Monday, January 23, 2012
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.
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Want a budget surplus? Abolish #tax breaks for the 1% | En Passant
Via: http://enpassant.com.au/?p=11511
Want a budget surplus? Looking for billions in savings? Easy. Tax the rich. Cut their subsidies.
The tax system is a disguised spending program, worth, according to Treasury, $113 billion last year. This is equivalent to 30 percent of all Federal Government spending and receives no attention when the Labor and Liberal neoliberals talk about cutting spending.
Attacking the $113 billion in annual tax expenditures – the tax lurks where income isn’t taxed or where extra tax deductions are given – could focus on the largesse to business and raise many tens of billions. Cutting capital gains tax concessions to business alone would raise up to $10 billion.
A wealth tax, gift and inheritance taxes, taxing the profit on the sale of the homes of the super rich – these too could raise billions from the big end of town. Not to mention raising income tax rates on the rich and big business and reducing dividend imputation.
What about abolishing the fossil fuel subsidies to business? An extra $10 billion there.
Now all of these would have consequences. Business would try to raise prices and/or sack staff.
But that could be met with strict price controls on the profit bludgers, mandated job retention and creation and wage policies that reverse the flow of wealth to the rich from the poor and working class. And if there is a threat of a capital strike nationalise the company or industry under workers’ control.
So maybe taxing big business might produce enough money to wipe out the budget deficit, improve our public health, education and transport systems and have enough left over for addressing climate change. So let’s do it.
There goes another porcine parachute.
The reason the neoliberals don’t raise this disguised spending program in the tax system is simple. It is spending on the rich and powerful. It is disguised spending on the one percent.
Treasury estimates are that direct spending through the tax system on business totals about $8 billion. On top of that the capital gains tax concessions give billions each year to business and the rich.
And the superannuation concessions, which overwhelmingly favour the rich, are actually a disguised spending program worth more than the pension.
Why doesn’t Labor tax big business and stop spending tens of billions on the rich through the tax system. Labor?
So here we have a Government and Opposition intending to attack the poor and ordinary workers to save a few billion when a few simple tax measures – like taxing the family homes of the rich, and abolishing the superannuation tax lurks for the millionaires, and getting rid of the tax concessions for capital gains – would raise tens of billions.
Funny, I don’t hear either side of conservative politics actually suggesting attacking the tax rorts for the rich.
Both like to keep these dirty little details of spending on the rich quiet because that is who they rule for.
It gets worse. In a speech in February last year Deputy Commissioner of Taxation Jim Killaly said that 40 percent of big business (those with a turnover greater than $250 million) had paid no income tax in the three income years between 2006 and 2008. He also said twenty percent of those companies were actually making accounting profits.
The global financial crisis is likely to have increased the number of big businesses not paying income tax to perhaps 50 percent or more. The latest ATO statistics show that for 2008/09 60 percent of all business (not just big business) paid no income tax.
Analysis by Adele Ferguson and Stuart Washington in the Sydney Morning Herald showed that most industries actually pay much less than the headline 30 percent company tax rate. For the finance sector for example they found the figure was 20 percent. For mining companies it is between 13 and 17 percent.
In other words almost half of all big business pays no income tax and those that do mostly pay much less than the notional 30 percent headline rate.
What is to be done?
Read more here...
Saturday, November 5, 2011
#OCCUPYSYDNEY
After an amazing, peaceful, creative and passionate march of approx 2500 people through the streets of Sydney, then music, speeches and a GA in Martin Place, Occupy Sydney are now on route to Occupy Hyde Park. See you there – all welcome!
If you can’t make it in, but interested are in updates or continuing the conversation, follow the #occupysydney tag on twitter.
Latest #Occupy Sydney rally
Defiant Occupy Sydney protesters are preparing to re-occupy the Sydney CBD, saying they won't back down this time.
About 1000 people, led by representatives of the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA), are expected to take part in a protest march from Town Hall at midday on Saturday.
The march will end with a rally in Martin Place where protesters are planning to remain indefinitely, Occupy Sydney spokesman Josh Lees told AAP.
'We will have a general assembly at Martin Place to decide, but we will most likely stay there,' he said.
On Friday, NSW police dropped their legal action aimed at preventing the rally, after the activists agreed to change the route of the march.
NSW Police Acting Assistant Commissioner Mark Walton said police would be watching the protest and would take 'reasonable action' if protesters failed to leave Martin Place at the agreed time of 4.30pm (AEDT).
But Mr Lees said the group, which is protesting against corporate greed, never agreed to leave at that time.
'We have a right to peaceful protest,' he said. 'We won't be backing down in the face of any police violence.'
Last month, police were accused of using excessive force after 40 protesters were arrested in a dawn raid that ended the group's week-long protest in Martin Place.
Saturday, November 05, 2011
http://bigpondnews.com/articles/National/2011/11/05/Protesters_to_re-occupy_S...
Police withdraw #Occupy Sydney court challenge
Police have withdrawn an application in the New South Wales Supreme Court to prevent an Occupy Sydney protest going ahead tomorrow.
Earlier the NSW Police Force had released a statement saying it has tried repeatedly but without success to negotiate a route through central Sydney that would allow the protest to proceed peacefully and safely.
But police relented after Occupy Sydney organisers agreed to alter their route to march from the Sydney Town Hall to Martin Place but not back again.
Police had said they were worried about crowd control, traffic management and public safety, including the possibility of violence on a sunny weekend day that is expected to draw families into the city.
The force also had specific concerns about the impact of the protest on a wedding at St Andrew's Cathedral and a Christmas concert at the nearby the Town Hall.
The barrister representing the activists, Stuart Littlemore QC, told the media outside court that "all compromises in these areas are good ideas".
Friday, October 28, 2011
Life Among the 1% ...a letter from Michael Moore #occupy
Life Among the 1% ...a letter from Michael Moore
October 27th, 2011
Friends,
Twenty-two years ago this coming Tuesday, I stood with a group of factory workers, students and the unemployed in the middle of the downtown of my birthplace, Flint, Michigan, to announce that the Hollywood studio, Warner Bros., had purchased the world rights to distribute my first movie, 'Roger & Me.' A reporter asked me, "How much did you sell it for?"
