By Charlie Brown
Occupy Wall Street lives:
in Occupiers still meeting and acting all over the US and elsewhere .activism in Detroit , Traverse City Michigan,and NYC, etc.
- in dozens of facebook pages
Occupy The SEC , which is mainly a facebook page, has been deeply involved in the Volcker Rule Congressional action. !
Occupy the SEC shared a link.
We submitted a comment letter to the SEC regarding its proposed clearing agency regulations.
- in the popularization of "the 99%" and "1%" reference to working class and bourgeoisie in political economic discourse; in putting class struggle into the American consciousness more than since the 1930's
- in its impact on the 2012 election, including the Presidential election. The "47%" never would have been conceived in the major media without the premise of the "99%". And the "47%" and Romney's persona of definite "1%'er" were important to his losing Romney notoriously argued with Occupiers in person that "Corporations are people". Sure they are. Obama said 1%ers didn't build their businesses without lots of help from workers and the Gov'mint. The Republicans put up a banner at their convention saying "We built this", reminding most people that the Republicans were lying , exploiters; hadn't built it without the 99% doing most of the work.
Thus Occupy Wall Street played a big role in Obama's win.
- in concern about income inquality as an ongoing major news story clearly because of the initial push of the Occupy. 99%-1% splash. not since the 1960's has poverty mattered so much. Avnd so Occupy lives in the low-wage/minimum-wage battle clearly related to income inequality. The rallies against low pay at Walmart, McDonalds, and the rest, and the petitions for raising the minimum wage are children of Occupy Wall Street, in my opinion.
http://billmoyers.com/2014/06/08/how-seattle%E2%80%99s-15-minimum-wage-victory-began-in-new-york-city%E2%80%99s-zuccotti-park/
The banks, the financial sector are just under mass scrutiny more than ever in recent time, and they know it.
They are being scrutinized by none more than Senator Eliszabeth Warren of Massachusetts. Occupy lives in Elizabeth Warren's work in the Senate against Wall Street and much more
In many ways, Elizabeth Warren is the Senator from Occupy Wall Street. Her election victory and policy positions as a Senator, fighting for the 99%, came out of the Occupy dialectic and struggle.
Labor Power blogged here on Warren's effort to get debt relief for students, a effort especially fit for an Occupier to take on:
http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2014/06/pass-senator-elizabeth-warrens-bank-on.html
https://www.facebook.com/groups/WarrenFanClub/
Importantly right now , Senator EW is fighting against the re-election of that meely-mouthed , so-and-so, Mitch McConnell, ON HIS HOME STATE TERRITORY. Takin' it to him where he lives, for Democratic candidate
http://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/elizabeth-warren-is-coming-for-mitch-mcconnell-279307331865
With Warren , it is as if an Occupier of Wall Street was elected to the Senate. Senator Warren is mic-checking Republican Senate sultan McConnell.
Stop Mitch McConnell's dangerous obstruction. Add your name and help us defeat Mitch: http://bit.ly/1fqjRPs
Tue Jun 24, 2014 at 08:32 AM PDT
So much for that CRAAAZY Elizabeth Warren
Democrats aren't afraid of Elizabeth Warren in solid Red territory.
Democratic Senate candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes said Thursday that U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., will campaign in Kentucky against Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell [...] After the [failed student loan] vote, Warren told MSNBC's Chris Hayes, "One way I'm going to start fighting back is I'm going to go down to Kentucky and I'm going to campaign for Alison Lundergan Grimes."Today:
U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren will campaign for Natalie Tennant in West Virginia next month in a push to keep a Democratic Senate seat. Warren will accompany Tennant in the Eastern Panhandle on July 14 as she rolls out an education agenda. Tennant's campaign provided trip details to The Associated Press.So it's only June, yet Elizabeth Warren has already announced campaign appearances in conservative Kentucky and West Virginia. You can bet that the Grimes and Tennant campaigns have tested Warren's appearances, and that they extended the invitation means the results were good—that Warren is more of a positive than a negative. The Grimes campaign has been particularly cautious, yet even they aren't afraid of Warren. Makes sense, since these midterms will be a base turnout year, and Warren has got that niche locked up. Furthermore, and related, Democrats will win if women turn out in droves, and yup, Warren helps with that, too.
