Democrats who want to co-opt Occupy Wall Street should start their own movement
Left: Van Jones. Right: Occupy D.C. protesters march in front of the White House Nov. 15, 2011. (Credit: Center for American Progress Action Fund / CC BY 3.0/Reuters/Hyungwon Kang)
The corporate media seems to want to anoint a leader of the Occupy Movement, namely former Obama administration official Van Jones, now leader of the Rebuild the Dream organization.
When CNN’s Suzanne Malveaux suggested to Jones last week that he might be a “leader” of the Occupy Movement, Jones demurred saying, “There are a lot of us,” and that the movement is “leader filled.”
“All right, Van Jones, you might at least be a spokesperson, you know, maybe not a leader, but certainly a good spokesperson for the group,” Malveaux replied, according to a transcript, thus expressing the desire of the corporate media to appoint our leaders. Like Time magazine, CNN wants to make Jones a spokesperson for the movement. (Conservative commentators also find Jones useful as a straw man/leader whom they can attack.)
In fact, Jones, who received a golden parachute at Princeton and the Center for American Progress when he left the administration, is doing what Democrats always do: trying to co-opt the movement. Jones sees the energy of an independent movement and is racing to the front of it, in hopes of leading it down the familiar dead end path of electoral politics and essentially destroying it. While Jones and other Democratic Party front groups pretend to support the Occupiers, their real mission is to use it for their own ends.
As Glenn Greenwald noted in a recent Salon article, “White House-aligned groups such as the Center for American Progress have made explicitly clear that they are going to try to convert OWS into a vote-producing arm for the Obama 2012 campaign.”
Before the Occupy movement emerged, Jones said the first task of Rebuild the Dream was to elect Democrats. Now he urges the movement to make a “pivot to politics,” claiming there will be 2,000 “99 percent candidates” in 2012. These Democrats will be rebranded as part of the 99 percent movement, just as Republican operatives rebranded corporate Club for Growth spokesmen as Tea Party candidates in 2010. (Exhibit A: Sen. Pat Toomey before and after.) Even the Rebuild the Dream websitehas been rebranded as an Occupy movement site.
Jones’ call for the movement to “mature” and move on to party politics would only make us a sterile part of the very problem we oppose. As I learned working on Ralph Nader’s presidential campaign and running for the U.S. Senate in Maryland, the electoral system is a mirage where only corporate-approved candidates are allowed to be considered seriously. At Occupy Washington, D.C., we recognize that putting our time, energy and resources into elections will not produce the change we want. What we need to do right now is build a dynamic movement supported by independent media that stands in stark contrast to both corporate-bought-and-paid-for parties.
Democratic operatives want to steal the energy of the Occupy movement because they do not have any of their own. These front groups operate within the confines of the two-corrupted-party system and their agenda is limited by what big business interests say is politically realistic. Rebuild the Dream is more of the same that has been seen over and over from groups like MoveOn and Campaign for America’s Future. “Elect Democrats” is their mantra; indeed, it is their only program — and it is bankrupt. If it wasn’t, there would be no need for the occupation movement.
Democrats need to derail and co-opt the Occupy Movement because it calls attention to their failure. The American people need a real jobs bill, not one that is merely a political tactic for an election year. We need a truly progressive tax system — one that taxes wealth more and workers less. The poorest Americans pay taxes on necessities like food and clothing, so why is it that neither party urges a tax on the purchase of stocks, bonds and derivatives — a tax that could raise $800 billion over a decade? And finally, we need an end to the wars and militarism maintained and expanded by both parties, bringing huge profits to the arms industry and immense suffering to millions.
We don’t need media-appointed leaders.
You have come out in opposition to Van Jones and, thereby, againt Rebuild The Dream.
I absolutely disagree with your assessment of Jones, as well as your perceived threat he specifically, RTD, or many other progressive movements issue to your cause.
In the first place, Jones spent several opportunities directly disavowing what it is you accuse him of. Secondly, it is because of such groups that OWS has become known, much less supported. Believe me when I tell you that those of us who are participating with OWS would not have been there in the earliest days were it not for groups supporting and endorsing the movement, not among which the least of which was RTD, our affiliation with Jones, and other such citizen-empowered groups.
