Senator Warren Demands to Know Why Criminal Bankers Aren’t Being Locked Up

Fascism: n. the incestuous fornication between government and companies in jackalsome mockery of the public of whom they rape, pillage, and cannibalize.  

By Stephen C. Webster via Raw Story 

In a letter (PDF) sent to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, Attorney General Eric Holder and SEC Chair Mary Jo White on Tuesday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) demanded to know why the government keeps accepting financial settlements from criminal bankers when they could instead be taken to trial, convicted and locked up.  

In six short paragraphs, Warren requested that each institution turn over copies of any internal research “on the trade-offs to the public” between letting big financial firms pay a fine and walk “without admission of guilt” versus moving forward with full-scale prosecutions.  

The letter was sent as a follow-up to a similar question she asked of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) on Feb. 14.  Warren noted that the OCC replied last week denying the existence of any such research.  In her letter sent Tuesday, she went on to add:  

…I believe very strongly that if a regulator reveals itself to be unwilling to take large financial institutions all the way to trial — either because it is too timid or because it lacks resources — the regulator has a lot less leverage in settlement negotiations and will be forced to settle on terms that are much more favorable to the wrongdoer.

The consequence can be insufficient compensation to those who are harmed by illegal activity and inadequate deterrence of future violations.  If large financial institutions can break the law and accumulate millions in profits and, if they get caught, settle by paying out of those profits, they do not have much incentive to follow the law.  

There’s been a rash of mega-settlements between the government and the nation’s largest banks in recent years over allegations of foreclosing on people without just cause, knowingly making bad loans and reselling the debt, making false statements to rob from retired pensioners, laundering money for drug cartels, repressive regimes and terrorists, and agreeing to settlements and then ignoring them, to name a few.  

“The problem is the banks have overwhelming confidence that law enforcement is not taking this seriously,” New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman said last Monday, appearing on MSNBC.  “They have overwhelming confidence that whatever the rules are, they won’t be followed up on.”

Five years on from a financial crisis that nearly froze the flow of credit in the United States and sparked a multi-trillion dollar bailing-out of the global financial industry, few American bankers and big finance executives have faced criminal charges.  

There is, however, one notable exception:  Ponzi-schemer Bernard Madoff, who defrauded mainly wealthy clients to the tune of $64.8 billion.  He said from jail in 2011 that many of his former colleagues on Wall Street engage in criminal insider trading on a regular basis, much like he did.  

“It’s unbelievable, Goldman … no one has any criminal convictions,” Madoff told New York Magazine earlier that year.  “The whole new regulatory reform is a joke.  The whole government is a Ponzi scheme.”  
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Photo:  Screenshot via YouTube.

#OWS: Occupy Wall Street Resource Guide

The Occupy Wall Street protest movement began in New York City’s Zuccotti Park in September of 2011. The movement has grown and spread throughout the country. On their website, they describe the movement as a non-violent fight, “against the corrosive power of major banks and multinational corporations over the democratic process, and the role of Wall Street in creating an economic collapse that has caused the greatest recession in generations.”

This library guide was created as an informational tool on the continuing movement. We decided to include mostly material that contains frequently updated aggregated media updates. While we would like to offer you the best information available, we cannot claim that some of these are not free of bias so please peruse the following information with a critical eye. If you feel an important resource may have been overlooked, please let us know and we will consider adding it to the list.


From the Movement

Occupy Wall Street: Frequently updated webpage
We Are the 99%: Photos and descriptions from those supporting the movement
Common Dreams: Occupy USA Coverage: News, video and twitter updates as they occur


Related Groups

Occupy Together: Aggregates Occupy Wall Street events and other events in solidarity with the movement
Occupy Global: Unifying vision for Occupy movements
Interoccupation Communication: Enables communication among Occupy movements
Beginners Guide Video from Bristol, UK: Occupy movement in the UK


Local Group Sites

Occupy Baltimore
Occupy D.C.


