On March 30, 2011, an international human rights observer witnessed and reported an unusually cruel and violent confrontation between a NY police officer and an Occupy Wall Street protester. While lying on the ground, the injured protester informed approaching police officers that his shoulder had been dislocated, and that he was experiencing severe pain. The officers reassured him that an ambulance was on its way and because he had been injured, he would not be handcuffed.
But within minutes, a new group of policemen arrived on the scene and brutally handcuffed the protester, calling him a liar as he repeatedly cried out in pain, pleading with them to stop.
According to a report prepared by the Protest and Assembly Rights Project --a coalition of international human rights and U.S. civil liberties experts--the officers repeatedly pushed and pulled the protester’s injured shoulder, in essence, vindictively torturing the young man.
After being transported and admitted to a hospital, physicians quickly discovered the shoulder hadn’t been dislocated, as the man had claimed; instead, a clavicle had been broken, a serious injury that is known to cause extreme pain.
The final version of the document detailed 130 international crimes committed by NY police officers, including many attacks directed at protesters using:
• Bodily force (e.g., striking, punching, shoving, throwing, kicking, dragging);
• Hair pulling;
• Hitting or punching, including to the head and face; and
• Kicking, including to the head and face
• Weapon use (e.g., batons, barricades, scooters, horses, pepper spray); and
• Restraints (flex cuffs)
Many civil rights activists and organizations have made repeated attempts to expose the brutality of the NYPD; but they received little support from the corporately owned media and the corporately owned Justice Department. Even more telling was the tepid response they received from the leaders of the Democratic Party, a group of politicians traditionally known for their support of civil rights movements. But the lack of support was rooted in this: it wasn’t a corrupt, racist Georgia governor who coordinated the assault; it was conducted at the behest of a Republican mayor, a group of bankers and Wall Street executives, and a Democratic President.
Naomi Wolf, the Guardian:
“The document…shows a terrifying network of coordinated DHS, FBI, police, regional fusion center, and private-sector activity so completely merged into one another that the monstrous whole is, in fact, one entity: in some cases, bearing a single name, the Domestic Security Alliance Council. And it reveals this merged entity to have one centrally planned, locally executed mission. The documents, in short, show the cops and DHS working for and with banks to target, arrest, and politically disable peaceful American citizens.”
Following the brutal crackdown on the activists, many Obama supporters deflected criticism from the president, saying he was unaware of the abuses, but FBI documents suggested the President had been kept in the loop, receiving frequent intelligence reports from the NOC, not only about the assault carried out in Zuccotti Park, but also about coordinated operations aimed at every OWS chapter established in each state.
And in typical Obama fashion, when the attacks occurred, he was conveniently out of the country. But his true intentions were revealed in a statement delivered by his spokesman:
“White House Press Secretary Jay Carney responded to a question about the New York raids by justifying the actions. ‘Freedom of assembly and freedom of speech,” he said, had to be “balanced” with “the very important need to maintain law and order and health and safety standards, which was obviously a concern in this case.’”
Compare that statement and the brutal actions authorized by the White House to Obama’s description of the 1965 Selma civil rights activists:
President Obama:
“We gather here to celebrate them. We gather here to honor the courage of ordinary Americans willing to endure billy clubs and the chastening rod; tear gas and the trampling hoof; men and women who despite the gush of blood and splintered bone would stay true to their North Star and keep marching toward justice.”
“What they did here will reverberate through the ages. Not because the change they won was preordained; not because their victory was complete; but because they proved that nonviolent change is possible; that love and hope can conquer hate.”
“As we commemorate their achievement, we are well served to remember that at the time of the marches, many in power condemned rather than praised them. Back then, they were called Communists, half-breeds, outside agitators, sexual and moral degenerates, and worse – everything but the name their parents gave them. Their faith was questioned. Their lives were threatened. Their patriotism was challenged.”
