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Friday, September 30, 2011

Occupy Wall Street: FAQ for those still confused



Occupy Wall Street: FAQ


Q: I hear that Adbusters organized Occupy Wall Street? Or Anonymous? Or US Day of Rage? Just who put this together anyway?

A: All of the above, and more. Adbusters made the initial call in mid-July, and also produced a very sexy poster with a ballerina posed atop the Charging Bull statue and riot police in the background. US Day of Rage, the mainly internet-based creation of IT strategist Alexa O’Brien, got involved too and did a lot of the early legwork and tweeting. Anonymous—in its various and multiform visages—joined in late August. On the ground in New York, though, most of the planning was done by people involved in the NYC General Assembly, a collection of activists, artists and students first convened by folks who had been involved in New Yorkers Against Budget Cuts. That coalition of students and union workers had just finished a three-week occupation near City Hall called Bloombergville protesting the mayor’s plans for budget cuts and layoffs. They had learned from the experience and were itching to do it again, this time with the hope of having a bigger impact. But no one person or group is running the Wall Street occupation entirely.

So nobody is in charge? How do decisions get made?

The General Assembly has become the de facto decision-making body for the occupation at Liberty Plaza, just a few blocks north of Wall Street. (That was Zuccotti Park’s name before 2006, when the space was rebuilt by Brookfield Properties and renamed after its chairman, John Zuccotti.) Get ready for jargon: the General Assembly is a horizontal, autonomous, leaderless, modified-consensus-based system with roots in anarchist thought, and it’s akin to the assemblies that have been driving recent social movements around the world, in places like Argentina, Egypt’s Tahrir Square, Madrid’s Puerta del Sol and so on. Working toward consensus is really hard, frustrating and slow. But the occupiers are taking their time. When they finally get to consensus on some issue, often after days and days of trying, the feeling is quite incredible. A mighty cheer fills the plaza. It’s hard to describe the experience of being among hundreds of passionate, rebellious, creative people who are all in agreement about something.

Fortunately, though, they don’t need to come to consensus about everything. Working alongside the General Assembly are an ever-growing number of committees and working groups—from Food and Media to Direct Action and Sanitation. Anyone is welcome to join one, and they each do their own thing, working in tacit coordination with the General Assembly as a whole. In the end, the hope is that every individual is empowered to make decisions and act as her or himself, for the good of the group.

What are the demands of the protesters?

Ugh—the zillion-dollar question. Again, the original Adbusters call asked, “What is our one demand?” Technically, there isn’t one yet. In the weeks leading up to September 17, the NYC General Assembly seemed to be veering away from the language of “demands” in the first place, largely because government institutions are already so shot through with corporate money that making specific demands would be pointless until the movement grew stronger politically. Instead, to begin with, they opted to make their demand the occupation itself—and the direct democracy taking place there—which in turn may or may not come up with some specific demand. When you think about it, this act is actually a pretty powerful statement against the corruption that Wall Street has come to represent. But since thinking is often too much to ask of the American mass media, the question of demands has turned into a massive PR challenge.

The General Assembly is currently in the midst of determining how it will come to consensus about unifying demands. It’s a really messy and interesting discussion. But don’t hold your breath.

Everyone in the plaza comes with their own way of thinking about what they’d like to see happen, of course. Along the north end of the plaza, there’s a collage of hundreds of cardboard signs people have made with slogans and demands on them. Bystanders stop and look at them, transfixed, all day long. The messages are all over the place, to be sure, but there’s also a certain coherence to them. That old standby, “People Before Profits,” seems to capture the gist fairly well. But also under discussion are a variety of other issues, ranging from ending the death penalty, to dismantling the military-industrial complex, to affordable healthcare, to more welcoming immigration policies. And more. It can be confusing, but then again these issues are all at some level interconnected.

Some news reports have been painting the protesters as unfocused, or worse, as hopelessly confused and uninformed. Is there any truth to that?

