The agreement averts a looming showdown between EGT and the ILWU over the conglomerate’s refusal to hire longshoremen at its newly minted export grain terminal at the Port of Longview.

The details of the settlement were not immediately made public, but in the released statement, ILWU International President Robert McEllrath stated, “This is a win for the ILWU, EGT, and the Longview community.”

Thus, the ILWU’s two-year long struggle against EGT’s union busting in Longview appears to be at an end.  (Given EGT’s “negotiating” history, however, a measure of skepticism is perhaps in order until the deal actually comes to be finalized.)

It is imperative, then, to reflect back on how such an agreement was able to ultimately emerge.  Though McEllrath and EGT CEO Larry Clarke both praised the intervention and leadership of Governor Gregoire, the truth is that it was the militancy of the ILWU rank and file that finally forced EGT back to the bargaining table.

On two separate occasions, for instance, ILWU Local 21 and their supporters blocked trains from reaching EGT’s scab facility.  And back in September, longshoremen stormed the EGT terminal, allegedly dumping grain from an idle train car.

Of course, such militancy has also extracted a heavy toll.  To date, the union faces more than $300,000 from numerous fines and federal injunctions.  The longshoremen and their families, meanwhile, have been subject to 75 arrests, 200 citations, and various other means of police intimidation and harassment.

Certainly, though, one cannot overlook the impact the Occupy movement also had in bringing pressure to bear on EGT.  For example, the December Occupy-led West Coast port shutdown, called in solidarity with Local 21, succeeded in shutting down port terminals in Oakland, Portland, and Seattle.

Moreover, a solidarity caravan set to ferry both ILWU rank and file and occupiers from Seattle to Oakland in an attempt to block EGT’s looming attempt to begin operations at its terminal had raised the specter of thousands of protesters converging on the Port of Longview.  In fact, fearing a potential mass protest, EGT had resorted to calling on the US Coast Guard to safeguard its vessel and terminal.

Undoubtedly, such a combination of pressure coming from both the union and the greater community factored heavily into EGT’s calculus to return to the bargaining table.

And though it may be premature to deem the struggle a success—given that the details of the agreement have not yet been revealed—important lessons can still be gleaned from the struggle.  First and foremost, the fight in Longview has demonstrated the immense power of worker organization.  After all, through their organized and sustained fight back, the longshoremen from a small Washington town were able to drive a multi-billion dollar international corporation back to the negotiating table after two years of intransigence.  And of course in doing so, they have provided an enduring inspiration for working people the nation over.

Second, the struggle has illustrated the power of community solidarity in labor struggles, while also offering a potentially fruitful direction for the Occupy movement.  For if Occupy can continue to funnel its energy into labor struggles striving to achieve tangible victories for working people, it can begin the process of gaining a much wider base of working class support.  And potential opportunities to this end abound, with nearly 50 percent of workers proclaiming a desire to join a union, but only one out of every ten currently enjoying union representation.

And so, with an apparent victory in Longview, the struggle endures.  Let us hope, though, that the Occupy and labor movements can continue the struggle in concert.

Within weeks, if not days, the international conglomerate EGT Development will seek to commence operations at its new $200 million export grain terminal at the Port of Longview.  In refusing to use ILWU labor, EGT is breaking the precedent in place since the 1930s, which holds that all public port docks up and down the West Coast are to be worked by the ILWU.

As ILWU Local 21 in Longview maintains, the union’s struggle against EGT’s scab facility is indicative of “the fight of working people everywhere.”  It is, as the union continues, “a make-or-break struggle for all organized labor.”

Yet, as the ILWU and its allies ready to fight EGT’s union busting, the US military lies in wait to intervene on the behalf of the conglomerate.

As ILWU International President Rob McEllrath disclosed in a January 3 letter:

We have been told that this vessel will be escorted by armed United States Coast Guard, including the use of small vessels and helicopters, from the mouth of the Columbia River to the EGT facility.

The revelation that the Coast Guard (one of the five armed forces of the United States, and the lone military organization within the Department of Homeland Security) will be utilized to guard the EGT ship has drawn outrage and harsh condemnation from many within the labor community.  A January 9 resolution from the San Francisco Labor Council, for example, read in part:

This is the first use of the US military to intervene in a labor dispute on the side of management in 40 years—not since the Great 1970 Postal Strike when President Nixon called out the Army and National Guard in an (unsuccessful) attempt to break the strike.  The use of the Armed Forces against labor unions is something you expect to see in a police state.  This is part of a disturbing trend where the US military, acting as enforcers for the 1%, is poised to be used against our own people, as exemplified by the new law [the National Defense Authorization Act] allowing the military to imprison US citizens without trial…

…We condemn this use of the military as part of a union-busting campaign to lower the cost of labor on the waterfront and destroy the union.

Other labor organizations, meanwhile, have sent letters to President Obama in protest.  As a letter sent by the South Central Federation of Labor in Wisconsin states in part:

Use of our tax dollars and our military to assist such union busting is horrifying.  Mr. President, as Commander in Chief, we call upon you to order the Coast Guard to stand down, to not interfere on the side of management in this labor dispute.

Mr. Obama’s willingness to deploy military force ought, though, to be of little surprise.  Despite his campaign promise to “walk on that picket line with you as President of the United States of America,” Mr. Obama has consistently shown himself to be no champion of organized labor.  The president, after all, was all too content with leaving labor’s prized Employee Free Choice Act to unceremoniously rot in a Democratically controlled Congress.

But as President Obama clearly sides with management in Longview, the national AFL-CIO and its president, Richard Trumka, continue to maintain an indifference stance on the whole matter.

For its part, the AFL-CIO has maintained a virtual blackout of the Longview struggle, with no coverage of the dispute appearing on the federation’s website or blog.  As a frustrated reader commented on the federation’s blog, “It would be nice if the AFL-CIO Blog gave workers a voice by reporting on the struggle in Longview, Washington by ILWU Local 21.”

Mr. Trumka, on the other hand, has made just one statement on the matter, coming back in July.  In it, he deemed the struggle a mere “jurisdictional dispute.” Trumka’s remarks were prompted by an Oregon AFL-CIO Executive Board resolution condemning the actions of International Union of Operating Engineers (IUOE) Local 701—an AFL-CIO affiliate currently crossing ILWU pickets to work the EGT terminal—as “scab labor.”

Given that both unions reside within the national federation, Trumka went on to note that no AFL-CIO body had “the authority to intervene or take sides.”  He did clarify, however, that “this should not be construed as a judgment on the merits of the dispute.”

For Trumka, choosing to cloak his muteness in such a technicality may very well stem from the fact that the IUOE provides substantially more in annual membership fees to the AFL-CIO than the ILWU.

But if such a financial incentive is indeed driving Trumka’s public indifference, it is rather shortsighted.  For no matter the national AFL-CIO’s apathy, the struggle in Longview is proving to be a rather seminal event, bringing together organized labor, the Occupy movement, and an assortment of other activists in a direct fight against corporate greed.

And with such widespread support, coming from both within and without the house of labor, ample incentive and political cover would seemingly be in place for Trumka to step forth and take a firm stand against the jurisdictional raiding and corporate colluding of an AFL-CIO affiliate union.

Yet, as labor activist Harry Kelber writes, AFL-CIO leaders to this very day continue to “prefer a passive membership, rather than a militant one that might call for reforms.”  However, continuing to cling to such conservative pragmatism, while ignoring the broad working class militancy and solidarity presently unfolding around the Longview struggle, is a posture Trumka can ill afford to maintain.  For in doing so, Trumka only promises to relegate the AFL-CIO to further irrelevancy.

Thus, as President-“I’ll walk on that picket line with you”-Obama readies to send in the military against longshoremen in Longview, the time has come for all to take sides.  The struggle can no longer be credibly held as a jurisdictional matter; rather, it is a fight for all organized labor.  So, in the words of Florence Reece, the time has come to ask Mr. Trumka: Which side are you on?

On January 1, 1912, a new Massachusetts law had gone into effect that cut the maximum work week to 54 hours. Mill workers’ pay was given out on Fridays, not for the week just ended but for the previous week; thus, on Friday afternoon, January 12, 1912, workers received their pay for the work week of Monday, January 1 through Saturday, January 6. Workers found their pay to be an average of 32¢ short, representing the fewer hours that the mill workers had toiled. On Friday, January 12, upon finding that their pay had been shorted, 11,000 of Lawrence’s 28,000 mill workers walked off their jobs immediately; by the next day, the strike had grown to 13,000 workers.

The position of the mill owners was the essence of simplicity: you cannot expect us to pay for work that is not done. If the Massachusetts legislature is so benighted as to limit the number of hours that workers may work, the result is that workers will directly and immediately suffer the inevitable consequence: they will earn less money. It’s not our fault; it is the fault of the misguided legislature.

The plight of the mill workers in Lawrence in 1912 was unimaginable by today’s standards. Adults earned between $3 and $10 a week for work that often exceeded 60 hours a week. Overtime pay did not exist. Wages were allocated in a strict hierarchy depending on the nationality of the workers – there were Syrians, Greeks, Turks, Germans, Italians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Russians, Poles, Jews, Irish; each one received a different hourly wage for identical work. Blacks, of course, were the lowest paid. The law technically forbade labor by children under 14, but children as young as 10 often worked the same work week as adults (but were only paid half as much). Workplace safety was nonexistent, and workers were frequently maimed or killed by the mill machinery. Workers, especially children, were literally (not figuratively), starving to death; infant mortality accounted for half the deaths in Lawrence.

On January 12, 1912, 1% of the U.S. population owned 50% of the nation’s wealth. (By comparison, today the top 1% of the U.S. population owns “only” 37% of the nation’s wealth, though it is also true that the bottom 80% own only 15% of the nation’s wealth.)

On Sunday, January 14, 1912, three companies of militia were called in and martial law came to Lawrence. Striking workers picketed, and soldiers guarded the mills. Also on January 14, Wobbly organizer Joe Ettor arrived in Lawrence from New York.

Each day during that first week of the strike, fewer people went to work. By Saturday, January 20, 20,000 of the 28,000 mill workers in Lawrence were on strike, and every mill in the city was shut. On Tuesday, January 17, the strikers issued their demands (which were also the essence of simplicity). The strikers had four demands: (1) 15% pay raise for all mill workers; (2) double pay for overtime; (3) an end to the hated “bonus system” that paid extra money for meeting special, elevated production targets; and (4) amnesty for strikers. On Wednesday, January 18, 10,000 strikers held their first public parade; incongruously they marched behind an American flag singing The Internationale. The paraders were met and dispersed by soldiers with bayoneted rifles. More companies of militia were mobilized; mills were guarded by sharpshooters. On Thursday, January 19, another parade of 10,000 striking workers defied martial law and wound through the streets.

Also on January 19, dynamite was “discovered” at three locations in Lawrence frequented by strike organizers. Although strike organizers were arrested for possession of dynamite, it was later shown that the dynamite had been planted by minions of Billy Wood, the most hated of the Lawrence mill owners.

On Tuesday, January 23, strike organizers opened the first of several soup kitchens in Lawrence to feed the starving strikers and their families. First hundreds, then thousands of dollars poured into the Lawrence strike headquarters from all over the country, often in the form of a coin or two in an envelope. On Wednesday, January 24, another dangerous, radical Wobbly organizer arrived in Lawrence: Big Bill Haywood was met at the Lawrence train station by a jubilant, singing crowd of 10,000 strikers. Formal, dues-paying, card-carrying membership in the IWW soared to an unprecedented 10,000 members in Lawrence.

One of the most interesting aspects of the 1912 textile strike in Lawrence is the degree to which the main strike organizers, the Wobblies, and especially Joe Ettor, explicitly preached nonviolence to the strikers. In another strike seven years later (in 1919), the famous pacifist organizer A. J. Muste came to Lawrence to aid striking textile workers. One morning in that later strike, strikers awoke to find the men guarding the mills armed with machine guns. Quite understandably, strikers also wanted to arm themselves. A.J., ever the pacifist, cautioned against arms. “Let the mill owners try to weave cloth with machine guns,” A.J. is said to have counseled. What is interesting about the 1912 strike is that (unlike A.J.) the Wobblies were most emphatically not ideological pacifists. Yet the Wobblies clearly and unequivocally counseled nonviolence as the only tactic for the strikers that could be successful.

From the very first day he arrived in Lawrence, Wobbly organizer Joe Ettor repeatedly told the strikers: “As long as the workers keep their hands in their pockets, the capitalists cannot put their hands in there. With passive resistance, with the workers absolutely refusing to move, lying absolutely still, they are more powerful than all the weapons that the mill owners have to attack the workers.” On Monday morning, January 15, with the city under martial law, with armed troops everywhere, Ettor advised against any resort to violence: “You cannot win by fighting with your fists against men that are armed, or against the militia, but you have a stronger weapon than they have. You have the weapon of labor, and they cannot beat you down if you stick together.” When troops fired upon parading strikers and turned hoses on them (in one of the coldest New England winters on record), Ettor said, “You may turn your hoses on the strikers, but there is being kindled a flame in the heart of the workers, a flame of proletarian revolt, which no fire hose in the world can ever extinguish.” In a speech to rallying strikers, Ettor said: “Order can be kept, but I never saw order kept by bayonets. I want you all to understand that our cause cannot be won by spilling blood. Peaceful persuasion is the only weapon advocated from this platform!” As I say, the Wobblies were emphatically not committed to nonviolence for moral or ideological reasons, but nonviolent they clearly were. Their commitment was strictly a tactical one.

This strategic, tactical commitment to nonviolence puts me in mind of Gene Sharp. Gene has spent much of the past 40 years tweaking pacifists; Sharp’s line goes something like this: You pacifists should abandon your quaint, holier-than-thou, elitist moral commitment to nonviolence; nonviolence should be embraced because it is far more effective than violence. And for 40 years, we pacifists have smiled indulgently at Gene’s rebukes – after all, despite his present-day posturing, Gene was himself first a moral pacifist; indeed, one who was sentenced to two years in prison during the Korean War for his outspoken (moral) opposition to conscription. I believe that there is an odd convergence here: both Joe Ettor and Gene Sharp (in their respective, different eras) are preaching a substantially similar line: forget your highfalutin moralism; nonviolent direct action is a brilliant, winning tactic for effective campaigns by the dispossessed.

On the eighteenth day of the strike, Monday, January 29, 1912, a striking worker, Anna LoPizzo, was shot and killed by a police officer (Oscar Benoit) during a strikers’ demonstration in the streets. On Tuesday, January 30, a second striker, John Rami, was bayoneted to death by a soldier. The same day, Wobbly organizer Joe Ettor, and another man, Arturo Giovannitti, were arrested for complicity in Anna LoPizzo’s murder. The two men were a mile away when LoPizzo had been shot. The government’s legal theory was laughable by today’s standards: if these dangerous union organizers had not stirred up trouble, there would have been no riot, and Anna LoPizzo would not have been shot. (Here is an analogy: On May 4, 1970, National Guard troops at Kent State University shot and killed four students demonstrating nonviolently for peace in Vietnam. Imagine if the next day the police had arrested the student president of the Kent State SDS chapter, who was off campus when the killings occurred – because if those trouble-making SDS organizers hadn’t stirred up trouble, there would have been no protesting students for the troops to shoot.) Ettor and Giovannitti were eventually acquitted by a jury, but not until November 25, 1912, long after the strike was over. By then, the false arrest of Ettor had fully accomplished its purpose – he had been kept in jail through the remainder of the strike.

