the terms of the agreement (that your party had no hand in writing) IF you want to be included in the debate.

5. (e) The candidates may not ask each other direct questions during any of the four debates.

Ah well - rules are made to be broken.

7. Additional Rules Applicable to the October 16 Debate...

Too much here to re-type, but here is my summary: Audience members submit their questions to the moderator prior to the start of the debate. Moderator approves all questions to be posed and “eliminates” any questions she (and she alone) deems “inappropriate.” If any audience member poses a question or makes a statement that is in any material way different than the question that they submitted for review, they get cut off by the moderator and the Commission can cut off their microphone. All audience members describe themselves as likely voters. The audience is selected by Gallup Organization, but the campaigns have the final say on the “methodology” used for selection.

9. (a) (viii) All members of the debate audience will be instructed by the moderator before the debate goes on the air and by the moderator after the debate goes on the air not to applaud, speak, or otherwise participate in the debate by any means other than silent observation, except as provided by the agreed upon rules of the October 16 town hall debate. The moderator shall also state that, should an audience member fail to comply with this requirement, he or she will be will be subject to removal from the audience and from the facility. 

10. (a) ... Each campaign shall be entitled to receive directly from the Commission one-third of the available tickets (excluding those allocated to the participating audience in the October 16 debate), with the remaining one-third going to the Comission.

Basically, what we have here is some sort of facsimile of democracy in action, with all of the inconvenient randomness, diversity, and unscripted participation stripped out. And you are more than likely not invited.
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An additional note: beyond the specifics relating to distribution of tickets, section 10. (c) of the memorandum specifies seating arrangements, in order to “insure that supporters of each candidate do not sit in a block and are interspersed with supporters for the other candidate and interspersed with tickets distributed by the Commission.” Notable here is that there is no specific allotment for supporters of a different candidate entirely, or neither candidate, or those who have simply not decided (it is a debate after all). Perhaps folks in these categories can sit anywhere they like? If not, they could always sit outside in the street, or better yet, in a jail cell...

MIC CHECK!!!

“I take your stuff...”

On the weekend of the Occupy Wall Street anniversary I attended a meeting of the Strike Debt assembly in New York. The meeting was a book release for The Debt Resistors’ Operations Manual, but also a working meeting to get input from all that attended. At the onset of the meeting a couple of people shared their personal stories of debt with the group. This sharing of stories was intended to address the shame, frustration and fear that many feel in connection with their debt. I could understand the logic here, but I found myself having a very strong reaction to the idea of shame being a common reference point for our discussion of debt. I wanted to share my story, but I didn’t think it fit within this construct. I’m in debt, but it is not shame that I feel, it is outrage. I don’t buy into the common American debt narrative: you are in debt because you bought something you couldn’t afford, because you were living beyond your means, because you are lacking in personal responsibility, because you are lazy, etc. The underlying idea here is that debt is a product of choice. But debt is about much more than choice, it is a deliberate and coercive means of control.

After several people involved with Strike Debt had spoken about different aspects of the project, a facilitator asked us come up with a question concerning debt to be posed to the group. I wasn’t really sure how to frame my question, but I was eager to offer my input and get some feedback. So when the mic came around to me I asked, “How does debt relate to theft of resources by 1% corporations?” When corporations go into countries and steal resources to sell them on the global market, often back to those they originally stole them from, how does this relate to debt? The facilitators wrote down the questions people had posed, inviting us to break out into smaller groups and choose one of the questions to discuss. The group I was part of was interested in discussing several of the questions, one participant even adding a question of her own to the list. A few people in the group were particularly interested in the question I had posed and asked me to elaborate on it. I appreciated their interest and enthusiasm, but at the time I felt reluctant to do so. I was much more interested in engaging in dialogue and listening, than in elaborating on my question. Deference to leadership is common within our culture, a show of respect for those who appear knowledgeable and capable (or, in seeming contradiction to the origin of this nation, are divinely appointed). When this is coupled with individual ownership of ideas, another root tenet of our culture, it can be difficult to contribute to a conversation without appearing attached to the ideas one contributes. But if we are truly looking to evolve “our” ideas, and not simply own the soap box, perhaps we should be seeking to free them from ownership, to let them exist independent of individual ego and belief, to invite and encourage modification of the ideas through alternative perspectives.

When it comes to movement building I have always been a big proponent of broadening our focus to include allies internationally, to more objectively understand and address the obstacles we face, as well as to learn and share successful strategies for moving forward. While focusing on a single issue may seem like good strategy for mobilizing a specific group of people affected by and passionate about that particular issue, it can also create a kind of tunnel-vision, blinding us to the broader interconnectedness of multiple issues affecting our larger community. Similarly, we can become trapped inside our own cultural identities, unable to recognize that many of the obstacles we face are a function of these identities. Inclusion of alternative perspectives, free of this cultural bias, can often allow us to see past these obstacles.

International debt relief has been a focus of the global justice movement for many years, but that concept of debt appears quite different from the American (USA) model. It occurs to me that the major difference here is this American illusion of “choice.” When a Bolivian farmer is made to choose between paying for water or feeding his family - is this really a “choice”? When our seniors are made to choose between heating their homes or medicine to keep them alive - is this really a “choice”? When our youth are made to choose between getting an education or supporting their families - is this really a “choice”? All of these “choices” have something in common: resources that have been privatized and then sold off to make a profit. The corporations and financial entities (and governments that empower them) that have privatized (stolen) these resources have no intrinsic right to them, though they often receive public subsidies to extract and/or refine them. We are so indoctrinated into a system of individual ownership in the US, the very concept of “property” enshrined in our Constitution, that we can scarcely conceive of the commons belonging to us. When we provide our labor, why do we not conceive of it as a resource? When we speak of success, why is it not as a function of the combined labor (physical and intellectual) of those who have come before us? When the air, water and land we need to live is jeopardized by corporate abuse, why do we not simply take it away from them? Even our genetic information, the very mystery of life itself, is but another resource to privatize and commodify. Key here is that, once the resources have been extracted, the people will require assistance to make up for the loss to their economies, their livelihoods, their ability to provide for their people’s basic needs. And, as if on cue, in swoops the benevolent benefactor (you know - the same one that stole all your stuff moments ago) to generously provide that needed assistance - at a price...