Sure. In a world as complex as ours, we’re all uninformed about most things, even if we know about a few. I remember a police officer remarking of the protesters on the first or second day, “They think they know everything!” That’s how young people generally are. But in this case, noticing the over-concentration of wealth around Wall Street and its outsized influence in politics does not require a detailed grasp of what a hedge fund does or the current selling price of Apple stock. One thing that distinguishes these protesters is precisely their hope that a better world is possible. I might add that, for many Americans, such nonviolent direct action is the only chance of having a political voice, and it deserves to be taken seriously by those of us in the press.

How many people have responded to the Adbusters call? How large is the group? And how large has it ever been?

The original Adbusters call envisioned 20,000 people flooding the Financial District on September 17. A tenth of that probably ended up being there that day. Despite a massive Anonymous-powered online social media blitz, lots of people simply didn’t know about it, and traditional progressive organizations like labor unions and peace groups were uncomfortable signing on to so amorphous an action. Over the course of a difficult first week, with arrests happening just about every day, new faces kept coming, as others filtered out to take a break. The media coverage after last weekend’s mass arrests and alleged police brutality has brought many more. Now, during the day and into the night, one finds 500 or more people in the plaza, and maybe half that sleeping over. At any given time, several thousand people around the world are watching the occupation’s 24/7 livestream online.

Rather than a mass movement from the outset, this occupation has ended up depending on a relatively small number of highly determined, courageous young activists willing to sleep outside and confront police intimidation. But that is changing. As word spreads about it, the crowd has been getting older, more diverse. Already, though, this tactic of a somewhat rowdy occupation has garnered influence far greater than a traditional march would. After all, 20,000 marched on Wall Street on May 12—protesting bank bailouts and budget cuts for state employees—and who remembers that?

What would a “win” look like for the occupation?

Again, that depends on whom you ask. As September 17 approached, the NYC General Assembly really saw its goal, again, not so much as to pass some piece of legislation or start a revolution as to build a new kind of movement. It wanted to foment similar, like-minded assemblies around the city and around the world, which would be a new basis for political organizing in this country, against the overwhelming influence of corporate money. That is starting to happen, as similar occupations are cropping up in dozens of other cities. Another big occupation has been in the making for months, slated to begin on October 6 at Freedom Plaza in Washington, DC, and the organizers of that have been visiting Liberty Plaza on and off, learning all they can from its successes and mistakes.

I’ve heard some people saying, when Liberty Plaza was swamped with TV news cameras, “We’ve already won!” Others think they’ve hardly begun. Both, in some sense, are true.

Are there cops all over the square? How bad has the police brutality been? If I came there, what are the risks?

The police presence is nonstop, and there have been some very scary encounters with them—which also gave occasion for tremendous acts of courage by protesters. The worst incident was last Saturday, of course, but there has been very little trouble since then. A large contingent of protesters has no intention of getting arrested, and almost nobody is interested in taking pointless risks or instigating violence against people or property. The more that ordinary people join the cause—together with celebrity visitors like Susan Sarandon, Cornel West and Michael Moore—the less likely the police will probably be to try to suppress it. As one sign along Broadway says, “Safety in Numbers! Join Us!”

Nonetheless, challenging the powers that be—and doing so impolitely, outside the bounds of a permit—is never going to be 100 percent safe. To the extent that this movement is effective, it will also carry risks. If you take part, it’s not a bad idea to keep the National Lawyers Guild’s phone number written on your arm, just in case.

If I can’t come to Wall Street, what else can I do?

A lot of people are already taking part in important ways from afar—this is the magic of decentralization. Online, you can watch the livestream, make donations, retweet on Twitter and encourage your friends to get interested. People with relevant skills have been volunteering to help maintain the movement’s websites and edit video—coordinating through IRC chat rooms and other social media. Soon, the formal discussions about demands will be happening online as well as in the plaza. Offline, you can join the numerous similar occupations that are starting up around the country or start your own.

Finally, you can always take the advice that has become one of the several mantras of the movement, expressed this way by one woman at Tuesday night’s General Assembly meeting: “Occupy your own heart,” she said, “not with fear but with love.”

Monday, September 26, 2011

War Drawdowns Tempt Deficit Panel with $1.1T in Instant Savings

CommonDreams.org

Published on Monday, September 26, 2011 by The Hill (Washington, DC)

It's a move that's been dismissed as a budget gimmick, but it's also one that could make the supercommittee's job a whole lot easier: counting the savings of withdrawing troops from Iraq and Afghanistan.