It may be true that MSM is looking for a leader to deride, or make a strawman-scapegoat for OWS. Jones is not it, both by reality and by his own words. His implication that candidates will be recruited has nothing at all to do with OWS, but rather with the momentum that is currenty on-going. In my view, your statements against him, and those movements which, in a large part have been brought to OWS through his public assertions in favor of the OWS movement, are due an immediate and sincere apology. I participate in OWS (Nashville, Memphis), and RTD, and MoveOn, and several others not because I somehow believe Jones is the "annointed one". I participate because I believe in what OWS is about. I take your statement as a direct slap in my face, and I absolutely do not appreciate you seeming to believe that your statements speak for OWS, or for me.
THIS is the danger you face, and you seem to be in front of it. So how about issuing an apology to those of us who are doing all we can to participate and support the OWS movement--including Dr. Jones?
As with Obama, it's not personal. Both he and Jones are people who seem great personally. Both operate in a system that lives to co-opt movements if it can't destroy them w/smears, infiltration, provocateurs, and digging up dirt on individual leaders. Both try to do the best they can within the electoral campaign system.
The point of movements, however, whether civil rights, anti-war, environmental or pro-workers, is to survive long beyond election campaigns. It's not just to change the players, but to change the entire system and the way America THINKS about these issues. And OWS, like movements before it, has its own experts who, hopefully, won't end up in partisan 'think-tanks'.
As with Egypt, it's not about overthrowing Mubarak, it's about regime change. Egypt got rid of Mubarak, it now faces control by Mubarak's puppets in the military, or a conservative Muslim Brotherhood. The revolution there, and here, is in its infancy.
When a movement is this small, new and vulnerable, it will be defended ferociously, as it should be. Obviously, MoveOn, RTD and others - including Ron Paul people who I think are utterly deluded, and GOPers who seem to rather die than join OWS - are welcome. But, absolutely no political campaigning is permitted because OWS is NOT a campaign. It's a long term effort to do what so many campaigns have not and cannot, so long as elections are funded by corporations and millionaires/billionaires. That's a plutocracy, NOT democracy. Democracy is much, much more than elections.
Glen Greenwald explains it real well, but here it is in a nutshell: People with great minds and hearts go into politics with the best of intentions. Once there, their party's campaign committee will lay down the law: Raise 50,000, 100,000, 250,000, half a million, a whole million, for the party and your dang self, or the party won't help you get reelected.
The idealists arrive and, in their orientation, they are clearly told: Follow the green - and they do NOT mean environmentalists! Dylan Ratigan can be quite annoying, but he and his Get Money Out crew are utterly bipartisan/non-partisan and that's the only way we can get real democracy.
So, it is a double-pronged, inside/outside strategy. Those of us who are utterly burnt out on campaigns and their corporate funding choose to work outside. Those who still get a thrill from it, believe in it devoutly, or just are hustling to get into the halls of power, are welcome to it.
To demand that everyone in every progressive movement drop everything and only/mostly work on elections for almost two campaign years has already proven to be disastrous. Just note budget-breaking never-ending Afghanistan and Obama administration efforts to negotiate keeping more troops in Iraq, going on right now. Don't even get me started on environmental issues, where even when he has executive powers to push for stronger regulations, he will not so as to get campaign fund$.
So long as both movements work hard, they deserve props. If OWS goes off the rails and ignores the 99% they're supposed to represent, they're history. If the Dem Party and its campaign groups continue to cater to the 1% only slightly less than the GOP does, they will be history, no matter how hard well-meaning people work for Dems.
I detest political parties. Each and every one ends up run by/for insiders and their funders. When this nation was founded, political parties were deemed by many of the founders as a purely self-serving hustle, and they've been proven right, sadly.
I used to think we need more parties, a parliamentary system like Europe, but look at Europe now: two countries, Italy and Greece, lost their ELECTED leaders to so-called 'technocrats', who are really financial industry big wigs, after those very same big wigs destroyed the world economy, and made the leading nations in social services, most in Europe, broke - not from serving, but from credit default swaps and derivatives started by US and London financial houses.
