Pat Sarotte has a couple of concerns people in the Occupy movement should be aware of:
1. An article in Common Dreams delves into the motives behind the historic Irish Famine and the current global social deprivation plans of the New World Order, same as the Old New World Order. That article totally destroyed my good mood on this beautiful pre-spring day. Those of us who either Irish by birth or Irish only in celebration of St. Patrick need to respond and spread the word.
See the original article at:
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/03/15-4
2. FYI to those of us who have reached advanced years and the rest of us who have plans to age eventually: AARP, advertising themselves es a senior citizens lobby, "will soon be holding a private, principals-only 'salon-style conversation' with a host of advocates of entitlement cuts."
Online objections plus massive public protests are in order to alert the public.
See the article at:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/17/social-security-advocates-aarp_n_1355477.html
Sunday, March 18, 2012
Saturday, March 17, 2012
Leafleting Downtown Royal Oak
We had a dozen people handing out leaflets in Royal Oak today. All four corners at 4th and main were covered, and one person spent considerable time on Washington, two blocks over. We had the full-page leaflet and the simpler 1/4 sheet handout, in two colors on white paper or B & W on yellow card stock, to pass out. Something over 500 of all types were distributed. Most people were either very mildly interested or politely disinterested. Some were very receptive. A few were sort of hostile to the whole idea, in a smug "I'm part of the 1%" sort of way.
Some people left early, with other things to do. Some showed up late, because that's just the way we do things. Most of us were dressed a little to heavily for the perfect, sunny weather. Those who were there at the end of our tour decided on the nearby National Coney Island for a very pleasant lunch.
My sense is that the effort was as successful as could be expected. In an election campaign, it's a rule of thumb that a given voter needs to see a candidate's name roughly seven times before they begin to think "this is a real candidate" for whom they might vote. I think something similar is at work here.
A random person in the street has probably heard of the Occupy movement, but they've never heard of Occupy in Royal Oak because, before today's two-hour leafleting, there's never been any noticeable public activity in Royal Oak. There are a few yard signs, and there have been meetings in the Coffee Beanery, but those are not noticeable like a bunch of people handing out leaflets. We are going to need a persistent public presence before people in general take us seriously.
The literature we handed out included several Occupy web sites. The ORO calendar (click on the link at the top right of occupyro.blogspot.com) has been updated with information on the next meetings for Occupy Metro Detroit and Occupy Royal Oak. We'll see if anyone who got a leaflet on St. Patrick's Day shows up.
Art Myatt
Some people left early, with other things to do. Some showed up late, because that's just the way we do things. Most of us were dressed a little to heavily for the perfect, sunny weather. Those who were there at the end of our tour decided on the nearby National Coney Island for a very pleasant lunch.
My sense is that the effort was as successful as could be expected. In an election campaign, it's a rule of thumb that a given voter needs to see a candidate's name roughly seven times before they begin to think "this is a real candidate" for whom they might vote. I think something similar is at work here.
A random person in the street has probably heard of the Occupy movement, but they've never heard of Occupy in Royal Oak because, before today's two-hour leafleting, there's never been any noticeable public activity in Royal Oak. There are a few yard signs, and there have been meetings in the Coffee Beanery, but those are not noticeable like a bunch of people handing out leaflets. We are going to need a persistent public presence before people in general take us seriously.
The literature we handed out included several Occupy web sites. The ORO calendar (click on the link at the top right of occupyro.blogspot.com) has been updated with information on the next meetings for Occupy Metro Detroit and Occupy Royal Oak. We'll see if anyone who got a leaflet on St. Patrick's Day shows up.
Art Myatt
Monday, March 12, 2012
Occupy Royal Oak Takes To The Streets
Occupy Metro Detroit / Royal Oak Occupy will be meeting downtown Royal Oak, Saturday, March 17th to distribute informational flyers about "who is the Occupy movement". Anyone who wants to
join us is more than welcome.
The Place: Corner Main and 4th Street
The Time: 11:00 am to 1:00 pm, maybe later weather permitting.
We'll be handing out a flyer with a list of policies that, if implemented, would go a long way toward restoring political power to the middle class and securing homes, jobs and education for everyone. On the list are public funding of elections and public universities, taxing capital gains at the same rate as other income, real universal health care, removing constitutional rights for corporations and similar reforms. Everything on this list could be done whether the economy is growing or contracting, though they would certainly be easier to do if the economy was growing.
Republicans and Democrats, instead of putting these things first, agree on insisting that economic growth comes first and everything else must be a lesser priority. The two parties may disagree on how to grow the economy, but nobody is supposed to question the goal. Since we have seen plenty of economic decline in the last decade, the middle class and indeed everyone not in the top 1% have gotten lots of austerity and very little reform.
