So the protest in New York dodged a bullet. The mayor backed off and the park wasn't stormed. Which is a good thing, because they weren't moving, and it would've been a bloodbath. I can't believe how easy it was though. The unity and decisiveness of the people there is really inspiring, they just drew a line and said "no." A quote from Gene Sharp comes to mind: "Dictators are never as strong as they tell you they are — and the people are never as weak as they think they are."
Tomorrow is where it's happening though. Protesters all around the world are taking to the streets in solidarity with the Occupy movement. Italy couldn't wait. Here's protesters in Milan today tossing fruit at riot police, and storming the offices of Goldman Sachs.
FUCK YEAH!
There's one going on in downtown Springfield tomorrow. But they're only wanting about 200 people, and actual numbers usually go well below estimates, so you know... meh. Springfield's sort of a moderate conservative town, so I doubt this will really do anything, aside from mental masturbation, and getting my Republican parents pissed off at seeing my face on the nightly news. I'd rather watch the bigger protests over the internet, where things matter. The real action's in New York and D.C. Here's a photo from the one in D.C., where protesters have been signing this huge banner.
John Adams, reflecting on his life in his old age, once estimated how much of the American population supported the revolution. He guessed that about a third of Americans supported it, a third opposed it, and a third remained neutral. That seems sort of similar to the Occupy movement. A new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll (WSJ is conservative) shows that 37% of Americans support the movement. But hey, only 18% oppose it! That's much better than Tea Party numbers, where only 28% support it, and 41% oppose it! Why the hell doesn't this "I don't know" 50% get off their damn fence, are they damn idiots or something?
A few organizations are throwing in their support, and I'm putting up their statements. You should take the time to read them. Here's one from a group of intellectuals, activists, and leftists in China, who oppose China's oppressive capitalist government:
The eruption of the “Wall Street Revolution” is an historical indicator that the popular democratic revolution that will soon sweep the world is set to begin. It is an especially significant and important event for this movement. Before this most recent action, street protests had virtually been exclusively used as a tool by US elite groups to subvert other countries. Now, however, the “Wall Street Revolution” – with its goals of shared prosperity and popular democracy – has launched protests in the country that is the self-proclaimed defender of democracy. This will inevitably strike a hard blow against the US elite group, itself responsible for the plunder and oppression of people all over the world, and the group that pushed the world into crisis and instability. The protests ring the death knell of the rule of capital. Popular democracy will replace elite democracy in the 21st Century, and the curtain has lifted on the movement from elite politics to popular politics. Using the language of the “Wall Street Revolution,” this is a struggle of the popular 99% against the corrupt 1%, a struggle of the popular 99% against the elite 1%,and is the final struggle of the popular forces against elite capitalist rule.
The world belongs to all of the people of the world. Countries belong to the entire people of those countries. Even moreso, wealth is produced by the entire people, and therefore should be shared by the entire people, it cannot be monopolized by the 1% – or even less than 1% – that is made up of an extremely small number of elites. The demand for common prosperity in economics, and popular democracy in politics has become an unstoppable historical trend! The rapid expansion of a fictitious economy and the massive flow of social wealth has created an amply reliable material foundation for the realization of the common wealth of all people. The development of internet technology and political civilization has created the conditions for human society to make the transition from capitalist democracy to popular democracy. Human society is fully capable of transforming, on the foundation of the past democracy of slaveholders, the democracy of feudal lords, and the democracy of the capitalist class, to make the fundamental shift from the democracy of the elites to real popular democracy. Common prosperity and popular democracy will become the main content of the historical transformation of the 21stCentury. No matter how brutally the American riot police will attempt to suppress the participants in the Wall Street revolution, no matter how much the global elites – especially those in the U.S. and China –try to suppress news of the Wall Street revolution, they cannot stop the vigorous growth and ultimate victory of the democratic revolution of the people of the world.
