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The American people’s awakening to the carefully propagandized (yet iron-handed) oppression in which our ruling elites engage both at home and abroad – an awakening exemplified in the Occupy Wall Street action and a host of other planned occupations – is heartening indeed. But for all who side with full employment, peace, national self-sufficiency (versus the plunder of other nations’ resources at gunpoint) and individual rights, a critical question looms.
What happens next?
Imagine, if you will, the moment our victory is secured. The day it is universally accepted that the unemployment rate is the last concern of money-grubbing corporatists. The day we reject militarism in the name of “nation building” and corporate collusion in the name of “market share.”
The day – whether six weeks, six months, or six years hence – we finally decide to begin building a culture and an economy rooted in scientific inquiry, peaceful technologies, sustainable industries and agriculture, education, and the arts, in order to address critical societal needs such as creating jobs, saving the environment, and developing a real social safety net.
The Occupy Movement is a beacon of hope that such a day may now be much nearer at hand than it was even a week ago.
Or even yesterday.
But as history has shown time and again – and as we are seeing right now in Egypt – successful uprisings create a power vacuum which is all too often filled by elements of the status quo that the uprising sought to oust.
The only defense is preparedness. Organization. A clear vision of the kind of country in which we want to live, and people in place who are fully committed to seeing that transition through.
Indeed, it is the lack of any such vision or organization to which those trying to subvert the Occupy Movement most frequently point. “What exactly are you protesting for?” or “Things are bad everywhere, it’s just the way it is!” or “Imagine how much worse it would be if the Republicans controlled things.”
In short, the same old bullshit that feeds the status quo, and ensures our oppression by it.
Trouble is, they’re right. Those protesting have nothing even remotely resembling a clear statement of greivances, let alone a plan for the fundamental overhaul of what America has become – and such a plan already exists.
It was crafted over the first half of this year, based upon the input of hundreds of everyday people.
It was ratified by some of the most vocal supporters and key organizers of the protests now occuring and spreading across the country.
It is wholly non-partisan.
It’s called the Unified Progressive Platform.
It could well be a blueprint for What Happens Next.
Or… we could end up like Egypt.
Anthony Noel
NPA Facilitator
tonyn_at_newprogs_dot_org
The New Progressive Alliance is a 100-percent volunteer organization founded last year by diarists and readers at MyFDL in response to the deepening corporatization of the American electoral and legislative process. Learn more here. (You’ll also find a printable version of the Unified Platform for distribution at public events.)
26 Comments
I like much of what you say, and make the following points because of that fact.
You posit: “Imagine, if you will, the moment our victory is secured.” Then what? Your statement, “The only defense is preparedness. Organization. A clear vision of the kind of country in which we want to live, and people in place who are fully committed to making seeing that transition through,” is very important.
But here’s where I take issue. You raise these issues as coming in the aftermath of our victory. But I would contend that these issues must be coherently addressed as a precondition of victory.
Secondly, the Unified Progressive Platform is a very good platform. But a platform is not a plan. It does not speak to how that platform is to be won, and implemented. You can’t just elect an NPA Congress and have its members pass the platform. What you advocate has implications that will result in our corporate masters fighting to the death. And a plan must also incorporate how that fight to the death is to be won.
I am trying to wrestle with these issues, and make no bones about not having solid answers to all these matters. You can see my further thinking in Dump Capitalism 3: we define ourselves.
Tony, can we ditch the italics?
To coin a phrase: Yes, we can!
The fact is there are no easy answers, as your series points out.
But I’ll have to disagree; a platform is a plan, in the same way a blueprint is. It is a vision of what one intends to build. As any architect will tell you, blueprints get revised when the realities of what’s possible are introduced.
I once built the cabinetry in an incredibly ostentatious house for some even more ostentatious people. Estimated by their architect to cost them $1.5 million to build, the eventual price tag for this monument to the owners’ egos ran to twice that. And not because they chose to do it on the cheap. On the contrary.
Plans can (and must) change, but that’s impossible in the absence of any.
My point is this: Getting into the streets is all well and good, and i support it wholeheartedly. But as you rightly point out, the corporatists are not going to simply fold up their tents and say, “Okay, no problem!” Which is why the Occupy Movement’s near total lack of anything coherent in terms of grievances, demands – even if it’s as simple as a WPA-style jobs program, something the Unified Platform calls for – is the movement’s greatest weakness.