News Outlets

New York Times: Topic page updated with the latest developments and linking to other New York Times content
DNAinfo.com: Manhattan Local News: Local New York news outlet
Salon: Topic page updated with the latest stories
News Articles in Academic Search & MasterFILE: TU Community –Login to view News articles through the databases


Images

Associated Press: Photographs of the Occupy Movement: TU Community –Login to view News articles through the databases
Flickr: More photographs from the Occupy Movement


Charts, Graphs & Statistics

Occupy Wall Street Overview: An Infographic
Who is Occupy Wall Street?: An Inforgraphic
Occupy Design: Building a Visual Language for the 99 Percent: Grassroots project connecting designers with on-the-ground demonstrators in the Occupy Together movement
Wealth, Income, and Power in the U.S.: An Infographic
Wealth & Income Inequality: From Mother Jones


Social Media

Facebook
Twitter
YouTube –OccupyTVNY


Miscellaneous Items

Gallup Poll on Occupy Wall Street from October 18, 2011: U.S. opinion of Occupy Wall Street
EPI (Economic Policy Institute) Report on Occupy Wall Street from October 26, 2011
Pew Research Center on Occupy Wall Street from October 19, 2011
Internet Archive: Occupy Wall Street: Collection of media about Occupy Wall Street and related movements
Podcast: What is Occupy Wall Street?: From NPR
Ways to Teach about OCW: From the New York Times blog
Inequality.org: Portal for data, analysis, and commentary on wealth and income disparity from the Institute for Policy Studies


Opposing View Points

The Heritage Foundation: The Conservative’s Guide to the Occupy Wall Street Protests: Research and educational institution for conservative public policies
We Are the 53%: Photos and descriptions from those against the movement
Townhall.com: Conservative news, politics, opinion, breaking news analysis, and commentary. 

Voices of the Occupation: What they'll take away

 

On Tuesday, in the hours before Occupy L.A. was ejected from the grounds of City Hall, Margot Roosevelt photographed participants and interviewed them about what had brought them to the protest and what message they hoped people would take away from it.  Their statements have been edited for length.

Allen Lasley, 26

Anaheim HillsMy mother was a single parent for me and my sister.  When I was young, she was going to college and working two jobs — at McDonald's and at a dry cleaners.  She still had to steal food. I was 4 years old when I realized something was seriously wrong.

Every experience I've had since then has been struggling to survive.  I went into the Marine Corps when I was 17.  I did two tours in Iraq.  I came back realizing how messed up this country is, how we fight unjust wars for political assets.

In my head, as a kid, I thought if you work hard, you can achieve the American dream. I'd worked my entire life.  But now I spend 12 hours a day filling out applications.  I go to the unemployment office.  My resume is on Monster.com. I've never been called to an interview.  Not one time.  I've lived at homeless shelters even though I get some military benefits.

I came to be a part of changing humanity for the better.  When I first came down here I stayed up all night.  I wanted to see what kind of people were here.  The most intelligent people I ever met reside here.  Everybody has the same story of getting screwed over by the government.  Many veterans have gone through what I have and can't find work.  That is the No. 1 thing for most people.  There are just no jobs. I came here and these people gave me hope for humanity I had never felt before.

What people should take away is that we the people are the powers that be.

I believe power should be used to create equality.  We want a level playing field.  We don't want a small percentage of people to control everything going on around us.

Matt Wegner, 53

Lake Arrowhead

I was foreclosed on.  That is partly why I'm here.  I'll never own again.  I refused to renew my [real estate] broker's license after seeing people foreclosed on and pushed into the street.  I can no longer ethically practice real estate.

I've been wearing this sign on my back:   “Greed is a Disease.”  It is a sickness.  It is destroying the lives of people.  What is the opposite?  Generosity.  We have to stop taking and start giving.  That is the mind shift I am trying to bring to the world.

I was hoping Villaraigosa would be the first mayor to say, “We are on your side,” rather than sending police to say, “Oh, we are going to evict you.”  You can't evict an idea.  You can't handcuff the truth.

Kern Masser, 18

Originally from Bakersfield, but then moved to his sister's place in Eureka

A lot of things are wrong.  I tried to get a job after high school and no one would hire me because I had never had a job before.  It is an endless cycle.  I applied for 20 jobs in six months.  I can't go to school because there's no way I could pay for the tuition.  I'd like to learn.  I like gardening but don't know how to do it.

