The Best Among Us

by Chris Heges

There are no excuses left. Either you join the revolt taking place on Wall Street and in the financial districts of other cities across the country or you stand on the wrong side of history. Either you obstruct, in the only form left to us, which is civil disobedience, the plundering by the criminal class on Wall Street and accelerated destruction of the ecosystem that sustains the human species, or become the passive enabler of a monstrous evil. Either you taste, feel and smell the intoxication of freedom and revolt or sink into the miasma of despair and apathy. Either you are a rebel or a slave.

Chris Hedges

To be declared innocent in a country where the rule of law means nothing, where we have undergone a corporate coup, where the poor and working men and women are reduced to joblessness and hunger, where war, financial speculation and internal surveillance are the only real business of the state, where even habeas corpus no longer exists, where you, as a citizen, are nothing more than a commodity to corporate systems of power, one to be used and discarded, is to be complicit in this radical evil. To stand on the sidelines and say “I am innocent” is to bear the mark of Cain; it is to do nothing to reach out and help the weak, the oppressed and the suffering, to save the planet. To be innocent in times like these is to be a criminal. Ask Tim DeChristopher. 

Choose. But choose fast. The state and corporate forces are determined to crush this. They are not going to wait for you. They are terrified this will spread. They have their long phalanxes of police on motorcycles, their rows of white paddy wagons, their foot soldiers hunting for you on the streets with pepper spray and orange plastic nets. They have their metal barricades set up on every single street leading into the New York financial district, where the mandarins in Brooks Brothers suits use your money, money they stole from you, to gamble and speculate and gorge themselves while one in four children outside those barricades depend on food stamps to eat. Speculation in the 17th century was a crime. Speculators were hanged. Today they run the state and the financial markets. They disseminate the lies that pollute our airwaves. They know, even better than you, how pervasive the corruption and theft have become, how gamed the system is against you, how corporations have cemented into place a thin oligarchic class and an obsequious cadre of politicians, judges and journalists who live in their little gated Versailles while 6 million Americans are thrown out of their homes, a number soon to rise to 10 million, where a million people a year go bankrupt because they cannot pay their medical bills and 45,000 die from lack of proper care, where real joblessness is spiraling to over 20 percent, where the citizens, including students, spend lives toiling in debt peonage, working dead-end jobs, when they have jobs, a world devoid of hope, a world of masters and serfs.

The only word these corporations know is more. They are disemboweling every last social service program funded by the taxpayers, from education to Social Security, because they want that money themselves. Let the sick die. Let the poor go hungry. Let families be tossed in the street. Let the unemployed rot. Let children in the inner city or rural wastelands learn nothing and live in misery and fear. Let the students finish school with no jobs and no prospects of jobs. Let the prison system, the largest in the industrial world, expand to swallow up all potential dissenters. Let torture continue. Let teachers, police, firefighters, postal employees and social workers join the ranks of the unemployed. Let the roads, bridges, dams, levees, power grids, rail lines, subways, bus services, schools and libraries crumble or close. Let the rising temperatures of the planet, the freak weather patterns, the hurricanes, the droughts, the flooding, the tornadoes, the melting polar ice caps, the poisoned water systems, the polluted air increase until the species dies. 

Who the hell cares? If the stocks of ExxonMobil or the coal industry or Goldman Sachs are high, life is good. Profit. Profit. Profit. That is what they chant behind those metal barricades. They have their fangs deep into your necks. If you do not shake them off very, very soon they will kill you. And they will kill the ecosystem, dooming your children and your children’s children. They are too stupid and too blind to see that they will perish with the rest of us. So either you rise up and supplant them, either you dismantle the corporate state, for a world of sanity, a world where we no longer kneel before the absurd idea that the demands of financial markets should govern human behavior, or we are frog-marched toward self-annihilation. 

Those on the streets around Wall Street are the physical embodiment of hope. They know that hope has a cost, that it is not easy or comfortable, that it requires self-sacrifice and discomfort and finally faith. They sleep on concrete every night. Their clothes are soiled. They have eaten more bagels and peanut butter than they ever thought possible. They have tasted fear, been beaten, gone to jail, been blinded by pepper spray, cried, hugged each other, laughed, sung, talked too long in general assemblies, seen their chants drift upward to the office towers above them, wondered if it is worth it, if anyone cares, if they will win. But as long as they remain steadfast they point the way out of the corporate labyrinth. This is what it means to be alive. They are the best among us.

Click here to access OCCUPY TOGETHER, a hub for all of the events springing up across the country in solidarity with Occupy Wall St.

McKinney: The Art of Leadership and the Fight for Justice

by Cynthia McKinney

“Who among our elected officials today exercises the art of leadership in an engaged struggle for justice?”