"Exorbitant spending on failed wars that have killed thousands of Americans must not be exempt from budgetary scrutiny," the supercommittee wrote. "Before we ask American families to pitch in more, let's bring our troops home — and, in the process, our tax dollars home." (photo: Reuters/Mohammed Ameen As the 12 lawmakers on the panel begin searching high and low for at least $1.2 trillion in deficit cuts, they are eyeing once-sacrosanct areas like entitlements and weighing huge projects like tax reform.

If that weren't enough, a growing number of members, as well as the White House, are pressuring the supercommittee to "go big" and exceed its statutory target of $1.5 trillion in cuts.

But if the troop withdrawal is factored in, over a trillion dollars in savings is there for the taking, and at least for the time being, supercommittee members are not ruling it out.

"Everything's on the table," supercommittee member Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) said, when asked if such savings should be considered as part of the panel's mission.

In the president's proposal to cut the deficit, a major chunk of the savings in the bill comes from the withdrawal of troops following the "surge." Those savings come about because the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) assumes war spending will stay at the temporary levels of last year for the next 10 years when scoring savings.

The White House says $1.1 trillion will be saved by drawing down those troops from Afghanistan and making the U.S. presence in Iraq a civilian, not a military, one.

Given that the supercommittee must track down at least $1.2 trillion in cuts to avoid the triggering of automatic cuts, simply accounting for those savings would nearly get the panel there all by itself.

But trying to count those savings as significant deficit reduction has come under fire from top Republicans, who argue it is more budget wizardry than real savings, relying on a CBO loophole to pump up deficit-reduction claims.

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has dismissed the president's accounting on the matter.

“Do you think it’s fair to take a trillion dollars of less spending on wars and claim it as your own?" he said in a recent interview with Fox Business Network. "We all knew that we were going to spend less in the wars in Iraq and the wars in Afghanistan, but nobody really felt like we ought to be taking credit for what was already going to happen."

In July, the House Republican Conference blasted that accounting move as "phantom savings" and "budget deception" when it was included as part of Democrats' proposal to raise the debt ceiling. The conference is headed by Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas), who also co-chairs the supercommittee.

Hensarling's office did not respond to questions about whether he would oppose counting the withdrawal savings as part of the supercommittee's work.

For now, supercommittee members are reluctant to weigh in on any particular deficit-reduction approach, taking a broad perspective in public as the debate begins.

Baucus’s "Everything's on the table" has become the mantra of the supercommittee as a whole.

With the group just weeks old and in the earliest stages of negotiations, members are loath to begin picking and choosing what is off the table. So everything is on it.

But high-level talks to reduce the deficit have had a poor track record so far in this divided Congress, increasing the pressure on the supercommittee to succeed. In addition to the theatrics of the debt-limit fight, talks led by Vice President Biden fractured down party lines after weeks of work, and Congress came within minutes of a government shutdown earlier in the year.

"Failure is not an option," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said earlier this month. "The committee is structured to succeed."

In fact, counting surge savings is not even enough to satisfy some lawmakers. On Thursday, 70 members of the House, including four Republicans, called on the supercommittee to find even more in military savings by ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan altogether.

By cutting funding for those wars and winding down the American troop presence there, the lawmakers said the supercommittee could achieve $1.8 trillion in savings over the next decade.

"Exorbitant spending on failed wars that have killed thousands of Americans must not be exempt from budgetary scrutiny," they wrote. "Before we ask American families to pitch in more, let's bring our troops home — and, in the process, our tax dollars home."

Sunday, September 18, 2011

Less Is More: Less Work, Less Stuff, More Living

yes!

Less Work, More Living

Working fewer hours could save our economy, save our sanity, and help save our planet.

Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Organizing to Fight the Plutocracy

CommonDreams.org

Published on Wednesday, September 7, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

Yet what force on Earth is weaker
than the feeble strength of one?


-From Solidarity Forever by Ralph Chaplin, 1915

Before Labor Day fades into memory, let’s remember that most of the economic gains workers have made in the US, came about because people organized to secure their economic rights.