There has been much energy spent trying to turn Warren into a boogeyman. This is proof that those conservative efforts have failed miserably.
Warren's latest
Jeri Henson Dies says:
The smart and classy fighter of the Senate.
MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT (Photo:...
Truthout
http://www.truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/elizabeth-warren-champions-bill-to-restore-glass-steagall-act-and-rein-in-wall-street
MORE ON OCCUPY
11/11/11 exchange : "this "occupation protest" thing is wearing off,yes it hitting major
citys but its not accomplishing anything .
Like · · 6 minutes ago ·
Charles Brown
///// It's accomplished more in organizing a national
anti-capitalist campaign directly targeting Wall Street and Corporate
America, and _not_ the government, but the real rulers behind the
govt.on Wall Street who not been demonstrated against 100's of times
as the government has been over the last many decades. Just changing
people's _political_ attention to the Private Market as a Political
Power Center and formulating it is class terms of the 99% vs the 1%,
and then having a months long demo as opposed to the one say demos of
the past ACCOMPLISHES MORE IN TERMS OF A WORKING CLASS STRUGGLE
MOVEMENT AGAINST THE BOURGEOISIE THAN ANYTHING SINCE THE 1930'S FLINT
SITDOWN STRIKE AGAINST GENERAL MOTORS.
The Whole reverse Citizen United movement came significantly from the boost of Occupy . You might say that it has not succeeded. But many local resolutions have been passed. It has brought a whole group of people onto the left side of a class struggle It intersects with other efforts in terms of activist and politically campaigning personnel.
Subject: Amend the Constitution
To: cb31450@gmail.com
Hey,
I'm fed up with the explosion of big corporate influence over our politics.
With the Supreme Court ignoring its own precedents to unleash a
torrent of corporate and special interest money in our elections, I
decided to take action.
Senators Dick Durbin, Jeff Merkley, Chuck Schumer, Tom Udall, and
Sheldon Whitehouse have introduced an amendment to the U.S.
Constitution that would restore our right to regulate money in
elections -- the right the Supreme Court took away with their
misguided Citizens United ruling in 2010 -- and I just signed their
public petition in support of it.
This is a really important issue for our democracy, so I thought you
would want to sign, too.
Take action here:
http://petition.
Thanks!
http://petition.
Occupy made itself a descendent of the Civil Rights Movement when it declared for non-violent tactics. Veterans of the Civil Rights brave efforts visited Occupy Wall Streeters recognizing this kinship.
non-violen
Inbox
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11/9/11
 | |||
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If police assaulted a mass picket, or a demonstration, people would
have every right to defend themselves if they could. Invoking
'non-violence' in such circumstances would be absurd. One should not
to turn a valid, but provisional, tactical calculation into a spurious
categorical imperative.
^^^^^
CB: Followers of ML King did not respond with violence to violent
police attacks. In general, it is considered that the Civil Rights
Movement won its struggle with the segregationists with these tactics.
Similarly, Ghandi had a significant impact in forwarding the Indian
national liberation movement. So, responding to violence by invoking
'non-violence' is not absurd. OWS gained a lot of sympathy and support
with non-violent response to the police violence against them early
on.
have every right to defend themselves if they could. Invoking
'non-violence' in such circumstances would be absurd. One should not
to turn a valid, but provisional, tactical calculation into a spurious
categorical imperative.
^^^^^
CB: Followers of ML King did not respond with violence to violent
police attacks. In general, it is considered that the Civil Rights
Movement won its struggle with the segregationists with these tactics.
Similarly, Ghandi had a significant impact in forwarding the Indian
national liberation movement. So, responding to violence by invoking
'non-violence' is not absurd. OWS gained a lot of sympathy and support
with non-violent response to the police violence against them early
on.
|
11/9/11
| |||
| ||||
There was violence in the civil rights movements. The growth of
armed black defense groups in the south during the mid 60's was
instrumental in ending the KKK attacks on non-violent civil rights
workers. Th riots of the 60's also played a major role. peace Jim
Davis Ozark Bioregion, USA, Planet Gaia check out my books at:
http://stores.lulu.com/store.