Lawrence mill owners specifically, and U.S. capitalists more generally, responded to progressive calls for improved working conditions in at least two different ways. First, mill owners refused to negotiate with strikers. They relied on troops to keep order, and (where possible) on scabs to keep mills open. Strike organizers were fired and then blacklisted, so they could never find work elsewhere. If necessary, they were framed and sent to prison (like Joe Ettor) or shot (like Wobbly songwriter Joe Hill, who was framed for murder and executed by a Utah firing squad on November 19, 1915).

A second way of dealing with calls for improved working conditions was through the courts. This was the so-called Lochner era, during which a deeply conservative Supreme Court struck down literally hundreds of progressive state laws involving minimum wages, maximum work weeks, worker safety, child labor, and so forth. The eponymous case for which the era was named was Lochner v. New York, 198 U.S. 45 (1905), which struck down a New York law setting a maximum of 60-hour work week and 10-hour work day in New York bakeries. Another famous case of the era was Coppage v. Kansas, 236 U.S. 1 (1915), which struck down laws that restricted so-called “yellow-dog contracts” – that is, the Court was striking down union-backed legislation that made it illegal for employers to require that employees not join a union. The ideological underpinning of the Lochner-era cases was “freedom of contract,” as guaranteed in the Constitution. If the mill workers of Lawrence want to work 60 hours a week for, say, 15¢ an hour and send their 10-year-old children to work in the mills for half that amount, the sanctity of freedom of contract required that the state not interfere.

The strikers in Lawrence had another tactic. In several successive waves, they sent away hundreds of the starving, emaciated children of strikers to New York, Philadelphia, Vermont, and elsewhere to stay with wealthy families who would care for the children for the duration of the strike. The exodus of malnourished children made national headlines and generated considerable sympathy for the strikers. On Sunday, February 25, 1912, heavily armed police and soldiers used violence to break up a huge crowd of strikers seeing their children off at the Lawrence train depot. The reports of the brutal police riot were reported nationally and helped to build further support for the strikers – in much the same way that extensive media coverage of Police Chief Bull Connor’s turning attack dogs and fire hoses on civil rights marchers in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1963 built support for the civil rights movement (leading President Kennedy to comment that no person since Abraham Lincoln had aided civil rights more than Bull Connor).

On Saturday, March 9, 1912, the first mill owner capitulated to the strikers, and other mill owners soon followed suit. The strikers did not win a complete victory, but they did win a substantial one. There were across-the-board wage increases; the increases averaged about 15% and the lowest-paid workers realized the largest increases, thereby making wage scales somewhat more equitable. Overtime pay was not granted, but the hated bonus system was substantially curtailed, and there was an amnesty for most strikers (except prominent strike organizers who were, of course, blacklisted). And the Lawrence strike had cascading effects elsewhere: in the weeks and months after the successful conclusion of the Lawrence strike, 250,000 other textile workers throughout New England won substantial pay increases from mill owners without striking! Eugene Debs, running for President that year on the Socialist Party ticket, commented, “The victory at Lawrence was one of the most decisive and far-reaching ever won by organized workers.”

And it all started 100 years ago, on January 12, 1912.

•  This article first appeared in New Clear Vision.

In a January 3 letter addressed to his members, ILWU International President Robert McEllrath disclosed that EGT will soon attempt to commence operations at its new $200 million grain terminal located at the Port of Longview.  As McEllrath wrote, “We believe that at some point this month a vessel will call at the EGT facility in Longview, Washington… Prepare to take action when the EGT vessel arrives.”

The Struggle and Its Stakes

At the heart of the Longview dispute has been EGT’s refusal to hire longshoremen from ILWU Local 21 to work its grain terminal at the Port of Longview.  The publicly owned port—as with all West Coast public port docks—has been worked exclusively by the ILWU for decades.

Dismissing this hard-won jurisdiction, EGT chose to break off negotiations with the ILWU last year and contract with a third party employing labor from International Union of Operating Engineers (IUOE) Local 701.  The ILWU argues that this is in direct violation of EGT’s lease agreement with the Port of Longview, which explicitly stipulates all port work is to indeed be done by the ILWU.

For its part, IUOE Local 701 has been widely condemned within the Northwest labor community, with many accusing the local of conspiring with EGT to break the ILWU.  Both the Washington and Oregon state AFL-CIO bodies, along with numerous other unions, have already passed resolutions condemning Local 701.  The July resolution passed by the Oregon AFL-CIO described 701’s actions at the EGT terminal as “scab labor.”

The national AFL-CIO, on the other hand, has remained conspicuously muted on the dispute.  No mention of the ILWU’s struggle in Longview can be found on the federation’s website or blog.  In fact, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka has referred to the entire matter as a mere “jurisdictional dispute.”

Yet despite the AFL’s seeming indifference, the outcome of the struggle couldn’t have greater stakes.  As Kyle Mackey, Secretary/Treasurer of the Cowlitz-Wahkiakum Central Labor Council (the umbrella labor body for the Longview area), argues, “If EGT succeeds, they will have essentially broken the ILWU.”  As he explains:

First, they will set a precedent that work on public port docks is no longer automatically longshore jurisdiction. Then within less than a year, when the northwest grain handlers’ agreement is set to be negotiated, all the other grain elevators will seek to either go non-ILWU or to match the eroded standard EGT creates. Shortly thereafter, in 2014, the ILWU will negotiate its master contract with the Pacific Maritime Association. If they lose, you can bet the PMA will take notice and hit hard.

In the midst of a nationwide attack on organized labor and the right to collectively bargain, the defeat of the powerful ILWU would also be sure to have consequences reaching far beyond the docks.

The Call for Solidarity

Responding to the intensifying situation, the Cowlitz-Wahkiakum Central Labor Council on January 2 passed a resolution calling for solidarity action to stop the EGT vessel from being loaded.  The resolution read in part:

Be it Resolved: That this Council call out to friends of labor and the “99 percent” everywhere to come to the aid of ILWU Local 21, and to support them in any way possible in their fight against multinational conglomerate EGT. And,

Be it further Resolved: That this Council request that anyone willing to participate in a community and labor protest in Longview, Washington, of the first EGT grain ship do so when called upon by this body.

Accordingly, planning for a regional solidarity caravan to shuttle ILWU rank-and-file and other supporters to Longview on word of the EGT vessel’s arrival is already underway.  With the support of the San Francisco Labor Council, ILWU Local 10, for one, has already pledged funds for a bus to ferry rank-and-file picketers up to Longview once given the word.

The Northwest Occupy movement, meanwhile, has also begun to mobilize.  On December 19, Occupy Longview issued a call for Occupy activists to converge on the port to blockade the loading of any vessel at EGT’s terminal.  As Occupy Longview stated:

We are calling out to all occupies, from New York City down to Florida, all the way through to the West Coast, to join us in solidarity… We ask that tens of thousands travel to Longview to join us and make this action the central action for January 2012.

Occupy and The ILWU

The inclusion and participation of outside activists in the ILWU’s Longview struggle—such as those from the Occupy movement—has not been without its share of controversy.  As was widely publicized, the ILWU leadership refrained from embracing the West Coast Port Shutdown in December, which the Occupy movement had called in part to show solidarity with the ILWU in the struggle against EGT.  In fact, the Occupy-led port shutdown led a few unionist and other observers to question the merits and rationale behind an action conducted without much in the way of ILWU input and participation.

Occupy activist, though, maintained that they did indeed have rank-and-file support for the action.  Moreover, they argued that the antagonistic statements coming from the ILWU leadership regarding the port shutdown were merely for legal cover.  (Local 21, for instance, already faces upwards of $300,000 in fines due to unfair labor practice charges accrued from its ongoing struggle.)

Regardless, the matter of independent action conducted in solidarity with, or in the name of, the ILWU remains an issue.  As President McEllrath cautioned in his January 3 letter, “Any showing of support for Local 21 at the time that a vessel calls at the EGT facility must be measured to ensure that the West Coast ports have sufficient manpower so as not to impact cargo movement for PMA member companies. A call for a protest of EGT is not a call for a shutdown of West Coast ports and must not result in one.”

Facing a Stacked Deck

The dictate to limit any ILWU action to EGT in Longview stems from the severe restrictions American labor law places on unions.  As McEllrath notes in his letter to members, “Locals need to be aware of the narrow path that we must cut through a federal labor law (the Taft-Hartley Act) that criminalizes worker solidarity, outlaws labor’s most effective tools, and protects commerce while severely restricting unions.”

Of course, in addition to repressive labor laws, a key challenge facing any attempt to effectively blockade EGT’s terminal from beginning operations will be the expected heavy-handed police presence.  To date, at least 75 out of the 200 Local 21 members have already faced arrest, citation, fines, or both.  (Little surprise, then, to learn that EGT has made contributions to local police and fire bureaus.)

But as for what to expect once EGT seeks to load a grain barge later this month, McEllrath warns, “We have been told that this vessel will be escorted by armed United States Coast Guard, including the use of small vessels and helicopters, from the mouth of the Columbia River to the EGT facility and that the facility itself will be protected by a full complement of local law enforcement from multiple jurisdictions.”

But even facing such a stacked deck—with the courts, police, and, needless to say, the media conspiring against them—make no mistake: the ILWU has never been a union to back away from a struggle.  As ILWU Local 21 President Dan Coffman has stated, “The ILWU cannot lose this fight; we are in it to it to win it.”

And so it is that as we approach the one-year anniversary of the Wisconsin uprising, the long sleeping giant that is American labor stirs once more.

“To be internationalist is to pay our debt to humanity” says Fidel Castro and this can be read on many billboards in Cuba.

What is internationalism?—cooperation among people and nations, states my dictionary. The book of definitions maintains that internationalism is a principle of communism and socialism. It is the belief of ideological leaders such as Lenin, Fidel and Che.

Che wrote in his essay, “Socialism and Man”, that proletarian internationalism isn’t just a duty but a necessity. If revolutionary leaders forget this, Che wrote, the revolution will lose its inspiration and imperialism will benefit.

Che was also known for having severely criticized Soviet Union leadership for having lost its internationalism with the world’s proletariat and the Third World. Following up on Che’s critique, I find it important to criticize communist and socialist parties, and governments led by these parties, which let down people who are oppressed by, or invaded by, national or foreign powers.

Internationalism in action

1. Internationalists must support resistance fighters against invasions. Therefore, one must chastise political parties and groups that give political or moral support to those who call themselves the Iraq Communist Party as it is part of the Quisling government the USA terrorist state set in. ICP leaders live side by side the invaders in the Green Zone. That there are organizations in the United States, UK, Denmark and elsewhere, which call themselves communist or socialist parties and that cooperate with the world’s greatest terrorist state is incomprehensible, shameful, immoral and anti-internationalist.

2. The same applies to people who still support the Zionist state of Israel, which commits genocide against the Palestinian people. Millions of decent people have gotten together to support Palestinians in many ways, including Ships to Gaza. In Denmark, four groups of people have challenged the state’s terrorist laws by donating solidarity aid to the secular leftist PFLP which is part of the Palestinian resistance. Rebellion (Denmark), Fighters and Lovers, Horserød-Stuthoff Association (veterans of WWII resistance fighters imprisoned in Horserød and Stuthoff prisons), and TIB’s club (local carpenters near Copenhagen) have aided both PFLP and FARC, Colombian armed liberation movement.

3. Internationalist can not cooperate with US-NATO aggressive wars, which always have the goal of controlling that country’s economy and politics for capitalist profits. It is shameful that many experienced socialists and communists, as well as naïve progressive people, have backed up West’s big capitalist plans to take over Libya, and thus have bombed Libya back to the stone age. Denmark was one of only six countries that dropped tens of thousands of bombs on Libya, destroying much of it infrastructure, schools, hospitals…In fact, Denmark dropped more bombs on Libya than it has on any other country in its history, Afghanistan included. And the pilots were cowards as there was no resistance by Libya’s air force, already decimated.

This conflict has little to do with the Arab Spring movement. It is a conflict between internal war lords, with ordinary people involved who wished to increase democracy but who were misled by US-NATO whose forces seek to control Libya’s oil and avoid a gold-based currency that Gaddafi was promoting amongst all African countries. Now, US-NATO has placed a lackey government in Tripoli just as they did in Afghanistan and Iraq.

4. Internationalists must also criticize comrade governments, such as Cuba and ALBA governments in Latin America, when they make big mistakes regarding internationalism. We can’t be true comrades-solidarity activists by keeping our mouths shut when this occurs. Such is the case with their support of the brutal government of Sri Lanka, which practices genocide against the minority Tamil population. Ever since independence from Great Britain, in 1947, the majority Sinhalese governments and chauvinist Buddhist monk system has discriminated against Tamils. They have constantly been treated as second class citizens, their language and religions relegated to secondary status without national recognition. Even pogroms have been employed with the brutal murder of many thousands on various occasions. And since May 2009, following the end of a 26-year civil war, ethnic cleansing in the traditional Tamil homeland in the north and eastern areas is the rule of the day.

Cuba and ALBA have spoken only positively of their historic ties with the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), to which Sri Lanka is a member, but so are 130 other nations. One cannot, in the name of protecting each nation’s sovereignty, avoid critique when one or more of these nations oppresses or conducts pogroms and genocide against part of the population. Nor can we accept as an excuse the immoral geo-political game that nearly all governments of whatever color play.

We shall also criticize Bolivia, Uruguay, Brazil and other Latin American progressive governments for helping the US and France in their ouster of the only decent and only democratically elected people’s president in Haiti’s history, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. These Latin American governments actually assist the US’s 2004 coup d´état against Aristide by placing occupying troops in the small country, seeking to dampen the people’s anger. These progressive governments should, instead, back up the people’s desire to bring their president back to state power, just as they sought to do for President Zelaya in Honduras where national capitalists and generals kicked him out of office, with background support once again by the United States government.

5. On the personal and organizational plain, internationalism operates when workers of a major firm ask people to boycott a product because of the mistreatment of the workers by the firm. This is the case with Coca-Cola whose workers in Colombia asked us to stop buying the “drink of the death squad” (David Rovics song), because it hires mercenaries to murder workers who seek to organize a union and struggle for collective bargaining. Workers in other countries, such as Guatemala, and farmers in India have asked the same.

It is with joy that I can state that here where we gather (carpenters’ hall in Valby, Denmark), this union is one of the few local unions and political or grass roots groups in Denmark that has boycotted Coca-Cola. This is something any and all individuals can do. It is just a soda drink. So drink something else. Boycotting Coca-Cola is just like boycotting all products from Israel and Sri Lanka. It is a simple act of solidarity, of internationalism.

Charlotte and I have just returned from a six week trip in India where two of my books (“Tamil Nation in Sri Lanka” and “Sounds of Venezuela”) were published by New Century Book House, Tamil Nadu. The Tamil book concerns the history and contemporary life of the Tamil people in that island-nation, and the need to act in solidarity with them. The Venezuela short book concerns this people’s efforts to create a better world for themselves and solidarity with all peoples. When people asked us where we are from we often replied that we are “internationalists”. Interestingly, many Indians understood our meaning and were pleased to think in terms of being brothers and sisters in the world.

