What was Britney, I mean Romney thinking? What did Santorum have for breakfast? Aren’t they ridiculous? Just look at them! They’re crazy! HA! HA! HA! Oh look…..
Yes, Republican Primary season has been here for far too long already and these are the kinds of things we hear ad nauseam, but not just on MSNBC, CNN, and every other major news outlet. A majority of this coverage populates the front page on Daily Kos with the big exceptions of Meteor Blades and Joan McCarter whom are both well worth reading. There’s really no need to watch something on MSNBC (or listen and tune out in the background as I do while reading) and then read the same thing on Daily Kos, but that is what happens now all the time I am sad to say.
There are also too many rec list diaries about the Republican primary or diaries telling us what we have known about Republicans since 1987(when I learned of the Iran Contra scandal from my mom as a kid). Because of this dynamic, we, those of us on the blogosphere and potential new visitors, really miss out on what Daily Kos was and could be again. For instance, as my friend joanneleon asked, where is the antiwar left now? Indeed.
That’s a great question; one that counting tags on diaries won’t answer. There is simply just not enough substantive discussion about issues related to war, the MIC, and the private war contractors(who commit war crimes) we are leaving all across the middle east on this site anymore. It used to be normal on Daily Kos to have these discussions on war.
There’s another dangerous one on the horizon despite the other never ending quagmire (Afghanistan) we won’t leave. This Persian war depends entirely on what Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel decides to do since we have, in no uncertain terms, backed his play. He’s itching to go to war with Iran over an overblown nuclear threat (to think anyone wants to turn the Dome of the Rock into a nuclear wasteland is willfully being ignorant of Islam), especially compared to what attacking Iran would do. It takes art and satire, it seems, to have these types of needed discussions whether on war or the erosion of our civil liberties by a war loving Democratic administration.
This Eisenhower quote still rings true to this day going by the political priorities of modern day Democrats and Republicans choosing to politically destroy this nation. They do so by claiming we can't afford to invest in combating poverty and building up our infrastructure while funding their wars like the MIC pays them to.
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.
Dwight D. Eisenhower, From a speech before the American Society of Newspaper Editors, April 16, 1953
34th president of US 1953-1961 (1890 - 1969)
It’s not just war, a multitude of other issues gets lost in the fray where we hear about nothing but the political pro wrestling match all day. That’s detrimental and has a real human cost. This is a usual occurrence with what I call the corporate owned media, but it shouldn’t be that way on this site. After all, at its inception, Daily Kos really did crash the gate along with many other blogs. Daily Kos should use its traffic for more worthy endeavors as it once did, and for awhile actually did once again, during the inception of the Occupy Movement countering and shaping the COM narrative.
This is important for a number of reasons; some I have outlined in my writing about the Occupy Movement and its early successes.
1. OWS has truly crashed through the corporate owned media gate though it took the beautiful brave women pepper sprayed by Anthony Bologna raising OWS from a point of curiosity to a national movement. That is a major victory considering something else Bill Clinton did in 1996; The Telecommunications Act of 1996 creating the mega media conglomerates we know and hate today, at least those of us who know how damaging propaganda is. At least those living under the iron curtain knew their media was lying to them. We tell ourselves since this is the US our media only lies sometimes.
"Any dictator would admire the uniformity and obedience of the U.S. media. “ –Noam Chomsky
Breaking through the COM barrier was a major victory brought on by the brave women who got pepper sprayed by Anthony Bolognia in NY and Scott Olsen in Oakland California. It takes brave activists to confront power, but it also takes real journalism to chronicle what happens when power is confronted. This is especially important when power reacts violently against protests. In this thought provoking piece about the Occupy Movement from its start to its uncertain future, Astra Taylor reminds us of just how much importance civil rights leader Martin Luther King put on the latter dynamic.
