CONNECT
Truthdig / Op-Ed
Published: Tuesday 25 October 2011
“If this movement can cross class lines, if it can articulate its vision to those in marginalized communities, especially poor people of color, it can tap into a force and power that was never part of the New Left.”
Occupiers Have to Convince the Other 99 Percent
The occupation movement’s greatest challenge will be overcoming the deep distrust of white liberals by the poor and the working class, especially people of color. Marginalized people of color have been organizing, protesting and suffering for years with little help or even acknowledgment from the white liberal class. With some justification, those who live in these marginalized communities often view this movement as one dominated by white sons and daughters of the middle class who began to decry police abuse and the lack of economic opportunities only after they and their families were affected. This distrust is not the fault of the movement, which has instituted measures within its decision-making process to make sure marginalized voices are heard before white males. It is the fault of a bankrupt liberal class that for decades has abandoned the core issue of economic justice for the poor and the working class and busied itself with the vain and self-referential pursuits of multiculturalism and identity politics.
The civil rights movement, after all, achieved a legal victory, not an economic one. And for the bottom two-thirds of African-Americans, life is worse today than it was when Martin Luther King marched in Selma in 1965. King, like Malcolm X, understood that racial equality was impossible without economic justice. The steady impoverishment of those in these marginal communities, part of the Faustian deal worked out between the Democratic Party and its corporate sponsors, has been accompanied by draconian forms of police control, from stop-and-frisk to militarized police raids to the establishment of our vast complex of prison gulags. More African-American men, as Michelle Alexander has pointed out, are in prison or jail or on probation or parole than were enslaved in 1850, before the Civil War began. The corporate state keeps some two-thirds of poor people of color in the United States trapped in internal colonies—either in the impoverished inner city or behind bars. And the abject failure on the part of the white liberal establishment to stand up for the rights of the poor, as well as its decision to throw its support behind Democratic politicians such as Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, who abet this institutionalized and economic racism, has left many in these marginal communities disdainful of protesters from the newly dispossessed white middle class.
“The black community and the community of color have been dealing with these issues for decades,” the Rev. Raymond Blanchette, an African-American preacher from Queens, said in Zuccotti Park in Manhattan one day last week as we closed our jackets against a chilly wind whipping down the canyons of the financial district. “Now the white community around the country is beginning to see it and experience it firsthand. It’s pretty shocking to them. The African-American community and other communities of color are saying, ‘Welcome to the world I live in.’ That’s why you don’t see that many of those [nonwhite] faces here. It’s like, OK, now you decided you are going to speak up because now you’re the one that’s affected by it. One of the reasons I’m here is because I see the viability of this movement. I want to bring those communities together.”
The power elite have desperately tried to tar the movement with a series of calumnies, branding protesters as hippies, anti-Semites, drug addicts, leftists, anarchists and communists. They have so far been unable to blunt the fundamental truth the movement imparts: We have undergone a corporate coup. It has to be reversed. But this truth has yet to resonate among those who for decades have been betrayed and ignored by white liberals.
The decision by protesters from Occupy Wall Street to join Cornel West in Harlem last Saturday to protest the New York City Police Department’s stop-and-frisk policy was an important step in taking the message of the occupy movement to our impoverished internal colonies. West, who led the protest outside the 28th Precinct at West 123rd Street and Frederick Douglass Boulevard and who was arrested along with about 30 others, was part of a crowd that chanted: “Stop-and-frisk don’t stop the crime. Stop-and-frisk is the crime.”
The power elite are frantically searching for the ideological weapon that will discredit the movement. But the clarity of the protests, the painful personal stories of dislocation that are the heart of its message, and, most important, the self-discipline, despite police provocation, which has kept these protests nonviolent have advanced the movement and discredited the forces of control. The power elite, held together by the glue of force and fraud, are seeking ways to communicate in the only language they know they can master—unrestrained force. And as we enter the second month of demonstrations, the power elite fear that the core message and the calls for resistance, which resonate with a majority of Americans, will lead to a direct confrontation with the corporate state. If the movement starts to pull hundreds of thousands of people together, if it leaps across class lines, as I saw during the peaceful revolutions in East Germany and Czechoslovakia, then the corporate state is probably finished. Our corporate overlords know this. And they are doing everything in their power to make sure this does not come to pass.
The divisions between the poor and the working class on the one hand and the white, liberal middle class on the other reach back to the Vietnam anti-war movement. The New Left in the 1960s was infused with the same deadly doses of hedonism that corrupted earlier 20th century counterculture movements such as the bohemians and the beats. The antagonism between the New Left during the Vietnam War and the working class and the poor, whose sons were shipped to Vietnam while the sons of the white middle class were usually handed college deferments, was never bridged. Working-class high schools, including many high schools with large numbers of African-Americans, sent 20 to 30 percent of their graduates to Vietnam every year while college graduates made up only 2 percent of all troops sent to Vietnam in 1965 and 1966. Anti-war activists were seen by those locked out of the white middle class as spoiled children of the rich who advocated free love, drug use, communism and social anarchy.