So how can we recast this American debt narrative of “choice” to be more in line with the one that is known throughout the world? One person in our break out group suggested that we might come up with a sort of overarching metaphor, something to cut through all the complicated financial bs that insulates debt from critique. I mentioned something about native cultures’ conception of land as communal, a gift from the creator, rather than as some thing to be owned. It got me thinking that a deeper look at the concept of ownership itself might be helpful when examining debt. As the break out groups were called on to report back to the larger meeting, I quickly jotted this down in my notebook:

I take your stuff, then I make you pay for it. I take the lion’s share then I make you fight for the crumbs. Then I offer you a “loan” to make up for your loss. Then I sell your debt/use it to make even more money.

I’m not an expert in finance or debt. I have a BFA, not an MBA. But swimming in this financial cesspool of intentional obfuscation, perhaps more expert testimony is not what we need. Perhaps a bit of intuitive common sense instead. When the banking/brokerage kings of finance are allowed to sell 30-40 times more debt (most of it in bundled home mortgages) than they can back up with actual cash money (liquid assets), turning profit on every sale along the way, knowing full well that our taxes will bail their asses out when the junk debt they’re selling goes belly up; maybe we need to be looking beyond the paltry sums that we “owe” them - to the massive amounts of profit they make dealing “our” debt. Whatever we decide to focus on, we should keep in mind: it is only through our common consent to their hoarding of our resources, that we remain indebted to them.
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Today we will be meeting, marching, and MAKING SOME NOISE in New York and across the world. Perhaps you will join us wherever you are :)
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I wrote a bit about the 1% austerity model in a related post here

BLACK SUIT / RED TIE

Psst... Romney’s not Reagan. Neither is Ryan. Steal & share. Click for larger image.

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Apparently it isn’t enough to be a CEO playing a politician playing an actor playing the president - you actually need to have your vp candidate inform your base (and the media) that this is in fact what you are doing...

From October 7th (the day after I posted my split screen):
Paul Ryan Compares Romney's Debate Performance to Ronald Reagan

"Did Mitt Romney not knock it out of the park the other night in Denver?" Ryan asked a crowd of about 200 donors at a fundraiser here Saturday evening. "I was so excited to see that because I was thinking to myself, finally people are seeing the guy we know. Finally - I mean didn't you kind of think of Ronald Reagan when you were watching that?"

A donor interjected that Romney's debate performance actually reminded her of the man standing in front of them.

"We were thinking of you," a donor yelled.

Two Reagan’s for the price of one.

WHO WON THE DEBATE?

I am fully aware of how electoral politics is used to distract us from pursuing any kind of direct democratic action: as a siphon of limited time and organizing energy, but also as a restraint to keep us in line. If organizing a social justice movement (political campaign) without the stated objective of influencing electoral politics is ineffectual (as those in power brand it), then why bother? Just stick to voting every couple of years. Reading my blog, it may not surprise you when I write that the win/lose construct is one of the most effective tools to discourage us from participating in shared dialogue. That said, I feel like there is an opportunity for us to move forward here by simply recognizing the missing point.

Try this - when thinking about what was said at the debate, apply this filter: every single attack Romney made on Obama at the debate was for something that Republicans had requested, initiated, or modeled prior to Obama picking it up and moving it forward. Does this alter your perception of the debate?

A little background. There was a lot of media attention and speculation when Supreme Court Justice Roberts presented his “dissenting” opinion concerning the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act mandate. Left leaning media hailed it as a victory for Obama, citing dissension within the court between Roberts and Scalia. Strangely I did not find, and still don’t find, anyone writing about how saving the legislation would be a boon to the Romney campaign. The logic here is simple - “Obamacare” is the single most important issue specific avenue of attack that the Romney campaign has in its arsenal. Other values based issues have been used again and again in Republican campaigns, but this issue is specifically a product of the Obama Administration, often described as Obama’s “signature legislation.” Removing this issue from the table would have been disastrous for Romney, having spent so much of his campaign focused on “repealing Obamacare.”  Roberts’ re-contextualization of the mandate as a “tax” was widely panned as a stretching of the law, but it did do one thing perfectly: it defined a specific difference between Obama’s healthcare legislation and Romney’s Massachusetts healthcare legislation. Romney’s was a mandate, but Obama’s was a TAX. And Republicans love taxes.

After Paul Ryan gave his speech at the Republican National Convention, there was again an uproar in the press over all the “lies” he told from the stage. But again, I saw no specific critique that pointed out that each of the legislative problems Ryan blamed on the Obama administration was actually dreamt up and put into motion by Ryan and his cohorts. This was a blatantly transparent strategy of toxification. You have an issue that you will undoubtedly use against me in a debate. I preemptively attack you for creating the issue in the first place. My base believes my attack because they do not have any other information to dispute my claim. When it is time to debate, you cannot bring up the issue without immediately being blamed for it - it has been made toxic. Your ace in the hole is now my ace in the hole.

This is the strategy that Romney used throughout Wednesday’s debate. Once this strategy has been put into motion it is practically impossible to defend against. If all of what I witnessed on Wednesday was not simply scripted spectacle, then it would seem that Obama’s campaign is not quite as smart as they are given credit for. It is too late to mount a defense when you finally realize that each of the legislative compromises you made is a trap which will be used to attack you. If you defend yourself by saying “I gave you what you wanted,” they will only label you a weak, whiny liberal. When Romney flipped the switch attacking Obama repeatedly for making cuts to Medicare (under the guise of balancing the budget, reducing the deficit, reigning in spending, ALL Republican talking points) there was simply no defense he could mount. When Romney attacked Obama on Obamacare saying that it was a failure at a federal level while declaring (for the first time) that his own Massachusetts plan was a model for all states to emulate, what could Obama say? But my plan is based on yours? If yours is a success, then SO IS MINE!? How does one draw attention to the essential difference between oneself and one’s opponent when the majority of one’s “successes” come through compromise with them?

