Arun. I've been going down to OWSNY daily as well. The article is lovely but misses a key point of the occupation. The occupiers come from both the left and the right. People holding signs that say "End Capitalism" stand together with people holding signs that say "End the FED." In the first day or two of the occupation the self-declared "socialists" dominated the GA and scared away many of the libertarians, but the liberty community has returned, is growing and being accepted as more and more people realize that "progressives" and "libertarians" agree on the biggest issues of the day: the imperial wars, drug prohibition, debt and the Federal Reserve. Occupy Wall St isn't about "left" and "right", "progressive" or "conservative." It's about a process of direct democracy that is giving birth to a new political paradigm. Below is copy from a flier I've been handing out: *We Agree* *In 2008, presidential candidates Ralph Nader, Ron Paul, Cynthia McKinney, Chuck Baldwin and Bob Barr signed a statement declaring their agreement on the following principles:* *1. Foreign Policy: The Iraq War must end as quickly as possible with removal of all our soldiers from the region.* *We** *must initiate the return of our soldiers from around the world, including Korea, Japan, Europe and the entire Middle East. *We** *must cease the war propaganda, threats of a blockade and plans for attacks on Iran, nor should we re-ignite the cold war with Russia over Georgia. *We** *must be willing to talk to all countries and offer friendship and trade and travel to all who are willing. *We** *must take off the table the threat of a nuclear first strike against all nations. *2. Privacy: We **must protect the privacy and civil liberties of all persons under US jurisdiction.* W*e *must repeal or radically change the Patriot Act, the Military Commissions Act, and the FISA legislation. *We *must reject the notion and practice of torture, eliminations of habeas corpus, secret tribunals, and secret prisons. *We *must deny immunity for corporations that spy willingly on the people for the benefit of the government. *We *must reject the unitary presidency, the illegal use of signing statements and excessive use of executive orders. *3. National Debt: We **believe that there should be no increase in the national debt. *The burden of debt placed on the next generation is unjust and already threatening our economy and the value of our dollar. *We *must pay our bills as we go along and not unfairly place this burden on a future generation. *4. Federal Reserve We **seek a thorough investigation, evaluation and audit of the Federal Reserve System and its cozy relationships with the banking, corporate, and other financial institutions*. The arbitrary power to create money and credit out of thin air behind closed doors for the benefit of commercial interests must be ended. There should be no taxpayer bailouts of corporations and no corporate subsidies. Corporations should be aggressively prosecuted for their crimes and frauds. Source: http://www.votenader.org/weagree/ *Libertarians and Progressives agree on the important issues of the day:* *End the Wars, Protect Civil Liberties, Stop Accumulating Debt, Audit the Federal Reserve* *Don't let the corporate media divide us with their culture war. We agree. We must organize!* I'm at the library most days during the afternoon, between the GAs, with the Free/Libre/Open Solutions Working Group. I wear a very colorful hat. Come say hi! On Wed, Sep 28, 2011 at 6:43 AM, <[email protected]> wrote:
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I've been going down to the Wall Street protest nearly every day.Not only is it growing, it is amazing to see how the protesters have managed to create a non-commodified radical democratic space in the heart of global capital.
There is genuine potential in this occupation for revitalizing radical left movements and perhaps even achieving a historical victory.
But it will take a concerted effort from every single one of us. Please take a few minutes to read this -- it's short!
More important, please forward this to all your contacts asking them to join in and likewise pass along the call.
Best, Arun
The Revolution Begins at Home By Arun Gupta
What is occurring on Wall Street right now is truly remarkable. For over 10 days, in the sanctum of the great cathedral of global capitalism, the dispossessed have liberated territory from the financial overlords and their police army.
They have created a unique opportunity to shift the tides of history in the tradition of other great peaceful occupations from the sit-down strikes of the 1930s to the lunch-counter sit-ins of the 1960s to the democratic uprisings across the Arab world and Europe today.
While the Wall Street occupation is growing, it needs an all-out commitment from everyone who cheered the Egyptians in Tahrir Square, said "We are all Wisconsin," and stood in solidarity with the Greeks and Spaniards. This is a movement for anyone who lacks a job, housing or healthcare, or thinks they have no future.
Our system is broken at every level. More than 25 million Americans are unemployed. More than 50 million live without health insurance. And perhaps 100 million Americans are mired in poverty, using realistic measures. Yet the fat cats continue to get tax breaks and reap billions while politicians compete to turn the austerity screws on all of us.
At some point the number of people occupying Wall Street -- whether that's five thousand, ten thousand or fifty thousand -- will force the powers that be to offer concessions. No one can say how many people it will take or even how things will change exactly, but there is a real potential for bypassing a corrupt political process and to begin realizing a society based on human needs not hedge fund profits.
After all, who would have imagined a year ago that Tunisians and Egyptians would oust their dictators?