The unions and the white working class remained virulently anti-communist. They spoke in the language of militarism and the Cold War and were unsympathetic to the anti-war movement as well as the civil rights movement. When student activists protested at the AFL-CIO’s 1965 convention, chanting “Get out of Vietnam!” the delegates taunted them by shouting “Get a haircut.” AFL-CIO leader George Meany ordered the security to “clear the Kookies out of the gallery.” United Automobile Workers President Walter Reuther, once the protesters were escorted out, announced that “protesters should be demonstrating against Hanoi and Peking … [who] are responsible for the war.” The convention passed a resolution that read: “The labor movement proclaim[s] to the world that the nation’s working men and women do support the Johnson administration in Vietnam.”
Those that constituted the hard-core New Left, groups like Students for a Democratic Society, found their inspiration in the liberation struggles in Vietnam and the Third World and figures such as Mao and Leon Trotsky rather than the labor movement, which they considered bought off by capitalism. They saw the working class as part of the problem. Many came to embrace the cult of violence. The Black Panthers, the Nation of Islam and the Weather Underground Organization became as poisoned by this lust for blood, quest for ideological purity, crippling paranoia and internal repression as the state system they defied.
The bulk of the white protesters in the 1960s found their ideological roots not in the moral imperatives of King or Malcolm X but the disengagement championed earlier by beats such by Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsburg and William Burroughs. It was a movement that, while it incorporated a healthy dose of disrespect for authority, focused on self-indulgent schemes for inner peace and fulfillment. The use of hallucinogenic drugs, advocated by Timothy Leary in books such as “The Politics of Ecstasy,” and the rise of occultism that popularized transcendental meditation, Theosophy, Hare Krishna, Zen and the I-Ching were trends that would have dismayed older radical movements such as the Wobblies and the Communist Party. The counterculture of the 1960s, like the commodity culture, lured adherents inward. It set up the self as the primary center of concern. It offered affirmative, therapeutic remedies to social problems and embraced vague, undefined and utopian campaigns to remake society. There was no real political vision. Hermann Hesse’s novel “Siddhartha” became emblematic of the moral hollowness of the New Left. These movements and the celebrities who led them, such as the Yippie leader Abbie Hoffman, catered to the stage set for them by television cameras. Protests and court trials became street theater. Dissent became another media spectacle. Anti-war protesters in Berkeley switched from singing “Solidarity Forever” to “We All Live in a Yellow Submarine.”
The power of the Occupy Wall Street movement is that it has not replicated the beliefs of the New Left. Rather, it is rooted in the moral imperatives of justice and self-sacrifice, what Dwight Macdonald called nonhistorical values, values closer to King than Abbie Hoffman. It seeks to rebuild the bridges to labor, the poor and the working class. The movement eschews the hedonism of the New Left; indeed it does not permit drugs or alcohol in Zuccotti Park. It denounces the consumer culture and every evening shares its food with the homeless, who also often sleep in the park. But, most important, it eschews, through a nonhierarchical system of self-governance, the deadly leadership cults that plagued and ultimately destroyed the movements of the 1960s. The political and moral void within the New Left meant that, like the counterculture of the beats or the bohemians, it was seamlessly integrated into the commercial culture. At its core the New Left shared the same hedonism, entrancement with mass entertainment, love of spectacle and preoccupation with the self. And the degeneration of the New Left is personified by politicians such as Clinton, who mouthed the usual platitudes about the poor and working men and women while he and both major political parties, awash in corporate dollars, betrayed and impoverished them.
Murray Bookchin wrote: “Radical politics in our time has come to mean the numbing quietude of the polling booth, the deadening platitudes of petition campaigns, carbumper sloganeering, the contradictory rhetoric of manipulative politicians, the spectator sports of public rallies and finally, the knee-bent, humble plea for small reforms—in short, the mere shadows of the direct action, embattled commitment, insurgent conflicts, and social idealism that marked every revolutionary project in history. … What is most terrifying about present-day ‘radicalism’ is that the piercing cry for ‘audacity’—‘L’audace! L’auduce! Encore l’auduce!’—that Danton voiced in 1793 on the high tide of the French revolution would simply be puzzling to the self-styled radicals who demurely carry attaché cases of memoranda and grant requests into their conference rooms … and bull horns to their rallies.”
Macdonald argued that those who wanted change had to base all actions on the nonhistorical and more esoteric values of truth, justice and love. They had to retain Danton’s call for audacity. Once any class bows to the practical dictates required by effective statecraft and legislation, as well as the call to protect the nation, it loses its moral authority and its voice. The naive belief in human progress through science, technology and mass production, which this movement understands is a lie, erodes these nonhistorical values by placing faith in state power and fantasy. The choice is between serving human beings or serving history, between thinking ethically or thinking strategically. Macdonald excoriated Marxists for the same reason he excoriated the liberal class: They subordinated ethics to another goal. They believed the ends justified the means. The liberal class, like the Marxists, by serving history and power capitulated to the state in the end. This capitulation by the liberal class, as Irving Howe noted, “bleached out all political tendencies.” Liberalism, he wrote, “becomes a loose shelter, a poncho rather than a program; to call oneself a liberal one doesn’t really have to believe in anything.”
In line with the occupy movement, we must not extol the power of the state as an agent of change or define progress by increased comfort, wealth, imperial expansion or consumption. The trust in the beneficence of the state—which led most liberal reformers to back the wars in Vietnam and Iraq at their inceptions, as well as place faith in electoral politics long after electoral politics had been hijacked by corporate power—ceded uncontested power to the corporate state. Liberals and liberal groups, such as MoveOn, which urge us to appeal to formal structures of power that no longer concern themselves with the needs or rights of citizens have become forces of disempowerment.