It was telling that Obama failed to mention the crucial role played by white Democratic activists during the struggle to win the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. It was significant because that group -- the former members of the “New Left” -- now represent the bulk of the Elizabeth Warren wing of the party, the faction of Democratic voters that Obama kicked to the curb as soon as he was elected.
In 1964, the year the Civil Rights Act was enacted --- one year before the Selma march -- African Americans represented only 15% of U.S. population. Martin Luther King understood black activists working alone would not be enough to ensure the successful passage of the equal rights agenda; what he, and other civil rights leaders needed, was the support of a large segment of the white population.
In March on Washington, white activists were largely overlooked but strategically essential -- Washington Post-- Krissah Thompson
Gathered on July 2, 1963, at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York, the six men who led the nation’s largest civil rights groups hashed out the details of the nonviolent show of force planned for late summer. In that meeting room sat the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and the NAACP’s Roy Wilkins, the National Urban League’s Whitney Young, the SNCC’s John Lewis and the Congress of Racial Equality’s James Farmer. The 74-year-old black union leader A. Philip Randolph was the elder statesman and march chairman who had brought them all together. They called themselves “the Big Six,” and their organizations all had interracial support but were predominantly black, as was their leadership.
With less than eight weeks before the big day, Randolph and the others decided that they would add four more leaders to their roster: Four white men were invited to join the six blacks.
It was a strategic move, says David Levering Lewis, a historian of the movement.
“Unless it could be shown quite graphically, dramatically, how important it was to white people that black people wanted change, we wouldn’t have gotten there,” he says.
Letters sent out by Rustin’s team soon included a call to action on behalf of what was now the Big 10, the six black men plus a rabbi, a Catholic leader, a Protestant minister and a labor boss.
What seems incongruous, but significant about that timeframe; is that Republicans were stronger supporters of racial equality than Democrats. Only sixty-three percent of House Democrats voted to pass the civil rights amendment, while 80% of Republicans supported it. In the Senate, it was 69% of Democrats supporting the bill, while 82% of Republicans voted in favor of the bill.
So, how did the Democratic Party become synonymous with the racial civil rights movement?
While many religious people – primarily white Catholics, Chicanos, and Jewish people -- normally strong supporters of the Democratic cause -- joined civil rights attorneys and labor organizations to promote the equal rights agenda, it was the hippies, the largest activist group, and the most zealous faction of the Democratic Party that ended the division over racial civil rights.
Today, the accepted hippie persona is the image popularized in the second episode of the ninth season of South Park, when Cartman said hippies “smoke pot, wear crap and smell bad".
And that was the image promoted by the mainstream media during the 1960s; similar to the model that FOX News and many conservative talk shows adopted to portray Democrats today.
It was the same type of vitiation that Rahm Emanuel used when he called the members of the left, “f*#king retards,”
But the 1960s counter-culture included two politically savvy groups; one in particular, that played a very prominent role in the advancement of civil right’s issues, including women’s rights, and gay and lesbian rights.
Both groups evolved from the anti-war/peace movement, or they were members of the nuclear disarmament resistance; in fact, both groups were so intertwined, the universally accepted symbol for peace was adopted from the logo of the 1950s British Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
When people reference “radical leftists,” or “revolutionary hippies” they’re primarily talking about members of the Young International Party (yippies), the infamous group of anarchists who clashed with Chicago police during the 1968 Democratic Convention.
On the other hand, Students for a Democratic Society, the party faction that was dubbed the “new left”, were the unsung heroes of the 1960s. Many of their members became politically active after John F. Kennedy championed the civil rights movement. They were the group that laid the groundwork for many great civil rights breakthroughs, including the struggle to win equal rights for women, and equal rights for gays and lesbians. Their contribution to the racial civil rights movement was enormous.
But because neo-liberals have championed popular “liberal” ideals on the campaign trail – while rejecting them in private – many members of the media still conflate Obama’s policies with traditional Democratic values. Nothing could be further from the truth: neo-liberal policies are the antithesis of the Democratic Party platform.
That is why members of the “new left” now call themselves “populists”.