The violent repression and virtual blockade of news about the “Wall Street Revolution” by elite groups led by the US proves that the fate of oppressed people around the world is the same, regardless of whether they are from developed or developing countries, whether they are from so-called democracies or authoritarian countries. The international elite was the first class to link-up internationally via globalization. Their plunder of public wealth and repression of popular democratic movements is cruel and far-reaching, and utterly lacking in freedom and democracy. So-called freedom and democracy in modern society is nothing more than democracy for capitalism, an elite democracy. Freedom is another word for the elite to plunder, oppress and violently suppress others. Popular forces have been completely excluded from the freedoms and democracy of modern society, and the extent of democratic rights is to choose between presidential candidates that have already been vetted by capital. You can vote once every four years, but you have no way of affecting the people above you who directly determine your fate: your boss or superior. And there is no way of constraining the capitalist oligarchs who can take away the wealth of the majority of the population with the slight of hand of fictitious capital. Freedom and democracy have become a virtual game, nothing more than a tool to subvert other countries. Now the popular and democratic world revolution – symbolized by the “Wall Street Revolution”- demands an end to this political game, and that freedom and democracy be returned to the people. Democracy is not just a check on the president, but a check on government officials; democracy is not just a check on power, but a check on capital. If the rights and privileges of feudal and absolute rulers are understood to be a sin and abomination, then giving those rights to capital is also a travesty.
Securities and computer networks should have been two crucial elements of our shift from an industrial society to an information society, from a material economy to a virtual economy, from capitalism to a human-centered economic system, and from elite politics to popular politics. But the elite class has turned securities into a tool of appropriation akin to the ‘indulgences’ issued by middle-age church functionaries in Europe. In the new securitized economy, all the public’s wealth can easily melt into thin air – including their houses, wages, labor power and even their hope for the future. All these things have become the targets of appropriation by a tiny elite minority. Both the white-collar middle classes in developed countries – owners of fictitious property, and the blue-collar workers in developing countries who cannot afford housing or health care, belong in point of fact to the same class: modern proletariat. When the people protest the unprecedented plunder and vast income gap perpetrated by fictitious capital, they are met with violent repression – both in so-called democracy countries that claim to be defenders of human rights such as the US, and in authoritarian countries that are said to lack freedom and democracy. Faced with street protests erupting from the Balkans to North Africa, President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton have repeated over and over, “The rights of peaceful protest and the occupation of public space should be respected at all times.” Yet when US citizens attempt to exercise this right they immediately are faced with violent repression by armed police, and a blockade by the news media. If this is reaction of the US – the self-proclaimed leader in human rights – then we can imagine what the reaction will be in other capitalist countries. Rule by the capitalist elite is just as described by the “Wall Street Revolution” – everywhere. There is nowhere left were we can live and die as people.
The eruption of the “Wall Street Revolution” in the heart of the world’s financial empire shows that 99% of the world’s people remain exploited and oppressed – regardless of whether they are from developed or developing countries. People throughout the world see their wealth being plundered, and their rights being taken away. Economic polarization is now a common threat to all of us. The conflict between popular and elite rule is also found in all countries. Now, however, the popular democratic revolution meets repression not just from its own ruling class, but also from the world elite that has formed through globalization. The “Wall Street Revolution” has met with repression from US police, but also suffers from a media blackout organized by the Chinese elite.
The same fate, the same pain, the same problems, the same conflict. Faced with a common enemy in an elite global class that has already linked-up, the people of the world have only one option: to unite and in a unified and shared struggle overturn the rule of the capitalist elite, to ensure that everyone enjoys the basic human rights of work, housing, health care, education, and a secure old-age. But we must go further if we are to realize shared prosperity and popular democracy in a new socialist world historical framework, If we are to fully escape and neutralize the crises and disasters that capitalism has brought the human race, and realize harmonious social development.
The great “Wall Street Revolution” and the great popular “Chilean Winter” that preceded it signal that the day when we realize shared prosperity and popular democracy is approaching. It signals that worldwide popular and democratic socialist movement – dormant since the 1970s – is waking up again. But this time, it will be the final battle to put capitalism in its grave. The victory of popular democracy and death of elite rule are inevitable! The embers of revolt are scattered amongst us all, waiting to burn with the slightest breeze. The great era of popular democracy, set to change history, has arrived again!
Resolutely support the American people in the “Wall Street Revolution”!
Resolutely support all street protests pushing for shared prosperity and popular democracy!
Long live the “Wall Street Revolution”!
Long live the global movement for popular democracy!
Long live popular international solidarity!
FUCK. YEAH.
Here's a statement the Socialist Alliance released today:
The Occupy Wall Street protest started small. But it has now become a global movement, with occupy events planned in about 1500 cities worldwide.
It’s born out of the recognition that, in country after country, ordinary people are being made to pay for an economic crisis caused by the super-rich. The 99% are being told they must surrender their livelihoods, their future, their security and their dignity to keep a broken system afloat.