This concept, and feeling, of brotherly love, of internationalism has taken off in a bigger way, in 2011, than in many decades. It started in Tunisia, and has expanded to the indignados in Spain, to the anti-capitalists in Wall Street and in hundreds of cities throughout the US and the West.

We have much to criticize and yet much to be glad for as 2012 opens. We must remember and appreciate those who set us off on this new anti-capitalist/anti-imperialist, non-violent and democratic revolution—from the martyr in Tunisia (street vendor Mohammed Bouazizi) and his Iraqi spiritual brother a bit earlier, shoe-thrower Muntazar al-Zaidi, to Occupy Wall Street protestors to Bradley Manning and Julian Assange and co-workers at Wikileaks, who helped spark it all by blowing the whistle on the war criminals. These modern-day Paris Commune resisters without arms—OWS and Occupy the World—are growing and they are presenting a vision and with it a program-in-discussion that must be studied and supported.

Internationalism is an endless struggle, an endless challenge. It does not end even when one or more of our political parties take over the governing reigns. We activists from the streets must always keep our wary eyes pinned on the leaders, regardless of their names, just as our clear eyes cast light upon humanity’s future.

After a century of scheming in the Middle East and Central Asia by first Britain and then the US, the tables turned much faster than anyone could have imagined. As the pivotal 2011 draws to a close, it is the perfect moment to look at how we got here. The rollercoaster ride has been long and terrifying, and it is vital to understand where it is taking us.

From the 19th century on, it was clear to imperial strategists such as Cecil Rhodes and Halford MacKinder, motivated by the desire to conquer the world, that the “heartland”, Eurasia, was the key to securing the proposed world empire. WWI was supposed to clinch the deal, with the collapse of the Ottoman Caliphate leaving the Levant “free” to be carved up and secured. The Indian Raj was the empire’s base for securing Central Asia and the Far East .

But the horrors of the war led to an unforeseen result: revolution in Russia, inspiring a growing anti-imperial movement across Eurasia. Inspired by Russian revolutionaries, the Raj seethed in discontent, demanding freedom from the British yoke, and Chinese patriots coalesced around their own rapidly growing Communist movement. Historic Turkestan was now off limits, part of the Soviet Union or in the case of Afghanistan, unconquerable.

WWII erupted as Germany attempted to snatch the world empire from the British and destroy its Russian nemesis, but this merely accelerated the decline of the Euro-imperialists, their schemes exposed as relying on mass slaughter and cold, calculating privilege for the elite of the imperial centre.

When the war ended, there were hopes that imperialism would end too. The empire had been forced to ally with the Communists to defeat the Germans, and to promise to dismantle the imperial system after WWII. This new world order was to be one of independent nations competing on a level playing field. But what should have been the last gasp of this inhuman system of “free trade” in the service of empire gained a new lease on life, as the US had escaped the 20th century’s cataclysms unscathed, and its capitalists were eager to take on the mantle of empire ceded by the bankrupt Brits.

Moreover, a new, subtle but key force in the new empire was the Jewish state established by the British and Americans in the heart of the Middle East, a blatant colonial entity which draped its imperial role in the language of anti-colonial liberation. This, despite the fact that it was created by dispossessing the native Arabs, even as neighbouring Arabs in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and North Africa were gaining nominal independence from their colonial masters.

This new playing field witnessed a long, bloody match, pitting the empire’s forces against both Communists and anti-colonial forces. After millions of deaths, it culminated in the defeat of the Communists in 1991, and a new game began, with world control once again the prize.

The dreams of revolution and an end to empire were dashed, and this new world order was once again baldly imperial, as planners accelerated their plans, epitomised by the rise of the neoconservatives with their Project for a New American Century, combining market fundamentalism and imperial aggression in a deadly cocktail where there were no longer any geographical limits.

The former Communist union, especially Turkestan, with its strategic location and oil wealth, was quickly brought into the imperial orbit. Even China was accommodated, as it acceded to the world economic order established by the empire after WWII.

But the baggage of empire continued to complicate the picture. The Islamists, so useful in the destruction of the Communist bloc, resisted imperial designs. Israel, also useful throughout the post-WWII struggle against both the Communists and the 3rd world liberation forces, established itself as an independent player and even posed as the new imperial coach, penetrating to the heart of the empire and asserting its own goals of expansion and hostility against its Muslim neighbours.

At its beheast, the resulting wars have been against the Arab and Muslim world, but two decades of attempts to subdue them have merely hardened Muslims’ opposition to empire, even as the devastation caused by imperial designs increases.

Hence, the Arab Spring of 2011 and the accession to power of Islamists via the ballot box across the Middle East . Hence, the unwinnable war against the Afghan people, that brought empire to its knees in fateful 2011, even as the slaughter of insurgents and civilians increased. Yes, the imperialists managed a clever ruse, invading Libya to depose the clownish Gaddafi, but the Islamists and fiercely independent tribes there are unlikely allies of empire.

The tsunami of resistance to imperialism surged throughout 2011 around the world, while the empire’s leaders put a worldwide “missile defence” system in place. But even as radars and missiles were installed in Europe, the rising tide reached the empire’s shores in 2011, as financial crisis led to rising poverty and unrest in the imperial centre itself.

Taking inspiration from the Arab Spring, mass demonstrations in Greece and Spain erupted and Wall Street, the empire’s “heartland”, was occupied. The “99 per cent” entered the political lexicon as the people vs the ruling elite (the 1 per cent who own half of the country’s assets). Even Israel and newly capitalist Russia witnessed mass demonstrations, as ordinary citizens began to realise how the system works, or rather doesn’t work for them. How increasing disparity of wealth is the logical result of market fundamentalism and control of the economy by financial capital.

2011 will go down in history as a year as fateful as 1917, when the blinkers fell away from the common people’s eyes in Russia and they rose up against their oppressors. But while 1917 witnessed a Communist revolution against capitalism and imperialism by a small corps of professional revolutionaries, 2011 has witnessed a mass, leaderless revolution facilitated by telecommunications, and in the case of the key Middle East, inspired by Islam.

There is no Lenin, not even a Gamal Abdel-Nasser, the one Arab leader who managed to slow down the imperial steamroller in the Middle East and is still revered for his defiance. Unlike Communist revolutionaries of yore, the new leaders in the Middle East of what must be called the Islamic revolution of 2011 are not the object of veneration, something that Islam as a religion warns against.

Revolutions always start in the weakest links. Thus, the Middle East has a head start on the revolutionary process over the West, though through the growing Palestinian solidarity movement, notably the global Boycott Divestment and Sanctions campaign, the struggles of East and West are increasingly seen to be one and the same. What will be the decisive test for the new revolutionaries in the Middle East and the West itself is how well they can navigate the political shoals and landmines laid by a century of empire.

How to dismantle apartheid Israel without it unleashing nuclear war on the world? How to put an end to US world financial blackmail centred on the dollar without the US strategists taking everyone else down with them? While the empire is on the defensive, it is still powerful and as its star wanes, it will only become more lethal.

The foes of empire are popping up faster than the empire’s drones can knock them off. They are found not only in Arab (and Persian) lands, or even in a skeptical Russia and still-Communist China. As the links in the system continue to fray, they are increasingly in the heart of the empire itself. Americans and Europeans will continue to develop alternatives to empire, financially, economically and politically, in their own communities and continue to link up with their comrades-against-arms in the heart of the supposed enemy in Eurasia .

More and more Americans are involved in co-ops, worker-owned companies and other alternatives to capitalism. Some 130 million Americans are part owners of co-op businesses and credit unions. As Obama cuts funding to states, the latter considers establishing their own banks and use public pensions to fund state economic development.

There is a wealth of expertise in the “heartland” of the empire that can help show the whole world the way out of the imperial dead end. The new generation in America lacks the Cold War paranoia about socialism: Americans under 30 years old are “essentially evenly divided” as to whether they preferred “capitalism” or “socialism”, according to a 2009 Rasmussen poll.

Even as the world environment degrades, even as imperial arms continue to kill, maim and choke demonstrators and insurgents both at the heart of the empire and in the heart of the “enemy”, we can take heart in the new sense of human dignity which 2011 spawned, and fight the intrigues of empire with new vigour in 2012.

The thugs of the hills are only the icing on the cake. Most of the work is being done by thugs wearing kid gloves. Unlike the people who threw the stone at the deputy brigade commander, these are fan favorites in Israel. The flesh of our flesh. Officers and soldiers, military jurists, architects and contractors in the service of the army, Interior Ministry and National Insurance Institute clerks. The hands are their hands. The head is the head of the demos, the Israeli-Jewish people, who by the democratic process send governments to be the dictator over the Palestinians.

What is the Israeli dictatorship over the Palestinians? Not only control of their space and the creation of isolated enclaves; not only the 19-year-olds who are sent — masked and armed to the teeth — on military raids (560 last month, according to the monitoring group in the PLO’s negotiations department); not only daily arrests (257 arrests in November, including 15 Gazans) and the 758 temporary roadblocks that were placed on West Bank roads that month.

The dictatorship is not even just a ban on Palestinian construction in more than 60 percent of the West Bank, permission to invent a new law every day to disenfranchise and expel, and the demolition, during 2011, of 500 Palestinian dwellings, wells, cisterns, animal pens, toilets and other essential structures. The dictatorship is all that together, and much more.

The Israeli dictatorship is the art of the double standard (Palestinians cannot build on their agricultural land so as not to impair rural zoning, but the state can legalize a Jewish outpost on Palestinian agricultural land). It is the champion of self-righteousness and arrogance (“the only democracy”), and holds an advanced degree in hypocrisy (“ready to return to negotiations any time”). Instead of going crazy with rage, the Palestinians know that these characteristics will hurt the Israelis themselves.

Anyone who has been harmed by the Israeli dictatorship feels alone, weak, angry and desperate. But every family in its own way cultivates its humanity. In a curious and moving way — despite internal rivalries, an unfair distribution of the burden, manifestations of ignorance and opportunism and disappointing leadership — the ability to remain steadfast and social solidarity are the overall result.

That’s the summud that attorney Raja Shehadeh wrote about ages ago, when we still deluded ourselves that the Israeli-Jewish people can heal itself from the disease of lordship. This totality also typifies every individual and family: the ability to remain resilient and show wise restraint, which has become routine bravery and will be translated in due time into mass collective resistence.

The Palestinians are heroes, and that’s not simply a flowery journalistic phrase. It’s a fact not intended for the thugs, but rather for people who shut their eyes — and they are many. Those who shut their eyes do so because they seek normalcy. What they don’t see doesn’t exist and doesn’t bother them. Israeli normalcy longs for the Palestinians to disappear, or at least to remain silent and finally surrender. But Palestinian bravery will continue to thwart the longings of Israeli normalcy.

On December 10th, police in Banda Aceh, capital city of Indonesia’s Aceh territory, raided a local concert. Featuring several local punk groups, the show was held as a fundraiser for the area’s orphans; punks from all over Indonesia had reportedly travelled to attend. None of this apparently mattered to the police, who stormed into the venue with batons swinging. Of the 100 people in attendance, 64 were arrested and taken to a detention center 30 miles outside the city.

There, the 59 men and 5 women had their clothes confiscated: dog collars and chains, spiked belts and tight jeans. They were all given toothbrushes and ordered “use it!” by prison guards. After being taken outside, guards forcibly shaved off their mohawks and long hair; women were given a short bob. They were then bathed in a nearby lake before being subjected to “moral re-education” classes.

The Associated Press quoted one young punk, identified as 20-year-old Fauzan: “Why? Why my hair?” he said, pointing to his head. “We didn’t hurt anyone. This is how we’ve chosen to express ourselves. Why are they treating us like criminals?”

Banda Aceh’s Deputy Mayor Illiza Sa’aduddin Djamal, remained unapologetic, claiming the detainees were in violation of the region’s interpretation of Islamic law: “The presence of the punk community is disturbing, and disrupts the life of the Banda Aceh public. This is a new social disease affecting Banda Aceh. If it is allowed to continue, the government will have to spend more money to handle them. Their morals are wrong… This training will be an example in Indonesia of the reeducation of the punks.

Meanwhile, perhaps feeling the pressure of international scrutiny, Aceh Governor Irwandi Yusuf claimed the punks’ reeducation wasn’t so much for sake of Islam as it was for their own good. Speaking at Indonesia’s presidential palace, he told reporters that “the government needs to think of their future.” Insisting that most don’t have jobs or go to school, he asked “if they don’t work, what will they be?”

This flies in the face of what some of the detainees have told reporters. One anonymous punk from the Medan area of North Sumatra said he worked as a contractor at a bank. “I’ll probably be sacked for not coming into work for a week.” Nonetheless, Djamal has promised the raids will continue until all punks have been caught and reeducated — personal consequences be damned.

At the time of this writing, the Banda Aceh 64 are scheduled to be released on Friday, December 23rd. For their own part, the detained punks have remained defiant

Aceh is somewhat unique in Indonesia. After the 2004 tsunami, newly-elected President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono brokered a peace deal with the separatist Free Aceh Movement (GAM) that allowed for a relative amount of autonomy from the central government in Jakarta. Since then, the region has become Indonesia’s most conservative, embracing what governing politicians call “key elements of Sharia.” Adultery in Aceh is punishable by stoning to death, and residents fingered as gay or lesbian have been caned in public.

Persecution of music, however, isn’t as singular for Indonesian authorities. The 32-year rule of dictator Suharto (backed till the end by the US, of course) maintained a stranglehold on mainstream culture, including disappearances of dissident artists and musicians. When East Timor was occupied by the Indonesian military in 1976, traditional Timorese songs were banned. Bella Gahlos, a Timorese activist who fled the country in the early ‘90s, estimates that “thousands of people have been killed for singing these songs.

By the early ‘90s, not even MTV was allowed to broadcast in Indonesia (Suharto’s censors were notoriously paranoid of what they deemed culturally seditious). Nonetheless, songs from America’s “punk revival” began to seep through the nation’s archipelagic borders. It wasn’t too long until a growing number of bands began to spring out of an already vibrant underground rock community, armed with little more than a righteous sense of rage that had been pent up for way too long. Though still restricted to the extreme fringes of society, the burgeoning punk scene was an enthusiastic part of the revolutionary upsurge that overthrew Suharto in 1998. Says ethnomusicologist Jeremy Wallach:

Almost from the beginning, musicians in the Indonesian underground movement performed songs attacking the corruption of the Suharto government, even when it was dangerous to do so. Thus, although Indonesian punk is as politically divided as its western counterparts, it is not surprising that many Indonesian punks place their movement and their allegiance in the context of the struggle against Suharto.

Punks’ support for that struggle could indeed be dangerous. Rumor has it that during these uprisings there was an unofficial order for army and police to “shoot anyone with a tattoo,” so widespread was the counter-culture’s involvement.

Now, almost fifteen years after the end of Suharto’s rule, the Indonesian punk scene is the most vibrant in Asia and, according to some, among the largest in the world. Its beginnings might have sprouted initially from the import of America’s most mainstream groups (Green Day, the Offspring, Rancid). But since then its roots have deepened, and the movement has blossomed into one both uniquely Indonesian and organically interwoven with a global sub-culture motivated by a strong DIY ethic and profound distrust of authority.

