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David Graeber: The Power Of Finance, History Of Inequality & Legacy Of OWS

September 18, 2016 David Graeber, www.roarmag.org , , ,
By David Graeber for ROAR Magazine. So hundreds of thousands suddenly showed up. I mean, we had what — like 800 occupations at peak? Then of course came the evictions and they realize, “oh, I guess we couldn’t after all.” And after that the repression became extremely brutal and the media coverage also shifted to be just completely one-sided. But all that was really just back to normal. So the question is, why was there any sympathetic media coverage at all in those first few months? Why was there this little bubble of democracy? I think in retrospect it’s easy to see: there was a fraction of the establishment, basically the left of the Democratic Party, that thought that we were going to become their version of the Tea Party. That is, a grassroots movement that would make a lot of anti-establishment noises but ultimately play the game of raising money, running candidates again. They tried to infiltrate the media teams, set up tacit leadership structures… But eventually they figured out we were really serious. If our main complaint was that the US political system had turned into a system of legalized bribery, no, we weren’t going to join the system and try to see if we could raise enough bribes ourselves to run candidates and change that from within. Suddenly the curtain went down.

New Economic Vision: Amish Culture, Occupy & Start-Ups

September 5, 2016 Alexa Clay, www.nationofchange.org , , ,
By Alexa Clay for Nation of Change. If markets and industrial production have become separated from society and community, the task now seems to be figuring out how to envelop production within community. Localizing production in community might lead to a certain sacrifice of market efficiency, but would also offer greater flexibility and enhanced quality of life, and would strengthen social ties and community resilience. Ultimately, to reimagine production, we have a variety of models to choose from. Culture is no longer contingent on particular ethnographic contexts. Rather, practices from indigenous peoples, protest movements, entrepreneurial startup hubs, intentional communities, and even religious traditions require remixing by emergent forms of community around the world. While this remixing might feel like a consumerist “pick and choose” approach, it’s also one of the quickest pathways I’ve identified for accelerating social change and building more resilient local economies and communities. Designing community around cultural hybridity gives us a much broader diversity from which to organize ourselves and foster a greater sense of belonging for very different types of people.

Newsletter: Labor Day Time To Build Worker Power

September 4, 2016 Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, www.PopularResistance.org , , , , , , , , , ,
By Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers for Popular Resistance. Private-sector workers who are members of a union have fallen from 1 in 3 workers in the 1950s to about 1 in 20 today. Politics is about power and the loss of organized worker power has meant a loss in political power for all workers and a loss of wealth, income and benefits. In recent years, there have been strong signs that labor is getting more organized and militant in fighting for worker rights. They have linked worker issues to other issues, e.g. racial injustice, climate change and creating stronger communities; and are showing signs of resurrection. Recent years have seen aggressive attacks against workers: pension funds are raided, health benefits are cut or ended, the right to collective bargaining is destroyed and social services are cut. This is dramatic and needs to be reversed.

Potential ‘Occupy Debates’ Movement Threatened

August 24, 2016 John Eggerton, www.broadcastingcable.com ,
By John Eggerton for Broadcasting & Cable - A former Green Party candidate and Occupy FCC activist is seeking to get third party candidates into the televised presidential debates and has called on the Republican and Democratic candidates to push for inclusion, suggesting there could be an "Occupy Debates" protest targeting media, sponsors and candidates if the criteria for participation are not changed. The first of three presidential debates, organized by the Commission on Presidential Debates, is scheduled for Sept. 26, 2016, at Hoffstra University in Hempstead, New York. T

Newsletter: On To The General Election, Create Surprises

July 30, 2016 Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, www.PopularResistance.org , , , ,
By Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers for Popular Resistance. The make-up of elections are almost complete with only a few primary races and the Green Party National Convention (August 4-7 in Houston), where Jill Stein's running mate will be announced, remaining. Otherwise we know the candidates that will be with us for the next three months and the potential presidents who will almost assuredly be the focus of mobilizations for the next four years. While Bernie Sanders is no longer running for office and has shifted his energy to working to elect Hillary Clinton, many in the Bernie or Bust Movement have shifted to Jill or Bust, with the initial goal to get Jill Stein into the highly restrictive (and anti-democratic) debates.

