Selections from the Coalmine

Democracy in America?: Occupy Calls Nation's Bluff

2012-01-05T18:43:00.000-08:00

In many ways, the core of the Occupy Wall St. movement's impact in the U.S. has been to expose how corrupt our systems of governance really are, and to show what (direct) democracy in action actually looks like. We live in an age of perverse language, when "democracy" and "freedom" are exported by drones, or at gunpoint, and where anarchism -- democracy without government -- is viewed by many as tantamount to terrorism.

With those specific things in mind, here is a cluster of material related to the underlying theory and evolving practice of the Occupy movement, highlighting adaptive and prefigurative organizing successes and casting an eye towards 2012.

Another cluster focusing on corporate and state repression of democracy in the United States, with an emphasis on anti-OWS actions, will follow shortly.

Thank You Anarchists
With their emphasis on participatory direct democracy, the anarchists behind Occupy Wall Street have changed the very idea of what politics could be, and they've offered American political life a gift, should we choose to accept it. They’ve reminded us that we don’t have to rely on Republicans or Democrats, or Clintons, Bushes or Sarah Palin, to do our politics for us. With the assemblies, they’ve bestowed a refreshing form of grassroots organizing that, if it lasts, might help keep the rest of the system a bit more honest. | THE NATION
Occupy Wall Street's Anarchist Roots
The 'Occupy' movement is one of several in American history to be based on anarchist principles. From the beginning, organizers made the audacious decision to operate not only by direct democracy, without leaders, but by consensus, and with a commitment to direct action. | by DAVID GRAEBER, AL JAZEERA
Occupy Wall Street Revives An Ideology
The anarchism that motivates some Occupiers today is ultra-egalitarian, radically environmentalist, effortlessly multicultural, and scrupulously non-violent...The “horizontal” nature of a movement brought to life and sustained by social media fits snugly inside their anarchist vision of a future in which autonomous, self-governing communities would link up with one another, quite voluntarily of course. | THE NEW REPUBLIC
Intellectual Roots of Occupy Wall St. in Madagascar?
Occupy Wall Street's most defining characteristics—its decentralized nature and its intensive process of participatory, consensus-based decision-making—are rooted in other precincts of academe and activism: in the scholarship of anarchism and, specifically, in an ethnography of central Madagascar. | THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION

Occupy Wall Street's Consensus Process
A look into the "HOW" of the Occupy Wall Street movement: The consensus process. The community of occupiers at Liberty Plaza have sparked the process of building direct democracy. | YOUTUBE
Is New York City's General Assembly the University of the Future?
What is a university? There's a legal answer to that question, of course, as well as historical, philosophical, instructional, and civic. And strictly by some of these definitions, General Assembly doesn't qualify as a university. There are no degrees awarded. There is no .edu Web domain. There is n... | MINDSHIFT/KQED + M.I.T. Game-Changer: Free Online Education For All
Barter Market Replaces Money At Occupy Wall StreetOccupy Wall Street is first and foremost about Americans exercising their Constitutional right to peaceful assembly, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. | SHAREABLE
Barter Markets: Shopping without Money
We visit a street market in Barcelona where no money is allowed, only trading. | YOUTUBE
What The OccupyTogether Encampments Can Teach Society About Sustainability
Using grey water recycling systems, bicycle generators, and solar panels, many Occupy movements across the nation can now sustain themselves for the long haul, unlike the rest of society. + With Generators Gone, Wall Street Protesters Try Bicycle Power + TIME'S UP! :: NYC Direct Action Environmental Organization - Energy Bikes
Informed Journalist Not Taking Crap from NYPD
How to successfully resist police intimidation and defend your rights.
Clowns Arrested in Near-Successful Attack on Wall Street Bull
A small group of Occupy Wall Street activists engaged in a near-successful corrida against the Wall Street Bull. | YES LAB + Wall Street bull survives attack by matador; clowns arrested

META/FORWARD:

10 Important Questions (and Answers) on Occupy Wall Street
FROM ITS BEGINNING on October 15th to this day in early January 2012, Occupy Vancouver has prompted many questions about its nature, aims, and practices. I here offer responses to some of the more frequent and wide-ranging of these questions. They are my personal responses, but they also tap the spirit of the movement, and the experiences and thoughts of many fellow occupiers, gleaned over the months of my involvement.
The Occupy Wall Street Movement and the Coming Demise of Crony Capitalism
In 1978, to the laughter of many and the derision of a few, I wrote a book called, "The Downfall of Capitalism and Communism," which predicted that Soviet communism would vanish around the end of the century, whereas crony or monopoly capitalism would create the worst-ever concentration of wealth in... | RAVI BATRA, TRUTHOUT
Why Now? What's Next? Naomi Klein and Yotam Marom in dialogue about OWS
Naomi Klein talks to an Occupy Wall Street organizer about offering resistance, creating alternatives, and using Occupy as a moment to dream big.
OWS: The End of the Beginning
To call a mayor or a city councilman slippery is to insult every smooth, wet stone that has ever graced a streambed. To call them faithless is an offense to all adulterers. To call them liars is, well, too banal. Would you scold an anteater for eating all the ants? Better to trust the wind. Which, a... | BEN EHRENREICH, LOS ANGELES REVIEW OF BOOKS
What Occupy Has Accomplished So Far
1. Shifted more than 10 billions dollars from big banks to credit unions. Relocalized money flow. 2. Shifted the national conversation to focus on the interlinked issues of income disparity, joblessness , homelessness, debt, crony capitalism, big banks... | EVOLVER.NET
Occupy or Self-manage?
I have yet to see my nearest large occupation, Boston, or the precursor of all U.S. occupations, Wall Street. Instead, I have been on the road for the past six weeks in Thesselonika and Athens Greece; Istanbul and Diyarbikar Turkey; Lexington, Kentucky; London, England; Dublin, Ireland; and in Barce... | MICHAEL ALBERT, RED PEPPER
Occupy Wall Street and the Global Trend Against Inequality
The protest movement that began in Tunisia in January, subsequently spreading to Egypt and then to Spain, has now engulfed Wall Street and cities across America. Globalization and modern technology now enable social movements to transcend borders as rapidly as ideas can. And social protest has found... | JOSEPH E. STIGLITZ, SLATE
Occupy Wall Street, Act Two
Some radical historians claim the entire Historical Movement of the Social went wrong in 1870 when the Paris Commune failed to expropriate (or at least destroy) the Bank. Could this really be so? | HAKIM BEY, INTERACTIVIST INFO EXCHANGE

Principled, Consistent, Wrong: The Perfectly Selfish Problematics of Ron Paul

2012-01-05T14:33:00.000-08:00

He’s the only truly anti-war, anti-imperialist candidate in the 2012 Presidential race, but here's the truth: Take a good look at Ron Paul and you'll see a racist, sexist, anti-gay, anti-worker candidate whose ideas about getting rid of all environmental regulation, returning to the gold standard, rolling back civil rights, and further restricting women’s access to abortion, are all extremist. So is his libertarian support for the Austrian School of Economics. Paul, like Rick “Oops” Perry, is another right-wing free-market zealot from Texas not worthy of holding higher public office.

But what is it about Paul–his brand or his substance–that pulls support from so many parts of the political continuum?

