As police began wholesale attacks on the Occupy Wall Street protests in early November, I attended a dinner party at "the scene of the crime," as many Occupy protestors call it -- the New York Stock Exchange. Hosted by NYSE and arranged by a group called wf360, the event was billed as a night of conversations around questions beginning with "What if...?"
My 200 fellow dinner guests were mostly senior executives, mostly from the financial industry, mostly (seemingly) Republicans. A lot of what was said, however, sounded little like the empty rhetoric out of Washington or cable news. There was widespread disgust with government paralysis and both political parties. More surprising, there was widespread sympathy for the problems of ordinary Americans and a broad appreciation of a central message of the Occupy movement -- the message cable news can't seem to get -- that the US needs to get money out of politics and end corporate control of government.
Reflecting the spirit of the evening, one diner, General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, rose to ask, "What if the Occupy Wall Street protestors are our Arab Spring?" He added, "What if they are moving the line between the governing and the governed?"
"Arab Spring" holds special meaning for Dempsey. He has spoken with palpable awe of the popular revolutions rearranging Middle East politics. He credits the downfall of Egypt's Mubarak to "Facebook and social networking, a leaderless organization that rose up and we call the Arab Spring," Agence France Presse reports. Speaking about these "viral" uprisings to world military leaders in London in June, he said, "I think our imaginations are just beginning to touch the edges of what it might mean...."
Continuing that theme back home, Dempsey stood in a private dining room of the New York Stock Exchange contemplating the rise of such a "leaderless organization" in America. In public and private conversation, he seemed to sway between his military duty to put down insurrections and his devotion to the idea that America stands for the unquestioned goodness of democracy.
When I think about the last few months in American politics, I think about the clashing themes Dempsey conjures. Our support for democracy, in the abstract, and for the growing democratic protests across the world is counterbalanced by our fear of democracy in action and our official tolerance of police violence in multiple US cities against peaceful protesters. In these and other ways, the Occupy movement confronts America with our contradictions.
Let's look at a few of those contradictions: We live in an America where the bedrock promise of opportunity for all is contradicted by the widening gap between rich and poor; the promise of democracy is contradicted by the dominance of money and corporate interests in our politics; the promise to support freedom is contradicted by our historic support of repressive dictators like Mubarak and our ambivalence about majority rule in the Middle East; our promise of free speech and free assembly is contradicted by use of rubber bullets, pepper spray, beatings and arrests to put down protesters here at home. This list could go on, but that's a start.
It is obtuse, I fear, not to interpret recent police violence in the US as a sign of intentional and coordinated opposition to the Occupy movement by official America, whether you call that group the 1%, the Establishment, the ruling class or any other name.
For those fond of obtuseness, please remember that Oakland Mayor Jean Quan told the BBC she decided to evict her city's protesters after discussing the matter with 18 mayors on a conference call. Many of these mayors executed similar evictions and mass arrests immediately after that call, all citing what they termed health and safety concerns. That same week, MSNBC's Chris Hayes reported on a memo in which a large DC lobbying firm proposed that its client, the American Association of Bankers, pony up $850,000 to create "negative narratives" about Occupy and the politicians who support the protests.
Are the rights of the Occupy movement being violated by the American establishment or are police merely enforcing the law? Assuming that the protestors were, in fact, breaking the law, how should our democracy react to non-violent civil disobedience? Isn't such lawbreaking enshrined in the founding of the nation and the modern American notion of free expression?
When considering these questions, it is important, first, to see the context. At the heart of what's going on in our politics is something that left and right broadly agree about: We are in a long-standing crisis and our government isn't doing anything about it.
In case you are in the tiny minority that disagrees with that statement, let's remember that the middle class has been shrinking for 35 years as the gap between rich and poor has been widening. There are now 100 million Americans living either in poverty or just fractionally above the poverty line while the top 1% of American earners have seen their outsized share of total wages nearly triple and they now control 40% of the country's total wealth.
Meanwhile, among the other 99%, misery spreads. Seriously delinquent mortgages started rising again in September, up to 4.9% of all mortgages, according to the New York Fed and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. This is roughly half what the rate was at the end of 2009, happily, but still nearly three times the delinquency average for the three decades prior to the crash of 2008. Unemployment, of course, sits at 8.6%, a recent low, after a welcome half-point drop in early December. But for youth it's double that, for Hispanics it's more than double and for African-Americans it's more than triple that. If you are a typical American, you see the majority of America in crisis while the rich keep getting richer and Congress does absolutely nothing to turn things around.
Times are so hard that most Americans now question the country's longest-running mythical narratives about hope, hard work and social mobility -- the bedrock social contract that we call the American dream. Pew's Economic Mobility Project, in fact, finds that a majority of Americans (54%) now feel the government helps the rich "a great deal," but only 6% say it helps "people like me." In short, by a 9-to-1 margin, Americans see the game is rigged against them.
It is in this context that Occupy Wall Street sprang up in Manhattan two months ago with a central message about the essential unfairness of America -- the growing disparity between rich and poor; the escalating clash between the rights of flesh-and-blood persons with the expanding rights accorded to money itself and to legal-fiction persons known as corporations. (Harold Myerson recently referred to the Citizens United decision as "one dollar, one vote.")
