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Matthis Chiroux: The Wisdom and Power of a Leaderless Resistance

1 Nov

With no leadership structure to dismantle, the message of the Occupy movement stands poised to self-perpetuate, impervious to traditional routes of attack. The greatest tradition in movement breaking of all time, wanton violence, could still be used against us, but as the establishment learned once again last Tuesday in Oakland, sometimes using violence to clear an intersection can fill it twice as fast.

What is to come of our struggles is a story yet unwritten. We cannot honestly say we will win. What we can say is it doesn’t matter. Simply to struggle changes to world, and we learn from the struggle and continue to fight more effectively for the change we seek.

via Matthis Chiroux: The Wisdom and Power of a Leaderless Resistance.

David Brooks, Fooled by Inequality

1 Nov

He’s at it again, being reasonable out of one side of his mouth while makin’ it up out of the other. I’m talking about David Brooks, Mr. Reasonable, the Mr. Blizzard of plausible risibility. His current column, The Wrong Inequality, is a masterpiece of rhetorical legerdemain and misdirection.

It’s about two inequalities, call them Inequality One and Inequality Two. That’s not what he calls them, but his labels are part of the misdirection, so we’ll skip them for the moment. Inequality One is the 1% vs. the 99%. Inequality Two is the college educated vs. those without college.

After laying them out Brooks helpfully observes: “These two forms of inequality exist in modern America. They are related but different. Over the past few months, attention has shifted almost exclusively to” Inequality One. And, yes, he’s right on all three counts. America has both, they’re related, and attention is now on One, rather than Two.

The point of Brook’s advertorial is that, while Inequality One is bad (his loss leader), Inequality Two is Much Much Worse. For it affects many more people, a big percentage of the 99%, though he doesn’t quite put it that way. Here’s his oh so reasonable conclusion: “If your ultimate goal is to reduce inequality, then you should be furious at the doctors, bankers and C.E.O.’s. If your goal is to expand opportunity, then you have a much bigger and different agenda.”

Notice, first of all, that that conclusion is apples vs. oranges. We’re angry at the beneficiaries of Inequality One (apples), but we’re supposed to expand opportunity in response to Inequality Two (oranges). Umm, err, Mr. David Brooks, Sir, if we’re angry at the One Percenters, what are we to do about it? He doesn’t say or suggest. All he does is divert out attention to the need for more opportunities for, well, the bottom 50%. Well, yes, they need opportunity, and debt forgiveness, health care, and jobs would be nice too. Continue reading →

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Occupy Wall Street: Too Abstract? Will it Last?

31 Oct

Plus Zombies, Bicycles, and Fat Cats

John McWhorter and Glenn Loury have an interesting discussion, mostly about Occupy Wall Street. McWhorter went down there the other day and noticed that it’s small.

Yes it is. Was there yesterday afternoon (Sunday 30 Oct) and it IS small. A whole city block, yes, but a small block. And crowded with tents. It’s large in the imagination, but physically small.

And jammed with people taking photos, shooting videos, and doing interviews. Which surely is the point, get in the media however possible.

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The crowd, more diverse than some reports suggest, though it’s hard to tell the OWSers from the one-time visitors. Some folks, of course, visit time and again. I got an armband of orange mesh—just like the police use to corral people—from an older couple who were helping out. I also saw some seminary students offer a sympathetic ear as Pastors for Occupy Wall Street (something like that, I forget the exact banner they flew under). Yes, lots of young folks, but also middle aged and old. Women as well as men, and a child singer playing a pink guitar in one placer, a child drummer in another. Black white yellow, probably red too.

Will OWS Last?

But back to McWhorter and Loury. McWhorter thinks they’ll all disperse in a month or so when the weather gets really cold. Perhaps.

What McWhorter and Loury were wondering is whether or not THIS is the sort of thing that really stirs the passions so that the protest will last and last. And thus really get in people’s minds and under their skin.

Yes, the 1% vs. 99% message is clear enough, economic inequality. But you push beyond that, and what do you get? They feat that the enemy may be too abstract. Financial manipulation, derivatives, that’s a bit abstract. Cheating is not abstract, but is that cheating? How so?

I think they’ve got a point. How to bring the message home? Continue reading →

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TIME’S UP! :: NYC Direct Action Environmental Organization – HOME

31 Oct

I saw this over the weekend. This is cool technolgy and a brilliant OWS move.

Time’s Up! in conjunction with OWS Sustainable Working Group, are creating energy bikes to replace all the generators that were confiscated by the City from Occupy Wall Street (OWS) last week. We’ve secured funds for 5 human-powered energy cycles that will be installed this weekend. Please donate what you can so we can secure the additional bikes needed to ensure that OWS is fossil-fuel free! Check out the video to see the current energy bike at OWS in action:

via TIME’S UP! :: NYC Direct Action Environmental Organization – HOME.

