Monday, January 23, 2012
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Looking back on a year of rebellion | via En Passant » #Occupy
via: http://enpassant.com.au/?p=11847
Some years stand out because they change the course of history, and they change us. They change the way we think about our society, about politics, about the possibilities for social change. 2011 has been one such year writes Rebecca Barrigos in Socialist Alternative.
Beginning with the revolution in Tunisia in December and January, struggle and resistance has swept through the world like wildfire. It sparked the Arab Spring, in which millions of Egyptians, Syrians, Bahrainis and others continue to rise up against vile Western-backed dictators and agendas that have condemned people to poverty and repression for decades.
These revolutions in turn have inspired workers the world over, spreading to the occupations of hundreds of public squares in Spain, and fanning the winds of workers’ struggle in Greece. Here there have been umpteen general strikes and workers have amassed in their tens of thousands in Syntagma Square in the shadow of the Parliament, their voices filling the space with the anti-government chant, “Thieves, thieves!”
This global wave of resistance has also threaded its way to the US in the form of the Occupy movement, which began in Wall Street, the heart of world capitalism.
The common concerns linking workers from the streets of Tunis and Cairo’s Tahrir Square through to Europe and America are concerns raised by a rapacious world capitalist system in deep economic crisis. This system is inflicting misery the world over as our ruling classes have scrambled to force workers to pay – with our jobs, health care, public services and our wages and conditions – for their crisis.
The struggles reveal a lesson of universal significance that has emerged from years of attacks from governments following the global financial crisis: that we can and should fight back. In the resistance we have seen this year lies the alternative to a world dominated by the greed and tyranny of the capitalist class, of the 1 percent.
These struggles have put the idea of revolution and mass struggle back on the agenda. For decades socialists, like us in Socialist Alternative, who have argued for a revolution to overthrow capitalism and establish a society of genuine human freedom, were dismissed as utopian dreamers. In the West, we were told, the mass of people are too apathetic or too well-off to revolt; they will never rise up against their oppressors. In the Arab world they were too cowed by brutal police states to be able to mount effective resistance. The events of the past year refute the sceptics and pessimists.
In the case of the Arab world, workers and the oppressed have proven that revolution is the surest and swiftest way to win social change. In Egypt and Tunisia, the masses achieved in a matter of weeks in January and February what decades of roundtables, talks and writing letters could never have achieved – they toppled hated dictators Ben Ali and Mubarak and put world imperialist powers on the back foot.
The scenes of the Arab revolution that we have watched on YouTube or on our TVs have given us a sense of the real alternative to a society based on the greed and profits of the 1 percent.
In ordinary times under capitalism, workers can feel powerless to effect change; we are stuck under the bosses’ thumbs and compelled to accept the status quo. But revolutions turn this whole state of affairs on its head as workers realise that their own actions can shape the tide of history, that we are masters of our own fates.
From the words of countless protesters standing defiant in Egypt’s streets after decades of submission, you get a feel of the awesome transformative power of revolution. In February in Alexandria, 40-year-old electrician Abdel Reheem described his experience of the revolution. He had already been protesting and camping downtown for weeks, giving up his meagre $200 a month income:
I learned to say “No, I am not a coward anymore.” All I cared about before was making a living, but now people have started to care about each other. I feel like I have been born again.
Egypt
The Egyptian revolution shows us how it is possible for people to overcome the backward ideas and divisions constructed by capitalism; how to fight collectively for a better society. This has been the experience of protesters who have seen firsthand that to maintain the revolution, unity is required. Divisions across racial, ethnic, religious and gender lines, as well as those between people of different sexuality, have to be overcome.
Women, the elderly and children – often assumed to be the most passive – have come to the fore in all the Arab revolutions, leading chants and marches, bravely defying the security forces and riot police.
Some of the most inspiring images from this year have been those that defy all the Western stereotypes of Muslim women. Women on the front lines of confrontation with the police; giving impassioned media interviews; a teenage woman leading a crowd of men in a face off against the brutal riot police, parading before them defiantly and encouraging the crowd – “Security forces are the lowest scum!” Today it is this young woman in a pink veil who is the bravest revolutionary and the inspiration to the crowd.