Occupy the Media—and the Message
Left-wing activists have long had a rocky rapport with the mainstream media; in this respect, Occupy is nothing new. Organizers tend to be deeply suspicious of the corporate press, which generally ignores or belittles them. At the same time, they need mainstream outlets to spread their messages and grow their movements. One might ask, philosophically, If there’s a protest and no reporters show up, did it really happen?
Nobody knew this better than Martin Luther King Jr., who had a knack for staging dramatic, mediagenic confrontations. In 1965 during the march to Selma, Alabama, he told a Life photographer who had put down his camera to help a protester being beaten by police to go back to taking pictures: “Your role is to photograph what is happening to us.” If King was an organizer working today, he’d remind protesters to keep photographing themselves. Theoretically at least, there are now as many “channels” as there are people attending an event. With social media, every protester can broadcast his or her experiences and opinions for public consumption.
“Go back to taking pictures.” That’s how important it is to chronicle the police brutality inflicted on protesters protesting economic injustice as did King in addition to civil rights. Occupy protesters and the media networks they set up themselves taking advantage of every camera in every cell phone are following in MLK’s example in many ways, especially his instructions to that Life magazine photographer.
Civil disobedience of unjust laws from Gandhi to MLK in the practice of the teachings of Henry David Thoreau gained more support as the public witnessed how they were treated in their plight. That same dynamic is timeless as Gene Sharp sharp’s manual on peaceful civil disobedience building on these teachings has shown time and time again with modern examples.
This piece on the Occupy movement explores the intricacies and differences of opinion within the movement per its defining characteristics. Though I think transparency for transparency’s sake was a good dynamic to start the movement off, ultimately I fall on the side of Mathew Smucker on the transparency debate. Occupy should have the same protections that we enjoy here on Daily Kos as anonymous posters so they can participate without worrying about getting fired from their jobs or not being able to find one because of expressing themselves or their political opinions.
It’s even more important for actively protesting in the streets where the 1st amendment should be more like an absolute; in that sense each individual in the collective we should be allowed to make mistakes and not have it forever on the record with our real names thus tarnishing the movement as a whole (despite the fact that Occupy is a leaderless movement as it should stay) based on how the COM will spin it.
But some are more circumspect. As Nick Pinto wrote for the Village Voice, there’s “an ongoing tension within Occupy Wall Street, as many protesters and organizers embrace radical transparency, while others—especially those involved in planning direct actions—see a need for secrecy and strict security culture to protect the movement from the government infiltrators almost everyone agrees must be within the movement.” Matthew Smucker, a member of the OWS press relations working group, thinks Occupy shouldn’t be obligated to air all its dirty laundry or show all its cards. “There are downsides to transparency,” Smucker reflected. “I think we have a right to strategize, and to think and talk candidly with each other. You have to be able to say stupid stuff, to make mistakes and be corrected.” Having everything on the record, forever, can be inhibiting and counterproductive; it also doesn’t leave space for those who may face repercussions at work or home for being openly associated with Occupy (people have lost their jobs for this, which explains why some activists decline to use their real names).
Now that thankfully the spring awakening has started for the Occupy movement, it’s sad that someone still has to get their head slammed through a window (as what happened recently in Zucotti park) in order for the corporate owned media to cover Occupy, so that’s why it's a real battle; a real one we must fight. We won’t be helping these brave class warriors fight crippling income inequality by regurgitating what we hear on Meet the Press or Hardball about the political pro wrestling match of 2012. On a blog that once moved the COM to cover important issues that affected the 99% whether they wanted to or not, it’s a sad dynamic to see only what we see on MSNBC for the most part. It seems like the COM is influencing this blog more than the other way around.
Thanks to Bill Clinton and the Telecommunications Act of 1996 as well as the final repeal of Glass Steagall, our financial sector and the 4th estate are now both controlled by monopolies and oligopolies with too much political power. When it comes to the monopolized 4th estate, barriers of entry, and the economies of scale that keep important shows like Democracy Now from reaching a wider audience, we have to utilize social media better to force these monopolies to cover issues they don’t want to like Daily Kos used to. We have to talk about what the COM won’t in enough of a scale so that the COM will be forced to.