After Georgia was forced by the United States Supreme Court to abandon its scheme to deny Black people the right to an undiluted vote and representation, Leroy Johnson became the first Black person elected to the Georgia State Senate since Reconstruction. The year was 1962. During his tenure, Johnson used his considerable influence inside the body to become the Senate's Chair of the Judiciary Committee.  From this position, he was able to bottle-up legislation that was bad for the State of Georgia, especially its Black residents. Outside and inside the State Senate, Leroy Johnson practiced the art of leadership and engaged in the fight for justice. He produced solid results for a people who were hungry for justice. Who among our elected officials today exercises the art of leadership in an engaged struggle for justice? Sadly, the numbers are way too small. It is more expedient to exchange silence for merely "being there," in the end exercising no leadership at all and becoming a spectator to power in abandonment of those who need the effective use of power the most. The art of the struggle has veritably been abandoned for merely occupying a seat at the table when the purpose of the struggle for the seat at the table was to empower the struggle for justice. The only reason we send people to occupy that seat is to leverage the power of the community where power is exercised, on behalf of those who need it the most.

“The only reason we send people to occupy that seat is to leverage the power of the community where power is exercised.”

As I was commiserating over the Troy Davis situation with a former member of the Georgia Legislature who rose to the highest possible position within that body for his party, he lamented that for all of his years in the Legislature, he had not introduced a single death penalty bill. I quickly interjected that he was so busy putting out other fires and sticking his fingers in all the holes of the leaky dikes and schooling his colleagues on the effective use of the power of their elected positions that he couldn't do everything. It will be interesting to see what legislative actions his former colleagues will initiate in the face of this clear act of barbarism by my state.

Occupying these "seats at the table" is important. Engaging in the struggle for justice is important. And contrary to what many would have us believe, leadership is important. That's why so much effort is spent on co-opting or marginalizing the leaders of conscience that we do have and preventing authentic representatives of our values to occupy those seats at the table.

Therefore, more is required of us. We must hone the skill of discernment. We must not give our vote to just anybody to occupy these positions of power. We must not allow "posers" to represent us. Posers are those who wear the jackets of authority, who are put in positions of power by us, but who do not engage in the artful use of that power on our behalf. Discerning who is friend and who is poser has been difficult. But, is being made more possible by the arrogance now of those who do not have the interests of the people at heart. They seem not to care that their "neanderthal" is showing. But we can look at them and clearly see that they ain't us. Their actions are a clue that they do not share our values.

“The violence sponsored by the United States abroad has its origins inside the United States.”

Unfortunately, posers exist all around us: and in the media, too. The job now of people of conscience is to make sure that we don't enable these posers by our own supportive behavior. My friend reminded me that Leroy Johnson, alone in the Georgia State Senate, was more powerful in the 1960s than are the 55 Black members of the Georgia Legislature now. We need to stop and think about that.

More is less? What role have we all had to play in such a circumstance? Is our leadership more of a reflection of who we are than we have acknowledged? What can we do differently in order to get a better result?

Abu Ghraib has its antecedents right here in the United States. The violence sponsored by the United States abroad has its origins inside the United States. As the United States and NATO drop bombs on unsubmitting African people in Libya, the United States kills an innocent Black man in Georgia. There is more to come unless we affirmatively take steps to stop it. Republican voters cheered at the prospects of more executions at a recent Presidential debate. In a recent article, AFRICOM commander Army Gen. Carter F. Ham, Africom brags on its lessons learned from Libya:

“The command had to define what effects it needed, and what specific targets would contribute to achieving those effects – a precise endeavor. If attacking a communications node, planners must ask themselves what does that particular node do? How does it connect to other nodes? What’s the right munition to use? What’s the likelihood of collateral damage? What’s the right time of day to hit it? What’s the right delivery platform? And finally, how to synchronize attacks.

“That level of detail and precision … was not something the command had practiced to the degree that we were required to do in Odyssey Dawn…. If we were to launch a humanitarian operation, how do we do so effectively with air traffic control, airfield management, those kind of activities?”

The United States has to craft those practices with African partners, he added.

U.S. allies in Libya are as barbaric as their sponsors. Despite youtube's efforts to dissuade it from being seen, please watch this video sent to me from France:

As committed Libyans valiantly resist the entire NATO arsenal of modern and old-fashioned killfare, a new kind of perverse global plantation is being created. There is a clear and present danger that Africa and Asia will become U.S. killing fields for the next decade or more while the United States, itself, becomes a police state--unless we stop this poser leadership that really stopped representing us a long time ago. If we fail to stop them, watch that video again--and welcome to the new America, hauntingly familiar to a place we never left.

Cynthia McKinney can be contacted at hq2600(at)gmail.com.