A small handful of bands, like Bali’s Superman Is Dead, have gone on to a measure of international acclaim and signed to Sony Records (even while encouraging their fans to “steal” their albums). Others, like Jakarta-based Marjinal, have made a name for themselves playing entirely in Indonesia’s kampung (poor urban neighborhoods), giving their tapes away for free and teaching street kids how to busk on trains and corners.

Homeless youth are among the most neglected and abused in Indonesian society. Since 2001, Jakarta’s government has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on “anti-poverty” initiatives that consist of nothing but hiring out local thugs to round up homeless youth and turn them into the police. Naturally, these types of programs have accelerated with the economic crisis. Given the popularity of the sub-culture among poor and working class youth, punks have found themselves frequently in the cross-hairs of such initiatives.

Mike, lead-singer of Marjinal,told a journalist for Time magazine in 2007 “Music gives these kids a way to survive, to make some kind of living… Punk, to me, is addressing the things that are rotten in society. It tells us that we have the ability to be independent and take care of each other.” It’s a spirit of camaraderie familiar to anyone who’s been in attendance at a local gig, be it in Milwaukee, Prague, Johannesburg or Tokyo.

Little wonder that the global punk community has rallied so fiercely around the Banda Aceh 64. When the Guardian and other major outlets picked up on the story, punk websites blew up in protest and solidarity. Propagandhi, well-known as a fiercely anarchist group for almost two decades (who also paid tribute to Bella Gahlos in 2001) was one of the first to release a statement:

In the past Propagandhi has received letters from people in Banda Aceh and all over Indonesia so any one of these people could be the same people who have contacted us… In the off chance that they might see this post I’d like to say to all the Punks who’ve been victimized by authorities in Indonesia that we, the members of Propagandhi, are supporting you and admire that you have expressed yourselves even at your own expense.

They weren’t alone.A petition supporting the kids and released on Change.org gained over 8,500 signatures in five days. Seattle-based Aborted Society Records has announced a “mix tapes for Aceh” initiative, asking people to donate homemade mix CDs to eventually be sent to Aceh. German band Red Tape Parade have launched a similar campaign, urging their fans to send them not just CDs but ‘zines, records, shirts, pins and anything else for support.

Already, demonstrations and actions by local scenesters have taken place at Indonesian embassies and consulates in London, Moscow and Los Angeles. And in Jakarta, the Bendera Hitam punk collective protested outside the Aceh representative’s office.

Almost as troubling as the events in Banda Aceh has been the reactions of some here in the western world–specifically the anti-Muslim bigotry that they’ve attempted to promote. Mainstream media, including the AP and Guardian, have emphasized the religious fundamentalism of Aceh’s government, meanwhile failing to provide a wider context.

For the most part, there’s been little mention of the vibrancy of Indonesia’s punk scene, its class characteristics, or the long history of harassment its endured, even in more moderate regions. And while questions are asked of Aceh’s governor, there don’t seem to be any questions asked about why the US continues to give support to a government guilty of such flagrant violations of cultural rights.

Instead, the problem is made out to be one of Sharia law, and, in turn, Islam. This has suited the “stop Islamization” crowd just fine, most of whom couldn’t care less about punk rock. Unfortunately, while many of these professional Islamophobes may be on the extreme right of the political spectrum, their ideas have become common currency, even in parts of the punk community.

PunkNews.org, an otherwise apolitical site who have nonetheless done an excellent job reporting in solidarity with the kids in Aceh, have been the most obvious example, albeit briefly. The site’s initial post on December 13th made the assertion that not just Aceh but all of Indonesia was under Sharia — a factual error. The editors were quickly called on it, and two days later they retracted that portion of the post. Even more disheartening, though, was that they linked to Robert Spencer’s reprehensible “Jihad Watch” blog.

Spencer, who many will surely remember from his role in the hate campaign against the “Ground Zero mosque” earlier this year, never misses a chance to smear Islam as a religion of hate. Though he obviously cares not an inkling for the right to cultural expression, he inevitably released a story on Jihad Watch entitled “In Aceh, Sheena is not a punk rocker.

Spencer may be smiling at the supposed cleverness of such a title (I happen to think it’s a bit cheap and obvious). His editorializing, however, is nothing but pure bigoted vitriol:

Aceh is a case study in how creeping Sharia works. It gets a foot in the door with promises of moderation, tolerance, and limited applications… As its proponents gain confidence, enforcement of Sharia becomes more aggressive and intrusive on private behavior, because, in truth, Sharia is a comprehensive system of governance for every aspect of human life, and knows no compartmentalization of public and private behavior… Muhammad’s well-known antipathy toward musical instruments can’t help.

One might wonder which part of his own ass Spencer pulled this argument out of, but it’s hard to tell with his head still up there. He is willfully oblivious to the similarity his description holds with any form of religious fundamentalism, and to how such extreme ideas are more a tool of state repression rather than the root. Look, for example, at how the Christian fundamentalism of John Ashcroft and George W Bush ran perfect cover for the crimes at Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo.

Spencer also deliberately ignores that what we have come to refer to as “Sharia” was, for most of its history, a set of clerical guidelines for living and governing rather than a political dogma. Deepa Kumar, in a recent article on political Islam, distinguishes: “While the clergy insisted that the potent rule society in a way that conformed to Sharia law, they viewed their role as censures of a bad ruler rather than rulers themselves.”

In other words, religious ideologies are bent to political agendas; not the other way round. As for the assertion that Muhammad hated musical instruments, it’s groundless. While zealous sects have interpreted it as such over the past hundred or so years, most mainstream Islamic scholars are in agreement that it was only vulgar songs that were proscribed; what counts as vulgar is open to interpretation. Muhammad was known to have musicians play and sing at his wedding.

The editors of PunkNews.org never responded to an email calling them on the inclusion of the link to Robert Spencer’s blog. They did, however, sever the link the next day. Once again, this is to their credit. However, if a reputable punk site can link to a blog like this without thinking twice, it reveals just how deep Islamophobia runs through post-9/11 America.

What makes this so especially tragic is that there is a brilliant history within punk of fighting bigotry. The very existence of a thriving Indonesian punk scene proves that it long ago ceased being a “white boy thing.” Back here on this side of the pond, there are punkers of every race and creed — from the Afro-punk movement to Chicano and Latino communities to yes, even Muslim punks.

Tanzila Ahmed, a Los Angeles activist and writer, lays it out straight up. “In America, being Muslim is an act of defiance,” says Ahmed. “That’s punk.” Ahmed, or “Taz” as she prefers to be called, runs the Taqwacore Webzine.

For the uninitiated, “Taqwacore” is the name for the movement of openly Muslim punk rockers that has taken hold over the past decade in North America. Since writer Michael Muhammad Knight’s 2002 novel The Taqwacores, the scene has coalesced around bands like Al Thawra and the Kominas. In 2010, director Omar Majeed released the documentary Taqwacore: The Birth of Punk Islam, currently making the rounds at festivals around the world.

In a commentary on the site, Ahmed puts her identity, her faith, and the idiocy of both the Aceh “Sharia police” and American Islamophobia, all in perspective:

My baptism wasn’t by lake water but by fire, avoiding the glares of Christian fundamentalists with their barking dogs on the street corner protesting outside my American mosque, or being pulled out by TSA in airport security lines. My Islamic baptism happens when I watch my back for hate-crimes when walking down the street defiantly brown in a white America or when I get told by drunk bigots at parties to go back to where I came from. My boycott these days is of a hardware supply store for not supporting a reality show. That is the American Muslim punk baptism right there.

Taz’s experience — absorbing the sneers of a repressive society bent on shoving you into a box — isn’t unique among punks. And it’s certainly not unique among Muslims. It could justifiably be said that Taqwacore kids bear a double burden. One of the most poignant and enraging scenes in Majeed’s doc is when a Detroit club cancels a Taqwa gig, claiming they’re wary of “the Muslim thing”.

It goes without saying that the righteous indignation that Spencer spewed out against the raid in Banda Aceh doesn’t extend to the kids who have their shows shut down thanks to anti-Muslim bigotry. Neither for the punks thrown in prison in Indonesia’s more “moderate” provinces, squatters evicted from viable homes in London’s St. Agnes Place in 2005 or the countless gigs shut down by cops every year in Europe and America.

For the most part, the response to the arrests in Aceh among punks in the west has dodged this kind of blatant anti-Muslim bigotry. Even before PunkNews.org severed the link to Jihad Watch, people who left comments like “Fuck Islam. If I could put a picture of Muhammed [sic] here I would” were quickly rebuked by several other visitors to the site. Perhaps that’s because the instinct among punks — that repression is repression is repression — continues to ring true. And with it the time-honored suspicion of well-dressed people with cowardly ideas.

In the midst of all this, it’s worth stepping back and asking why, thirty-five years after the Sex Pistols first called Bill Grundy a “dirty fucker” on national television, despite so many attempts to sanitize and market it, punk can still be a threat. Indeed, how is it that this culture hasn’t only refused to fade into oblivion, but found its niche in almost every nation on the planet?

Ultimately, it’s because amidst the crumbling economic casualties of corporate globalization there continues to be a vast, pulsing mass of human beings sick of being pushed to the margins. The flip-side of that coin, then, must be that these indignant many deserve to run the world for themselves — be they black, brown or white, Christian, Jew, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist or atheist. It’s a dream that throughout history has been called a utopian pipe dream. But then, is there anything more punk than making the impossible possible?

The next day, the self-immolation was confirmed as a suicide: Lise Bonnafous had died from the third-degree burns that covered 95% of her body. So ended the life of this 44-year-old teacher who had been working for ten years at the Jean-Moulin Lycée at Béziers, one of the largest in the Languedoc-Roussillon region.

In a carefully worded statement the 280 teachers at the lycée declared: “This symbolic act has left us reeling and has caused us all much heart-searching (‘nous interroge tous’). This gesture is a call to solidarity for the entire staff and bears witness to the difficulty we have in accomplishing our mission.”

Teaching at the lycée was suspended as staff and students attempted to come to terms with this gruesome event. The teaching staff declared a strike of indefinite duration until responsibility for the tragedy could be established. The French teaching union SNES called for a “debate” concerning the tragedy and pressed the ministry of education for “an improvement in the general conditions of work for teachers, which have become considerably more demanding in the last few years”. Another union, SNALC, said that the suicide points to “an immense malaise in the entire profession”. The unions organised a “white march” (“marche blanche”) in Béziers on 18 October and a further march in Montpellier the following day.

Officials were quick to portray the suicide as the isolated act of a mentally unstable teacher. The French minister of education, Luc Chatel, referred to her “psychologically fragile state” and said that she had been receiving “pedagogical and medical treatment”. However, this claim is denied by colleagues: “Luc Chatel is lying, she was not being treated medically nor was she fragile, but she was conscientious, competent, she loved her work, and she had courage,” said a colleague, a certain F. Peru. Other colleagues pointed out that teachers generally have been reduced to a “fragile” state because of a steady deterioration in their conditions of work.

In any case, this was no ordinary suicide: rather, a symbolic act of self-immolation with all the horrifying impact on those involved, especially the eye witnesses. But even if one may deplore this self-inflicted violence and the trauma it has caused, one cannot ignore the context in which such an extreme act was carried out. Indeed, some of her colleagues regard her as a hero, and admire her for paying the supreme sacrifice in order to draw attention to the problems within the French education system. Morale among French teachers is after all low, as teachers are contending with a number of problems simultaneously, including government cuts, “reforms” (widely suspected as money-saving ploys) and increasingly disruptive behaviour on the part of students.

In the 2011 budget, 16,000 lycée posts are scheduled to disappear out of a total of 850,000 teachers. The increased class size (40 or more) is making effective teaching more difficult and also adding to the marking load for each teacher. The cuts are perceived as all the more perverse because they do not correspond to a decrease in the number of students.

Teachers feel abandoned and misunderstood, that they are not being listened to. They say that recent “reforms” have been introduced without their views being taken sufficiently into account. One symptom of this is that the one-year teacher-training course, in which students taught half-time and spent the rest of the time in training – has been abolished: from now on young teachers will be forced to face the classroom for the first time with almost no preparation. Instead, the trainees are obliged to attend a few “training sessions” throughout the year. Exactly what is taught in these sessions has emerged in a report about one such session held in Bordeaux on 3 December last year. Trainees were lectured on their rights and duties as civil servants – but were not given any actual training on classroom teaching. Instead, they “benefited” from a talk in which two army officers tried to persuade trainees to steer their students towards a career in the army!¹  “If my soldiers were to begin to think, not one of them would remain in the army,” said Frederick the Great. Towards what career is the French government trying steer its students, if not a military one?

Disruptive behaviour in the classroom is another concern, pointing to problems within society at large. Sometimes this leads to assaults on teachers, which are on the increase. The FNEC FP-FO teaching union links the increase in violence and incivility to the suppression of teaching posts and CPEs (a team of administrators responsible for disciplinary matters): more than 60,000 positions abolished since 2007. If the recent changes have a negative effect on student behaviour or performance, the cuts will have turned out to be a false economy.

The attempt to instil martial virtues is not the only example of insensitivity on the part of the educational authorities. Bad feeling has also been caused by the increase in bonuses paid to the rectors of education academies (the regional bodies responsible for implementing national education policy) at a time when less money is being allocated for teaching. In fact bonuses are a normal part of the benefits package of France’s top civil servants. In this case, however, the bonuses were doubly outrageous: first, they were being awarded to proviseurs in proportion to the number of posts or institutions they were able to abolish; second, for 2011 the bonus had been increased from 19,000 to 22,000 euros – money that could have been used to help pay the somewhat meagre salary of teachers. The issue of bonuses was highlighted when a retired lycée director, Michel Ascher, an officer in the order of “Palmes Académiques”, handed back his decoration in protest. In an open letter dated 22 December 2010 he publicly lambasted the French educational system as being concerned exclusively with money. Other holders of the same distinction quickly followed suit.

A sign that teaching resources are being stretched is that the rules governing the conditions under which teachers are supposed to work are being flouted. Several teachers have been assigned classes in schools from 35 to as many as 66 kilometres apart, even though the rules clearly state that the teacher may be asked to teach only in the same town or in a neighbouring one. This immediately creates extra work in terms of commuting and multiplication of meetings with staff and parents. Of course, a teacher has the right – after a months-long appeal process – to refuse these extra demands, but at a price. The proviseurs (lycée directors) wield a lot of power. They can put pressure on you to teach another subject instead of paying someone else who is qualified to do it; they can assign you to larger classes if you exercise your right to refuse to work more than two supplementary hours; or they can simply order you to teach those extra hours.

Other “reforms” are in the pipeline. A proposed new law would change the way lycées are inspected. Instead of the current independent inspectorate, the task of inspecting would fall to the directorate of the lycée itself. Apart from the fact that the work schedules of proviseurs and vice-proviseurs are already stretched, the proposal almost guarantees that the process will be carried out in a perfunctory way at best. At worst, favouritism, or the suspicion of favouritism, is an obvious danger, not to mention conflict of interest and lack of impartiality. Such a measure merely reinforces the suspicion among teachers that the so-called “reforms” are a thin disguise for money-saving ploys.