The only effective tool for change will come through movements such as those that stand in direct opposition to state power and seek through the sheer force of numbers and civil disobedience to discredit and weaken the corporate state. The corporate state cannot be the repository of our hopes and dreams. And the liberal establishment has, by making concession after concession, merged itself into the corporate apparatus and has nothing left to say to us. It is part of the elaborate and hollow political theater that has replaced genuine political participation. The dismantling of our radical social and political movements in the early and even middle part of the 20th century in the name of anti-communism left the liberal class, as well as the wider society, without a repository of new ideas. The utopian fantasies of globalism and naive acceptance that the dictates of the marketplace should be permitted to determine human behavior became not just the creed of the corporatists but finally the creed of liberal apologists such as Thomas Friedman and most professors in university economic departments. And the strength of the new movements is that they have exposed this lie.
What we are witnessing in parks and squares across the United States is not simply widespread revulsion over the greed and cruelty of corporate capitalism, but the articulation of a new and potent radicalism. This radicalism challenges the right of corporations to poison our ecosystem and turn greed and self-promotion into the highest good at the expense of human life. If this movement can cross class lines, if it can articulate its vision to those in marginalized communities, especially poor people of color, it can tap into a force and power that was never part of the New Left. It can make possible the shaking of the foundations and, let us hope, the toppling of the corporate state.
This article was originally posted on Truthdig.
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Chris Hedges is a weekly Truthdig columnist and a fellow at The Nation Institute. His newest book is “The World As It Is: Dispatches on the Myth of Human Progress.”
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31 comments on "Occupiers Have to Convince the Other 99 Percent"
immypwoy
October 27, 2011 12:10am
Time will tell whether the tipping point of protests will turn the tide of the extreme radicalism of the extreme corporations. We are talking about something that many, including Chris Hedges, who have seen the effects of American hegemonic policies, that of course coupled to serve the governmental and American military's system. All that America has done, in the name of war, is just that. Finally, now, we are seeing that after effects of continuous was, the exacerbation of the wealth of American citizens drained, only to be placed within the hands of the few who control the direction of local, state, national policies as well as international policies. It is not only in war by through a barrage of financial attacks by Wall St., the corruption of the banking system, mortgage system, and simply the unwillingness of the politicians whom have favored the extreme capitalistic system, regardless of the sufferings of the American public.
I don't deny that fact that the liberal establishment is a failure, but at least in it's basic, multi-faceted reasons for protest. It's a start. The OWS movement throughout the United States is truly awe inspiring as well as a hearty attempt by the masses to expand and liberate the public by consensus. Those people who demean this protest are either in denial of what is happening in the United States or truly satisfied with their present financial status and simply blinded by the establishment's jargon through the media. But don't be fooled. Most of America know what is happening. It should be known that Wall St. is scared stiff, and know exactly the grievances OWS is enacting. The totality of this American movement has moved the dialogue away and bringing a consensus into a movement that can be taught to those who don't have an inkling what is occurring. It has to happen or we will be swallowed whole. I truly debate any issues concerning the politics of this movement and will push head-forth into opposing anyone who will think otherwise. It's a battle that has to be won and in my opinion. We will be faced with even a harsher reality that will expand their predatory means, if we don't change it!
October 27, 2011 12:05am
I always and greatly appreciate Hedges' analyses and I applaud and welcome his support for OWS.
Convincing 99 percent of Americans of anything is a pretty tall order. I don't think that OWS has to accomplish that. I think we are trying to "Wake Up, America!" I think it is up to the 99 percent to wake up.
"Who are the leaders of this protest demonstration and what are their demands?"
Those are exactly the questions that the corporate media, and those directing and managing the illegitimate corporate takeover of government (government that should be of, by, and for the people, instead of government that is by and for corporations and the super-rich), and the police and intelligence agency and private mercenary force administrators that are trying to protect their interests, are insistently seeking the answers to. And those are the very questions that those parties want to plant in the minds of those of us among the 99 percent who have not yet awakened and realized that the planet Earth itself, and the very elements and essential necessities of life, and even life itself, are being claimed, possessed and threatened with destruction in toto by inherently sociopathic trans-national corporations and the super-rich.
Understand that this is a Global Occupation by the people of the earth - it is not a "protest demonstration". Only the addled with no comprehension of history and the elderly suffering from an unwarranted,distracting nostalgia are taking part in marginalized, ineffective, and substantively ignored "protest demonstrations" these days. And understand that making "demands" or "requests" would simply mislead the 99 percent and falsely imply that there is any authority or agency which legitimately holds power and which actually represents the aspirations and the needs and rights of the people, and of life on Earth, to which such "demands" or "requests" could or might be submitted. Finally, our public rejection of the cult of leadership inspires and encourages the creativity that is necessary, and it wisely protects emerging inspiration and growth that would otherwise be targeted and vulnerable to co-opting or decapitation and "disappearance" by the status quo. In many ways, we are back to square one in our struggle for life, for legitimate government, and for happiness and a viable future.