Of Broken Clocks, Presidential Candidates, and the Confusion of Certain White Liberals
"And [Paul would] shut down the Fed! Woo-hoo! That would be awesome: so then interest rates and the money supply could be controlled entirely by private banks, without even a theoretical modicum of public accountability! What progressive wouldn’t love that? And sure, the Fed was created by an act of Congress, but that doesn’t matter: a president with the determination of David Duke can just snap his fingers and poof! All the central bankers will be begging on the streets for change! Like I said, it’s fucking magic!" | BY TIM WISE
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Let's Be Clear: Ron Paul Sucks, and Here Are 20 Reasons Why
Every single one of the candidates currently running for the Republican nomination is a walking disaster. But one of them, Texas congressman Ron Paul, seems to be getting a disturbing amount of support from liberals. Mostly that's because his nut-job libertarian views happen to not sound so nutty on a handful of issues. He wants to end the War on Drugs. He is against the death penalty. He would support a constitutional ban on gay marriage. He was opposed to the War in Iraq and wants to end all American military intervention abroad. All of that sounds pretty good to us left-wing types — downright refreshing coming from a Republican. Some progressives have claimed they'd rather vote for him than for Obama. Even Occupiers have sung his praises.But if you're a liberal who supports Ron Paul, you either haven't been paying enough attention or you're out of your fucking mind. | BY LITTLE RED UMBRELLA
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Paul criticized equal pay, AIDS patients, sexual harassment victims
Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) may be the most principled and consistent Republican candidate for president, but what exactly are those principles? | THE RAW STORY
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Ron Paul Thought His Newsletters Were Pretty Great in 1995
Ron Paul's position on the newsletters with racist statements that were published under his name 20 years ago has changed quite a since then -- in a 1995 interview with CSPAN, for instance, he was pretty proud of them. | THE ATLANTIC
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Occupy protesters interrupt Ron Paul: "Why do you hate gays?"
Protesters with the 99-Percent movement have been interrupting campaign-related events all over Iowa. | THE RAW STORY
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On the Environment, Ron Paul Even Crazier Than Bachmann and Perry
OK, forget that he'd like to make it a criminal offense for a woman to get an abortion. How about that he thinks there should be no environmental protections at all? | TREEHUGGER
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A Bigot Through and ThroughThere isn't any reason good enough to support Ron Paul | ELIZABETH SCHULTE, SOCIALIST WORKER

OF RELATED INTEREST:

The Trap: What Happened to our Dream of Freedom?
A series by Adam Curtis exploring the concept and definition of freedom, specifically, "how a simplistic model of human beings as self-seeking, almost robotic, creatures led to today's idea of freedom. | BBC
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The Austrian School of Economics is Crank Science
The Austrian School of Economics is a tiny group of libertarians at war with mainstream economics. They reject even the scientific method that mainstream economists use, preferring to use instead a pre-scientific approach that shuns real-world data and is based purely on logical assumptions. But this is the very method that thousands of religions use when they argue their opposing beliefs, and the fact that the world has thousands of religions proves the fallibility of this approach. Academia has generally ignored the Austrian School, and the only reason it continues to exist is because it is financed by wealthy business donors on the far right. The movement does not exist on its own scholarly merits.

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Noam Chomsky on Ron Paul and the US Libertarian Party
Noam Chomsky talking about US propaganda and how US Libertarian Party values like those advocated by Ron Paul contrast with Libertarian thought elsewhere. | YOUTUBE
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Ayn Rand Made US a Selfish, Greedy Nation
Ayn Rand helped make the United States into one of the most uncaring nations in the industrialized world, a neo-Dickensian society where healthcare is only for those who can afford it, and where young people are coerced into huge student-loan debt that cannot be discharged in bankruptcy. | READER SUPPORTED NEWS
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Pulling Back the Curtain on the Wall Street Money Machine
We are indentured to a Wall Street money machine that creates our money and lends it back to us at interest. We have forgotten our roots, when the American colonists thrived on a system of money created by the people themselves, debt-free and interest-free. The continued dominance of the Wall Street money machine depends on that collective amnesia. | TRUTHOUT
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On OWS, Ron Paul and the Fed
Ron Paul may hate imperial war, but he also hates Social Security and Medicare... We need to democratize the Fed, but let's not sign on with Ron Paul, please. And let's not join with the simple-minded right-wing critique that blames all of capitalism's systemic problems on government institutions. | LEFT BUSINESS OBSERVER