But change can happen.  People are trying to fight the 1%.  People will look back at how bad things are now and say, “I'm glad we did that.”

 

Michael Basillas, 26

San Diego

What made me join [Occupy L.A.] was to find a place where I could have a conversation about social, political and economic injustice in this country.  Our system favors the 1%.  That is not sustainable for the citizens of the U.S.  It's good to know you have other people that feel the same way.

I worked at HSBC [Bank] in the accounting department for three years.  They let us go because they needed to outsource the jobs.  So how do I pay my bills? I'm not going to wait until I'm homeless on the streets to fight for change.

Government power is an illusion.  We placed them there.  We can always take it away from them.  Occupy is trying to figure out how. I'm a Republican — but a radical Republican.  I don't like high taxes, but if you pay taxes, you want to know it is going to the betterment of people.  You want to know it is going toward things like health insurance. I don't have health insurance.  It is too expensive.

Joseph Thomas, 50

Los Angeles

I was raised political.  My mother adored Robert Kennedy.  My father hated Richard Nixon.  We talked about politics over dinner.  My parents made clear to me:  If you take social justice seriously, you have to be political.  I'm here because I see our world is being broken.  My generation has a responsibility to do something about it.  I'd like to think even if I were living in a mansion in Bel-Air, I would come here.

The message?  It's that politics matters.  It is not peripheral.  If you want to build a better world, you have to engage in the political process.  We need to build a kinder, gentler world. I'd like to see a change in U.S. foreign policy.  The U.S. has a dismal record in supporting brutal people across the globe.  I'd like to see the Occupy movement be a force for democracy and social change.

Vivian Ortiz, 19

Grand Junction, Colo., attending photography school in North Hollywood

After I came here to school and went into debt, I found out my school is unaccredited. It is part of a corporate chain.  They were good at making themselves seem like a legitimate school.  But now I'm stuck.

A lot of people say, “The economy sucks, and I'm not going to do anything about it.”  I'm here to hopefully make a change.  I want to have a more stable future than what I'm having right now.  I want people to look back on [Occupy L.A] with a positive light.  Everyone came with their own issues.  But the major thing is that something is wrong with society.  People want their voices to be heard.  Me personally?  I want to get a proper education and not be in debt forever because of it.

Carina Clemente, 24

Inglewood

I went to Cal State Long Beach.  I graduated with a major in psychology and theater.  I was laid off a year ago.  I've been trying to find work since then.  I've spent five or six hours a day filling out applications and looking for work.  But I only got contract jobs teaching theater classes and doing temp administration work.

I came out of curiosity.  I didn't have an initial plan.  The first day there were different focus groups.  We came up with the idea of the People's Collective University.  We held classes around political, social and economic justice, sustainability and community needs.  We are making plans to expand into neighborhoods.  The idea is to provide an alternative education model.  We are focusing on the ideas of Paulo Freire, the Brazilian educator.  He came up with a “popular education” based on mutual respect and using the personal experiences of students.

My experience through the collective university is that we have knowledge to share and can educate each other.  We don't have to rely on the repressive education system.  We can build together.  We had classes on nonviolent direct training, on working-class unity, on healthcare inequality, on ending racism and white privilege, on addressing the role of patriarchy.  Just having honest discussions, people were able to get a different perspective.  People got a chance to understand each other.

One message is, we have the power to provide for ourselves.  We are intelligent and capable enough to do so, regardless of formal institutional education.


Gabriel Marantz, 25

Venice

I came as a response to corporate greed and social, political and economic injustice.  It is time for us to restore our democracy and have real representation for reasonable taxation.  This movement gives a sense of hope in our ability to make change. Going to the ballot box is not enough.  Until we change and reform the corruption of the political system at its core, we can't have a government that represents us.  By volunteering [in the campaigns of Barack Obama and Dennis Kucinich], I was [able to] have an effect in getting someone elected, but getting one elected official into office is not enough.  We are not a true democracy anymore.  The disparity in wealth is saddening.  To do nothing is just not an option for my soul.

