Month: October 2011

Co-option unnecessary
by David Atkins (“thereisnospoon”)

The mini-brouhaha over the potential co-option of the Occupy Wall Street movement ranks among the sillier nontroversies of the last few weeks. Apparently, someone unknown put out this image, which has been seized upon by everyone from conservative to libertarians to progressives with an ax to grind against the Democratic Party. This, even though neither the General Assembly nor anyone who can be credibly purported to speak for the protesters at Occupy Wall Street had anything to do with it.

When it comes to “co-option” of the protests, there are a few key points that bear repeating:

1) The more organizations get involved in the movement, the harder it becomes to co-opt. A wide array of progressive and progressive-affiliated groups are already putting their weight behind Occupations all over America.

2) The Democratic Party as it currently stands is fairly incapable ideologically and organizationally of co-opting the protests. The chief problem with the Democratic Party nationally is that it should have been on the ground engaging in anti-Wall Street rallies and anti-Wall Street rhetoric at least since the fall of Lehman Brothers if not before. Progressives who have a conspiratorial view of the Democratic Party despite never attending a single central committee meeting often fail to realize that as an institution, the Democratic Party’s ostensible function is to register voters, advocate on behalf of progressive causes insofar as it has the courage and uncorrupted spirit to do so, and spend money to elect Democratic candidates.

A Democratic Party that can’t even stand firm on ending naked short-selling and banning naked credit default swaps isn’t about to be able to co-opt an anti-Wall Street message. Passing out voter registration forms at the protests, while a good idea on general principle, doesn’t really fit the spirit of the protests at least at this stage of the game. And most cities in America don’t have major elections going on right now. So organizationally, there’s not much for the Democratic Party as an institution to functionally co-opt, anyway.

3) The only people who run the risk of negatively co-opting the movement are the InfoWars/Alex Jones/Ron Paul types. But even then there is strength in numbers and ideological variety. Part of the benefit of these sorts of protests, as Digby pointed out, is the educational aspect. People come together and learn from one another: maybe a more traditional Democrat learns about the shady history of the Federal Reserve, while a Paulite learns why going back on the gold standard is a really bad idea. Cross-fertilization of ideas is a good thing.

4) Even if the Democratic Party wanted and had the capability to co-opt the protests, it would be a bad idea from a purely political and media perspective for both sides. Part of the media appeal of the Tea Party is that to this day it stridently insists that it is non-partisan, independent and not affiliated with the Republican Party. The Republican Party understands that the benefit of this pretense of separation is that, in theory, the GOP doesn’t get tarred with brush of the craziest elements of the Tea Party, while the Tea Party doesn’t get labeled as just another partisan Republican organization. Similarly speaking, the more staid Democratic Party would want to avoid being associated with any potentially extreme statements coming out of the Occupy movement, while the Occupy movement would certainly want to dissociate itself from overtly partisan activity.

5) Talking about “co-option” is silly in many cases, anyway. Again contra the widely held beliefs of many online progressives, most local Democratic club members and activists (including local party officials like myself) perform their volunteer efforts entirely pro bono. Sometimes we get paid to work on individual campaigns, but it’s rare seasonal work and the pay isn’t great. We don’t receive much in the way of official diktats from national headquarters, and guidance even from state headquarters is fairly limited. As anyone who’s been much involved in Dem Party activism outside of certain machine cities can attest, Will Rogers’ famous quip about not belonging to an organized political party is on target in this respect. And most of the people who volunteer at the local level to work for tens of hours every week totally unpaid while donating hundreds or even thousands of dollars every year out of pocket to affiliated organizations, do so because they’re passionate about either social issues, anti-corporate and anti-inequality issues, or both.

So when MoveOn and labor groups join to help occupy cities, they’re often drawing from the same pool of activists. Yes, there are many Democratic activists at Occupy movement locations. Not because the Democratic Party orchestrated the protests, as right-wing conspiracy theorists are claiming. Not because the Democratic Party is trying to co-opt the protests, as left-wing conspiracy theorists are claiming. It’s just because many of the people most agitated against corporate control of the country were already volunteering to help Dems and Dem issues in the first place. The exception to the rule here is New York City, of course, where much of the Democratic infrastructure has been cowed by financial sector influence.