We must face and deal with the reality that corporations now control all three branches of government at the state and the federal levels, as well as the leadership of both of the two permitted political parties in the USA, with the result that corporations are now "Governing People for Profits", and they are doing so in the United States of America under authority of the false, unjustified, and entirely discredited legal theory that a corporation possesses the rights that were explicitly defined by the Constitution for a Person. We must recognize that life and our very existence on earth is facing a paramount challenge. That challenge is: "Corporations v. Persons - the Struggle that will Define the 21st Century".
http://clydewinter.wordpress.com/2009/11/11/governing-people-for-profits/
http://clydewinter.wordpress.com/2011/05/27/corporations-v-persons/
We are not spectators in this contest. We are all participants. If we do not take active, constructive part, we and generations to follow us, as well as life as we know and love it on earth, will be victims in a catastrophe of unprecedented proportions.
OCCUPY EVERYTHING!
October 26, 2011 1:55pm
PS to my longer comment above:
For some reason, my website was deleted. Trying again: PaulCienfuegos.com.
October 26, 2011 2:11pm
Chris,
The corporate coup against We The People started long before you think it did. Corporations have been winning one Supreme Court decision after another expanding their constitutional so-called "rights" for 190 years now...
* The Dartmouth Decision in 1819
* The courts FINDING corporations in the Commerce Clause and Contracts Clause of the Constitution in the mid-1800's
* The infamous corporate personhood decision of 1886 re Southern Pacific Railroad
Corporations now wield the 1st, 4th, 5th, and 14th Amendments against We The People. This has been going on for a long long long time, Chris. Why do you ignore this larger analysis?
Corporate Coup: 190 years and counting.
You claim the existing Occupy uprisings "challenge the right of corporations to poison our ecosystem and turn greed and self-promotion into the highest good at the expense of human life." I would dispute your claim.
None of the strategic thinking coming out of any of the Occupy camps so far is explicitly about corporate so-called "rights". It's still focused on one corporate outrage at a time - pleading with government regulators and corporate executives to cause less harm. NOT YET is it challenging the Constitutional "rights" of corporations - their free speech ("money=speech") and property protections (corporate decision-making as a property right), for example, which is HOW they wield so much political and legal power in the first place.
How much longer will it take for Americans to stop protesting one corporate harm at a time, and start EXERCISING OUR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT OF SELF-GOVERNMENT? This right is clearly stated in every state constitution and the preamble to our federal constitution.
I'm leading mini-workshops twice weekly at Occupy Portland, trying to help this community to recognize that our most effective strategy is to start passing RIGHTS-BASED ordinances here in Portland. That's where our REAL power lies.
Imagine if our city ended corporate "rights" by ordinance, as 140 US cities in six NE states have already done. (See CELDF.org for details.)
Pittsburgh banned corporate fracking and nullified corporate "rights" last November in a 9-0 vote of City Council. Where was the left press? Missing in action. (See paulcienfuegos.com/node/70.)
Communities across the NE have banned corporate mining, sludge dumping, water withdrawal for bottling, etc. All of these ordinances also nullified corporate "rights". Both urban leftists and rural conservatives have been leading these ordinance campaigns in their communities. This is NOT a left vs right struggle. It's about WHO DECIDES what happens in our communities? We The People who live there, or legal fictions known as corporations?
What are we waiting for? Imagine if each city with an active Occupy group focused on EXERCISING OUR COMMUNITY RIGHTS by nullifying corporate "rights", rather than trying to coordinate a larger consensus on what we want. Isn't that a better model for the "genuine political participation" that you seek?
You can find out much more about this growing movement at my website PaulCienfuegos.com.
October 26, 2011 3:06pm
I agree with your focus, Paul.
We the People of the United States need to repeal, rescind, overturn the unjustifiable legal hoax that a corporation is a person, and has the rights that were explicitly defined in the Constitution for a person.
And I agree that the history of how this abomination occurred needs to be understood.
For example, the 1886 Supreme Court case which you mentioned is the cornerstone of modern corporate law, and has been used as the primary legal precedent for the accumulating case law establishing the bogus notion that a corporation is a person under the Constitution. Many people, however, are unaware that the momentous assertion in that case (that a corporation is a person in the meaning of the 14th Amendment) was not argued before the Court; that no testimony on that subject was permitted to be introduced to the Court; that no deciding, concurring, or dissenting opinion in that case documented any legal analysis of that question or topic; that the assertion itself was merely an assertion contained in the headnotes. In other words, Paul, the cornerstone of corporate law, and the specific precedent used by the 5-4 majority of the Roberts Court in 2010 in Citizens United Corp. v. Federal Elections Commission, is a house of cards built on no foundation whatsoever. The careful analysis and explicit pro-and-con argument that is expected to accompany and document (in detail) a Supreme Court decision is completely absent from this illegitimate, unjustified "precedent".
An important discovery has been recently made in the U.S. Constitution itself that sheds an inextinguishable light on unmistakable proof that the Founders and ratifiers of the U.S. Constitution, with Amendments, never intended that the word "Person" (as used throughout the Constitution, including the 14th Amendment) was to apply to a "corporation", or to anything other than a living human being.
Read "Corporations v. Persons - the struggle that will define the 21st century".
http://clydewinter.wordpress.com/category/constitutional-law/
October 27, 2011 10:55am
Clyde,
Thanks for your note to me.