The Tar Sands Action (smile)

Photo by Shadia Fayne Wood

by Ted Glick

My mind has been a jumble the last couple of days as I’ve tried to think about what I would be saying in this column. I knew I would be writing about the historic and amazing Tar Sands Action in Washington, D.C.

I am literally smiling as I embark on this writing journey. There was so much positive energy, so many wonderful experiences, so much hope for the future in and around the two weeks of sitting-in and standing-in in front of the White House, August 20-September 3.

One of the things I will never forget is how, day after day, new people kept arriving at Lafayette Park in the morning prepared to walk across the street and get arrested, 1252 of them. Wave after wave, daily, this kept happening. And over the last four days, from August 31 to September 3, the numbers kept getting bigger and bigger each day. On the last day, 243 people crossed Pennsylvania Avenue and stood and sat, first in the rain—most without rain gear--and then in the hot sun, some for four hours, before being arrested.

The vast majority of those arrested had never done so before. They were from all over the country, just about every single state. They ranged from teenagers to grandparents in their 80s, predominantly white but racially diverse, people of faith, landowners, movie celebrities, climate scientists, elected officials and more.

Then there was Kandi Mossett of the Indigenous Environmental Network and North Dakota, speaking Friday morning in Lafayette Park before she and others crossed over and got arrested, speaking from the heart, speaking of the many people close to her who have died of cancer at young ages because of the fossil fuel industry’s poisoning of her community’s air and water. Was there anyone in the audience of hundreds not moved to tears?

There were the young people Saturday morning and afternoon who sang and chanted for hour after hour on the Lafayette Park sidewalk to keep up the spirits and energies of those across the street in front of the White House who kept waiting for hours for their turn to be handcuffed and put into police wagons or buses.

There were the sobering things I learned about the tar sands throughout the two weeks, especially from the Indigenous people from Alberta province in Canada who have been leading this struggle for years: The second-largest area of (extra-dirty and thick, tar-like) oil in the world, behind only Saudi Arabia. The ethnocide of Indigenous people taking place as their land, water, health and millennia-old culture are being devastated as the forests are destroyed and massive strip mines moonscape the land. All of the toxic chemicals that must be added to the thick tar sands oil in order for it to be able to flow through pipelines, which increases the likelihood of corrosion and leaks. The plan for the pipeline to be built over the Ogallala Aquifer, water source for many millions in the US, and the ecologically sensitive Sand Hills of Nebraska.

There was the statement by our nation’s leading climate scientist, James Hansen, that if the Keystone XL pipeline is built and the tar sands is fully exploited, it’s “game over” for the planet as far as surviving climate change.

There was all the news coverage, this issue becoming all of a sudden a major national story. In retrospect, the decision of those who called this action for the “dog days” of late August, when Congress and the President are out of town, turns out to have been very prescient. There was lots of press coverage in the first week which then led to even more and more extensive coverage in the second week, including Bill McKibben being on the national PBS news program. Tim DeChristopher reported to friends that the protests were one of the three national news stories on the late night television news he saw in the Nevada jail where he’s currently housed.

There hasn’t been an action like this in the United States for a long, long time. The last ones I know of in terms of comparable numbers were the 1414 people, my late ex-wife and excellent political artist Peg Averill among them, arrested in Seabrook, New Hampshire in 1977 outside the site where a nuclear reactor was beginning to be built, and the many thousands arrested over several days in early May of 1971 in Washington, D.C. in a Vietnam war protest.

But neither of them went on for two straight weeks.

I know that some of those not in touch with what’s been happening within the climate movement in recent years were amazed to watch the Tar Sands Action unfold over these two weeks. But it didn’t come out of nowhere.

Two and a half years ago thousands of people were prepared to be arrested at the Capitol Coal Plant action in Washington, D.C. Then, more recently, there was the 10,000-person Power Shift conference and actions in mid-April in D.C. and the powerful, week-long March on Blair Mountain of hundreds, and a thousand on the last day, in early June. There was the example and leadership of Tim DeChristopher, who publicly called for just this kind of day-after-day, provoke-a-political-crisis type of action from the stage at Power Shift, three months before he was sentenced to two years in prison. And, without question, there was the exemplary, day-to-day leadership given by Bill McKibben. Without Bill, without his passion, his tireless work, his writing and speaking, this action never would have happened.

But it wasn’t a one-man show, not at all. Scores of mainly young people worked hard leading up to and during the two weeks of the action doing all of the things needed to make this be such a success. When Bill and 51 others were unexpectedly kept in jail for 53 hours after the first day’s action, there wasn’t an iota of letting up or hesitation. On the second day, as those 52 sat in jail, 45 people crossed over to the White House sidewalk, all of them knowing they could receive the same treatment. As it turned out, the willingness of those 45 to not back down, to show the police that we were serious about our plans for scores to get arrested each day for two weeks, led to a dramatic pull-back by the police. They went back to their original plan to use “post-and-forfeit,” essentially a $100 fine on everyone arrested, and then let them go within a few hours of their being arrested.

