One of the most substantial examples of policy efforts within Occupy is a group called Occupy the SEC, which for months has been meeting twice weekly to review the 298-page Volcker Rule through a diligent, line-by-line reading and analysis. The group’s goal is to submit a public comment to the Securities and Exchange Commission examining potential loopholes in the rule. When implemented, the Volcker Rule, part of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, will restrict American banks from making certain forms of speculative investments, such as proprietary trading.
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Occupying Policy | The Nation
27 JanOccupii Membership Steadily Growing and Decentralized | Irregular Times
12 JanIt’s been about two weeks since Occupii.org, the new social network site for the Occupy movement, got kick started. A look at membership trends suggests that overall membership is steadily growing, and that it’s decentralized. Most people are not joining the two biggest groups at Occupii, Occupy USA and Occupy UK, but are rather headed to a large number of smaller groups focused on particular interests, like running a newspaper.
via Occupii Membership Steadily Growing and Decentralized | Irregular Times.
Farmers March with Occupy Wall Street: Sowing the Seeds of Hope and Democracy
28 DecAccording to AlterNet, more than “500 rural farmers, urban farmers, food laborers, community activists and former occupiers” showed up for the beginning of the day at an East Village community garden, which began with Bronx urban farmer Karen Washington telling an energetic crowd of her journey over the past two decades to create a healthy food environment for her neighborhood.
Washington, who helped found the City Farms Markets, a series of community-run farmers markets, was stunned to hear that “food was a privilege and not a right”. So she set out to change that, mainly by putting her hands in the dirt, planting seeds and feeding her community. Through her work in the Bronx, Washington is helping combat the major issues of obesity, diabetes and lack of access to healthy food faced by underserved communities. …
Over the past three decades, the U.S. has adopted economic policies promoted by Wall Street investment banks and agribusiness monopolies that have led to massive concentration in food and agriculture. Today market concentration is so great that only four firms control 84 percent of beef packing and 66 percent of pork production, which has resulted in forcing more than 1.1 million independent livestock producers out of business since Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980.
via Farmers March with Occupy Wall Street: Sowing the Seeds of Hope and Democracy.
Revolution Through Banking? | The Nation
27 DecIt’s easy to list the characteristics of an ideal “Occupy” bank. Setting one up is rather harder. The legal and institutional obstacles to establishing a new (or de novo) bank are formidable and would require years of work and hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not more. One alternative therefore might be for Occupy to partner with or even acquire a bank that is already established and that shares our vision. Indeed there are many small banks around the country which might be amenable—community banks, or so-called “triple bottom line” banks, which aim for community development and positive social and environmental impacts as much as profit.
Our group works on, and we are well aware that we may not succeed. But there are other groups around the country thinking about this problem: Occupy San Francisco is already setting up its own credit union. Perhaps our work will inspire someone else to set up a bank like the one we are imagining. If many attempts are made, there is a greater chance that one will succeed.
Occupy movement comes to New Paltz; one arrest is made | New Paltz Times
23 DecA New Paltz resident and Occupy movement member spoke up during the public comment period, saying, “I was an activist probably before many of my fellow members were even born.” That said, he felt “rejuvenated by these young people and the Occupy movement, which is born out of great darkness. Homes of working Americans are being foreclosed on; millions are without health insurance; those that are pay more than half their paycheck for the limited insurance they receive, which includes increasingly high co-pays and deductibles that they can’t afford. We’re seeing extreme layoffs, corporations paying off politicians to continue practices that endanger public health and our water and air. They are a ray of light shining into that darkness, and I support them.”
via Occupy movement comes to New Paltz; one arrest is made | New Paltz Times.
Thank You, Anarchists | The Nation
20 DecThe anarchists’ way of operating was changing our very idea of what politics could be in the first place. This was exhilarating. Some occupiers told me they wanted to take it home with them, to organize assemblies in their own communities. It’s no accident, therefore, that when occupations spread around the country, the horizontal assemblies spread too.
At its core, anarchism isn’t simply a negative political philosophy, or an excuse for window-breaking, as most people tend to assume it is. Even while calling for an end to the rule of coercive states backed by military bases, prison industries and subjugation, anarchists and other autonomists try to build a culture in which people can take care of themselves and each other through healthy, sustainable communities. Many are resolutely nonviolent. Drawing on modes of organizing as radical as they are ancient, they insist on using forms of participatory direct democracy that naturally resist corruption by money, status and privilege. Everyone’s basic needs should take precedence over anyone’s greed.
