Occupy Movement Solidarity: Where are the Professors?

by Matt Reichel / October 19th, 2011

Absent from the occupy protests throughout this country, as with most meaningful movements in recent memory, are faculty of our major universities. Aside from the symbolic arrest of Cornel West and passive words of support from Noam Chomsky, the academic profession has been notably absent from this exhilarating movement.

This is particularly bothersome because one of the primary grievances of the protestors is the cost of higher education, and the larger role of indebtedness in informing the present precariousness of young people. Education debt, even more than housing debt, plays a repugnant role in this society, insofar as it preys on the young and ambitious, ultimately leaving citizens shackled to the financial industry for the bulk of their adult lives. Before anyone is capable of making sound fiscal decisions in life, they find themselves five-figures in the red, just for doing what they grew up believing to be the “right thing.”

When British students rallied against fee increases last year, professors were present alongside. The same goes for several waves of protests dealing with fees and the precariousness of youth in France, dating back to the CPE protests of 2006. These alliances between students and faculty were integral to the growth and widespread popularity of these movements. Meanwhile, the student-professor alliance has historically explained the affordability of higher education throughout Western Europe.

In the United States, we see no such alliance. Professors will offer themselves as speakers at rallies or teach-ins, maintaining a top-down relationship with students, but will rarely support as brothers-in-arms. This stems from a social authoritarianism in this culture, where the opinions of the credentialed are taken more seriously than the “commoner.” As someone who has experienced living on both sides of the Atlantic, I can say that Americans have a problem trusting your average person. Rather than judging someone based on the merit of their argument, the American tends to ignore the argument and judge based on ceremonial merit (such as whether the person has a PhD or not.) As such, professors have generally only been involved as credibility lending figureheads in American social movements.

I am happy that Dr. West has participated in this protest, but wish that it wasn’t such a breaking story. He possesses no more intrinsic value than the other 99%, and should be busily organizing his colleagues at Princeton to join along on next visit. The same goes for Chomsky and his colleagues at MIT. If this vigorously anti-totalitarian movement is to thrive, we need the academic egos to dissipate and the academic masses to bring numbers to the protests.

For this to occur, they will have to identify their support as a moral imperative rather than mere intellectual exercise. By allowing the present system of higher education to continue without their condemnation, professors become complicit in the overarching moral crisis this country is facing. Since the beginning of the 80s, American wages have been stagnant, while the average cost of a college education has risen over 4-fold (adjusted for inflation). Meanwhile, we have seen nary a peep of moral outrage from faculty. By excluding Americans of modest means from the enrichment of the university experience, this country is hampering the human potential of millions of young people. By not providing quality higher education to all Americans for free (or a nominal fee), we remain a second-rate society.

Academics are ostensibly progressive in nature: you would expect such of open, intelligent minds. However, they have proven particularly meek in the United States. There are several reasonable explanations for this. For one, we have a climate of repression and anti-intellectualism that is simply not known throughout Western Europe. The recent experiences of Ward Churchill and Norman Finkelstein are evidence enough of this. Furthermore, large American research institutions tend to be located in small “campus towns” rather than inside major urban hubs, thus dislocating professors from the bulk of the industrial workforce. This design has served to de-radicalize labor through the last century, and also explains the lack of involvement of professors in the ongoing protests (though there are a few notable universities on Manhattan). Moreover, many professors enjoy tenure and six-figure salaries, thus outpacing their Western European counterparts. This serves to supplement their geographic isolation from labor with added socioeconomic distance.

Nonetheless, this professorial passivity must end: not solely for the aforementioned moral reasons, but also because professors have an important stake in this political moment. As austerity measures have placed an increasing pinch on the higher education system, knowledge is treated as more of a commodity than a social good. Universities are forced to run more like businesses than loci of the grands discours. This commodification of knowledge has resulted in the increasing social alienation of professors. Tight university systems, intent on cutting costs and increasing class sizes, will increasingly see professors as expendable. You compound this with the growing authoritarianism in post 9-11 America and professors will increasingly feel pressured to conform or produce favorable results (a la the University of Chicago Economics Department).

Lastly, professors possess great power to change the financial racket that poses as higher education in this country. They are the mode of production for that industry. A national professor’s strike committed to the long-haul will force states to close their budget shortfalls through progressive tax measures or sane monetary policy. The latter is just one way to address systemic pre-tax injustices in our economic system: spend money into existence rather than charging the people interest by lending into existence. Either way, forced with a non-compliant faculty at their flagships school, states will have to learn to get innovative, if that is possible with the class of charlatans that governs from both political parties.

Professors largely supported Barack Obama in the 2008 election. As with most other progressives in this country, they fell into the passivity of hope. At this juncture, we need them to muster the courage for action. It is their moral imperative, and also in their own interest. In order to defend the integrity of the academic profession, the vision of education as a social good and a right to all regardless of class, professors need to join the 99%. When is it going to happen?

Matt Reichel is a writer currently living in New Orleans. He can be reached at: mereichel@gmail.com. Read other articles by Matt, or visit Matt's website.

This article was posted on Wednesday, October 19th, 2011 at 8:00am and is filed under Activism, Education, Solidarity.

Occupy the future: Eight steps to being the 99 per cent

By Michael Kaufman

| October 18, 2011

The genius of the Occupy movement is the proclamation, from the outset, that it represents 99 per cent of the population.

That stands as a far cry from the huge youth movement in the late 1960s/early 1970s. We made a fundamental mistake in those days: we were not only content but we were thrilled to be a minority. We loved being different and outsiders. True, this gave us energy and a collective identity against a culture we despised and mistrusted. But we effectively abandoned the mainstream to the right.

This was more than a shame. It paved the way for 30 years of increasing social disparities and cuts to social services. At that time, the majority of people were what we'd now think of as liberal; many identified with ideas that now seem on the left. Even most conservatives of the day would have shuddered to hear the rhetoric of the Tea Party and their slightly less-lunatic cousins in governments from the United States to Canada, England and beyond. It should have been a golden time for progressive forces to permanently shift the social and economic landscape. True, we helped stop the war in Vietnam and true, we launched powerful movements (feminism, gay rights, environmental) and supported others (civil rights) that live on and have indeed reshaped mainstream thought. But in many ways, we failed.

The Occupy movement, now just at its beginning, has the potential to go beyond the New Left. After all, not since the U.S. right wing proclaimed itself the "Moral Majority" in the mid-1970s has anyone had the temerity to do two things: First, at a time when they were a minority, the right wing boldly declared itself the majority. Second, while the actual majority was questioning the morality of war, discrimination and inequality, the right wing claimed and captured moral momentum and the moral high ground.