The problem with this bi-partisan attitude is, the conditions that allowed economic growth since the beginnings of industrial society centuries ago have vanished.
Perhaps that's not the right expression. Saying those conditions have vanished makes it sound like some celestial event like a solar flare or meteor strike, something entirely beyond our control, just happened to us. It would be more accurate to say the conditions allowing expansion of our industrial society have been burned up, and we are the ones who have done the burning.
The industrial economy has grown for centuries by substituting machine power for human labor and animal power. The machines on which we are now dependent for heat, light, food, travel and all the other essentials require energy to function. Each machine requires very specific sources of energy to function - gasoline for most cars, diesel fuel for most big rigs, electricity for lights and computers, coal or nuclear or hydro power for most electrical generation, and so on.
Behind the machinery of the industrial economy is an assumption that the right type of energy for each machine will be indefinitely available, and affordable too. Oops. Over the last decade, it has become more and more apparent that the liquid fuels to run industrial transportation are not so available as we would like, and not nearly as cheap.
Pundits, politicians and economists have a variety of conflicting theories of why this is so, and a variety of conflicting ideas about how to fix it. The upsetting conclusion from many who have studied the subject of peak oil is, this is not a problem that can be fixed. Peak oil is simply a fact that we will have to accept, even if accepting it mean we must abandon our expectation of everlasting economic growth.
There was a time when it seemed the world was so large that unexplored and undeveloped lands offered limitless opportunity. With seven billion people on earth and no land that has not been studied by repeated satellite photography, we know neither the land nor the opportunities are limitless.
There was a time when the rivers and oceans seemed so large that they could easily absorb all our garbage and still supply us with all the fish we would ever need. Now, fish stocks are in a permanent state of collapse. Surface waters in the United States are so loaded with mercury and other industrial contaminants that regularly eating fish is inadvisable, as is drinking untreated water. The oceans near our shores are spotted with dead zones and toxic algae blooms.
There was a time that the atmosphere seemed so large that it could absorb our exhaust emissions indefinitely. Enough said; we all know it is not so.
When the air and the oceans and the fuels for industry seemed limitless, the basic theories about endless growth that economists use today were formulated. Today, economists and politicians who prescribe endless growth are simply wrong. they are proposing something that can't be done.
Wikipedia tells us, "Liebig's Law of the Minimum, often simply called Liebig's Law or the Law of the Minimum, is a principle developed in agricultural science by Carl Sprengel (1828) and later popularized by Justus von Liebig. It states that growth is controlled not by the total amount of resources available, but by the scarcest resource (limiting factor)."
The limiting factor for today's industrial economy is liquid fuels made from oil. We started with a finite amount of oil on the earth - perhaps 3 trillion barrels of oil in the ground. We have already burned one trillion.
Another trillion barrels is deeper, more inaccessible, and takes more effort to find and get out of the ground. Think of the difference between a simple derrick in Texas or Oklahoma that starts producing oil a year after construction starts, and a deep water platform that takes ten years and 500 million dollars to build before it produces anything. Then imagine the additional difficulties of a platform that is not in the Gulf of Mexico, but in the Arctic, coping with icebergs and other extra hazards.
The final trillion may be so inaccessible and so heavy and so contaminated and so scattered that it will never be extracted because extracting would cost more than it is worth.
Before 2002, the price of oil had been fairly stable around the 20-25 dollars per barrel range for a number of years. Before 2002, the supply available on the world market increased steadily to meet demand with stable and affordable prices.
Since 2002, the price of oil has doubled, and doubled again, and now with the price over $100 for some months, it seems to have started on its third doubling. The supply of oil increased at a declining rate until 2006, and has been basically flat since then. Following the financial crisis of 2008, the price temporarily collapsed to the 30-40 dollar per barrel range, and then steadily climbed back to its present position.
It's not clear how much the price of oil contributed to the crash in 2008. Certainly, prices as high as $140 per barrel drained a lot of purchasing power from the economy and did nothing to prevent the financial catastrophe. It is clear there is some price for oil that will break the economy, and current price trends are testing just what that level might be.
There is quite a lot more that could be said about oil and alternative sources for liquid fuels. The essential point is that at least 96% of our industrial transportation depends on liquid fuels. Conventional oil is the source for about 90% of these liquid fuels. The supply of conventional oil has begun a process of long-term decline.
If peak oil is indeed the limiting factor, then the long term prospects for growth of our energy-intensive economy are not good, no matter what kind of stimulus program is tried. We will have to create a new economy that is much less energy intensive and much more labor intensive. We will have to carry through on all the reforms to make our society more democratic and more egalitarian without waiting for or even expecting economic growth.
Art Myatt
join us is more than welcome.
The Place: Corner Main and 4th Street
The Time: 11:00 am to 1:00 pm, maybe later weather permitting.
