Evict Us, We Multiply by Pham Binh of Occupy Wall Street on March 2, 2012
At 9 a.m., as most of us clocked in to work for the 1%, occupiers in New York City clocked in to work for the 99% by assembling in Bryant Park to take action against the members of the American Legislative Exchange Council, a powerful corporate lobbying group that literally writes legislation. The call to “shut down the corporations” on #F29 came from Occupy Portland weeks ago. Actions spanned the nation and coincided with anti-austerity protests in Spain and Belgium. Targets included Pfizer, Bank of America, Wal-Mart, AT&T, and others. Three Wal-Mart warehouses in Mira Loma, California were closed by the time occupiers got there. The mood was festive and defiant, a real achievement given the cold, the rain, and the turnout (about 100). After leaving Bryant Park, occupiers spoke on the people’s mic in front of Pfizer before returning to the park for drumming, chanting, singing, and a teach-in by America’s top muckraker Matt Taibbi on Bank of America, the next target of the roving march. Taibbi spoke under an umbrella, discussed the ins and outs of mortgage-backed securities fraud, and noted how the 1% hedge their election bets by giving generously to both parties. No matter who wins in November, the 99% lose. Two parties, 1%. The most popular chants of the day: “Robbers, thieves, protected by police!” “A, anti, anticapitalista!” “From New York to Greece, fuck the police!” “Evict us, we multiply! Occupy will never die!” The last of these was chanted loudest and most insistently. But is it true? From the beginning of Occupy Wall Street (OWS) on September 17, 2011, the mainstream media and some in the progressive community have speculated endlessly about Occupy’s demise. We were on our last legs before we were even born. They focused on allegedly insurmountable difficulties: first the lack of “demands,” ideology, or agreed-upon political strategy, then Occupy was too middle class, white, straight, and male to gain traction with workers, women, LGBTs, and people of color who make up most of the 99%, and now they point to the fact that we’ve been evicted from most of our encampments. The wiseacres failed to understand something very simple: stumbling is not falling, as Malcolm X said. Look at it this way: when Gadhafi’s government went postal on the Libyan people in early 2011, was it the end of the Libyan revolution? No. Gadhafi’s failed to extinguish the flames of revolution with Libyan blood despite his best efforts. Instead, he created a subterranean fire by driving the organizing underground into neighborhood cells in Libya’s capital Tripoli. With NATO fighters screaming overhead and an offensive by militias from the west, these cells launched a carefully planned uprising on August 20, the day the Prophet Muhammed captured Mecca, adding Gadhafi to the list of dictators ousted by the Arab Spring cleaning and giving heart to the Syrians who quickly began to chant, “Bye, bye Qaddafi, Bashar your turn is coming.” full: http://www.thenorthstar.info/?p=303 _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