I must disagree with some of your analysis though. Thom Hartmann is the one who has put forward the notion that because the personhood decision of 1886 wasn't actually IN the decision, but was instead just part of the "headnotes", that that somehow makes it obvious or easy to get the decision reversed. But that's not how law works. Since 1886, there have been endless laws BASED on this decision. Case law after case law that rests on "corporations as persons". So at this point, it might as well have been a part of the 1886 decision. It no longer matters.
On the other hand, the fact that the Supreme Court keeps FINDING corporations in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, when that word doesn't appear anywhere in these documents.....now THAT is unconstitutional. The judiciary is not supposed to MAKE law, it's supposed to judge existing law. So yes, all of their corporate "rights" decisions are fundamentally illegitimate for that reason alone. No state or federal legislature has EVER voted that corporations are persons, or have constitutional "rights".
For this same reason, I think it's fairly irrelevant that there may be new proof that the founders really meant "persons" when they wrote "persons". Case law has now buried all of this history.
One more point: the 2010 Citizens United decision was NOT a huge opening of the corporate money floodgates, as ALL of the media reported it was, from Fox to NPR to Democracy Now. It was, in fact, merely the candle on the icing on the cake of corporate "rights". The floodgates of corporate funding of our elections opened in the 1970's via the Supes' Buckley v Valeo decision, that for the first time equated money with speech. They stated that to limit how much money a corporation could give would be to limit a corporation's "right" to speak to us. Citizens United merely eased the METHOD of giving, and allowed more anonymity. So let's not put too much energy into merely reversing Citizens United. Instead, let's focus our full attention on reversing ALL corporate constitutional "rights", including those that came long before the 1886 decision.
Paul Cienfuegos
PaulCienfuegos.com
October 26, 2011 12:38pm
I agree with most of the analysis by Chris Hedges, but I think he and many of the commentators here are overlooking something that is critical to building a movement that can achieve true change in this country.
The inability of liberals to comprehend the reality of life in marginalized communities is a problem rooted in the dominant cultural values taught in this country through the socialization process. So is the persistent conservatism in our national politics.
Greed, self-absorption, ethnocentrism, the drive to dominate those who are different--these are traits instilled in people starting at an early age. It is a circular process that continuously "outputs" people with those traits and feeds them into institutions that influence our individual and collective behavior (e.g., schools, the media, the political system, etc.). This is sociology 101, not rocket science, and it explains why significant change in this country is so very difficult to achieve.
I believe Chris is correct when he says: "The only effective tool for change will come through movements such as those that stand in direct opposition to state power and seek through the sheer force of numbers and civil disobedience to discredit and weaken the corporate state." However, Chris does not address how such a movement can be built in a country where the culture teaches us to make self-interest our top priority.
Many in my generation (I'm a boomer) thought that our nation would not make the same mistakes that led to the political upheavals of 45 years ago. But we were wrong, and ever since then we've witnessed regressive cycles of war, environmental destruction and social injustice. The big question is why do these cycles keep repeating? Is it because we haven't protested in sufficient numbers or developed democratic decision making processes in our organizing? I don't think so. During the 1980s there were sometimes hundreds of thousands marching and demonstrating together, and large-scale civil disobedience was a tactic used at various times. And frequently the same kind of democratic, consensus-based organizing approach was used that is now evident at OWS sites (I know from my personal involvement).
What we did NOT do back then was give enough attention to affecting the underlying values that would make people complacent when the regressive politics came back. And we still don't have that focus today, except for a relatively small number of activists who are organizing against the militarization and corporatization of schools (e.g., www.nnomy.org). Right wing groups, corporations and the Pentagon have all been working hard for the last several decades to turn K-12 schools into spheres of conservative influence, where they reach a captive audience of millions of children whose minds are still developing. Their power is secure in the face of our protests because they have this long-term strategy of affecting the society through its young people.
Groups working for progressive change cannot possibly achieve lasting results unless they have their own deliberate, long-term strategies for reshaping the values of our society. Until they do that, protests and electoral campaigns will continue to have only short-term effects that are inevitably reversed in the next cycle of conservatism.
October 26, 2011 12:03pm
This is not the time to pit one race against the other. I understand that we as black people are constantly trying to achieve economic justice, but blame can be placed on a host of reasons as to why some of us have not achieved this goal. Some reasons are self-inflicted which includes the break-up of the family unit, lack of education (for whatever reason), drugs, etc. Then there's discrimination in the work-place which I witness on a DAILY basis (human resources field). But, do I harbor resentment/animosity because I may have struggled more than my white liberal brethren? No, I do not. During this EXTREMELY critical time in our country when our rights as citizens are being threatened , ALL liberals/moderates/whomever should and must keep our eyes on the prize. We're all in this together, and we will either sink or swim TOGETHER. Arguing why the black race has struggled more than whites at this stage is a HUGE mistake that serves no positive purpose at this moment. Our main concern should be reclaiming our country from Wall Street and the bought-and-paid for Republicans and Dems, and we can deal with these other issues later.
October 26, 2011 9:10am
Hedges is now officially in love with his own voice. He gets it exactly wrong on whom the Democrats lost with their triangulation: mainly the white middle class. Also, some of their upper class support, and some of their lower-class support (all the lost support was white, straight, male, or all three).The man could use a good editor.