That said, its greatest strength is the energy and enthusiasm you rightly praise in your current diary. It’s just that – as Egypt, Obama, and countless other “revolutions” prove – enthusiasm alone will not get it done.
You are spot on as to the reasons why some basic demands are nessecary .
These demand must be nearly universally acceptable by the majority of the American public .
A couple of things. First, you can choose to define a platform as a plan and not have Webster revoke your keyboard. But it remains that a whole lot more has to be done before victory than draw up a platform. A platform is most certainly not a strategy, and that is the greater weakness.
Secondly, movements are movements, and they are very messy, it’s inherent to their nature.
The essence of Dump Capitalism 3 is to have a cohesive leadership organization that has both platform AND strategy, which can operate within mass movements and mass organizations, influence them, and if their strategy and tactics are correct, aspire to actually lead them.
I have never, never, never, ever, ever, ever in the history of the known universe stated or even implied that “enthusiasm alone” could get it done. Everything I have written for decades has been a rejection of such notions. But to give the occupiers their due, they have more than enthusiasm.
They have what you might call a broad united front against Wall Street, within which a variety of tendencies are peacefully contending. If you were working with them, and successfully convinced that agreement on platform was a precondition for their action, you would not have a body capable of making that particular decision (Occupy is not a membership organization with delegates and all that), and making that a precondition would either greatly reduce their numbers or paralyze them so that what they have done would not have been done.
Movements work in specific ways, and the fact that we are in some ways hoping to break into new territory doesn’t mean that the ways movements work has been repealed.
All that said, I am thrilled. This is the very kind of discussion that the left has been unable to have for far, far too long.
Thanks!
If dumping Wall Street is not yet acceptable to the majority of the American public, and the people holding out for that are not ready for the kind of actions the Occupy Wall Street are taking, then should such actions be canceled?
Or do such actions representing a minority position help move the dialogue left, even if not meeting YOUR requirements? The Tea Party is certainly a minority movement, but you can’t deny its effectiveness.
I love that you always cite Webster. It cracks me up (in a good way).
You have a sometimes annoying – and I assume completely unintentional – way of sounding like you’re putting words in diarists’ mouths, Jeff. Strategy is doubtless absolutely necessary. Though I’ve never claimed otherwise, a reading of your comment infers I have. The NPA has a strategy – one you happen to disagree with, which is certainly your prerogative – but nothing is gained (assuming you truly are thrilled at having such a discussion, and I believe you are) by an inference, intentional or otherwise, that I (or anybody else) is suggesting strategy is not important (unless, of course, they have).
We agree that movements work in specific ways. We also agree that they are messy. I hope we can further agree that, as enamored as we both are of the analysis of movements, too much of same can fatally cripple them, stop them in their tracks. The messiness of movements is in no small part due to the absolutely necessary practice, during them, of throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks. The NPA is already in contact with Occupy Together about coalescing around as much of the platform as possible. We’ve thrown it at their particular wall, and we’ll see what happens.
In closing – and again, just for clarity’s sake – I never, never, ever, ever
accused you of suggesting that enthusiasm alone will get it done. The point of the diary and my comments since posting it is that much of the Occupy crowd still seems to think it will – and that lack of organization plays into their detractors’ hands. Not to beat a dead horse, but a statement as simple as “We want a WPA-style jobs program now,” would go a long way in refuting claims that this movement lacks focus.
- Tony
Caesar, Cromwell, or Napoleon cometh. If we are lucky.
Very lucky. Still, any of them are better for the American people than what we have now. We have sunk that low.
Well, George Webster and Bubba Smith were two of my favorite players my first year at Michigan State.
Strategy and tactics are two words that get kicked around a lot. Put two tactics together and call it a strategy. I have an electoral strategy, therefore, of building an alliance of progressive Dems and progressive independents. But overall, I consider electoral politics a tactic. See what I mean?
My calls for strategy entail a lot more, like anticipating the dynamics of collapsing capitalism (not just, well, it’ll get worse), questions of whether Europe will join in the collapse, whether progressives can pick off some of the weaken European links, whether Europe will break free of the U.S.