The Occupy movement is boldly going beyond a statement that we are the majority by proclaiming we are the 99 per cent.

And here, then, is the biggest challenge: It's one thing to say we're the 99 per cent, it's quite another to be the 99 per cent.

Eight steps to being the 99 per cent

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1. To be the 99 per cent means, by definition, that we are claiming the mainstream.

We should not fear to be mainstream. Rather, if we believe that our ideas are good and just, then we should want those ideas to be accepted by the mainstream. If we know that our ideal of a low-carbon, sustainable economy is both necessary and practical, then we should want this ideal to be part of the status quo. If we know that a much more egalitarian society is a more humane, less violent, and more productive one, then we know these are ideals for everyone.

2. Claiming the mainstream does not mean, however, we have to fit into what the mainstream currently defines as "realistic."

Social, economic and political realism is what we collectively create. The current mainstream does not see it as realistic to spend billions to prevent the worst effects of climate change or to provide safe drinking water to the people of the world, but thinks it is "realistic" to spend trillions on wars or to bail out private banks. Our job is to help redefine what is realistic.

3. Creating bridges to the mainstream.

This is the biggest challenge to becoming the 99 per cent. It literally requires reaching that 99 per cent with our message. It requires facilitating a process for others to identify with our ideals -- to truly be the 99 per cent. In the months and years ahead, we need to find ways to create those bridges. We have to see ourselves as the bridge-builders: since we're coming from the outside with a new social and economic vision, we can't expect, in advance, that our sisters and brothers of the 99 per cent will automatically see things our way. It is our job to reach out to them. This has many practical implications: It means going to where people are to engage in a respectful discussion to win them to our views; to places of worship and classrooms, shopping centres and workplaces, unions and service clubs, seniors homes and community groups, and the media. We will be confronted with many who disagree, even demonize us. Our job is to model respect, refuse to demonize others, and to present our ideas in language that each group can most easily identify with and see as their own. Why? So they will best discover ways to articulate our common vision to those around them.

4. Creating bridges also means forming common cause with people and organizations we may not agree with about many things but with whom we can find principled areas for a united voice.

This can be uncomfortable and difficult for us to accept! But, for example, a trade union might support an environmentally disastrous industry, but we can find common cause to speak with one voice about social and economic inequalities. Similarly, a church group may oppose abortion rights, but we can find ways to speak together for measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions or for public health care. A student association may support military spending, but we can work with them to insist that education should be available to all. Those things we disagree about are indeed critical issues and for those who've been active so far in the Occupy movement, we know these issues are all linked to our concerns. But if we truly want to be the 99 per cent, we have to see that the 99 per cent includes many people we disagree with about fundamental matters. The question is how to engage in a healthy discussion with them? How do we work together to advance our common objectives? Working together, we can agree to disagree on things dear to both our hearts, but also strive to have an ongoing and respectful conversation about those differences. Again, if we truly believe our ideas should and will be the ideas of the majority, we need to have some faith in our long-term capacity to have an impact on others. Nothing greater will threaten the 1 per cent than forms of unity, in spite of many differences, among the 99 per cent!

5. Don't worry about the naysayers who criticize us for not having "clear demands."

The most powerful thing about the Occupy movement is that it is unleashing a society-wide conversation about social inequality and, to a lesser extent, a range of other human rights, social, political, and economic issues. That in itself is a huge victory in only a month. A big part of our work is to nurture that conversation.

6. At the same time, it is important that we continue to encourage streams of conversations about economic, social and political alternatives.

There's nothing wrong with having answers! What are some practical measures to greatly reduce social and economic disparities? What does a more democratic society look like? How can we deepen political democracy and extend democracy to control of the economy? What parts of the economy should be public services and not in private hands? How can we develop effective global income taxes and global responses to climate change and economic disparities? How can public policies encourage the growth of diverse economic models including more cooperatives, more public ownership, more small business, and more non-profits with the type of power and impact that large corporations now monopolize? What do we need to do to ensure sustainable economies? And much, much more.

7. Be suspicious of those who want to polarize and of those who preach violence or the destruction of property (no matter how venal are the owners of that property).

Such actions are the dead ends of social movements. They are the hallmarks of powerlessness. They will isolate us. They will stop us from becoming the 99 per cent.

8. Trust our capacity to live the changes we believe in. Trust our capacity to win over the great majority to our beliefs.

Trust that we can model respect and compassion. Trust that we have the capacity to build bridges and patiently change minds. Trust that we will be part of finding new answers. Trust that we can truly be the 99 per cent.

Michael Kaufman is a writer, educator, and the co-founder of the White Ribbon Campaign, the largest effort in the world of men working to end violence against women. Follow him on Facebook and on Twitter @GenderEQ.

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Statement from Occupy Wall St

Winter Patriot Community Blog

Statement from Occupy Wall St

Wed, 10/05/2011 - 10:02 — newjesustimes

I received this in my email this morning from a mailing list I'm on called NationofChange. I endorse this message

Dear Readers,

What follows is the first official, collective statement of the protesters in Zuccotti Park:

As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies. As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known. * They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage. * They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses. * They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one's skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation. * They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization. * They have profited off of the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless animals, and actively hide these practices. * They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions. * They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right. * They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut workers' healthcare and pay. * They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people, with none of the culpability or responsibility. * They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams that look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance. * They have sold our privacy as a commodity. * They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press. * They have deliberately declined to recall faulty products endangering lives in pursuit of profit. * They determine economic policy, despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce. * They have donated large sums of money to politicians, who are responsible for regulating them. * They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil. * They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save people's lives or provide relief in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantial profit. * They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit. * They purposefully keep people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media. * They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt. * They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad. * They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas. * They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government ontracts.* To the people of the world, We, the New York City General Assembly occupying Wall Street in Liberty Square, urge you to assert your power. Exercise your right to peaceably assemble; occupy public space; create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone. To all communities that take action and form groups in the spirit of direct democracy, we offer support, documentation, and all of the resources at our disposal. Join us and make your voices heard!

NationofChange has been an unfiltered media resource for the Occupy Wall Street movement even while the mainstream media has ignored, censored, and undermined the progress of the people.

What to do if you're arrested or stopped by the police

MICHAEL BLUEJAY

award-winning writer

"The seventh-best site on the web!"
-- Cockeyed.com

What to do if you're arrested or stopped by the police

When you're stopped by the police, you run the risk of being arrested or hurt, or both. Most officers will not act improperly, but whether they act properly or not you still need to protect your rights and keep yourself safe.

