----- Original Message -----
From: andy liberman
To: John A Imani
Sent: Saturday, October 01, 2011 5:16 AM
Subject: posting
John-would you post this to MLK_Coalition yahoogroups? and how may I do this
too?
thanks.
Andy Liberman
_0
~~~ _ \<,_
~ --- (_)/ (_)
Coffee House Teachins
http://www.facebook.com/groups/teachins1/
http://www.CoffeeHouseTeachins.blogspot.com
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: John A Imani <[email protected]>
To: "[email protected]"
<[email protected]>; LAAMN <[email protected]>;
"[email protected]" <[email protected]>
Cc: [email protected]; [email protected]
Sent: Friday, September 30, 2011 5:21 PM
Subject: [actionla] Fw: [MLK_Coalition] : The Revolution Begins at Home (Arun
Gupta), Occupy LA, Unions Head to Wall Street
----- Original Message -----
From: Sabina Virgo
To: [email protected]
Sent: Friday, September 30, 2011 12:51 PM
Subject: [MLK_Coalition] : The Revolution Begins at Home (Arun Gupta), Occupy
LA, Unions Head to Wall Street
Occupy LA begins this Saturday Oct 1st! We are
Occupying LA in solidarity with Occupy Wall St. (A Peacefull Occupation)
Starting at 10:00am in Pershing Square, marching
to City Hall Map Join Us - Bring a sleeping bag, food, supplies, friends!
Check out the website. The revolution is not being televised.
http://occupylosangeles.org/
***
From: Mitchel Cohen [mailto:[email protected]]
The Revolution Begins at Home
By Arun Gupta [email protected]
What is occurring on Wall Street right now is truly remarkable. For over 10
days, in the sanctum of the great cathedral of global capitalism, the
dispossessed have liberated territory from the financial overlords and their
police army.
They have created a unique opportunity to shift the tides of history in the
tradition of other great peaceful occupations from the sit-down strikes of the
1930s to the lunch-counter sit-ins of the 1960s to the democratic uprisings
across the Arab world and Europe today.
While the Wall Street occupation is growing, it needs an all-out commitment
from everyone who cheered the Egyptians in Tahrir Square, said "We are all
Wisconsin," and stood in solidarity with the Greeks and Spaniards. This is a
movement for anyone who lacks a job, housing or healthcare, or thinks they have
no future.
Our system is broken at every level. More than 25 million Americans are
unemployed. More than 50 million live without health insurance. And perhaps 100
million Americans are mired in poverty, using realistic measures. Yet the fat
cats continue to get tax breaks and reap billions while politicians compete to
turn the austerity screws on all of us.
At some point the number of people occupying Wall Street -- whether that's five
thousand, ten thousand or fifty thousand -- will force the powers that be to
offer concessions. No one can say how many people it will take or even how
things will change exactly, but there is a real potential for bypassing a
corrupt political process and to begin realizing a society based on human needs
not hedge fund profits.
After all, who would have imagined a year ago that Tunisians and Egyptians
would oust their dictators?
At Liberty Park, the nerve center of the occupation, more than a thousand
people gather every day to debate, discuss and organize what to do about our
failed system that has allowed the 400 richest Americans at the top to amass
more wealth than the 180 million Americans at the bottom.
It's astonishing that this self-organized festival of democracy has sprouted on
the turf of the masters of the universe, the men who play the tune that both
political parties and the media dance to. The New York Police Department, which
has deployed hundreds of officers at a time to surround and intimidate
protesters, is capable of arresting everyone and clearing Liberty Plaza in
minutes. But they haven't, which is also astonishing.
That's because assaulting peaceful crowds in a public square demanding real
democracy -- economic and not just political -- would remind the world of the
brittle autocrats who brutalized their people demanding justice before they
were swept away by the Arab Spring. And the state violence has already
backfired. After police attacked a Saturday afternoon march that started from
Liberty Plaza the crowds only got bigger and media interest grew.
The Wall Street occupation has already succeeded in revealing the bankruptcy of
the dominant powers -- the economic, the political, media and security forces.
They have nothing positive to offer humanity, not that they ever did for the
Global South, but now their quest for endless profits means deepening the
misery with a thousand austerity cuts.
Even their solutions are cruel jokes. They tell us that the "Buffett Rule"
would spread the pain by asking the penthouse set to sacrifice a tin of caviar,
which is what the proposed tax increase would amount to. Meanwhile, the rest of
us will have to sacrifice healthcare, food, education, housing, jobs and
perhaps our lives to sate the ferocious appetite of capital.