From Occupy Protests To The Platforms

July 25, 2016 Akshat Tewary, www.commondreams.org ,
By Akshat Tewary for Common Dreams - At Occupy Wall Street rallies in New York’s Zuccotti Park back in September 2011, Akshat Tewary noticed that many protesters were calling for the reinstatement of the Glass-Steagall Act, the Depression-era law that separated investment and commercial banking. As an administrative lawyer, Tewary knew that financial regulators are required to consider input from the public. To make sure these regulators heard the views of Wall Street critics – not just financial industry boosters — he helped organize a loose group of protestors under the name “Occupy the SEC.”

Newsletter: Brexit Backlash Against EU, Revolt Against Elites

June 25, 2016 Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, www.PopularResistance.org , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
By Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers for Popular Resistance. The globalized economy is not working for most people of the world. International trade agreements and new government structures like the European Union serve corporate power and put the people and planet aside to ensure profits continue to come first. They undermine democracy and national sovereignty, leaving people feeling more powerless. By pushing austerity and commodification of public services, people are now more economically insecure with less wealth and lower incomes. The response of many is anger. Some protest austerity, others blame people of a different skin color, heritage or ethnicity. The surprise vote in the UK to leave the European Union is the latest, and perhaps the biggest, example of the blowback economic and political elites are getting for their actions. Brexit shows we have our work to do to educate people that this is not about racism and anger at ethnic groups, but is really the battle between the people and the elites. It is a conflict over whether we the people will have the power to decide our futures, whether we can create a fair economy that serves more than the 1% and whether we can act in ways that are consistent with the needs of the environmental crisis we face.

Newsletter: Making Protest Personal; Take It To Their Homes

June 18, 2016 Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, www.PopularResistance.org , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
By Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers for Popular Resistance. Protests at homes of public officials and corporate CEOs is a common tactic used widely because it can be very effective. The response of Barrasso shows it is working and should continue. As Saul Alinsky, author or Rules for Radicals, pointed out “any effective means is automatically judged by the opposition as being unethical.” Such protests have to be nonviolent and conducted in a way that does not inconvenience neighbors but educates them about why the protest is occurring. These tactics seek to personalize the issue, to make it less abstract than a federal agency. The campaign should keep their focus on the people responsible, not let up, continue to escalate and make the person isolated and unpopular. The goal is to maintain constant, escalating pressure so the official pays a heavy personal price for their actions.

Where Will The Next Social Movement Come From?

May 29, 2016 Tom Engelhardt, www.tomdispatch.com/ , , ,
By Tom Engelhardt for Tom Dispatch. Much of our future is reliably unpredictable, and what more so than the moments when mass movements suddenly break out and sweep across our world? Who expected, for example, that for perhaps the first time in history hundreds of thousands of people would hit the streets of U.S. cities and towns—and millions the global streets from London and Barcelona to Sydney and Jakarta—in early 2003 to protest the coming invasion of Iraq, a war, that is, that hadn’t even begun? Or that such a movement would essentially vanish not long after that war was predictably launched? Who imagined that, in September 2011, a small group of youthful protesters, settling into Zuccotti Park, an obscure square near Wall Street in downtown Manhattan, would “occupy” it and so the American imagination in such a way that “the 1%” and “the 99%” became part of our everyday language; Wall Street (as it hadn’t been for decades) a reviled site; and “inequality” part of the national conversation rather than just the national reality? Who imagined in the moment before it happened that such a movement, such a moment, would then sweep the country and the world. . .

“Energy Without Injury”: From Redwood Summer To Break Free

May 25, 2016 Desiree Hellegers, www.counterpunch.org , ,
By Desiree Hellegers for Counter Punch - On Sunday, May 15, more than a hundred climate change kayaktivists took to the waters of Padilla Bay in Anacortes, Washington, risking arrest to land on the banks of the Tesoro oil refinery. In the shadow of the refinery smoke stacks, they unfurled banners calling attention to the potentially lethal risks that fossil fuel workers confront each day on the job. “Seven Dead, No More Casualties, Tesoro Explosion April 2, 2010” read one banner focused on Tesoro’s checkered workplace safety record.