October 26, 2011 2:38am
Ok - I don't buy this. History is written by the victors, and often written by the media as it is happening. His dismissal of the New Left of the 60's is based on some idea that it was a completely bought out escapade, led by hedonists who only cared about justice for the sons of the white middle class.
This manages to magically delete all of those who were fighting for economic justice, those who were desperately fighting for programs for the inner cities, those who were fighting to end the war and bring our kids home. Just because the establishment was able to paint a whole movement as a 'bunch of drug dropping hippies' does NOT make it so.
As to black people feeling disenfranchised by "white liberals" - you know? It was a whole lot of white 'liberals' who were fighting like hell for Troy Davis' life. We white 'liberals' have been here, all the time - and we have cared, and we have spoken up, but we have been shut out by black on white racism, listened patiently while we are accused of being racists ourselves, and have been continually treated with mistrust and contempt. It's hard to help a cat trapped in a pipe when the cat keeps biting you no matter your intentions.
Finally - as to the 'liberal establishment' - tell me who belongs to it so I can write to them. I do not see a 'liberal establishment' in the US. I see a Right Wing, a Far Right Wing, and a cowering, cowardly, 'Establishment somewhere just a little bit right of Center'
October 26, 2011 9:16am
Hedges says that toppling the corporate state will lead to economic justice. In calling for the anarchic destruction of the state, Hedges sounds hauntingly like Grover Norquist, who wants to shrink the size of government then drag it into the bathroom to drown it in the bathtub. To top that dream of the reactionaries and Libertarians in the Tea Party, Hedges bashed the counterculture movement of the sixties, and then he attacked hedonism. But, Hedges didn't stop there, along the way he lashed out at: the Beat Generation; Jack Kerouac; Alan Watts; William Burroughs; Hermann Hesse's novel Siddartha; inner peace and fulfillment; occultism; hallucinogenic drugs; transcendental meditation; Hare Krishna; Zen and the I-Ching in a homily worthy of Pat Robertson or Franklin Graham calling the faithful to return to their old time religion. Then, Hedges called for the black and the working poor to ally themselves with the OWS movement at Zucotti Park while jettisoning their drugs, alcohol and consumerism as part of a neo-temperance component to the OWS movement. At the core of his urgent message, is Hedges calling for a new wave of Puritanism? It certainly sounds as though he is, if this column is anything to go by. While arguing against the cult of leadership he says destroyed the counterculture movement of the sixties (he singled out Abbie Hofmann as the opponent of King - a risible tactic) Hedges appears to be setting himself up for the position of Moral Arbiter modelled on the moral tyrants of the Reformation: John Calvin and Oliver Cromwell. Hedges' unique vision has become so clouded, so murky, so unintelligible, that he alone can reveal it. This column sounds more like the echoes of the principles of a Robespierre, rather than the teachings of Gandhi. In his Principles of Political Morality, Robespierre argued, "To punish the oppressors of humanity is clemency; to forgive them is cruelty." and, "Death to the villain who dares abuse the sacred name of liberty or the powerful arms intended for her defence." Ultimately, the zealous excesses of Robespierre to guillotine people with little or no reason created enemies leading to his arrest and execution along with about a dozen of his supporters, including Saint-Just. This column seems to be evidence that Hedges has anointed himself to be the self-appointed director of a committee on public safety in a leaderless movement in pursuit of economic justice by collapsing every mechanism that could deliver it. Hedges' case is far from proven, and he has yet to provide a convincing prima facie argument for the huge swathes of presumptions in this, his latest frenzied homily.
October 25, 2011 9:37pm
I reject the juxtaposition of multiculturalism to a more working class oreinted left posed by Hedges. Dr. King did not have the language, but he was working for economic justice in a multiracial society, when he was gunned down. He was working to run discussion of race to discussions of class, but it the context of multiracialism/culturalism. Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition in the 1980s was a tack in the sme direction, but Reverend Jackson can be ctriricized for spending more time seeking respect form the Democratic Party than building a social movment. Identity politics is not just navel-gazing in a society so profoundly built upon racism, sexism and environmental degradation. And let' not forget that the white working class of the twentieth century was profoundly racist and sexist, so the youngsters were ruight to rebel against all that!
October 25, 2011 8:16pm
cultural/racial differences is a whole other layer inside and outside the occupy and other movements. it's a cultural thing. it's an american thing. it's a separateness thing. it's a safety and comfort thing to stay within the group. it's something we need to get over. and reach out for each other. race is definitely still an issue and something to work out among ourselves right along with the protests. just like gender issues. our lives are multilayered. let's just break it down and patiently work each part..
October 25, 2011 8:15pm
cultural/racial differences is a whole other layer inside and outside the occupy and other movements. it's a cultural thing. it's an american thing. it's a separateness thing. it's a safety and comfort thing to stay within the group. it's something we need to get over. and reach out for each other. race is definitely still an issue and something to work out among ourselves right along with the protests. just like gender issues. our lives are multilayered. let's just break it down and patiently work each part..
