Let's be honest, we're Democrats so we're supposed to be anyway, our party is broken. It's split between our own left and right wings. When we had the majority in both houses we couldn't pass any decent legislation because our conservative side votes for what their corporate masters want and the hell with the middle/working/lower classes. The corporate/super wealthy/grotesquely wealthy not only have an entire political party, a propaganda network (Fox News) and way too many other organizations to mention shilling for them, they have a pretty good percentage of our party shilling for them too.
Not too hard to imagine that a lot of folks feel left out of this whole representative form of government thing, it's not and they're right. I'm just pretty sure that this is what the framers of the Constitution had in mind when they conceived that very revolutionary, very liberal document that placed the power of the new nation in the hands of it's citizens. And that would be it's human citizens not the recent right wing Supreme Court made corporate citizens.
So, here's a little something to get you caught up just what Occupy Wall Street (OWS) is really all about. It's from Time and written by Ishaan Tharoor.
With the Occupy Wall Street protests gaining steam in the
U.S., it seems obvious to link it with the other grassroots movement that
recently shook up American politics — the Tea Party. My colleagues' pieces number
among a flurry of others pondering the parallel. Michael Scherer recast Occupy Wall Street
as the Tea Party
of the American left. Roya Wolverson suggested how the two
movements, coming from diametrically-opposed sides of the political spectrum,
could find common ground (and perhaps actual policy influence) in their mutual
distaste for a Washington dominated by the vested interests of corporations. But
while the similarities are noteworthy, they obscure more relevant truths about
Occupy Wall Street, the supposedly inchoate movement that has transfixed the
American media in recent weeks. I enumerate these truths after the jump.
1.
Occupy Wall Street is an expression of a global phenomenon. A cursory
glimpse at newspapers over the weekend would have shown scenes of mass protest
across European capitals and cities elsewhere in the world, all in solidarity
with the anti-greed protesters in New York. The Tea Party, for all its early
brio, commands no such solidarity, nor does it care for it. It's a
hyper-nationalist movement in the U.S., lofting the totems of the Constitution
and the flag. Few viable political factions across the Atlantic advocate the Tea
Party's anti-big government, libertarian agenda (though the xenophobic,
culturally-conservative wing of the Tea Party would perhaps see eye to eye with
Europe's Islamophobic far-right). (See photos frome the Occupy Wall Street protests.)
Many of the Occupy Wall Street's
participants, on the other hand, consciously see themselves as part of a
worldwide uprising, a flame first kindled by the Arab Spring and borne across
the Mediterranean by anti-austerity protesters in Europe. In all three settings,
social media has played a vital role in mobilizing and organizing the
disaffected and the disenfranchised. In all three settings, activists and
protesters have drawn to varying degrees from a toolbox of leftist, anarchist
protest tactics and made do with minimal institutional support or funds. And in
all three settings, the protesters have pulled together sympathizers from across
myriad political camps within their countries and somehow made a virtue out of
their movement's lack of central leadership. The U.S. economy may not be facing
the same existential pressures as those of Greece or Spain, nor are American
protesters facing the sort of desperate brutality meted out on brave dissidents
in Tunisia, Egypt, or Syria. But the call for social justice echoes the same
across continents.
2. Occupy Wall Street is fueled by
youth. Reporters covering the ongoing occupation of Zuccotti Park have
encountered and profiled a host of characters from all walks and stages of life.
One of my favorite interviews so far has been Marsha Spencer, a 56-year-old
grandmother who can be found on weekends at the Park's western edge, knitting
gloves and scarves for fellow protesters. She makes no bones about what's
driving Occupy Wall Street — young people: college students saddled with years
of debt, 20-somethings struggling to land a job, and an entire generation
banging its head on what seems to be the ever-lowering ceiling of their
possibilities. "It's all about them," Spencer told me on a rainy morning last
week in Zuccotti Park.
Not true for the Tea Party, whose typical
supporter is older, wealthier, and whiter than the American demographic average.