In contrast, the 1% are having a wonderful crisis. The world’s biggest corporations have emerged stronger, more profitable and more powerful than ever before.
To add insult to injury, the 1% want to convince us that we, the 99%, are to blame for the crisis. They say our wages are too high and that we don’t work hard enough. They say our social security systems are not affordable and that our rights at work are should be done away with. They say our public education and health systems are not efficient and that our public services must be privatised.
The occupy movement is raising a challenge to the power of the 1%. Its strength lies in its diversity, breadth, unity and grassroots democracy.
In New York, after two weeks of discussion, the protesters agreed on a declaration that said none of our big problems can be overcome unless the 99% can unite in a movement for real democracy.
The occupy movement has spread to Australia, with protests planned to start here from October 15.
It’s true the economic situation here is not yet as dire as in the US, where the richest 400 Americans have more wealth than the poorest 150 million.
But Australia is headed in the same direction. We should not wait to protest until things get as bad as the US, Spain or Greece, where inequality reigns supreme.
Inequality in Australia is large and growing. Already, the richest 20% of Australians have 61% of the wealth. The poorest 20% have just 1% of the wealth. Australia’s richest 11 individuals have more than the poorest 800,000 households combined.
Further, there are many reasons why we should take this opportunity to start to bring Australia’s own 1% to account.
We should occupy because White Australia has occupied stolen Aboriginal land for more than two centuries. The dispossession of Aboriginal land and culture continues today with the infamous Northern Territory intervention, which is forcing Aboriginal people from their traditional homelands. Today, Aboriginal Australians are the most imprisoned people in the world. To Australia’s eternal shame, their life expectancy is still 19 years lower than other Australians.
We should occupy cities in Australia because the richest mining and energy corporations already occupy our atmosphere, pumping it full of greenhouse gases and ignoring the warnings from scientists that climate change threatens to destroy life as we know it.
We should occupy because coal seam gas and other fossil fuel companies already occupy our farmlands, our forests, our drinking water catchments and our communities. With government support, the fossil fuel industry has free reign across the country, regardless of the serious health and pollution risks.
We should occupy because the Australian military already occupies other countries, and is bringing endless war and countless civilian deaths to Afghanistan.
We should occupy because Australian governments, Liberal and Labor, have occupied Australia with refugee detention centres — modern-day concentration camps that bring immense suffering to desperate asylum seekers that deserve our help.
We should occupy because government laws already occupy our relationships, denying the right of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex people to marry if they choose and making queers second-class citizens without equal rights.
We should occupy because restrictive anti-union laws already occupy our workplaces, denying the right of working people to organise to defend their rights at work.
We should occupy because governments have helped corporations occupy our public assets, turning services for the public good into profit machines for the 1%.
And we should occupy because Australia’s richest corporations already occupy our parliaments, state and federal.
The best democracy capitalism can deliver today is the right to tick a box once every few years. Between elections, corporations have open access to politicians while the rest of us are shut out, expected to bear the consequences in silence.
The 1% give millions to the big political parties each year and they demand a return on their investment. They skew the mainstream media debate in their interests because they are the mainstream media. They pour millions into cynical public relations and advertising campaigns. Corporate power over the political process is growing relentlessly.
The global 1% will not change their ways on their own account. Profit and greed are their only gods. Only the 99%, acting together, can put an end to the system of corporate rule and build something new in its place, a system that puts human need before corporate greed.
We won’t be silenced. Our power lies in our numbers. United as communities, with our unions and with each other, we can raise a challenge to corporate power.
FUCK. YEAH.
And this last one isn't from a group, but it's a great article about tomorrow's events. It sort of borders on propaganda, but hey, it gets the blood pumping.
It is five minutes to dawn and the wind smells like freedom
It is no longer five minutes to midnight. After Arab Spring leaps to Spain, and Greece, and on to New York’s Wall Street, it suddenly feels like five minutes to dawn.
We no longer need assume that there is no time to stop the world going to shit. There is an opening and we are flooding into it.
We are suddenly in a moment that is not marked by exhausted routine protests that speak for no one and speak to no one.
The oppressors (our common enemies) are no longer unchallenged — or more no longer unchallengeable. They are instead rocked backward, confused, bewildered, furious. The billionaire mayor of New York can’t clear a tiny park — and suddenly the question is not how to force the occupiers out, but whether he may be forced out of power if he pursues that course.