So why didn’t the Democrats see this coming? Is this just the ultimate outcome of bi-partisan politics? I don’t have any faith in this President, but I also know that Romney/Ryan could be even more of a nightmare, for the simple fact that their base offers little or no resistance to (and would even celebrate many of) the draconian measures they would certainly codify into law. Even with all of his outrageous expansions on policies initiated during the Bush (and Clinton) years, Obama still has to maintain a public image as benevolent leader that Romney will not. Of course, all bets are off during a lame duck presidency...

There really is only one way (that I can see) to deal with this Republican flip the switch strategy. Mobilize the American people to support legislation that they actually want. Basing new policy on past Republican policy proposals in order to garner Republican support? How’s that workin’ for ya? Yeah, not so much. Perhaps our current “great communicator” president wasn’t up to the task of popularizing a program of renewal with the American people, or perhaps his pragmatism keeps him from launching the kind of ambitious plan that Americans could actually get excited about, or perhaps he is actually just the smiling face of corporate control. Whatever the reason, it is up to us to recognize how these concepts link, and how they yield predictable results - if we don’t want to get swept up in the horse race frenzy that our political system has become.

Who won the debate? Who cares.

P.S. Regarding Big Bird - remember this? Are we really this easy to manipulate?

COKE OR PEPSI?

I’m not going to try and convince you that Obama and Romney are exactly the same. I’m not going to make a case for not voting or voting third party. I don't yet know who I will vote for in November myself. And I like it that way. When is the last time that you remember going into an election cycle looking for the candidates to introduce themselves to you, to communicate their specific positions on issues important to you, to actually listen to you and reflect on what they can do for you as your representative? Do you remember that far back? Do you even remember that at all?

The first CPD sponsored presidential debate of the 2012 election cycle will take place tonight. By my count there are still more than two dozen citizens running for the office of president across the country. How many of those candidates will be allowed to speak in tonight’s debate?

Two.*

Who gets to debate, the topics that will be “debated,” the format of the debate - all decided on and agreed to ahead of time by the Obama and Romney campaigns. So who is this CPD that sponsors the debates? The Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) is a private “non-profit” corporation started by former heads of the Democratic and Republican National Committees in 1987. It replaced the League of Women Voters in 1988 and has been sole sponsor of every presidential debate since that time. The CPD itself currently has seven sponsors including three companies, the largest of which is Anheuser-Busch (that's right Budweiser is sponsoring your democracy). While people mobilize across the country to battle efforts by the right to limit ballot access (a nice way to say steal the vote) , the CPD quietly acts as a limited liability shill (as corporations often do) for the censorship of any dissenting opinion at the presidential debates. It is only through the inclusion of alternative voices that the dialogue can be expanded and that candidates can be kept honest. This limiting of the number of voices at the debate by folks who are already in the debate is clearly a conflict of interest. My “more voices” graphic below includes four alternative voices (among many) that should be part of the debate: (from left to right in no particular order) Rocky Anderson of the Justice Party, Gary Johnson of the Libertarian Party, Jill Stein of the Green Party, and Anonymous. Please feel free to “steal” it and share it EVERYWHERE. Click to enlarge image.

I could go into depth about instant runoff voting (IRV), public financing of elections, voting “no confidence,” but there is one thought that I want to draw attention to above all the others. Representational democracy is about voting for the person that best represents your interests. So regardless of who you choose to vote for in November, I sincerely hope you will remember that it is your choice and not the choice of pollsters, pundits, or the CPD.

Democracy Now! ran a great in depth piece on the CPD today - watch it here

*Democracy Now! is airing a LIVE expanded debate tonight from 8:30 - 11:30 pm ET, pausing after questions to include equal time responses from Jill Stein of the Green Party and Rocky Anderson of the Justice Party - watch it here

Learn more and get involved at opendebates.org
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October 15, 2012 - Mark Halperin at Time Magazine posts leaked Memorandum of Understanding between the Obama and Romney campaigns - read it here

Rahm Emanuel is the Democrat Scott Walker

Back in high school I had a professor who asked our class what we all thought was a simple question: “What is culture?” I had answered this question correctly a number of times before on various tests. You could even look it up in the index of the world studies book we were using. Yup, there it was in graphic black and white: “Culture - a way of life.” So you can imagine our surprise when we offered up this definitive answer in unison only to become the target of our professor’s scorn. Apparently we were all participating in something called “regurgitation,” and she quite forcefully demanded that we do something else instead - think. Well this didn’t sit well with many of our school’s best and brightest. Hell, we wouldn’t even have had the opportunity to be in this class if we hadn’t gotten that answer correct on all those tests I mentioned before. I'll never forget the silence in the class, the conditioned inability to respond to her question in depth. What the hell did she want from us? This is the single professor I admire most from my years in the public school system. When I invited her down to the art room toward the end of the term, to see the artwork I was working on all those 30 days in a row that I had skipped her class, she was honored her feedback was that important to me.