If you're stopped or arrested, try to avoid conflict to keep the police calm. The following tips may help. They're combined from several sources (including the ACLU and myself). I'm not a lawyer and I can't tell you anything beyond what I have listed here. -- M. Bluejay, 7-00

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What to do when you are stopped

1. Stay calm and in control of your words, body language, and emotions.
   
2. Do not run or walk away. Keep your hands where police can see them -- don't put them in your pockets. (Don't make the police nervous by wondering if you have a weapon.) Don't make any sudden movements. Never touch a police officer.
   
3. Be polite and respectful.
   
4. Give your name and address only if you're asked to, but remember you don't need to say anything more. (The caveat is that if the police are annoyed by your refusal to say more, they may take you to the station out of spite.) Remember, anything you say or do can be used against you later.
   
5. To search you or your vehicle the police must have a warrant, or have arrested you, or have probable cause that you committed a crime. If the police lack these they may ask you for permission to search. If you GIVE them permission, then you can't argue later in court that they performed an illegal search.
   
6. Try to remember the officers' physical decriptions. Try to memorize badge numbers, names, license plate numbers, and police car numbers. Once the police stop questioning you, write all this down as soon as you are able.
   
7. Ask bystanders to stand at a discreet distance and observe. The police are less likely to do something wrong if there are people watching. People have a right to stand at a reasonable distance and observe as long as they do not interfere. (The police may consider that bystanders repeatedly asking them questions constitutes "interference".) Get the names and phone numbers of the witnesses afterward in case you need them in the future.
   
8. If you are being abused, don't resist. Once multiple officers start hurting you, you can't stop them by resisting, and struggling may only encourage them. Think of a cat playing with a mouse -- while the mouse is struggling, the cat is excited, but when the mouse stops moving, the cat loses interest. In some cases, the police may continue to abuse you even if you don't struggle, but since struggling can't help you, it's best not to try.
   
9. If the police let you go and you are injured, take photographs of the injuries as soon as possible, but make sure you seek medical attention first.
   
10. If you feel your rights have been violated, file a written complaint. Keep a copy of the complaint, and make sure a family member or close friend has a copy.

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If you're arrested

1. Do not resist arrest, even if you believe you are innocent. You will be arrested anyway, and then you'll have the additional charge of Resisting Arrest. Also, the police are more likely to hurt people who resist arrest.

2. If you are told that you are under arrest, give only the name, address, and telephone number of you, your immediate family, and your employer. This information is needed in setting bail.

3. You have a right to remain silent. Say only, "I want to talk to a lawyer." If the police continue to question you, do not answer. Also, do not speak on a video tape or to a district attorney about anything. Remember, it's in the police officers' best interest to get you to incriminate yourself. If you're arrested with somebody else, don't talk with them about the incident in the back of the police car even when the police are not in the car; many police cars now secretly make video or audio recordings of such conversations.

4. You have a right to make one phone call to your family, lawyer, or organization (remember the phone you use may be tapped).

5. Do not act defiant or talk about filing complaints. You do not want the police to retaliate against you while you're in their custody.

6. You will be handcuffed searched, photographed, and finger-printed.

7. Try to get the names and badge numbers of the police who arrested you or deal with you in the police station. (This information is your right.)

---

If your friend is arested

1. Write down the officers' names, badge numbers, and car number. The police do not have to give you their badge numbers unless you're the one being arrested, though. Be polite and don't threaten to file a complaint; you don't want them to arrest you too out of spite. I've seen it happen.

2. Write down the time, date, and place of the incident.

3. Get the names and phone numbers of witnesses.

4. If possible, photograph or videotape the incident.

5. Get a name of a relative to contact if the person is arrested.

6. Ask on what charge your friend was arrested and where (s)he is being taken.

Cell Phone Guide for Occupy Wall Street Protesters (and Everyone Else)

Electronic Frontier Foundation

Defending your rights in the digital world

October 14, 2011 - 6:05pm | By Eva Galperin

Cell Phone Guide for Occupy Wall Street Protesters (and Everyone Else)

Occupy Wall Street has called for a global day of action on October 15, and protesters are mobilizing all over the world. In the United States, the Occupy Wall Street movement has already spawned sizeable protests in New York, Washington DC, Boston, Seattle, San Francisco, Oakland, Austin, and other cities. Several of these movements have faced opposition from their local police departments, including mass arrests.

Protesters of all political persuasions are increasingly documenting their protests -- and encounters with the police -- using electronic devices like cameras and cell phones. The following tips apply to protesters in the United States who are concerned about protecting their electronic devices when questioned, detained, or arrested by police. These are general guidelines; individuals with specific concerns should talk to an attorney.

1. Protect your phone before you protest

Think carefully about what’s on your phone before bringing it to a protest. Your phone contains a wealth of private data, which can include your list of contacts, the people you have recently called, your text messages, photos and video, GPS location data, your web browsing history and passwords, and the contents of your social media accounts. We believe that the police are required to get a warrant to obtain this information, but the government sometimes asserts a right to search a phone incident to arrest -- without a warrant. (And in some states, including California, courts have said this is OK.) To protect your rights, you may want to harden your existing phone against searches. You should also consider bringing a throwaway or alternate phone to the protest that does not contain sensitive data and which you would not mind losing or parting with for a while. If you have a lot of sensitive or personal information on your phone, the latter might be a better option.

Password-protect your phone - and consider encryption options. To ensure the password is effective, set the “password required” time to zero, and restart phone before you leave your house. Be aware that merely password-protecting or locking your phone is not an effective barrier to expert forensic analysis. Some phones also have encryption options. Whispercore is a full-disk encryption application for Android, and Blackberry also has encryption tools that might potentially be useful. Note that EFF has not tested these tools and does not endorse them, but they are worth checking into.

Back up the data on your phone. Once the police have your phone, you might not get it back for a while. Also, something could happen, whether intentional or not, to delete information on your phone. While we believe it would be improper for the police to delete your information, it may happen anyway.

2. You’re at the protest – now what?

Maintain control over your phone. That might mean keeping the phone on you at all times, or handing it over to a trusted friend if you are engaging in action that you think might lead to your arrest.

Consider taking pictures and video. Just knowing that there are cameras watching can be enough to discourage police misconduct during a protest. EFF believes that you have the First Amendment right to document public protests, including police action. However, please understand that the police may disagree, citing various local and state laws. If you plan to record audio, you should review the Reporter’s Committee for Freedom of the Press helpful guide Can We Tape?.

