How you can resist funding the government →
other forms our opposition can take →
nonviolent action; “People Power” →
“Occupy” movement
War tax resister Steve L. sends me this report from the Occupy Freedom Plaza protest in Washington, D.C., :
It was an experience I will not soon forget, bordering on spiritual.
Although I have not heard an official number, I’m guessing there were close to two thousand people there.
I arrived at around noon, just before Kevin Zeese, one of the organizers, got up and spoke to the crowd.
His talk was informative and depressing; but empowering as well.
He spoke about how our democracy has been hijacked by one percent of the population who because of their obscene wealth, have a disproportionately powerful influence in the forming of public policy.
Our leaders marginalize the 99% and instead do the bidding of the 1%.
He reported that the wealthiest 400 Americans have the wealth of 154 million people and that their tax rate is half that of the middle class.
Soon after Kevin spoke, we all organized and marched toward the White House,
then to the Chamber of Commerce where a huge banner hung from the building
that said “JOBS” in individual letters.* We held
a rally there and many spoke including Medea Benjamin from Code Pink. She
gathered résumés from many in the crowd as we chanted “We want jobs!” Since
the doors to the Chamber remained closed and our calls for jobs unanswered,
Medea slid the résumés under the front door.
Upon leaving the Chamber of Commerce, we proceeded to march down K Street
which is headquarters for many lobbying firms. What was remarkable and
encouraging was the feeling of solidarity among all of us. And also
heartening to me was the support we received from passersby as we marched.
Whether it was friendly honks from car horns, thumbs up, or peace signs, all
who took notice of us seemed to share a sense of camaraderie. And why
wouldn’t they? They too are part of the 99%. The major media, due to their
lack of integrity and talent for honest journalism, have downplayed and/or
misrepresented this movement which is spreading across the nation. They say
there is no unifying message and that we are a leaderless movement. Well, to
answer the latter sentiment, we may be leaderless and in my opinion, that is
the beauty and one of the greatest strengths of the movement. We are a
grassroots movement of many voices. The media, like the State in their
weakness only understands the paradigm of authority and hierarchy. As to our
message, it is simply this: We want an end to wars and we want the government
to provide for human needs not corporate greed.
I have every intention of going back to Freedom Plaza and also to go and
stand with my brothers and sisters on Wall Street as well. I encourage every
person who loves freedom and justice to support this Occupy Movement. There
are currently around 900 cities being occupied across the nation. More than
likely there is a city or town near you that has an Occupy Movement. If not,
perhaps you may consider starting one in your community.
Thanks for allowing me the opportunity to share with your readers on
The Picket Line.
* This banner was put up by the Chamber; the
complete message is “JOBS: Brought to you by American free enterprise.” The
Chamber likes to rhetorically champion free enterprise, but it is mostly a
lobby group trying to win political favors and money for businesses, and
it supported such examples of “American free enterprise” as the bailout of
Detroit automakers and the Troubled Asset Relief Program. —♇
In D.C., the spontaneous spread of the Occupy movement coincided with and overshadowed the earlier-planned “Freedom Plaza” occupation there.
Ruth Benn of NWTRCC was there for parts of that action, and sent a report to the wtr-s email list.
Myself, I haven’t had much to say about the Occupy Wall Street movement and its spin-offs.
I biked by the Berkeley incarnation of it on the way back from the university library where I had been hunting through the microfilm, but didn’t see anything there worth reporting: a handful of people huddled under a tarp in front of a Bank of America branch (what passes for the “financial district” in Berkeley), some protest signs.
So most of what I know about how the movement is progressing I’m getting from blogs and the news media, and I haven’t felt like this has given me much original to contribute on the subject.
Most of the coverage I have read has been very disappointing.
The Occupiers seem to be such a loose coalition of interests and grievances that most commentators take advantage of this to make their commentaries all about themselves — most of what I have read is variations on “what the Occupy movement really stands for is [insert my pet concern here] and the way they will succeed is by following my unsolicited advice, as herein composed from back in my office.”
Witness, for instance, the abominable bloviator Tom Friedman’s revealing reaction:
“When you see spontaneous social protests erupting from Tunisia to Tel Aviv to Wall Street, it’s clear that something is happening globally that needs defining” [emphasis mine —♇].
Sadly, the vulgar libertarians have been at their vulgarest when covering the protest — reacting to a bunch of left-leaning protesters running loose on Wall Street as though Obama had seized Galt’s Gulch under eminent domain in order to have a nice place to hold a Phish concert.
So my usually more-or-less reliable sources of insightful though often snarky comment that cuts through partisan posturing on important issues of the day have been less helpful than usual (I’m looking at you, Reason… though keep trying).
The one “official” statement from Occupy Wall Street that I’ve seen violates my cardinal rule for such statements — it talks almost entirely about “they” and “them” without committing “us” to any particular course of action (the closest it gets is to “urge you” to “exercise your right to peaceably assemble; occupy public space; create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone”).