Despite a history of tensions between Coptic Christians and Muslims in Egypt, which the interim military government (SCAF) had consciously fostered since Mubarak’s fall, the unity chant of “The Muslims and Christians are one hand” has dominated the current wave of revolutionary struggle as it did in Tahrir in February. The unity across sectarian lines is testament to the solidarity that the process of revolution promotes and requires.
In January and February institutions of popular democracy and self-organisation flourished in Egypt as neighbourhood committees were formed to defend working class suburbs from repression, to organise sanitation and street-cleaning and ensure the supply of gas, water and electricity to workers at the height of the protests, and even to undertake traffic control.
And Tahrir Square, the centre of the protests in Cairo, was converted into a real microcosm of a collectively run society – with free clinics staffed by volunteer doctors and nurses to treat the wounded, childcare centres, media centres, platforms for political discussion and debate and so on.
This alternative society, one based on dignity, equality and camaraderie, is so much more rational and inspiring than anything we have seen under so-called capitalist “democracy.”
The Arab revolutions of 2011 have also revealed the centrality of workers’ struggle in bringing about social change. In Egypt, defiant mass street protests certainly tested Mubarak, but it was when Egyptian workers escalated their strike wave that his fate was sealed. With the workers of the Suez Canal, so integral to trade, as well as transport workers, steel and petroleum workers and textile workers on strike, the whole country began to shut down and the military knew they would have to step in and dispose of Mubarak if “business as usual” was to be resumed.
Yet while their heroic movement may have toppled the figurehead of a rotten regime, the reign of Egyptian capitalism has continued. The economic crisis has intensified and unemployment has increased this year. Consequently, nine months later, a core demand of the revolution – the raising of the minimum wage – has not been achieved. State repression remains a permanent feature of daily life, with arbitrary arrests and torture of activists, breaking of strikes and military trials of civilians the norm.
The military government, comprised of the generals of the Mubarak regime, has proven itself just as committed to ensuring the interests of the rich of Egypt as Mubarak – in fact restoring “business as usual” has been the slogan for the SCAF since it took power. It forms part of the class at the top of Egyptian society which benefits from holding down wages and suppressing strikes. The military itself owns and controls factories and agricultural holdings.
So the leadership of working class is the key to the ultimate success of the revolutions – it’s no coincidence that Tunisia and Egypt – where there is the most established role of workers in struggle, and where there are larger and more experienced working classes – are the places where the revolutionary process has gone furthest.
Europe
Workers in Spain, Greece, Italy, Portugal and Britain have met the brutal austerity measures of governments with resistance and strike action on a scale unseen for decades. This stands as proof that the rebellion of 2011 is not just about standing up to dictatorships, but is a response to the depravities of capitalism.
The economic crisis has created a whole lost generation of young people with no jobs and few prospects. In Spain the youth unemployment rate stands at nearly 50 percent. The miserable reality of joblessness and desperation sparked the occupation of public squares from May. But it is a reality that resonates throughout the Eurozone.
In Greece a reporter asked protester Nikkos Kokkalis, “Are you an indignado?” (i.e. an angry person, an indignant – the term was coined by the Spanish protesters). His response: “I’m a super-Indignado! There are 300 people over there,” he waves at the MPs’ offices. “Most of them make decisions without asking the people.” He is a 29-year-old graduate who lives with his parents and has never had a stable job. His story is common.
The Greek bankers have secured three massive bailouts, but only on the condition of implementing savage austerity that has slashed public sector wages, seen the proposed selling of every public asset in the country, and stripped workers of their pensions and access to public services.
Cabinet ministers have been hounded wherever they go; government buildings have been occupied and when a new tax on utilities was announced, workers took over the offices where electricity bills are printed. Workers and youth have fought what seem like weekly battles with the riot police. As the political elites scramble around for some “solution” to the debt crisis, we have seen the replacement of the elected government with one run by an ex-central banker charged with overseeing the austerity.