But now, as these economic gains are evaporating in corporate-funded clouds of conservative dogma and divisiveness, it is time to organize to secure our political rights.

Quite simply, corporations have stolen the political process and the rights of citizens, in much the same way they robbed people of their economic rights in times past.

Doubt that? Consider this:

Contrary to what the press, pundits, political advisors and our elected officials believe, on an issue-by-basis, the vast majority of Americans are progressives.

For example, most Americans were far more worried about jobs and economic growth than they were about the debt ceiling, yet Washington focused on the debt ceiling, foreclosing on our capacity to fund meaningful job-creating programs.

Single payer and the public option were favored by vast majorities in the health care debate, yet they were never seriously discussed by the White House or Congress and the few Congressional representatives who actually chose to represent the people’s views on health care reform were treated as if they were a lunatic fringe by their peers and by the press.

Americans overwhelmingly wanted to restore New Deal regulatory constraints on banking and the financial sector; it didn’t happen. Dodd-Frank was a watered down law that didn’t address too-big-to-fail, and didn’t restore Glass-Steagall.

Most people favored rescinding the Bush tax cuts for the rich; it didn’t happen.

The vast majority wanted social security, Medicare, and Medicaid protected; they’re all on the chopping block.

The majority of Americans have wanted to cut Defense spending and end the insane wars of choice for some time now; no sign that the wars will end, (the White House is actually negotiating with Iraq to stay there longer than our current agreement allows) and any cuts to Defense are likely to be in the range of a paltry $35 billion a year.

Most Americans want clean energy policies and investments; they want to get serious about dealing with climate change; they want to end mountain-top mining; they want environmental laws and protections, etc. etc. etc. They’re getting fossil-fueled business as usual served up with a heavy dose of green rhetoric, but just a dollop of support for green energy and little or no support for environmental protection.

It’s enough to make you think the people aren’t in charge anymore. (Did I just hear a big Homer Simpson, DOH?)

So, OK, it’s no secret that American governance has been purchased – lock, stock and barrel – by the plutocracy. They own it, they operate it, and they control it. And the same goes for the press.

What can we do about it?

The answer, when you think about it, is quite simple. We need to buy back our country. Here’s how.

We can organize and use our market power to: 1) build a Superpac that funds candidates who pledge to represent us – not the plutocracy; 2) expand the progressive base by being more strategic in our messaging and our goals; and 3) constrain corporate power. Let’s examine the first effort; building a focused Progressive Superpac.

The framework for such a Pac already exists. Efforts such as A Contract for the American Dream have elements of the idea and the organizational structure needed to make it happen. And Van Jones has the vision and credibility to make it work.

The ten steps outlined in the Contract could form the basis of a platform candidates would have to pledge to support to qualify for funds from the Progressive Superpac.

And in aggregate progressives are capable of generating enormous sums of money. There are approximately twenty five to thirty million self-indentified progressives – An average contribution of just $20 from each one would put a war chest together of half to three quarters of a billion dollars. That fields a lot of candidates and funds a lot of campaigns. Unions and other organizations could also contribute to the Superpac, making the war chest even bigger.

But to be effective, this money couldn’t be randomly distributed to candidates and causes deemed “good. ” If our experience with Obama proves anything, it is that rhetoric – no matter how eloquent – is cheap. The Progressive Superpac would be available only to candidates who signed a pledge to support progressive principles, and the Pac would monitor their performance and condition future support on how closely they adhered to honoring the pledge. Think Grover Norquist in reverse.

Aggregating our resources around a higher moral and ethical compass, would buy us access and influence, just like big Pharma, Exxon, or the Chamber of Commerce, except it would be on behalf of the people, not the plutocrats.

If government is for sale, our best hope is to put in a few bids and see if we can buy it back. If we are successful, we might even return the governance of this country to “We the People,” instead of the America we have now: A country for the corporations, by the corporations and of the corporations.

John Atcheson's writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the San Jose Mercury News, the Memphis Commercial Appeal, as well as in several wonk journals. He is currently at work on a fictional Trilogy that centers on climate change. Atcheson's book reviews are featured on Climateprogress.org. Email to: jbatcheson@gmail.com