^^^^^
CB: However , not all or even most of the Civil Rights activists,
including M L King, responded to the violence with violence. The
children set upon by dogs and water hoses did not respond with
violence, nor did the Deacons for Defense or anybody else defend them
with violence. This forbearance from violence gained widespread
sympathy around the country. This sympathy resulted in millions of
voters non-violently pressuring Congress and the President to pass
Civil Rights laws. The main non-violent tactic in the US is voting.
Ergo, " responding to violence by invoking 'non-violence' is not absurd. "
And of course , the main non-violent form of "fighting" politically is through VOTING
Sen. Bernie Sanders: It’s time to declare independence from the 1 percent
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/07/05/sen-bernie-sanders-time-to-declare-independence-from-the-1-percent/
Charles Brown As
far as shortcomings, and in comparison with the Bolsheviks, of course,
Occupy Wall Street did not lead a socialist revolution. However, I did
not expect that. I had been calling for protests at the Wall Street
site, politicizing the symbolic finance capital center, for several
years before the Occupy took place.
Occupy
W is a reform, not revolutionary, spontaneous upsurge from middle
strata and organic intellectuals, middle strata who are very much mixed
wage-laborers, very little petit bourgeois activity in the sense of
starting their own businesses. ( see _Contemporary Capitalism and The
Middle Classes_ by S.N. Nadel)
What
was the significance of the Occupy Movement? Was it an immature
outburst? A missed opportunity? Did/does it have potential to become a
sustained, organized movement? Or is/was it merely a prelude to
something else? What were its successes and failures? Was it a student
movement, a worker's movement, a poor people's movement? What was its
relationship to the other 'global uprisings' of 2011-2012?
- 2 people like this.
Charles Brown http://take10charles.blogspot.com/.../occupy-wall-street...
take10charles.blogspot.com- Charles Brown MORE ON OCCUPY
11/11/11 exchange : "this "occupation protest" thing is wearing off,yes it hitting major
citys but its not accomplishing anything .
Like · · 6 minutes ago ·
Charles Brown
///// It's accomplished more in organizing a national
anti-capitalist campaign directly targeting Wall Street and Corporate
America, and _not_ the government, but the real rulers behind the
govt.on Wall Street who not been demonstrated against 100's of times
as the government has been over the last many decades. Just changing
people's _political_ attention to the Private Market as a Political
Power Center and formulating it is class terms of the 99% vs the 1%,
and then having a months long demo as opposed to the one say demos of
the past ACCOMPLISHES MORE IN TERMS OF A WORKING CLASS STRUGGLE
MOVEMENT AGAINST THE BOURGEOISIE THAN ANYTHING SINCE THE 1930'S FLINT
SITDOWN STRIKE AGAINST GENERAL MOTORS. - Charles Brown - in concern about income inquality as an ongoing major news story clearly because of the initial push of the Occupy. 99%-1% splash. not since the 1960's has poverty mattered so much. Avnd so Occupy lives in the low-wage/minimum-wage battle clearly related to income inequality. The rallies against low pay at Walmart, McDonalds, and the rest, and the petitions for raising the minimum wage are children of Occupy Wall Street, in my opinion.
http://billmoyers.com/.../how-seattle%E2%80%99s-15.../
billmoyers.comImmediately after the Occupy Wall Street protests began, candidates and elected ... See More - Charles Brown Occupy, with it's we are the 99% vs the 1% has shoved the idea of class and class struggle back into the mass US national political discourse.
Ellis Reamt OWS was the real thing - the real thing is going to suck and be full of frustration & differences & egos, etc etc, and the state and media will step in to make it look like shit. i'm going to write a piece about OWS & publish it on www.TheAcademicActivist.org in a few days
www.theacademicactivist.orgContemporary Philosophy PlaylistSubmitted by admin on Thu, 07/31/2014 - 15:38We ... See More
Bob Maschi It was an anarchist movement, with some socialists as well, that liberals tried to co-opt. It was a good start.- Charles Brown Occupy politicized the symbolic finance capitalist center , Wall Street. It demonstrated Wall Street as the dominant political institution. That's huge . Most past protests are at government sites , like Washington , D.C.
Cy Lee Farquar In the UK it definatily wasn't an anarchist movement. In the UK it attracted mostly non-aligned people who knew what they didn't want but had very little or no ideal what should replace capitalism. There were actually very few anarchists and socialists that identified with Occupy in the UK. It was badly infiltrated by hippies, freemen of the land, and power junkies that wanted to just try wanted to try and influence people.