6) Maybe most importantly, there is absolutely no need for the Democratic Party to co-opt the protests. When you’ve got jokers like this speaking for Republicans, all the Dems need to do is get out of the way and let them keep talking:

Rep. Paul Broun (R-Ga.) on Thursday slammed the Occupy Wall Street protests, saying they are an attack on businesses and freedom.

“They don’t know why they’re there. They’re just mad,” Broun said on ABC’s “TopLine.”

“I see people angry in my district too. But this attack upon business, attack upon industry, attack upon freedom and I think that’s what this is all about.”

Or conservative icon Bill O’Reily:

“What do these people want?” O’Reilly asked. The common thread seems to be income equality… basically socialistic outfits… You can get it in places like Cuba and Zimbabwe.”

The Dems don’t need to co-opt the protests. All Dems need to do is give them a thumbs up, and let the protesters hear what conservatives and Republicans have to say about the frustrations of the 99%. Come election season, any protesters in doubt who were paying much attention at all will know if not whom to vote for, at the very least whom to vote against.

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Wall street is War street

by digby

Remembrances of things past (and future)

by digby

The New Yorker:

The next target is Wall Street,” an anarchist collective known as Black Mask wrote in its January newsletter, 1967. On February 10th, around twenty-five members of the group, wearing black balaclavas and carrying giant skulls, took to the streets of the financial district and handed out this statement:

WALL STREET IS WAR STREET

The traders in stocks and bones shriek for New Frontiers—but the coffins return to the Bronx and Harlem. Bull markets of murder deal in a stock exchange of death. Profits rise to the ticker tape of your dead sons. Poison gas RAINS on Vietnam. You cannot plead “WE DID NOT KNOW.” Television brings the flaming villages into the safety of your home. You commit genocide in the name of freedom.

BUT YOU TOO ARE THE VICTIMS!

If unemployment rises, you are given work, murderous work. If education is inferior, you are taught to kill. If the blacks get restless, they are sent to die. This is Wall Street’s formula for the great society!

The photographer Larry Fink was there. “They had nothing but their own stealth, and no support,” Fink told me. They hoped to stoke a revolution. “They were working from a massive historic misinterpretation,” Fink said.

Fink thinks that today’s Occupy Wall Street protests are different. “We’ve gone past the time when utopia seemed like a viable option,” he said. “There’s no hope for some kind of Marxist future, so it seems formless. They just know that it can’t go on like this: the greed, the inequality. It can’t go on, so we’ll sit here.”

That picture above was taken in 1967.

Here’s one he took two years later:

Click over to see the whole slide show. The pics are great.

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Fighting communism three times a week

by digby

I am reading way too many lugubrious recitations of the origins of the mythical populist Tea Party these days. Will Bunch sets the record straight.

One of the biggest myths about the Tea Party is that a driving force in its creation was anger over bank and Wall Street bailouts. It’s true that some rank-and-file joiners did feel that way at first, but they were quickly co-opted by the movement leaders — including radio talkers and groups funded by the Koch Brothers — into worshipping the rich instead.

Here, by way of Brian Hickey, is what the local Independence Tea Party has to say about Occupy Wall Street:

“The idea that Wall Street is the root of all evil is also an anathema to us. Like any other institution, Wall Street has its corrupt figures–and such individuals should be dealt with accordingly,” said Ms. Adams. “But to condemn Wall Street, en masse, is akin to condemning our entire free enterprise system.

“Our Association deplores corporate bailouts (GM), corporate subsidies (Solyndra), and corporate welfare. At the same time, however, we recognize the contributions and achievements of America’s chambers of commerce.

So why does the Tea Party deplore the government rescuing GM — which actually makes things and employs thousands of middle-class Americans — and yet make no reference of the massive corporate bailout of AIG, which makes nothing but profits (or risky losing bets). This is what hypocrisy looks like.