We should abolish private financing in all federal elections and get rid of perks and gifts to politicians.  We need a constitutional amendment that says corporations are not people and money is not free speech.  I want a lot of things, [including] serious electoral reform.   [We should] abolish the electoral college.  Elections should be on national holidays so everyone can get there without restrictions.  [We need to] make government more representative.

Rachel Bulisky, 29

Recent transplant to Los Angeles from New Jersey

I have an accessory line, http://www.trashriot.com/.  I do necklaces.  But I haven't made anything lately because I'm homeless.  I have a BA in fine arts from Montclair State in New Jersey.  Now I'm $20,000 in debt and I'm on the street.  I majored in artistic welding.  But you need electricity and a blowtorch.  So now I do wire wrapping in my tent.  I used to sell in Venice, [but the store] got shut down.

I was on a bus. I saw all these tents.  I got off to see what was going on.  Someone asked if I needed a place, and gave me a tent.  At the same time, these people were protesting all the things I hate.  The government is totally messed up.  Everybody here can agree on one thing:  Things are not right.  There are a lot of frustrated people and nowhere to go with that.  There's a lot of energy.  It's not like we all say the same thing.  It is a meeting ground and a shelter where we can all throw around ideas.

There have been a lot of beautiful moments.  It's been a meeting place of brilliant minds.  At least in one place, we're trying to work it out.  I learned how to crochet here.  We started a crochet circle.  We were making handbags out of scraps of materials.  It was a lot of fun.

J.D. Mcconnell, 33

Recently moved to Las Vegas from Los Angeles

I came to get money out of politics.  We have a system of legalized bribery and political puppeteering.  Before, I was not feeling like I had a political voice.  This is the first time I've felt like I had a voice.  If you get enough people together, you really can be heard.

 Allan Eaton, 33

Ontario

The key issue is our economic and financial situation.  It is important that we do the most we can to bring attention to it, so future generations won't see the noose getting tighter and tighter around their necks.  It seems like a class war.  The wealth has been unequally distributed and too many people are losing their homes.  Too many are homeless.  Too many veterans are coming home from war and not getting the treatment they need.

I gave up a job [to join Occupy L.A.].  I found an occupation.  Separating myself from my work life, social life, home life, I see more of who I am.  I have separated myself from everything I know.  Sometimes it is weird.  I'm used to getting up and going to work.  Seeing the spectators.  Having a social life, going to hear music, bands.  Getting beers with friends.  Shooting billiards.  All those things are of so little significance.  This is more important for the future of this country.

The message is economic justice. That is it. 

Too Big to Fail: The Movement -- And Everybody Needs One, Every Day

A Movement Too Big To Fail 

Chris Hedges, TruthDig 
October 17, 2011


There is no danger that the protesters who have occupied squares, parks and plazas across the nation in defiance of the corporate state will be co-opted by the Democratic Party or groups like MoveOn.  The faux liberal reformers, whose abject failure to stand up for the rights of the poor and the working class, have signed on to this movement because they fear becoming irrelevant.  Union leaders, who pull down salaries five times that of the rank and file as they bargain away rights and benefits, know the foundations are shaking.  So do Democratic politicians from Barack Obama to Nancy Pelosi.  So do the array of “liberal” groups and institutions, including the press, that have worked to funnel discontented voters back into the swamp of electoral politics and mocked those who called for profound structural reform.

Resistance, real resistance, to the corporate state was displayed when a couple of thousand protesters, clutching mops and brooms, early Friday morning forced the owners of Zuccotti Park and the New York City police to back down from a proposed attempt to expel them in order to “clean” the premises.  These protesters in that one glorious moment did what the traditional “liberal” establishment has steadily refused to do-fight back.  And it was deeply moving to watch the corporate rats scamper back to their holes on Wall Street.  It lent a whole new meaning to the phrase “too big to fail.”