For so long, all of the things that leave people crying at night: the numbing global poverty itself, the painful loneliness of atomized non-community, the discarding of the old and the young, endless war for dominance, global structures of empire, the ravaging of nature, the manufacture of ignorance, intolerance and bigotry, the rape and casual daily brutality toward women — all of these things have seemed untouchable and permanent.
Now suddenly….a different day is approaching — where we can increasingly see and act in in startling ways, with rippling new impact. Ears perk up. Sights are raised. The pulse quickens. Suddenly we recognize the faces of others — once unknown to us — animated and awake with a common spirit. The powerful look discredited and vulnerable.
Morning is coming…. Go and wake the sleeping ones.
The hope of a radically new society, of abolishing capitalism, reveals it is far from exhausted. No, it suddenly springs from every pore. These occupations of dozens of city squares are a wind that heralds a coming storm.
This is a mood that produces actual revolutionary movements and dedicated militants of a new truth process.
Advanced, radical and discontented people who felt alone and isolated — suddenly realize they are millions. Allies emerge out of shadows, attracted by each early flame.
Networks congeal almost overnight. New thought jumps from human to human, morphing in each passage, adapting and refining. The forms of expression shake off the old and exhausted…A new generation invents its language from the messaging in the air.
Let’s understand what this is. Let’s recognize where we stand. Let’s embrace the possibilities within the new.
This break in the norm reveals what has already moved into place, and had long been building. And that revelation transforms everything — especially because we all see it together, in common, and recognize ourselves in that picture.
Be relentlessly impatient with this criminal system.
Be lovingly patient with each other — as we find the common language to act and transform.
Listen for the new. And grasp firmly to the truths that has so long been hidden and denied — but that we are now speaking from center stage.
Let’s seize the high moral ground (a precious position to hold), and never give it up. And be aware that thugs with suits and video cameras will be coming to snatch that ground away and portray us as fools, or dupes, or barbarians at the gate.
Above all: Let’s consciously go for the whole thing!
The change we want is about taking the accumulated wealth, technology, hard work, science, and connections of a complex global civilization — and finally (finally!) putting it into the service of us all, including the very least and previously powerless among us. It is about the voiceless suddenly speaking, and the wealthy suddenly becoming silent.
This is not about “budget financing” (!) but about power in the most fundamental sense. We don’t want to tax the zillionaires of finance capital — we need to rip their zombie hands from the throats of us all…. so we can breathe, perhaps for the first time in our lives. And so we can change the whole direction of the world.
The “freedom” we want is not the individual license promoted by smug Republican ideologues (the freedom of “up with me, you suck”). Instead, we need to seek the freedom of people, together, to shape their common world — an ethos of mutual caring and solidarity That is the freedom (the ability and possibility) that comes when new power of the people wrenches everything from the very few.
A revolution starts in ideas and mutual recognition. It then moves to the terrain of power.
At this moment: we can get a glimmer of how empires break, and how armies start to unravel. They don’t die on the battlefields, at least not at first — but in sudden re-allegiances of the young and awakening.
We cannot “take America back” — we never had it. But we can take over our own lives, our own planet and our common future — wrenching them away from sinister and hostile forces.
This moment of occupations is not about some concept of “America” anyway. It is global — because our society, our future and our biosphere are all global. This wave of contagious occupations and manifestations is about who will shape this beautiful blue orb as a whole. And we cannot allow that to be diminished and corrupted by slogans of America First.
The old “American dream” promised each one the ability to climb up upon the others. This new coming dream can be about a global community of mutual flourishing among human beings — about substituting community for the sale of humanity.
Let’s go for the whole thing. Let’s go for the future itself. Let’s save the only earth we have. Let’s aim to wipe out together the poverty of the many and the suffering of the abused.
Here at dawn, let’s envision the day we want, and make that revolutionary vision the center of debate, for once, and perhaps from now on.
FUCK. YEAH.
In closing, I think I'll just post this amazing video again from the other day
"But things can change—and sometimes they change very fast. Take the Civil Rights Movement in the United States: over a ten-year period, it was just a sea-change. Or take the feminist movement, which a lot of you are involved in: the changes came very fast. It went from being virtually nothing, a little nitpicking about activist groups having the women licking the stamps, and within a couple years it was a major movement, swept the country. When the time is right, things happen fast. They don’t happen without any basis—things have to have been happening for a long period. But then they can crystallize at the right time, and often become very significant."
Noam Chomsky
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