At the rally in Lafayette Park on September 3^rd, it was announced by Bill McKibben that there were plans being developed to keep this movement going. It has to; Obama is supposed to make a decision about the Keystone XL pipeline by the end of the year. One big upcoming date is October 7^th, when the last of a number of public hearings around the country on that pipeline will be held in Washington, D.C.

Bill also reported on an action taken in Seattle, Wa. where 40 or so people paid a visit to the newly-opened office of the Obama re-election campaign. A repetition of that tactic would be a way to keep getting the attention of Obama and his people: public visits to such offices all over the country, especially by people who worked for and/or voted for him in 2008, so that the Obama campaign understands that we are serious, that we expect Obama to finally carry through on his promises during the 2008 campaign.

“Let’s be the generation that finally frees America from the tyranny of oil.” That’s one of the things Obama said, along with this big applause line, that his election was “the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.”

He hasn’t yet delivered. Worse, he and his administration have opened up public lands in Wyoming for coal mining, allowed most mountaintop removal permits to proceed forward, done nothing to stop natural gas fracking, supported the expansion of deepwater ocean drilling beyond the Gulf of Mexico and, so far, given lots of indications that he will approve the Keystone XL pipeline. These methods of extreme extraction of fossil fuels are exactly the wrong direction to be going.

Michael Marx of the Sierra Club’s Beyond Oil campaign gave an excellent speech on Saturday in Lafayette Park. He called for us to help Obama find his “inner lion” so that he can finally begin to do what he promised he would do in 2008, which will only help his chances of reelection. He went on to say that if that is going to happen we need to find our own inner lions and we need to “bare out teeth.”

For those who want to see Obama reelected, for those who are turned off by all of his administration’s many betrayals of his campaign promises and unsure of what they’ll be doing about the Presidential election, and for those who have had it with both Republicans and Democrats, the campaign to defeat the Keystone XL pipeline is a classic unifying issue, an urgent issue. The next few months are key. Let’s keep building the Tar Sands Action momentum and win one for the people and the earth this year. 

Si, se puede!

Ted Glick is the National Policy Director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network. He worked on the Tar Sands Action for two months. Past writings and more information can be found at http://www.tedglick.com. Follow him on twitter @jtglick.

How to Remember 9/11

by Margaret Kimberley

In a few weeks, it all begins again: the howling scream-whine of a narcissistic nation oscillating wildly between fits of megalomania and depressive woe-is-me-ism. “Will there be calls for a true investigation into what the government knew and how that knowledge might have prevented the tragedy?” Not a chance – that would spoil the pity-party. But you can be sure that “anyone who dares suggest that our country also inflicts terror will not be given serious consideration.” Is the United States capable of serious – and civilized – collective thought? Certainly not in the last ten years.

 “The country is now in a permanent state of warfare.”

The awful words and platitudes are already being written and spoken: “Ten years later,” “ten years on,” “tenth anniversary,” “how to talk to the children,” “where were you when it happened,” etc, etc, etc. Of course I am speaking of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center towers in New York City and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.

If Osama bin Laden thought he could change or destroy the American system he was very much mistaken. Just a few days after the terrible events took place, cheap items allegedly honoring the dead began appearing for sale in New York, the city that was supposed to be in a deep state of mourning. Americans, led by the corporate media, rallied around George W. Bush, their illegitimate president, and were told to go forth and shop and not ask any inconvenient questions about who knew what and when they knew it.

We had to go to war against Afghanistan, so we were told, and only one member of Congress, Congressional Black Caucus member Barbara Lee, voted against the action. The country is now in a permanent state of warfare. The attacks were used as a pretext for invading and occupying Iraq and establishing secret prisons around the world. Words like water boarding, a form of torture, came into being and Guantanamo became a place where the United States threw away its Constitution and the rights it once guaranteed to citizens and non-citizens alike.

“Barack Obama has moved further to the right in ways that Bush never dreamed of.”

The military tribunals and all of those wars outlived the president who established them. His Democratic successor has no intention of undoing any of the things that Bush was vilified for doing. It isn’t surprising, given that progressives don’t care if his presidency is in some ways worse than Bush’s. Barack Obama has moved further to the right in ways that Bush never dreamed of.