Tinkering with the corporate state will not work.  We will either be plunged into neo-feudalism and environmental catastrophe or we will wrest power from corporate hands.   This radical message, one that demands a reversal of the corporate coup, is one the power elite, including the liberal class, is desperately trying to thwart.  But the liberal class has no credibility left.  It collaborated with corporate lobbyists to neglect the rights of tens of millions of Americans, as well as the innocents in our imperial wars.  The best that liberals can do is sheepishly pretend this is what they wanted all along.  Groups such as MoveOn and organized labor will find themselves without a constituency unless they at least pay lip service to the protests.  The Teamsters’ arrival Friday morning to help defend the park signaled an infusion of this new radicalism into moribund unions rather than a co-opting of the protest movement by the traditional liberal establishment.  The union bosses, in short, had no choice.

The Occupy Wall Street movement, like all radical movements, has obliterated the narrow political parameters.  It proposes something new.  It will not make concessions with corrupt systems of corporate power.  It holds fast to moral imperatives regardless of the cost.  It confronts authority out of a sense of responsibility.  It is not interested in formal positions of power.  It is not seeking office.  It is not trying to get people to vote.  It has no resources.  It can’t carry suitcases of money to congressional offices or run millions of dollars of advertisements.  All it can do is ask us to use our bodies and voices, often at personal risk, to fight back.  It has no other way of defying the corporate state.  This rebellion creates a real community instead of a managed or virtual one.  It affirms our dignity.  It permits us to become free and independent human beings.

Martin Luther King was repeatedly betrayed by liberal supporters, especially when he began to challenge economic forms of discrimination, which demanded that liberals, rather than simply white Southern racists, begin to make sacrifices.  King too was a radical.  He would not compromise on nonviolence, racism or justice.  He understood that movements-such as the Liberty Party, which fought slavery, the suffragists, who fought for women’s rights, the labor movement and the civil rights movement-have always been the true correctives in American democracy.  None of those movements achieved formal political power.  But by holding fast to moral imperatives they made the powerful fear them.  King knew that racial equality was impossible without economic justice and an end to militarism.  And he had no intention of ceding to the demands of the liberal establishment that called on him to be calm and patience.  “For years, I labored with the idea of reforming the existing institutions in the South, a little change here, a little change there,” King said shortly before he was assassinated.  “Now I feel quite differently.  I think you’ve got to have a reconstruction of the entire system, a revolution of values.”

King was killed in 1968 when he was in Memphis to support a strike by sanitation workers.  By then he had begun to say that his dream, the one that the corporate state has frozen into a few safe clichés from his 1963 speech in Washington, had turned into a nightmare.  King called at the end of his life for massive federal funds to rebuild inner cities, what he called “a radical redistribution of economic and political power,” a complete restructuring of “the architecture of American society.”  He grasped that the inequities of capitalism had become the instrument by which the poor would always remain poor.  “Call it democracy, or call it democratic socialism,” King said, “but there must be a better distribution of wealth within this country for all of God’s children.”  On the eve of King’s murder he was preparing to organize a poor people’s march on Washington, D.C., designed to cause “major, massive dislocations,” a nonviolent demand by the poor, including the white underclass, for a system of economic equality.  It would be 43 years before his vision was realized by an eclectic group of protesters who gathered before the gates of Wall Street.

The truth of America is understood only when you listen to voices in our impoverished rural enclaves, prisons and the urban slums, when you hear the words of our unemployed, those who have lost their homes or cannot pay their medical bills, our elderly and our children, especially the quarter of the nation’s children who depend on food stamps to eat, and all who are marginalized.  There is more reality expressed about the American experience by the debt-burdened young men and women protesting in the parks than by all the chatter of the well-paid pundits and experts that pollutes the airwaves.

What kind of nation is it that spends far more to kill enemy combatants and Afghan and Iraqi civilians than it does to help its own citizens who live below the poverty line?  What kind of nation is it that permits corporations to hold sick children hostage while their parents frantically bankrupt themselves to save their sons and daughters?  What kind of nation is it that tosses its mentally ill onto urban heating grates?  What kind of nation is it that abandons its unemployed while it loots its treasury on behalf of speculators?  What kind of nation is it that ignores due process to torture and assassinate its own citizens?  What kind of nation is it that refuses to halt the destruction of the ecosystem by the fossil fuel industry, dooming our children and our children’s children?

“America,” Langston Hughes wrote, “never was America to me.”