On suspects too that Sarkozy is playing to popular discontent with civil servants, the category to which lycée teachers belong. French bureaucracy is cumbersome and expensive, and civil servants are often seen as lazy, overpaid and over-protected. Anything that would bring their pay and conditions into line with the private sector is seen by many as a good thing. However, while it is true that some civil servants are well paid, this is not the case with most lycée teachers. Teachers face the added problem of a restrictive work schedule: whereas most workers can take time off then they please, teachers are obliged to turn up for the classes and cannot change their schedule. The stereotype of feather-bedded bureaucrats does not apply to teachers.

Secondly, Sarkozy wants to go one better than the private sector: in an effort to cut down on absenteeism, it is being proposed that civil servants forfeit one day’s pay for each period of sick leave. Apart from the measure’s obvious unfairness in criminalizing illness, it could have the reverse effect to the one intended: workers who are genuinely sick the first day could well decide to take a second or even a third day off in addition, even if they are not sick, just to get their “money’s worth”.

France is generally viewed as a “worker-friendly” country where employees receive generous social benefits and can be sacked only with difficulty. The reality, however, is that unhappiness at the workplace is a major problem in France. (It was probably a factor behind the recent strikes against pension reforms.) Renault was hit by a spate of workplace suicides a few years ago. France Telecom lost a staggering 58 of its employees to suicide within three years. In a grim premonition of the Lise Bonnafous case, one worker killed himself by setting himself on fire. Another “model” in the Bonnafous case could have been street vendor’s suicide that sparked off the revolution in Tunisia.

Both Renault and France Telecom were facing difficulties at the time the suicides occurred, and low morale would have been an issue even under the best management. In the specific case of France Telecom, it has been alleged that there was a policy of attempting to reduce staff without resorting to redundancies.[8] The suspicion must be that, precisely because redundancy is such a laborious and expensive process in France, in certain cases employers are resorting to ruthless tactics to slim down their workforce: making life hell for their employees in the hope that they will leave – unless, that is, they commit suicide first.

In the case of the French education system, however, the likely culprit is incompetence and lack of imagination rather than ruthless pursuit of profit. However you view the causes, Lise Bonnafous’s is by no means the first suicide among teachers: recent cases include a school director in July, two teachers in June, and in August a young trainee who had been dismissed. According to a study by Inserm (a public research institute) dating from 2002, the suicide rate among teachers in the national education system is unusually high, at 39 per 100,000 per year.

French teachers are hoping their educational system will not become another France Telecom.

1. “Des militaires pour former les profs stagiaires”, www.rue89.com/2010/12/15/des-militaires-pour-former-les-profs-stagiaires-180932, based on an eye-witness account given to a representative of the SNES of Lot-et-a-Garonne

The camps are important free-speech centers, a long overdue mass protest of the capitalist austerity program. Hopefully, the movement will be able to turn the tide against the police crackdown.

But, looking beyond the haze of tear gas, occupiers are starting to ask, “What’s next?” How can the Occupy movement create desperately needed change?

The movement’s amazing potential will be squandered if it does not develop past existence as a network of utopian, process-obsessed symbolic encampments. Or “victory” is reduced to settling for a few surface reforms — higher taxes on stock transactions or slaps on the wrist for Wall Street crooks.

To avert this, the mobilization needs to consciously evolve beyond its current orientation, “We are the 99 percent.” That’s a slogan anyone can embrace, from the CEO of Men’s Wearhouse to tea partiers and head-busting police.

Race and sex matter

For the mobilization to make a deep and lasting impression, the survival issues of the bottom of the 99 percent have to move to the top of the agenda. Putting the focus there will raise the movement’s sights, because the needs of those who are most oppressed challenge the very foundations of capitalism — a system dependent on their unequal status.

For this to happen, the leadership of women, immigrants, and people of color, especially women of color, is critical.

These are people disproportionately hurt by the Great Recession, experiencing far higher rates of joblessness, home foreclosures, and poverty. Whether it’s cancer rates or incarceration, they suffer more.

In giving their concerns priority, the movement of “the 99 percent” will actually unify greater numbers of people. The survival needs of people who have the least — like a living wage job, health care, retirement security — are also basic to everyone’s survival, and capitalism is putting them out of reach for more and more people.

Placing a political focus on women and people of color means developing a program and demands that can bridge the multiple divisions that capitalism is so expert at creating. In turn, embracing the leadership of women and people of color will help the Occupy movement evolve into a fighting force for real change. And the good news is that this leadership already exists.

When Occupy Wall Street was two weeks out of the gate, the New York People of Color working group formed. Asian American tenant organizers are involving occupiers in protesting greedy landlords in Chinatown. Occupy Harlem is fighting police policies that target Blacks and Latinos.

In Occupy Philly, Black women are campaigning against a racist youth curfew law and connecting it to Pennsylvania’s penchant for funding prisons over schools and community programs. And in Colorado, the American Indian Movement’s platform for indigenous rights was adopted by Occupy Denver.

Across the U.S., people of color are forming Occupy the Hoods and caucuses that enable them to intervene on issues such as police violence — issues often new to white occupiers. Women, queer, and transgendered activists are likewise pushing their concerns forward through caucuses and teach-ins.

These working groups and actions amplify perspectives that are routinely brushed under the rug by the 1 percent. A next step is to bring this leadership front and center.

The power of labor

Just as issues of women and people of color too often get lost in the shuffle without conscious leadership, the movement risks co-optation without the grass roots of organized labor centrally involved.

This doesn’t mean letting union officials take over, as some young protesters fear. For rank-and-file unionists it does mean bringing labor’s struggles to the Occupy movement, while pushing unions and labor leaders to defend it.

For unionists, Occupy Wall Street offers a historic opportunity to build the independent and radical working-class movement that organized labor must develop to remain alive.

The November 2 general strike in Oakland, Calif., is the clearest example yet of the power of a movement uniting workers and the disenfranchised.

Spurred by the violent dispersal of Occupy Oakland, including the police assault against an Iraq War veteran, and by the corporate attack against longshore workers in Longview, Wash., labor activists agitated for a general strike. The idea caught fire, and the Occupy Oakland general assembly approved it.

The action drew up to 30,000 people and shut Oakland’s port. Occupy Oakland adopted compelling demands for the strike put forward by leftists and unionists, including “end police attacks on our communities” and “defend Oakland schools and libraries.” The strike indicted “an economic system built on inequality and corporate power that perpetuates racism, sexism and the destruction of the environment.”

The International Longshore and Warehouse Union, with seasoned Black and radical leadership in the Oakland-San Francisco Bay Area, helped pave the way for this. In the past, Local 10 has shut the port to protest the Iraq War and police murder of Oscar Grant. Occupy Oakland built on this legacy.

A strong next step for the Occupy movement would be to start new occupations at state Capitols to fight budget cuts — to confront the government enabler of Wall Street. Joining with the organized, collective power of labor could make this happen.

Moving forward with a united front

To build for sustained actions, the best vehicle is the united front. This is a powerful alliance of different political tendencies with a working-class program and leadership.

The united front is the direction to go for Occupy activists who are rightfully worried their movement will be co-opted by the Democratic Party or Madison Avenue. With labor and the disenfranchised united, it is highly unlikely that the agenda will be confined to cosmetic reforms or cheerleading Democrats who “feel our pain.”

As the 2012 election season nears, movement opportunists will zero in on the Occupy movement to funnel it into status-quo election campaigns. If the occupations orient to the needs of the most oppressed and fuse with the power of labor, 2012 can be a year where fed-up people in the U.S. did more than just occupy — they started to fight back and win.

• This article first appeared in the Freedom Socialist newspaper.

Angie Tibbs:  Dr. Ezzat, let’s start at the beginning.  In January 2011 hundreds of thousands of Egyptians began their Tahrir Square occupation; you were on the ground there as a journalist and as a medical doctor. Would you recreate the mood of the demonstrators, and, in fact, of the country?

Ashraf Ezzat:  Egyptians still refer to those 18 days (January 25- February 11) as the glorious days of the revolution. Those days will undoubtedly carve their place in the modern history of Egypt. And contrary to what the mainstream media concluded, the Tahrir Square saga that captured the world may have been called for by some activists using the internet social media, but it was mainly fueled and triggered by years of political corruption and oppression. The build-up for this uprising has been brewing for years and specifically after Mubarak made it clear he was bequeathing the presidency for his son, Gamal.

Hence, the general mood of the Egyptians was a blend of dissatisfaction, anger and a potent urge for change. It is funny but it seems that the Egyptians had a clear-cut idea what they wanted from the first day they took to the streets. I joined the protests from the second day; the people on the streets were not divided about their demands.  You could see it in their eyes and hear it as they chanted “Bread, freedom and social justice” … and those three demands are what the “Tahrir Square” is still fighting for.

Dr. Ashraf Ezzat in Tahrir Square

AT:  One of the demands of the protesters was for President Mubarak to step down, effectively ending his 30 year authoritarian rule.  This he did on February 11, at which time the military council took over the country, promising to bring about democracy and to respect the wishes of the people. Did this happen, and did anyone expect it would happen?

AE: The military council of armed forces (SCAF), whose generals are Mubarak’s handpicked appointees, did nothing in the last ten months to promote democracy in the country; on the contrary, the generals, and through their ineptness or unwillingness actually to restore security on the street, have helped to bolster the tide of the counter-revolution.

And hadn’t it been for the thousands who lately returned to Tahrir Square to denounce the military rule and ask for a hand-over of power to a civilian salvation government, the revolution would have been done with and declared dead.

The majority of the Egyptian people kind of hoped the military would lead them out of these difficult times but while most of Egyptians didn’t doubt the capability of SCAF to do so, a lot of activists and political analysts suspected that the way SCAF has been handling things would eventually put the country on the road to democracy.

AT: Are you saying that there were those who believed that in time the SCAF would have, if left in power, brought about democracy?

AE: No, I meant to say that the downfall of Mubarak was so abrupt that nobody actually had seen it coming, not even the military which is part and parcel of the despotic old regime. And while stunned by the uprising’s rapid pace, military generals were following how this people vs. regime uprising was going to end, and they decided not to take sides until this whole thing was almost settled.

And when it was obvious, despite the White House’s pro-Mubarak stance, that the people were gaining the upper hand in this uprising the military, only at that moment, decided to side with the people and this is when the protesters in Tahrir square chanted “ The people and military are joined hand in hand”

But not everybody was fooled by this “wait and see” approach by the military. A lot of activists and political analysts knew that the self-serving generals would try to somehow steer this transitional period in their favor. And that is exactly what they did when they proposed a new draft for a constitution that would shield the military from parliamentary scrutiny and which declares the military the guardian of “constitutional legitimacy,” suggesting the armed forces could have the final word on major policies.

AT:  How did Egyptians feel about the military and the police from the commencement of the Mubarak regime up to the demonstrations of January 2011?

AE: Actually Mubarak’s regime was just a police regime. A giant police apparatus that stifled dissent by violent means and that only served and protected the corrupt elite and the president. The citizen/police relation has been quite tense over years of coercion and misconduct. Throughout most of Mubarak’s rule Egyptians feared and somehow distrusted the police.

But in the last couple of years and prior to his ouster they began to loathe the corruption that swept across the whole security apparatus that turned the policeman into a thug with a badge, placed him above the law and allowed him to get away with almost anything … even crimes.

The famous case of the killing of Khalid Saeed, young Egyptian man from Alexandria, who was beaten to death by security forces after he was indicted on framed charges, has incited unprecedented anger and helped trigger the revolution in January. 

While the majority of Egyptians had negative feelings for the police they honored and respected the military for its patriotic role of protecting the sovereignty of the state and for the long and heroic confrontation with Israel especially after the 1973 war.

But I hope that Egyptians will make the necessary and fair distinction between the military forces or the army as a whole and the generals in the military council when they come to judge the conduct of SCAF in the transitional period that followed January 25 revolution.

AT:  In the months since the occupation of Tahrir Square ended, have there been any changes meaningful to Egyptians?

AE: Though a lot of things have remained the same if not for the worse, I would say that the only thing that really changed in the life of Egyptians is their ability to say NO to anything and anyone. And also to vote freely, as we all have witnessed the huge turnout for the first post-Mubarak parliamentary elections.

The Egyptian people broke the fear barrier and this, for people who have been enduring under tyranny for centuries, is quite an achievement. Moreover, I truly believe that once placed on the path of real democracy, the whole world will witness a new and amazingly different Egypt.

AT: Since the demonstrations ended in February, thousands of people have been arrested and tried before military tribunals, yet throughout the occupation of Tahrir Square there appeared to be good relations between the protesters and the security forces.  What caused these widespread arrests and are they continuing?

AE: As I mentioned before, many of the Tahrir activists viewed the stance of the military with suspicion and as days went by it became obvious that the generals were trying to give the old regime a comeback chance. The scenario of chaos and sectarian violence that Mubarak threatened would engulf the country if he was to step down was beginning to be unleashed.

Shortly after the toppling of Mubarak, Egypt began to witness months of unrest, economic plunge, lack of security forces on the street, sectarian violence and a series of churches attacks which culminated in the lethal clashes with a Coptic rally on October 9 that left 27 killed by the military forces in what is now known as the Maspero massacre.

But this was not what the revolutionary youths and activists demanded when they initiated the January uprising. This was not why people got killed in the protests. The people didn’t topple Mubarak to have a military dictatorship instead.

So this is why the honeymoon with the military didn’t last and it wasn’t long before many activists began to point the finger at SCAF for all the scenarios aimed at thwarting the revolution tide. And it wasn’t long either before the thousands – almost 15,000 according to Human Rights Watch – were thrown behind bars and tried before military tribunals until this very day.

AT:  Protesters have again taken to the streets of Cairo and elsewhere in Egypt, and the police are responding, thus far killing over 30 people. What has prompted this, and what do you anticipate happening as a result?

AE:   According to the counter-revolution plan, which the United States fully backed, the military was supposed to grab the power permanently. To set the stage for such scenario, the military in the last ten months has done everything possible not only to thwart the advance of the revolution but to turn the Egyptians against the idea itself as the plan augmented the sense of vulnerability and insecurity of the average Egyptian citizen and cunningly linked it to the revolution.

And just when the generals thought they had managed to hijack the revolution, they were in for a big surprise.

Emboldened by the power they’ve got and by the American support, the generals dared to propose a new draft for a constitution that could only pave the way for a military fascism and this is where they went wrong.  This blatant exploitation on part of the military council triggered the pouring of thousands into Tahrir Square once again in what is now dubbed “the second revolution”.

AT:  The military council is now promising presidential elections before July of 2012.  Is this a satisfactory response to the current uprising? Will the Egyptian people accept this or will they view it as an attempt by the military to divert world attention from its ongoing crackdown? Furthermore, do Egyptians accept the military as a caretaker government? 

AE: Egyptians didn’t flock back to Tahrir Square to demand elections. The protesters in Tahrir Square have made it clear that they don’t want the military council as a caretaker and moreover they insist that the council should step aside and hand over power to a civilian salvation government. In January the protesters in Tahrir Square wanted Mubarak to step down, and in November they wanted the military to step aside.

AT:  Were you surprised to hear the US State Department initially praising the “exercise of self-restraint and professionalism” of the Egyptian security forces with respect to the present demonstrations?