Then China. Is Chinese growth a limited phenomenon that will eventually take the course of the rest of capitalism, or does state control under the Chinese Communist Party allow it to circumvent the normal path of capitalist development, a la Lenin’s NEP? Does China provide any kind of model for developing countries, or is it the emerging empire?
Such questions have to be part of any long-range strategy, and I simply pat myself on the shoulder for being able to ask them.
As for “enthusiasm alone will not get it done,” since it was said in reply to me, I took it as directed at me. My mistake. Though I wonder who ever actually said, “enthusiasm alone will get it done.” Maybe the MSU cheerleaders when George Webster was making a tackle.
When to push for how much unity is one of the eternal political questions, just as those over when making a deal is a sellout and when it isn’t. (Recall Lenin and the sealed train.) All I can say at this point is that determining such is a fine art.
Whether pushing for more unity (or purity as its detractors call it), and how hard to push it, to me, is in large part (though not exclusively) a matter of whether achieving unity — even through splits and purges — allows people to move forward. Or whether creating splits and purges in pursuit of unity destroys the ability to act.
Given the nature of the Occupy people, and the fluid tactics they developed to make the most of their small numbers, I think they did extremely well. But let’s say that next year they planned another Wall Street action. And suppose you convinced them that supporting an independent candidate with the Unified Platform was the correct tactic. What would be the practical consequences?
Would the quite sensible rallying around a specific independent candidate limit the numbers? And more seriously, would that end up limiting the action to a traditional campaign rally, tactically, and preclude the kinds of creative, mobile tactics that they have developed in the past week?
Or would it be best to allow the organizers to organize it roughly as they have done to date, but bring as large an NPA contingent to participate and push the NPA platform from within?
Get my drift?
These demonstrators seem to be doing fine without following the advice of others.
There movement has spread across the country and now the world, without your or anyone elses platforms or demands.
Many people don’t seem to understand what is happening, it is new and where most of the “organized” groups are going nowhere they are already successful.
Well, I’d say they’re doing fine in terms of growth, but Anthony is right to be concerned about the protester’s lack of vision. Although I can’t be 100% sure how representative the sampling was, and how suggestive the “quoting” was, if you look at the (skimpy) profiles, here, you may get the sense, as I did, that the protesters are poorly educated, and mentally, well, hazy, even though there was a lot of positive affirmations expressed (“love”, etc.). I’m all for positive affirmations, but if your future and that of your society and even planet are being threatened by a class of greedy sociopaths, you should at least have some modestly defined ideas for a practical, societal remedy. Love may be your motivation, and set the tenor of what you’re about, but if you’re not willing to fight your oppressors – or even have a non-hazy idea of what such a necessary fight should look like – then there’s real cause for worry.
If you read through those profiles at the link I gave, and then watch “Berkeley in the 60′s” (highly recommended, BTW), it’s like night and day. Of course, Berkeley is/was an elite institution, getting superior students, and I did wonder, while watching the film, if the interviewees were chosen mostly because of their eloquence. But still – I think only one NYC profile gave me confidence, that the person being profiled had a strong mental concept of the need to regulate Wall Street. (Of course, some will want to do away with it, but who expressed any credible vision of theory of change to accomplish that?)
Gandhi believed in loving his enemies. But he knew exactly what he wanted from his enemies (he wanted the Brits to leave) and he had a clear vision on how to achieve that. Maybe this is the best framing for trying to de-hazify the protesters – compare their efforts, so far, to Gandhi’s. If anybody wants to write a diary exploring this argument, feel free.
It’s too early to make any judgements about how the protesters will evolve. We know that they are having assemblies, and I believe that they will come up with a list of demands. Even so, I wouldn’t be averse to confronting the protestors with the vast gulf between Gandhi’s efforts in India and what I think I’m observing in NYC, so far. Offering the United Progressive Platform by it’s fans seems like a good idea, but I wouldn’t be too strident about pushing any platform (as opposed to the idea of embracing one, without undue delay, and thinking about such things from the get-go.)
Anyway, I believe that they are looking to migrate to the big occupation in Washington, DC, next month. In this case, there’s no real need to push for even a list of demands right now. How would anybody know that the demands they embrace would be acceptable to the larger gathering in DC?
Excellent Point, Jeffroby: a platform is not a plan. The plan is the document that tells how that platform is to be won and implemented.
However, the platform is important and it is the first step in organizing any political group or political campaign. In terms of starting a business, it can be thought of as your product description. This is public information and you do want to promote it.