It's the money. It's always the money. And for THAT to change, we need an outside movement, with NO political affiliations. Rev Dr MLK did not endorse the Dem Party - he challenged it, over and over again. So I have to ask Van: Where are those 2,000+ candidates going to come from? How many are the very incumbents getting rich from insider trading, serving the 1% and throwing crumbs at the rest of us? Will they take corporate $$? Will they sign a righteous pledge to filibuster [in the senate] until they get public campaign financing?
Strategically, we can't stop making demands because Dems are in power. What did we ever get from demanding anything from the GOP? Well, actually, we got the EPA from Nixon, who also tried to pass the very same kind of health care plan Obama got passed. Reagan raised taxes on the rich in the recession, and GOP presidents decided to trade w/communist nations (honey instead of vinegar!) and use the vast pork-laden military to control the resource-rich nations to get oil, gas, coal, gold, copper, uranium, etc. instead,.
We 'ended' the Cold War and kept military contractors in the driver's seat. Why? Because those military contractors put a factory in every state's congressional district, and every politician, Dem or GOP, uses jobs as an excuse to throw more and more pork at it.
Parties don't change the world. People do. Respect people who work for change outside the cesspool that is Washington DC politics.
Next Up: 'Occupy Congress'
By Greg Sargent, The Washington Post
19 November 11
One of the enduring questions about Occupy Wall Street has been this: Can the energy unleashed by the movement be leveraged behind a concrete political agenda and push for change that will constitute a meaningful challenge to the inequality and excessive Wall Street influence highlighted by the protests?
A coalition of labor and progressive groups is about to unveil its answer to that question. Get ready for "Occupy Congress."
The coalition - which includes unions like SEIU and CWA and groups like the Center for Community Change - is currently working on a plan to bus thousands of protesters from across the country to Washington, where they will congregate around the Capitol from December 5-9, SEIU president Mary Kay Henry tells me in an interview.
"Thousands of people have signed up to come to Capitol Hill during the first week in December," Henry says, adding that protesters are invited to make their way to Washington on their own, too. "We're figuring out buses and transportation now."
One idea under consideration - pending various permitting and other logistical issues - is to have a series of tents set up on the lawn outside the Capitol, each representing a state, with the number of unemployed in each state prominently displayed. But the optics are still being worked out.
One goal of the protests, Henry says, is to pressure Republicans to support Obama's jobs creation proposals. More generally, the aim is to highlight Congress's misguided obsession with the deficit and overall inaction on unemployment.
"We're taking about it as an effort to take back the Capitol," Henry says. "It would be great if we could build pressure that goes beyond the jobs act."
Of course, Occupy Wall Street is distinguished by its organic, bottom-up nature and its critique of both parties' coziness with Wall Street. Does a coordinated effort by labor and liberal groups to channel the movement's energy into pressuring one party risk compromising the essence of what's driven the protests?
Henry said she wasn't worried about that happening, noting that Occupy Wall Street had created a "framework" - which she described as "we are the 99 percent" - within which such activities would fit comfortably.
"The reason we're targeting Republicans is because this is about jobs," she said. "The Republicans' insistence that no revenue can be put on the table is the reason we're not creating jobs in this country. We want to draw a stark contrast between a party that wants to scapegoat immigrants, attack public workers, and protect the rich, versus a president who has been saying he wants America to get back to work and that everybody should pay their fair share."
But Henry added she salutes Occupy Wall Street for finding fault with both parties, adding: "We agree that on domestic social programs, we have not won the day with either party. And we are applying pressure to both."
Occupy Congress!
Division is not the answer...unless our agendas are totally different. MoveOn agenda is the same as our's,fighting for the 99%,how can we say it's alright for there members to be a part of the Occupy Movement but it's not alright for MoveOn as a organization to be a part of it,do you really think there members would take part in the Occupy Movement knowing this .The Political party's in this country are all control by the 1% money but the Republican\ Tea party wants to cut social programs for the Middle class and the working poor whereas they want to give tax brakes to the 1% and put every thing on the back's of the middle class and working poor . If you believe as I do that this GOP pledge to Grover Norquist supersedes the oath of office taken by these congressional representatives to uphold and defend the US Constitution and why is MoveOn the only organization being single out because there are other organization that's have the same agenda as MoveOn and they are not being single out,why ?