We'll be handing out a flyer with a list of policies that, if implemented, would go a long way toward restoring political power to the middle class and securing homes, jobs and education for everyone. On the list are public funding of elections and public universities, taxing capital gains at the same rate as other income, real universal health care, removing constitutional rights for corporations and similar reforms. Everything on this list could be done whether the economy is growing or contracting, though they would certainly be easier to do if the economy was growing.
Republicans and Democrats, instead of putting these things first, agree on insisting that economic growth comes first and everything else must be a lesser priority. The two parties may disagree on how to grow the economy, but nobody is supposed to question the goal. Since we have seen plenty of economic decline in the last decade, the middle class and indeed everyone not in the top 1% have gotten lots of austerity and very little reform.
The problem with this bi-partisan attitude is, the conditions that allowed economic growth since the beginnings of industrial society centuries ago have vanished.
Perhaps that's not the right expression. Saying those conditions have vanished makes it sound like some celestial event like a solar flare or meteor strike, something entirely beyond our control, just happened to us. It would be more accurate to say the conditions allowing expansion of our industrial society have been burned up, and we are the ones who have done the burning.
The industrial economy has grown for centuries by substituting machine power for human labor and animal power. The machines on which we are now dependent for heat, light, food, travel and all the other essentials require energy to function. Each machine requires very specific sources of energy to function - gasoline for most cars, diesel fuel for most big rigs, electricity for lights and computers, coal or nuclear or hydro power for most electrical generation, and so on.
Behind the machinery of the industrial economy is an assumption that the right type of energy for each machine will be indefinitely available, and affordable too. Oops. Over the last decade, it has become more and more apparent that the liquid fuels to run industrial transportation are not so available as we would like, and not nearly as cheap.
Pundits, politicians and economists have a variety of conflicting theories of why this is so, and a variety of conflicting ideas about how to fix it. The upsetting conclusion from many who have studied the subject of peak oil is, this is not a problem that can be fixed. Peak oil is simply a fact that we will have to accept, even if accepting it mean we must abandon our expectation of everlasting economic growth.
There was a time when it seemed the world was so large that unexplored and undeveloped lands offered limitless opportunity. With seven billion people on earth and no land that has not been studied by repeated satellite photography, we know neither the land nor the opportunities are limitless.
There was a time when the rivers and oceans seemed so large that they could easily absorb all our garbage and still supply us with all the fish we would ever need. Now, fish stocks are in a permanent state of collapse. Surface waters in the United States are so loaded with mercury and other industrial contaminants that regularly eating fish is inadvisable, as is drinking untreated water. The oceans near our shores are spotted with dead zones and toxic algae blooms.
There was a time that the atmosphere seemed so large that it could absorb our exhaust emissions indefinitely. Enough said; we all know it is not so.
When the air and the oceans and the fuels for industry seemed limitless, the basic theories about endless growth that economists use today were formulated. Today, economists and politicians who prescribe endless growth are simply wrong. they are proposing something that can't be done.
Wikipedia tells us, "Liebig's Law of the Minimum, often simply called Liebig's Law or the Law of the Minimum, is a principle developed in agricultural science by Carl Sprengel (1828) and later popularized by Justus von Liebig. It states that growth is controlled not by the total amount of resources available, but by the scarcest resource (limiting factor)."
The limiting factor for today's industrial economy is liquid fuels made from oil. We started with a finite amount of oil on the earth - perhaps 3 trillion barrels of oil in the ground. We have already burned one trillion.
Another trillion barrels is deeper, more inaccessible, and takes more effort to find and get out of the ground. Think of the difference between a simple derrick in Texas or Oklahoma that starts producing oil a year after construction starts, and a deep water platform that takes ten years and 500 million dollars to build before it produces anything. Then imagine the additional difficulties of a platform that is not in the Gulf of Mexico, but in the Arctic, coping with icebergs and other extra hazards.
The final trillion may be so inaccessible and so heavy and so contaminated and so scattered that it will never be extracted because extracting would cost more than it is worth.
Before 2002, the price of oil had been fairly stable around the 20-25 dollars per barrel range for a number of years. Before 2002, the supply available on the world market increased steadily to meet demand with stable and affordable prices.
Since 2002, the price of oil has doubled, and doubled again, and now with the price over $100 for some months, it seems to have started on its third doubling. The supply of oil increased at a declining rate until 2006, and has been basically flat since then. Following the financial crisis of 2008, the price temporarily collapsed to the 30-40 dollar per barrel range, and then steadily climbed back to its present position.
It's not clear how much the price of oil contributed to the crash in 2008. Certainly, prices as high as $140 per barrel drained a lot of purchasing power from the economy and did nothing to prevent the financial catastrophe. It is clear there is some price for oil that will break the economy, and current price trends are testing just what that level might be.
