The Occupy Movement is the best chance in 40 years to establish a working class political agenda that benefits the majority. The impact of this movement is so strong that the Sacramento Bee (The Sacramento Bee!) is calling for policies that will actually cost banks money to help people keep their homes.
But we stand right on the brink of squandering that chance for another generation. Ocupy needs to:
1. Keep all actions focused on big banks and the right wing, mostly within the Republican Party. Stop messing with Jean Quan and the OUSD, even the Port althiough yesterday was a great show of strength. Some of the actions of these players particularly Quan are not very helpful but ultimately cities and school boards, especially in cities like Oakland, are suffering immensely from the actions of Wall Street. Port workers and truckers NEED to work.
2. Win something tangible that working people can celebrate. With the strength you have built, you should be able to bring major banks to the table to negotiate principal reduction on millions of mortgages, without even having to figure out how to engage in the electoal arena.
3. Isolate and publicly expel post-haste the anarchists and the police agents that inevitably infiltrate their ranks. You cannot give the police an excuse to attack you and the media to discredit.
4. Start to discuss how to take back Copngress from the Tea Party. Way it works is capital gets regulated by laws, laws get made by Congress. We are in the throes of a crisis created by a well-thought-out 35 year campaign by the right wing to win electoral battles. Doesn;t mean you have to love the Democrats, but you have to turn your power into a force to hold them accountable BECAUSE you have the strength to help or hurt them.
Might be time to change tactics… Take down the tents and build some structures to decide on and start to work on a political platform.Yes the “whole world is watching” but mostly mainstream working america is watching to see if you are real, have sense and can get something done.
You all are making an amazing impact. Please don’t blow it. Please have the courage to be relevant for the long term.
Good post! This post is a more comprehensive version of what I was trying to say in my earlier post. This is the type of credo’s we should base our movement on if it is going to stay relevant and not become reduced to a mere “fashion statement” of sorts. Both right and left media are trying to marginalize what we are about (mostly right-wing media of course). If we are not careful, our movement will be highjacked and perverted by left-wing mass media… which is every bit as dangerous as being marginalized by the right. They both lead to the refraction of our message. Though the movement is based on a “no-leaders” foundation, we DO need a spokesperson or spokespeople to convey our message more clearly and distinctly. This is something we ALL need to think about as we have reached a point where we are garnering wider attention.