America’s Exploding Pipe Dream – NYTimes.com

29 Oct

We sold ourselves a pipe dream that everyone could get rich and no one would get hurt — a pipe dream that exploded like a pipe bomb when the already-rich grabbed for all the gold; when they used their fortunes to influence government and gain favors and protection; when everyone else was left to scrounge around their ankles in hopes that a few coins would fall.

We have not taken care of the least among us. We have allowed a revolting level of income inequality to develop. … This was underscored in a report released on Thursday by the Bertelsmann Stiftung foundation of Germany entitled “Social Justice in the OECD — How Do the Member States Compare?”

Be sure to click through to the NYTimes article so you can view the data (click on the link at the end of the article).

via America’s Exploding Pipe Dream – NYTimes.com.

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Religion in America, Going Forward

28 Oct

What role will churches play in moving America to a more equitable and sustainable society?

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The other day I made a post about a church service I’d recently attended, remarking both on the power of the pastor’s preaching, its effect on his congregation, and on his responsibility to them. It was clear to me that he was energizing them to go out a face the world in a constructive frame of mind.

A friend of mine, a man I’ve known for almost 40 years, replied by indicating that he’d been lurking on a list of Unitarian ministers that was currently discussing Black Preaching: The Recovery Of A Powerful Tool by Henry H. Mitchell. This paragraph seems to have been particularly provocative:

As has been noted, worship among Whites and Blacks was similar during the Great Awakenings. It might now be asked why audible response or dialogue disappeared from mainline Protestant patterns of worship. One guess is that the preaching material soared beyond the intellectual reach of the congregation. This occurred, perhaps, because Protestant seminaries had engaged in a contest of one-upmanship with the graduate divisions of the liberal arts colleges, creating scholars instead of professionals skilled in reaching people. With such standard conditioning in the theological schools, the preacher might well be expected to be intellectual in concerns rather than interested in the day-to-day issues of ordinary people. It follows that in such a school-conditioned, abstract atmosphere, answering back would soon be considered by the preaching scholar as impolite and disruptive. This attitude would increase the inhibitions of an audience eager to please. Modern-day experiments in the middle-class church, in which dialogue takes place during and after the sermon, seem clearly to support this hypothesis. In the planning of the talk-back after the service, great care is taken to pitch the dialogue within the intellectual reach of the laity involved. It is encouraging to speculate that the middle-class model may now be drifting away from the graduate classroom and back to the pattern once shared by Blacks and Whites in the preaching event.

My friend then went to say: Continue reading →

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Crony Capitalism Comes Home – NYTimes.com

27 Oct

…this is a chance to save capitalism from crony capitalists….in recent years, some financiers have chosen to live in a government-backed featherbed. Their platform seems to be socialism for tycoons and capitalism for the rest of us. They’re not evil at all. But when the system allows you more than your fair share, it’s human to grab. That’s what explains featherbedding by both unions and tycoons, and both are impediments to a well-functioning market economy.

via Crony Capitalism Comes Home – NYTimes.com.

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Wall Street Isn’t Winning It’s Cheating | Matt Taibbi | Rolling Stone

27 Oct

Success is the national religion, and almost everyone is a believer. Americans love winners. But that’s just the problem. These guys on Wall Street are not winning – they’re cheating. And as much as we love the self-made success story, we hate the cheater that much more.

In this country, we cheer for people who hit their own home runs – not shortcut-chasing juicers like Bonds and McGwire, Blankfein and Dimon.

That’s why it’s so obnoxious when people say the protesters are just sore losers who are jealous of these smart guys in suits who beat them at the game of life. This isn’t disappointment at having lost. It’s anger because those other guys didn’t really win.

via Wall Street Isn’t Winning It’s Cheating | Matt Taibbi | Rolling Stone.

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Patrick Blanc « Green College Online Blog

26 Oct

World famous French botanist, Partick Blanc, is known as the original creator of the vertical garden concept and has since travelled the world creating green urban master pieces without parallel. With his incredible modern approach and naturally green fingers, he takes on commissions with the attitude of “no wall is too big”. The beauty of his flowing and flowering work defies gravity and his incredible urban art form contributes to the built environment from New York to London, Cape Town to Paris, Hong Kong to Istanbul and beyond.

“In any city, all over the world, a naked wall can be turned into a Vertical Garden and thus be a valuable shelter for biodiversity. It’s also a way to add nature to the daily life of city inhabitants” said Patrick Blanc who started out as a scientific researcher in the 80’s until he made a trip to Malaysia and Thailand which inspired him to start his work in bringing plant life to corporate and urban spac

via Patrick Blanc « Green College Online Blog.

The Occupy Wall Street image that marks the end of the global | guardian.co.uk

25 Oct

There were “anti-capitalist” protests in the boom years but these were self-evidently marginal to a society lapping up the joys of credit. Today, the world is ready to listen to Occupy Wall Street and its claim to speak for the 99% against the profiteering 1%. Everyone knows what they are talking about and everyone can see some truth in it.

via The Occupy Wall Street image that marks the end of the global consensus | Jonathan Jones | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk.

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