Indeed. It’s very, very, very important to remember that the Tea Party is simply the Christian Right in a tri-corner hat. They are the same people Rick Perlstein colorfully described here:

The John Birch Society meetings in suburban parlors nationwide, in which chapters no bigger than two dozen members — a cell structure ostensibly to prevent Red infiltration but that, as it happened, was also the ideal size for a cocktail party — plotted how to forestall the Communist takeover of the PTAs by taking them over first. “I just don’t have time for anything,” a Dallas housewife told Time in 1961. “I’m fighting Communism three nights a week.”

Not trying to take anything away from them. I’m sure they are very sincere. But let’s not ever get confused about their “populism.” They hate government, not corporations. They are the most unlikely allies for progressivism in American politics.

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States rights be damned

by digby

This morning I speculated that the Obama administration might decide to sacrifice women’s rights in exchange for its more populist rhetoric (Democrats simply refuse to make a straight liberal appeal)and that’s still very possible. But this looks like an immediate offering to the social conservatives, whose loathing of personal freedom and pleasure extends beyond sex and even eclipses their fetishization of states’ rights. They’re going to love this:

Federal officials are warning California medical marijuana dispensaries they must shut down within 45 days or face criminal prosecution and having their property confiscated.

The state’s four U.S. attorneys sent letters Wednesday and Thursday notifying at least 16 pot shops or their landlords that they are violating federal drug laws, even though medical marijuana is legal in California. The attorneys are to announce their coordinated crackdown at a Friday news conference.

The move marks an escalation of the conflict between the government and the medical marijuana industry.

That ought to please even the most ignorant culture warrior while angering virtually every liberal and libertarian in the state. I wonder how many social conservatives with vote for the president’s re-election because of it?

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Occupying California
by David Atkins (“thereisnospoon”)

The Occupy Wall Street protests are spreading like wildfire around the country, not least in California, where they are garnering positive media attention.

As I noted earlier, local lawmakers in Los Angeles are cheering on the protesters.

In Santa Barbara, protesters are largely peacefully holding their ground despite curfew arrests, and receiving positive vibes from the local media.

In San Francisco, 600 people made their presence felt in front of the Federal Reserve building and many continue to camp out there. The press coverage in San Francisco has been supportive.

And in my own backyard in Ventura County, I was one of a little over 40 people attending the Occupy Camarillo event yesterday. The county newspaper the Ventura County Star, normally fairly conservative-leaning, wrote an article free of the condescension and irony apparent in so much of the East Coast establishment media:

The Occupy Wall Street protests have spread to Ventura County with Facebook pages set up for Occupy Camarillo and Occupy Ventura and protesters gathering on Ventura Boulevard in Old Town Camarillo late Wednesday afternoon.

The grass-roots movement whose slogan is “We Are The 99%” aims to focus attention on what it says is a wealth distribution in which 1 percent of the U.S. population owns the majority of the wealth and on whether that 1 percent should pay higher taxes.

By 5 p.m. more than 40 people had gathered in front of the Chapel of St. Mary Magdalen at the Highway 101 on-ramps and offramps carrying signs saying, “We are the 99% and so are you.”

Many drivers honked their horns in support.

“I’ve thought about it for months — that we need to stand up — and they motivated me, the young people in New York and around the country,” said Patty Osborne, a 51-year-old mother and caregiver.

“Nothing’s moving because the economy is just stuck, and people are fighting in Washington, and I’m sick of it,” she said. “It’s time for the people to say ‘enough.'”

The protest was organized by Carolyn Crandall of Camarillo.

“Last week I was watching the TV, and I said: ‘I’ve got to get up off the couch. I can’t stand it.’ I am over the Wall Street greed,” she said.

This is a movement that is now resonating and gaining steam all over the country. But it’s mostly only in the establishment media on the east coast that the protests are viewed with condescending skepticism.

One of the biggest problems with the American media is that the vast preponderance of its infrastructure is situated in the New York-Washington D.C. corridor, which happens to be one of the wealthiest areas in the country, and the area most overrun with the twin corruption of the financial sector and the military-industrial complex.

Most of this country’s media elite hobnob with people who made it rich in the financial markets and the business of war and national security. One doesn’t even need to appeal to venal corruption of the media: the mere social milieu in which our media bigwigs operate has a signficant warping effect on their discourse, without even a single quid pro quo dollar changing hands.