In the mid 90’s, while I was working in on-air graphics at VH1, I witnessed a major shift in the music industry: away from talented artists who had creative control over their music, toward generic musical acts that could be more easily manipulated to match market trends. Creating their own “artists” from scratch gave the record companies ultimate control over the product - no debate, no compromise, pure profit. All through the Bush (W.) years my political advisor and I would make jokes about the Friday afternoon press dumps, simultaneously launched from multiple sources within the administration and rarely ever in agreement. By Monday they would know which story had polled best and run with it, relying on the few people who actually kept up with such things to forget who originally said what. It’s a kind of consumer marketing campaign. Testing the waters, seeing what the consumers will accept and what they will reject, researching ways to get them to accept (and even support) an agenda that is not in their best interest. When I see Paul Ryan being rolled out as the standard bearer for the Republican Party, from relative obscurity, charged with championing a budget plan that seems all but DOA; I can't help but think of a certain young Illinois State Senator bursting onto the political scene at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. When Kerry conceded the presidency that year, Obama was all over the airwaves explaining away yet another stolen election, with a new democratic narrative connecting the loss to “moral values.” Who was this fucking guy I thought? Why was he lending his support to the Karl Rove strategy playbook? Prior to the election, I had a lengthy discussion with a friend over dinner about how the same-sex ballot measures engineered by Karl (“Bush’s Brain”) Rove were NOT really intended to increase turnout at the polls, but rather to be used retroactively as validation of yet another stolen election “victory.” Post election studies showed that voter turnout was no higher in states with ballot measures than in those without. Though I sincerely hope we don’t have to go through another stolen election this year, I think it’s important to keep in mind how our two party system uses these opportune election moments to roll out “next year’s model.” The more obvious spectacle is often just a cover for the machinations that are going on behind the scenes. 

Watching the teachers in Chicago take to the streets I immediately thought of the Wisconsin uprising. Reading a few articles on the Chicago Teacher’s Union strike I saw some bits about how the teachers were seeking higher compensation even though they were the highest paid in the country, how compensation was by law the only issue that they were allowed to strike over, how if the strike were allowed to go on that the parents might turn against the teachers due to the inconvenience of having to find something to do with their children. I was unfamiliar with the specifics of the strike itself, but all of this sounded like spin to me. I knew that Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel; a Democrat, former Obama Administration Chief of Staff, had presided over the crackdown on Occupy Chicago (touched on this in my last post). I knew that his coming out against the Chicago Teacher's Union (CTU) was not something new. I knew that Obama’s Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, was the former Chief Executive Officer of the Chicago Public Schools (CPS). And I knew that all three; Obama, Duncan, and Rahm are proponents of education reform programs that include privatization of public schools and teacher/student evaluation through standardized testing. So I went to the CTU website and read a press release titled CPS Fails To Negotiate Fair Contract To Prevent First Strike In 25 Years. In it I found a bunch of information I hadn’t seen in the articles I’d read, most importantly this: “Another concern is evaluation procedures. After the initial phase-in of the new evaluation system it could result in 6,000 teachers (or nearly 30 percent of our members) being discharged within one or two years. This is unacceptable. We are also concerned that too much of the new evaluations will be based on students’ standardized test scores. This is no way to measure the effectiveness of an educator. Further there are too many factors beyond our control which impact how well some students perform on standardized tests such as poverty, exposure to violence, homelessness, hunger and other social issues beyond our control.” I was seeing a familiar pattern here, a political party running a controlled experiment to see what they can get away with through a combination of scripted narrative and sleight of hand. Wisconsin was the chosen test subject for the Republican attack on collective bargaining rights, but the model would be replicated in Republican run states all over the country. Their objective? To completely remove the ability of the opposition to mobilize on their own behalf, insuring that any future Republican legislation could be enacted with no opposition whatsoever. This is of course nothing short of an attack on democracy itself, with the Republican narrative casting democracy as an inconvenience in the face of economic crisis. Walker, Rove, the Koch Brothers, Rupert Murdoch and their whole cabal don’t seem to have any reservations about using actual people as lab rats (and as a vegan I don't use this term lightly) in their little poli-sci experiment.

When CTU refused to end the Chicago teacher’s strike, Rahm Emanuel released a statement claiming the strike was “illegal on two grounds – it is over issues that are deemed by state law to be non-strikable, and it endangers the health and safety of our children.” Further, he claimed that the strike was one of “choice,” and suggested that the children were being “played as pawns in an internal dispute within a union.” The state law that Rahm mentions in the statement? That’s SB7, legislation requiring an increase in CTU’s threshold to strike from a simple majority to 75% of its membership. What he is referencing specifically, though the law seems to have different interpretations, is a restriction of CTU’s right to strike to issues of economics only (wages, benefits, etc.). Emanuel lobbied for the passage of this legislation and unlike Wisconsin, where the Democratic legislators left the state in order to stop Walker’s plan to crush collective bargaining, the Illinois Democratic (majority) state assembly and governor voted FOR this “reform” legislation to restrict the CTU. The legislation passed almost unanimously (House 112-1 / Senate 54-0) in May of last year. As in Wisconsin, this is a set-up, a trap, a manipulation of circumstances in order to force the opponent to play the role that has been scripted for them. In Wisconsin the public unions were cast as lucky beneficiaries of a free ride at the taxpayers’ expense. In Chicago the union, and by association its membership, are cast as law breakers and a danger to children. Yup, that’s right your child’s teacher is a dangerous criminal - thanks Rahm.

These may sound like different strategies, but they actually issue from the same source - economics. The 1% austerity model involves engineering an economic crisis and then attacking those most impacted by it for not being willing to sacrifice even more than what has already been stolen from them. Proponents of “education reform,” push the idea that more education, more vocational training, more personal responsibility, will lift our poor and disenfranchised citizens out of poverty and ensure personal success and success for the country. But if the 1% create the crisis that causes your misery, and then cynically offer you a path out of misery working to make a profit for them, isn’t this just a modern take on indentured servitude? Of course, you’ll have to go into debt to acquire the level of “educational excellence” that is required to qualify for one of those “good jobs.” We have laws against child labor in this country, but no law against transforming our public education system into a private system of vocational training to make sure that our youth will be able to get those “good jobs.” Prioritizing education as a competition, a “Race to the Top,” an “escape from poverty,” de-emphasizes the importance of creative and critical thinking that is essential to our advancement as individuals and as a society. Our public education system can be so much more than a system of indoctrination to prepare our youth for a life of servitude. Yes Rahm, this is a strike of “choice,” a choice not to allow ourselves and our children to be used as lab rats, pawns, or servants in this bi-partisan 1% consumer marketing campaign.