3. Help! Help! I’m being arrested

Remember that you have a right to remain silent -- about your phone and anything else. If questioned by police, you can politely but firmly ask to speak to your attorney.

If the police ask to see your phone, you can tell them you do not consent to the search of your device. They might still legally be able to search your phone without a warrant when they arrest you, but at least it’s clear that you did not give them permission to do so.

If the police ask for the password to your electronic device, you can politely refuse to provide it and ask to speak to your lawyer. Every arrest situation is different, and you will need an attorney to help you sort through your particular circumstance. Note that just because the police cannot compel you to give up your password, that doesn’t mean that they can’t pressure you. The police may detain you and you may go to jail rather than being immediately released if they think you’re refusing to be cooperative. You will need to decide whether to comply.

4. The police have my phone, how do I get it back?

If your phone or electronic device was illegally seized, and is not promptly returned when you are released, you can file a motion with the court to have your property returned. If the police believe that evidence of a crime was found on your electronic device, including in your photos or videos, the police can keep it as evidence. They may also attempt to make you forfeit your electronic device, but you can challenge that in court.

Cell phone and other electronic devices are an essential component of 21st century protests. Whether at Occupy Wall Street or elsewhere, all Americans can and should exercise their First Amendment right to free speech and assembly, while intelligently managing the risks to their property and privacy.

Ten Things Not To Do If Arrested

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Ten Things Not To Do If Arrested

TEN THINGS NOT TO DO IF ARRESTED

I have been practicing criminal law for 24 years and have seen a wide variety of reactions by people who are being arrested. Some of these reactions are unwise but understandable. Others are self defeating to the point of being bizarre. No one plans to be arrested, but it might help to think just once about what you will do and not do if you ever hear the phrase “Put your hands behind you.” The simplest “to do” rule is to do what you are told. Simple, but somehow it often escapes someone who is either scared or intoxicated. More important to guarding your rights and interests are ten things you SHOULD NOT do:

1. Don’t try to convince the officer of your innocence. It’s useless. He or she only needs “probable cause” to believe you have committed a crime in order to arrest you. He does not decide your guilt and he actually doesn’t care if you are innocent or not. It is the job of the judge or jury to free you if he is wrong. If you feel that urge to convince him he’s made a mistake, remember the overwhelming probability that instead you will say at least one thing that will hurt your case, perhaps even fatally. It is smarter to save your defense for your lawyer.

2. Don’t run. It’s highly unlikely a suspect could outrun ten radio cars converging on a block in mere seconds. I saw a case where a passenger being driven home by a drunk friend bolted and ran. Why? It was the driver they wanted, and she needlessly risked injury in a forceful arrest. Even worse, the police might have suspected she ran because she had a gun, perhaps making them too quick to draw their own firearms. Most police will just arrest a runner, but there are some who will be mad they had to work so hard and injure the suspect unnecessarily.

3. Keep quiet. My hardest cases to defend are those where the suspect got very talkative. Incredibly, many will start babbling without the police having asked a single question. My most vivid memory of this problem was the armed robbery suspect who blurted to police: “How could the guy identify me? The robbers was wearing masks.” To which the police smiled and responded, “Oh? Were they?” Judges and juries will discount or ignore what a suspect says that helps him, but give great weight to anything that seems to hurt him. In 24 years of criminal practice, I could count on one hand the number of times a suspect was released because of what he told the police after they arrested him.

4. Don’t give permission to search anywhere. If they ask, it probably means they don’t believe they have the right to search and need your consent. If you are ordered to hand over your keys, state loudly “You do NOT have my permission to search.” If bystanders hear you, whatever they find may be excluded from evidence later. This is also a good reason not to talk, even if it seems all is lost when they find something incriminating.

5. If the police are searching your car or home, don’t look at the places you wish they wouldn’t search. Don’t react to the search at all, and especially not to questions like “Who does this belong to?”

6. Don’t resist arrest. Above all, do not push the police or try to swat their hands away. That would be assaulting an officer and any slight injury to them will turn your minor misdemeanor arrest into a felony. A petty shoplifter can wind up going to state prison that way. Resisting arrest (such as pulling away) is merely a misdemeanor and often the police do not even charge that offense. Obviously, striking an officer can result in serious injury to you as well.

7. Try to resist the temptation to mouth off at the police, even if you have been wrongly arrested. Police have a lot of discretion in what charges are brought. They can change a misdemeanor to a felony, add charges, or even take the trouble to talk directly to the prosecutor and urge him to go hard on you. On the other hand, I have seen a client who was friendly to the police and talked sports and such on the way to the station. They gave him a break. Notice he did not talk about his case, however.

8. Do not believe what the police tell you in order to get you to talk. The law permits them to lie to a suspect in order to get him to make admissions. For example, they will separate two friends who have been arrested and tell the first one that the second one squealed on him. The first one then squeals on the second, though in truth the second one never said anything. An even more common example is telling a suspect that if he talks to the police, “it will go easier”. Well, that’s sort of true. It will be much easier for the police to prove their case. I can’t remember too many cases where the prosecutor gave the defendant an easier deal because he waived his right to silence and confessed.

9. If at home, do not invite the police inside, nor should you “step outside”. If the police believe you have committed a felony, they usually need an arrest warrant to go into your home to arrest you. If they ask you to “step outside”, you will have solved that problem for them. The correct responses are: “I am comfortable talking right here.”, “No, you may not come in.”, or “Do you have a warrant to enter or to arrest me in my home?” I am not suggesting that you run. In fact, that is the best way to ensure the harshest punishment later on. But you may not find it so convenient to be arrested Friday night when all the courts and law offices are closed. With an attorney, you can perhaps surrender after bail arrangements are made and spend NO time in custody while your case is pending.

10. If you are arrested outside your home, do not accept any offers to let you go inside to get dressed, change, get a jacket, call your wife, or any other reason. The police will of course escort you inside and then search everywhere they please, again without a warrant. Likewise decline offers to secure your car safely.

That’s it: Ten simple rules that will leave as many of your rights intact as possible if you are arrested.

How about a short test? You have a fight with your live-in girlfriend and the police come and find you on the sidewalk two houses down from the apartment. The girlfriend points you out and the police arrest you for assault. They tell you they don’t intend to question you. They just want your name and address. Do you answer? Well, you shouldn’t. Your address is the single most damaging admission you could make. If you admit living with her, you have just converted a misdemeanor assault into a felony punishable by state prison. When you are arrested it is their game, and you don’t know the rules. It is best to be silent and let the attorney handle it later. The bottom line is that if the police have enough evidence to arrest, they will. If they don’t have that evidence, you could easily provide it by talking.