In Britain there has been a massive attack on public education that will put university firmly out of the reach of working class students. The experience of worsening living conditions, years of government cutbacks to social spending and constant police harassment fuelled the London riots. And the 30 November public sector strike saw the biggest stopwork since 1926.
As of yet this inspiring resistance in Europe has not stopped the attacks, but we’ve seen a monumental refusal to just accept the austerity.
The United States
The Arab revolutions and the European revolt have helped to inspire resistance in the largest capitalist country in the world, the US, where tens of thousands of people have participated in Occupy protests.
The Occupy movement has shaken up US politics and transformed the whole terrain of political debate. Occupy has shone a spotlight on the concerns of millions of working class Americans and acted as a lightning rod for the discontent with unemployment, home evictions and the growing gap between rich and poor which is every bit as much the experience in the wealthiest country in the world as it is in the poorer nations.
The message of Occupy, which has resonated with so many people around the world in 2011 and provoked solidarity protests even here in Australia, is that there is something fundamentally wrong with a society based on the corporate greed of the 1 percent; that society should be run in the interests of the majority – the 99 percent.
Occupy has also shown how quickly things can change in the volatile political times we are living through. Before this year there had been no seriously organised response to the crisis in the US, even as people had their homes foreclosed and already meagre public budgets were slashed. Then in Wisconsin, workers occupied the Capitol building to protest the budget slashing and union busting of Governor Walker. Now the year is closing with Occupy protests having spread to hundreds of US cities and university campuses.
The Occupy Wall Street movement began in September, with 500 people making a stand in Zuccotti Park. They reached out to New York’s unions and got solidarity in the form of a march involving tens of thousands of workers. Initial police repression of OWS, far from smashing the movement, provoked tens of solidarity marches and occupations throughout America and across the world. And it exposed the gross hypocrisy of a US establishment that condemned the violence and repression of the Arab regimes, while raining tear gas and rubber bullets on Occupy protesters.
The response of the police to Occupy has been a reminder that, even in the West, the ruling class will not hesitate to fall back on violence to back up their heinous system.
A year of rebellion and revolution
The lessons from the past year of struggle are invaluable: If we struggle, maybe we can win; revolution and resistance is the way to win social reform; change is not a question of finding “better” leaders to represent us; we need fundamental social change everywhere, because everywhere we face a system ruled by the 1 percent who benefit from war and oppression, who make workers pay for the crisis of their system, subjecting us to unemployment, and allowing us no say over our world; only those who would benefit from a better society have an interest in fighting for it; and winning that better world is up to us, the working class!
There is no question that the resistance and revolutions of the past 12 months have shaken the world’s rulers, changed the world political situation and enlivened masses of people to the possibility of change. But workers, even in Egypt, are only just beginning the kind of struggle that will be necessary to get rid of capitalism once and for all. If we are to have a world free of crisis and poverty, we must smash capitalism – the system which breeds and thrives on misery – and replace it with a society run by workers. We need a society in which decisions are made by the democratic will of the majority, and where human need – not profits or the market – determines what we produce.
Whether or not the resistance that has exploded in 2011 can ultimately triumph is a question of what politics will lead the workers’ struggles. Every struggle, big or small, brings competing ideas into play. The participants are confronted by political questions, questions of strategy – not only about how to beat the state repression that is the inevitable response of the ruling class to any movement that threatens their power, but of how and to what end can we change the world. How do we win? Should we fight for a fundamentally different system, or can the system just be reformed by electing less corrupt leaders, voting for a different party?
This year has highlighted the need for revolutionary organisations, large enough and with sufficient experience, to lead the struggles and convince workers that no amount of tinkering with the system will be enough.
The question of building such organisation is key in the Arab revolutions, but no less a question for those of us in the rest of the world who have been inspired by the past year of revolt, and whose hearts have been in Egypt and Syria and Greece, Spain and Wall Street because we share the hope that these struggles can win a better world.