Two weeks ago a Wisconsin judge ruled Walker’s anti-union law “unconstitutional.” Last week a judge ruled the mass arrests of Occupy Chicago demonstrators “unconstitutional.” The successful Chicago Teacher’s Union strike is inspiring educators, parents & students to stand in solidarity throughout the country, to look beyond the austerity narrative that they are being sold. We need not wait for the president to put on his comfortable shoes and join us on the picket line. Together we can revitalize our system of public education, infusing it with the creativity, the curiosity, and the critical thought to see past the 1% script and write a narrative of our own choosing.
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While writing this post I came across an article with a similar theme (and a damn near identical title) by Joseph A. Palermo as well as another great article on the CTU strike by Matt Reichel.

To PVC, or not to PVC, is not the question.

I could not have been in Washington Square Park for five minutes when I was surrounded by police. On Saturday I attended the Occupy Town Square, arriving late in the afternoon. The Park was filled with people: occupiers, people there for the folk festival, and the general public. When I arrived I approached a friend who was lending a hand bracing the OTS banner on a breezy day. Our conversation was interrupted when a Parks Department official came up and told my friend that pvc (plastic) tubes were not allowed and “asked” him how long it would take to switch the pvc for cardboard tubes. I put ask in quotes here because it didn't actually sound like a question at all, but more like a threat. The three Parks Department officials were accompanied by a rapidly growing circle of NYPD officers who said nothing during the initial exchange, but moved in rapidly to surround the banner and the few people that were near it, myself included. As the circle of officers grew tighter, it was apparent that they were not looking to patiently wait for the pvc tubes to be replaced, but were simply using the non-issue as a means to escalate the situation - likely to provide a rationale for suppressing the entire event. Needless to say, it is rather alarming to be in the park talking with a friend and then to find oneself suddenly surrounded by police officers. It is especially alarming when the police seem to be silently enacting some preplanned strategy that does not involve actually communicating to you what it is that you have done to warrant this treatment. I took the opportunity to step outside of the circle when it presented itself, realizing that I might be subject to arrest just for standing where I was.

Having been a banner wrangler in the past I was familiar with the claims being made about the pvc tubes. The tubes themselves are not illegal. According to the NYPD, “the carrying of signs or objects at a demonstration is protected First Amendment activity. However, where it can be shown that the object carried, i.e. a wooden pole with a sign attached or a bat, (italics mine - a bat?!) has the potential for being used as a weapon, the police may prohibit the carrying of the object during the demonstration. Persons who insist on carrying objects that are potential weapons should be directed to put the object down and leave the area of the demonstration. If they refuse to do so and continue to congregate with others in the demonstration, they may be arrested for Disorderly Conduct, Penal Law Section 240.20.” Clearly, the OTS banner is NOT a weapon, nor is it a structure that would violate the Parks Department’s prohibition on “unlawful camping.” Reading through the current rules and regulations concerning the regulated uses of the NYC parks, it would seem that our constitutional right “peaceably to assemble” now requires the permission of the parks Commissioner when we chose to exercise it in our city parks.

Once away from the circle, I decided to mic check to the crowd as I was particularly struck by the absurdity of the situation, and hoped that shedding some light on it while it was occurring might raise the awareness of folks in the park. Some occupiers seemed upset when I was vocal about the situation, perhaps recognizing that this engineered conflict was a distraction and not wanting us to focus on it. My concern was that people, particularly those outside of OWS, should know why the police action was being taken - that it was not really about plastic tubes, but about the suppression of OWS.

Back in February of 2002, I was stopped by NYPD on the sidewalk when leaving a demonstration focused on the World Economic Forum that was happening in NYC that year. I was blocks away from the demonstration when I saw two officers that had been deployed to protect a nearby Starbucks. One of the officers demanded that I surrender the cardboard tube that my sign was stapled to. I asked them what would happen if I did not, and they told me that I would be detained until their superior arrived, and that he would decide what to do with me. I removed the tube (one of hundreds I had purchased months earlier) from my sign staple by staple as the officers looked on, and surrendered it to them. I lifted my sign high above my head as I walked down the block. I recall thinking about the police busily confiscating all of the x-mas wrapping paper that must have flooded that entire area of the city just a few weeks back, and how absurdly selective this confiscation of my property was.

So big deal. It’s just a tube. Why is this so important to me? Well, it’s easy to recognize that the police presence, tactics, actions are intended to intimidate protestors; but I believe community intimidation to be the real focus of these overwhelmingly disproportionate displays of force. These police spectacles are staged over and over at Occupy events, an over reaction to fabricated danger that is simply not present at these events. In a self-validating cycle, it is the police presence itself that creates the appearance of a conflict that they must then police. The 1% are aware just how unpopular their policies are, and the consistent repetition of their “occupiers clash with police” mantra (delivered through their corporate media) is meant to discourage others from joining the movement. While OWS works to broaden the movement and make protest more accessible - the NYPD is tasked with forming a barrier between OWS and the community; via police lines, barricades, vehicles, etc. The implied message is “if you join these folks in protest, you may be subject to arrest.” The heavy police presence can be alarming to those of us who are not faced with it every day in our communities. For those at greater risk of arrest, deportation, etc. these patterns are all too familiar; but the choice to run the gauntlet, when NYPD has been deployed as a barrier to participation, cannot be an easy one to make. It’s a set up. The 1% want you to believe that in order to join the movement, you have to be willing to breach that barrier, to risk arrest. But this is a distraction - the police should not be the focus of Occupy, a manufactured conflict to siphon off our creative energy. The NYPD officers are by definition part of the 99%, being played as pawns to protect the king. It is up to us to stay focused and not let the one percent use us in a similar fashion.