This article was authored by Brian Dinday, a member of the California Bar, with an office in San Francisco, California.

To the Occupy Movement: You Have Met the Enemy and They Do Not Care

To the Occupy Movement

by James Keye / October 17th, 2011

The following argument will not be popular; it is not popular with me. It is, however, necessary because it has the greatest chance of being true.

Unless the Occupy Movement contains the roots of real behavioral change it will be a flash in the pan. People will become excited by the possibility of regaining control of the forces that surround them, but unless they are clear on what is required, they will, of necessity, fall back into the behaviors that support the economic elite rather than discover the actions that will chasten them.

Being heard is not winning. The plutocrats know that the masses are being abused; they are the abusers, for Christ’s sake (take that last as you will). These are not people who are unaware of the consequences of their actions; they do not care that hundreds, thousands, millions, even billions of people’s lives are damaged or destroyed: they do not care! Their behaviors will not change if their actions are pointed out to them.

The plutocracy is concerned that their behaviors might become generally known to an increasingly informed populace, but only in the sense that they would then have to own-up to being an aristocracy, a nobility, that can more easily do as it wishes when the people are ignorant, but just as willing to exercise its power directly over the people if it has to. The Occupy Movement may be effective in exposing power relationships, but without its own participants’ willingness for personal changes, there will be no greater result.

If the goal of the Occupy Movement is the resurrection of the American Dream and the Great Middle Class, it will fail fast. The economic elite owns that road and controls all the tollbooths. They are wired into that path like the brain is wired into the muscles. No; the elite must be starved out by the formation of self-sufficient heterogeneous human communities all over this country and the world who are willing, even desirous, to live a simpler life, a life in which the economic elite and their tollbooths can be avoided.

We have no targeted “antibiotic” for the disease of plutocracy. Like pre-penicillin medical “cures”, the pathogen must be attacked with a poison, designed in its dosage and application to kill it, before the patient is too seriously damaged. That is where we are now in our understanding and capacity to deal with the machinations of run-away economics and growth. It is now time to take our medicine, though there is very little likelihood that we will, preferring rather to die of the disease.

As long as each person absolutely has to sell some large bit of his or her life and labor in order to not die, the world will always turn out as it has. As long as food, shelter and other essentials for life are obtainable only by purchase using money gained with labor sold to someone else, no governing design, no system of laws will support the masses, but will always become the tools of enslavement to an elite who will use the masses as instruments for their desires. This is quite independent of any ‘ism’ under which the people labor.

The selling of labor must, at some level, be voluntary for human societies to be both stable and healthy. This means that real viable options for satisfactorily meeting essential needs be part of the “ecology” of the society. When ‘work’ that no member of a society will do voluntarily becomes necessity, especially for some members, then a few must be forced to do it. Patterns of social conflict, slavery and war – the stuff of our human history – are the result; patterns that we can no longer afford.

The mass movements evident around the world, of which the Occupy Movement is a part, are possibly the last chance that the species has to make adaptations to our real situation on the earth before the biophysical processes that support the present structure of life are so perturbed that ecological collapse is inevitable. If the energy of these movements is devoted solely to wresting power and wealth from the present elite, which would be most easily facilitated by starting a struggle to gather wealth and power into the hands of a new elite, then the pot will have only been stirred with no change in our actual circumstances.

What we require may be impossible, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t require it: a drowning man requires a breath of air; the degree of need doesn’t determine that he will get it. Rather than uncritically redistributing wealth and power in some manner acceptable to the ‘movement leaders’, these instruments of human maladjustment must be redefined as community and environmental property. This redefinition must happen in the minds of the people. The Occupy Movement cannot, in its heart of hearts, have as a goal that “the people” will take over power from the elite, but must understand that the present forms and structures of power will only create, in no time, new elite communities that are just as mad and self-serving as the present ones.

It must be recognized and acted on that the human unit is the heterogeneous human community; the economic and power elite form or buy “communities”, but demand that the masses confront elite collective action as individuals without power, like a single person confronting a street gang. We see this everywhere: the company “bargains” with the employee or with the customer; the petty criminal confronts the police, the DA’s office and the court; the home buyer is delivered the developer’s covenants, the speeder talks with the cop representing ‘The Law.’ Collective action that does not support elite community needs and desires is co-opted, marginalized or criminalized.

As long as a critical mass of the masses desires to have what the economic elite has, as long as they honor the result of elite behavior, then they will be ripe targets to be persuaded to support elite methods. Belief that individuals have the right, even the responsibility, to collect excess wealth into their absolute control is a destructive insanity; any unbiased look at history associated with competent reasoning demonstrates the consequences. And when a society makes the individual collection of excess, not just desirable, but essential for both safety and acceptability in that society, there is no other outcome than the one we currently face.

The Occupy Movement and the other mass movements worldwide challenge status quo beliefs and habits; this is the best possible time to begin planting the seeds for the beliefs and understandings that just might allow the species to get out of the trap we have constructed. It is almost certainly too much to ask that the movement message include a major shift of societal story; so much simpler to stay with the same story and only attempt to reassign the players. But the effort must still be made.

Here are three, somewhat overlapping, lists of changes in thinking that need to begin to percolate into the new societal story; all more fully explicated in previous essays posted on the Dissident Voice site.

A new Seven Deadly Sins:

1) Progress

2) Economic growth

3) Property

4) Excess

5) Censorship

6) Repression

7) Religion

Five foundational beliefs and actions to replace our current hodgepodge (from What We Must Do):

1) All life is important.

2) The value of a life is in the daily living of it, not in the tallying up of duration.

3) No one is to live from the fruits of another’s labor.

4) We must not make the assumption that the ‘life style’ (really level of consumption) that is average for the highest consuming population is the one we should adopt as our standard.

5) We must finally come to a socially and intellectually mature relationship with our “religious instincts.”

Eight foundational beliefs and understandings to replace our current hodgepodge (from Extremism in the Defense of Survival)

1) Humans are animals that must integrate their behaviors into ecological processes.

2) Nothing can be owned by anything; all claims of property and ownership are relationships in which one party is arbitrarily devalued based on short-term power imbalances.

3) Wealth accumulation is an aberrant behavior – a form of psychopathology.

4) The measure of normal in the world must be from places and processes that are uninfluenced by human action.

5) There are no normal or natural human behaviors, group or individual, of any scale remaining in the human repertoire.

6) Humans are a community-based organism.

7) Our understandings of and relationships to health, illness and death have become terribly distorted.