The campaign plan which must follow if there is to be success can be compared to the business plan. And, like the business plan, it includes strategy and other information which, for obvious reasons, should not be public knowledge.
There’s no question they are doing fine, wayoutwest, at what they are doing. But did you even read the link? Do you see what’s happened in Egypt? Suddenly the military is declining to implicate Mubarak. If we – and by we, I mean the nascent movement in this country – really believe those commanders are being influenced purely (at all?) by Egyptians, we are naive indeed.
Which is the point of the diary. Popular unrest against an empire such as that the United States now commands will only take you so far. As jeffroby rightly asserts above, the powers that be will fight to the death in defense of their domination. Until the dissenters show equivalent – nay, stronger – determination to wrest control back to the people, their efforts will be nothing more than a mere footnote to history.
This is a late reply so I am not sure you will get it but…
My wife kids and myself actually traveled to new york from the west coast and joined the protesters for a day .
I spent between 3 and 4 hours explaining to the police why we were there and why the occupation of wall street and that of DC on Oct 6th were now the only way to go . They were remarkably supportive after someone actually explained the reason for the actions of the protesters .
You shouldn’t make judgements based on lack of information and ascribe positions to others that they have never taken in order to disagree with them , you’ll only alienate potential allies .
Here’s the post I made afterwards and posted here on FDL .
http://my.firedoglake.com/freeman/2011/09/23/my-observations-while-at-the-wall-street-occupation/
And here is one I made several weeks before Tahir Square and Madison Wisconsin took place .
http://my.firedoglake.com/freeman/2010/12/17/dancing-with-tyrants-or-why-civil-disobedidience-is-now-the-only-way-forward/
Who knows how far this uprising will go. It is the first stage in resistance and only time will tell if Amerika will rise to the challenge. No other organized, acceptable to status quo, movement have shown any traction.
Insted of dictating what they should do to win support we should look at what they have done differently that has resulted in their amazing success.
These folks are leading by example and have rejected the outdated losing methouds of the past, we need to learn from them and not be stuck in the past with our dogmatic ideas of what makes a Revolution.
That’s not how the NPA rolls generally, or in this particular case, although, given your own opposition to the NPA’s insistence that a primary candidate pledge not to support the president, I can understand why you might think so.
In fact, all we ask of allied organizations is their endorsement of the Unified Platform. Nothing more. That endorsement secures them a place on the Steering Committee (which is actually transitioning, now that we’re established, to an Advisory Board).
The Platform is laden with policy ideals (demands, so to speak) which Occupy and the full range of others who oppose what the U.S. has become and what it is doing to its citizens should have no trouble endorsing. It is a document around which an alliance can be built.
The electoral strategy is one distinct part of a much larger picture, which includes the NPA’s endorsement and promotion of in street actions, civil disobedience, and other forms of public dissent. Whether allied orgs choose to involve themselves in the NPA’s electoral aspect is entirely up to them.
It is only primary candidates seeking the NPA’s endorsement who, in order to get it, must publicly endorse the Unified Platform AND pledge that, in the event they lose, they will throw their support ONLY to a general election candidate who has ALSO publicly endorsed the platform.
jeffroby, I agree wholeheartedly with you that what needs to happen, and is happening I believe, is a parallel transition to the kind of society we would want to become universal. I don’t think the Egyptians could have had the success they did without at the same time as their occupation was happening forming coordinated groups within the protest which dealt with fundamental ordinary processes like keeping the square clean (they were very proud of that), taking care of the injured, remaining peaceful unless someone needed protection, assigning work to folk in an orderly way, meeting in counsel democratically and without prejudice – in microcosm doing in an exemplary fashion what you would want to see in society at large.
These were the positive aspects we saw there, and do not yet see in, say, Libya, though I would hope for the sake of the Libyans that is happening for them. And apart from a rocky beginning as reported here, that does seem to be happening as the Wall Street Occupation continues. And it is getting some coverage, though mostly that comes from a media only alerted by violent issues, feeding on those. That is because the real issues of societal change are anathema to the wealthy.
Ralph Nader has a piece on Common Dreams explaining why the plan to confront Obama in primaries has been put together. This is another method of occupation really, not actually a campaign ploy since he accepts from the start that there is no possibility for even third party entry into the political race. That is how I am reading his essay. He should know; he tried hard enough. And things have not changed in that respect.