Over the last year we have heard numerous statements by the Secretary of State and even the President himself concerning protection of freedom of speech and freedom of assembly in Egypt, Syria, Libya, Iran, Russia, etc. but they have been entirely mute when it comes to the crackdown on those same freedoms here in the United States. It was Chicago Mayor Rahm “Rahmbo” Emanuel that presided over the arrest of more than 300 Chicago occupiers during the shut down of their encampment. I called the White House to inquire when the President would be contacting his former Chief of Staff, to ask him why people were being arrested for exercising their 1st Amendment rights. Not surprisingly - they had no answer for me. Within a matter of weeks numerous occupations that had sprung up all over the US (and the world) were systematically shut down one by one, with New York, Oakland, Oregon, Denver, and Zurich forcibly cleared in a single night. When folks talk about the demise of Occupy and/or its disappearance from the headlines, it seems like such nonsense to me - like a self fulfilling prophecy. When the main stream media shows up to a demonstration hours after all the demonstrators have been forcibly removed and claims that the demo is a dud because no one showed up, do you buy what they are selling you? When a New York City Councilman is shoved by NYPD three times at the OWS one year anniversary, do you hear about it on the news? When another New York City Councilman was roughed up and arrested during the raid on Liberty Square, does Mayor Bloomberg / Commissioner Kelly apologize? With over 7000 US Occupy activist arrests, some 2,500 in NYC alone, when will our government address the issue?

The Wisconsin protests last year are a powerful example of what is possible when people stand in solidarity and can see past the political double speak of 1% politicians. The outcome of the recall effort reminds me of those “self fulfilling prophecies” hurled at Occupy. A thirty million dollar Walker war chest was countered with lukewarm support from the DNC and a hours before election day tweet of support from the President. Despite all the talk of community and grassroots organizing in the 2004 Obama campaign, it seems pretty obvious that supporting a recall made possible through popular protest was just not a priority. A victory that might embolden people to think they can actually make the “change” themselves might not be the best strategy for an incumbent in an election year, especially if you have to share that year with Occupy... One of the things that stood out to me about the Wisconsin protests was the bridge that was formed by the participation of the local police. The Madison police were there in solidarity with their union brothers and sisters, but they could speak to their fellow officers in the Capitol Police as brothers and sisters as well. So is it somehow possible to duplicate this kind of bridge in NYC, to lessen the grip of the 1% on New York’s Finest? A few weeks back I asked a friend from Wisconsin what it would take to get the local Madison police officers out here to march with OWS, today I read a joint statement from the Madison Professional Police Officers Association and Dane County Deputy Sheriffs Association: “The right to free speech and the right to peaceful assembly are two of the fundamental rights upon which our democracy is based. Since the birth of our nation, the courts have taken great pains to protect these rights vigorously, and view any infringement upon these rights with great skepticism. We believe the recent enforcement action at the Capitol clearly violates these rights in a way that should be unacceptable in a free society.”

Read the statement in its entirety here
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OWS never got that apology from Bloomberg and Kelly, but there is this
 

OTHER OBSERVATIONS ON (FOR) OCCUPY

The first thing I noticed when I became involved with the OWS movement was that it had an intuitive quality that I had not seen in other organizing I had been part of. In my past organizing I often found myself championing some specific point or other that I felt was so utterly essential to the success of the action being planned. I worried that we might be missing yet another opportunity if these specific points were overlooked. My feelings were certainly a function of the desperation I felt to stop the suffering that was being piled upon the world, but they were also tied to my belief that our actions could be more focused, more meaningful, and more widely received if we would only put that extra bit of forethought into them. When I started attending Occupy actions I noticed myself immediately starting to think along those same lines, “if only we… then our outcome might be…” But something was very different. I imagine my not being there from the beginning in organizing meeting after organizing meeting might have something to do with my perception, but it really felt like something new was happening. I started telling friends that Occupy was “self-correcting.” It’s hard to explain, but I found that whenever I noted some potential obstacle to the movement (and felt the accompanying feeling of urgency to remedy the situation) - I found that OWS as a whole seemed to recognize and remedy the situation before I could take any action myself. This intuitive quality allowed me to step back and not feel so desperate to be centrally involved.

So I find myself with a bit of an internal dilemma. I have such respect and gratitude for the tremendous scope and potential of OWS that I am often concerned about imposing my own limited perspective and perceptions on others within the movement. There is always the nagging thought - but what if I am wrong about this? But lately it occurs to me that if our collective intelligence (and intuition) are the core of our movement, then we really do need to be sharing our thoughts openly; not for the sake of ego, or for the sake of being right, but with the recognition that it is through the thoughtful participation of each of us that this movement grows and evolves. So I offer the following thoughts with love and mindfulness to my Occupy sisters and brothers.

The initial 1% response to Occupy Wall Street was to write us off as a bunch of do-gooder trust fund kids, who had nothing better to do than camp out complaining about our first world problems. The mass media mocked us saying that our use of smart phones and lap tops was proof that we weren’t really the disenfranchised poor that we claimed to be. The most common taunt heard near Liberty Square was “get a job.” I found the duplicity of these criticisms stunning, but these are just the most recent example of the us against them strategy deployed so successfully by the 1% (to strip young movements of their organizing power). When I was in College it was the “cultural elite” (hard to believe Dan Quayle came up with this one on his own) who were responsible for all of society’s ills. Under Reagan it was “welfare queens.” In Wisconsin it was the unions that were bankrupting the state. These fabricated conflicts are designed to misdirect the legitimate outrage of the people away from those actually responsible for our common oppression. And while we so righteously fight among ourselves, the 1% quietly (and often not so quietly) continue pillaging our labor, our resources, and our world.

So why are we so easily duped into this fabricated conflict? Well, I think it starts with a clever little bait & switch approach to our core identity as Americans.* At a very young age we are presented with a vision of our society firmly rooted in the concept of scarcity. Our own internal vision of our society (whatever that might be) is systematically replaced with this new vision that celebrates independence, competition, and the work ethic. The feeling of belonging and sense of purpose engendered through acceptance of these new ideas is a powerful motivation for impressionable young minds. This is the bait. The switch involves linking these new ideas and feelings to a new identity as “American.” I believe this to be the more significant step of our indoctrination, because while establishment of the core ideas is important, it is the implied threat of losing our new found feeling of belonging that steers us clear of critique and deviation from those ideas. And it is through this process that any suggestion of an alternative set of core ideas, in fact any critique at all, is easily cast as un-American, anti-freedom, etc.

