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A famous Chicago factory gets Occupied – Occupy Chicago – Salon.com

28 Feb

Working alongside the union, Occupy Chicago gets results, in one-day, in a labor action:

Whether because of the right’s overreach, the rise of Occupy, or both, struggles like the Serious occupation seem to resonate with the general public. Fried says the existence of a large, easily mobilized Occupy movement made their 2012 action different. . . .

It’s that kind of Occupier/union synergy that has caught on in a few locales and has been given partial credit for union victories in places like Washington state, as well as pushing the labor movement more generally to take risks leaders are usually uncomfortable with.

In the case of Serious, Fried says Occupy’s participation changed the tone of negotiations with the company’s management in California. “When they heard that Occupy Chicago had moved in outside their company, they were alarmed,” she says.

via A famous Chicago factory gets Occupied – Occupy Chicago – Salon.com.

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The truth about violence at Occupy – Occupy Oakland – Salon.com

22 Feb

While the camp was in existence, crime went down 19 percent in Oakland, a statistic the city was careful to conceal. “It may be counter to our statement that the Occupy movement is negatively impacting crime in Oakland,” the police chief wrote to the mayor in an email that local news station KTVU later obtained and released to little fanfare. Pay attention: Occupy was so powerful a force for nonviolence that it was already solving Oakland’s chronic crime and violence problems just by giving people hope and meals and solidarity and conversation.

The police attacking the camp knew what the rest of us didn’t: Occupy was abating crime, including violent crime, in this gritty, crime-ridden city

via The truth about violence at Occupy – Occupy Oakland – Salon.com.

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Manhattan District Attorney Subpoenas Occupy Protester’s Twitter Account | The Nation

16 Feb

The Manhattan District Attorney subpoenaed the Twitter account of Malcolm Harris, who’d been arrested on a disorderly conduct charge in an Occupy event on 1 October (crossing the  bridge with 700 others). They were seeking “any and all user information including e-mail address, as well as any and all tweets for the period 9/15/11-12/31/11” for his account, which has almost no bearing on the offense:

Why the prosecutor would bother to conduct an investigation into the most minor of offenses, one that even upon conviction does not result in a criminal record is unclear. But whatever it is that is under investigation—perhaps the entire Occupy movement—it is not Harris’s alleged disorderly conduct. New York criminal defense attorney, Earl Ward, who is familiar with the case, but not involved in it, calls it a “fishing expedition meant to have a chilling effect on protest” and says it is “prosecutorial abuse, an effort by the DA’s office to get into personal communications of these protesters, for the purpose of chilling their First Amendment rights.”

via Manhattan District Attorney Subpoenas Occupy Protester’s Twitter Account | The Nation.

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The unemployed meet MacArthur’s tanks – Salon.com

16 Feb

Mass unemployment isn’t new at all,  of course. Which raises the question, generally asked about software, is it a ‘bug’ or a ‘feature’?

Another similarity between the “unemployed armies” of yesteryear and the Occupy movement is the brutal response by law enforcement. Witnesses expressed shock when the Oakland police sprayed tear gas at protesters and complained about the liberal use of billy clubs by cops in New York, but imagine Gen. Douglas MacArthur unleashing a deadly offensive of tanks, bayonets and torches on military veterans camping out in Washington, D.C. It’s all captured in the chilling video below.

via The unemployed meet MacArthur’s tanks – Salon.com.

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We Need a Politics of Jubilee

15 Feb

What I’m thinking is that the Occupy movement is the beginnings of a politics of Jubilee. But I’m getting ahead of myself. What is Jubilee?

Writing in Leviticus as Literature, the late Mary Douglas observes (p. 243): “Release of slaves and cancellation of debts incurred under the preceding regime were common practice for victorious conquerors, a magnanimity that cost them nothing while their rule was new and their power to enforce it recently demonstrated.” Continue reading →

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Will Occupy Embrace Nonviolence? | The Nation

10 Feb

The Occupy movement will be be tested, we will be tested.

Then, in house occupations and anti-foreclosure actions, the movement began to deliver palpable results—putting real families in real homes, preventing evictions. And despite ample provocation by paramilitarized police, the movement occupied the moral high ground by staying almost wholly nonviolent. Now, ready or not, here comes the election cycle of 2012, putting pressure on the movement to keep up a vital tension between self-maintenance and growth, between challenging the whole plutocratic political economy and upping the odds of reforms that can arrest and reverse it.