Books, articles, documentaries, and ceremonies will be solemnly presented over the next three weeks. They will culminate in a ghastly parade of dreadful politicians, making solemn speeches and pretending to care about humanity. The families, more accurately some relatives of some of the victims, will be placed front and center and deified only for the purpose of justifying government evil doing on behalf of their deceased loved ones. The group September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, who actively oppose efforts to use their loved ones as rationales for the commission of violent acts, remain largely unknown to the public.

The system certainly didn’t miss a stride in the past ten years. Yet another World Trade Center tower is being built, and like its first iteration, on the government’s dime, with government agencies filling the office space and tax payer subsidies to the few private businesses which will be located there.

Will the endless commemoration bring any discussion of American’s history with the Taliban? 

Will the corporate media tell us how they were first supported and armed by the United States?

Will there be any revelations of Israeli “moving companies” and “photographers” coincidentally appearing on the New Jersey side of the Hudson River that fateful morning? Will there be calls for a true investigation into what the government knew and how that knowledge might have prevented the tragedy?

“The next three weeks will be an endless and shameless display of hyper patriotism and obvious money making.”

These questions are rhetorical because the answer to each one is obviously in the negative. The next three weeks will be an endless and shameless display of hyper patriotism and obvious money making. The effect will be to further propagandize an already ignorant nation and re-traumatize the masses with an endless loop of planes crashing into skyscrapers, desperate victims jumping to their deaths, fire fighters, police officers and weeping relatives.

Anyone who suggests moving on or asking for answers will be given no attention whatever, or will be given the spotlight only for the purpose of being dismissed and demonized. No one will be allowed to make any real connections with the suffering of people outside of this country. No one will be allowed to say that we should not inflict similar suffering with drone strikes in Afghanistan, or proxy terror in Somalia, or NATO backed bombing in Libya. Anyone who dares suggest that our country also inflicts terror will not be given serious consideration.

It is appropriate to remember the dead, but those memories should be extended to all the people of this planet. It is disgraceful for Americans to think that they are alone in their suffering or that their government doesn’t dispense its own brand of death. Remember September 11th if you will, but not in the way that the government and its corporate media lackeys demand.

Margaret Kimberley's Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR, and is widely reprinted elsewhere. She maintains a frequently updated blog as well as at http://freedomrider.blogspot.com. 

Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgandaReport.com.

US eco-activist Tim DeChristopher speaks out from prison

AP Photo

 Tim DeChristopher was jailed for two years in July for disrupting an oil and gas industry auction.   The following text appeared in a handwritten letter from Tim DeChristopher addressed to Grist’s Jennifer Prediger. Grist is an online independent news report.

If I had ever doubted the power of words, Judge Benson made their importance all too clear at my sentencing last month. When he sentenced me to two years in prison plus three years probation, he admitted my offense "wasn't too bad." The problem, Judge Benson insisted, was my "continuing trail of statements" and my lack of regret. Apparently, all he really wanted was an apology, and for that, two years in prison could have been avoided. In fact, Judge Benson said that had it not been for the political statements I made in public, I would have avoided prosecution entirely. As is generally the case with civil disobedience, it was extremely important to the government that I come before the majesty of the court with my head bowed and express regret. So important, in fact, that an apology with proper genuflection is currently fair trade for a couple years in prison. Perhaps that's why most activist cases end in a plea bargain.

Since that seems like such a good deal, some people are asking why I wasn't willing to shut my mouth and take it. But perhaps we should be asking why the government is willing to make such a deal. The most recent plea bargain they offered me was for as little as 30 days in jail. (I'm writing this on my 28th day.) So if they wanted to lock me up for two years, why would they let me walk for an apology and keeping my mouth shut for a while? On the other hand, if they wanted to sweep this under the rug, why would they cause such a stir by locking me up? Why do my words make that much of a difference?

With all criminal cases, of which 85 percent end in a plea bargain, the government has a strong incentive to avoid a trial: In addition to cutting the expense of a trial, a plea bargain helps concentrate power in the hands of government officials.

The revolutionaries who founded this country were deeply distrustful of a concentration of power, so among other precautions, they established citizen juries as the most important part of our legal system and insisted upon constitutional right to a jury trial. To avoid this inconvenience, those seeking concentrated power free from revolutionaries have minimized the role of citizens in our legal system. They have accomplished this by restricting what juries can hear, what they can decide upon, and most importantly, by avoiding jury trials all together. It is now accepted as a basic fact of our criminal justice system that a defendant who exercises his or her right to a jury trial will be punished at sentencing for doing so. Transferring power from citizens to government happens when the role of citizens gets eliminated in the process.