Newsletter: The Corruption Of Money

April 16, 2016 Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, www.popularresistance.org , , , , , , , , , ,
By Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers. As tax day approaches, there will be numerous reports about how US oligarchs – wealthy individuals and major corporations – do not pay their fair share in taxes. A GAO report released this week found “at least two-thirds of active U.S. corporations paid zero federal income taxes between 2006 and 2012. The report also found that large, profitable corporations only paid 14% of their profits in federal income taxes on average from 2008 through 2012, while approximately one-fifth of them paid nothing at all.” This is not only due to tax laws that provide corporations with a wide array of loopholes to lower their taxes, but is also due to the intentional hiding of money off-shore. A 2015 report found that nearly 75% of Fortune 500 companies tucked away $2.1 trillion in accumulated profits offshore to avoid paying US income taxes.

Nuit Debout Occupies In Revolutionary Call For Change

April 10, 2016 Angelique Chrisafis, www.theguardian.com , , , , ,
By Angelique Chrisafis for the Guardian. Nuit debout, which loosely means “rise up at night”, the protest movement is increasingly being likened to the Occupy initiative that mobilised hundreds of thousands of people in 2011 or Spain’s Indignados. Cherifa, a French student at Paris’ Louis-le-Grand high school, who is taking part in the night-time protests. Cherifa, a French student at Paris’ Louis-le-Grand high school, who is taking part in the night-time protests. Photograph: Elliott Verdier/AFP/Getty Images Despite France’s long history of youth protest movements – from May 1968 to vast rallies against pension changes – Nuit debout, which has spread to cities such as Toulouse, Lyon and Nantes and even over the border to Brussels, is seen as a new phenomenon. It began on 31 March with a night-time sit-in in Paris after the latest street demonstrations by students and unions critical of President François Hollande’s proposed changes to labour laws. But the movement and its radical nocturnal action had been dreamed up months earlier at a Paris meeting of leftwing activists.

#NuitDebout Movement: France’s Indignados?

April 3, 2016 Avi Davis, www.france24.com , , ,
By Avi Davis for France 24. Paris, France - NuitDebout started like many other French demonstrations. Student and workers groups who oppose François Hollande’s planned labour reform law, which they say will make it easier for struggling companies to fire workers, organised a protest march on March 31. But after the march many participants wanted to continue the protest and expand their message. They proposed three nights of occupation in République, which they called March 31st, 32nd and 33rd, and came up with the name NuitDebout to express their defiance. Between 1000 and 2000 people attended each night, according to organisers, although by 8pm on Saturday there were probably a few hundred.

60 Groups Demand Investigation Of Spying On Political Groups

March 8, 2016 Chip Gibbons, www.PopularResistance.org , , , , ,
By Chip Gibbons for Defending Dissent. Over 60 national and local groups have signed on to a letter initiated by the Bill of Rights Defense Committee and Defending Dissent Foundation, calling on the Senate and House Judiciary Committees to investigate the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) monitoring of political protests and social movements. Signatories include the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee, Center for Constitutional Rights, ColorOfChange, Government Accountability Project, Greenpeace USA, National Lawyers Guild, Popular Resistance, Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, Rising Tide North America, School of the Americas Watch, US Uncut, United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America, and Veterans for Peace.

Newsletter: End The Security State

February 20, 2016 Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, www.PopularResistance.org , , , , , , , , , ,
By Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers for Popular Resistance. The conflict between democracy and state repression, often claimed as necessary to protect our safety and security, has moved the United States consistently toward a greater national security state that has become inconsistent with people’s privacy and freedom; as well as their ability to exercise First Amendment protected political activities. The depth of surveillance – including infiltration of political movements, cameras to enforce traffic laws and monitor activities almost everywhere in populated areas, aerial surveillance of neighborhoods and protests by helicopters, drones and airplanes and digital spying, have created a pervasive surveillance apparatus that undermines privacy, political activity and communication. We cannot have a real democracy with this level of surveillance.
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