8) Our spiritual understandings and habits are the distorted products of the pre-scientific forest life made to serve the interests of kings and other authoritarians.

I add this final thought:

Individualism is the opposite of valuing individual human beings. Individuals are supremely valuable and that value is only formed and sustained in community.

James Keye is the nom de plume of a biologist and psychologist who after discovering a mismatch between academe and himself went into private business for many years. His whole post-pubescent life has been focused on understanding at both the intellectual and personal levels what it is to be of the human species; he claims some success. Email him at: jkeye1632@gmail.com. Read other articles by James, or visit James's website.

This article was posted on Monday, October 17th, 2011 at 8:01am and is filed under Activism, Economy/Economics, Philosophy.

Occupy Wall Street and "The American Autumn": Is It a "Colored Revolution"? Part I

Occupy Wall Street and "The American Autumn": Is It a "Colored Revolution"? Part I

by Michel Chossudovsky

Global Research, October 13, 2011

There is a grassroots protest movement unfolding across America, which includes people from all walks of life, from all age groups, conscious of the need for social change and committed to reversing the tide.

The grassroots of this movement constitutes a response to the "Wall Street agenda" of financial fraud and manipulation which has served to trigger unemployment and poverty across the land.

Does this movement constitute in its present form an instrument of meaningful reform and social change in America?

What is the organizational structure of the movement? Who are its main architects?

Has the movement or segments within this movement been co-opted?

This is an important question, which must be addressed by those who are part of the Occupy Wall Street Movement as well as those who, across America, support real democracy.

Introduction

Historically, progressive social movements have been infiltrated, their leaders co-opted and manipulated, through the corporate funding of non-governmental organizations, trade unions and political parties. The ultimate purpose of "funding dissent" is to prevent the protest movement from challenging the legitimacy of the economic elites:

"In a bitter irony, part of the fraudulent financial gains on Wall Street in recent years have been recycled to the elites' tax exempt foundations and charities. These windfall financial gains have not only been used to buy out politicians, they have also been channelled to NGOs, research institutes, community centres, church groups, environmentalists, alternative media, human rights groups, etc.

The inner objective is to "manufacture dissent" and establish the boundaries of a "politically correct" opposition. In turn, many NGOs are infiltrated by informants often acting on behalf of western intelligence agencies. Moreover, an increasingly large segment of the progressive alternative news media on the internet has become dependent on funding from corporate foundations and charities.

The objective of the corporate elites has been to fragment the people's movement into a vast "do it yourself" mosaic." (See Michel Chossudovsky, Manufacturing Dissent: the Anti-globalization Movement is Funded by the Corporate Elites, Global Research, September 20, 2010)

"Manufacturing Dissent"

At the same time, "manufactured dissent" is intent upon promoting political and social divisions (e.g. within and between political parties and social movements). In turn, it encourages the creation of factions within each and every organization.

With regard to the anti-globalization movement, this process of division and fragmentation dates back to the early days of the World Social Forum. (See Michel Chossudovsky, Manufacturing Dissent: The Anti-globalization Movement is Funded by the Corporate Elites, Global Research, September 20, 2010)

Most of the progressive organizations of the post-World War II period, including the European "Left" have, in the course of the last thirty years, been transformed and remoulded. The "Free Market" system (Neoliberalism) is the consensus of the "Left". This applies, among others, to the Socialist Party in France, the Labour Party in Britain, the Social Democrats in Germany, not to mention the Green Party in France and Germany.

In the US, bi-partisanship is not the result of the interplay of Congressional party politics. A handful of powerful corporate lobby groups control both the Republicans and the Democrats. The "bi-partisan consensus" is established by the elites who operate behind the scenes. It is enforced by the main corporate lobby groups, which exert a stranglehold over both major political parties.

In turn, the leaders of the AFL-CIO have also been co-opted by the corporate establishment against the grassroots of the US labor movement.

The leaders of organized labor attend the annual meetings of the Davos World Economic Forum (WEF). They collaborate with the Business Roundtable. But at the same time, the grassroots of the US labor movement has sought to to carry out organizational changes which contribute to democratizing the leadership of individual trade unions.

The elites will promote a "ritual of dissent" with a high media profile, with the support of network TV, the corporate news as well as the internet.

The economic elites -- which control major foundations -- also oversee the funding of numerous civil society organizations, which historically have been involved in the protest movement against the established economic and social order. The programs of many NGOs (including those involved in the Occupy Wall Street Movement) rely heavily on funding from private foundations including the Ford, Rockefeller, MacArthur, Tides foundations, among others.

Historically, the anti-globalization movement which emerged in the 1990s has opposed Wall Street and the Texas oil giants controlled by Rockefeller, et al. Yet the foundations and charities of Rockefeller, Ford et al have, over the years, generously funded progressive anti-capitalist networks as well as environmentalists (opposed to Big Oil) with a view to ultimately overseeing and shaping their various activities.

"Colored Revolutions"

In the course of the last decade, "colored revolutions" have emerged in several countries. The "colored revolutions" are US intelligence ops which consist in covertly supporting protest movements with a view to triggering "regime change" under the banner of a pro-democracy movement.

"Colored revolutions" are supported by the National Endowment for Democracy, the International Republican Institute and Freedom House, among others. The objective of a "colored revolution" is to foment social unrest and use the protest movement to topple the existing government. The ultimate foreign policy goal is to instate a compliant pro-US government (or "puppet regime").

"The Arab Spring"

In Egypt's "Arab Spring", the main civil society organizations including Kifaya (Enough) and The April 6 Youth Movement were not only supported by US based foundations, they also had the endorsement of the US State Department. (For details see Michel Chossudovsky, The Protest Movement in Egypt: "Dictators" do not Dictate, They Obey Orders, Global Research, January 29, 2011)

Egyptian dissidents, Fellows of Freedom House in Washington DC (2008)

"In a bitter irony, Washington supported the Mubarak dictatorship, including its atrocities, while also backing and financing its detractors,... Under the auspices of Freedom House, Egyptian dissidents and opponents of Hosni Mubarak (see above) were received in May 2008 by Condoleezza Rice ... and White House National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley." (See Michel Chossudovsky, The Protest Movement in Egypt: "Dictators" do not Dictate, They Obey Orders, Global Research, January 29, 2011)

The following year (May 2009), a delegation of Egyptian dissidents was received by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (See below)

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaks with "Egyptian activists promoting freedom and democracy", prior to meetings at the State Department in Washington, DC, May 28, 2009.
Compare the two pictures. Part of the 2008 delegation meeting Condoleeza Rice is part of the 2009 delegation meeting Hillary Clinton

OTPOR and the Centre for Applied Non Violent Action and Strategies (CANVAS)

Dissidents of Egypt's April 6 Youth Movement, which, for several years, was in permanent liaison with the US Embassy in Cairo, were trained by Serbia's Centre for Applied Non Violent Action and Strategies (CANVAS), a consulting and training firm specializing in "Revolution" supported by FH and the NED.