"Three million dollars!" I proudly exclaimed. A cheer went up from the union guys surrounding me. It was absolutely unheard of for one of us in the working class of Flint (or anywhere) to receive such a sum of money unless one of us had either robbed a bank or, by luck, won the Michigan lottery. On that sunny November day in 1989, it was like I had won the lottery -- and the people I had lived and struggled with in Michigan were thrilled with my success. It was like, one of us had made it, one of us finally had good fortune smile upon us. The day was filled with high-fives and "Way-ta-go Mike!"s. When you are from the working class you root for each other, and when one of you does well, the others are beaming with pride -- not just for that one person's success, but for the fact that the team had somehow won, beating the system that was brutal and unforgiving and which ran a game that was rigged against us. We knew the rules, and those rules said that we factory town rats do not get to make movies or be on TV talk shows or have our voice heard on any national stage. We were to shut up, keep our heads down, and get back to work. If by some miracle one of us escaped and commandeered a mass audience and some loot to boot -- well, holy mother of God, watch out! A bully pulpit and enough cash to raise a ruckus -- that was an incendiary combination, and it only spelled trouble for those at the top.
Until that point I had been barely getting by on unemployment, collecting $98 a week. Welfare. The dole. My car had died back in April so I had gone seven months with no vehicle. Friends would take me out to dinner, always coming up with an excuse to celebrate or commemorate something and then picking up the check so I would not have to feel the shame of not being able to afford it.
And now, all of a sudden, I had three million bucks! What would I do with it? There were men in suits making many suggestions to me, and I could see how those without a strong moral sense of social responsibility could be easily lead down the "ME" path and quickly forget about the "WE."
So I made some easy decisions back in 1989:
1. I would first pay all my taxes. I told the guy who did my 1040 not to declare any deductions other than the mortgage and to pay the full federal, state and city tax rate. I proudly contributed nearly 1 million dollars for the privilege of being a citizen of this great country.
2. Of the remaining $2 million, I decided to divide it up the way I once heard the folksinger/activist Harry Chapin tell me how he lived: "One for me, one for the other guy." So I took half the money -- $1 million -- and established a foundation to give it all away.
3. The remaining million went like this: I paid off all my debts, paid off the debts of some friends and family members, bought my parents a new refrigerator, set up college funds for our nieces and nephews, helped rebuild a black church that had been burned down in Flint, gave out a thousand turkeys at Thanksgiving, bought filmmaking equipment to send to the Vietnamese (my own personal reparations for a country we had ravaged), annually bought 10,000 toys to give to Toys for Tots at Christmas, got myself a new American-made Honda, and took out a mortgage on an apartment above a Baby Gap in New York City.
4. What remained went into a simple, low-interest savings account. I made the decision that I would never buy a share of stock (I didn't understand the casino known as the New York Stock Exchange and I did not believe in investing in a system I did not agree with).
5. Finally, I believed the concept of making money off your money had created a greedy, lazy class who didn't produce any product, just misery and fear among the populace. They invented ways to buy out companies and then shut them down. They dreamed up schemes to play with people's pension funds as if it were their own money. They demanded companies keep posting record profits (which was accomplished by firing thousands and eliminating health benefits for those who remained). I made the decision that if I was going to earn a living, it would be done from my own sweat and ideas and creativity. I would produce something tangible, something others could own or be entertained by or learn from. My work would create employment for others, good employment with middle class wages and full health benefits.
I went on to make more movies, produce TV series and write books. I never started a project with the thought, "I wonder how much money I can make at this?" And by never letting money be the motivating force for anything, I simply did exactly what I wanted to do. That attitude kept the work honest and unflinching -- and that, in turn I believe, resulted in millions of people buying tickets to these films, tuning in to my TV shows, and buying my books.
Which is exactly what has driven the Right crazy when it comes to me. How did someone from the left get such a wide mainstream audience?! This just isn't supposed to happen (Noam Chomsky, sadly, will not be booked on The View today, and Howard Zinn, shockingly, didn't make the New York Times bestseller list until after he died). That's how the media machine is rigged -- you are not supposed to hear from those who would completely change the system to something much better. Only wimpy liberals who urge caution and compromise and mild reforms get to have their say on the op-ed pages or Sunday morning chat shows.
Somehow, I found a crack through the wall and made it through. I feel very blessed that I have this life -- and I take none of it for granted. I believe in the lessons I was taught back in Catholic school -- that if you end up doing well, you have an even greater responsibility to those who don't fare the same. "The last shall be first and the first shall be last." Kinda commie, I know, but the idea was that the human family was supposed to divide up the earth's riches in a fair manner so that all of God's children would have a life with less suffering.
I do very well -- and for a documentary filmmaker, I do extremely well. That, too, drives conservatives bonkers. "You're rich because of capitalism!" they scream at me. Um, no. Didn't you take Econ 101? Capitalism is a system, a pyramid scheme of sorts, that exploits the vast majority so that the few at the top can enrich themselves more. I make my money the old school, honest way by making things. Some years I earn a boatload of cash. Other years, like last year, I don't have a job (no movie, no book) and so I make a lot less. "How can you claim to be for the poor when you are the opposite of poor?!" It's like asking: "You've never had sex with another man -- how can you be for gay marriage?!" I guess the same way that an all-male Congress voted to give women the vote, or scores of white people marched with Martin Luther Ling, Jr. (I can hear these righties yelling back through history: "Hey! You're not black! You're not being lynched! Why are you with the blacks?!"). It is precisely this disconnect that prevents Republicans from understanding why anyone would give of their time or money to help out those less fortunate. It is simply something their brain cannot process. "Kanye West makes millions! What's he doing at Occupy Wall Street?!" Exactly -- he's down there demanding that his taxes be raised. That, to a right-winger, is the definition of insanity. To everyone else, we are grateful that people like him stand up, even if and especially because it is against his own personal financial interest. It is specifically what that Bible those conservatives wave around demands of those who are well off.
Back on that November day in 1989 when I sold my first film, a good friend of mine said this to me: "They have made a huge mistake giving someone like you a big check. This will make you a very dangerous man. And it proves that old saying right: 'The capitalist will sell you the rope to hang himself with if he thinks he can make a buck off it.'"
Yours,
Michael Moore
MMFlint@MichaelMoore.com
@MMFlint
MichaelMoore.com
P.S. I will go to Oakland tomorrow afternoon to stand with Occupy Oakland against the out-of-control police.
