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Anatomy of a Victory: Occupy Wall Street Wins a Big One

October 17, 2011 By 1 Comment
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  1. Efforts to deprive Bloomberg/Brookfield of its pretext for seizure

Russell Simmons’ offer to fund the clean-up effort was unnecessary, it turns out, because the occupiers took it upon themselves to take care of that endeavor. Having solicited the donation of tons of cleaning supplies, the effort lasted for hours and involved hundreds of volunteers. Radio Dispatch’s Josh Knefel tweeted, “Pep talk for tomorrow, then back to cleaning. This is the cleanest damn park in America.”

Brian Williams and Mara Schiavocampo of NBC Nightly News devoted coverage to the clean-up effort. Footage showed that the adults here were the self-organized occupiers, who took pains to maintain the sanitary integrity of what is, let us not forget, their living space, while the Bloomberg/Brookfield side reacted to the protest by throwing a tantrum.

So what is the take-away? Why did these things work? The answer is simple democratic theory, expressed pristinely byFrederick Douglass at Canandaigua, NY in 1857.

Let me give you a word of the philosophy of reform. The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle. The conflict has been exciting, agitating, all-absorbing, and for the time being, putting all other tumults to silence. It must do this or it does nothing. If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.

This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.

When one of the greatest living novelists, who lived underground for many years under the threat of lethal violence suborned by a totalitarian theocrat, condemns you as acting against liberty, you take note. When your plans involve arresting scores of American workers, arms linked in non-violent defiance, you take note. When your optics will be the commission of mass violence in order to clean up an already clean park, you take note. The NYPD, in possession as it is of guns and clubs, can take the park whenever it wants, but not without its leaders suffering massive political consequences. And that’s the point.

What is the “goal”?

As of right now, public officials are vastly more intimidated by the power of Wall Street than by the power of the people, and so they do the bidding of the former group, rather than the latter. That is what takes what is theoretically a democracy (demos meaning “people”) and transforms it into a plutocracy, a society whose policies are driven by wealth.

The über-goal of Occupy Wall Street is to empower people to intimidate government officials even more than the ownership class does. If that can be achieved, then the movement will succeed merely by surviving. Wall Street, after all, hasn’t got a list of demands that it makes one protest at a time; it exerts constant, unyielding pressure on the engines of power and arranges to continue to bully policymakers in perpetuity. If the Occupy movement expands and persists, it can conceivably arrange to bully policymakers even more fiercely. That would result in the achievement of real democracy, and all of the policy goals that implies.

Power is taking note. Just in the last day, Bloomberg ran away from protesters who hounded him at his classy eatery of choice, and Treasure Secretary Tim Geithner, whom bankers consider “our man in Washington” promised major Wall Street action. They’re becoming afraid of the might of a united democratic populace.

What we must do now is move to a state of affairs in which that is the permanent situation.

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Comments

  1. Alan says:
    October 23, 2011 at 9:28 pm

    The Occupy Movement embodies the deep wisdom and understanding of the 99%. Our goals are not undefined they are comprehensive. The diverse goals of OWS all stem from the same problem, the corruption of our democracy. Our nation is rising up to take back our democracy and I believe this will come to pass. But what happens then? We need to identify now what action we want our new citizen legislators to take to solve the litany of problems left behind from when the 1% controlling the 99%. We must act to create productive, long-term jobs for hard working Americans. We need to end our dependence on foreign oil and oil altogether and we need to save our planet for our children and grand children. There is only one way to do all this and the solutions are here today!

    The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was partly a stimulus plan but more than half was “Reinvestment” in the American industrial base. The ARRA was successful at leapfrogging over existing technologies making it financially feasible to use biological systems to replace our reliance on dwindling oil reserves. The biggest leap has been in Advanced Biofuels making it possible to cost effectively produce liquid fuels from organic waste like sewage, farm waste and solid municipal waste and the first “at scale” plants are coming on line now. When Pearl Harbor was bombed and we declared it took only 6 months to retool our industrial infrastructure for war. Now is even a greater emergency.

    We the people must vote with our wallets and let our voices be heard to pressure corporations to use a small part of the 2 Trillion dollar horde of money they are holding to implement an Advanced Biofuels program. This would bring a Quarter Trillion dollars a year home to pay American workers to produce domestic biofuels. Now that the science is complete, we must “Declare War on Energy Dependence” and redirect the money we now pay to OPEC to pay Americans to produce bio oil at home.

    There is a bill in Congress to attain this goal by 2030 based on the success of the ARRA. But we are in an emergency and we must approach this as we would if at war. With the right focus we could produce enough advanced biofuels by 2018 to end the import of non-North American oil. This will improve our national security by removing the need to have American troops around the globe to protect our energy supplies. It will bring home One Quarter of a Trillion dollars per year to pay American workers improving long-term employment opportunities and this plan has the fringe benefit of reducing pollution and carbon in our environment.

    Now that we the 99% have found our voice, let us take a concrete step to change this country and this planet forever. This may be our last chance.

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