CANVAS was established in 2003 by OTPOR, a CIA supported Serbian organization which played a central role in the downfall of Slobodan Milosevic in the wake of the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia.

Barely two months after the end of the 1999 bombings of Yugoslavia, OTPOR was spearheaded into playing a central role in the installation of a US-NATO sponsored "caretaker" government in Serbia. These developments also paved the way towards the secession of Montenegro from Yugoslavia, the establishment of the US Bondsteel military base and the eventual formation a Mafia State in Kosovo.

In August 1999, the CIA is reported to have set up a training program for OTPOR in Bulgaria's capital Sofia:

"In the summer of 1999, the head of the CIA, George Tenet, set up shop in Sofia, Bulgaria to “educate” the Serb opposition. Last August. 28 [2000], the BBC confirmed that a special 10-day class had been given to the Otpor militants, also in Sofia.

The CIA program is a program in successive phases. Early on, they flatter the Serbs' patriotism and spirit of independence, acting as if they respect these qualities. But after having sown confusion and broken the unity of the country, the CIA and NATO would go much further."

(Gerard Mugemangano and Michel Collon, "To be partly controlled by the CIA ? That doesn’t bother me much.", Interview with two activists of the Otpor student movement, International Action Center (IAC), To be partly controlled by the CIA ? October 6, 2000. See also "CIA is tutoring Serbian group, Otpor", The Monitor, Sofia, translated by Blagovesta Doncheva, Emperors Clothes, September 8, 2000 )

"The Revolution Business"

OTPOR's Centre for Applied Non Violent Action and Strategies (CANVAS) describes itself as "an International network of trainers and consultants" involved in the "Revolution Business". Funded by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), it constitutes a consulting outfit, advising and training US sponsored opposition groups in more than 40 countries.

OTPOR played a key role in Egypt.

Egypt Tahir Square: What appeared to be a spontaneous democratization process was a carefully planned intelligence operation. View video below.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpXbA6yZY-8

Egypt. The Logo of the April 6 Movement

Egypt’s “April 6 Youth Movement,” the same fist logo, Source Infowars

Both the April 6 Movement and Kifaya (Enough!) received prior training from CANVAS in Belgrade "in the strategies of non-violent revolution". "According to Stratfor, The tactics used by the April 6 Movement and Kifaya "were straight out of CANVAS's training curriculum." (Quoted in Tina Rosenberg, Revolution U, Foreign Policy, February 16, 2011 )

It is worth noting the similarity of the logos as well as the names involved in CANVAS-OTPOR sponsored "Colored Revolutions" The April 6 Youth Movement in Egypt used the clenched fist as its logo, Kifaya ("Enough!") has the same name as the Youth Protest movement supported by OTPOR in Georgia which was named Kmara! ("Enough!"). Both groups were trained by CANVAS.

Georgia's Kmara ("Enough!")

The Role of CANVAS-OTPOR in the Occupy Wall Street Movement

CANVAS-OPTOR is currently involved in the Occupy Wall Street Movement (#OWS).

Several key organizations currently involved in The Occupy Wall Street (#OWS) movement played a significant role in "The Arab Spring". Of significance, "Anonymous", the social media "hacktivist" group, was involved in waging cyber-attacks on Egyptian government websites at the height of "The Arab Spring".(http://anonops.blogspot.com, see also http://anonnews.org/)

In May 2011, "Anonymous" waged cyberattacks on Iran and last August, it waged similar cyber-attacks directed against the Syrian Ministry Defense. These cyber-attacks were waged in support of the Syrian "opposition" in exile, which is largely integrated by Islamists. (See Syrian Ministry Of Defense Website Hacked By 'Anonymous', Huffington Post, August 8, 2011).

The actions of "Anonymous" in Syria and Iran are consistent with the framework of the "Colored Revolutions". They seek to demonize the political regime and create political instability. (For analysis on Syria's Opposition, see Michel Chossudovsky, SYRIA: Who is Behind The Protest Movement? Fabricating a Pretext for a US-NATO "Humanitarian Intervention" Global Research, May 3, 2011)

Both CANVAS and Anonymous are now actively involved in the Occupy Wall Street Movement.

The precise role of CANVAS in the Occupy Wall Street Movement remains to be assessed.

Ivan Marovic, a leader of CANVAS recently addressed the Occupy Wall Street protest movement in New York City. Listen carefully to his speech. (Bear in mind that his organization CANVAS is supported by NED).

Click link below to listen to Ivan Marovic’s address to Occupy Wall Street in New York City

Ivan Marovic addresses Occupy Wall Street
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkM3BBtc7N0

Marovic acknowledged in an earlier statement that there is nothing spontaneous in the planning of a "revolutionary event":

"It looks like people just went into the street. But it's the result of months or years of preparation. It is very boring until you reach a certain point, where you can organize mass demonstrations or strikes. If it is carefully planned, by the time they start, everything is over in a matter of weeks." (Quoted in Tina Rosenberg, Revolution U, Foreign Policy, February 16, 2011)

This statement by OTPOR's spokesperson Ivan Marovic would suggest that the protest movements in the Arab World did not spread spontaneously from one country to another, as portrayed by the Western media. The national protest movements were planned well in advance. The chronology and sequencing of these national protest movements were also planned.

Similarly, Maravic's statement also suggests that The Occupy Wall Street movement was also the object of careful advanced planning by a number of key organizations on tactics and strategy.

It is worth noting that one of OTPOR's tactics is "not try to avoid arrests", but rather to "provoke them and use them to the movement's advantage." as a PR strategy. (Ibid)

Occupy Wall Street Clenched Fist on http://occupywallst.org

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PORA; Its Time!

KMARA Enough!

OBORONA Defense

KELKEL New epoch

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PART II of this article will examine the mainstay of the Occupy Wall Street movement, including the role of NGO organizers.
Global Research Articles by Michel Chossudovsky

AlterNet.org

Occupy Wall Street and the History of Democratic Finance Protest

Given some of my key subjects, I can’t help but be interested in the “occupy” movement that, at the moment, has a few hundred protesters [UPDATE: Now a lot more; I was there on Tuesday] more or less living in Zuccotti Park near the New York Stock Exchange in lower Manhattan, and is apparently starting to engage in similar protests in other cities. You can’t find out much about this action via “mainstream media,” and even much of the left media, such as it is, has been critical in some cases, and outright dismissive in others, regarding the movement’s evident formlessness and absence of specific goals.