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Thursday, October 27, 2011
Occupy Melbourne/Sydney | #OccupyWallStreet
On the wall next to the ATM outside the Commonwealth Bank branch on Queens Parade, North Fitzroy, a new piece of graffiti appeared last weekend: ''I am 99%'', a version of the catchcry of the Occupy protests that began in New York's Wall Street district last month. The shops along Queens Parade service the Edinburgh Gardens district, a ''tightly held'' pocket of houses, which is real-estate-speak for expensive. Single-fronted, single-storey terraces can cost more than $1 million there.
The neighbourhood is politically distinguished. Situated in the north-eastern corner of the federal seat of Melbourne, its former Labor member, Lindsay Tanner, was known to refer to the streets around that bank branch as the national centre of green politics. At last year's federal election, when Adam Bandt won the seat for the Greens, voters at the nearby Fitzroy High School polling place voted 58 per cent Green and 42 per cent Labor.
It's no surprise that the bumper-sticker message of the Occupy movement would get a bit of display in that part of town. It's also a safe bet that at least a few locals attended the Occupy Melbourne protest in the City Square last week.
Since the police, at lord mayor Robert Doyle's request, broke up the protesters' encampment last Friday, links have been drawn between the Greens and the Occupy Melbourne group. Sympathetic noises have come from Bandt and from Melbourne City Greens councillor Cathy Oke, who wants an inquiry into Friday's events. Other prominent Greens members have been involved in the local protest.
But is the Australian manifestation of the Occupy movement - if the local chapter can be called a movement - all good news for the Greens? The local version is a series of protest groups in the literal sense: they are protesting about just about anything you can name, from a left perspective. If interviews with members are any guide, they are variously against rising inequality, corporate and financial greed, our system of representative democracy, political parties and their leaders, failures of social justice and environmental degradation.
That is not an exhaustive list, nor is it necessarily the case that any single protester would subscribe to any more than one of these beliefs. It is difficult to divine the group's common purpose apart from a general expression of grievance with the status quo.
The local Occupy groups, like their foreign counterparts, eschew the concept of formal organisation. They do not have, nor do they appear to want, leaders or a manifesto. The amorphous nature of the protest is advanced by its members as a key virtue.
Which raises the question of where the Greens fit within all of this. The Greens have, after all, fashioned themselves as the formal vehicle for political protest against rapacious, excessive capitalism.
Since the 2004 election, the Greens have become the purist left-wing protest party. Initially, the party's protests were directed at the Liberal-National Coalition. Since Labor took office in 2007, they have been widened to include the ALP, armed with the compromises and sidesteps that have come with Labor's incumbency.
Unlike in the United States or Britain, Australians who are unhappy with the economic and political systems have their own representatives in both houses of Parliament in the form of the Greens. And those Green MPs have an alliance with the Gillard government in the lower house and hold the balance of power in the Senate. For an organisation that attracted 12 per cent of the vote in 2010, the Greens have a lot of power; because of them, the nation is about to get a carbon tax.
This contrasts most dramatically with the birthplace of the Occupy movement, America. Unlike Australia, the US did go through a recession and it has not yet recovered. Unemployment is at 9.1 per cent. An uncomfortably large proportion of Americans who managed to get a job operate in substandard conditions. The federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour and its real value has halved since its historical high in 1969. Australia's wage, health and welfare systems are far more generous.
That the American protests began in Wall Street made absolute sense. The ungrateful, insensitive, greedy response of the US financial sector to the public bailouts of 2008-09 was contemptible. While there's no doubt that there are serious income inequities in Australia, they pale when compared with the American experience.
On top of that, the American political system has ground to a halt. The challenges of a world in which China and India are taking off are proving too much for the Republicans and Democrats. As a consequence, we see the emergence of the Tea Party on the right and the Occupy Wall Street movement on the left. The groups are two sides of the one coin. In different ways, they carry the same message of condemnation of mainstream political and economic activity. Both start from the same point of resentment at government bailouts of big business.
In Australia, the Occupy groups, denied the overwhelming political and economic failures that have energised their American comrades, have allowed themselves to get sidetracked by their rough dealings with the police. This is confounding given their objective, which is, from what they've said so far, to rewrite Australia's power structures. That would involve conferring greater influence and higher incomes to millions of Australians. If they want to achieve that, they'll have to endure more discomfort than a few chokeholds and bloody noses on a rainy Friday.
Shaun Carney is an Age associate editor.
Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/occupying-a-green-space-20111025-1m...
Monday, October 24, 2011
#Occupywallstreet protest and arrests
Occupy Wall Street vs. Police: Fighting Breaks Out as Protesters March
Dawn action by police @occupySYDNEY fails to deter protests | #SMH
ORGANISERS of the week-long Occupy Sydney protest say their activism will continue despite police forcibly evicting about 100 people from Martin Place before dawn yesterday.
''We have been removed … today but Occupy Sydney lives on, stronger than ever,'' organisers said in a statement.
The activists, who had been at the Reserve Bank's headquarters for more than eight days as part of a global campaign against capitalist greed, said police bashed and manhandled protesters.
Last night, more than 100 protesters met and decided to hold another protest on November 5.
The Treasurer, Wayne Swan, said the Occupy demonstrations - which have occurred in Australia and around the world - have intensified debate about social and economic inequality.
''There seems to be a growing sense of frustration in many countries that opportunities are not being evenly shared and that the burden of the global economic downturn has been carried by those that can least bear it,'' he said. ''It's disappointing this important discussion has been obscured by instances of violence over the past few days.''
An Occupy Sydney spokesman, Mark Goudkamp, said sleeping protesters were given little warning before police descended.
''I saw bloody noses, I saw police throwing punches and I myself was put into a wrist lock like I have never experienced before - I was screaming in pain,'' Mr Goudkamp said.
The NSW Police Assistant Commissioner, Mark Murdoch, said claims police used excessive force were ''grossly exaggerated''.
He said police made the ''deliberate decision'' to end the protest after negotiations over an agreement to allow the protest to continue during daylight hours only broke down. ''They certainly can't say they weren't warned,'' Mr Murdoch said.
Forty people were arrested, four of whom were charged with criminal offences. The rest were issued with infringement or court attendance notices for breaching the Local Government Act.
Akin Sari, 33, of Northcote, Victoria, appeared in Parramatta bail court yesterday charged with striking a police officer in the head with a metal torch. He was granted conditional bail and will appear in the Downing Centre Local Court on November 25.
A second protester, Annaleis du Pille, 31, was also granted bail but was ordered to remain in custody after she refused to sign a bail undertaking. Police alleged she bit an officer's hand and repeatedly yelled, ''I do not recognise your authority'' as she resisted arrest. She will appear in Central Local Court today.
