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“Occupy…to engage the mind, energy and attention of”
Here’s a song for all who are awake, engaged, and working to make this world a better place. Thank You!
This was recorded 12-15-12 in downtown Traverse City. Doc Probes is the singer/songwriter, members of Occupy Traverse City back him up!
It’s been a tough week here in Michigan, we needed something to boost our morale. A professional recording has been done, many thanks to Sonic Bloom Recording. It will be posted when editing complete. For a cleaner rendition of this song, take a look at an unedited view of recording session here.
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Very interesting articles on OWS starting at TruthDig (by way of ‘The Baffler’, which sounds like a Batman nemesis): How OWS Toppled Itself
Smart lefties like Hedges and Chomsky were criticized for not being critical enough of OWS, similarities between Tea Parties and OWS mentioned, maybe the most interesting thing was that MLK was planning big march on Washington, before his assassination (by state actors, BTW, as per civil trial won by the King family, and argued by Dr. Pepper) that would have involved big occupations, until their well defined demands were met.
The comments at truthdig are interesting, but to me they underscore the fact that the state of OWS is tough to define. Since one of the huge positives, to me, of OWS was a very public presence with attendant opportunities for networking and morale-boosting, and re-constituting such gatherings WITHOUT illegal encampments is a no-brainer, the foggy status of OWS is NOT a good problem to have – it reflects the fact that OWS has very little public presence, even given points of light like Occupy Sandy. Successfully reconstituting a persistent, public presence would constitute evidence for strength of the movement. The fact that evictions weren’t properly anticipated is yet another lamentable example of the lack of strategic smarts of American activists, but hardly one that can’t be recovered from.
Speaking of strategic smarts, what is the strategy for this particular Occupy group to grow to a critical size? And, if they acquired the human capital to make a difference (hopefully including permanently retiring a lot of worse-than-useless Congress critters), what would they do with their collective, political strength?
Being nebulous and directionless may have attracted some of the early Occupiers, but does nothing for me. Tolerance can be a wonderful thing, but I draw the line at fuzzy-headedness.
Thanks for comments and links.
Quoting from the referenced Truthdig article, “for all its intellectual attainments,” Frank writes, referring to the highly academic nature of the Occupy movement and its outreach to the public, “the Left keeps losing. It simply cannot make common cause with ordinary American people anymore.”
Personally, I disagree with the Occupy movement being characterized as a manifestation of the “Left”. I avoid thinking in terms of “Left” and “Right”. I have found that labels are both divisive and a barrier to good conversation.
I like your reference to “human capital”, which has been neglected and undervalued in our society, as have social and biosphere capital. Occupy has brought attention to the injustice that occurs when only “economic capital” is pursued.
As I work with our local Occupy group, my focus is on educating myself and others. As we come together, we talk and try to change the focus of conversations, we share, we educate, we message. We take small steps. We enlarge our community by particiipating with and networking with others. Yes, as you mentioned “retiring a lot of worse-than-useless Congress critters” is a good idea. One that is painfully obvious this week.
Will the critical mass needed to bring about a paradigm shift, arise from our group. I don’t think so. We will be only a few, of the many that must rise to see real change.
What direction are you headed and what is your strategy for getting there?
Good question! Most people don’t ask strategy questions. I’ve often wondered why. I suspect that human evolution involved reaction to immediate threats. (I think I heard Paul Ehrlich make this argument; it’s not original with me.) Slow moving threats would not even have been understood. Hence, no strong selection pressures to evolve long-term strategy smarts. Meanwhile, we have millions of years of evolutionary baggage inclining us towards tribalism, and embracing myth, as fact.
Am currently in survival mode (got threatening letter form landlord this week…), but I have a new job, so I think I will be OK in a couple of months.
I intend to keep working on facilitating political and social organizing via creating online tools. (I’m a programmer.) I actually released a first installment of an online tool for facilitating both political and social organizing, roughly a couple months ago, and announced it at MyFDL.(See the beta site occupypublicspaces.org; occupythesidewalk has been “pre-empted”) Hardly anybody took notice; according to my check of the database a few weeks ago, nobody used it except a group in Italy (and it had a bug such that the program failed, there. I’d only been checking in US locations; the ‘Italy bug’ is fixed, but I know it will also fail near the equator and 0 longitude; more programming, needed!).
Also, again when I have time, I’m going to try and talk local activists into not just using my tool, but to also at least experimentally pursue aggressive strategies toward politicians, on the one hand, and more recruitment-oriented strategies, on the other.
To my mind, an “aggressive strategy” MUST involve an electoral threat. For your electoral threat to be credible, ultimately you want a sizeable (enough) voting bloc behind your threat, that will guarantee the ability to fire your Congress critter. (Of course, firing is actually the easier task, presuming your voting bloc can do simple math re primaries, and aren’t afraid to inject themselves into legacy party politics. Getting your own guy elected, in a general election, requires bigger numbers.)
