Two cheers for Occupy!
Abrazos from California to all those willing to take action and make a statement against the economic status quo and politics as usual. Your spirit and activism are cheering to those of us from the 60s generation who have not given up on reform in America.
You already have your critics from the right-wing Republican leadership to middle-of-the road commentators like David Brooks. Ignore them. You are more important than you know. A few progressive critics have made an important point: activism without a vision or a program ultimately will die out or be disappointed. Economic inequality in the US is outrageous, and Wall Street interests do heavily influence both political parties -- but being right about the situation does not mean that it will change. Your movement needs content -- and it needs dialogue. Here are a few modest suggestions:
- Organize a national day of Popular Economics teach-ins, focused on economic inequality. Model it after Earth Day or the Vietnam Moratorium. Start on campuses, then take it to communities in civic centers, union halls, churches and schools. There are a number of progressive economists who would participate such as Joe Stiglitz and Paul Krugman (both Nobel Prize winning economists), James Galbraith, Barry Bluestone, Robert Reich, Martin Carnoy, Richard Parker, Richard Rothstein, Jeff Madrick -- and smart political scientists and journalists like Jacob Hacker, Michael Hirsh, John Judis, Caroline Heldman and Tom Edsall. They and many others would be happy to offer their analysis and expertise -- and they all speak economics in English.
- Show the documentary Inside Job by Charles Ferguson. Put up screens in public parks and in front of city halls and have free showings of the film as part of your demonstrations. Make use of the film for Teach-In events in the spring as part of a public outreach strategy.
- Circulate and discuss the New America Foundation's report, The Way Forward, reported on in the New York Times, Oct. 11. This is a serious, progressive plan to move the economy out of the doldrums. It is one example of an intellectual rallying cry for your movement, and an answer to the question: what are you for?
- Give activists copies of what I call The Little White Book -- the paperback Mis-Measuring Our Lives -- Why GDP Doesn't Add Up by Joseph Stiglitz, Amartya Sen, and Jean-Paul Fitoussi, all world class economists, who explain why traditional economic statistics don't do justice to reality and what is important in our lives. Wave copies of the book in front of Congress and the Treasury in Washington, DC, to make the point that economics should put people's lives at its foundation -- and that there are practical ways to for the government to do that.
- Actively support candidates like Elizabeth Warren in Massachusetts and Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin who are running on economic reform platforms -- and support Barack Obama, but with qualifications (as I outlined in my Huffington Post piece, "Thinking About Obama," 9/12/11). And run your own candidates in state and local elections just as the Tea Party did. Many of the more liberal members of Congress got their start by running as anti-war candidates or pro-environment candidates in the 60s and 70s.
- Make allies of artists, musicians, comedians, and the clergy
- Already many of your Occupy sites have included improvised music and art. Reach out to more musicians and artists for songs and posters about economic inequality and justice and the power of Wall Street. Engage performers to put on local concerts. Ask local clergy to reflect on religion's stance on economic inequality. Consider a nationally televised concert for Economic Equality on the Mall in Washington, DC. I'll bet that you could persuade Lady Gaga (she has endorsed Obama) to appear with Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen. No doubt Jon Stewart would be happy to be MC.
If you extend the life of your movement by adding content and reaching out to more people through Teach-ins and other forms of public dialogue, you will have a dramatic effect on the issues debated in the 2012 Presidential election. You already have had an impact, adding spine to Democrats in Congress and pushing the White House in a more progressive direction. You could also energize Obama to become a truly progressive President in his second term -- and you could build a movement which would live beyond and outside any one elected leader. At the very least, call on him now to appoint a Presidential commission on Inequality--its causes and solutions.
Feel free to check out copies of Economic Democracy, or A New Social Contract, books which I co-authored with Stanford economist Martin Carnoy, or even peruse the Clinton/Gore campaign platform, Putting People First, which I co-authored with Robert Reich and Ira Magaziner. You might find a few reform proposals which are still relevant.
It's a Fall Offensive to make my heart sing.