Friday, November 18, 2011
#Occupy » We won’t be silenced
Via:http://enpassant.com.au/?p=11572
Via http://socialistworker.org/
Our movement is facing an organized attack on our rights–and we need to respond, argues a recent editorial in Socialist Worker.
THE POLITICAL representatives of the 1 percent are carrying out a carefully organized assault across the country–with the aim of destroying the Occupy movement.
The post-midnight military-style raid on the birthplace of the Occupy movement in New York City’s Zuccotti Park on November 15 was the culmination of a series of attacks on encampments around the country, from Oakland to Philadelphia and Atlanta to Portland. In nearly every case, the assaults were carried out on orders from Democratic Party mayors–showing without a doubt that the “party of the people” isn’t on the side of the 99 percent.
But if the 1 percent thought their raids would intimidate Occupy activists into silence, they thought wrong.
In New York, hundreds responded to an emergency alert in the middle of the night, and the next day was filled with running confrontations over the future of Zuccotti Park. In Oakland, Occupy activists gathered again in Oscar Grant Plaza for a General Assembly hours after they were evicted. In Portland, the movement is building for student walkouts on November 16 and the November 17 national day of action.
The police raids and attempts to shackle the movement with new legal restrictions are a tipping point in the struggle. Whether they succeed or not will determine its future shape and direction. But supporters of Occupy are determined that the struggle will continue, whether or not it must take a new form.
Our movement must use every opportunity to defend our camps and stand up for the right to protest–and also to organize a bigger movement, more rooted throughout U.S. society. We can do both in the coming days by mobilizing the largest numbers we can for the battles to defend encampments–as well as for the November 17 national day of action set by Occupy Wall Street in solidarity with labor.
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THE MOVE to raze the Occupy Wall Street camp may have taken activists by surprise–but it wasn’t unexpected.
All signs point to the crackdown on the Occupy movement nationally being a coordinated one–and if anyone doubts it, Oakland Mayor Jean Quan provided the evidence. In an interview with the BBC, she let slip that last weekend’s operation to clear the Occupy Oakland encampment came about after a conference call “with 18 cities across the country who had the same situation.”
Politicians and business leaders have grown increasingly annoyed with the encampments that are speaking truth to power in downtowns and financial districts, on campuses and in neighborhoods–and the corporate media has dutifully repeated the slanders and distortions of their propaganda campaign against Occupy. The raids are the latest stage of the counter-offensive.
The lengths to which America’s elite will go to break the Occupy movement was clear from the attack on Zuccotti Park. As the New York Times reported, the operation was “minutely planned,” weeks in advance:
The overnight hours of Monday into Tuesday were chosen because it was believed the park would be at its emptiest, the police said. The operation was kept secret from all but a few high-ranking officers, with others initially being told that they were embarking on an exercise when they set out on Monday evening…
The operation came after weeks of planning. Police officials watched how the occupations in other cities played out…[and] held conference calls with colleagues in other cities. They increased so-called disorder training–counterterrorism measures that involve moving large numbers of police officers quickly–to focus on Lower Manhattan.
The symbolism was unmistakable: A ruthless raid on peaceful protesters camped out in the shadow of Wall Street, ordered by a billionaire mayor–the 1 percent cracking down on the 99 percent.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg and fellow city officials claimed they were responding to “health and safety concerns” and that the park would be “cleaned and restored” before reopening in the morning.
What actually happened was that hundreds of cops in riot gear rampaged through the plaza, trashing tents and the Occupy Wall Street kitchen, and destroying thousands of books in the “People’s Library.” That, apparently, is Bloomberg’s definition of “cleaned and restored”–destroying what protesters took two months to build up, and claiming to do it all for the benefit of the “public.”
Bloomberg said in a statement that Zuccotti Park must, by law, “be open for the public to enjoy for passive recreation 24 hours a day. Ever since the occupation began, that law has not been complied with” because protesters had taken over the park, “making it unavailable to anyone else.”