There are some within Occupy who argue that this is where the focus should be: the movement should make its own media and not concern itself with attracting the attention of professionals who work for conglomerates owned by the 1 percent. The problem, though, is that much of the 99 percent still gets its news through the local paper, CBS affiliate or corporate news sites. “Social media is self-selecting,” Smucker warns. “Livestreaming is for the junkies.” Musician Boots Riley, who has become a respected voice within Occupy Oakland through his thoughtful use of Twitter and Facebook, has similar concerns. “The short answer is that social media works to some extent, but without a consistent flow of new people in the circles that it reaches, its power dwindles.” Mainstream media, he argues, are often what pique people’s interest, and alerted them to the existence of the movement in the first place. “My fear,” Riley says, “is that all of this goes away when the mainstream media ignore us.”
Meanwhile, the traditional media are already losing interest. Six months in, with an election year under way, Occupy is old news. To be fair, part of the problem for reporters is that Occupy, sprawling and leaderless from the get-go, is even more difficult to report on without encampments providing a central meeting ground. Even the most dedicated participants find it impossible to keep abreast of everything that’s going on locally and nationally within their movement. While some promising initiatives, like InterOccupy, aim to change this, a major task for Occupy in the coming months will be making the scope of its actions intelligible to as many people as possible, including those who are part of it.
I’m doing what I can to support Occupy and luckily my poster artwork is funding the Occupy movement in a small but significant way as you know. This is more significant because I am unemployed and have no income.
I still believe in the promise of the Occupy movement despite a terrible winter and blow to the movement brought on by a billionaire mayor who shits on the homeless and a DHS-PERF coordinated shut down with mayors of each city of each major encampment funded by our tax dollars. This was a major blow in more ways than just losing a meeting place as it was highly symbolic and powerful to see these encampments everywhere. I don’t know exactly how to get back to that place, but we have to keep covering the Occupy movement and the issues that affect the 99% regardless, instead of campaign gossip 2012 most of the time.
Occupy is what matters in a Citizen’s United world. Occupy is what matters in a world where Democrats and Republicans both overwhelmingly love the filibuster and voted to keep it as their fundraising 60 vote excuse ruining any chance for qualitative legislation in the future. Therefore Occupy is all that matters with a government owned lock, stock, and barrel by the banks, big pharma, and the insurance industry.
Occupy is what matters in a world of economic illiteracy professed by both candidates running; and though one is more of a Bain, the other was ready to slash Medicare to death and raise the eligibility with his grand debt ceiling bargain. Intent matters regardless of the fact that Republicans rejected the grand New Deal/Great Society betrayal for Chicago school style deficit stupidity agreed to by this President during the debt ceiling debacle. It’s a good thing Occupy started after that, because we need people out in the streets.
We need to support people out in the streets using whatever talents and whatever resources we have. We can’t get lulled into a COM reality show when the real reality is 9 million people dropping out of the labor force is what is behind the official 8.3% unemployment parred off to us in an election year as something to celebrate. We can't pretend our metrics are not all screwed up in how we count unemployment rates going all the way to celebrating GDP in a bikini graph. We could do something about it, but not when deficit terrorism attacks in the form of Democrats and Republicans. Their poor knowledge of the federal budget, our monetary system, and public/private sector balances terrorizes the poor.
They both follow the same bond vigilante, confidence fairy, JOBS deregulation bill sermon on the mound of lobbyist cash financing this. This is a cult-like Washington religion, albeit on different levels, but still a political poison that's slowly killing us. We have to support the Occupy movement any way we can so that they break through the COM barrier. This is the core message my latest Occupy piece. We can't let the COM stop talking about the murder of Trayvon Martin(RIP) and the corrupt police investigation into it so I remembered to put hoods in this piece as well.
There is a rally for this cause in NY right now. You bet your ass we need Occupy and we must break through the Corporate owned media filter using whatever social media and web platform we can.
P.S priceman is at Netroots Nation if you want it.