Today the reports from OccupyWallStreet caused me to sit back for a moment and place them in a historical perspective. In short, what is really fueling this fascinating example of courage and social push-back is no different than what has fueled society's revolutionary movements of our nation's past---endemic unresponsiveness and the desire of a citizenry to bring to account its leaders, (private or public). How different is this movement than what propelled the youth of a nation to rise up against the Vietnam War? Or Black-Americans to revolt against institutionalized racism. Or women to flood the streets over suffrage rights? Look back to the abolitionists or most of all, the America's original Revolutionaries we celebrate each Fourth of July. How different are those who were corralled on the Brooklyn Bridge and those cornered on a Boston courtyard street by armed and loaded British Redcoats? Each of those brave souls throughout history stood up to what was considered impossible odds, the ridicule of those who supported the then current powers and experienced great personal costs because of moral and political dissent.
Today I read that the New York Times' financial columnist (spotted sell out), Adam Sorkin, wrote on October 3, 2011 in his NYT’s “DealB%k blog; (http://dealbook.nytimes.com/...)
I had gone down to Zuccotti Park to see the activist movement firsthand after getting a call from the chief executive of a major bank last week, before nearly 700 people were arrested over the weekend during a demonstration on the Brooklyn Bridge.
“Is this Occupy Wall Street thing a big deal?” the C.E.O. asked me.
I didn’t have an answer.
“We’re trying to figure out how much we should be worried about all of this,” he continued, clearly concerned. “Is this going to turn into a personal safety problem?”
Salon’s Glenn Greenwald references this post and comments on Sorkin and the episode in a post titled, Andrew Sorkin’s Assignment Editor(ouch): http://politics.salon.com/...
How interesting that when a CEO “of a major bank” wants to know how threatening these protests are, he doesn’t seek out corporate advisers or dispatch the bank’s investigators, but instead gets the NYT‘s notoriously banker-friendly Wall Street reporter on the phone and assigns him to report back. How equally interesting that if this NYT financial columnist can’t address the concerns and questions of a CEO “of a major bank,” he hops to it to find out what was demanded of him. Sorkin did what he was told:
Again from Dealb%k: Sorkin continues:
As I wandered around the park, it was clear to me that most bankers probably don’t have to worry about being in imminent personal danger. This didn’t seem like a brutal group — at least not yet.
Salon’s Greenwald then continues with his commentary on the Sorkin caricature:
As I noted last week when critiquing the patronizing, dismissive and scornful attacks on these protests from establishment circles, the “message” is clear and obvious enough, and Sorkin had no trouble discerning a significant part of it: “the demonstrators are seeking accountability for Wall Street and corporate America for the financial crisis and the growing economic inequality gap.” He added: “that message is a warning shot about the kind of civil unrest that may emerge — as we’ve seen in some European countries — if our economy continues to struggle.” His CEO banking friend is right to be concerned: if not about this protest in particular then about the likelihood of social unrest generally, emerging as a result of their plundering and pilfering. That healthy fear on the part of the oligarchs has been all too absent.
As a white-haired, aging baby-boomer who witnessed civil unrest during my youth, and then studied it a decade later at a major Big Ten University, I see much similarity in today's building civil unrest, but not with Europe, more like our own country's experiences. My political science mentor, Prof. Bernard Morris discussed the 1960's civil unrest in a little celebrated, albeit academic article, published in 1986, where he discussed civil unrest as actually “direct political action”.
"The 1960’s where a response to unresponsiveness of the political system inability of citizens to call their leaders into account.” (The Congress and the Presidency, Volume 13, Number Two, August 1986)
Today's circumstances might have changed where back then it was a combination of institutional poverty of Black-Americans and the disgust and dissent over the Vietnam War, where now it is the extreme economic gap coupled with the extreme entrenched political power of artificial persons in the name of CORP capitalism.
No matter how morally reviled were some Americans over the oppression of African-Americans and their ghettos, it was the lack of responsiveness and the inability of the political system to act that resulted in fueling America’s worst riots. Ironically, their political movement was sparked a single brave NACCP secretary, who on her own refused to move out of her seat in an open defiance to institutionalized racism to be arrested. Soon thereafter that incident incited a city's Black-Americans to boycott their city's bus system wide bringing it to its economic knees and leading to a court to declare seating discrimination on city buses outlawed. From there history will record how an obscure young Baptist minister came to lead a nationwide civil rights movement that changed the cultural and political landscape.
Soon thereafter in the 1960’s, America chose to get involved in a three decades long civil war in Southeast Asia. As America’s involvement escalated from 400 advisers to over 500,000 troops on the ground (and many more naval servicemen off shore alongside untold or unknown secret intelligence officers) the revolt centered on the se of the inequalities of a military draft to fill the uniforms to wage war in someone else;s civil war. Unresponsiveness resulted in civil disobedience where protests culminated where practically all our nation's great universities experienced massive protests and disturbances. All this culminated with the murder of 4 collegian activists by the Ohio National Guard when the too trapped protesters and then stopped, aimed and fired upon defenseless citizens.
Systemic social injustice, be it economic or political is endemic to unresponsiveness, where leaders thinking are unaccountable wage tyranny on their own citizens. Protests and civil disobedience seeks to make them accountable and force responsiveness---it is direct action because the political system has been compromised. Direct action is the next democratic resort. Therefore, allow me to answer the aforementioned Sorkin CEO banker friend's (assignment editor) questions that Sorkin dutifully went out to investigate among the OccupyWallStreet activists;
“
Is this Occupy Wall Street thing a big deal?”
Yes, probably bigger than you can imagine, just go back in time and find a way to ask Birmingham’s top banker who invariably thought when his community's Black-Americans boycotted his client's bus lines. But the reality was the bus lines were small potatoes, what was brought down was the entire culture of the South's White America.
On the succeeding question;
“We’re trying to figure out how much we should be worried about all of this,” he continued, clearly concerned. “Is this going to turn into a personal safety problem?”
On the personal safety issue, I hope not, but if there remains a continued unresponsiveness toward's our nation's investment and large banks to which you lead one, and the further corruption of our nation's politicians whom you own, than history suggests that the possibly exists that your properties, which your bank owns or has stake in, might be at risk. I recall that the Chicago Police Riots destroyed much personal property and political careers as well. This is not meant as a warning or call to arms, merely an old hand at reading history and the nature of man and society.
In conclusion, I was watching clips of FOX News, the likes of Ann Coulter among other commentators, mocking the protesters by labeling them Nazi’s or French Revolutionaries. What is ironic Ms. Coulter is that the principles these OccupyWallStreet protesters are expressing is precisely the same stuff that came about in 1775 when America was subjected to a British financial nobility who were unresponsive back then. Unlike the supposed Tea-Baggers whom you promoted as they masqueraded on FOX in 2009-2010, this is not about some trumped political policy issue, it is about social economic justice. Just read the Declaration of Independence in its entirety and how hauntingly similar this movement is to our core principles. And in those historical prose you may see how to deal with an entrenched financial nobility who will not relinquish one iota of power or a tax rate without a power fight. So fine you want a power fight against direct action, well when you have made 99% against you the numbers are on the side of the direct activists.