There is quite a lot more that could be said about oil and alternative sources for liquid fuels. The essential point is that at least 96% of our industrial transportation depends on liquid fuels. Conventional oil is the source for about 90% of these liquid fuels. The supply of conventional oil has begun a process of long-term decline.
If peak oil is indeed the limiting factor, then the long term prospects for growth of our energy-intensive economy are not good, no matter what kind of stimulus program is tried. We will have to create a new economy that is much less energy intensive and much more labor intensive. We will have to carry through on all the reforms to make our society more democratic and more egalitarian without waiting for or even expecting economic growth.
Art Myatt
Monday, February 27, 2012
Real Occupiers Are Not Anonymous
At Sunday's Occupy Metro Detroit meeting, we had an inconclusive discussion about how much personal information should be shared with others in the group. The occasion for this discussion was the question of putting one's name, address, phone # and e-mail on a spreadsheet to be shared. Of course, anyone could choose to put only as much information as they cared to share. some chose none. Some chose only name and e-mail. Others went for the full Monte.
At one extreme is the attitude that it's all public information anyway. If you are at an Occupy meeting and some government agency wants to know who you are, they will soon have all the information listed above, and more, whether we like it or not. Therefore, by not circulating the same information among ourselves, we are only hampering communications within our own group.
At the other extreme is the attitude of wanting to control the information about us that others have. Thus, a few trusted people may have everything including a home address; others, only a phone # plus e-mail. We might want the group organizer to have only an e-mail address, with the understanding it is not to be circulated and that mass e-mails be sent by way of the "BCC" line.
That is, some people are nervous about a list with their name on it, saying they attended a given meeting or are a member of the group. They think there may be negative consequences at work or with friends and neighbors, if it becomes known. And it is all too easy to copy an electronic list.
Here's a fact about participating in a political group: In order to show up on a street corner holding a protest sign or handing out leaflets, you have to be in a public place. People can and will take pictures. If any authorities from local police to Homeland Security are interested in identifying you, they probably will.
You can't put a sign on your lawn or a bumper sticker on your car without people noticing. You can't honestly talk about a political issue without revealing to friends and family which side you are on. The only way you can keep this sort of thing a secret is to take a completely passive approach toward political issues.
If you were a passive person, you would not be at an Occupy meeting, or any other kind of political gathering. Participating straightforwardly in small-d democratic actions requires each one of us to take a public stand. We are in fact exposing ourselves to potential allies and potential opponents.
In theory, we do not do this in a voting booth. Ballots are supposed to be secret, though many of us doubt that they are. Many of us also doubt that they are counted accurately - but that's another discussion entirely.
Being any sort of political activist requires each one of us to come out of the closet, so to speak. We put signs in our yards, bumper stickers on our cars, buttons on our shirts, political hats on our heads and on occasion, put our bodies on the line. We act in public.
There will be opposition. We can't control how violent that opposition might get. We can only control how violent or non-violent we will be. The political issues of equality and democracy are serious. As we get closer to winning, we can expect some degree of violence directed our way. At least, that was true of the abolition movement, of the labor movement, of the civil rights movement, of the anti-war movement and every other serious attempt to extend and defend human rights.
Of course, this does not mean we will be personally safe from violence if we simply refrain from political activity. Any day's news coverage shows how impossible it is to be safe from violence. A ten-year old sleeping in bed at home can be shot in the head, and has been.
The point is, we are in a real political struggle to see if our government will be controlled by corporations or by human beings, and we are not going to be finished by, for instance, this fall's election. We are going to be dealing with issues of inequality, injustice and a failing economy for the foreseeable future.
Governments at every level (federal, city, state, school district, etc.) can be used to alleviate the impact of crises, to help us adjust to a failing economy. They can be used to prop up the institutions which caused the crisis by forcing austerity programs on the rest of us. Which way this goes is determined by who controls those governments.
In this context, isn't it a little silly to worry about getting a few more scam e-mails or annoying phone calls if a list with your name and number on it is copied by the wrong people? That sort of thing is a reasonable concern for an internet group that discusses model trains. If the group can't or won't keep your information private, then the consequences of dropping out of the group are very small.
Our only real choice is between participating in the public arena or letting our opponents win. Considering the stakes, the consequences of letting the wealthy and powerful do as they please, we are going to have to take public stands for quite a while.
Maybe a few super-genius hackers can participate anonymously. For the rest of us, anonymous is not a realistic option, even if we put on a Guy Fawkes mask now and then.
Art Myatt
At one extreme is the attitude that it's all public information anyway. If you are at an Occupy meeting and some government agency wants to know who you are, they will soon have all the information listed above, and more, whether we like it or not. Therefore, by not circulating the same information among ourselves, we are only hampering communications within our own group.