“The black vote mean [nothing],” the rapper Nas intones.  “Who you gunna elect/ Satan or Satan? In the hood nothing is changing,/ We aint got no choices.”

Or listen to hip-hop artist Talib Kweli:  “Back in the ’60s, there was a big push for black … politicians, and now we have more than we ever had before, but our communities are so much worse.  A lot of people died for us to vote, I’m aware of that history, but these politicians are not in touch with people at all.  Politics is not the truth to me, it’s an illusion.”

The liberal class functions in a traditional, capitalist democracy as a safety valve.  It lets off enough steam to keep the system intact.  It makes piecemeal and incremental reform possible.  This is what happened during the Great Depression and the New Deal.  Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s greatest achievement was that he saved capitalism.  Liberals in a functioning capitalist democracy are at the same time tasked with discrediting radicals, whether it is King, especially after he denounced the war in Vietnam, or later Noam Chomsky or Ralph Nader.

The stupidity of the corporate state is that it thought it could dispense with the liberal class.  It thought it could shut off that safety valve in order to loot and pillage with no impediments.  Corporate power forgot that the liberal class, when it functions, gives legitimacy to the power elite.  And the reduction of the liberal class to silly courtiers, who have nothing to offer but empty rhetoric, meant that the growing discontent found other mechanisms and outlets.  Liberals were reduced to stick figures, part of an elaborate pantomime, as they acted in preordained roles to give legitimacy to meaningless and useless political theater.  But that game is over.

Human history has amply demonstrated that once those in positions of power become redundant and impotent, yet retain the trappings and privileges of power, they are brutally discarded.  The liberal class, which insists on clinging to its positions of privilege while at the same time refusing to play its traditional role within the democratic state, has become a useless and despised appendage of corporate power.  And as the engines of corporate power pollute and poison the ecosystem and propel us into a world where there will be only masters and serfs, the liberal class, which serves no purpose in the new configuration, is being abandoned and discarded by both the corporate state and radical dissidents.  The best it can do is attach itself meekly to the new political configuration rising up to replace it.

An ineffectual liberal class means there is no hope of a correction or a reversal through the formal mechanisms of power.  It ensures that the frustration and anger among the working and the middle class will find expression now in these protests that lie outside the confines of democratic institutions and the civilities of a liberal democracy.  By emasculating the liberal class, which once ensured that restive citizens could institute moderate reforms, the corporate state has created a closed system defined by polarization, gridlock and political charades.  It has removed the veneer of virtue and goodness that the liberal class offered to the power elite.

Liberal institutions, including the church, the press, the university, the Democratic Party, the arts and labor unions, set the parameters for limited self-criticism in a functioning democracy as well as small, incremental reforms.  The liberal class is permitted to decry the worst excesses of power and champion basic human rights while at the same time endowing systems of power with a morality and virtue it does not possess.  Liberals posit themselves as the conscience of the nation.  They permit us, through their appeal to public virtues and the public good, to see ourselves and our state as fundamentally good.

But the liberal class, by having refused to question the utopian promises of unfettered capitalism and globalization and by condemning those who did, severed itself from the roots of creative and bold thought, the only forces that could have prevented the liberal class from merging completely with the power elite.  The liberal class, which at once was betrayed and betrayed itself, has no role left to play in the battle between us and corporate dominance.  All hope lies now with those in the street.

Liberals lack the vision and fortitude to challenge dominant free market ideologies.  They have no ideological alternatives even as the Democratic Party openly betrays every principle the liberal class claims to espouse, from universal health care to an end to our permanent war economy to a demand for quality and affordable public education to a return of civil liberties to a demand for jobs and welfare of the working class.  The corporate state forced the liberal class to join in the nation’s death march that began with the presidency of Ronald Reagan.  Liberals such as Bill Clinton, for corporate money, accelerated the dismantling of our manufacturing base, the gutting of our regulatory agencies, the destruction of our social service programs and the empowerment of speculators who have trashed our economy.  The liberal class, stripped of power, could only retreat into its atrophied institutions, where it busied itself with the boutique activism of political correctness and embraced positions it had previously condemned.