The Premier, Barry O'Farrell, said police acted lawfully as it was against council laws to camp at Martin Place.
The lord mayor of Sydney, Clover Moore, said the council did not ask police to move in. She said references to council ordinances or by-laws were inaccurate.
Cr Moore said the city respected the right of people to protest.
''The police chose to enforce signage in Martin Place that prohibits camping,'' she said
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/dawn-action-by-police-fails-to-deter-protests-20111...
#Activist Rights Victoria | #Occupymelbourne info
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The Activist Rights website is for people who are trying to create positive changes in their lives and communities.
Resources on this site have been drawn from around the world and from our own experience here in Australia to help support new and experienced activists, campaign organisers, legal workers and progressive lawyers.
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Thursday, October 20, 2011
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
The case for abolishing #capitalism | En Passant #OWS #occupy
Hundreds of thousands of people protested against inequality and injustice on 15 October. In cities across the world, town squares were occupied or reoccupied under the slogan “We are the 99 percent!”
Formally, there were few actual demands in many of the protests. But the content was clear from the slogan we used, which expresses a basic fact in need of redress: in every country the vast majority of us are shut out of political decision making processes, and often live precarious existences, pay cheque to pay cheque.
We watch around us as the world burns. Economic crisis is ravaging almost all of Western society. Environmental destruction is threatening ecological catastrophe. War, famine, poverty and inequality are endemic to the globe. Yet we seem powerless to do anything about any of it, unable to firmly secure even our own existences in the face of storm-like market forces.
When granted a small say in the political process – every few years come election time – we are confronted with political parties that are almost identical, the content of their policies so similar that they differentiate themselves only in the most vacuous ways: personality, likeability, fashion sense, and “leadership”. They operate like a giant cartel whose only interest is in further entrenching its own power, marginalizing, maligning and crushing any genuine opposition.
We are the 99 percent, and we face not just by a world apparently beyond our control. Just as we are everywhere shut out, so in every country there is a tiny minority of people who wield a power and influence greatly disproportionate to their number.
They are the 1 percent. They own 40 percent of the world’s wealth. When their portion is expanded to include the top 10 percent, they own over 85 per cent of it. They own it in the form of cash, stocks, bonds and other financial assets. They own real estate and infrastructure. Most importantly, almost everything we need to keep society functioning is in their control.
They make the decisions about how the world’s natural resources will be used, about how production of goods and services will be organised, about who will be allowed to work and how our capacities will be directed. They own the media outlets, which decide what is, and what is not, news; which day after day campaign to shape public opinion; and which, to a large degree, set the political agenda in society.
Their decisions are informed, not by what will produce the greatest good for the greatest number, but by what is in their own self interest. Most often that is simply and purely financial gain.
Capitalism works…
This is the basic structure of capitalist society. It is a system of class domination in which the minority of people survive simply by living off the labour performed by the majority. The 1 percent think it is a positively cracking system. And why not? They occupy the controlling position.
To them, the bulk of humanity is but a pool of potential commodity producers and consumers, useful only so long as we can participate in the creation of their wealth. They would see the lot of us drown only that they might swim in a sea of ever expanding profit. Is this hyperbole? Only just.
Today human beings are starving to death because financial institutions like Goldman Sachs find ways to profit through speculating in the commodity futures market. Their activities push the price of basic grains out of the reach of the poorest on the planet. The value of human life, by market calculus, is worth less than that of a bushel of wheat.
These same financial institutions were behind the predatory loans that were aggressively sold to the desperate and vulnerable in the US in the period leading to the global financial crisis. Purchasers of these loans were often unaware of the level of interest rates, the prospect of rate hikes after an initial teaser period, and the penalties for late or prepayment. But the financial institutions didn’t care if the people they lent to didn’t understand the terms or consequences of a loan. By the time the customer was made homeless, the problem would be offloaded to someone else in the form of a “security”.
These companies destroyed entire economies with their schemes to make mega-money. When the shit hit the fan, they were the first to come cap-in-hand for bailouts and guarantees. They got them – to the tune of trillions of dollars. With this free-flow of liquidity, the executives paid themselves bonuses, and demanded that government’s around the world cut back spending on welfare and pensions, pushing the burden of paying for the crisis on to the poor and the working class.
It’s not just this “finance capital” that is rapacious. All sections of the 1 percent – from those running the giant manufacturing firms that seek to outsource operations to semi-slave labour outfitters in the developing world, to the pharmaceutical companies using human subjects for testing new and complex chemical compounds, to agribusiness firms that deplete vast tracks of soil only to dump excess produce on the world market and drive small producers out of business, to the oil and mining companies displacing traditional owners and destroying environments – seek to boost their profits at all cost.
The 1 percent tell us that this model of society, for all its faults, is the best of all possible worlds. They say that when individuals pursue self-enrichment through the market, the greatest welfare to society as a whole will accrue. Resources and prosperity will be efficiently allocated. It isn’t true. As the United Nations Development Program Annual Report for 2006 noted:
Never before has the goal of abolishing poverty been within our reach: there are no longer any insurmountable technical, resource or logistical obstacles to achieving it. Yet more than 800 million people suffer from hunger and malnutrition, 1.1 billion people do not have access to clean drinking water and, every hour, 1,200 children die from preventable diseases. Despite a growing world economy and significant advances in medicine and technology, many people…are not reaping the potential benefits of globalization.
This was before the collapse of the North Atlantic financial sector at the end of 2008 and the plunging of much of the Western world into recession. Things today are even worse, and the situation is deteriorating.
In Australia, inequality continues to grow. Rents are sky high, unemployment is edging up and public transport continues to be run down. The number living in poverty is 2.2 million. Homelessness is at 100,000 yet little attention is paid to creating new public housing. All the while the mining companies and the banks announce record multi-billion dollar profits and CEOs snare obscene bonuses.
There are some who are slightly more critical of the system than the 1 percent who run it. They say that it is indeed rotten, but the problem is that capitalism has broken down under reckless stewardship; what we need is to fix the system and put checks and balances in place to ensure that it is more inclusive and doesn’t “leave anyone behind”.
But capitalism isn’t broken. This is how it works. The system is founded on inequality – on one hand in the concentration of wealth and resources in a minority of hands, on the other in the dispossession and disempowerment of the majority. This is the primary reason why, despite there being no “insurmountable technical, resource or logistical obstacles” to eradicating poverty, poverty still remains: it is a structural feature of capitalist society.