At the other extreme is the attitude of wanting to control the information about us that others have. Thus, a few trusted people may have everything including a home address; others, only a phone # plus e-mail. We might want the group organizer to have only an e-mail address, with the understanding it is not to be circulated and that mass e-mails be sent by way of the "BCC" line.
That is, some people are nervous about a list with their name on it, saying they attended a given meeting or are a member of the group. They think there may be negative consequences at work or with friends and neighbors, if it becomes known. And it is all too easy to copy an electronic list.
Here's a fact about participating in a political group: In order to show up on a street corner holding a protest sign or handing out leaflets, you have to be in a public place. People can and will take pictures. If any authorities from local police to Homeland Security are interested in identifying you, they probably will.
You can't put a sign on your lawn or a bumper sticker on your car without people noticing. You can't honestly talk about a political issue without revealing to friends and family which side you are on. The only way you can keep this sort of thing a secret is to take a completely passive approach toward political issues.
If you were a passive person, you would not be at an Occupy meeting, or any other kind of political gathering. Participating straightforwardly in small-d democratic actions requires each one of us to take a public stand. We are in fact exposing ourselves to potential allies and potential opponents.
In theory, we do not do this in a voting booth. Ballots are supposed to be secret, though many of us doubt that they are. Many of us also doubt that they are counted accurately - but that's another discussion entirely.
Being any sort of political activist requires each one of us to come out of the closet, so to speak. We put signs in our yards, bumper stickers on our cars, buttons on our shirts, political hats on our heads and on occasion, put our bodies on the line. We act in public.
There will be opposition. We can't control how violent that opposition might get. We can only control how violent or non-violent we will be. The political issues of equality and democracy are serious. As we get closer to winning, we can expect some degree of violence directed our way. At least, that was true of the abolition movement, of the labor movement, of the civil rights movement, of the anti-war movement and every other serious attempt to extend and defend human rights.
Of course, this does not mean we will be personally safe from violence if we simply refrain from political activity. Any day's news coverage shows how impossible it is to be safe from violence. A ten-year old sleeping in bed at home can be shot in the head, and has been.
The point is, we are in a real political struggle to see if our government will be controlled by corporations or by human beings, and we are not going to be finished by, for instance, this fall's election. We are going to be dealing with issues of inequality, injustice and a failing economy for the foreseeable future.
Governments at every level (federal, city, state, school district, etc.) can be used to alleviate the impact of crises, to help us adjust to a failing economy. They can be used to prop up the institutions which caused the crisis by forcing austerity programs on the rest of us. Which way this goes is determined by who controls those governments.
In this context, isn't it a little silly to worry about getting a few more scam e-mails or annoying phone calls if a list with your name and number on it is copied by the wrong people? That sort of thing is a reasonable concern for an internet group that discusses model trains. If the group can't or won't keep your information private, then the consequences of dropping out of the group are very small.
Our only real choice is between participating in the public arena or letting our opponents win. Considering the stakes, the consequences of letting the wealthy and powerful do as they please, we are going to have to take public stands for quite a while.
Maybe a few super-genius hackers can participate anonymously. For the rest of us, anonymous is not a realistic option, even if we put on a Guy Fawkes mask now and then.
Art Myatt
Friday, February 17, 2012
Progressive or Radical? - Yes!
Progressives work within the official political apparatus to achieve incremental changes for their goals. In elections, this almost always leads to support for Democratic Party candidates, though there have been occasional Republicans who are somewhat progressive. Progressive Republicans are at least a threatened species, and may be extinct soon.
Radicals work outside of and frequently in opposition to the official political apparatus. They are looking for wholesale change, often creating new institutions, to further their goals.
Radicals tend to favor direct action; progressives, political action. Progressives believe they are being "practical." Radicals think they are "getting to the root of things." Both lines of argument have some limited merit.
The point is that both lines of argument have their limits, just as the earth has limits on its ability to absorb pollution, the economy has limits to growth, and empires have limited lifespans even if they sometimes last for centuries.
Progressives and radicals have, to a large extent, common goals: health care for all; elimination of hunger/poverty/homelessness; education for all; and so on. It's an academic commonplace and an artificial distinction to say that they differ on the means to achieve those common goals.
Its an artificial distinction because, apart from a very few very committed ideologues, real people are neither progressive nor radical. Ordinary people are more inclined to approve of what works than they are to worry about whether it's progressive or radical. They support some progressive initiatives and some radical initiatives. They are indifferent to or opposed to many of each. They (we) are entirely right to have this approach.
We all can think of initiatives from various progressives and radicals that didn't work and that were never going to work, because they were just impractical no matter how ideologically pure. We will not all have the same list, but if we have been paying attention, we all have a few examples in mind. I think of the dumber PETA campaigns, myself. You may have a different favorite flop.