That's why more and more people are joining the Wall Street occupation. They
can tell you about their homes being foreclosed upon, months of grinding
unemployment or minimum-wage dead-end jobs, staggering student debt loads, or
trying to live without decent healthcare. It's a whole generation of Americans
with no prospects, but who are told to believe in a system that can only offer
them Dancing With The Stars and pepper spray to the face.
Yet against every description of a generation derided as narcissistic,
apathetic and hopeless they are staking a claim to a better future for all of
us.
That's why we all need to join in. Not just by liking it on Facebook, signing a
petition at change.org or retweeting protest photos, but by going down to the
occupation itself.
There is great potential here. Sure, it's a far cry from Tahrir Square or even
Wisconsin. But there is the nucleus of a revolt that could shake America's
power structure as much as the Arab world has been upended.
Instead of one to two thousand people a day joining in the occupation there
needs to be tens of thousands of people protesting the fat cats driving
Bentleys and drinking thousand-dollar bottles of champagne with money they
looted from the financial crisis and then from the bailouts while Americans
literally die on the streets.
To be fair, the scene in Liberty Plaza seems messy and chaotic. But it's also a
laboratory of possibility, and that's the beauty of democracy. As opposed to
our monoculture world, where political life is flipping a lever every four
years, social life is being a consumer and economic life is being a timid cog,
the Wall Street occupation is creating a polyculture of ideas, expression and
art.
Yet while many people support the occupation, they hesitate to fully join in
and are quick to offer criticism. It's clear that the biggest obstacles to
building a powerful movement are not the police or capital -- it's our own
cynicism and despair.
Perhaps their views were colored by the New York Times article deriding
protesters for wishing to "pantomime progressivism" and "Gunning for Wall
Street with faulty aim." Many of the criticisms boil down to "a lack of clear
messaging."
But what's wrong with that? A fully formed movement is not going to spring from
the ground. It has to be created. And who can say what exactly needs to be
done? We are not talking about ousting a dictator; though some say we want to
oust the dictatorship of capital.
There are plenty of sophisticated ideas out there: end corporate personhood;
institute a "Tobin Tax" on stock purchases and currency trading; nationalize
banks; socialize medicine; fully fund government jobs and genuine Keynesian
stimulus; lift restrictions on labor organizing; allow cities to turn
foreclosed homes into public housing; build a green energy infrastructure.
But how can we get broad agreement on any of these? If the protesters came into
the square with a pre-determined set of demands it would have only limited
their potential. They would have either been dismissed as pie in the sky --
such as socialized medicine or nationalize banks -- or if they went for weak
demands such as the Buffett Rule their efforts would immediately be absorbed by
a failed political system, thus undermining the movement.
That's why the building of the movement has to go hand in hand with common
struggle, debate and radical democracy. It's how we will create genuine
solutions that have legitimacy. And that is what is occurring down at Wall
Street.
Now, there are endless objections one can make. But if we focus on the
possibilities, and shed our despair, our hesitancy and our cynicism, and
collectively come to Wall Street with critical thinking, ideas and solidarity
we can change the world.
How many times in your life do you get a chance to watch history unfold, to
actively participate in building a better society, to come together with
thousands of people where genuine democracy is the reality and not a fantasy?
For too long our minds have been chained by fear, by division, by impotence.
The one thing the elite fear most is a great awakening. That day is here.
Together we can seize it.
--------------------------------------------
Arun Gupta is the editor of The Indypendent.
http://www.mitchelcohen.com/
Unions Head to Support Occupy Wall Street
Citing common cause, the Transport Workers Union - one of the country's largest
unions with over 200,000 members - has announced its support for the Occupy
Wall Street protests. They will join a Friday rally. Other unions are following
suit, with a slew of big NYC unions planning an Oct. 5 rally.
The Village Voice interviewed Transport Workers Union Local 100's spokesman Jim
Gannon:
Why did they join? "Well, actually, the protesters, it's pretty courageous what
they're doing," he said, "and it's brought a new public focus in a different
way to what we've been saying along. While Wall Street and the banks and the
corporations are the ones that caused the mess that's flowed down into the
states and cities, it seems there's no shared sacrifice. It's the workers
having to sacrifice while the wealthy get away scot-free. It's kind of a
natural alliance with the young people and the students -- they're voicing our
message, why not join them? On many levels, our workers feel an affinity with
the kids. They just seem to be hanging out there getting the crap beaten out of
them, and maybe union support will help them out a little bit."
Could Unions Help Rebrand Occupy Wall St from a Dirty Hippie Protest to a
Populist One? from ANIMALnewyork.com on Vimeo.
**NEW Activist Tools from ActionLA!**
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