AE:  There seems to be a growing number of people in and around the Tahrir Square angry at being fired on by weapons supplied from countries like the US, making nice noises about democracy and restraint in Egypt. The US government and its weapon companies continue to supply tools of repression, usually for profit, to those who they well know will use them to violate human rights and repress their own citizens.

So once again the unexpected course of the Egyptian revolution – and contrary to the conspiracy theorists who view the Arab revolutions as orchestrated by the CIA & the neo-cons – has exposed the flagrant American double standards in the Middle East and especially in regard to the Arab spring.

The mere fact that protesters refused to meet Mrs. Clinton, the American secretary of state, on her first visit to Cairo after the ouster of Mubarak should tell us how the revolutionary youths of Egypt view the United States’ stance on their revolution.

AT: Do you see a connection between the Egyptian military and possible US and Israel future plans for Egypt?    

AE: I doubt the Egyptian military would undertake any move that could jeopardize its patriotic history, but I would certainly be relieved if this current top command of Egypt military could be replaced soon.  No matter how we look at it, those generals of Egypt military council are part of the old regime.

Indeed our reading into the current turmoil and change gripping Egypt and the rest of the Arab world is bound to open our eyes to a brand new Arab world in the making right now – but not the Condoleezza Rice’s new Middle East. New forces are emerging and the United States will soon have to relinquish its old diplomacy in Middle East that relied mainly on the so called strong allies/dictators and try to prepare for the rise of a new political front – most probably of Islamists – that will rule in Tunisia, Libya, and Cairo and maybe Syria.

AT:  What is happening in Egypt today, and what is the mood of the people?

AE: The parliamentary polls opened amid escalating protests that reject the newly appointed prime minister and a build-up of public opinion that demands the generals must go back to their barracks. The general mood is split between the youths who seem determined to take the revolution to the farthest limit and the older generation who believe that stability and compromise is what the country needs right now.  It is split between the conservative front who thinks it is time we gave our support for the Muslim Brotherhood (the longtime outlawed Islamist political group) and the liberal groups who, despite their modest preliminary showing in the parliamentary polls, believe that we should separate the mosque from the state.

In that sense, you could say the current struggle is between the old and the new or the past and future; in other words, between the conservatives and the liberals. But I don’t think Egypt, the land of moderate Islam and the liberal hub of the Arab world, will get lost as long as the Tahrir Square spirit remains with us.

According to a 2010 AFL-CIO analysis of 299 U.S. companies in the S&P 500, average gross CEO pay was about 11.4 million dollars, 343 times the median wage (the widest gap in the world). Banksters, big agribusiness and corrupt lawmakers make healthy food inaccessible for growing numbers of people around the world while basic health care continues to become prohibitively expensive thanks to bloated medical, insurance and pharmaceutical companies. Meanwhile corporate-owned media distracts and disinforms the masses just enough for the top-heavy self-destructively corrupt system to drag on a little longer.

So when a group of activists (organized largely through the internet and social media) took a stand to occupy Wall Street, they also occupied the collective imagination. Occupiers’ critiques of corrupt political and economic systems are nothing new but today they’re so transparently and demonstrably true, occupation sites spread like wildfire across the country and world faster than the establishment’s concerted efforts to extinguish it with propaganda and violent coercion.

Occupy Wall Street (OWS) represents another tipping point for international outrage in the context of a global struggle for justice and democracy. From late last year mass anti-austerity protests swept through European and Mediterranean countries while earlier this year Arab Spring revolutionary movements sprang up in the Middle East and North Africa (which I previously wrote about here) and in some cases continue today. Though there’s differences in the nature of the situations and struggles, what’s shared in common is growing awareness and desire to put an end to mass suffering and injustice due to neoliberal policies dictated by powerful institutions.

Such institutions include Wall Street, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization, the U.S. Government, and all other governments and organizations they’re aligned with and/or have influence over. Their policies include elimination of trade barriers, regressive taxation, private central banks, budget cuts for social services, privatization of public resources and deregulation.

The top 1% would like us to believe these measures are necessary to strengthen the economies of nations and improve government efficiency but in reality it has done the opposite. There’s overwhelming evidence from around the world linking neoliberalism to erosion of democracy and national sovereignty, militarism, increased corruption and wealth disparity, weakened infrastructures, widespread unemployment and poverty, inflation, worker exploitation, and environmental degradation.

Because wealth and power of big banks and corporations drastically increases under this system, the 1% would also like us to think no alternatives are possible. However, following a long tradition of dissident movements, OWS owes its existence to the desire to create alternatives that put people over profits.

Like all evolving social movements, Occupy Wall Street isn’t perfect. They’ve made strategic mistakes and have internal struggles but have also shown remarkable determination and ability to learn and adapt. One of the most common critiques leveled against OWS is “they lack focus and need a specific list of demands.” Such criticism is unavoidable for organizations that are not single-issue but seek to change a complex system responsible for multiple interrelated problems.

The structure of OWS also confuses people because unlike hierarchical models most are familiar with, occupiers tend to be open-source, decentralized and collaborative. Decisions are made through General Assemblies using a process of consensus decision making, a form of participatory democracy. As with most forms of direct democracy it’s often a slow and difficult, but far more open and inclusive to a diversity of voices than republics and non-democratic systems. It also ensures that the decisions made benefit as many people as possible as equally as possible.

What critics forget is that America’s forefathers (all wealthy white men) didn’t get around to drafting a constitution and declaration of independence until after the revolution. OWS might not yet have an official list of demands but it’s not difficult to find statements and documents online to get an idea of their values and goals, such as the NYC General Assembly’s Principles of Solidarity.

Other common charges against the Occupy Movement frequently parroted by corporate news include “protesters are too lazy to get a job”, “they’re just a bunch of dirty hippies” and “they’re looking for a confrontation with police”. These stereotypes can be dispelled simply by visiting an occupation site or talking to people at OWS rallies. Judging from the people I’ve met and heard interviews with, many have part time positions while others include students seeking jobs with which they can pay off student loans. Some unemployed activists were recently laid off and are still searching for jobs. To put their situation in perspective, in the sixties the unemployment rate was just over 4% while today the rate has more than doubled. When counting workers who are “underutilized” and “marginally attached”, the rate jumps to 16.7%. Out of the approximately 14 million unemployed in America, 46%, or over 6 million have been unemployed for 6 months or longer. In some cases unemployed homeowners at risk for foreclosure are trapped by underwater mortgages and couldn’t relocate even if they did find jobs elsewhere.

Though in our current system most of us need jobs and wages to access basic needs like food, shelter and clothing, all could be provided for free with just a fraction of the current number actually working. Approximately 60,000 tons of food is wasted annually to keep prices high while banks faced with a glut of foreclosed homes demolish them to avoid taxes, maintenance costs and devalued markets. Companies such as H & M and Walmart have even been caught destroying unused clothing. More jobs might encourage more complacency but would do nothing to resolve structural problems such as overproduction outstripping demand, wealth disparity, devastating economic bubbles, corporate monopolization, and a culture of greed and hyperconsumerism.

What could be a solution is a better socio-economic system, the creation of which is one of the Occupation’s fundamental principles of solidarity.

Ad hominem attacks against OWS regarding hygiene and appearance initially struck me as oddly childish and superficial. Camping without a shower would have the same effect on anyone and it has nothing to do with the issues. Then I recalled how characterizing groups as “dirty” and subhuman is typical of ruling elites’ tried and true “divide and conquer” strategy. In this case it seems like an attempt to prevent the average corporate news consumer from paying attention to the ideas of OWS and identifying with them as part of a unified 99%.

A leaked memo from a lobbying firm has already confirmed an $850,000 proposal to spread “negative narratives” about the Occupy Movement. Occupiers are also certainly not all hippies. OWS includes people representing a wide spectrum of backgrounds and ideologies. Many tend to be on the progressive side but I’ve also met libertarians at Occupy events holding some beliefs associated with the Tea Party. Not surprisingly, at a recent joint Occupy/Tea Party forum in Memphis, the two groups clashed on certain issues but also found points of agreement such as frustration regarding unresponsiveness of government to average citizens and opposition to bank bailouts and crony capitalism.

With further conversation the groups may find many other common interests such as ending perpetual wars on terror and drugs, eliminating NAFTA and similar unfair trade agreements, abolishing or restructuring the Federal Reserve, prohibiting militarized police state tactics, protecting civil liberties, creating fair election and mass media systems, and keeping pollutants out of our air, food and water. These are shared goals that 99% of the rest of the world could agree with as well.

Most critics who accuse OWS of trying to pick a fight with police usually don’t understand the purpose of non-violent civil disobedience and believe more conventional channels of political expression such as voting or letter writing are enough to fix the system. A central insight of OWS is that our problems go beyond politics to sources of power and wealth gaming the system and are, in fact, part of the same beast. Unfortunately voting and letter writing in themselves can do little to counteract massive amounts of money used to finance campaigns, shape legislation, and influence politicians and public opinion. When there are no longer true avenues of political and judicial redress, civil disobedience is exactly what is needed. It’s a tactic that has been used with great success in the Civil Rights, Anti-Vietnam War and Women’s Suffrage movements as well as the American Revolution. Critics who complain about tax dollars wasted on policing Occupy sites need to remember that city officials decide how to spend that money (and how much violence police use).

There has been incidences and allegations of sexual assault occurring on or near OWS camps reflecting a sad reality of our patriarchal society that even within groups trying to change the society it could still happen. Though a relatively rare occurrence, it’s a serious issue more OWS General Assemblies need to openly address and create preventative measures for as some have already done.

Conservative news channels like FOX focus disproportionately on reported crimes and isolated incidents associated with the Occupy Movement to create a false image of police simply defending themselves and the community. If that seems far-fetched, just google keywords “fox news” “ows” and “violence”. Other corporate news also cover such incidents in addition to police violence but usually within a limited context and far less air time than similar protests in the Middle East.

Independent and alternative media (including citizen journalists using social media, blogs and YouTube) have been by far the source of the most detailed and comprehensive coverage of OWS. Without independent cameras on the street, fewer people would have known about the mass pepper spraying, beating, tasering and rubber bullet shooting (all effectively forms of mass torture) of peaceful protesters across the country.

Numerous videos and accounts can be found online revealing a pattern of coordinated violent crackdowns at all major Occupy sites including New York, Atlanta, Nashville, Austin, Denver, Berkeley, U.C. Davis, Portland, and Seattle (where among the victimized crowd were an 84 year old activist, a Methodist Pastor in clergy robe, and a young pregnant woman who miscarried a week later). Or how in Oakland, Iraq War veteran Scott Olsen suffered a fractured skull from a gas canister shot at close range and 8 days later Afghanistan and Iraq War vet Kayvan Sabeghi was beaten by police while trying to return home. Unnecessary indiscriminate and excessive police brutality is nothing new, but citizens now have a greater ability to document and report it than ever before without censorship and distortion.

Such incidences of violent police provocation could have escalated to wide-scale riots were it not for the self-control of the Occupiers and their determination to remain a peaceful movement. They understand that besides being in a struggle for survival, they’re involved in a philosophical struggle for the hearts and minds of the world. To resort to violence would be to adapt the mentality of the oppressors and be maligned as threats to national security (though that’s often how they’re treated by the State).

Police and military are well armed and trained to deal with violence but they’re not prepared to deal with public shaming and unarguable facts that may someday override orders, threats and conditioning from the 1%. There’s probably nothing ruling elites fear most than an awakened 99% united in solidarity, including people of all political and religious persuasions, occupations, races, and nations. Once that happens, one percenters know it’s “game over” so we should expect them to do everything in their power to divide and conquer, especially if, as recent research has theorized, some of them may be literally psychotic.  To counteract this effort, it’s more important than ever to think critically and stay informed. Be aware that it’s perfectly legal for corporate news media to lie and there’s plenty of sources online to find more accurate and up-to-date information.

Better yet, visit a local Occupy site or event to get firsthand knowledge about who they are and what they believe in. By becoming, in effect, a citizen journalist you’ll be well equipped to challenge common fallacies about OWS when talking to family, friends, coworkers and strangers. Whether they realize it or not, we’re all in it together.

A Global Occupation may not bring utopia (probably nothing ever will), but it’s the best opportunity yet to prevent our world from falling further into dystopia.

Norman Solomon has concluded it isn’t either/or. A prominent writer and leader in left movements for decades, Solomon is running for Congress in the hopes of being practical and remaining principled.

“Since I first went to a protest at age 14 in 1966 — a picket line to desegregate an apartment complex — my outlook on electoral politics has gone through a lot of changes,” Solomon said. “First I thought politics was largely about elections, later I thought politics had very little to do with elections, and now I believe that elections are an important part of the mix.”

Solomon argues that when the left has treated elections as irrelevant, the result has been self-marginalization that helps empower the military-industrial complex.

“The view that genuine progressives should leave the electoral field to corporate Democrats and right-wing Republicans no longer makes sense to me. I used to say that having a strong progressive movement was much more important than who was in office, but now I’d say that what we really need is a strong progressive movement AND much better people in office,” he said. “Having John Conyers, Barbara Lee, Dennis Kucinich, Jim McGovern, Raul Grijalva, Lynn Woolsey in Congress is important. We need more of those sorts of legislators as part of the political landscape.”

The 60-year-old Solomon had been considering such a strategy, and when Woolsey announced she was not running for re-election in her northern California district, he entered the race with the goal of staying true to his left political views, and winning.

“I’m skeptical about election campaigns that abandon principles, but I’m also skeptical about campaigns that have no hope of winning and that are only for protest or public education,” he said. “There are more effective ways to protest and to educate.”

Solomon said that if elected he would strive to change the relationship between social movements and members of Congress.

“Progressive movements and leaders in Congress should be working in tandem,” he said. “I want to strengthen the Congressional Progressive Caucus and help make it more of a force to be reckoned with.”

Solomon said that a re-invigorated Progressive Caucus could be more effective in fighting for the human right of quality healthcare for all; ending the perpetual war of the warfare state, what Martin Luther King Jr. called “the madness of militarism”; pushing back against the power of Wall Street; replacing corporate power with people power.

Solomon is most widely known for his media criticism and activism, through his “Media Beat” weekly column that was nationally syndicated and his work with Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting. In 1997 he founded the Institute for Public Accuracy, a national consortium of policy researchers and analysts for which he served as executive director for 13 years.

Solomon became more visible in mainstream media through his trip to Iraq with actor Sean Penn on the eve of the U.S. invasion, part of anti-war efforts to prevent that coming catastrophe. Solomon’s 2005 book, War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death, and a companion film drew on his media and political expertise to analyze the war machine. (Full disclosure: I found the book and film so compelling that I brought Solomon to my campus to speak.)

Polls indicate that Solomon is competitive in a Democratic primary that includes a state assemblyman, a county supervisor, and two business people. Penn is supporting Solomon’s campaign, which has also received endorsement from U.S. Rep. Raul Grijalva, co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, and Dolores Huerta, co-founder of the United Farm Workers. Fundraising is always a struggle, especially since he committed to “corporate-free fundraising.”

“By raising more than $250,000 from more than 2,000 different people, we’ve shown that we can raise the needed funds without a single dollar from corporate PACs,” Solomon said. “But we need to raise a lot more, and the month of December will be crucial — end-of-year totals will be seen by many as a self-fulfilling gauge of our capacity to gain enough support to win.”