This is understandable, as it must have been difficult enough to get a group of people with such varying concerns, ideas, and commitments to agree on what they’re outraged about, without then trying to get them to agree on a specific and suitably-strong response to commit to.
And maybe at this point, the occupations, and their momentum, is the action, and not merely the seed from which the action is supposed to grow.
It is bringing together people who were feeling angry and voiceless and
letting them hear a whole bunch of other people talk about their perspectives their ideas for change — likely a more raw, more radical, and more diverse set than they encounter on the boob tube or their favorite web sites
experimenting with a new set of modes of organizing and political decision-making
That’s not so bad just by itself, and already makes it more than just the left-wing equivalent of the TEA parties.
I’d been feeling kind of guilty about not participating in any of the Occupy events, and having a hard time putting a finger on the reasons for my reluctance.
After all, might this be something like the “we’re finally fed up”-rising I’ve been hoping for?
In , as you’re probably already aware, groups of people from a number of area law enforcement agencies tried to destroy the Occupy Oakland gathering.
They fired a variety of projectiles at the crowd, including tear gas and flash-bang grenades — in one case, striking an Iraq vet in the head with enough force to hospitalize him with brain damage, then tossing a flash-bang grenade into the group of people who had come to his aid.
The result of all of this is that the city of Oakland and its new mayor (the darling of Oakland’s progressive voters in the last election) got a black eye, and the occupation came back stronger than ever.
The occupation’s 1,607-person “general assembly,” operating on a supermajority-voting modified consensus-style process, decided to up the ante by calling for what it called a “general strike” to take place today.
The strike proposal called on people to “liberate Oakland and shut down the 1%” by joining the strike, and threatened to march on “banks and corporations” that failed to honor the strike by closing their doors for the day.
It further encouraged people to organize on their own initiative to “participate in shutting down the city.”
I got downtown at about .
I believed the hype enough that I packed a lunch, figuring everything might be closed down.
Not so much.
Some businesses were closed, but many others, even ones close to the Occupy Oakland encampment, were still operating.
There were a few thousand people gathered at an intersection of Broadway, listening to an amplified speaker.
The mood was festive.
At one point, a hundred or so people broke into a synchronized dance as someone sang a protest song to the tune of “I Will Survive.”
The speakers were not doctrinaire and didn’t seem to be trying to make themselves out to be the leaders, which was a refreshing contrast to the ANSWER-style anti-war rallies.
One speaker noted that the general assembly had also passed a resolution encouraging people to occupy or otherwise appropriate abandoned or foreclosed buildings.
Another encouraged people to move their own bank accounts into credit unions on .
The encampment had a fresh layer of straw down under it, and was ringed by booths, including a library of sorts, a compost collection area, and a food tent.
A number of publishers and booksellers of various socialist persuasions had set up lit tables, and the IWW were silkscreening propaganda messages in black beans onto tortillas and handing them out (neat trick).
There were several shrines to Scott Olsen, the vet who was shot during the police raid on the encampment.
It reminded me a lot of the protests I’d seen in Mexico, which seem commonly to take the form of people camping out for a period of time in the zócalo.
If I were to try to distill the message of the crowd — the signs they carried, the speakers they cheered, the chants they chanted — it’d come down to something like this: “Why the hell should we play by the rules when the rich and powerful all have their thumbs on the scales — it’s our turn now, there are more of us than you, and we’ll take what we can get because we’re sick of getting played.”
There wasn’t much patience for nuance or well-thought-through policy proposals: mostly just a feeling that the haves mostly got theirs unfairly, and so the have-nots have every right to demand it back.
That said, chants and signs and exhortations from speakers are necessarily oversimplified things, so it should be no surprise that any message you can distill from them will itself be oversimplified.
The rally became a short march, doing a loop around several blocks of the downtown area.
There was much talk of “shutting down” Oakland or the 1%, but really the march was just a parade.
It marched past the state and federal government buildings without stopping to do anything there, and eventually circled back to its starting place.
Some people plastered posters on the doors of a Wells Fargo branch that had wisely been closed for the day; a crowd rallied outside a Comerica bank branch across the street that hadn’t been so wise (they quickly locked the doors).
Some time after I left, the glass-breaking fetishist fringe smashed some windows at the Wells Fargo branch and some other businesses that failed to heed the strike call.
For the most part, though, the rally was overwhelmingly nonviolent, and the police presence was very light: except for some police in the subway station and a handful of guards inside the doors of the government buildings, I didn’t see any uniforms at all.
That changed as the window-smashers showed up, and as night fell, the police presence at the Port of Oakland increased.
By late-afternoon, the rally had moved from downtown to the Port of Oakland, which the marchers blockaded (“Maritime operations at the port are effectively shut down,” a port authority spokesman said around ).