With civil disobedience cases, however, the government puts an extra value on an apology. By its very nature, civil disobedience is an act whose message is that the government and its laws are not the sole voice of moral authority. It is a statement that we the citizens recognize a higher moral code to which the law is no longer aligned, and we invite our fellow citizens to recognize the difference. A government truly of the people, for the people, and by the people is not threatened by citizens issuing such a challenge. But government whose authority depends on an ignorant or apathetic citizenry is threatened by every act of open civil disobedience, no matter how small. To regain that tiny piece of authority, the government either has to respond to the activist's demands, or get the activist to back down with a public statement of regret. Otherwise, those little challenges to the moral authority of government start to add up.

Over the last couple hundred years of quelling dissent, the government has learned a few things about maintaining power. Sometimes it seems that the government has learned more from our social movement history than we as activists have. Their willingness to let a direct action off with a slap on the wrist while handing out two years for political statements comes from their understanding of the power of an individual. They know that one person, or even a small group, cannot have enough of a direct impact on our corporate giants to really alter things in our economy. They know that a single person can't have a meaningful direct impact on our political system. But our modern government is dismantling the First Amendment because they understand the very same thing our founding fathers did when they wrote it: What one person can do is to plant the seeds of love and outrage in the hearts of a movement. And if those hearts are fertile ground, those seeds of love and outrage will grow into a revolution.

Source:

http://www.grist.org/politics/2011-08-29-letter-from-prison-tim-dechristopher-speaks

Why I bought a one-way ticket for Oct. 6

by Chuck Kaufman

There are iconic moments in the movement for justice and peace when, if you are not a participant, you regret it forever. My first was May Day 1971 when we shut down Washington, DC protesting the Vietnam War. I missed being with a million people in New York in September 1982 protesting nuclear war, and I missed the November 1999 WTO protest in Seattle. But I did participate, and earned my first arrest, in March of 1990 on the 10th anniversary of Archbishop Romero’s assassination. I also participated in the April 2000 IMF/World Bank protest in DC and a year later the Summit of the Americas protest in Quebec City where the Free Trade Area of the Americas was born and died. And, of course, I participated in all the national anti-war protests for the past 10 years beginning with the formation of the ANSWER Coalition three days after Sept. 11, 2001, especially the two largest – Jan. 18, 2003 in DC and Feb. 15 in New York.

The anti-war movement was never able to assemble the numbers it did prior to the invasion of Iraq after President Bush ignored the popular will and invaded Iraq based on lies.  Sectors of the movement demobilized to work in the pro-war Kerry campaign of 2004 and again for the Obama campaign in 2008, leaving the anti-war movement marginalized.

So why should Oct. 6, 2011, with its ambitious plan to start a permanent occupation of Freedom Plaza near the White House, be any different?

Maybe it won’t be. Maybe it will show that we’re still not angry enough. Maybe it will show that Euro-Americans are still too comfortable.

But maybe it will be the beginning of something new. I’m feeling that something different is in the air; the first sudden gust of wind announcing the hurricane to follow. A few days ago, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said that labor is going to ditch the Democrats in the run-up to 2012. He said, “We’re going to use a lot of our money to build structures that work for working people. You’re going to see us give less money to build structures for others, and more of our money will be used to build our own structure.” Hallelujah. I joked on Facebook that Trumka’s speech was the true epicenter of the recent East Coast earthquake.

October 6 could be the beginning of a paradigm shift in which the anti-war movement too divorces itself from the Democratic Party and determines to build popular movement structures that will have to be taken into account by whichever party is in power. President Obama may have made a serious mistake when he raised so many people to the mountain top of hope only to throw them under the bus after he got elected. As the social movements of Venezuela, Bolivia, and Brazil have proven, it is possible to take power peacefully, by mobilizing smart and by mobilizing relentlessly to confront the corporatacracy and its morally bankrupt political parties.

I bought a one-way ticket to Washington, DC for Oct. 6 in the hope that we are done with voting for the lesser of two evils; that we are done with expecting salvation from the servants of our corporate ruling class.

It may not happen. Our movements may yet be too co-opted. But, man, would I regret if forever if I had booked a return flight to my home in Tucson, Arizona for Oct. 9 and it turned out that those who stayed founded a new age without me.

Chuck Kaufman is National Co-Coordinator of the Alliance for Global Justice. He lived in Washington, DC for 38 years but now lives and works from Tucson, AZ.

Souce:

http://october2011.org/blogs/margaret-flowers/why-i-bought-1-way-ticket-oct-6

It Can Be Done. Now is the Time.

Americans Can Stop the Corporate Machine and Create a New World

More than 2600 have been arrested for dissent since 2009.  Here ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern is arrested at a speech by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in February, 2011.

by Kevin Zeese

October2011.org seeks to Stop the Machine and Create a New World. It can be done. Indeed, it must be done and now is the time to do it. The thousands who have joined October2011.org know the challenges we face but we also know that the disastrous direction the country is going is unacceptable. We have seen that the normal tools--elections, lobbying and education--do not work. The U.S. is facing a crisis on many fronts--economic, environmental and in foreign relations--and the government does not respond or even makes things worse.

