Two sites that I often check up on to get the News are Truthout and Reader Supported News. Both are basically alternatives to
Time and in fact offer and interesting sprinkle
of what's in the news States' Side. They also are the only place I know of that give regular coverage to the Occupy movements and its aftermath. And of course, now that the main thrust of the movement is past, various other configurations are cropping up in its wake.
One article leads to
another, and you find yourself knee deep in discussions about something you in fact know nothing about!
Well that's not absolutely true. In that last article, an Occupier was blasting a 99% organizer, as if it were the enemy. I may not be up to speed about OWS or even the 99%, but I do know a little something about organizing, and I have my opinions about the relationship that should exist between the organizers and the organized. So I posted an answer. and here it is, in italics, with some added comments.
"We
were then asked to come up with some ideas about direct actions we could
take."
That is the
key with what was 'wrong'. If you want to fight, then you have to know what to
fight for. If the organizers start by asking you what YOU want to do, then I'd
say they're on to something.
If you come
to these 'organizing' situations expecting to be told what to do, then it is
you who are subverting OWS. For the entire point of the Occupy movement is to
take back power. But that means learning to chose, to think for yourself, and
organize the follow through that ensures success.
As a union rep in France, nothing irritates me more than the attitude that asks 'what are
the unions doing'. Because the only answer to that is what are you doing?
That being
said, you had the right idea in swapping phone numbers with your neighbor. That
way both can look for what you need, and share your finds with each other and
with others. That's what OWS is about.
If you
crave training, my best suggestion is to check out your union locally. Yes,
some of the people there might be silly and self important buffoons (but they
appear everywhere), but most are people with their ear to the ground. At the
local level, they are your colleagues; they speak your language, but they also
have the logistical support to show how your situation fits into the greater
scheme of things. They have behind them decades of experience of how the world
shapes your workplace and life. And how to fight back.
Yes, some of my co-workers are self important fools as organizers. And, as in France, there are several competing unions, I leave to imagine the hostilities between them. But unions as a whole have learned a lot from previous events. In 1995, a major strike broke out to fight the pension revision plan. It lasted a month, but it also sustained itself because it work from the ground up. Each local telling the general Union how to behave. An interesting prequel to OWS, in a way...
I might even add that the source of your problems might not have been with the stated goals of the seminar, but with the person in charge of running the seminar. It is not an innate talent to teach.
If the
Dem's start snooping around, fishing for votes, don't slap them away, coopt
them: you have the whipping hand and can shape the party's objectives. It's up
to you to tell the party what ideas it should have, not the other way around.
It's what the Tea Party did to the Republicans. Democracy thrives on debate,
not consensus. to face radical Republican, we need radical Democrats.
It is an interesting opinion that I've noticed among my colleagues, and often those on the left (but are my colleagues, albeit working class, on the left?): those who hold power of any kind are selfserving and dangerous...
Part of
what OWS is about is wrestling power from the elites. But that will never happen
if you are not willing to touch the very levers of power at your disposal.
And that the elites don't hesitate to use. It often leaves me dazed to see that people can at the same time think that politics are useless and not wonder why the wealthy pump such collossal sum into the process.
The essence
of the Occupy Movement, the 99% and any other of the similar movements, be they
politically affiliated or not, is the inalienable Right to the Pursuit of
Happiness. That means taking your life back, not fun and games, not playing
Beatnick facing off against a Cop.
It means
finding your purpose in life and then offering that purpose to fill the needs
of the Collective Good.
When Progressives took what they could get, they had Two Roosevelts (the anti Trust acts, the New Deal), Wilson (the Society of Nation, the blueprint for the UN), Truman and, yes, even Kennedy and Johnson (the New Frontier and the Great Society, not to mention that minor detail, Civil Rights). Even the best Republican in office, Eisenhower, maintained and augmented the New Deal (the interstate freeways). None of them were saints by any stretch of the imagination. But the force was powerful enough to put a man on the Moon and get a Nixon to set up the EPA (I don't know which is the more startling).
If you want the Messiah to return, go to Church, but don't call yourselves politically progressive or anything else. To be political is to realise that a bit of good helps a whole lot more than demands for perfection. and to achieve that little bit of good is to understands the levers at your disposal and take whatever you can get to get there, one step at a time.