Through the Occupy movement, these assemblies have helped open tremendous space in American political discourse. They’ve started new conversations about what people really want for their communities, conversations that amazingly still haven’t been hijacked, as they might otherwise might be, by charismatic celebrities or special interests.
Letters at 3AM: Occupy the Future
20 DecIt is not my place to speak for Occupy, but I’ll use my own “people’s mic” to offer a proposal: that Occupy demands a constitutional amendment to reverse Supreme Court decisions that have given corporations the rights of citizens. Carefully craft this amendment to make clear, beyond doubt, that a corporation does not enjoy or deserve the constitutional rights of a citizen. Rather, a for-profit corporation is a commercial venture subject to the republic’s laws governing commerce. This amendment must state and enforce that corporations are not people.
Change the Supreme Court’s stance that corporations are people and you change the fundamental rule under cover of which corporations conduct themselves. The passage of such an amendment would go a very long way toward getting corporate money out of American politics.
via Letters at 3AM: Occupy the Future – Columns – The Austin Chronicle.
Occupy the Safety Net | The Nation
15 DecHere is where the movement to end poverty could gain inspiration from the proudly unprofessional activists who have seized spaces and occupied the national discourse these past few months. Historically, like OWS, successful poor people’s movements have preferred justice to charity, pursuing goals set not by policy shops but by the people who know most intimately what kind of change they need, and on whose vigorous participation the movement depends. When Lyndon Johnson signed the Economic Opportunity Act in 1964 as part of his War on Poverty, it contained a provision calling for “maximum feasible participation” of the poor—a provision that “grew out of the mass civil rights mobilizations in the 1950s and early 1960s that, with blood and sacrifice, had won basic political rights for African Americans across the South,” writes historian Annelise Orleck in her introduction to The War on Poverty: A New Grassroots History, 1964–1980. The law secured funding for more than 1,000 community action agencies across the country, which helped engage and politicize poor mothers, who fought many battles over the ensuing decade for better food, schools and healthcare for their families (and won some of them). Imagine that: a president signing a law that asked for, even paid for, grassroots participation to shape policies and decide priorities. It sounds utopian now—even under a president who once worked as a community organizer—but as OWS has reminded us, sometimes the size of the demand is the measure of a movement.
Taking Root in Unlikely Soil, Occupy Florida Gains Momentum | The Nation
14 DecThe Sunshine State seems unlikely territory for the movement, but Occupy has taken root in cities and towns across Florida. Swaths of the state are deeply conservative—ostensibly more hospitable to the Tea Party than Occupy Wall Street—and the state is known for beaches and Disney World, not political action. But Occupy has resonated here, drawing hundreds of people to demonstrations even in the smallest towns. And this month, Florida will be home to the first-ever state Occupy convention—the “People’s Convention.”
via Taking Root in Unlikely Soil, Occupy Florida Gains Momentum | The Nation.
An Open Letter from America’s Port Truck Drivers on Occupy the Ports | Coalition for Clean and Safe Ports
12 DecThere is so much at stake in our industry. It is one of the nation’s most dangerous occupations. We don’t think truck driving should be a dead-end road in America. It should be a good job with a middle-class paycheck like it used to be decades ago.
We desperately want to drive clean and safe vehicles. Rigs that do not fill our lungs with deadly toxins, or dirty the air in the communities we haul in.
Poverty and pollution are like a plague at the ports. Our economic conditions are what led to the environmental crisis.
You, the public, have paid a severe price along with us.
Why? Just like Wall Street doesn’t have to abide by rules, our industry isn’t bound to regulation. So the market is run by con artists. The companies we work for call us independent contractors, as if we were our own bosses, but they boss us around. We receive Third World wages and drive sweatshops on wheels. We cannot negotiate our rates. (Usually we are not allowed to even see them.) We are paid by the load, not by the hour. So when we sit in those long lines at the terminals, or if we are stuck in traffic, we become volunteers who basically donate our time to the trucking and shipping companies. That’s the nice way to put it. We have all heard the words “modern-day slaves” at the lunch stops.
Truth and Traditions 