What I am longwindedly saying is that these efforts are different from the old way of changing things. We couldn’t do it with Obama – we tried. And so much could we NOT do it, that indeed things became very evidently worse for all the causes we believe in that the NPA has so eloquently put forward in their platform.
The old style hippie communes opted out of the system and made little worlds for themselves which didn’t last. This newstyle occupational expression is very inclusive, that is its strength. It is more a mature political version of what some in my generation were seeking in the ’60′s. And because of all the things that are so very apparently wrong with the way things are being orchestrated now, this badly needs to succeed in the way that grass succeeds in replacing asphalt if it is allowed to do so. It is already happening.
You’re giving me a headache, dude
My point exactly.
And exactly how does your mind organize the citing of an actual, current example of what happens in the absence of plans for filling the power vacuum (an example you apparently STILL have not read) into
I’ll toss this idea into the ring for discussion. I am going to suggest two goals for the October2011 Movement, since the Occupy Wall Street movement will be joining up with it very soon.
Be It Resolved that
1. The immediate goal of the October2011 Movement should be to nonviolently obtain the resignations of the president, vice president, secretary of state, every member of the House and Senate, and every member of the Supreme Court.
I included the Secretary of State because I believe that under the Constitution, she is in the line of succession to replace the President, if the President, Vice President, and Speaker of the House resign, or are unable to assume the duties of the president.
If I am wrong about that, I propose my resolution be amended to include everyone in the line of succession, whomever they may be.
2. A provisional interim government consisting of the duly elected leaders of the October2011 Movement shall replace the current government and schedule a constitutional convention and national elections that shall be held within six months.
How’s that for a specific plan?
Some of my comments are generic, not particularly directed at the NPA, or against the NPA. There are many ways these things can play out.
Consider the disparity of the 400-some occupiers during weekdays, and the 2-5,000 on Saturday. At the risk of artificially imposing a paradigm, one could say that the 400 represented an organization, and the 2,000+ represented a movement, two very different KINDS of entities.
The 400, you may seek the endorsement. The movement, you work within. To split a hair, a movement can support a platform. An organization can endorse a platform. What we are engaging in this discussion (and I include you in the “we”) is that there are different kinds of organizations, requiring different kinds of relationships. I think you understand this.
It is interesting that in response to my Dump Capitalism 3, which explicitly focuses on building tight core organizations that operate within larger organizations, people start right off talking about what the correct mass consciousness should be.
It’s not that they are ignoring what I say (which requires understanding), but rather that they find what I say outside their realm of comprehension. That’s why I am thrilled at this conversation.
One more note: what I see developing with the occupation is what in more traditional terms would be called a united front against Wall Street. Some might be offended by the Marxist cast of such terminology, but that terminology didn’t come into being because George Webster thought it up one day. Rather, the concepts are actually useful.
As for the NPA (and why I may seem like such a pain in the ass sometimes) is that the NPA has some of the characteristics of the core organization I discuss in Dump Capitalism 3, and some of the characteristics of a mass organization. I can critique on the basis of a static snapshot of it at any moment, but as a body in motion in the process of development, I consider it highly significant.
As for the Occupy people, I see them similarly, i.e., in process. What sets them apart is that they are strong on plan of action, even if weak on programmatics. Given the inertia of so much of the left, lacking in tactics to transform anything, I consider this particularly precious.
Specific but ultra-left. But the “what-if” of what you propose are interesting. Because positing such an endpoint, we can begin to discuss more about getting from here to there, under what conditions the above could happen, and how those conditions could be created.
Right on! What you’re starting to do — distinct from the predominant mode of starting where we are and muddling forward — is lay out more of where we need to go, BUT doing so in a way that is accessible to where we actually are.
I have been keeping uo with Egypt and knew there would be trouble with the military from the beginning.
I doubt you can compare what is happening on Wall Street with what happened in Egypt, they are not going to overthrow the Gov. or force the Prez to resign any time soon.
This is the beginning of a mass resistance, hopefully, and there will be a reaction from the PTB as it grows.
Trying to require a plan at this point is counterproductive, it should be allowed to grow and organize based on their own ideas which seem to work.
Have you been watching at the Dissenter? It’s pretty dead here but it’s been interesting to follow there.