Solomon believes that citizen frustration with concentrated wealth, and the political dominance that big money buys, is opening up new possibilities for progressive candidates.

“Our campaign is very much in sync with Occupy Wall Street,” he said. “Issues that I’ve been talking about from the outset of this campaign last January, and for many years before that, are part of the OWS focus — Wall Street’s undemocratic power, the widening disparities between the rich and the rest of us, the need to eject corporate money from politics.”

Solomon has described his politics as “green New Deal,” arguing for a vigorous government role in providing quality education, adequate health care, consumer protection, civil liberties, and environmental safeguards. For leftists, two questions hover: Can a candidate go beyond liberal positions and articulate anti-capitalist and anti-empire politics during a campaign? If elected, can a member of Congress stay true to those principles? Movement activists are wary of left/liberal politicians who push their rhetoric toward the center to get elected and then end up advocating centrist policies.

Solomon said he identifies with a phrase Penn used at a campaign rally: “principle as strategy.”

“I intend to stick with principles, what I believe and what I’m willing to fight for,” Solomon said. “The quest is not for heightened rhetoric, it’s for deeper meaning, with insistence on policies to match — economic populism, human rights, civil liberties, ending wars, and working for social equity.”

Though that agenda suggests radical change, Solomon said he doesn’t use the term “radical,” opting instead for terms such as “genuine progressive,” “progressive populism,” and “independent progressive” to describe himself and his campaign.

“The term radical can be understood as ‘to the root,’ but what it conveys to most of the public is that we are extreme and the status quo isn’t,” he said. “But look at the huge disparities between rich and poor, catastrophic climate change and destruction of ecology, inflicting massive suffering, extreme violence of war, and on and on. I would say the status quo is extreme.”

Disorganized and still finding our footing, we nonetheless have already proven our value. The political discourse is being framed differently, big banks and huge financial entities are beginning to understand that their power may not be limitless. Corporations are learning that their grip on global culture may not be as firm as imagined. Most importantly, we are finding our voices and our power, and connecting in new ways with each passing moment.

Here in Cincinnati, we face challenges similar to other occupations. Our encampment was shut down after two weeks, with 145 citations and over 50 arrests, which led to a Federal lawsuit based on First Amendment rights. Since then we’ve been looking for a new, sustainable encampment, while still carrying out our various processes and actions.

We have had our successes. We targeted four local council members who supported the 1%, all were defeated. We joined with other Occupations in Bank Transfer Day, moving money and staging street theatre. We built an oil derrick to highlight local Senator and Super Committee Member Rob Portman’s unwillingness to rid us of oil and energy subsidies. Yet to me nothing is a greater success than adopting these five principles.

Peace, Love, Equality, Justice and Solidarity. Fine words, every one. And the idea behind each word is tremendously powerful and empowering. These words speak well for us. They create the basis for a system of ethics. Let’s take a moment to consider the implications of holding these principles.

1] An End to War. There can be no war with the principle of peace. It’s antithetical. As Albert Einstein said, “You cannot simultaneously prepare for war and for peace.” Any policies or actions that promote war cannot be condoned by Occupy Cincinnati. Also implied, an end to personal violence. We have far too many situations in the old culture where wounded and fear-driven folks lash out, power trip or otherwise act out in a fashion that is deleterious to human health. We wholeheartedly resist such behaviors.

2] Reversing Globalization. We cannot find these adopted principles in the system of globalization. Designed and built for the profit of the 1%, there is no equality or justice in extractive practices like mining and logging, child and underpaid labor and poorly made products. To honor our principles, we must necessarily extract ourselves from the globalized system to whatever extent we can, starting with spending our money locally and starving behemoths like Walmart.

3] Restoring Communities and Ecosystems. We have no equality when corporations ravage communities and living systems just to make a buck. We have no legal recourse when government sides with corporate interests. With these principles, the Occupation can work to create a generative, rather than extractive culture. Organic food production, sustainable, local energy solutions, community-building and getting involved with local government are all implied in the principles of equality and justice.

4] Reconstituting Government. Federal governments across the globe have proven time and time again where their loyalties lie, and it is not with we, the people. This Occupation must focus on reconstructing governments based on Internet-enabled technologies and human need. The archaic, dysfunctional, corrupt system of government that serves the 1% must be replaced.

This is powerful stuff. Revolutionary stuff. And yes, revolution is what we are about here in the Occupied Territories. Of course, with these principles our efforts mirror the efforts of Gandhi, King and other change agents who refused violence at every turn, and yet created something fundamentally better than the condition that existed previously.

With this worldwide Occupation, we begin to see the scope of what we are about. Creative acts of solidarity, fresh eruptions from the Arab Spring, talk of a constitutional assembly – doesn’t sound much like a fad. It sounds like revolution. But as we are committed to peace, it does not mirror bloody revolutions from the past [can’t speak for agents of the 1%]. It reflects something completely new under the sun, an uprising such as the world has never seen.

I encourage other Occupied Territories to adopt these or similar principles. Such principles form the frame we operate within, the lens through which we apply ourselves. And while we cannot control violence from the state, we can hold to our process and principles, and do all we can to make this R-Evolution as peaceful and agile as possible.

This is the third successive forum in this city, and for the third successive year Haligonians are organizing to condemn this war conference with a rally on Saturday, November 19th, 1:00 p.m., at the Cornwallis Park. The Halifax Peace Coalition and the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, among others, have endorsed the stand.

In 2009 as part of their protest, anti-war groups and individuals aptly renamed the park Halifax Peace and Freedom Park in honour of the Mi’kmaq and fraternal First Nations who resisted with great honour colonial conquest and the NATO base in Labrador. The reclamation of the park was repeated in 2010 and will be done again in 2011.

In 2009 I wrote: “Conferences aimed at working out the justification for the global expansion of NATO, which has been and will continue to be a U.S. project, can only be condemned as preparations for invasion, occupation, subversion and destabilization of governments and other crimes against the peace and sovereignty throughout the world. The public security agenda has nothing to do with security if the word security is to have any meaning, premised on recognizing all nations big or small as equal and the right of all peoples to self-determination and to live in peace.”

War criminals

The HISF features a roster of open war criminals such as Ehud Barak and Amos Gilead of Israel and U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, who is to be given the podium to deliver the keynote speech.

Panetta is a protagonist of “pre-emptive warfare”, the conduct of outright wars of aggression using self-defence and the “responsibility to protect” as a pretext and a justification.

As CIA Director until July 1st, Panetta was the invisible architect for the fourfold expansion of the unmanned “drone” attacks controlled remotely, which have caused huge numbers of casualties in both Afghanistan and over the border in Pakistan as well as in Yemen and Somalia. He has also increased the role of private companies and militias under the pretext of the war on “Islamic terrorists.”

In order to deal with the deepening crisis within NATO, Panetta is demanding the Anglo-U.S. “allies” absorb US military and Pentagon spending and foreign troop deployment. This is being done in the name of spending cuts demanded by the U.S. Congress and against the so-called “two-tiered NATO”, whereby the U.S. alleges it produces “security” while Europe “consumes” it. This demand has been embraced by the Harper government, with its so-called “transformation” of the Canadian Forces featuring boosting the number of combat-ready troops, the warship shipbuilding program and stealth jet fighters, and the establishment of military bases around the world.

CIA director Panetta continued Guantanamo, which was not shut down. In little-noticed testimony at his nomination hearing, Panetta said that if the approved techniques of torture were “not sufficient” to get a detainee to divulge details he was suspected of knowing about an imminent attack, he would ask for “additional authority.” In an internal memo issued April 9 2009 Panetta announced a blanket amnesty for all Bush officials, torturers and war criminals.

Panetta is committed to America’s “long war” including global warfare under the pretext of the “war on terrorism.”

Panetta is accompanied by Senator John McCain, the leading advocate in the U.S. Senate for aggressive foreign policies including the assassination of political leaders that Washington finds inimical to its interests. As Obama himself put it in 2008, “[T]his is the guy who sang, ‘Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran,’ who called for the annihilation of North Korea.” This is McCain’s third HISF. At the 2010 HISF, fellow U.S. Senator Lindsay Graham openly called for the “neutering” of Iran.
Other speakers involved in war crimes include members of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, a short-lived but influential, neoconservative-led letterhead group that emerged after the 9/11 attacks to promote attacking Iraq, such as Bruce P. Jackson. He held a high office as vice president for strategy and planning in Lockheed Martin, one of the largest arms multinationals in the world and set to reap the big score from Harper contracts for jet fighters and warships.

On 27 December 2008, war criminal Ehud Barak, Israeli Defence Minister, ordered the aerial bombardment of Gazan population centers. The attacks involved hundreds of fighter jet sorties, dropping hundreds of tons of bombs on Gazan neighbourhoods. At least 1,300 Palestinians – innocent men, women and children – were killed and 5,300 were injured. Barak also commanded the violent assault on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla in 2010 where commandos killed nine people, many of them shot in the back.

Major General (Ret.) Amos Gilad is head of Israel’s defence ministry’s diplomatic-security bureau and an invited speaker for the third successive year. Gilad is a Zionist war criminal and senior state terrorist who commanded the killings of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza from 1974 to 1979 as a Chief of the Department of Military Intelligence. In December 2008, Gilad personally negotiated with Mubarak to ensure Egypt’s support for the lethal invasion of Gaza. The ongoing military siege of Gaza is a crime against humanity and in violation of the Rome Statue and the Fourth Geneva Convention.

The Harper government is sending Lieutenant-General Charles Bouchard to the HISF as its star representative and saviour of the Libyan people. Bouchard should also be put on trial for war crimes; he was commander of the U.S.-NATO air war on Libya including the killing of civilians, the violent overthrow of the country’s government and the extrajudicial killing of Gadhafi and others. Bouchard made it clear he held final authority for approving all targets. On November 6, CBC Newsworld interviewed Bouchard about the need for “action” against Syria with the Libyan war as “a template.” Who is next?

The crimes against peace being carried out by the U.S. government and its allies to be discussed at the HISF and hatched in its backrooms relate in particular to their plans for military intervention.

Enroute to Halifax, Barak huddled in Ottawa on Wednesday with Canadian Defence Minister Peter MacKay. They negotiated details (which have been kept secret) of “deepening” military cooperation in anticipation of – in the words of MacKay – “much more volatility… throughout the Arab Spring and
Summer and now Arab Fall and the cascading effects” of uprisings throughout the Middle East.

According to a Pentagon news release on November 16, Panetta has scheduled meetings in Halifax with Barak, MacKay and French Gen. Stephane Abrial, the NATO allied commander for transformation. Who is next?

From Panetta on down, the participants (300 in all) have been summoned from a select handful of countries; the US, Canada, Germany, and those who wish to subordinate national sovereignty to the strategic interests of the imperialists and NATO.

The speaker’s roster is packed with hand-picked NATO, NORAD, Pentagon, State Department and CIA veterans; elected and appointed government officials (Democrat and Republican) – those who prepared and planned the war against Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya; war industries; and associated think-tanks from most (but not all) 28 NATO member-states, plus the State of Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
Less than ten per cent of the participants announced so far are from Canada, including two current Conservative cabinet ministers: Vic Toews, Public Security, and Peter MacKay, Defence;
 the Chief of Defence Staff Gen. Walter Natynczyk, etc. Many of the sessions are listed as “off-the-record.”

However, military intervention is by no means the only crime against the peace and humanity in preparation at the Halifax conference.

Shift in emphasis

The first and second HISFs in 2009 and 2010 concentrated on elaborating the new “strategic doctrine” that was to be adopted by NATO at its Brussels Summit, with generals, admirals and strategists predominant and U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates inaugurating the event.

However, comparing the first and third forums – its organization, roster of speakers, and content – one notices a shift in emphasis.

The HISF organization is now intermeshed with the powerful U.S. Council on Foreign Relations, the imperial brain trust, and the driving force behind the “Security and Prosperity Partnership” (SPP) for North America in the service of the biggest North American monopolies, North American Security Perimeter agreement and the annexation of Canada.

The Third Halifax International Security Forum is highlighted by the participation of leading liberal representatives of such agencies of the U.S. state as the National Endowment for Democracy and two of its core agencies, the National Democratic Institute and the International Republican Institute, together with Freedom House and Human Rights Watch. Its agenda is synchronized with the program of subversion of these agencies which are well known to specialize in the “soft power” techniques of intervention, political destabilization and regime change under the pretext of “people power,” “democracy,” “open society,” “non-violence” and “human rights.”

At the same time, a much broader focus is being given by the HISF to the Middle East and Africa. Of particular significance is the fact that specialists in manipulation and subversion of the “Arab Spring” have been recruited from the NDI and Freedom House to the board of directors of the HIF.

In short, the U.S. and Canadian governments remain committed to varying forms of interference and intervention throughout the world in order to safeguard the interests of the big monopolies and financial institutions in the same measure that foreign intervention in the internal affairs of Canada as exemplified by the HISF is escalating. It is in these circumstances that all democratic people must take a stand not only against military intervention, but also and all forms of interference in the affairs of the peoples of Africa, the Middle East, South America and Asia as well as Canada itself.

Further, the involvement of the Dexter government of Nova Scotia and leading “civilian” officials from the Halifax Port Authority, which delivered the welcoming address in 2010, and other regional transportation centres is noteworthy. It indicates how the port of Halifax and Nova Scotia is being integrated into the military, logistic and strategic plans of the Pentagon as a harbour for war and global transportation route. All democratic people must remain vigilant regarding the Atlantic Gateway project, which is geared towards facilitating the robbery of oil and the other resources of the sovereign peoples of Asia, Africa and the Middle East.

The Halifax International Security Forum organised by the United States and the Harper government and their warmongers must be vigorously condemned, as must the expansion of all preparations for intervention and war. American Imperialism represents the greatest threat to the security and stability of the world’s people.

Silence is shame!
No Harbour for War!

For further information contact: moc.liamtohnull@rawrofruobrahon.

Peter Bohmer has been an organizer and participant in the struggle for social and economic justice since the 1960s. In recent years, his political activities have taken him to Venezuela, Cuba, Greece and a number of US cities. He teaches political economy and has been a faculty member at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA since 1987.

Peter and I go back over twenty years. The conversation that follows is but one of many we have had since we met. We share it as a springboard for thought and discussion. At the same time, we do not claim any special knowledge and pretend to no higher wisdom. We hope that the dialogue is received in the spirit of revolutionary camaraderie.

Ron Jacobs: Do you remember last spring you said in an email (during the Arab Spring stuff before NATO and Libya) that this could have the same impact as 1968? Can you briefly explain that perception?

Peter Bohmer: I was very inspired by the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt beginning at the end of last year and early this year, 2011. The growing numbers in the face of murderous repression, the courage, the participatory democratic process of the occupiers, and the call in their statements and in the actual occupation for democracy and economic and social justice really resonated with me and captivated me.

Movements and uprisings tend to spread within and between nations as people begin to feel that there are alternatives to resignation to the status quo and the sense of powerlessness that so many people feel. When I said that I hoped 2011 would also be a world historic year, I thought it was somewhat likely these movements and upsurges would burst forth first in countries where there was growing economic inequality and poverty, where austerity programs were in place and where the majority of the population had no power over the direction and policies of their country. I thought of places as ripe for major rebellion such as Greece which I had visited in September 2010 where the IMF and the European Union was increasingly calling the shots and particularly in other nations in North Africa and the Middle East where the people were following what was happening in the region’s largest country.