What it did do is wake up a few people who were asleep but most of the occupy movement I spoke too wouldn't even give any proclaimed socialist/anarchist the time of day. The only answer I got was that they were failed options from the past and we 'had to be creative and find something new'. What was ironic was that they tried to organize the camp outside of St Pauls Cathedral in London non-hierarchically and on a consensus federated basis. In short they used anarchist ideas but couldn't bring themselves to use the word.- Charles Brown The only answer I got was that they were failed options from the past and we 'had to be creative and find something new'/////// luckily the US tendency to be ahistorical in thinking works to our advantage in this case, as US'ers don't speak of the "past" much. So, socialist ideas can be introduced as if they had historical amnesia.
Matt Kong Flash I definitely want to comment on this. I was around the Occupy Indianapolis thing. I'm a little bit busy, right now, but this is a great question, and I will be thinking about an answer from what I saw. Again, this is a good question and topic for discussion.- Cy Lee Farquar @Charles. Thats where a relatively young country like the US comes into its own. Brits are bloody besotted with the past.
- Charles Brown Yes, Cy Lee Farquar, except unfortunately, actually, socialist and Marxist thinking relies on historical thinking, so USers' ahistorical thinking by habit in general acts as a sort of vaccine preventing them from thinking like Marxists. The current example above is a sort of ironic exception.
- Charles Brown https://www.facebook.com/OccupyIND
We join united as people of peace with those in our country and the the world th... See MoreCommunity: 15,317 like this - Charles Brown https://www.facebook.com/groups/OccupyDetroitGA/
- Hello 99! This is a discussion area for general Occupy Detroit conversation. Up...
- Charles Brown https://www.facebook.com/occupythesec
A working group of Occupy Wall Street, Occupy the SEC is a collection of concern... See MoreCommunity Organization: 1,506 like this 
David Faunt Le Roy I think its successes included:
• Education: people learned something about how their economy and governments actually work and who dominates them.
• It highlighted the antagonism and contradictory interests of the %1 and the %99. I don't think this formula was the best, but it was simple an easy to understand. I wouldn't say its a class formula. There are huge, serious divisions and contradictory interests within the %99.
• The Occupiers discovered pretty quickly who the police were there to protect and serve. So it exposed in a very intimate way the class character of the state.
Failures:
• The crash of 2008 was often presented as the result of the actions of a few greedy bankers rather than a natural outcome of the inherently crisis-ridden capitalist system
• The tactic of occupying public spaces has only a limited utility. It doesn't shut production like a strike or factory occupation. I'm not sure what its supposed to demonstrate or convey. Although it did show that local governments had no problem denying the right assembly to peaceful protesters.
• The organizers of the movement had some sort of aversion to being articulate. They refuse to formulate a program, a mission statement or even a limited set of demands.
• It drew attention to suppressed issues like income inequality, money in politics, the imperialist aims of US foreign policy, but didn't propose what to do about any of it.
• The General Assembly model was basically just a talk shop. As far I can tell no attempt was ever made to set up permanent local institutions, define their purposes and goals, and coordinate their activity. The movement never went beyond sitting in a public space and talking and trying out difference models of consensus decision making.- Ellis Reamt that's not true. it was decentralized -- meaning there were tons of smaller groups working on different projects. for example @ a GA someone would get up and say we want to start a history group to teach people about history & create info to distribute - then anyone who was interested would join. or maybe there was a group to address local single parent families.
- David Faunt Le Roy I don't think an organization that is that decentralized will ever have a prayer of successfully confronting the organized power of the capitalist state.
- Ellis Reamt hmm it actually will probably be the only capable form of organization that could. if it was centralized it would get smashed.
- Ellis Reamt for example, if the vietcong in vietnam had a base and city - they could have been taken down dont u think?
- David Faunt Le Roy I think the structure of the Bolshevik Party is highly instructive. They went through periods of legality, semi-legality and illegality. They were underground, and did open work. They had Duma deputies, yet were opponents of parliamentary democracy. They had a presence in the unions and factories and working-class neighborhoods. They had a central committee, but also powerful local committees. They went through periods of revolution (1905-1907) and reaction (1908-1911). Whenever one layer of leaders got arrested, another stepped up. The arrests actually helped the party in that it forced the party to develop more and more cadres who could play a leading role. The rank and file played a leading role in the uprisings that brought down the Czar. The Party organized hundreds of thousands in opposition to the Provisional Government. And it was able to seize power from the capitalist government in what wad basically a surgical strike in October.