Further, a system in which businesses compete against each other for profits leads to a great disjuncture between the production of things that are socially useful and the production of things solely for wealth realisation. Those things that are socially useful are often, by their very nature, not particularly profitable. For example public hospitals, housing, transport systems and educational facilities for working people; renewable energy development; and goods made to last.
The most profitable things are generally those that can be produced quickly and cheaply and which can be sold quickly. So we get a glut of things that are designed to fall apart only that we might get back to the shop to have them repaired or to buy another. For products like health and education to be profitable, they have to be sold at a high price. That simply means that often it is only the rich, with their accumulated wealth, who get the “premium product”, in the form private hospitals and schools (which nevertheless receive billions of dollars in public funding), and the best quality foods.
The workers who produce the products are paid only a fraction of the value of the things they create – and the smaller the fraction, the greater the profit. Hence the propensity of firms to downsize, to always push for “productivity gains”, and hence the frequent attacks on trade unions, the organisations that attempt to increase workers’ wages. So the system begins with inequality, but this process of screwing over workers leads to a growth in inequality over time as more and more wealth becomes concentrated in the hands of the 1 percent. In the United States for example, the top 1 percent have taken over 40 percent of the total growth of the country’s wealth since 1983. The bottom 40 percent have seen a collective drop of over 6 percent in their wealth.
The anarchy of the system, the blind chase for profits, also leads to a great misallocation of resources, as one day a rush of capital flows into the latest fad sector, the next out of it and into something else. The result is a propensity for crisis; the system breaks down, firms go bust and workers are sacked at increasing rates. This is a feature that has never disappeared, and highlights not a lack of good leadership within the system, but the fact that, while the 1 percent might control all the resources, they cannot control the forces that are unleashed in the process of economic expansion and contraction.
For all these reasons, the idea that this system can be made to work for the majority completely misses the point. In this system the majority work for the minority. If we want to get rid of the scourge of poverty, the precariousness of life that most endure, and the alienation we experience from the political process, we have to take the power from the 1 percent, not simply plead with them to be nicer to us.
We need to end the ability of a parasitic minority to exploit the majority. To that end, the current system has to be dismantled and replaced by a society founded on equality, in which the resources are shared and the economy planned democratically. This is what we mean by socialism.
This article, by Ben Hillier, first appeared in Socialist Alternative.
En Passant » Yes, we the 99% can #OWS #occupy
Yes, we the 99% can
Posted by John, October 18th, 2011 - under Occupy Australia, Occupy Wall Street, Occupy!.
500,000 in Madrid according to El Pais, 100,000 in Times Square and 60,000 in Santiago.
This is a global movement expressing the anger and frustration of ordinary working people with the way the world works.
They want change. Not the fake Obama change which is more of the Bush same, but real change that makes their lives better, gives them a job, adequate pay and social services and a real say in the running of society.
These are of course demands that capitalism in crisis cannot meet. The agenda of the global capitalist class for the last 30 years has been to expropriate more and more of the wealth we create.
This shift in wealth to the elite from the rest of us is a global phenomenon. But it hasn’t addressed the economic crisis at all, only worsened it.
Part of that shift has been to make us work longer and longer hours. We work more and they get the benefits.
The Occupy movement is a step to the left in society. It expresses our anger with 30 years of neoliberal wealth transfer, and in countries where the crisis is deepest, of the austerity that makes us pay for their crisis of profitability.
In Australia, where the economy is holding up tolerably well at the moment, the Occupy movement as been smaller. A few thousand around Australia demonstrated on the weekend and a hundred or more have Occupied in Sydney and Melbourne.
But what this has done has raised the very issues of inequality and corporate greed – shorthand in my view for the exploitation that is capitalism and the elite’s response to systemic economic crisis - and put on the agenda alternative visions.
In Australia, and I suspect much of the developed world, the possibility for opening up a space to the Left has developed because of the bankruptcy of the social democratic parties – by and large captured by neoliberalism – and the inaction of the trade union bureaucracy.
This does not mean reformism is dead. It arises from the very relations between labour and capital. But it does mean the more political sections of the working class and society in general, having seen that bankruptcy, seeing the global movement, might draw more radical conclusions than relying on Barack Obama or Julia Gillard for change.
And therein lies the beauty of this movement. The focus of change is not from on high, from above, from the elite, but from below, from the protestors, from us.
The movement has the potential to develop and orient to the one force in society which can carry out fundamental change from below – the working class.
If the necessity for a democratic society to run production to satisfy human need becomes clearer, then the very real possibility of addressing inequality and corporate greed can arise, not through the chimera of capitalist ‘reform’ but through the reality of revolution.
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Comments
Comment from Dally M
Time October 18, 2011 at 8:55 amBut you’re not “the 99%”, you’re a microscopic minority of disaffected individuals with no real solution to the issues you go on about. You remind me of angry public servants at a pub after hours, whinging about your supervisor, each of you voicing the “obvious solution” if only the Minister would miraculously put you in charge of the system. Then back to work the next day for more unproductive duties, staring into the abyss of irrelevance, the bitter taste of defeat in your mouth.
Free yourselves, embrace the idea of actually arguing your case to the people you so desperately want to impress: the mythical “99%”.
Register a political party and go to the next election with a platform.
If you can’t do that then you are in fact just engaging in adolescent fantasy in the guise of a political philosophy.
Your fans deserve better, surely.
Comment from Henrik the Intact
Time October 18, 2011 at 3:35 pmNow, let’s get a few facts straight.
1. You know me/us/we.
2. You have never been to South Africa, visited your ‘brothers’ in Zimbabwe, travelled to Libya, Egypt, Gaza, the West bank, Syria, Israel or Iran … yet you claim to be some expert on these countries. This annoys us as we have been to these countries and more and your second-hand internet googleing is no substitute for reality.
3. You get all self righteous and thin skinned when criticised, yet bandy about terms like ‘zionist’, ‘genocide’ and ‘fascist’ at everyone who disagrees with you. It is irksome that you are so quick to denigrate and belittle yet when challenged you revert to type – an angry, frustrated and ignored man with unaddressed temperament issues.