Russell Jacoby writes:  “The left once dismissed the market as exploitative; it now honors the market as rational and humane.  The left once disdained mass culture as exploitative; now it celebrates it as rebellious.  The left once honored independent intellectuals as courageous; now it sneers at them as elitist.  The left once rejected pluralism as superficial; now it worships it as profound.  We are witnessing not simply a defeat of the left, but its conversion and perhaps inversion.”

Hope in this age of bankrupt capitalism comes with the return of the language of class conflict and rebellion, language that has been purged from the lexicon of the liberal class, language that defines this new movement.  This does not mean we have to agree with Karl Marx, who advocated violence and whose worship of the state as a utopian mechanism led to another form of enslavement of the working class, but we have to learn again to speak in the vocabulary Marx employed.  We have to grasp, as Marx and Adam Smith did, that corporations are not concerned with the common good.  They exploit, pollute, impoverish, repress, kill and lie to make money.  They throw poor families out of homes, let the uninsured die, wage useless wars to make profits, poison and pollute the ecosystem, slash social assistance programs, gut public education, trash the global economy, plunder the U.S. Treasury and crush all popular movements that seek justice for working men and women.  They worship money and power.  And, as Marx knew, unfettered capitalism is a revolutionary force that consumes greater and greater numbers of human lives until it finally consumes itself.  The dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico is the perfect metaphor for the corporate state.  It is part of the same nightmare experienced in postindustrial mill towns of New England and the abandoned steel mills of Ohio.  It is a nightmare that Iraqis, Pakistanis and Afghans, living in terror and mourning their dead, endure daily.

What took place early Friday morning in Zuccotti Park was the first salvo in a long struggle for justice.  It signaled a step backward by the corporate state in the face of popular pressure.  And it was carried out by ordinary men and women who sleep at night on concrete, get soaked in rainstorms, eat donated food and have nothing as weapons but their dignity, resilience and courage.  It is they, and they alone, who hold out the possibility of salvation.  And if we join them we might have a chance.

The Future of the #Occupy Movement: Solidarity and Escalation

Mark Engler - October 21, 2011

A month after it began with a few hundred people marching on Wall Street, the #Occupy movement has grown to include tens of thousands of participants throughout the country and has captured headlines around the world. If it has not yet succeeded beyond its wildest dreams, that’s only because its participants have dreamed big: imagining a sustained popular uprising that could force fundamental changes in our political and economic system—ones that could end corporate dominance and promote real democracy. 

The movement can, in fact, propel significant changes. But #OccupyWallStreet and its allied occupations still have a ways to go before realizing their potential. The two issues most pressing as they chart their next steps: solidarity and escalation. 

 “Co-optation” or Flattery? 

Despite great success in capturing the public eye, the actual number of people camped out at the various occupations around the country remains relatively small. While there are several hundred people camping in hubs such as New York City and Los Angeles, overnight participants in smaller cities number in the dozens. What bolsters the power of these encampments is that they are representative of a much wider discontent. Far greater numbers of sympathizers turn out for mass meetings, marches, and online shows of support. And, importantly, more established political bodies—unions, advocacy organizations, and community groups representing large constituencies—have offered endorsements of the growing #Occupy effort. 

As more have signed on, some activists have been wary of outside expressions of support. Particularly as Democratic Party officials (including President Obama and Vice President Biden) have said positive things about the movement, some have voiced concerns about “cooptation.” They have argued that outside liberals, “while pretending to advance the goals of the Occupy Movement,” could instead “undermine it from within.” 

How big of a danger “cooptation” actually represents is a matter of dispute. In a recent interview, Chris Maisano asked veteran social movement theorist Frances Fox Piven about this issue. (Piven is author, among many other books, of the landmark Poor People’s Movements and has considered the issue of cooptation at length in her work.) I believe she struck the right tone in her response: 

Maisano: [As] recent comments by even the president and vice-president have showed, a lot of the more institutionalized forces on the left like the unions and MoveOn and the Van Jones American Dream Movement are trying to latch on to the protests and turn them into what some people have called a liberal version of the Tea Party. How do you think their involvement will effect the movement? How should the activists at the core of the movement relate to them?  

