Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
We need to turn the “disadvantage” of seasonal down time to our advantage so as to be ready and able to push the Occupy movement much further, deeper and wider as winter becomes spring.
We need to come together, small group by small group, to begin the process of thinking things out. I’m suggesting that we start creating house parties, where people gather in people’s homes, to begin these processes.
The commons is an old value that’s resurfacing as a fresh approach to twenty-first-century crises such as escalating economic inequality, looming ecological disruption and worsening social alienation.
– Lessons from Iceland: The People Can Have the Power
– Ex-banker turned Hindu monk urges Wall Street to meditate
– Former Philadelphia Police Captain Joins Occupy Protesters, Gets Arrested
– Occupy the Skies! Protesters Could Use Spy Drones
– A Career Occupation
– 5,000 books reportedly thrown out in Occupy Wall Street raid
– Chris Hedges: This Is What Revolution Looks Like
It happens that just hours before, Adbusters magazine—which originally called for the occupation—promulgated “Tactical Briefing #18: Occupy the High Ground.” It suggested that perhaps the time has passed for the movement to be so focused on encampments, and that it might move on to bigger and better things instead. This is a notion that has come up repeatedly in my recent conversations with early organizers; after almost three months, they feel, the movement is starting to outgrow the occupation.
In an epoch when going to extremes has become one of the most popular habits in American culture, the very idea that a middle ground might be a more sensible place to stand is about as popular as garlic aioli at a vampire convention. Still, the obsession with binary thinking that’s done so much to back America and the industrial world into its present corner is unlikely to get us back out of it. With the help of a Greek philosopher, an Austrian mystic, and two famous California cities, the Archdruid explores some of the alternative territory.
The GA, and the break-out groups that meet in the Atrium at 60 Wall Street are blessed with the Quaker tools now refined by waves of protest movements: the Suffragettes, Satyagraha, Lunch Counter Sit-Ins, No-nukes Affinity Groups, and Battle in Seattle. What doesn’t work? Violence. Power Trips. Hierarchies. What works? Good facilitation, timekeeping, note-taking, hand-signs, open agenda, global café, conflict transformation, consensus. What came out of the conventions at the turn of the 18th to 19th Century was protection of slavery, disenfranchisement of women, ethnic cleansing of Native Americans and the preservation of an elite ruling class, especially the banksters. What will emerge from this process may also be flawed when seen in hindsight centuries hence, but it will be progressively less so.
Such a movement cannot be evicted. Some politicians may physically remove us from public spaces — our spaces — and, physically, they may succeed. But we are engaged in a battle over ideas. Our idea is that our political structures should serve us, the people — all of us, not just those who have amassed great wealth and power. We believe that is a highly popular idea, and that is why so many people have come so quickly to identify with Occupy Wall Street and the 99% movement. You cannot evict an idea whose time has come.
Conventional wisdom has it that the next election will be fought exclusively on the topic of jobs. But President Obama’s announcement last week that he would postpone a decision on the Keystone XL pipeline until after the 2012 election, which may effectively kill the project, makes it clear that other issues will weigh in — and that, oddly enough, one of them might even be climate change.
The pipeline decision was a true upset. Everyone — and I mean everyone who “knew” how these things work — seemed certain that the president would approve it.
– Why I quit the mainstream media
– Oakland Mayoral Adviser Tells Keith Olbermann Why He Quit
– Faces Of Zuccotti Park: The Columbia Economics Professor
– Occupy Wall Street and the U.S. Labor Movement
– Police Clear Zuccotti Park of Protesters
– Court Order: City Can’t Keep Protesters Out of Zuccotti Park
– Did Bloomberg do Occupy Wall Street a favor?
– Press Suppression at Occupy Wall Street Raid
…[T]he Occupy movement reminds Transitioners that we can’t adequately address peak oil and climate change without democracy and fairness in the economy. Their blogger then goes on to recognize that Occupiers have picked up on their own some of the open ways of the Transition movement: decision-making by consensus and making cooperative action plans to increase community resilience. But not all Transitioners agree that Occupy is a good angle for local groups devoted to making their communities more resilient.
– Seattle Ex-police chief: Paramilitary Policing From Seattle to Occupy Wall Street
– Man Outed As Undercover Cop At Occupy Oakland Condemns Police Brutality, Supports The Movement
– #OccupyWallStreet: A Leaderfull Movement in a Leaderless Time
– Iraq vet: Penn State, my final loss of faith (in the leadership of his parents’ generation)
– Crimson Front: On Occupy Harvard
– Hawaiian musician with ‘Occupy with Aloha’ T-shirt plays 45-minute protest song for Obama at summit… and no one notices (video from Makana)