And, right on cue, here come the city governments of Chicago, Tampa and Charlotte, readying noxious rules and massive armament to corral the likely thousands of demonstrators who will gather, in the Occupy spirit—though not necessarily with any official imprimatur—to greet the G-8 and NATO in May, the Republicans in August and the Democrats in September, respectively.

via Will Occupy Embrace Nonviolence? | The Nation.

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African American pastors express support for Occupy movement – The Washington Post

3 Feb

But Bryant, who observed the movement from a distance before deciding he wanted to be part of it, was adamant that Occupy the Dream has a defined agenda.

“Number one, we are asking for more Pell grants so that our young people might be able to compete and go to colleges and universities,” he said. “Number two, we are asking for an immediate freezing on foreclosures.” The group is also seeking billions of dollars “from Wall Street for economic development and for job training.”

Beginning in February, Bryant plans to launch a campaign to urge people to bank only at minority-owned financial institutions.

via African American pastors express support for Occupy movement – The Washington Post.

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The Politics of Dignity – NYTimes.com

1 Feb

This message, of course, plays well in the USofA too:

Dear Sirs: You may think that the situations in Egypt and Russia have nothing in common. Think again. Yes, these two countries have starkly different histories. But having visited both in recent weeks, I can tell you that they have one very big thing in common: the political eruptions in both countries were not initially driven by any particular ideology but rather by the most human of emotions — the quest for dignity and justice. Humiliation is the single most underestimated force in politics. People will absorb hardship, hunger and pain. They will be grateful for jobs, cars and benefits. But if you force people to live indefinitely inside a rigged game that is flaunted in their face or make them feel like cattle that can be passed by one leader to his son or one politician to another, eventually they’ll explode. These are the emotions that sparked the uprisings in Cairo and Moscow. They don’t go away easily, which is why you’re in more trouble than you think.

via The Politics of Dignity – NYTimes.com.

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Occupy the Super Bowl: Now More Than Just a Slogan. | The Nation

1 Feb

The Republican-led state legislature aims to pass a law this week that would make Indiana a “right-to-work” state. … In the reality-based community, “right-to-work” means smashing the state’s unions and making it harder for nonunion workplaces to get basic job protections. This has drawn peals of protest throughout the state, with the Occupy and labor movement front and center from small towns to Governor Mitch Daniels’s door at the State House. Daniels and friends timed this legislation with the Super Bowl. Whether that was simple arrogance or ill-timed idiocy, they made a reckless move. Now protests will be a part of the Super Bowl scenery in Indy.

The Super Bowl is perennially the Woodstock for the 1 percent: a Romneyesque cavalcade of private planes, private parties and private security. Combine that with this proposed legislation, and the people of Indiana will not let this orgy of excess go unoccupied. Just as the parties start a week in advance, so have the protests. More than 150 people…marched through last Saturday’s Super Bowl street fair in downtown Indianapolis with signs that read, “Occupy the Super Bowl,” “Fight the Lie” and “Workers United Will Prevail.” Occupy the Super Bowl has also become a T-shirt, posted for the world to see on the NBC Sports Blog.

via Occupy the Super Bowl: Now More Than Just a Slogan. | The Nation.

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Under Occupy DC’s tent of dreams – OccupyDC – Salon.com

31 Jan

There was Michael, once a African-American kid who went from Alaska to Iraq as a gung-ho warrior and came back from the war zone a happy-go-lucky leftist with a taste for confronting the right-wing media. There was Katie, graduate of a private school in northwest Washington who regularly facilitated the occupation’s General Assemblies and learned to try to trust the judgement of the group. There was Sam who came from Virginia with a political science degree in hand, yamulke on his head, and unshakable interest in non-hierarchical politics. There was Vic who had traveled the country for the sake of her political activism and found renewed inspiration from a man named Charles Jones, who desegregated a lunch counter in South Carolina long before any of them were born. And there were few dozen others just like them–and some not at all like them at all–who had claimed a patch of grass in McPherson Square on October 1 and called themselves OccupyDC. There was hardly a professional reformer among them.

via Under Occupy DC’s tent of dreams – OccupyDC – Salon.com.

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