Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
If there is one thing the Occupy Wall Street movement has generated, it’s the opinion that there is no unifying agenda or policy being advanced by the Occupiers. Perhaps that explains why we (CASSE) have been asked repeatedly to contribute to that agenda and identify that policy. And perhaps the time has come to oblige.
Ever since the crash several years ago, Americans have felt precarious about the nation’s economy and the value of its currency. Money seems to take inconceivable, abstract, and even magical forms, traveling around the world at lightening speed with little oversight and obvious mismanagement.
I personally support the spirit of Occupy Wall Street, especially the spotlight it has cast on the shocking level of inequality in our country. But the movement oddly conveys a very mainstream message that Wall Street can and should be fixed. Just clean up our existing financial institutions – make them more accountable, honest, transparent – and all will be well. Really?
I think it would be smarter to end our relationship with Wall Street. Just say “no.”
Flash forward to October 2011. Those ruminations and years of activism – and the rumblings getting louder everywhere – are finally surfacing in the public square. We’re getting it! Finally and gloriously and intelligently and courageously. The occupations have been going on long enough that good suggestions are arising for the direction of this movement. Get political. Sustain dialogue. Demonstrate democracy in action. No matter what one’s prescription though, the marvel is that the occupation continues and is a school of democracy itself, a sustained bonding among people who normally have nothing to do with one another, who keep their heads down in tunnels of adaptation, still believing in the American Dream.
Instead, what is needed is for the 99% to walk away from the current unsustainable, rapacious, soul-destroying and Earth-destroying systems the 1% have so effectively exploited to their own advantage — the political, economic, work, media, education, health, and technology systems on which we are all, today, utterly dependent — and build a new culture with new systems and infrastructure, bottom-up, egalitarian, community-based, focused on the welfare and well-being of all, without the 1%’s help or the need for their support.
It has been interesting to note that most of those I have met at OccupyLondon hadn’t previously heard of Transition, and that got me thinking about the parallels and differences between the two movements…
– NYT: Occupy Wall Street Protest Reaches a Crossroads
– Occupy Wall Street Ads Hit TV This Weekend
– The Audacity of Occupy Wall Street
– Will Extremists Hijack Occupy Wall Street?
– How I Got Off My Computer And Onto The Street At Occupy Oakland
– Anthropologist Graeber Turns Radical Side Loose in Zuccotti Park Protest
– #Occupy and Transition: resources for creating lasting change
– Jan Lundberg: How The Occupy Movement May Be Off-Base, and How It Can Evolve
– What’s the Black Bloc? And why is it important for the fate of the Occupy Movement? (links)
The Occupy Movement is the most significant development of the year – together with Arab Spring and the Indignados protests in Mediterranean countries. Occupy is important for those of us who follow Peak Oil and Transition, because it has the potential to change the political equation. As the rising price of oil and other commodities continues to threaten living standards in the US and other countries, protest movements are inevitable.
The Occupy Movement has struck a chord with the “99 percent.” Occupy Oakland, for example, saw somewhere between 5,000 and 25,000 people out in the street during the General Strike there Wednesday, November 2. I was struck by the presence of the black clad groups that appeared in the midst of the demonstration to trash stores, break windows, etc. These are the Black Bloc, a phenomenon which first appeared in the 80s and has been with demonstrations across the world ever since. How the Occupy Movement deals with the Black Bloc is critical for its future.
Below is a collection of excerpts/links for those who wish to learn more.
The current industrial model of US agriculture is economically, energetically, and ecologically doomed. Any hope for a livable future requires that we accelerate the creation of resilient, ecologically-viable ‘shadow structure’ replacements for industrial US agriculture in the diminishing time available to us. We already possess the tools, knowledge, and organizational structures to begin such projects at the family and community level. Here are some things I’m excited about.
There’s a lot to be said about the general strike yesterday in Oakland—in which thousands of people shut down banks and the fifth-largest port in the country—but here’s what I found especially striking about the strike: extreme message discipline. We usually think of message discipline in relation to political campaigns and the conscious attempt to mechanically repeat talking points. But here I found another kind of message discipline—of a more organic variety—in which people spoke about the same issue not out of a pre-designed plan but because their shared experiences were remarkably similar.
Born of water, wool, soap and human hands — felt is the most immediate textile that can be created from the back of a sheep. The directness of the process, and utility of the finished product has found its way deep into the heart and soul of our kindred featured artisan, Katherine Jolda, a woman whose creative life has manifested fundamentally crucial garments for the 150 mile wardrobe. She has been deemed “a brilliant inventor, natural philosopher, and felt athlete” by those who have both observed and worn her work.