4. You are a middle-class tenured academic in a sleepy hollow university yet pretend to be some working-class warrior. We get miffed by your laziness and/or fear of travelling to the places where real workers fight real battles. You are a chocolate soldier and your claims of solidarity and support are rather silly when you’ve never actually left your comfort zone to confront war, terrorism, violence and a police state.
5. You call our government ‘mass murderers’ and killers, yet happily bank your pay check and accept money from the same state you attack. We call this hypocrisy. Go work for a non-state organisation if you believe this; but it makes you duplicitous and mendacious to label the state as terrorists and then take their money.
6. You are no more ‘socialist’ than Cory Bernardi is. You wear clothing made in sweatshops in Asia, send text messages using technology invented by Zionists, use a computer with components invented in Israel and then stand outside some poor sap’s chocolate shop pretending your Che Guevara and abusing innocent workers. We think this is a joke, but apparently not. We invite you to travel to Gaza … or is actually leaving Kambah all too much and you’d rather just rant and rave than see the world for yourself.
7. Your website is read by about 15 people and you are so desperate for comments than you don’t realise how many of them are from the same person.
8. You are, in many ways, a fraud. You lecture on taxation and the economy yet hide behind accusations of greed and class and the proletariat. You are not a worker. Your hands are soft and you are complacent and middle class. You support multimillionaire football teams whose players are paid hundreds of thousands of dollars yet pretend this doesn’t conflict with your ‘working class socialist alternative’. Is not watching Channel 9 a conflict in itself.
9. You advertise and promote banks and capitalism on your website. How is this not a conflict of interest? Apparently the ANZ is worthy of your endorsement, but banks are also evil. Answer that and stay fashionable. If you hate the banks, don’t promote them.
10. You smell. Sorry, but it’s true.
Kind regards
HenrikComment from Leonore Thompson
Time October 18, 2011 at 4:46 pmNo shite Sherlock, you’ve just woken up to this? And you missed a few too – that’s when we use a different laptop.
Now, let’s get a few facts straight John P.
1. You know me/us/we.
2. You have never been to South Africa, visited your ‘brothers’ in Zimbabwe, travelled to Libya, Egypt, Gaza, the West bank, Syria, Israel or Iran … yet you claim to be some expert on these countries. This annoys us as we have been to these countries and more and your second-hand internet googleing is no substitute for reality.
3. You get all self righteous and thin skinned when criticised, yet bandy about terms like ‘zionist’, ‘genocide’ and ‘fascist’ at everyone who disagrees with you. It is irksome that you are so quick to denigrate and belittle yet when challenged you revert to type – an angry, frustrated and ignored man with unaddressed temperament issues.
4. You are a middle-class tenured academic in a sleepy hollow university yet pretend to be some working-class warrior. We get miffed by your laziness and/or fear of travelling to the places where real workers fight real battles. You are a chocolate soldier and your claims of solidarity and support are rather silly when you’ve never actually left your comfort zone to confront war, terrorism, violence and a police state.
5. You call our government ‘mass murderers’ and killers, yet happily bank your pay check and accept money from the same state you attack. We call this hypocrisy. Go work for a non-state organisation if you believe this; but it makes you duplicitous and mendacious to label the state as terrorists and then take their money.
6. You are no more ‘socialist’ than Cory Bernardi is. You wear clothing made in sweatshops in Asia, send text messages using technology invented by Zionists, use a computer with components invented in Israel and then stand outside some poor sap’s chocolate shop pretending your Che Guevara and abusing innocent workers. We think this is a joke, but apparently not. We invite you to travel to Gaza … or is actually leaving Kambah all too much and you’d rather just rant and rave than see the world for yourself.
7. Your website is read by about 15 people and you are so desperate for comments than you don’t realise how many of them are from the same person.
8. You are, in many ways, a fraud. You lecture on taxation and the economy yet hide behind accusations of greed and class and the proletariat. You are not a worker. Your hands are soft and you are complacent and middle class. You support multimillionaire football teams whose players are paid hundreds of thousands of dollars yet pretend this doesn’t conflict with your ‘working class socialist alternative’. Is not watching Channel 9 a conflict in itself.
9. You advertise and promote banks and capitalism on your website. How is this not a conflict of interest? Apparently the ANZ is worthy of your endorsement, but banks are also evil. Answer that and stay fashionable. If you hate the banks, don’t promote them.
10. You smell. Sorry, but it’s true.
See you round, like a rissole
Comment from John
Time October 18, 2011 at 5:07 pmActually my dear Leonore/Terrance/IB,/Wendy 123 (how was Mackillop College by the way?) my website is read by about 200 people a day (and your reading adds to my numbers and revenue. Thank you). God, some students can be so silly. Maybe you should grow up. Too bad I take people at face value. Shows my trusting nature. Oh well. Actually I am quite restrained and the deceit you went to just proves my indignation with all your lies was appropriate. Go back to your cubicle and read your textbooks for a change. Maybe that is why you failed.
Comment from John
Time October 18, 2011 at 5:32 pmStudent misconduct rules 5(i) and (k).
Comment from Comrade V
Time October 18, 2011 at 5:58 pmOh man, Wendy/Terrance/Leonore (and possibly Gradool aswell??) but such an elaborate act of sockpuppetry like this doesn’t give one the impression of you being clever, just unprincipled and pathetic.
And take this from someone that loves trolling Internet Forums & Blogs.
I’d personally be more flattered than offended over this deception, that some pimple-faced dweeb of an apologist for Benjamin Netanyahu’s right wing government has lavished such attention toward Evil John and his nasty words concerning Israel, and consequently wasted a couple of months of his/her life on fruitlessly trolling.
Btw who is this person? A disgruntled student?
I’d also recommend blocking such persons IP address. It’s tedious to see the comment section of every blog post on this site become filled up with obloquys and insults, concerning the latest phase in the battle between the Israelites and the Cannannites.Comment from Wendy
Time October 18, 2011 at 6:47 pm“Student misconduct rules 5(i) and (k).”
John my friend, you wouldn’t be invoking the instruments of state oppression to silence my right to free speech, would you? Surely no matter how much I annoy you, it seems, well a tad ‘repressive’ to cite student rules as a way to oppress and subjagate my freedom of expression.
Unless this is a Hamas led place, isn’t a website like this a place for all opinions, views, comments and the like – or are you the gatekeeper of what is said and read in a manner we see in other cultures and societes where those you isagree with are silenced?
A moral question I believe I have posed here.
Comment from John
Time October 18, 2011 at 7:41 pmNo comment. The matter is with my advisers.