We might make the argument that there were times when the progressive approach worked very well in America. Yet, when we look closely at any of those times - Depression, New Deal, Civil Rights, Anti - (Vietnam) War, Women's Liberation and so on - what we see is a combination of progressive and radical actions. There were radical and progressive groups. There was a sustained mass movement struggling against economic failure, social injustice and war. The broadest-based and most successful political groups undertook some radical and some progressive actions at the same time.
Regardless of past victories and past failures, the times they are a-changin' - again. The supposedly free-market global economy that promised prosperity has spectacularly failed to deliver. The economic crisis that became so acute it stopped the 2008 Presidential campaign for a while may well become even more acute in this 2012 Presidential campaign.
None of the issues of mortgage fraud by banks, declining real wages, unemployment, foreclosures and all the other symptoms of the declining American empire have been fixed. The institutions at fault have been propped up with trillions of government dollars. That's a debt to the wealthy we ordinary citizens are expected to pay for with a severe drop in our security and standard of living.
With no mass movement insisting on stimulating the economy from the bottom up and not from the top down, the purely progressive approach of supporting the two-party system is obviously a failure. It's not hard to find articles outlining 100 important ways the Obama regime has been just like the Bush regime, and often worse. Individual rights protected by the Constitution and centuries of legal practice appear to have been obliterated at the stroke of a pen, when Obama signed the law allowing indefinite detention of American citizens, for just one instance.
The inalienable rights mentioned in the Declaration of Independence are not rights that apply only to American citizens. There was, at the time the Declaration was written, no United States of America of which one could be a citizen. Those rights, of which life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness were specifically mentioned, are not rights not of citizens of this or that country but of every human being. Obama is the latest in a long line rulers trying to sign them away, but they are inalienable, whether he likes it or not.
It's time for a mass movement to assert those rights. Occupy Wall Street is a good start, but it is just the beginning. If the movement is to be successful, Occupy groups will be just part of a movement, not the whole. No one group will be the whole. No one person or organization has the whole truth or the sole authority to say what is next.
The economic, political and social failures of today were not caused by taxes that were too low, or too high, or applied to the wrong people and institutions. They were not caused by gay marriage or the lack of it. they were not caused by access to abortion or the the lack of it. They are not caused by too much or too little stimulation of the economy. Yet this sort of tax policy and social policy and abstract economic policy is all that is offered by the political parties that hold power in Washington and Lansing and locally.
The failure of our society is caused by an economic, political and social system that is successful only when the economy is growing. We are in a situation when growth is not happening - or at least, the 99% have not seen economic growth for years and none is on the horizon.
I think that continued conventional growth is just not possible, because the resources of food, water and energy to support that growth simply do not exist. Other people may have other explanations. We could look at overpopulation, at concentration of capital, at a political system captured by obsolete, bankrupt institutions that are using that political control as life support for them instead of us. All these things contribute. There is no one right answer.
It's an interesting discussion. The main thing is to realize we are trying to understand why growth is not happening, in spite of the best efforts of Democratic and Republican politicians and their teams of economic experts. Official statistics for GDP, unemployment and inflation are all fudged to make the situation look better than it is. The situation is not good, and it can turn suddenly worse with any shock such as a Greek default, war with Iran or a Fukushima-type meltdown in the United States.
What the government should be doing is looking out for the general welfare, not the welfare of bankrupt companies, no matter how large. It's not doing what it should; not even close. We need help. they give us austerity. That's why we need a mass movement with radical and progressive moves all at once; not just some thousands of Occupiers in Michigan, but hundreds of thousands. If something so inconsequential as football can fill Michigan Stadium, we should be able to overflow it. We will never win if we are not at least this ambitious.
Of course, since we are the 99%, reaching this number of people should be easy. People who are very dissatisfied with business as usual are all around us. We don't even need to stir them up. Repeated economic & political failures are already doing that. We only need to reach out and organize them. Let's get on with it.
Art Myatt
Radicals work outside of and frequently in opposition to the official political apparatus. They are looking for wholesale change, often creating new institutions, to further their goals.
Radicals tend to favor direct action; progressives, political action. Progressives believe they are being "practical." Radicals think they are "getting to the root of things." Both lines of argument have some limited merit.
The point is that both lines of argument have their limits, just as the earth has limits on its ability to absorb pollution, the economy has limits to growth, and empires have limited lifespans even if they sometimes last for centuries.
Progressives and radicals have, to a large extent, common goals: health care for all; elimination of hunger/poverty/homelessness; education for all; and so on. It's an academic commonplace and an artificial distinction to say that they differ on the means to achieve those common goals.
Its an artificial distinction because, apart from a very few very committed ideologues, real people are neither progressive nor radical. Ordinary people are more inclined to approve of what works than they are to worry about whether it's progressive or radical. They support some progressive initiatives and some radical initiatives. They are indifferent to or opposed to many of each. They (we) are entirely right to have this approach.