My point is simple: the protests are actually about something (or a set of somethings) very seriously wrong with America. The protests are about things that many of us agree deserve our serious attention. The substance of the protestors' complaints are so serious and widespread, in fact, that they have given rise to the kind of "leaderless organization" that is bringing down governments in other parts of the world; so serious that America's highest-rankling military leader wonders out loud about the similarities among Cairo, Tripoli and Oakland.
I make this point because we should acknowledge that if the First Amendment was meant to protect any kind of speech at all, it certainly was meant to cover what the Occupy movement is doing: identifying inequities, agitating for redress and dramatizing the need for change. We need to acknowledge that the First Amendment is a safety valve that actually protects the 1% from revolution by allowing for political change.
So I am troubled, to say the least, by official America's intolerance of free speech, particularly when the speech addresses subjects so central to our expressed national beliefs and so important to our political process. I think we should all be troubled.
Follow Kirk Cheyfitz on Twitter: www.twitter.com/KirkCheyfitz
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Deborah Gaines: The Undercover Mother
Also, the details show OWS isn't just free speech issues. Shallow is helpful to propagandize, but not for truth.
OCCUPY WALL STREET/BOSTON/Etc ARTICLES BEHIND THE MEDIA
http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=232263773495584
Liberals love democracy?
Liberals hate to admit this is a REPUBLIC (Pledge-"And to the REPUBLIC for which it stands").
Americans should love that we are a REPUBLIC, Tom, with some ASPECTS/POINTS of a democracy.
Its like its okay for us to criticize the Arabs and Muslims who have their extremists, but no one talks about how extremes on both the right and left here are also extreme in how they try to get their points of view across.. bombing and shooting abortion clinics and staff, bombing federal buildings, bullying, beating and killing gays, starting underground survivalist groups espousing hate of Jews, blacks, and anyone that doesn't believe what they believe. While we still may be the greatest country in the world, we are not without blame, blood, and our own shame. and most assuredly hypocrisy.
Occupy Congress. Igits!
Our fate rests on how the elites respond to the OWS movement. If they continue to do so by head-bashing and theft of private property, a true 'American Spring' will rise up out of that, and it will be very, very ugly.
If they get a clue, some changes will occur, so the peasants will be mollified and go back to sleep.
So, as usual, it's really all about how the 1% respond.
(Search for "1981 ABC report about BOHEMIAN GROVE..A MUST SEE" on YouTube watch?v=0UJW8VKJv4c )...
THESE LEADERS ARE NOT TRUE CHRISTIANS - (They are apostates and hypocrites that slander God's name with lies, greed and murder...)
NOTE: BUSH = KERRY = OBAMA...
McCain and Kerry went to Egypt with GE to start bringing the corporations into that country to "save them"...
Number of CIVILIANS killed from 9/11 attacks : 2973
Number of BRITISH CIVILIANS killed in terrorist attacks: 52
Number of US MILITARY killed in Iraq: 3545
Number of CIVILIANS killed in Iraq War : 250,000 directly (some say over 1 million indirectly)
Number of CIVILIANS killed in Afghanistan by coalition forces: 35,000
“Hands that are shedding innocent blood” have been one of the most detestable things to Jehovah ever since righteous Abel’s blood cried out from the ground. (Pr 6:16, 17; Ge 4:10; Ps 5:6)
Jesus said: “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” (John 13:35, New International Version) Ask yourself, ‘Do members of this religion display love toward all men at all times not only with words but also with actions?’
http://watchtower.org/e/20090801/article_03.htm
Many people would answer the above question with a single word—God. But significantly, nowhere does the Bible say that either Jesus Christ or his Father are the real rulers of this world. On the contrary, Jesus said:
"The ruler of this world will be cast out."
And he added:
"The ruler of the world is coming. And he has no hold on me."
—John 12:31; 14:30; 16:11.
So the ruler of this world is in opposition to Jesus. Who could this be?
http://www.watchtower.org/e/t22/article_01.htm
hmmmm...actually a whole group of ppl...the 1 per-centers...now i would really be a believer if 99% take over coz jeebus said "meek shall inherit the earth" :)
The U.S. is very tolerant of free speech. That is not enough for the protesters, however, they want us also to tolerate their being the sole judges of the when, where and how of their speech, free of the reasonable time, place and manner restrictions that apply to the rest of us.
What is troubling is that so many are so ignorant of the law regarding free speech that they think the OWS tactics are protected by the First Amendment. They are not.
I have to follow the law, you have to follow the law, and it is about time it was brought home to OWS that they too have to follow the law.
Perhaps, but here is the critical point. No one is entitled to "effective" protest. No one is entitled to make the rest of us listen to your speech. If you want your speech to be effective you have to convince people you are right. Acting obnoxious is no substitute for this.
Actually, it is OWS' illegal and obnoxious tactics that make what it stands for besides the point.
Which America?
Those of us that live here, work here, fought it's wars, try to be honest with others, and play by the rules?
Or the 1% who OWN it, it's government, and the politicians who run it........lock, stock, and barrel?
It's an important distinction to make, to really understand the answer.