On the west coast, by contrast, there is very little in the way of political reporting. Californians are barely aware of what is happening in their own state due to a lack of political coverage, and West Coast sensibilities barely break through in the national dialogue.

Compounding this problem is the fact that the majority of nation’s policy wonks are being selected from Ivy League schools for no good reason whatsoever, while those who aren’t from the Ivies are almost all from east of the Mississippi:

In total, the Post reckoned that 22 of Obama’s 35 appointments had, at that point, a degree from an Ivy League university, MIT, Stanford, the University of Chicago, Oxford or Cambridge. Since then, Obama has appointed a Harvard alumnus as education secretary, a Nobel-prize winning Stanford physicist as energy secretary, and a handful of Harvard law school classmates.

The West Coast and California in particular have more than our share of problems. But California’s problems are most the singular result of Proposition 13, which forced California to rely heavily on unstable sales taxes while allowing the bare 1/3 of the legislature controlled by Republicans to veto anything resembling a sensible budget. On the whole, however, the west coast states are moving quickly in the right direction both attitudinally in terms of public policy.

The challenge lies in bringing that West Coast ethic to the rest of the country, and forcing the country to pay closer attention.

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“They probably don’t even masturbate to the Constitution”

The Daily Show on Occupy Wall Street:

The Daily Show
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

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The forgotten front

by digby

The war on women continues apace:

In a strongly worded speech, Sebelius said Republicans are not only working to repeal President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul, but also want to take away benefits in Medicare, cut back Medicaid and eliminate health services provided by Planned Parenthood.

“We’ve come a long way in women’s health over the last few decades, but we are in a war,” Sebelius said at a NARAL Pro-Choice America luncheon attended by about 300 people, who gave some of their loudest applause at her mention of the Obama administration’s support for requiring insurance plans to cover birth control without copays.

“In other words, they don’t just want to go after the last 18 months, they want to roll back the last 50 years in progress women have made in comprehensive health care in America,” Sebelius said.

Well naturally. Viagra helps mostly older men achieve sexual pleasure, which is a fundamental right. Birth control, on the other hand, encourages the sluts to tempt them. Big difference. Huge.

On the larger issue, if you care about this keep an eye on it. While the Democrats are (mostly) seeing the usefulness of confronting the right on class issues, they are very likely to be searching madly for ways to find common cause with them on culture war issues. With all the successful anti- choice activity at statehouses around the country they may very well decide that women have to take yet another bullet for the team. It wouldn’t be the first time …

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A tale of two cities
by David Atkins (“thereisnospoon”)

In New York, Mayor Bloomberg is sending in the police to mace and bludgeon protesters and journalists alike:

MYFOXNY.COM – While covering the Occupy Wall Street protests on Wednesday night, Fox 5 photographer Roy Isen was hit in the eyes by mace from a police officer and Fox 5 reporter Dick Brennan was hit by an officer’s baton.

The protests on Wall Street continued to grow all day. The rallies and their participants are showing no signs of slowing down.

In the evening, crowds surged past barriers and NYPD officers moved in to contain the protesters. By many accounts, mayhem broke out.

Officers, many wearing white shorts indicating supervisor rank, swatted protesters with batons and sprayed them with mace, video from the scene showed.

Meanwhile in Los Angeles, mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is officially backing the protests, handing out rain ponchos to the protesters:

The five-day old campout demonstration outside Los Angeles City Hall to protest Wall Street greed is getting official thumbs up from the city.

City News Service says the office of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa distributed 100 rain ponchos to the demonstrators on Wednesday while seven of the 15 councilmembers voted in favor of a resolution in support of the Occupy LA protest.

The resolution, which is slated for a final vote next week, called the protest “a peaceful and vibrant exercise in First Amendment rights.”

This is the difference between a city beholden to the vampires in the financial sector, and a city that isn’t. It’s the difference between a mayor with a community organizing and civic activism background, and a mayor beloved of the corrupt Third Way crowd who “earned” his chops playing games with other people’s money. It’s the difference between real progressivism, and authoritarian conservatism with a happy, socially liberal smile on its face.

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