That absence is pretty much undeniable. Still, in Salon, Glenn Greenwald has shrewdly criticized liberal-Democrat scorn for Occupy Wall Street. On the other hand, Mother Jones criticizes the movement on bases other than those that Greenwald attacks. . . .

But I write about the deep, founding roots of rowdy, American populist protest and insurrection, often visionary and even utopian, yet informed and practical too, specifically over money, credit, and the purpose and nature of public and private finance. And despite my pop-narrative books on the subject, and despite my articles here, and in such place as Newdeal20.org (articles picked up by AlterNet, Huffington, Salon, Naked Capitalism, and others), key indicators of my relative impact (like royalty statements!) give me a sneaking suspicion that most people still don’t connect the American founding period with a rugged drive on the part of ordinary people for equal access to the tools of economic development and against the hegemony of the high-finance, inside-government elites who signed the Declaration and framed the Constitution and made us a nation.

Sometimes people even ascribe democratic ideas to the famous upscale American Revolutionaries, who to a man actually hated democracy and popular finance. Paine, the exception, was ultimately rebuked and scorned by all of the others.

The difficulty in dealing with our founding battle for democratic economics arises in part because the movement was not against England but against the very American banking and trading elites who dominated the resistance to England. That complicates our founding myth, possibly unpleasantly. Also, it was a generally losing battle. With ratification of the Constitution, Hamiltonian finance triumphed, and people looking to Jefferson and Madison for finance and economic alternatives to Hamilton are barking up the wrong tree, since what those men knew, or even really cared, about finance could be written on a dime. (Anyway, in pushing for creating a nation, Madison supported Hamiltonian finance down the line. Their differences came later.) When Occupy Wall Street protesters say “It’s We the People!” they’re actually referring to a preamble, intending no hint of economic democracy, to a document that was framed specifically to push down democratic finance and concentrate American wealth for national purposes. Not very edifying, but there it is.

The Tea Party, meanwhile, has taken up founding economic issues from a right-wing point of view, associating itself with the upper-middle-class Boston patriots (often mistaken for populist democrats) who led a movement against overrreaching British trade acts in the 1760′s and were important to the impulse toward American independence. I’ve written fairly extensively about where and how I think the Tea Party goes wrong on the history of the founding period. But at least they’re framing their objections to current policy, and framing the historical roots of their ideas, not mainly in cultural but in economic terms.

Like it or not, though, it is Occupy Wall Street that has the most in common, ideologically, not with those Boston merchants and their supporters but with the less well-known, less comfortably acknowledged people who, throughout the founding period, cogently proposed and vigorously agitated for an entirely different approach to finance and monetary policy than that carried forward by the famous founders. Amid horrible depressions and foreclosure crises, from the 1750′s through the 1790′s, ordinary people closed debt courts, rescued debt prisoners, waylaid process servers, boycotted foreclosure actions, etc. (More on that here and here.) They were legally barred from voting and holding office, since they didn’t have enough property, so they used their power of intimidation to pressure their legislatures for debt relief and popular monetary policies. Their few leaders in legit politics included the visionary preacher Herman Husband, the weaver William Findley, and the farmer Robert Whitehill.

They had high hopes for American independence. In the 1770′s, their “out-of-doors” collaboration with the famous elites was critical to enabling the Declaration of Independence — even though none of their names appears there (well, Benjamin Rush’s does, but by then he’d become unradicalized). Their democratic, egalitarian hopes dashed, in the 1780′s, in western Massachusetts, they marched on the state’s armory in Springfield to reverse regressive finance policies that had again plunged ordinary people into debt peonage and foreclosure while bailing out rich creditors (elites called that populist action, reductively, Shays’s Rebellion). In the 1790′s, with the Constitution in force, and Hamilton’s economics the law of a powerful new nation (partly in direct reaction to the Shays action), populists took over the militia and debt-court system throughout western Pennsylvania and western counties of neighboring states, flew their own flag, and tried to secede from the United States and form an economically egalitarian country. Hamilton dubbed that action, again in a successful effort to reduce it, the Whiskey Rebellion, and he and President Washington responded, naturally enough, by occupying western Pennsylvania with federal troops.

It is my possibly vain hope that reading up on such historical matters might inspire efforts like Occupy Wall Street to greater cogency and a deeper, more solid foundation in longstanding (if embattled and problematic) American values than they now seem to possess. You don’t have to look as late as the 19th-century Populists and the 1930′s labor movement, for example, to find an American left deeply immersed in both economic issues and an ambitious vision of a better country. Those things were present at the creation.

Occupy Wall Street probably doesn’t, when you shake it down, want to secede from the union like the whiskey rebels — happily enough. But those rebels didn’t start out by wanting to secede, either; they’d fought in the awful front lines of the Revolution in hopes that those sacrifices might lead to something for them and their families; it didn’t. Occupy Wall Street does seem to want to secede, somehow, from the hopeless-feeling regurgitation, through the two political parties, of elite finance theories and policies that never seem sincerely dedicated to any fundamental improvement of opportunity for what they call, not wrongly, “the 99%.”

The problem for Occupy Wall Street is that their founding-period political ancestors, who were indeed good at “occupying,” almost always accompanied their efforts with, for one thing, published resolutions registering specific demands and objections (not “this situation sucks” — which of course it does — but “replace a regressive tax with a progressive one,” “give us access to the franchise,” ”issue paper money,” “take away Robert Morris’s bank charter,” etc.). On Twitter I’ve tried to collect some specific goals from Occupy people. Generally those who respond seem interested not in anarchist dismantling of government or sweeping stuff like ending capitalism but, say, real regulation. Which is cool if only because my early American democratic-finance activists called themselves “regulators”!

But a lot of efforts to state a goal for the protest itself devolve in sloganeering about the economic situation and self-admiring paeans to the virtues of protesting. Wouldn’t galvanizing this stuff require… leadership? Our founding democratic-finance activists weren’t such communitarians that they refused to have leaders and set achievable goals. They were used to being rank-and-file — even though as miltiamen, they elected their leaders.

And they knew where they’d succeeded and failed. This thing in Zuccotti Park is open-ended. It has no declared closing date. How can it ever declare victory, get the hell out, build its organization, and come back to fight another day?

By William Hogeland | Sourced from Hysteriography

Posted at October 1, 2011, 8:06 am