We certainly understand the despair, lost hope and discouragement that many Americans feel about the U.S. political system. The system seems designed to make change impossible. We also see the power and sophistication of the corporate propaganda media machine. But, we also see people in the United States seeing through the propaganda, understanding the truth and getting angry. In every rebellion around the world that has occurred in the last year--from Egypt to Spain--the view that it can't be done, the people will not rise up would have been the belief of 95% of the population before it happened. Predicting the future is not as easy as it looks. There is a lot of evidence that the time may be right for an American Awakening. The past is not always the future.

The organizers of October2011.org are well aware of the challenges we face and aware of the power of the U.S. police forces to stamp out dissent. We have faced them before. We are developing contingency plans to deal with those issues. And, we know if the police remove us on the first day, October 6, we will come back in the days that follow with even more people. We will not give up. Indeed, in Spain on the first day, the police cleared out a few hundred people, and then they came back two days later with thousands more and stayed for a month. They continue to pressure the government with their indignant independent movement demanding real, fundamental change starting with real democracy, not the phony two party charade they encounter in Spain as we also do in the United States.

October2011.org is a peoples led effort. The people who have signed up are doing their part: Spreading the word; Urging their friends and families to come; And, coming themselves. We all know we cannot let business as usual continue -- it is literally killing us and others, degrading the environment, destroying the middle class and creating massive transfers of wealth to the richest 1%.

One thing that stops many from doing anything is fear of failure. We don't fear failure.October2011.org will be a success. The issue is what level of success will it be? That is up to you, dear reader. If you see the misdirection of the country, do not despair, join us. Unified with confidence in our power we cannot be stopped.

There are always people who say "it can't be done." If the human species lived by that credo we'd still be living in caves and not growing our own food. Africans would still be slaves in the United States. Women would not be allowed to vote. All of these changes became inevitable after seeming impossible. Indeed, change is inevitable. Our economy is collapsing and government is dysfunctional. This cannot continue. Change will occur. It is our job to direct it to a better world.

People involved in this effort have been organizing for years, some for decades. Some of the leaders, including me, organized events where 130+ were arrested in December and 110+ in March protesting the wars. Many were part of organizing demonstrations of tens of thousands of people. This event builds on years of organizing, not just demonstrations but organizations. It is not an event coming out of nowhere or disconnected from other organizing work. And, none of us see this event as the final event that will solve all the problems the United States is facing.

We see October2011.org as another event building an independent movement. This event is not about "instant"gratification, it is about persistent, well-informed citizen action that demands an end to war and domination by concentrated corporate interests.

Kevin Zeese, Daniel Ellsberg, and Ann Wright in December

In December I worked with some of the leaders of Veterans for Peace and other organizations to protest the wars. We knew when we organized this event we would be building to something like October2011.org -- we called it building a "culture of resistance". At this event, Pulitzer Prize-winning war correspondent and author Chris Hedges, made a clarion call for resistance, large and small, against corporatism and militarism: "Hope will only come now when we physically defy the violence of the state. All who resist, all who are here today keep hope alive. All who succumb to fear, despair, and apathy become an enemy of hope. They become in their passivity agencies of injustice."

The people of the United States are showing they are ready to revolt against the tyranny of corporate power. October2011.org is not alone in organizing a revolt against corporatism and militarism. We are part of a rising tide of Americans who have had enough. If the corporate media covered what was going on in the U.S. this time would be seen as one where the country is in revolt. The corporate media does not cover the culture of resistance because they know that if Americans knew they were not alone they would be empowered to do more.

Here's a snapshot of America in Revolt. There are many more examples - big revolts in Wisconsin, Ohio and Michigan against austerity and challenges to union rights. There are many other revolts being planned that are bigger than the ones listed below. October2011.org may be timed exactly right, it may be the zeitgeist moment where the people of the United States are ready to stand up against the corporate-state and demand real change; demand that the peoples necessities come before the profits of campaign donors. Here are some examples of Americans revolting against the status quo, some you may have heard of, but I doubt you have been aware of all of them: Peace protesters have been out all over the country demanding an end to the war. On the anniversary of the Iraq War a protest was held in Washington, DC:

Those who favor transparency in government, oppose war crimes, oppose abuse of prisoners and want to see a fair justice system have been protesting for Bradley Manning, the alleged Wikileaker. After this protest at Quantico, Manning was removed from solitary confinement and placed in more appropriate pre-trial conditions:

And, outrageous police force did not prevent the success of the Free Bradley Manning Movement:

Wall Street has been a particular target of U.S. protest. Banksters were protested on April 15th as we became aware that the nation's biggest banks, Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase were not paying any taxes:

and

Some are showing they can even mount successful protests by themselves, see this Los Angeles Bank of America protest, U.S. Uncut, a new protest movement organized bottom up has resulted in hundreds of protests against the banks. Here is one example of many, US Uncut vs. Boston Bank of America:

You can see more at U.S. Uncut.