Starting from a position of weakness, the threat must be of relentless recruitment into a voting bloc which WILL vote out the bad Congress critter, when it attains critical mass.
As for recruitment, if you check my diaries targeting the Green Party, especially, the common thread was for them to be realistic about a likely loss, on the one hand, but not to squander their opportunities for recruitment into a long term process/organization, on the other.
So,… I intend to do less writing on blogs – which scroll off the front page in a few days – and more networking with locals to see if they’ll implement my ideas and use my tools.
BTW, while OWS was inspiring, it simply had to evolve. The illogic of protesting – even if indirectly – to a ruling class, but leaving untouched the corrupted players who have been, and still are, busy selling us out, makes no sense. Yeah, sure, it’s nice to be able to express your frustrations. But people are still losing their homes, their jobs, their future.
I’m much more interested in actually solving problems, which means the question of taking political power, responsibly, must be pursued. There are doubtless other avenues, and certainly, historically, people who have no voting power, or curtailed voting power, managed to bend the government to their will. Under current circumstances, in the US, I don’t see those earlier examples of effective activism as most relevant to our current situation.
You don’t take political power just by protesting; nor by camping in the middle of downtown. If you have a charismatic leader like MLK, that can mobilize and inspire millions, fine and dandy (until the plutocrats have him murdered, that is). We need to be resourceful, and not wait for an MLK or Ghandi.
Good luck with your strategy! I am happy to hear whenever someone is doing something! I’ll take a look at your site soon, need to dash to work now!
Many of our local Occupy group diverted to election strategies in the past year, not just this week. It’s a tough game with lots of money and entrenched power to contend with.
*There was a strong, but unsuccessful effort to elect a new state representative, using no corporate money. She plans to run again in 2014.
*Signatures were gathered to place Emergency Financial Manager law on the ballot. We were able to repeal this law in November. However this was rewritten and reinstated within 6 weeks by the lame duck legislature.
*Triple the amount of signatures needed to place the collective bargaining issue on November ballot were collected. Unfortunately, not enough votes were received to place our right to collective bargaining in the state constitution. Our governor has admitted that the recently passed Right to Work For Less laws are our punishment for attempting this.
I think for widespread change to occur, there need to be both traditional and non traditional strategies at play.
“I’m much more interested in actually solving problems”.
We have had 2 successes in reversing foreclosures, which may not sound like much, but is everything to the people involved.
“But people are still losing their homes, their jobs, their future.” And our planet!
Thanks for doing what you can to make a difference!
Mahalo, firedancer…! Keep on, Keepin’ on…!
What is always lost on the ‘meta’ thinkers/bloviators, is that Occupy has been never been a ‘national’ movement, with any ‘central’ core, nor any singular cause leading the way…! There’s waaay too much to fix, and, indeed; ‘All Politics are Local’…!
Doing something is always better than doing nothing. I like that sign “Who else is heard when money talks politics’. That sign reflects today’s reality where we live by “rule of money”, as opposed to “rule of law”. Rule of money will destroy this democracy.
Mahalo, CTuttle! Since I work all night long, it feels like I’m in the same time zone as you. Thanks for posting in!
At times like these, it does seems like too much to fix. After reading wendydavis’ post and viewing links on Econ4, I have my priorities down to three things…people, the planet, and the future!
” Rule of money will destroy this democracy”
lakota, we definitely had a painful, though unneeded, lesson here in Michigan on what results from the “rule of money”.
I, too, agree that doing something is always better than doing nothing. Sometimes you just start down the road and hope a better plan will become apparent on the journey!
Yes, it is, but we have tens of millions unemployed and underemployed, and my prognosis is continual decay, overall. That’s because the number one cause is globalization, which we can, in fact, protect ourselves from. It’s called TARIFFS. (Otherwise, you are being pitted against the impossible odds of a competing against a $5,000/year Chinese worker).
This problem is recognized by more serious conservatives, though I doubt that the cotton candy talking head conservatives (like Limbaugh and Hannity) talk about it, any more than Randi Rhodes or Rachel Maddow are likely to talk about it (or give it more than lip service). It’s another elephant in the room, that media that serves the 1% knows they can’t speak honestly about.
So, if you’re serious about taking sufficient political power to roll back plutocratic stranglehold, you have to have in mind a massive educational effort, plus not squander the opportunity to collude with serious conservatives, on issues where you can work together.
See The Staggering Decline and Fall of Labor at American Conservative Magazine and
Free Trade Still Doesn’t Work at Chronicles Magazine.
Occupy was sort of non-ideological, and provided the opportunity for ‘strange bedfellows’ to find common ground. That’s precisely a strong reason why the part of the 1% that doesn’t care about the 99%, and has no national loyalty, worked to end the visible face of OWS.
I’m writing a book on that very premise, and believe it or not, the book is beginning to write itself.
The premise of, Sometimes you just start down the road and hope a better plan will become apparent on the journey!
that is great, keep me posted on your book!
theory is that you can’t see around the curves ahead of you by standing still…you have to start down the road…