Comment from Gradool
Time October 18, 2011 at 7:42 pmHoly shit, I am but a crazed visitor to this wacky blog, I never imagined JP was actually a real source of campus hatred. But hey, it figures. Wendy etal, if I ever travel to Canberra for work again I’ll buy you a drink. Believe me comrades, I will. And I won’t smell.
)
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Monday, October 17, 2011
#Occupy everywhere! Movement reaches Australia » En Passant
Occupy everywhere! Anti-corporate movement reaches Australia
Posted by John, October 16th, 2011 - under Occupy Australia.
View our photos from the Occupy Melbourne protest today. More to come from other cities soon. Send your updates and photos to us here This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
UPDATE: The Occupy Melbourne general assembly has called a rally for 1pm Sunday, which will march from the occupation site at City Square to the Melbourne Club on Collins St. The next general assembly will take place at 4pm. In Sydney, there will be a general assembly at 10am, followed by a protest against coal seam gas at midday.
The system is not working. This is the overriding sentiment of those who turned out today in the “Occupy___!” protests around the country. October 15 is an international day of occupation, and the first protests are underway in Australia and New Zealand.
After a build-up over the last weeks as occupation sites were announced in capital cities, and news of events began circulating through social media, people have come out in solid numbers.
In Melbourne around 1,000 people are in the City Square, having pitched marquees and organising food, sound systems and child care. Political discussions and debates can be heard all over, as people from different backgrounds holding different world views come together around a common hostility to corporate rule.
300 joined a Palestine solidarity action at lunchtime, targeting the Max Brenner chocolate chain for its support for Israeli apartheid. Activists marched on Max Brenner stores in QV and Melbourne Central before returning to the occupied City Square for a general assembly.
In Sydney a general assembly of 1,000 people in Martin Place voted to turn the protest into an ongoing occupation. Logistical planning for that is now underway.
But first protesters will have to see off threats from the police to shut down the camp. Police warned that they would start clearing Martin Place at 4:30, and while that deadline has passed, there is still concern that they will move in
In Brisbane 150 people have gathered at Post Office Square and some have decided to set up an ongoing camp. In Adelaide and Canberra smaller actions were held.
In Perth 200 people protested in Forest Place, but the main game is in 2 weeks time when protesters will be out in the streets to meet the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting. The Occupy Wall Street movement has given a significant boost to the CHOGM Action Network, with over 50 people attending its last planning meeting, many of whom had been inspired by the images from New York.
CHOGM Action Network is now planning an ongoing occupation near the CHOGM site for the duration of the meeting – starting on Friday October 28 and finishing on October 30. The action will start with a march from Forrest Place at 10am on October 28.
Uniting different struggles
People from a variety of campaigns have come out today: refugee rights, Palestine solidarity, the Aboriginal struggle, anti-war, anti-corruption in government, action on climate change and anti-corporate circles. Activists involved in all these campaigns from various cities in one place at one time. This is a good thing.
The capitalist system prioritises the creation of wealth above all other considerations. To those 1 per cent who run the world, the bulk of humanity is but a pool of potential commodity producers and consumers, useful only so long as we can participate in the creation of wealth for the ultra rich. Those parasites would see us rot for a quick buck.
They divide us using racism, destroy our environment, lock us up in detention centres, send the military into our communities, use our resources to wage war, and push us to work longer and harder so that they can relax that little bit more in their mansions. That many different progressive causes were and are represented provides an opportunity to make the links between capitalism and abuses of all sorts.
All around the world today conditions are getting worse for the bulk of workers and the poor. In the Middle East, dictatorships continue to dominate the scene, pushing neoliberalism on already impoverished populations.
In Europe and the US economic crisis has ravaged economies and the ruling elite have viciously attacked wages and begun gutting welfare and pension systems. Yet the corporate elite who ran the system onto the rocks are rewarded with bonuses and continue to live lavish lifestyles.
Across Asia and Latin America, hundreds of millions scrape by day to day while a growing minority make the world’s rich list.
In Australia inequality continues to grow. Rents are sky high, unemployment continues to edge up and public transport continues to be run down. Homelessness is at 100,000 yet little attention is paid to creating new public housing. All the while the mining companies and the banks announce record multi-billion dollar profits and CEOs snare obscene bonuses.
That something is not right with this picture is not lost on the people who came out today. This is why the global movement that took inspiration from the mass protests in Egypt’s Tahrir Square, spread to Spain, Portugal and Greece, and that has swept Wall Street over the past weeks has found echoes in this country.
It is one world, one system, and today our struggle is one.
Union support
Importantly, the left activists have received support from the union movement. Officials from the construction union (CFMEU) and the wharfies (MUA) have attended the Sydney occupation and conveyed their unions’ support, pledging to provide resources. Warren Smith from the MUA has announced that his union will provide $1,000 for food, starting with a BBQ tonight; a CFMEU delegates meeting in Sydney had already voted on Friday to support the occupation.
In Melbourne the National Union of Workers had members and organisers in attendance. The NUW said its members were concerned about issues as diverse as increasingly precarious employment, lack of access to affordable housing, and a general “shift of risk” from employers to employees over the past few decades.
The Communication Workers Union has endorsed the call for real democracy, with state secretary Len Cooper writing a letter of support to Occupy Melbourne in which he stated:
All around the globe assemblies of the people are demanding that democracy truly become the will of the people, against greed, excess, militarism and socially induced environmental crisis, and for a future of appropriate scale, participatory democracy, which includes the economy and equality.
I also write to express the frustration that we feel, and that you speak to, at the lack of democracy for unions. In particular over the issue of the right to strike, because the strike is the sword of democracy, the means by which unions could defend each other, our communities and planet, but under the law are banned from doing so…
Some of our members and representatives will be participating across the actions you have organised for real democracy and communication. On behalf of my union I wish you every success in your endeavours, I encourage you in your courageous call for a real democracy, I assure you that your actions are appreciated by compassionate Australians from many walks of life, and I commend you for your concern for our collective future.
Join the occupation!
With protesters determined to try and establish ongoing camps, it would be great to see more people come down tonight and tomorrow to Brisbane’s Post Office Square, Melbourne’s City Square, and Martin Place in Sydney.
That 1 per cent at the top of society never tires of trying to screw us over. The actions today, and in the coming days, are a good opportunity to show them that we are prepared to stand against their greed.
