Damn Straight

Practical Occupation

Last month protesters from OWS along with community organizers broke into a home in East New York that had stood empty since being foreclosed in 2008 and turned it over to a woman and her family who had been homeless for the last 10 years. In similar actions in Columbus, Atlanta, San Francisco and Southgate, foreclosed, empty houses are being occupied by Occupy and turned over to those without homes. Evictions, sometimes as soon as 2 months after failing to make a mortgage payment, are being resisted by large crowds making it impossible for police to force people out of their homes. Through this action, OWS is putting its money where its mouth is by highlighting poor communities and how they have been affected by our economic system. It is also exposing some of the central questions we should be considering if we want to rethink how we run our societies.

In order for the movement to grow the coming year it is essential that it proves its relevance in helping to solve problems. The true relevance of OWS in starting a new conversation on how we want to see the future of our societies can only be maintained by not restricting ourselves to pointing out what is wrong but by proposing alternatives and implementing them where possible. Only by testing our ideas can we ascertain if they work. We have nothing to fear from the messy process of trial and error.

The focus on repossessed homes exposes one of the central differences between capitalism and socialism, between private property and community property, between the right of the individual and the right of the community. The question is what is of greater value, the right of an individual to buy an apartment building and leave it empty, for whatever reason, or the right of 20 families to housing at the expense of the individual?

A city belongs to all its inhabitants. When you buy a plot of land in a city that has been zoned for dwellings, do you have the right to not develop that land? The permits and deeds give you the right to make a profit from developing an apartment building that will serve a number of families, it does not give you a right to not build that building.

Finding the correct balance between the rights of individuals as opposed to the rights of a collectives is tough. Within reason, there is much to be said for the concept of private property. It is not difficult to find examples where the tyranny of the masses, or those claiming to speak for the masses, has trampled the rights of individuals. That this can and does happen in collectivist societies should not be used as an excuse to prevent criticism of the opposite extreme.

We are witnessing a tyranny by individuals who have amassed enough wealth and political power to trample the rights and interest of the many in order to serve the privileged few. Besides highlighting these perversions, we need to make sure we spend enough time thinking about how we break these power structures without merely replacing them with equally unbalanced and perverse structures and then to act. The housing crisis, at the heart of the current economic meltdown, is the perfect testing ground to try and rethink the balance between these rights in very practical terms.

Maintaining Indignation

Having spent the last couple of weeks with family visiting for the holidays and entertaining my kids on their winter break, I have felt markedly less angry at the outrages of our plutocracy. This is a good thing, to be reminded how easy it is to go through life oblivious of how the very few are running us into the ground. I was reminded of what Jamie Kilstein from Citizen Radio said, about living in a progressive bubble when you are mainly tuned in to other progressives and their independent media.

I’m still amazed and often at a loss for words when I have to explain what OWS is all about. What they want. Why they are so upset. Why they don’t just get a job. When you think about it, with the reality tv, unbridled consumerism, the cheap, processed crap we keep on stuffing our faces with on top of the usual day to day struggles, it’s no surprise that relatively few that manage to maintain their indignation.

And maintain our indignation we must! They told us we were a spoiled bunch of bored rich kids in New York, while they continued to repossess people’s homes without even holding the deed to the properties. They told us we were a bunch of sushi eating liberals in Tel Aviv while privatizing public lands. They called us lazy, welfare addicts in Athens while pushing austerity on the poor and debt relief on the rich. They call us terrorists in Damascus, when they have already killed more than 5,000 of us.

This will be our challenge in the coming year, to remind everyone why it is unacceptable to cause economic collapse and not be held accountable; why it is unacceptable to make housing, education and a decent wage inaccessible to many while the few take an ever growing share of the GDP; that to continue to expect the current system to supply different results is the definition of insanity.

And if that didn't piss you off, watch some of this, it worked for me...

Class Warfare

We take our democracy for granted as much as those in power take their privileges for granted. One of the greatest achievements of the protest movement sweeping the world is that it is exposing the lies and half truths peddled by the power elites and our willingness to lap it all up. It reminds us that rights are never given, but taken. It reminds them that they rule by our assent, which will eventually be rescinded when that privilege is abused. It exposes the lengths that they will go to hold on to power and the means by which they hope to achieve this.

Mitt Romney describes Occupy Wall Street as class warfare. He is not wrong, just that it isn’t the recent protest that started the conflict. It started with Ronald Reagan’s 1981 campaign to destroy organized labor, with further shots being fired by partner Margaret Thatcher during the coal miners’ strike of 1984-85. All of this being just the start of a campaign by conservatives, neo-liberals, free-marketeers and corporate interests to bring back the Gilded Age and the Roaring 20’s.

This campaign has been going on for a very long time, with much success. While we have been busy shopping, expressing ourselves with Nikes, Diesel jeans, gold and platinum credit cards, the right usurped the left. It was on Bill Clinton’s watch that Glass-Steagall was repealed. It was Tony Blair, with his New Labour, who implemented privatization that Thatcher could only have dreamed of. Most of the rest of the developed world followed suit, with the IMF and WTO often encouraging similar moves to free market capitalism amongst those developing nations that came to seek relief.

With the cooption of the entire political machine now exposed, it becomes clear that our Democracy has devolved into little more than a farce. We snicker at despots that claim to receive 98.76% of the popular vote in what they call democratic elections. At the same time we freely choose between candidates that all essentially implement the same policy. Where is the Democracy in that?

Each time the establishment lashes out, whether in New York, California, Egypt or Tel Aviv  it assists in more clearly contrasting the choices we are faced with. It is this conflict that is exposing what is at stake. It is the disobedience of the governed and the establishment’s reaction that is making the scam so blatantly clear. Is it a coincidence that Mayor Bloomberg held a news conference to reveal a foiled terror plot that had been under control for two years, complete with a video of what the plot’s success would have looked like, only days after realizing that he was loosing the public relations battle? Was there no connection between the incessant chatter about the Iranian threat by the Israeli government over the last couple of weeks and the passing of new anti-libel laws, laws against financing of NGO’s, laws on giving politicians more control over the selection of Supreme court justices?

What emboldens those in power to continue using excessive force to deal with these annoying protests is the knowledge that the majority will look at these transgressions and believe that they will never be perpetrated against them. But they always are. What starts with Jews will end with anyone opposing the regime, by way of Homosexuals, Communists and Gypsies. What starts with Muslims will end with privileged white college kids speaking in opposition to the establishment by way of Arabs, Mexicans and the unemployed. As Matt Taibbi so aptly puts it, what is hardest is the transgressing against the first liberty, trampling the rest becomes increasingly easy.

Armed with this knowledge, that we are next; that if we are not now unemployed to allow for greater profitability, we soon may be; that if we are not now being poisoned by yet more exploitation of our natural resources, we soon will be; that when we sympathize with others that have had their freedom curtailed, we know ours are soon to follow. How can we continue to sit at home and wait for someone else to bring change.? Get you down to Zuccotti Park, to Tahrir, to Rothchild boulevard and put your body on the line before they have your soul.