Never mind that the vast majority of New Yorkers never heard of, let alone set foot in, the privately owned park until Occupy Wall Street began.
Likewise, if there was still any doubt, the role of the police was laid bare on November 15. The cops behaved brutally to anyone who defied them, arresting as many as 200 peaceful protesters, inside and outside Zuccotti Park. New York City Council member Ydanis Rodriguez was left bleeding from a head wound after he was beaten and arrested as police forced activists away from the park.
Despite the repression, hundreds came out in the streets to challenge the assault, and more returned the following morning. Early in the day, lawyers for the Occupy movement succeeded in winning a court order against Bloomberg’s arbitrary rule that Occupy activists wouldn’t be able to set up tents or camp in Zuccotti Park when it was reopened.
But the city simply defied the ruling, keeping lines of riot cops in place to stop anyone from reentering Zuccotti Park–until Bloomberg’s henchmen found a state Supreme Court justice to overturn the lower court order.
As Salon.com’s Glenn Greenwald put it, the real criminal is sitting in the mayor’s office:
Bloomberg this morning has broken more laws than the hundreds of protesters who were arrested. But as we know, the law does not apply to the Michael Bloombergs of the nation; the law, instead, has simply been exploited into a weapon, used by the politically and financially powerful to prevent challenges to their standing.
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OF COURSE, it’s not only billionaire Republicans carrying out the attacks.
In Portland, liberal Democratic Mayor Sam Adams issued the eviction order. And in Oakland, Jean Quan–a Democrat with a long history of labor activism and community organizing–sent in police for a second time to raid the encampment.
All the mayors say they are only acting out of concern about “public safety and health” and to “uphold the law.” Bloomberg, for example, declared following the raid: “I could not wait for someone in the park to get killed or to injure another first responder before acting. Others have cautioned against action because enforcing our laws might be used by some protesters as a pretext for violence–but we must never be afraid to insist on compliance with our laws.”
But it was police who pulled down tents in Zuccotti Park without checking first to see if anyone was inside. In Berkeley, it was the cops who bludgeoned peaceful students with billy clubs. In Oakland, it was police who nearly killed Scott Olsen, an Iraq war veteran who was struck in the head with a tear gas canister after cops rioted against Occupy demonstrators.
In city after city, the politicians and the police are the ones who have turned to violence, not anyone connected to the Occupy movement. The idea that these public officials care about the welfare of ordinary people is laughable.
In Portland, Adams even had the gall to claim that he supports Occupy–and his order to evict protesters from their encampment was in the movement’s best interests. “I have said from the beginning that I believe the Occupy movement would have to evolve in order to realize its full potential,” he declared.
As valuable as Mayor Adams’ advice no doubt is, the Occupy movement is absolutely right to consider him an enemy who is protecting the interests of the 1 percent.
Anyone who knows the history of the civil rights movement will hear an echo of the past in the claims of politicians and police that they are merely “keeping order” and “doing their jobs.”
Laurie Pritchett, the one-time police chief of Albany, Ga., set a new standard for Southern sheriffs battling the civil rights movement. When the movement began a campaign in the city in late 1961, Pritchett deliberately implemented a strategy of using mass arrests, but avoiding violence that could attract sympathy for activists. His justification whenever questioned was that he was simply doing his job and “following the law.”
You can hear almost identical justifications today from Bloomberg, Quan, Adams and all the rest. They say they support the right of people to protest, but that Occupy activists are going too far, and their activities must be curbed for everyone’s good.
But the people participating in the Occupy movement are tired of being told to wait–tired of watching poor and working class people suffer while the rich get richer; tired of never-ending unemployment; tired of overwhelming student loan and health care debts.
The lives of the 99 percent are disrupted every day by poverty, debt, joblessness, lack of affordable health care, inadequate schools and more. Why shouldn’t the lives of the 1 percent be disrupted in the pursuit of some measure of justice and equality?