We all can think of initiatives from various progressives and radicals that didn't work and that were never going to work, because they were just impractical no matter how ideologically pure. We will not all have the same list, but if we have been paying attention, we all have a few examples in mind. I think of the dumber PETA campaigns, myself. You may have a different favorite flop.
We might make the argument that there were times when the progressive approach worked very well in America. Yet, when we look closely at any of those times - Depression, New Deal, Civil Rights, Anti - (Vietnam) War, Women's Liberation and so on - what we see is a combination of progressive and radical actions. There were radical and progressive groups. There was a sustained mass movement struggling against economic failure, social injustice and war. The broadest-based and most successful political groups undertook some radical and some progressive actions at the same time.
Regardless of past victories and past failures, the times they are a-changin' - again. The supposedly free-market global economy that promised prosperity has spectacularly failed to deliver. The economic crisis that became so acute it stopped the 2008 Presidential campaign for a while may well become even more acute in this 2012 Presidential campaign.
None of the issues of mortgage fraud by banks, declining real wages, unemployment, foreclosures and all the other symptoms of the declining American empire have been fixed. The institutions at fault have been propped up with trillions of government dollars. That's a debt to the wealthy we ordinary citizens are expected to pay for with a severe drop in our security and standard of living.
With no mass movement insisting on stimulating the economy from the bottom up and not from the top down, the purely progressive approach of supporting the two-party system is obviously a failure. It's not hard to find articles outlining 100 important ways the Obama regime has been just like the Bush regime, and often worse. Individual rights protected by the Constitution and centuries of legal practice appear to have been obliterated at the stroke of a pen, when Obama signed the law allowing indefinite detention of American citizens, for just one instance.
The inalienable rights mentioned in the Declaration of Independence are not rights that apply only to American citizens. There was, at the time the Declaration was written, no United States of America of which one could be a citizen. Those rights, of which life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness were specifically mentioned, are not rights not of citizens of this or that country but of every human being. Obama is the latest in a long line rulers trying to sign them away, but they are inalienable, whether he likes it or not.
It's time for a mass movement to assert those rights. Occupy Wall Street is a good start, but it is just the beginning. If the movement is to be successful, Occupy groups will be just part of a movement, not the whole. No one group will be the whole. No one person or organization has the whole truth or the sole authority to say what is next.
The economic, political and social failures of today were not caused by taxes that were too low, or too high, or applied to the wrong people and institutions. They were not caused by gay marriage or the lack of it. they were not caused by access to abortion or the the lack of it. They are not caused by too much or too little stimulation of the economy. Yet this sort of tax policy and social policy and abstract economic policy is all that is offered by the political parties that hold power in Washington and Lansing and locally.
The failure of our society is caused by an economic, political and social system that is successful only when the economy is growing. We are in a situation when growth is not happening - or at least, the 99% have not seen economic growth for years and none is on the horizon.
I think that continued conventional growth is just not possible, because the resources of food, water and energy to support that growth simply do not exist. Other people may have other explanations. We could look at overpopulation, at concentration of capital, at a political system captured by obsolete, bankrupt institutions that are using that political control as life support for them instead of us. All these things contribute. There is no one right answer.
It's an interesting discussion. The main thing is to realize we are trying to understand why growth is not happening, in spite of the best efforts of Democratic and Republican politicians and their teams of economic experts. Official statistics for GDP, unemployment and inflation are all fudged to make the situation look better than it is. The situation is not good, and it can turn suddenly worse with any shock such as a Greek default, war with Iran or a Fukushima-type meltdown in the United States.
What the government should be doing is looking out for the general welfare, not the welfare of bankrupt companies, no matter how large. It's not doing what it should; not even close. We need help. they give us austerity. That's why we need a mass movement with radical and progressive moves all at once; not just some thousands of Occupiers in Michigan, but hundreds of thousands. If something so inconsequential as football can fill Michigan Stadium, we should be able to overflow it. We will never win if we are not at least this ambitious.
Of course, since we are the 99%, reaching this number of people should be easy. People who are very dissatisfied with business as usual are all around us. We don't even need to stir them up. Repeated economic & political failures are already doing that. We only need to reach out and organize them. Let's get on with it.