National People's Action has mounted some of the most effective protests against banks and the austerity being caused by Wall Street:  They have also been very effective in pushing over the issue of property foreclosures and holding banks accountable.

Many are angry about the foreclosure crisis which is taking people out of their homes, resulting in vacant buildings undermining neighborhoods and families living in the streets. See these California foreclosure protests which led to 22 arrests.

Some have even camped out in public parks to protest austerity measures. This protest, Bloombergville, camped out in Union Square in New York City protesting the austerity budget of Mayor Bloomberg.

Students are protesting lots of actions being taken against them in the name of austerity and budget cuts. Students in Arizona took over their school board when they tried to cut the Mexican American Studies program.

Students in Detroit took over a high school the government was closing, a high school for pregnant girls that was having excellent educational outcomes:

The group By Any Means Necessary described the destruction of public education and why people are protesting in this video:

College students have protested around the country over massive tuition hikes, once again caused by austerity budget and deficit spending. Here are some examples, among many, Rutgers' students sit-in president's office:

Berkeley students protest tuition increase:

and a report on protests by students across the country:

While the media put a spotlight on the Tea Party, magnifying their protests beyond their real size, they also ignored nationwide protests against the health insurance industry as Obama pushed health care reform that further entrenched insurance domination of health care. The reason the Tea Party was covered by the corporate media was because their message was consistent with the insurance industry, keep government out of health care, leave it to the market. Those who challenged corporatism were ignored by the corporate media - but they were protesting across the country. The National Mobilization for Health Care shows many of the videos and tells the stories of health care protests at insurance companies throughout the country where more than 1,000 signed up to risk arrest to stop insurance domination of health care.

and

and

You can see videos and report of health care actions all over the country here.

The issue of climate change has been manipulated by the media to make it look like the science is unclear and the people oppose dealing with the urgent issue of climate change. In fact, many Americans are standing up. Tim DeChristopher, who will be sentenced on Tuesday, July 26th for stopping the illegal leasing of public lands to the oil and gas industry, stands out as an important resister. Here he is being hugged and sung to by supporters after being found guilty of fraud in oil lease purchase.

Tim gave a powerful, impromptu speech after the guilty verdict where he explained the strength of unity - why we must work together and support each other to make real change.

DeChristopher is not alone. Here are climate protesters taking over the Department of Interior earlier this year:

resulting in some being arrested.

And more on the arrests here.

Related to climate change is the continued dependence of the United States on coal. The fact is the U.S. could have a carbon-free/nuclear-free energy economy by 2035, instead the U.S. continues to allow mountain tops to be removed to mine coal. Many Americans are speaking out and opposing this practice. At this flower show mountaintop removal protesters criticized PNC Bank for their support of coal, 2011:

and here is a protest in West Virginia:

Earlier this year opponents of Mountain Top removal conducted an inspiring 50 mile march up Blair Mountain:

People in the United States also see the human rights violations of big business, especially the mistreatment of workers and the sucking out of dollars from local communities. Here hundreds of students march on Ohio State to kick out human rights violator Sodexo:

Others include  this event in Washington, DC last week:

These are a few among many, many more examples of America in revolt. Multiple protests are occurring every week. America is in revolt and October2011.org is seeking to bring all of these concerns together. October 6 ,the beginning of the occupation of Freedom Plaza, is the beginning of 11 years of war in Afghanistan and the first week of the new federal fiscal year that will make austerity spending - for everything except war - a reality. Every issue will be affected by this new budget and the link between war spending and austerity will become evident to all.
October2011.org seeks to unite Americans who recognize the need to end corporatism and militarism.

Already enough people have signed up and many more have told us they are coming without signing up so that we know October2011.org will be a success. The only question is how successful. When we announced October2011.org we published an article History is knocking! Now that we have been organizing this event for two months, there is no doubt history is in fact knocking. October2011.org will be an event of historic significance.

We know that out of this event will come more actions - just like a splash creates ripples; mass resistance will create more resistance. As Wikileaks says, "Courage is contagious." We want to make as big a splash as possible so that the impact is long-lasting and an independent political movement builds so it cannot be ignored. If you would like to see a turning point in history be part of October2011.org. Join us in spreading the word, reaching out to all Americans and making the turnout as large and as strong as possible.

Kevin Zeese is on the steering committee of October2011.org and directs It's Our Economy.