It's funny how year after year the movements and scams change names but the names of the "leaders" and figureheads stay the same.
I'm turning off my tv and going back to my Romance eBooks
I got to see the the corporate Democratic Party in a state convention and in the national convention in 2008 (I was even on the same plane as Van Jones on the way there!). It wasn't pretty.
At the state convention, incumbents did not generate discussion at caucuses. They stated their positions, asked people to raise their hands in support, and that was that. If anyone raised questions or concerns, we were glared at as if to say "We don't want input, this is an act, go along with it!"
At the national, I watched the insiders smiled to themselves as "fired up" newbies developed goals and principles in caucuses, and politely incorporated everything in the Democratic Party Platform - including Universal Single Payer and all our civil and human rights domestic and foreign policy and environmental issues - then promptly ignored it all when Democrats won all three branches.
We can't expect "representatives" whose highest priority is bribery-seeking, aka fundraising, to even have the ability, never mind the desire anymore (if they ever had it) to effect real change.
We can individually click on the eternal stream of progressive petitions, but just as Jim Morrison said "You CANNOT petition The Lord with prayer!" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XlqCFi6o-E Our supplications to congress critters and presidents fall on just-as-deaf ears.
Most of us will engage in "defensive" lesser-of-two-evils voting, with zero hope for meaningful change anyway. We know that corporations have more money than even the U.S.A., that they own and run our nation (into the ground, as they do any nation they can get away with), and have no patriotic sentiments whatsoever.
Without non-violent committed occupations of public spaces, there will be zero change. The status quo is 150% unacceptable. We're done with it.
WHY CAN'T WE ALL UNITE BECAUSE WE ARE FIGHTING FOR THE SAME THING .
Dear friend,
On Tuesday, the deficit Super Committee announced that they were not able to come to agreement. Republicans absolutely refused to budge on protecting giant tax breaks for the 1% and insisted instead on massive cuts to crucial programs including Social Security.
But thanks in part to grassroots pressure from hundreds of thousands of people—including you—the Democrats on the committee refused to give in to Republican extremism.
And that means NO mandatory cuts to Social Security.
The buzz on cable news makes it seem like the Super Committee's failure is a big letdown.
But the truth is that our pressure helped Democrats stand strong against Republican plans to savage Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid just so the super-wealthy wouldn't have to pay more in taxes.
The Super Committee was created back in July when conservative Republicans held our nation's finances hostage to a bogus default crisis. What it should have done is raise revenue by making Wall Street and the 1% pay their fair share. That's the real failure of the Super Committee.
At least now, we've helped stop the threat of Social Security cuts from the Super Committee, and it's time to turn our attention to what's next—rolling back terrible cuts in 2013 that were part of the awful debt ceiling deal in July.
We need to stop cuts to education, health care, job creation, environmental efforts, and more. Those programs aren't the source of the deficit. The deficit was caused by irresponsible tax breaks, the recession itself, and two wars.
Fortunately, the cuts don't start until next year, and we have several months to organize and make our voices heard. We'll be back in touch about ways that you can help stop the 2013 cuts.
You, along with nearly 200,000 other Rebuild the Dream members, signed the petition to stop the Social Security cuts. That is the biggest number since we launched just a few months ago, and it shows the impact we can have together. We also helped stop cuts to Medicare and Medicaid in the process.
This is an important moment that progressives should feel good about, due in part to work that Rebuild the Dream members have done.
Stay tuned for more ways you can help rebuild the American Dream.
Thank you for being a part of, and believing in, this movement.
–Natalie, Van, Billy, Jim, Ian, Somer, and the rest of the Rebuild the Dream team
I think it will be the doom of OWS to exclude groups. Most of us have the same agenda, that is, to make Wall Street accountable and have a true working progressive tax system. Some of us may have become sidetracked and a little overzealous for our own pet projects. It’s time to refocus and define what OWS wants. Otherwise, the movement just becomes a passive aggressive temper tantrum. There are many groups that will take ownership of OWS because the movement belongs to everyone. Period.
Division is not the answer...unless our agendas are totally different,we are all 99 ers .
Division is not the answer...unless our agendas are totally different,we are all 99 ers .