The TEACH-IN's! There ALREADY ARE workshops being taught at Occupy LA on Economics! Thanks for the article & suggestions--but Derek, COME ON DOWN! We're way OPEN to educators coming down & offering Teach-In's on many subjects! LOVE Zeeva
Inside Job is here: http://define.com/?item=2
along with a referendum to forgive all debts and completely start over with a global nonprofit banking system that guarantees the deposits of all the banks while forgiving all debt and letting everybody keep their homes, cars and the property they sleep on and providing a basic income guarantee to the poor, unemployed and retired and making work optional, while reducing government to its minimal footprint, eliminating ALL taxes worldwide, getting rid of the DEA and IRS, providing universal health care and eliminating the need for Social Security and Medicare.
Hey, if you're going to fight for something, might as well THINK BIG and consider overhauling the whole 9 yards. Can't hurt to try.
http://define.com/Enough
I'm hosting the kaleidoscope videos, including a 3D version, on MediaFire, which charges .06/GB in transfer fees. So, the 3D version, at 8.4GB, costs me 50 cents in transfer fees, so if you want to replicate it widely, host it yourself so I don't go bankrupt.
There's also a mechanism for paying for that bandwidth via PayPal, for people who can afford to part with increments of $5.
Also, just plain out and out buy LESS. Conservation of all resources instead of wasting is an invaluable tool.
First, Obama will not help with this.
Obama has amply demonstrated, over and over, that his allegience lies exclusively with Wall Street and the multi-national corporations.
Democrats will not help with this, they are just as corrupt and just as bought by Wall Street as are Tea-Publicans. In fact, Pelosi was instrumental in TARP.
Americans will have to do this on their own.
Second. Clergy will not help.
American clergy, particularly fundamentalist christians, have shown themselves to be part of the Tea-Publican machine since they were co-opted for the Family Values movement with Gingrich. Additonally, you can see for yourself that fundamentalist tyrnnical christians already support radical right-wing nutjobs like Perry.
Despite any quaint views that Clergy will actually follow the teachings of Jesus, they have, repeatedly, shown that they will follow the tyrannical, authoritarian right-wing who have adopted the pseudo-intellectual tripe of Ayn Rand's Objectivism and her "Virture of Selfishness" which is in direct contradiction to the teachings of Judaism, Christianity or Islam.
Being falsely positive is not useful.
Just looking at today's HP, count the number of "journalist counselors" putting out THEIR take (as if anyone asked them)! No wonder the supposed issues get dizzier and dizzier...the same old problem remains: who to believe, and why?
Let the movement decide what their issues are...don't need more help from the "press!"
We cannot afford another 4 years of Obama, his Wall Street cronies, and his disastrous policies of giving away billion$ of taxpayer money to banks and Wall Street.
Vote out Obama and every incumbent who approved of these giveaways!
great plan.
Obama also serves the 1%. Open your eyes.
vote independent
The reality is that Obama serves the 1%. He talks a good game, but he does Wall Street's bidding
The bottom 70% of americans combiend have an average net worth of 0. So if you are debt free and have just $500 in your checking account...then you have more wealth than the bottom 70% combined!!! My wife and I...with a family income less than what a public school teacher makes.....have a net worth greater than the bottom 90% of americans combined.
This happens because the Federal Reserve has given the banks at least 16 trillion so they could be saved from their often blatantly fraudulent and other failures. These numbers aren’t totals; we only got a snapshot of a year through the 1-time audit of the fed in the finance reform bull, the trillions being given to banks continues still today. But even 16 trillion is enough to pay of the entire US debt, every penny of lost value in real estate could have been covered, 3 times, every human in the US could have been given $50,000; but we gave it to the bank in programs like 0% interest rates in exchange for fraudulent, overvalued MBS. I say we “gave” the 16 trillion and not loaned because we will never get these funds back; every time they even talk about selling RMBS holdings that have doubled the size of our monetary base, the market crashes. So this is why you get no interest on your savings, that you have done everything right to accumulate – fair, right?
http://blogs.dailymail.com/donsurber/archives/44229
Be sure to keep the videos and pictures coming from your iPhones and Droids during the protests.
Robert Brault