RSS FeedThe OccupyUSA Blog: Special Weekend Edition!
Live-blogging OWS daily since October 1. Email: epic1934@aol.com. All times ET. See my e-book on Occupy "40 Days That Shook the World." My OWS-relevant "Journeys With Beethoven" just published in print and e-book, my other books here...
SUNDAY
12:30 Important piece from the Portland Occupier raising tough questions about Occupy's future and facing frankly loss of "momentum" and plunging number of participants. How does that idea of never issuing "demands" look now? "Numbers matter, and Occupy has been shedding numbers for months. A major reason for this is because Occupiers have swerved drastically left, leaving the broader 99% ashore. If this trend isn’t corrected soon, Occupy will resemble the pre-Occupy left: small isolated groups pursuing their own issues, disconnected from the very broader population that must be involved to actually win any significant demands.
"This is the original sin of Occupy: Without first sinking its roots deep enough into the broader population, Occupy marched quickly to the left, unconcerned with who was following. Hopefully Occupy can correct this mistake in time, since not doing so would be fatal fast.
"Hopefully, Occupiers have passed through the movement’s immature adolescence. For example, Occupy must shed its focus on radical-themed direct actions that inevitably attract only a couple hundred Occupiers but no one else. Again, this was the strategy of pre-Occupy that has already proved its lack of worth. Mass direction action is truly effective, but that raises the critical question: how to bring the masses of working people to Occupy, and vice versa?
"Europe has already answered this question, having passed through the adolescence if its own movement..."
* SATURDAY *
1:45 Livestream from the Chicago occupation.
1:00 Updates on school action @OccupyChicago. ... and story here.... Singing to stop foreclosures....
9:50 Humboldt Park school occupied in Chicago.
From late Friday
My new piece here at The Nation on Beethoven "calling the tune" for global protest. Yes, his music is the soundtrack to demonstrations almost everywhere. Occupyer Number One? Plus, Billy Bragg sings his re-working of the "Ode to Joy."
Another report ftrom London on Springsteen presser where he talked at length about the politics of his new album.
"I have spent my life judging the distance between American reality and the American dream," Springsteen told the conference, where the album was aired for the first time. It was written, he claimed, not just out of fury but out of patriotism, a patriotism traduced. "What was done to our country was wrong and unpatriotic and un-American and nobody has been held to account," he later told the Guardian. "There is a real patriotism underneath the best of my music but it is a critical, questioning and often angry patriotism."
"The temper has changed. And people on the streets did it. Occupy Wall Street changed the national conversation – the Tea Party had set it for a while. The first three years of Obama were under them.
"Previous to Occupy Wall Street, there was no push back at all saying this was outrageous – a basic theft that struck at the heart of what America was about, a complete disregard for the American sense of history and community … In Easy Money the guy is going out to kill and rob, just like the robbery spree that has occurred at the top of the pyramid – he's imitating the guys on Wall Street. An enormous fault line cracked the American system right open whose repercussion we are only starting to be feel. Nobody had talked about income inequality in America for decades – apart from John Edwards – but no one was listening. But now you have Newt Gingrich talking about 'vulture capitalism' – Newt Gingrich! – that would not have happened without Occupy Wall Street."
From my colleague Eliz Whitman: More on Occupy Koch Town: The organizers of the protest in Wichita say that 500 people have confirmed their attendance this weekend, during which they will focus on environmental and energy policies, touching on the role of the Koch brothers in the Keystone XL pipeline. A Koch spokesperson has insisted that "Koch Industries has no financial stake in the Keystone pipeline."
Senate joins House in passing payroll tax measure .... Low turnout for Occupy Fashon Week in NY....The Week in Poverty feature for today from The Nation. ... My piece on tragic death of reporter Anthony Shadid now updated.
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