So if you’re reading this and are tired of the growing inequality, the constant refugee bashing, the bankruptcy of the major parties, the racism, the lies, the wars, the hypocrisy, or any other rotten thing that this system dishes out on a daily basis, come on down – join the occupation!
This article first appeared in Socialist Alternative.
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Comment from Terrance
Time October 16, 2011 at 10:26 amJohn, an issue here I’d like to vent about. I went to the Sydney rally – see my earlier message – but here you talk about this Palestinian protest as part of the Occupy! rally.
Mate, this is what’s wrong with protesters and ‘movements’ these days. I thought this was about corporate greed, not some damn Middle-east protest. May as well chuck in whales and trees and climate change and plastic shopping bags and the biased referee in the France v Wales game!!
I’m with the anti-Wall St folk on this. All the way. But once you start adding in every other bloody issue it becomes a dog’s breakfast and pisses off some of us who want the focus on THE issue, not a bunch of other stuff that belongs elsewhere. Those stupid religious nutter in the Judean hills have F/A to do with Wall Street corporate greed. May as well boycott a Turkish resturant for their denial of the Armenian genocide.
Let’s stick with the issues here and not get side-tracked with matters irrelevant to Wall Street.
Comment from Ross
Time October 16, 2011 at 11:12 amRule No.1 Absolutely no violence even if you unfairly suffer it.
Take a camera or video to record the violence of potential ‘agent provocateurs’ police etc and post their faces on the web
Before you join any group,know who organises and funds them since in the past many of these groups are elite instigated.
Comment from John
Time October 16, 2011 at 1:58 pmI would have thought environmental destruction is the classic example of corporate greed and the drive for profit which underpins inequality. So you can’t actually fence off a range of issues. In fact the one percent versus 99 percent theme encompasses that i would have thought – destroying the environment – it’s what the one percent do. And generalising is important too – to hep people understand that greed and inequality are at the heart of the system, the system which destroys the environment, supports the dictatorships in the Middle east, continues the genocide against aboriginal people etc etc. capitalism is the problem. Or as one banner in Melbourne put it – you think greed is bad. Wait til you hear about capitalism.
Some might want to join the BDS anti-Max Brenner campaign. That doesn’t make it one subverting the wider campaign – it enriches it with a range of targets against the one percent, including I might add their support for the Arab dictatorships, the Northern Territory intervention etc etc…
Comment from Terrance
Time October 16, 2011 at 4:15 pmI take your agrument onboard John, but I reckon if you try to cram too many issues in to a protest or campaign, you risk alienating others. I’ve been to anti-logging protests where all kinds of weirdos pitched up trying to run their agenda, trying to hijack the cause for their own benefit.
I read your answer carefully but genocide isn’t the preserve of capitalism – facists and communists have been at the heart of that crime against humanity too. Capitalism is a damnable evil, but the Mayans destroyed their environment, the Easter Islanders cut down every single tree and destroyed their world long before capitalism came into being. Stalin wiped out huge tracks of Soviet land to name but a few/
I thought this was about Wall Street and corporate banking and the bailout of banks by government using our money. I thought this was about mortgage practices and exploiting ordinary workers – if it’s going to be a free-for-all what’s the point?
The Arab Spring’s got bugger all to do with the GFC and Wall Street. Not even on the same page. The NT intervention – another f-ing crime, isn’t about capitalism, it’s about racism.
This reeks of a pox on you all rabble. Not much different to those Tea Party nutters who link health care to Obama’s birthplace, communicsm, death penalty and Muslims.
Let’s keep this about banks and capital, not religious loonies and Arab dictators.
Cheers
Comment from MarianK
Time October 16, 2011 at 6:44 pmI’ve been involved in anti-war and anti-globalisation activist politics since the early 90s. However, I’m staying right away from this Occupy Wall Street Down Under/Anywhere/Everywhere global protest.
In fact, something is not quite right with this whole Arab Spring/European-US Autumn rhetoric that is mysteriously taking off everywhere, at the same time as the US-NATO military machine is launching what looks to be a new round of vindictive wars in northern Africa, the Middle East and Pakistan.
Suddenly, human rights and democracy movements have become the new military buzzwords, while sinister quasi-military organisations such as the National Endowment for Democracy and its minions like Human Rights Watch seem to have their humanitarian tentacles everywhere that either a war or democracy protest movement (including OWS) is brewing.
What’s more, alternative media sites , like Counterpunch, Democracy Now, ZNET and Al Jazeera, have now become cheerleaders for BOTH democracy protests against corrupt banks and financial systems AND genocidal military interventions, such as in Libya and (almost) in Syria. This reeks to me of infiltration and ‘manufacturing dissent’.
Until I know who and what is really behind all this, I’m staying home to do my laundry.
Comment from John
Time October 16, 2011 at 7:00 pmI thought it was about inequality and corporate greed – as exemplified by Wall St.
Comment from John
Time October 16, 2011 at 8:21 pmmarianK, I am joining a nascent movement against the forces of capitalism, a vibrant exciting movement bringing in people who have had enough of the wealth shifting to the rich and who want to challenge the rule of the ruling class in one way or another. Enjoy your laundry washed in conspiracy theories. And your continuing political isolation.
Comment from juanR
Time October 16, 2011 at 9:05 pmJohn I think MarianK has got a point, there is such a thing as manipulation of the masses.
Comment from John
Time October 16, 2011 at 9:12 pmOh FFS – this is a global movement challenging the rule of the rich. Why do you think the mass media have been ignoring it, then bagging it? Why did the cops attack it in NY and elsewhere? Because it is not being manipulated – it is the possible start of a rebellion against the rich. That is why the ruling class is beginning to take notice – because it is growing and because they don’t control it. It is inchoate and unformed but I am on the side of the occupiers. It is a movement with real potential. Let’s see what happens but to abstain from this is to miss an opportunity that only comes along every decade or so. It was Lenin who supposedly said ‘Sometimes nothing happens in decades and then decades happen in weeks.’ That is what could be happening here.
Comment from John
Time October 16, 2011 at 9:21 pmDear Wendy, just deleted a post from you. Looking forward to you coming to my room from your room on campus and introducing yourself. You do have the courage to do that, don’t you? Nah, didn’t think so.
Comment from John
Time October 16, 2011 at 9:44 pm60,000 marched in Santiago today as part of the movement. https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=107096176068056&set=p.107096176068056&type=1&ref=nf
That’s your answer marianK and juanR.
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