Our adherence to these core ideas has manifested in some curious ways, each with it’s own internal mechanism for reinforcing the status quo. The emphasis on independence and personal liberty has created a kind of “culture of doubt,” where people find it necessary to strike a defensive posture even when they are in agreement with others. We have fetishized our freedom of choice to such an extent that the act of choosing takes precedence over questioning the choices we have been given. Within this framework, making up one’s own mind appears to be in direct conflict with any manner of collective decision making or collaboration. Setting out independence as a virtue unto itself does not allow us to evolve ideas or come up with alternatives through constructive dialogue and interaction, rather it instructs us to remain apart to avoid the undo influence of others who may want to change our opinion. The powerlessness that people feel in their lives further intensifies adherence to their existing beliefs - simple choices becoming noble causes to be defended at all costs. And herein lies the contradiction: while we are taught to value independence, our ability to think independently is crippled through strict adherence to the concept. With this wholesale rejection of dialogue, our ability to evolve our own ideas stagnates, and we are made dependent on the choices that are provided for us.

Similarly, when we are taught to value competition, we are not informed that a few select players will not be required to follow the rules of this game. These few players will be allowed to make off with the lion’s share of the treasure, leaving us to compete for the remaining scraps. Here again our adherence to the core idea keeps us paralyzed, so busy struggling to make ends meet that we have little time and even less resources to challenge the authority of those hoarding the wealth. When our President speaks of America “winning the future,” I find myself questioning - who will lose? This construct of winners and losers is meant to force our participation in the competition. After all, you can’t win if you don’t play; and if you don’t play, you will most certainly lose.

In my previous Occupy post I wrote “Inherent here is a recognition that the vast majority of the work we do is ultimately not for our benefit at all, but solely to produce profit for the 1%. And the 1% are relying on our tacit participation in order to continue to harvest the wealth from us.” The work ethic, like the values of independence and competition, is yet another strategy of self-enforced obedience. Like the other two, it is used as both carrot and stick. The carrot is the fabled American Dream - “if I work hard, I can make it.” The stick comes in the assertion that those who are unemployed, or do not work hard enough, are solely responsible for their own lack of success. It was this stick that was used over and over to berate occupiers at Liberty Square. It was intended to silence the truth that many occupiers actually had jobs, that many had actually sacrificed the security of having a job to be there, and that a large number were at Liberty specifically because they could not find work (or there was no work for them to find). For years I have heard the “get a job” taunt callously hurled at my homeless brothers and sisters, many of whom were now occupiers themselves. The irony was not lost on me. Witnessing thousands standing in solidarity, each with their own personal story, no longer simply demanding jobs but fundamentally questioning the value of the work ethic as a measure of our worth as human beings, the simplistic “get a job” retort seemed particularly absurd. As in Wisconsin the 1% were relying on the work ethic to supply the needed distraction. The 1% were counting on Wisconsinites to forget their common economic struggles and instead buy into a delusion casting union members as lucky beneficiaries of a free ride at the taxpayers’ expense. Rather than being encouraged to come together and find ways to make their lives better, the people are duped into jealously attacking any progress that their sisters and brothers have fought long and hard to achieve. 1% politicians (corporate fat cats that they are) cynically ask, “why should they have it so good while you suffer so?” They aim to stem rising anger throughout our nation and the world, strategically directing it back at any and all willing to stand up for the common good. Draining every last cent from the public trust in the process is a nice bonus.

Occupy Wall Street isn’t so easily duped into this ridiculous misdirection of our energy, or are we? Organizing from inside of our own culture it’s easy to take for granted all the conditioned beliefs that have been imposed on us. When we compare our actions in the US to the mobilizations of our sisters and brothers around the world, we must remember to take into account the specific hurdles that are intrinsic to our culture and not judge ourselves too harshly if we do not see identical results. It is good strategy to seek out transformative opportunities within the obstacles we face, but we must also bear in mind that the solution/resolution we seek may not be contained in the problem itself. The open model of OWS is a fantastic engine for new ideas, but we need not reinvent the wheel to address every challenge. Fear of co-option should not be allowed to assuage us from seeking allies, both domestically and internationally, with whom we can share and evolve successful tactics and strategies. We need not assist the 1% by echoing their messaging when defending against their attacks, our energy is much better spent creating and outreaching our own. The 99% is by definition going to include people at all different levels of social and economic strata, all with their own relative perspectives on the most pressing challenges for OWS, so how can we recognize and release our conditioned defensiveness so that we can address these challenges without habitually casting one another as perpetrators of the crimes committed against us? Perhaps if we can give up ownership of the identities imposed upon us, refuse to play the roles that have been scripted for us, we’ll be better able to see one another as sister and brother. Making our solidarity conditional to agreement on every detail, or to our individual experiences of oppression being equal, would be ultimately self-defeating. The us vs. them dogma that we have been fed all our lives needs replacing, but this time with the feeling of belonging that evolves quite naturally when we stop fighting for independence, stop competing for superiority, and stop working hard to get ahead long enough to take to the streets.
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*I am once again using this term here to refer to those living in the USA, not to reference all of our sisters and brothers in the Americas.

MONEY OUT OF POLITICS?

For years now we’ve heard about corruption in politics, the influence of lobbyists, and the incompetence of politicians; but the Citizen's United decision and the election year cycle seem to have focused this dialogue more tightly. I am reading and hearing a single idea repeated over and over; it is essentially a concession that politicians must now do the bidding of their corporate sponsors or risk losing the funds necessary to win their respective elections.

Over the course of the Obama presidency this idea has evolved into a rationale for the passage of policy that the majority of people in the country do not want. Under threat of negative advertising and withholding of campaign contributions, politicians cast themselves as hapless victims of a system they have no control over. This relieves them of responsibility for the bad decisions they are forced to make. It is particularly disturbing to hear supporters of these candidates reduce their own critique to repetition of a variation on the single phrase, “What would you have them do? Their hands are tied.”