It is a movement, by and large, of the haves — not the have nots. "It's
essentially reactionary," says David Graeber, a professor of anthropology at
Goldsmiths College, University of London, who helped set up Occupy Wall Street's
much-heralded General Assembly and is one of the first people to push the
movement's now ubiquitous slogan 'We are the 99%'. "The Tea Party core group is
white middle-class Republicans who are angry that they seem to be losing their
position of preeminence in society." The ranks of Occupy Wall Street, on the
other hand, are most heavily populated by young people, who, says Graeber, "are
supposed to be the ones at the forefront, re-imagining their society." Their
protest fits into a long continuum of student and youth rebellions, most
recently seen in the Mediterranean rim countries mentioned above. (See "'The Whole World Is Watching': Occupy Wall Street Stares
Down the NYPD.")
3. Occupy Wall Street may prove much harder to co-opt into the political mainstream. Many have speculated what direction Occupy Wall Street will turn as it picks up momentum and encroaches on the U.S. 2012 Presidential campaign. Will the protest get co-opted by the country's big unions? Will D.C.-based advocacy groups like MoveOn.org try to exploit for its own ends the success of motley, diverse bands of protesters occupying dozens of downtowns across the U.S.? And, most importantly, will Occupy Wall Street radicalize the Democratic base the way the Tea Party energized the far-right of the Republicans?
At present, it's hard to see how Occupy Wall
Street can generate the left-wing, Democratic versions of Rand Paul or Michele
Bachmann. Few of the protesters one speaks to have any tolerance for either
political party, which they say are both equally enmeshed in a political system
entirely beholden to vested corporate interests. The Tea Party, boosted by
financial titans and one of the U.S.'s most influential cable news network, was
able to make the leap from grassroots anger to effective Beltway politicking.
Occupy Wall Street has no such benefactors nor mouthpiece, and will have to
undergo a massive — and potentially divisive — transformation should it become
the sort of tempered, streamlined (what many would deem 'compromised') political
player that can actually throw its weight behind the Obama Administration. For
the time being, it remains a social movement far more interested in the sort of
"direct democracy" practiced during occupations than that which gets negotiated
in the corridors of power in D.C. The sentiments below may have been expressed
by an exasperated Greek blogger in June, but they reverberate around Zuccotti
Park today: (Watch TIME's video "The Friday Showdown at Occupy Wall
Street.")
We will
not suffer any more so that we can make the rich, even richer. We do not
authorise any of the politicians, who failed so spectacularly, to borrow any
more money in our name. We do not trust you or the people that are lending it.
We want a completely new set of accountable people at the helm, untainted by the
fiascos of the past. You have run out of ideas.
4.
Occupy Wall Street still believes in politics and government. And this
is where another important line has to be drawn. Whereas much of the Tea Party's
programmatic ire seems directed at the very idea of government — and trumpets
instead the virtue of self-reliance and the inexorable righteousness of the free
market — Occupy Wall Street more sharply decries the collusion of corporate and
political elites in Washington. The answer, for many of the protesters I've
spoken with, is never the wholesale dismantling or whittling away of the
capabilities of political institutions (except, perhaps, the Fed), but a subtler
disentangling of Wall Street from Washington. Government writ large is not the
problem, just the current sort of government.
Because, at the end of the day, Occupy Wall
Street, like most idealistic social movements, wants real political solutions.
Excited activists in Zuccotti Park spoke to me about the advent of
"participatory budgeting" in a number of City Council districts in New York — an
egalitarian system, first brought about in leftist-run cities in Latin America,
that allows communities to dole out funds in their neighborhoods through
deliberation and consensus-building. It's the same process that gets played out
every day by the activist general assemblies held in Zuccotti Park and other
occupation sites around the U.S. To the outside observer, that may seem
foolishly utopian — and impracticable on a larger scale — but it's a sign of the
deep political commitments of many of the motley protesters gathering under
Occupy Wall Street's banner. They want to fix government, not escape from it.
About 60% of Americans support OWS, so this should be a fun political season. Enjoy.
Later