- Charles Brown Occupy was significantly spontaneous , in Lenin's sense in _What is to be done ?_. But it sort of rediscovered Lenin's theory of finance capital a bit. The length of time it last was a quantitative leap from all past protest demonstrations; and as I said it was at the symbolic finance capital center, "saying" that this Wall Street is a political location subject to popular protest. That's big time. The demonstrators are organic intellectuals largely , in the Gramscian sense.
- Ellis Reamt david what book do you recommend on the history of the bolshevik party? and wouldn't it be a rational conclusion that their structure is also what led to the removal of control from the soviets - centralization - and to stalin's rule?
- David Faunt Le Roy No not all. The main groups which maintain that Stalinism was merely an outgrowth of Leninism/Bolshevism are the Stalinists themselves and bourgeois historians who seek to associate Lenin with Stalin's crimes.
I would recommend:
The Bolsheviks Come to Power by Alexander Rabinowitch
The History of the Russian Revolution by Leon Trotsky
3-volume Lenin biography by Tony Cliff
From Lenin to Stalin by Victor Serge
Lenin Rediscovered by Lars Lih
My Life by Leon Trotsky
The Third International after Lenin by Trotsky
The Revolution Betrayed by Trotsky
The Stalin School of Falsification by Trotsky
The Challenge of the Left Opposition, 2 vols., Pathfinder Press
Year One of the Russian Revolution by Victor Serge
The Comintern by Duncan Hallas
Johm Riddell's Pathfinder Press and Haymarket Books editorial anthologies of Comintern documents from the 1st, 2nd and 4th World Congresses
Lenin and the Revolutionary Party by Paul LeBlanc
The Stalinist Legacy by Tariq Ali
Let History Judge by Roy Medvedev
The Bolsheviks in Power by Alexander Rabinowitch
The booka by Victor Serge might be particularly of interest to you as he was an anarchist Bolshevik. - David Faunt Le Roy I would also read about the other great communist party of that era, the German KPD.
The premier history of the German Revolution is 'The German Revolution 1917-1923' by Pierre Broue
Also:
In the Steps of Rosa Luxemburg, Selected Writings of Paul Levi, Haymarket Books
Karl Kautsky and The Socialist Revolution, 1880-1938 by Massimo Salvadori
The Lost Revolution by Chris Harman
The Lessons of October by Leon Trotsky - Matt Kong Flash I've read Trotsky's History of the Russian Revolution, but I can see that I need to read all these titles ESPECIALLY that three volume biography on Lenin. Damn, David Faunt Le Roy, you're a reading machine!
Charles Boyd It was a spontaneous movement of opposition and (importantly) it exposed concretely the strategic primitivism and overall lack of anything resembling an organized radical left.- Charles Boyd It could have developed into something more permanent or at least resulted in the formation of an SDS-like umbrella organization for the broad left within a mass movement.
Kerry Vernon http://directaction.org.au/.../occupy_sydney_mobilises...
directaction.org.auDirect Action was the paper of the Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP). At its f... See More- Kerry Vernon The state and the police successfully smashed Occupy Sydney and other Occupies around Australia, but there were interesting times and people. After it waned & the left & socialist groups left it degenerated into an apolitical squat & homeless food cent...See More
- Kerry Vernon One more: there was a debate in Occupy Sydney about the role of the police. I wrote the following article at the time http://directaction.org.au/.../can_police_be_part_of_the_99
directaction.org.auDirect Action was the paper of the Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP). At its f... See More - Charles Brown As far as shortcomings, and in comparison with the Bolsheviks, of course, Occupy Wall Street did not lead a socialist revolution. However, I did not expect that. I had been calling for protests at the Wall Street site, politicizing the symbolic finance capital center, for several years before the Occupy took place.Occupy W is a reform, not revolutionary, spontaneous upsurge from middle strata and organic intellectuals, middle strata who are very much mixed wage-laborers, very little petit bourgeois activity in the sense of starting their own businesses. ( see _Contemporary Capitalism and The Middle Classes_ by S.N. Nadel)
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