One of the basic tactics used by neo-liberals to obtain power is to divide and then demoralize their opposition, and true to the neo-liberal agenda, Barrack Obama has driven a massive wedge between populists and his core constituency, primarily African Americans, Hispanics, Gays and Lesbians, and women.
And the two factions have been at war ever since.
Before Bill Clinton’s presidency, no liberal could have imagined a Democratic president enacting Wall Street agendas instead of supporting the interests of middle-class Americans; no Democratic president would have unraveled the safety net that we had created to protect the downtrodden. And before neo-liberals won control of the party through deceitful measures, we were the political representatives of the labor movement, and we were pro-union. We championed women’s rights, we opposed unsanctioned warfare, and we effectively limited the influence of the military industrial complex; we were peace loving, pro-environmentalists who knew the world we had been gifted was too important to our survival to be treated as a corporate cesspool.
We would never have allowed a Democratic standard bearer to kill innocent children with drones. No Democratic president would have been allowed to approve tax breaks for the wealthy at a time when millions of innocent Americans were losing their homes and jobs; he would never have been allowed to approve the sequestration, or challenge Social Security benefits.
Most of all, we believed that no American -- no matter how fragile their financial or social status -- should be left behind. We would never have written off thousands and thousands of American workers who had lost their jobs to foreign workers.
We understood that state sponsored snooping creates hopelessness because we empathized with the East Germans; we celebrated their courage, and we were moved by their desperate struggle to be free. Now, the tyrannical policies instigated by the Stasi pale in comparison to the covert operations that US intelligence agencies employ to soak up every piece of data that defines our existence; from our DNA to our sexual preferences -- nothing is off limits to Obama’s intelligence community.
Today, everyone in America is a potential terrorist; and too many innocent American’s have had their names placed on terrorist watch lists simply because they exercised their constitutional right to speak out against tyranny. Anyone who has the temerity to criticize this administration knows his or her words could be used to brand him or her as a terrorist even though most progressive writers are non-violent by nature.
In the world of the corrupt; words represent a “clear and present danger.”
It’s indicative of the collapse of Democratic ideals that party infighting no longer centers around issues, but instead focuses on the conflict caused by Barrack Obama’s (and Hillary Clinton’s) championing of corporate policies that contradict traditional Democratic values. As one member of the Democratic Underground expressed today: what’s the difference between a Republican, and a Democrat who supports the Republican agenda?
The truth is; the Democratic Party of 2015 barely resembles the Democratic Party of 1965. As it exists today, the Democratic Party under Obama’s leadership has lost the moral high ground needed to win racial civil rights issues, especially the type of victories exemplified by the dignity of the Selma protesters.
And because Obama has marginalized populist members; many have either walked away from the party, or intend to do so if the TPP is enacted, or if Hillary Clinton becomes the Democratic nominee.
In 2009, Obama’s support among white millennial voters was 58%; by the start of the 2014 mid-term elections it had fallen to 34%. Among white voters, 30 and over, it dropped from 49% to 31%.
Salon Magazine recently posted this report:
According to the most recent polling from the Pew Research Center, 53 percent of white Catholics now favor the GOP, versus 39 percent who favor the Democrats—the largest point spread in the history of the Pew poll. And for the first time, white Catholics are more Republican than the voting group usually considered the ultimate Republicans: white Protestants (a designation that includes both mainline and evangelical Protestants).
From Gallup:
A more intriguing danger sign for Democrats has been the surprisingly strong GOP performance among the educated professionals that embraced Obama early on. This can be seen in gubernatorial victories in deep blue Massachusetts and Maryland, and a close race in Connecticut; in all three states concerns over taxes have shifted some voters to the GOP. Voters making over $100,000 annually broke 56 to 43 for the GOP, according to NBC’s exit polls. College graduates leaned slightly toward the Republicans, but among white college graduates the GOP led by a decisive 55 to 43 margin.