Art Myatt
Thursday, December 8, 2011
Recommended Items about Occupation
One or more of our members have found these interesting enough to recommend:
The way to Occupy a Bank is to Own One
http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article32194.html
Time for an Economic Bill of Rights
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=27611
Systems Thinking for OWS
http://questioneverything.typepad.com/question_everything/2011/11/is-occupy-wall-street-a-testament-to-the-need-for-systems-thinking.html
The Growth Paradigm has Become an Embarassment
http://theautomaticearth.blogspot.com/2011/11/november-14-2011-growth-paradigm-has.html
Transition Towns and Occupation - parts of the same movement?
http://transitionvoice.com/2011/11/transitioners-debate-how-to-engage-occupy-movement/
Makana sings his original Occupy song
http://www.youtube.com/v/xq3BYw4xjxE?version=3
How Republicans are being taught to talk about Occupy Wall Street
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/republicans-being-taught-talk-occupy-wall-street-133707949.html
The Occupied Amendment
http://www.theoccupiedamendment.org/
A Top Ten List of OWS videos
http://www.care2.com/causes/top-10-must-see-occupy-wall-street-videos-slideshow.html
Democrats Occupy Occupy
http://news.yahoo.com/democrats-occupy-occupy-050017272.html
If you have more that you believe we should be aware of, then please add them in the comments.
The way to Occupy a Bank is to Own One
http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article32194.html
Time for an Economic Bill of Rights
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=27611
Systems Thinking for OWS
http://questioneverything.typepad.com/question_everything/2011/11/is-occupy-wall-street-a-testament-to-the-need-for-systems-thinking.html
The Growth Paradigm has Become an Embarassment
http://theautomaticearth.blogspot.com/2011/11/november-14-2011-growth-paradigm-has.html
Transition Towns and Occupation - parts of the same movement?
http://transitionvoice.com/2011/11/transitioners-debate-how-to-engage-occupy-movement/
Makana sings his original Occupy song
http://www.youtube.com/v/xq3BYw4xjxE?version=3
How Republicans are being taught to talk about Occupy Wall Street
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/republicans-being-taught-talk-occupy-wall-street-133707949.html
The Occupied Amendment
http://www.theoccupiedamendment.org/
A Top Ten List of OWS videos
http://www.care2.com/causes/top-10-must-see-occupy-wall-street-videos-slideshow.html
Democrats Occupy Occupy
http://news.yahoo.com/democrats-occupy-occupy-050017272.html
If you have more that you believe we should be aware of, then please add them in the comments.
Saturday, December 3, 2011
Lazy Bums
About the Occupiers I hear "They're just being lazy bums sitting around and doing nothing but complaining." Please let me explain.
Other than life itself, time is the most valued possession of every human being on this earth. The harshest way we punish guilty criminals is by taking from them their time. We make them waste it in prison, or we take all they'll ever have by ending their lives. We also value our comfort quite highly, and neither sleeping out of doors in tents, nor being pepper sprayed are comfortable.
So if a person sacrifices both their time and comfort for a cause, they are sacrificing considerably. And when large numbers of people feel they have valid reasons to make personal sacrifice, disagreeing with their reasons may be acceptable, but ignoring or belittling the cause they are sacrificing to champion is an insult; one we should afford nobody.
We know that a recent, successful revolution in the Middle East was sparked by a college graduate who poured gasoline over himself in the town square and lit a match. Why? Because conditions were such that he and many other college graduates in his country were barely able to eke out the most meager of livings. He sacrificed all the time he had left on Earth.
A large percentage of the thousands of Occupiers in cities around the world are recent college graduates, heavily in debt and unable to find work, or students still in college already deeply in debt and facing prohibitive tuition raises. They are also our children and our neighbor's children, our brothers and sisters, our nieces and nephews, our cousins and our grandchildren. Right now they are out there sacrificing their time and comfort. Can we afford to be so foolish as to stand by and require them to sacrifice more than their time and comfort -- their lives -- before making a serious attempt to understand and redress their grievances?
Greg Schindler
Other than life itself, time is the most valued possession of every human being on this earth. The harshest way we punish guilty criminals is by taking from them their time. We make them waste it in prison, or we take all they'll ever have by ending their lives. We also value our comfort quite highly, and neither sleeping out of doors in tents, nor being pepper sprayed are comfortable.
So if a person sacrifices both their time and comfort for a cause, they are sacrificing considerably. And when large numbers of people feel they have valid reasons to make personal sacrifice, disagreeing with their reasons may be acceptable, but ignoring or belittling the cause they are sacrificing to champion is an insult; one we should afford nobody.
We know that a recent, successful revolution in the Middle East was sparked by a college graduate who poured gasoline over himself in the town square and lit a match. Why? Because conditions were such that he and many other college graduates in his country were barely able to eke out the most meager of livings. He sacrificed all the time he had left on Earth.
A large percentage of the thousands of Occupiers in cities around the world are recent college graduates, heavily in debt and unable to find work, or students still in college already deeply in debt and facing prohibitive tuition raises. They are also our children and our neighbor's children, our brothers and sisters, our nieces and nephews, our cousins and our grandchildren. Right now they are out there sacrificing their time and comfort. Can we afford to be so foolish as to stand by and require them to sacrifice more than their time and comfort -- their lives -- before making a serious attempt to understand and redress their grievances?
Greg Schindler
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