October 25, 2011 6:02pm
getting to the point here, armed self defense when all else fails, bullet proof vests standard issue, Che's guerilla warfare required reading, but it is education and self sacfrifice, not the glamor of seizure of power that counts the most. We must act, the articulation and verbalization of it all will fall out easily in the aftermath, slowly the masses are learning to disregard the nay sayers and critics, an attack by the enemy is an honor to yourself, with action our sense ofworth returns ,until we live and see and know again the ultimate truths, all are equal, rich, poor, men, women, children, minorities, and deserve a living wage, respect , love, and meaningful work, because we are human, corporations are built by humans, are to serve humans, how that has become so obscured defies reason and understanding, and is Gothic ignorance that subdues the patience
October 25, 2011 5:12pm
http://www.kickthemout.org/2011/10/25/on-the-limitations-of-passive-resi...
Even Jesus knew there was a time for PEACEFUL resistance, and a time to take up the whip and DRIVE the moneychangers out of the temple!
Liberal icon Noam Chomsky wrote: "“Non-violent resistance activities cannot succeed against an enemy that is able freely to use violence. That’s pretty obvious. You can’t have non-violent resistance against the Nazis in a concentration camp,to take an extreme case…."
Want to gain the trust of the "other 99%" - think about supporting the 2nd Amendment, for starters. The Founding Fathers included it NOT for hunting cuddly little critters, but for defending the freedom they gave us against an armed invading force. We ALL prefer to speak softly, but it only works if we still have that big stick.
October 25, 2011 3:26pm
In this essay Chris is half right- but only half right about organized labor. It is accurate that some of labor attacked the anti war activists in the Vietnam war. But, what he did not say was that communists and socialists had been purged from much of labor prior to this event.
here is what M.L. King had to say about the role of organized labor.
Martin Luther King Jr.
"The Labor Movement was the principal force that transformed misery and despair into hope and progress.
Out of its bold struggles, economic and social reform gave birth to unemployment insurance, old age pensions, government relief for the destitute, and above all, new wage levels that meant not mere survival but a tolerable life.
The captains of industry did not lead this transformation; they resisted it until they were overcome."
So, when you discuss working class folks, you need an accurate reporting on the role of the leading representation of working people- organized labor.
October 25, 2011 2:59pm
While Hedges makes some good points, he does a typical put down of identity politics characteristic of the Old white male left. Identity politics per se is not bad--after all the Civil Rights movement, women's movement and GLBT movements were based on this; and the lack of a left working class movement wasn't due to these movements, but the inability of the Old Left and the leaders of mainstream trade union movements to understand the need to deal with discrimination within their ranks and broaden their demands. But I agree with him that class politics is important and OWS people need to be sensitive to it. The reform question is a thorny one and I don't see either OWS or Hedges having made clear how you bring unconvinced people into a radical movement in the US without some concrete demands for reforms within the existing system, for example, by requiring that banks bail out all those whose mortgages have been foreclosed, which will then raise consciousness when the corporatocracy doesn't bring that about.
October 25, 2011 2:19pm
A lot of us white middle-class and working-class people have been ground down by the system for a great many years; it didn't just happen last week. And we've been looking around the political landscape for at least 30 years and not finding anyone, or any movement, who represents us, either. One of the reasons so many whites have been taken in by the demagoguery of the Right is that no one on the Left has been speaking to them for years. My impression of OWS so far is that it means well, but parts of it seem to be falling into the same self-obsessions that always sank the New Left. Are they presenting something that will inspire the down-and-out in the rust belt, or struggling West Virginia mining communities, or family farmers in Nebraska? I'm not seeing it so far, but they're part of the 99 percent, too.
October 25, 2011 1:03pm
Chris, I am one of the people who launched v2.0 of the web site for NYC General Assembly. I chose the "social networking" technology (WordPress/ BuddyPress) that we're using, configured and hosted the test server for the first 10 days. If you're interested, I can share with you the experience of someone born in Spanish Harlem in 1950 and the ups and downs of working with young white kids. DM me @drron
October 25, 2011 12:23pm
while i usually love Chris's articles, this one is of little use and is only destructive. I have not use for any kind of distraction from the current real problems that the occupiers are addressing. Get with it or be quiet.
October 25, 2011 12:11pm
This is an excellent article (though a bit more lengthy than need be) and I agree with its content. I spend 5 days of each week at Freedom Plaza with the October 2011 occupation (october2011.org) and I make financial contributions. This article coupled with my first hand observations causes me to raise two questions.
1. How will the poor, the people of color, the working class who have traditionally been ignored, or worse, exploited by the Liberals benefit in any way from shunning this movement. Isn't this the best opportunity they have had to help force a basic change from individual to social responsibility?
2. Why must support or non-support of the movements be an either - or situation. I do not believe that the vast majority of the 99% can be expected to camp out on the grass and concrete of a park or to send in financial donations. I do believe that compelling ideas about what must be done to remedy the injustices of unregulated capitalism, money in politics, unequal wealth distribution, illegal foreign occupations, environmental degradation, and the withholding of the right to healthcare will evolve from the Occupy Movements. Then the vast majority will support these ideas in polls, in conversations, and in interactions with others like themselves. When this happens the system will change or fail.
October 25, 2011 11:30am
I guess that makes the occupiers the one percenters...a bunch of pseudo-down-and-outers. If these protests really represented the disadvantaged in the big cities where they're taking place, they would have an entirely different shade.