The recent raids and arrests should be seen for what they are: a national assault on the right to peaceful protest. The 1 percent has no answers to the questions the Occupy movement is demanding of them–no answers other than trying to increase their wealth and power at our expense, and using police repression against those who dissent.
Across the U.S., more than 3,600 Occupy protesters have been arrested in the two months since the Occupy movement began–even as the criminals on Wall Street continued their pillaging of the economy.
Whether their attacks on our movement are “peaceful” or “aggressive,” delivered with claims of sympathy or not, the politicians are united in their defense of the 1 percent.
We have to be united in our opposition to their attempts to silence us. The fight is on in cities across the country to defend encampments and our right to protest. And on November 17, activists in many cities will participate in a labor-backed national day of action that can continue the process of building a broader Occupy movement, with more and more people mobilized behind it.
All these actions send a message, loud and clear: The political representatives of the 1 percent may get away with the attack on our encampments, but they’ll never silence the anger, the desire for change and the determination to struggle that is at the heart of the Occupy movement.
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
En Passant » This is the one percent’s ‘democracy’ # occupy #OWS
It was the middle of the night. The billionaire mayor attacked the Wall Street Occupiers. According to one tweet: “Protesters dragged away shoved into trucks, pepper spray, sound cannons, batons, teargas, bulldozers, massive piles of dismantled tents.”
The forces of repression kept out the press. 200 have been arrested.
The police now hold Zuccotti Park, with the Occupiers outside. (As one protester tweeted: “the cops have occupied #Zuccotti Park, we’re just trying to figure out what their demands are …”)
It is unclear what will happen next. But the actions of billionaire Bloomberg highlight the points the Occupiers have been making – society is unequal and the rule of the 1% is undemocratic. It is also brutal and repressive.
The one percent cannot stand any challenge, even a more or less symbolic one like the Occupy movement which doesn’t of itself threaten the productive process.
It however has inspired many and caused them to think about the nature of the society they live in.
The potential for fundamental change is there too, as the movement has begun to link to the working class movement, reaching its apogee in the US in the Oakland general strike and in Australia with the physical support of the Occupiers for the Baiada workers and picket line.
It is this potential which does or could really threaten the one percent. It looks as if the ruling class now wants to smash the movement before it does establish deeper and closer links with trade unions and workers.
Repression is always a dangerous move for the one percent. It can reinvigorate a movement as happened when the cops arrested 700 protesters on Brooklyn Bridge and then when the cops brutally attacked the Oakland Occupation and seriously wounded a young veteran.
The inequality and undemocratic rule of the one percent will not disappear just because police evict the Occupiers. The anger remains. The task for the movement now is to discuss, debate and evaluate the way forward. In the US that will first be the response to the eviction and the battles that arise from that.
It may also involve a process of clarification within the movement itself that the one percent can only be challenged by a powerful force that goes beyond just the act of occupation. The working class has the power to cut off the flow of profits to the one percent and in doing that challenge inequality and the anti-democratic nature of the rule of their rule.
The next few days will be important. As Sherry J Wolf wrote:
Last night’s attack on Occupy Wall Street — in the secrecy of dark, with overwhelming brute force — is symbolic of everything we hate about the 1%. Let’s get as many as we can to come out to the GA today and tonight to mobilize our response, especially the power of labor and students united Nov. 17 for mass direct action.
Here in Australia we too can mobilise against the one percent and their dictatorship.
Barack Obama, the political representative of the American one percent, is talking to our own political class. He will announce closer military ties between Australia’s ruling class and America’s.
Obama is speaking to the politicians of Australia’s one percent on Thursday. That day there is a demonstration against him at Federation Park outside Parliament House in Canberra at lunchtime. Be there to show your support for the Wall Street Occupiers and the protesters around the globe. And for the other members of the Occupy movement across Australia – support the 99% in struggle. Support the QANTAS workers, the Baiada picketers, the maritime workers, the public servants, the nurses, all those fighting for better wages and conditions. That is our future. That is our hope.