Americans* pride ourselves on our great empathy for others who are powerless to change their own circumstance. When our politicians present themselves as powerless to change the direction the country is headed, it is intended to resonate with our feelings of powerlessness in our own lives. Whether they feel your pain or they “know that times are tough,” they are recognizing your feeling of powerlessness and then relying on your empathy to validate their own appearance of powerlessness. If this is not an intentional fabrication, it is certainly a convenient one.

It occurs to me that by omission or by design, this powerlessness argument seems to miss two important points.

First, a growing number of our political officials are not simply under the influence of moneyed interests, but are in fact directly connected to the corporations that their policy decisions will affect; as former CEO's, major share holders, etc. Put simply, this is corporate leadership buying into office and then legislating for their own profit. I saw this in spades during Bush & Company's reign. Dick Cheney was CEO of Halliburton from 1995-2000, when he became Vice President. Halliburton received numerous no-bid contracts in connection with the Iraq War. The argument could have been made that the war was one for profit, but the media was seemingly too distracted by fictitious Weapons of Mass Destruction to investigate or even comment on this. Though Americans would support their President in defending the country, and even support defense contractors for a job well done, they might have had a different perspective if informed that those that stood to profit from the war were the same people that made the decision to go to war. Wholesale looting of the United States Treasury for private profit doesn't poll very well with voters.

Second, why don’t we have higher expectations of our political officials? On the campaign trail it is all “fight fight fight,” but why don't we expect them to act courageously on our behalf once they are in office? When they constantly reiterate the obstacles they face, no one asks them flat out what plans they are developing or what options they have for overcoming these obstacles. Isn't this their job after all? Why do we elect them/continue to elect them if they seem incapable of solving (or is it unwilling to solve) the problems we face? If you go to a demonstration and the society doesn't change the next day, you don’t just go home and give up. You have to be creative and come up with other ways of moving forward. If the authorities break up your protest, you can’t start using that as an excuse not to protest. It’s a self fulfilling prophecy. In Wisconsin the opposition senators left the state to keep the senate from achieving the necessary quorum to vote. They stood with their constituents and took action rather than spending time making excuses. What options do our political officials have available to them to solve the problems we face? Ask them if you don't know, tell them if you do, and above all talk to each other and come up with your own solutions.
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*I am using this term here to refer to those living in the USA, not to reference all of our sisters and brothers in the Americas.

OBSERVATIONS ON OCCUPY

This is a work in progress, a living document: a collection of my thoughts as they are today. I have come to this particular moment through the numerous conversations, dialogues and actions that I have participated in with my Occupy sisters and brothers over the last several months. My perspectives are also informed by the years that I spent organizing for peace & justice around the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and the parallel work organizing against Bush & Co. in all their “1%” guises. These thoughts rattle around my head incessantly and I am writing them up to add to the dialogue, to free them if you will. My hope is that others might evolve these ideas further, to help us all to grow the movement, to avoid repeating past mistakes, and to see opportunities where we might otherwise not think to look.

THE MODEL IS THE MOVEMENT

This observation seems pretty obvious to me, but I find that it is often misunderstood. I started using this phrase to get at the underlying irrelevance of the statement “what are their demands?” I don't think this was ever really meant as a question at all, but was simply presented as a rhetorical challenge to delegitimize the movement by labeling it as disorganized and lacking leadership. The news outlets that genuinely sought to report on the origins of the movement often sited the Adbusters poster which featured the headline “what is our one demand?” The headline was of course written prior to the occupation of Liberty Square and never actually adopted as a slogan of the movement, but for weeks it was used to hammer away at OWS as if it was a necessary prerequisite for a social justice movement to follow the rules set by the society that it was attempting to change. If reporters had taken the time to investigate the new organizational models that were being developed within OWS, they might have begun to understand how absurd the question of demands actually was.

Here's my take on it. Demands are rooted in the idea that someone has something that you want and if you negotiate with them they may give it to you. The collective bargaining process pits the leverage of the united workers against the interests of the managers (employers). In that model, management must respond to the demands of the workers to avoid a potential strike. Labor is similarly tethered to management because it is management that provides the salary and job to begin with. Though this is a perfectly sound organizing model, I don't see it as relevant to Occupy. I don't believe Occupy is particularly concerned with asking nicely for a piece of the pie or a fair share, but is focused rather on the complete withdrawal of our consent for a system that is designed to keep us enslaved. Inherent here is a recognition that the vast majority of the work we do is ultimately not for our benefit at all, but solely to produce profit for the 1%. And the 1% are relying on our tacit participation in order to continue to harvest the wealth from us. In order to be sustainable within this culture we are going to have to come up with viable alternatives to the current economic system.

So this brings me back to the model is the movement. Traditionally political movement goals were attained through the concessions of those in power. A traditional “solution” to the sub-prime crisis (housing bubble crash) might take the form of a tax applied to all derivatives. Isn't this essentially a tax on the profits made from you losing your home? Do you really want a piece of that pie? Are you satisfied with getting a little bit back of what was yours to begin with? An alternative solution could involve stopping the 1% from making pie out of your suffering. It is these kinds of alternatives along with strategies for their development and mobilization that emerge through the Occupy model. There is a recognition that the essential power of a 99% movement lies in the diversity of knowledge, experience, and passion of the people involved. Establishing movement goals before everyone comes to the table, would not take advantage of these strengths and could even create resistance from folks who felt they were not included in the process. The open dialogue of the people made possible through the local occupations and assemblies creates a real sense of connection. And in turn this experience of community builds compassion and understanding. Within this atmosphere, we can’t help but begin to move toward the sustainable alternatives we want. To paraphrase Jack Gibb in his book Trust, the “goals” are ultimately a by-product of the movement. It is the movement, the process itself, that is the product.