October 25, 2011 9:05am
Go to the internet. Protests draw attention to issues, but only action brings change. They should contact everyone they know and ask them to stop doing business with the culprits that brought on the crash. Not to mention, businesses that have outsourced jobs.
The people who had something constructive to say have said it and gone home. Those remaining give an image of unwashed freeloaders. This only plays into the hands of those who want to discredit the movement. For example, this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHbwH-skURY&feature=share
The interviewer obviously picked the lamest fringe elements to film. This is a longstanding tactic of the lame stream media and it's owners, the 1%.
The banks have trillions in assets sitting unused. Let them pay for the damage they have done, say, 3 trillion, if they want to avoid going to jail. Of course, they won't, voluntarily, and their creature, the government, won't make them. The only thing that can be done is for people to refuse to pay, or to do business with them.
JOIN THE RESISTANCE!
www.mortgageresistanceofamerica.com
www.studentloanresistanceofamerica.com
October 25, 2011 9:26pm
Much of what he says is exceedingly true, a few passages are gobbledygook and some of it is, in a word, "spin" to bolster his conclusions. I think the problem has been with the leadership all along. We the people, the rank & file of every political and social segment have been helpless in the thrall of fake leftist movements and more so by the right-wing tyranny.
All of the liberal groups & institutions have been co-opted. Take the DLC, perfect example. wimmens movement--Gloria Steinem & the CIA. There was planning in all of this, an agenda to subvert and water down anything that came from the grass roots "yearning to be free". I have learned all about this from Alex Jones, ad nauseum, especially regarding the ecology movement. That's why "liberal" is a dirty word, I guess you would say a "fighting word". Like "hippie", an appellation which I have proudly claimed for forty years. It certainly started well before 1980, but Reagan was the best puppet the evil-doers ever had...Bush the Lesser was just not likeable enough, but he sure got a lot done for the corporations, even without public support. Crime families are like that.
blah, blah, blah...I don't like it that he paints the racial minorities as gutless whiners. The protest sign I see myself, (former privileged middle-class preppie) holding with my mouth taped over with a dollar bill is:
MARGINALIZED my whole life
MARGINALIZED as a girl
MARGINALIZED as a woman
MARGINALIZED as a single mother
MARGINALIZED by disability
MARGINALIZED by poverty, and soon to be
MARGINALIZED by old age
I certainly have more in common with the non-white underclass than I do with upper middle-class white men. So I guess what he is saying is: you white boys did nothing to help the poor or fight the drug war, which is one of the main tools of the Owners to keep us down. I agree on this point: the white middle class non-profits as a class have done NOTHING but make things worse. ACLU lawyers and their ilk are just about the biggest bunch of dithering old tabbies I have ever seen. "To the barricades? Let me check my day-planner and see if it's OK with my wife." KARMA calling! It is not time to save ourselves, it is time to save the world! Everything in our lives has led us to this point.
I believe the call to arms will be heard when each person realizes that THEY are the 99% and stops whining and gets their black/brown/red/yellow & pasty white asses out in the street. Those kids are giving every disenfranchised minority cover--and hope!
Oh California! "This is just a dream some of us had" even has it's own Facebook page. I am hoping now that I can live long enough to see liberty and justice for all...not "just us". #Occupy Oakland!
October 25, 2011 6:50am
I guess I'm the liberal apologist who foolishly continues to work so that I can afford to donate to liberal causes, including #OWS. While I respect Chris's perspective, I have to disagree with the position in this article. I don't think Chris will win over any of the rest of the 99% with a literal, and figurative philosophical drubbing of the middle-class left. Sorry Chris, some of us think we might be more effective if we work within the system so that we may support and encourage reform movements when the time arises. Forgive us for not all occupying the streets for the past three decades. You think the Occupiers are immune to hedonism? We'll see...
October 26, 2011 12:13am
I call them Obamapologists! Donate to liberal causes? How effective were you? At this point it should be apparent to all 99% of us that the game is fixed, the house always wins and those who work within the system are only making things worse. Those who work for certain corporations just might be called complicit. No one wants to hear about how you were just putting food on your family--or that you were only following orders... So you sneer " we may support and encourage reform movements when the time arises."
I believe that time arose on December 12, 2ooo. Everyone has their own opinion. 1913, 1937, 1963, 2001. Along with many other seniors, (once again) I've been out on the street for years. The way things are going, I thought I'd better see what it was like. We've missed you. Reform "movements" require action.
Forgive you?
We will never forgive
We will never forget
Expect us
~Anonymous
October 26, 2011 11:20am
AMYBEAR, you should be more careful with how you choose to speak on behalf of the 99%. As dedicated as you may be, your rhetoric is not necessarily shared by everyone else. You attacked my comments here, and you speak with an angry and violent tone. You don't know who I am, or how much I contribute to my community, to this site, or even to the occupy movement. You're comments make me want to reject the movement if it's going to be overcome with extremists. You may be helping yourself, but you're not helping the 99%.
October 26, 2011 12:18pm
Well, I'm a 99%er, and I too think that we should work WITHIN the system. MLK did so with success, and we can too.
October 26, 2011 12:19am
"Foolishly"? You said it, not I. To work within a corrupt system is in itself corrupt.