*
President Barack Obama's job approval rating among white non-college graduates is at 27% so far in 2014, 14 percentage points lower than among white college graduates. This is the largest yearly gap between these two groups since Obama took office. These data underscore the magnitude of the Democratic Party's problem with working-class whites, among whom Obama lost in the 2012 presidential election, and among whom Democratic House candidates lost in the 2014 U.S. House voting by 30 points.
Implications
Given its sheer size, the working-class white population in the U.S. is of keen importance to politicians and strategists on both sides of the aisle, and many discussions and strategy sessions have focused on the complex set of attitudes and life positions which, as evidenced by these data, have pushed this group further from the Democratic president over the past six years. Discussions have also focused on the value of a populist approach to appeal to these voters' economic situations, and the impact of the cultural positions taken by a Democratic party that has as one of its core segments a coalition of minority race and ethnic group members, along with liberals and a smaller segment of highly educated whites. These discussions will continue as the 2016 election campaigns ramp up in the coming two years. At the moment, working-class whites exhibit weak support for the Democrats and their president, and it's not clear how likely that is to change as time goes on.
The message we sent to Democratic leaders during the 2014 midterm elections was unequivocal: if you continue to support corporate interests over the needs of millions of innocent Americans who were victimized by corporate crimes, then you ignore our voices at your own peril. We will not be there for you when you need us. But true to their past behavior, they ignored the true meaning behind the midterm rout, opting instead to spin it as a Democratic failure to clearly define its message.
And yet, they seem to be clueless about why so many people are abandoning the party.
The Democratic Party of 1965 knew that people who opposed injustice, no matter the color of their skin, needed a “big tent” to succeed; but the Party of 2015 has made it clear it doesn’t need "old white men" to win elections. In 2016, the causes du jour will be women’s rights and immigration rights. No one else will receive the same level of consideration.
But by failing to understand the significance of the attacks on OWS supporters, and because Democratic leaders took no action to mitigate the injustices inflicted on the movement’s members, the party has become a victim of its own indifference. And now: every future civil rights movement will be made weaker because injustices left unaddressed fester, and in time, collapse from the added weight the core members must shoulder. The Black Lives Matter movement lacks the strength and clout to counter conservative resistance; the right has too much money, and the conservatives are supported by thousands of militarized police departments, right wing controlled courts, and the blessings of the evangelical right. The framework needed to resist that type of political clout has been destroyed by Obama’s decision to drive a wedge between members of the left and members of the corporatist wing. And it should be noted that the populist faction has always served as the conscience of the Democratic Party. Without their support, soulless corporatists will exercise no more conscience than the lack of empathy one might have expected from Leona Helmsley. Populists are also the most dependable wing of the party. We are participative, we vote more, and we have always been more faithful.
Until now.
Even in 2011, Danny Goldberg made this observation:
“…shortly before the 2010 mid-year election, a left-wing blogger on a conference call with President Obama’s adviser David Axelrod complained that dismissive comments by the administration about its left-wing base amounted to “hippie punching.” The phrase was used to emphasize the contempt that the administration had shown for the progressive base…”
Contempt for the progressive base…
If I had to choose only one image to represent Obama’s presidency, it would be this video clip of the 2011 Occupy Wall Street protesters being mocked by Wall Street Traders. It encompasses Obama’s allegiance to his corporate donors, and it illustrates the hopelessness that millions of innocent Americans have felt because he chose Wall Street over Main Street. And it unequivocally demonstrates the contempt he and his cronies have exhibited to members of the Democratic base.
Wall Street Traders Mock Occupy Wall Street Protesters
9:54 AM PT: For those asking for a list of sources:
Allegations Of NY Police Brutality During Occupy Wall Street - Washington Post
http://cdn.theatlantic.com/...
Revealed: how the FBI coordinated the crackdown on Occupy
http://www.theguardian.com/...
Text of Obama’s Selma Speech
http://www.c-span.org/...
In March on Washington, white activists were largely overlooked but strategically essential – Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
The Democratic Party is facing a Catholic apocalypse – Salon
http://www.salon.com/...
Obama Approval Drops Among Working-Class Whites
http://www.gallup.com/...