Rumor had it that the Occupy San Francisco crowd had decided to march across the Bay Bridge (which normally has no pedestrian access) to join them, but I didn’t see any evidence of that.
So, yeah, that’s where it stands as of now.
A general strike it wasn’t, though it was a big bunch of people being pissed off together, making law enforcement more expensive, and shutting down a major port for a while.
Last night I went to Occupy Oakland’s “general assembly” to learn about the deliberative process that has developed there.
I found it very encouraging, at least when viewed on a sort of wide-angle and “meta” level.
To set the scene: for most of , helicopters were hovering over the U.C. Berkeley campus, where students organized an “occupy” event of their own, started to settle an encampment, and held their ground nonviolently while being attacked by brutal riot police.
Oakland’s mayor, members of the Oakland City Council, and representatives of the business community all issued statements to the effect that Occupy Oakland would no longer be tolerated.
The city cut water and electricity to the plaza where Occupy Oakland is encamped.
There was widespread anticipation of another police raid.
After the “general strike” and Port of Oakland blockade , a group of Occupiers tried to take over a vacant building near the encampment.
Anticipating a police raid, they set up burning barricades and smashed bricks to create makeshift projectiles.
Earlier, the general assembly of Occupy Oakland had approved a resolution encouraging the occupation of abandoned and foreclosed properties, which read in part: “We commit to providing political and material support to neighborhood reclamations, and supporting them in the face of eviction threats or police harassment.
In solidarity with the global occupation movement, we encourage the transformation of abandoned spaces into resource centers toward meeting urgent community needs that the current economic system cannot and will not provide” — and the people who carried out this building takeover and its attempted defense presumably felt themselves to be acting within that mandate.
Some other people affiliated with the Occupy Oakland movement graffitied buildings, smashed windows of businesses, and physically threatened people who tried to get in their way.
Acts of vandalism and violence such as these do not seem to be supported by most of the Occupiers.
Most would seem to prefer to stick to nonviolent resistance tactics, and to see the use of vandalism and violence as counterproductive and unhelpfully codependent with police violence.
However, the people advocating a nonviolent approach have not figured out a way to use nonviolent tactics to successfully discourage violent ones, and so the violent tactics have come to dominate the media coverage and public image of the movement.
Many people in the Occupy movement consider nonviolence to be a sort of unilateral disarmament that leaves the tools of violent coercion (which they believe to be potentially strong and effective tools) in the hands of their opponents.
They consider attempts to enforce nonviolent discipline to be effectively collaboration with the government in its attempts to suppress what is threatening to it about Occupy Oakland.
Nonviolence, to them, is a compromise made by the squeamish or the superstitiously pacifist in a misguided attempt to conciliate the powerful — not a strong tool that can be used to wield power.
This is something that every successful nonviolent resistance campaign has had to deal with.
They have all faced challenges from people who are sympathetic with their aims but skeptical of their means, impatient, and eager to tap their righteous rage to pay back some of the violence they have been receiving.
The best way for a nonviolent resistance campaign to cope with this challenge is to demonstrate results: to show that they’re every bit as committed and no less eager to put skin in the game and take risks, and to demonstrate that bold goals can best be reached by means of nonviolent action.
Gandhi did not become commander-in-chief of the Indian resistance by making speeches about how everybody ought to be nice to one other.
He had to convincingly demonstrate to skeptical members of the resistance why his methods ought to be given a chance to succeed in place of the tactics of a more traditional and intuitive violent revolution.
But some folks at Occupy Oakland hoped that there might be a short-cut: They could vote their way out of the problem, demonstrating by a show of hands of those in the general assembly that this was meant to be a nonviolent occupation and that violent tactics were an unwelcome invasion.
To this end, two resolutions were proposed for ’s general assembly.
The second of these, which would have declared that “those who lauch physical attacks on people or property are not welcome to do so at or near Occupy Oakland events and encampment,” was withdrawn at the last minute, with its promoters saying they plan to reintroduce it at a future assembly.
The other resolution was vague, urging “individuals employing Black Bloc tactics” (shorthand for vandalism & violence) “to use self-restraint and forethought” and “not to destroy local businesses,” while encouraging people using non-violent tactics “to continue to do so.”
The vague and non-committal wording of this resolution did not serve it well; only 15% of the 800+ people who voted on the resolution approved of it (the general assembly operates on a supermajority voting system, where resolutions approved by at least 90% of the votes of those assembled are considered to have passed and to represent the opinion of the assembly as a body).
A third proposal, calling on Occupy Oakland to march on and occupy a particular but unspecified building, also failed — the promoters of that resolution hoped to stay anonymous and so presented it via a proxy who was unable to answer even the most elemental questions about it (which building? do we have the keys or do we have to break in? who owns it? what is its capacity? what facilities does it contain?).