At Liberty Park, the nerve center of the occupation, more than a thousand people gather every day to debate, discuss and organize what to do about our failed system that has allowed the 400 richest Americans at the top to amass more wealth than the 180 million Americans at the bottom.
It's astonishing that this self-organized festival of democracy has sprouted on the turf of the masters of the universe, the men who play the tune that both political parties and the media dance to. The New York Police Department, which has deployed hundreds of officers at a time to surround and intimidate protesters, is capable of arresting everyone and clearing Liberty Plaza in minutes. But they haven't, which is also astonishing.
That's because assaulting peaceful crowds in a public square demanding real democracy -- economic and not just political -- would remind the world of the brittle autocrats who brutalized their people demanding justice before they were swept away by the Arab Spring. And the state violence has already backfired. After police attacked a Saturday afternoon march that started from Liberty Plaza the crowds only got bigger and media interest grew.
The Wall Street occupation has already succeeded in revealing the bankruptcy of the dominant powers -- the economic, the political, media and security forces. They have nothing positive to offer humanity, not that they ever did for the Global South, but now their quest for endless profits means deepening the misery with a thousand austerity cuts.
Even their solutions are cruel jokes. They tell us that the "Buffett Rule" would spread the pain by asking the penthouse set to sacrifice a tin of caviar, which is what the proposed tax increase would amount to. Meanwhile, the rest of us will have to sacrifice healthcare, food, education, housing, jobs and perhaps our lives to sate the ferocious appetite of capital.
That's why more and more people are joining the Wall Street occupation. They can tell you about their homes being foreclosed upon, months of grinding unemployment or minimum-wage dead-end jobs, staggering student debt loads, or trying to live without decent healthcare. It's a whole generation of Americans with no prospects, but who are told to believe in a system that can only offer them Dancing With The Stars and pepper spray to the face.
Yet against every description of a generation derided as narcissistic, apathetic and hopeless they are staking a claim to a better future for all of us.
That's why we all need to join in. Not just by liking it on Facebook, signing a petition at change.org or retweeting protest photos, but by going down to the occupation itself.
There is great potential here. Sure, it's a far cry from Tahrir Square or even Wisconsin. But there is the nucleus of a revolt that could shake America's power structure as much as the Arab world has been upended.
Instead of one to two thousand people a day joining in the occupation there needs to be tens of thousands of people protesting the fat cats driving Bentleys and drinking thousand-dollar bottles of champagne with money they looted from the financial crisis and then from the bailouts while Americans literally die on the streets.
To be fair, the scene in Liberty Plaza seems messy and chaotic. But it's also a laboratory of possibility, and that's the beauty of democracy. As opposed to our monoculture world, where political life is flipping a lever every four years, social life is being a consumer and economic life is being a timid cog, the Wall Street occupation is creating a polyculture of ideas, expression and art.
Yet while many people support the occupation, they hesitate to fully join in and are quick to offer criticism. It's clear that the biggest obstacles to building a powerful movement are not the police or capital -- it's our own cynicism and despair.
Perhaps their views were colored by the New York Times article deriding protesters for wishing to "pantomime progressivism" and "Gunning for Wall Street with faulty aim." Many of the criticisms boil down to "a lack of clear messaging."
But what's wrong with that? A fully formed movement is not going to spring from the ground. It has to be created. And who can say what exactly needs to be done? We are not talking about ousting a dictator; though some say we want to oust the dictatorship of capital.
There are plenty of sophisticated ideas out there: end corporate personhood; institute a "Tobin Tax" on stock purchases and currency trading; nationalize banks; socialize medicine; fully fund government jobs and genuine Keynesian stimulus; lift restrictions on labor organizing; allow cities to turn foreclosed homes into public housing; build a green energy infrastructure.
But how can we get broad agreement on any of these? If the protesters came into the square with a pre-determined set of demands it would have only limited their potential. They would have either been dismissed as pie in the sky -- such as socialized medicine or nationalize banks -- or if they went for weak demands such as the Buffett Rule their efforts would immediately be absorbed by a failed political system, thus undermining the movement.
That's why the building of the movement has to go hand in hand with common struggle, debate and radical democracy. It's how we will create genuine solutions that have legitimacy. And that is what is occurring down at Wall Street.
Now, there are endless objections one can make. But if we focus on the possibilities, and shed our despair, our hesitancy and our cynicism, and collectively come to Wall Street with critical thinking, ideas and solidarity we can change the world.
How many times in your life do you get a chance to watch history unfold, to actively participate in building a better society, to come together with thousands of people where genuine democracy is the reality and not a fantasy?
For too long our minds have been chained by fear, by division, by impotence. The one thing the elite fear most is a great awakening. That day is here. Together we can seize it.
-------------------------------------------- Arun Gupta is the editor of *The Indypendent. *
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