Piven: They should be friendly. They should ask them to do things; they should give them assignments. And not adopt the insignia of these groups as their own. In other words they should maintain considerable autonomy, but nevertheless they should treat these groups as allies, as they treated the unions as allies. But they shouldn’t ever let unions tell them what to do, they shouldn’t let Van Jones tell them what to do. Partly because they seem to know better, really. 

So I don’t think that’s their biggest problem, how to deal with their erstwhile supporters.

The danger of cooptation should be put in context. There have been some clearly opportunistic instances of Democrats trying to capitalize on the movement, such as the none-too-radical Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee attempting to build its mailing list through a “I Stand with #OccupyWallStreet” petition. But is it really possible that the Democratic Party would somehow swoop in and “take control” of the #Occupy movement? It doesn’t seem like even a remote possibility. 

 Moreover, Peter Drier has made the important point that, when it comes to social change, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. The fact that mainstream figures attempt to co-opt and advance watered-down versions of movement demands (as they did with once-impossibly-radical calls for “a progressive income tax, the eight-hour day, the direct election of Senators, old age insurance, and voting rights for African Americans”) is not a defeat, but a sign of victory. Of course, if activists use this as an excuse to call it a day, that is a problem. But if we treat it as an occasion to push for even greater changes, it is a very positive thing. 

 Joining Forces, Gaining Power 

One problem with the rhetoric of “cooptation” is that it casts the need to expand the movement’s reach in a negative light. It leads figures such as Chris Hedges, in a more-radical-than-thou cri de coeur, to adopt right-wing talking points denouncing allies as “union bosses,” rather than to approach coalition-building in a constructive manner. This is unfortunate. For, while cooptation is something to be avoided, a much more pressing and ongoing need for the #Occupy movement is fostering solidarity. 

Before #OccupyWallStreet ever existed, there were lots of people working to fight banks, reverse foreclosures, and challenge corporate power. The problem was that their efforts were isolated and almost universally ignored by the media. The #Occupy movement has created a great opportunity for many of these campaigns to see themselves as part of a unified fight and to receive an added jolt of energy. In return, the more groups that sign on and see themselves as part of the #Occupy effort, the more that movement is able to sustain its status as a growing and dynamic force. It gains greater numbers of participants, more diversity, and heightened credibility. 

Many actions that different local occupations have embraced have grown out of solidarity with groups that were already organizing to advance the interests of the 99 percent. As just one of many examples, #OccupyLA joined up with an anti-foreclosure action against several banks and successfully compelled the reversal of at least one foreclosure decision. This action—wonderfully militant and effective—did not emerge out of the occupation itself. Instead, it had already been organized by the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE), an LA community organization. But the fact that the #Occupy movement joined in solidarity was a great boon to all involved. It added a ton of energy to ACCE’s direct action. And, for the #Occupy folks, the positive media attention created by the action generated greater excitement about the City Hall encampment and helped bring a wider range of people to the occupation’s assemblies. 

 When Piven argued that cooptation is not the #Occupy movement’s biggest problem her interviewer replied, “What do you think their biggest problem is?” 

Piven gave a prescient answer: “Spreading the movement. Thinking of second, third, fourth, fifth phases. Other forms of disruptive protest that are punchier than occupying a square.” 

She is right. If the #Occupy movement is to remain in the media spotlight and continue gaining momentum, it must escalate. That could involve many steps, including occupying banks, continuing to use direct action against foreclosures, and embracing further international days of action. Solidarity will be an important part of all of these. 

Within the call of “We Are the 99 Percent” is the idea that, while no one can take over the movement—no single individual or group can declare it over or announce that its ambitions have been satisfied—the coalition of those invited to take part is vast. The movement draws power from its reach. And that is no small part of its brilliance.

Political Democracy can and will be fortuitous when Economic Democracy is established.   Explore this and other articles covering alternative economics, ethical leadership, economic democracy, and a society without the weal and woe of social and economic vicissitudes HERE   How does PROUT compare or contrast with capitalism or communism?  Explore the answers HERE What are essential ingredients assuring progressive sustainability bereft of the vicissitudes of economic or political predation, privation or disparity?  Learn more HERE  http://gplus.to/ProgressiveSustainability