Be all that as it may, what I found encouraging about the general assembly (the first I’d been to), had nothing to do with any of the specific items on the agenda.
The process that has developed and is developing — to keep the encampment running, to encourage participation, to share information, and to deliberate — is working.
Hundreds of people, with differing perspectives and ways of engaging, and with extreme variations in political outlook, come together enthusiastically and patiently to share their perspectives and to make decisions and to get things done.
It is like a real-world incarnation of the platonic ideal of “politics” meant as the careful deliberation of the polis — so different from “politics” as we usually use the term.
And it is “radically inclusive” just like they say: participatory, grass-roots, egalitarian, and non-authoritarian.
The facilitators are skillful, careful, and non-factional.
Whatever happens to Occupy Oakland itself — whether it succumbs to repression, internal division, winter weather, or short attention spans or whether it grows into a larger movement to occupy buildings, bring down banks, or launch a violent or nonviolent revolution — the people who are participating in this encampment and guiding its development and its innovations in organization will be empowered by their experiences to seed and nourish future grassroots movements by bringing along what they have learned.
Some bits and pieces from here and there:
If you haven’t seen it yet, treat yourself to this video of U.C. Davis chancellor Linda Katehi walking to her car down a path lined by silent sitting students, in the wake of yet another act of standard-procedure police brutality against protesting students on that campus.
Roy Prockter has taken his legal battle for conscientious objection to military taxation as far as it will go in the English court system, without success, and is now appealing to the European Court of Human Rights.
A group of residents of Andino, Argentina met and decided to suspend their payment of property taxes after rate increases they felt to be unreasonable.
The government of Argentina has been taking drastic steps — including prosecuting economists who have the nerve to contradict optimistic government figures, and sharply restricting the legality of people and companies to hedge by keeping their assets in foreign currency — to wish away inflation and prop up the peso, while introducing its own version of an austerity plan.
The resistance movement targeting the new tax on electric bills in Greece continues. Some recent actions have included sit-down blockades of the utility company offices and YouTube videos showing how resisters can reconnect their own power if the utility shuts them off for non-payment.
Some bits and pieces from here and there:
The U.S. Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation has released its annual Overview of the Federal Tax System that gives you some idea of how the federal government gets its hands on our money.
Tim Huber at Mennonite Weekly Review writes of “taxing conscience one war at a time” in the wake of the kerfluffle over government-mandated health insurance coverage.
The IRS doesn’t seem to be anticipating any sudden boost to its enforcement budget, judging from this news about the agency offering early retirement packages to the employees in their enforcement division.
graphic from a handbill that people from New England War Tax Resistance are
handing out at a tax day event organized with Occupy Boston
War tax resisters are finding that it is no less of a delicate balancing act
trying to merge their message with the left-wing Occupy movement than it was
with the right-wing
TEA Party.
…I took part part in meetings for tax day with the Boston groups that have
taken the lead in planning.
Reconciling the
WTR message
and those that OB &
the unions & NV
trainers want to get out has been challenging. It hasn’t been that the
coalition is averse to
WTR (though
folks have the usual questions), but that the mandate to the working group
was to find a consistent bottom-line demand that would get the most assent
from the public while at the same time giving all factions space to present
their part of the story. From my call that went out to the
E. MA
resisters:
The coalition that planned the tax day events is made up of Occupy Boston,
peace, and social-justice groups. After much discussion it was agreed that
the message should be kept simple and the slogan “Corporations and the 1%:
pay your taxes!” would be the best way to focus the public’s attention during
this one-day event; I agreed with the strategy. While it could be argued that
WTR, war, and
militarism rather than greed and corruption might be a better focus, the
WTR community
in the Boston area just doesn’t have the resources to pull off that sort of
demonstration, let alone lead a coalition. On the other hand those fighting
corporatism, greed, and the abuse of the tax system are beginning to
understand the connection of these ills to the militarization of America, and
have welcomed our collaboration.
I know it’s at first blush difficult to reconcile the call that corporations
should pay their fair share of taxes at the same time that we’re asking
citizens to refuse taxes that go for warmaking. But it’s not impossible, we
just have to be patient and continue to show the connections.…
I don’t see myself marching under a “pay your taxes” banner any time soon, but
some folks apparently see the ideological inconsistency as being a price worth
paying for possible coalition-building.
Our own local tax resistance group is holding a demonstration on tax day along with CodePINK, Global Day of Action on Military Spending, BAY-Peace, and others.
Some of these groups also have a pro-tax message, though not one necessarily out of line with mainstream war tax resistance (“Taxes for education not militarization”), and not one that forms a banner covering the demonstration as a whole.
The “tax the rich” message is very popular in Occupy circles, and war tax resisters who know that a rich person’s taxes are as badly misused as a poor person’s taxes have their work cut out for them when trying to put their own message forward.