Although the resistance to budget cuts in Washington Stare where I live was somewhat limited, I also thought it possible that the examples of the occupation in Egypt and the labor led protests in Madison against their Tea Party Governor, Scott Walker’s frontal attack on State workers and their unions would spread throughout the U.S.

RJ: And now we have the occupy movement, which seems to be inspired by the events in Tahrir Square. Despite it’s indecisiveness in its agenda, it has captured the hopes of many and the wrath of most of the corporate right wing. I have concerns about what I consider a lack of focus but at the same time there is a part of me that understands that the current political understanding of people in the US would reject something more directed. In fact there are those in the occupy movement that lump unions right up there with corporations. What this says to me is that they are confusing union leadership with the rank and file and misunderstanding the role of unions in a capitalist economy, not to mention an unawareness of that history. Nonetheless these types of political misconceptions exist. Is the movement a step forward?

PB: As a result of observation and participation in the still-growing “Occupy Movement”, an alternative to the pervasive feelings of powerlessness and resignation are emerging. There has been for quite some time in the United States widespread opposition to the growing inequality of income and wealth, to total corporate control over all parts of our life, to global warming, to a government that tortures and is totally beholden to Wall Street, to homelessness and losing our homes, to unemployment and underemployment, to growing debt and poverty, to the imprisonment of over two million people, to militarism and endless wars, and this list is incomplete. At the same time, resistance although greater than reported in the mainstream media has been somewhat limited and ineffective. The importance of this movement is that active resistance is increasingly being seen as valid and the right thing to do. There is a growing feeling beyond the occupiers that hopelessness and escape or maybe voting for the lesser of two evils are not the only options.

Common to the growth of powerful social movements have been people who are willing to resist the status quo and take a stand who by their bold actions strike a chord with much larger numbers of people. This causes them to then change for at least a period of time the organization and activities of their lives and also change their values and ideology towards a less self-centered and me first system of belief and towards solidarity and cooperation, and towards a commitment to economic and social justice. This is happening right now, something is in the air.

Having a physical space which people occupy makes this movement visible and also possible for new people to join it. In Olympia, Washington, it is creating dialog and community between homeless people, young people, anarchists and other activists, retired people, etc (many people belong to more than one category). Although in Olympia and in many other places there are no visible demands and somewhat limited discussion of what kind of society we want and how to get there or what we want in the short and medium run, occupiers needs for food, shelter and increasingly health care are being addressed and increasingly met as is the question of self-government. So to say, this occupation is not political is a very narrow definition of political.

RJ: If the occupy movement is at the forefront of left-oriented popular struggle, how do we move forward? What might forward look like?

I’ve been in a few occupation/liberation actions over the years, as have you. In fact, I think we were involved in two or three together. Anyhow, whether it was Peoples Park in 1979, a campus building sometime in the past few decades or the Occupy encampments in our respective towns, the fact is these actions usually end. Many of the ones I was involved with ended with some kind of compromise agreement between the bureaucrats involved and the occupiers. Peoples Park ended with a temporary truce and the park still a park. As I involve myself and observe the Occupy movement, I am also doing what I can to make it into something beyond the occupations. However, I am not sure what. We saw one possibility at the end of the Oakland Strike day when folks took over the foreclosed Travelers Aid building in Oakland’s downtown. Although the timing was obviously wrong (it’s not a good idea to occupy a building while the cops are down the street ready to kick ass), the impetus behind the action makes a lot of sense. In fact, I have been a part of discussions about squatting foreclosed buildings here in Vermont and also with folks online in other parts of the world.

A sidebar to this is how long can the occupations remain meaningful before they become like so much graffiti in the minds of the supportive observer?

PB: As of today, November 7, 2011, most of the occupations are maintaining their momentum. This is a very positive accomplishment. For example, in Olympia, many people in Occupy Olympia are looking ahead to November 28, 2011, to confront the Washington State Legislature when it is being called back into a special session by the Governor Gregoire, a Democrat, in order to make further cuts in a State budget that has already severely reduced needed spending for health care, for education at all levels and for poor people. Occupy Olympia is committed to maintaining the occupation of a downtown park at least until the legislative session and possibly beyond.

Nonetheless, as Michael Albert pointed out in his ZNet article, “Occupy to Self-Manage,” occupations and the related general assemblies, the decision-making group for most occupations, tend to decline over time in numbers and enthusiasm. So it is key to bring in new people and create an atmosphere that is welcoming of new people so that we do not wither away. Let us not unconsciously exclude people who have not been part of the left or activist communities. It is also important that we use our occupied sites as a base to for actions and education outside of our sites.

We need to consciously make movement building one of our goals of this phase of the Occupy Movement. This means developing organizations, institutions, and people who have a deepening analysis and critique of capitalism, with growing capacity and skills to confront this system, and to put forward and win non-reformist reforms. Hopefully this will last beyond these set of occupations. By non-reformist reforms, I mean reforms that meet people’s expressed needs, that build our understanding of the limits of capitalist reform, and that also build our capacity to struggle for and win more fundamental and radical transformation of this oppressive and unsustainable society.

For example, Occupy Olympia is trying to develop a set of tents where there would be free medical care, traditional and non-traditional, on-site. This would meet an important need and also point towards a system of free and universal health care as a basic human right. A next step could be to demand and/or occupy indoor and permanent space that could be used a free health clinic, to provide quality health care and also does popular education in the broader community that healthcare should not be a commodity.

I like the idea of creating housing by squatting in unoccupied buildings as you suggested in Oakland. Whatever we do must be done in a way that large numbers of people beyond the occupation understand and support our actions. That will increase the likelihood that if there is police and government repression our movement will grow rather than become isolated.

Overcoming defeatism and resignation and furthering community and beliefs in the importance of collective action is happening, that is a great start. We do not have the power during this period of the “Occupy Movement” to create a participatory socialist society nor even to seriously reduce the obscene inequality of income and wealth in this country. Hopefully some limited short-term goals will be won.

It is a long struggle. Building healthy networks, institutions, organizations within and between communities and cities; that create the basis for a more conscious, powerful and visionary and radical occupy movement in the not too distant future is a goal. It will make this current movement worth the time and effort and commitment of so many people throughout this country and beyond. Most of the specific occupations of space may come to a close in the not so distant future but the movement can and should continue.

RJ: There are those that say part of the reason the movement of the 1960s and early 1970s was able to be as effective as it was is because the establishment media covered it. Most the time, the coverage was negative, but the coverage itself spread the word and highlighted injustice. Since then, most of the movements against capitalism and its symptoms (war, poverty, environmental degradation, etc.) have been mostly ignored by that press. Occupy seems to be changing that. Perhaps it is because there are so many young middle class people involved, but nonetheless, the coverage is there. Consequently, the numbers may not be as big, but the message is reaching further, at least for now. Meanwhile, there are the new Internet social media. What’s your take on the role that these various media play today?

PB: Certainly in the 1960’s and early 1970’s, the mass media coverage of the protests, Black Freedom, anti-Vietnam war and the TV images of the U.S. war against Vietnam, and of the women’s liberation movement contributed to the growth of these movements. Probably even more important was a vibrant “underground” and radical press such as the Black Panther Party newspaper which was national, the Guardian which was also a national weekly newspaper and papers in many, many cities such as the Berkeley Tribe, the Old Mole (Cambridge, MA), the San Diego Street Journal and OB Rag (San Diego), and the Fifth Estate (Detroit). There were also important papers by the women’s liberation movement such as Off Our Backs, and the GI movement and a news service that provided news and graphics for these papers, Liberation News Service. These papers had significant circulation. They were an integral part of the new left and other movements of that period. Today these types of movement papers are few and far between although for example in Olympia, Works in Progress, plays that role to some extent. On the other hand, social media, particularly Facebook and Twitter, play an important role in spreading the word about actions although providing less context and analysis than the “underground” papers of the 60’s and early 70’s. Democracy Now today plays a very important and positive role in providing an alternative analysis to the mainstream media and in covering social movements such as the Occupy movement. So do websites such as Dissident Voice, Counterpunch, ZNet, and Alternews (among others). They lack some of the boldness and creativity of that earlier “underground press” but are very valuable. We need to tell our own stories.

The mainstream media has given a lot of coverage to Occupy Wall Street and the growing national movement. Although much of it is negative, it does as you say spread the word and has helped publicize the obscene economic inequality in the United States. I am not sure why it has gotten so much coverage. Its novelty may be a factor.

RJ: These last several months of worldwide anger organized against the neoliberal capitalist economy reminds me of a number of historical events. 1968 is but one. The Occupy movement is somewhat reminiscent of the IWW’s free speech crusade when their insistence on exercising their free speech rights by setting up soapboxes on street corners throughout the US West and the subsequent arrests and harassment by police exposed the myth of free speech in the US. Could this be that spectre that Karl Marx wrote about? Immanuel Wallerstein wrote in his book Antisystemic Movements about the years 1848 and 1968 as failed revolutions that ultimately changed the world’s consciousness in greater ways than the revolutions that preceded them (France 1789 and Russia 1917). “The fact that they were both unplanned and therefore in a profound sense spontaneous explains both facts,” he writes. “The fact that they failed and the fact that they transformed the world.” Perhaps the events of the past year and a half–from Greece to Egypt to Tunisia to Britain to Europe and North and South America–will be perceived similarly. I think it is much too early to tell. In the meantime, there is a growing surge of calls to converge for a number of actions in the spring.

PB: I think we are at the beginning of a huge upsurge, the beginning of a transformative social movement not just a movement that made a big splash for two months and then fades quickly. There will be setbacks. From what I saw and read, the demonstration in New York, today November 17th, was huge and powerful. The occupation of land may be winding down because of repression, the weather and fatigue but hopefully the Occupy movement will find new forms and really blossom in this coming spring. The high unemployment and poverty rates in the United States are not going to improve and may get worse. They are going to worsen in Greece, Italy, Portugal, Ireland, Spain and many other countries. The causes for action are not going to go way nor is the anger nor is the growing understanding of the need for collective action. We are part of a global movement. That capitalism is being named as the problem by many of the participants, not just the banks, is very exciting. Also necessary and beginning to happen although clearly a lot more needs to is a slowly growing awareness that anti-racism and the need for all forms of equality, economic, gender, racial, LGBT, is central both inside the movement and in the greater society.

The coordinated repression of many of the occupations, e.g., NY, Portland, Oakland, is clearly connected to the fear that much of the economic and political elites have of the potential power of this movement. Because of the widespread anger and the resonance this movement has with growing numbers of people, police brutality has rather than scared people increased participation. Bold and creative actions need to continue and grow. So does popular education of participants in these occupations and of the rest of the 99% in the causes of the economic and social crisis and of all forms of oppression. Equally important is further discussion of what kind of society we want and how to get there in the short, medium and long run. We need to consciously build organizations and institutions that can improve people’s lives now, particularly those suffering the most, while also building the capacity to revolutionize this society.

The movement is much bigger than those who have been occupying various sparks and sites. It includes those who have in ways big and small contributed to it, e.g., bringing food down to the occupiers, discussed and supported it at union meeting. One challenge here in Olympia and the Pacific Northwest more generally is to be more inclusive, to welcome and listen to and reach out and include more people who identify with the goals of the Occupy Movement but do not feel comfortable at the sites or the marches or direct actions.

It is a very exciting time to be alive. There is something in the air that I haven’t felt for a long time. In spring, 2013 I intend to co-teach a full time program at the Evergreen State College comparing and contrasting the liberation and social movements of 1968 to 2011 in the U.S. and globally. There will be a lot to examine for 2011 and we still have six weeks to go. I am confident 2012 will be hotter than 2011.

Power to the People!

RJ: I myself think it’s a bit early to tell if this is the spectre that Karl wrote about or if Wallerstein is correct. The underlying politics of the movement are too muddy right now. As far as I have seen, the relationship between the US wars and occupations and the 1% has only begun to become part of the conversation. This relationship needs to be addressed and brought to the forefront of the movement.

There are those in the movement who are anti-leftist (and I don’t mean the various non-left anarchists) and many more that haven’t consciously considered left politics. However, I can’t help but agree with you when you say it is an exciting time to be alive. This is especially the case after the events of N17 in New York, Portland, Oregon, Los Angeles and elsewhere. Indeed, although the numbers were smaller here in Burlington, VT., the spirit of resistance and hope present across the nation and in Greece and Italy on N17 permeated the march and teach-in here, as well. I concur: Power to the People!

When in the course of human events
WHEN IN THE COURSE OF HUMAN EVENTS

It becomes necessary for one people
IT BECOMES NECESSARY FOR ONE PEOPLE

To dissolve the political bands…
TO DISSOLVE THE POLITICAL BANDS…

To make their own music,
TO MAKE THEIR OWN MUSIC,

And to dance in the streets with joy–
AND TO DANCE IN THE STREETS WITH JOY–

Let us be those people!
LET US BE THOSE PEOPLE!

When one people
WHEN ONE PEOPLE

Shall demand redress of grievances
SHALL DEMAND REDRESS OF GRIEVANCES

Let us be those people!
LET US BE THOSE PEOPLE!

Let our hearts be full of courage and compassion!
LET OUR HEARTS BE FULL OF COURAGE AND COMPASSION!

Let our minds be full of clarity and light!
LET OUR MINDS BE FULL OF CLARITY AND LIGHT!

Learning, ever learning;
LEARNING, EVER LEARNING;

Striving, ever striving–
STRIVING, EVER STRIVING–

Forging a new tomorrow!
FORGING A NEW TOMORROW!

We hold these truths to be self-evident:
WE HOLD THESE TRUTHS TO BE SELF-EVIDENT:

That all men and women are created unequal.
THAT ALL MEN AND WOMEN ARE CREATED UNEQUAL!

Tall and short, smart and less-so;
TALL AND SHORT, SMART AND LESS-SO;

Black and white, red, brown and yellow–
BLACK AND WHITE, RED, BROWN AND YELLOW–

All have something to contribute!
ALL HAVE SOMETHING TO CONTRIBUTE!

Some are thrifty and some are spendthrift.
SOME ARE THRIFTY AND SOME ARE SPENDTHRIFT.

Some lean Left and some lean Right.
SOME LEAN LEFT AND SOME LEAN RIGHT.

Nevertheless…
NEVERTHELESS…

No one has the right to hurt another.
NO ONE HAS THE RIGHT TO HURT ANOTHER.

No one has the right to cheat or lie or steal,
NO ONE HAS THE RIGHT TO CHEAT OR LIE OR STEAL,

or exploit the labor of another!
OR EXPLOIT THE LABOR OF ANOTHER!

While we are not equal…
WHILE WE ARE NOT EQUAL…

No one is inferior!
NO ONE IS INFERIOR!

All can be taught, and everyone can learn!
ALL CAN BE TAUGHT, AND EVERYONE CAN LEARN!

The divine light in all can be honored.
THE DIVINE LIGHT IN ALL CAN BE HONORED.

We have to learn from each other.
WE HAVE TO LEARN FROM EACH OTHER.

We’re in the same lifeboat together!
WE’RE IN THE SAME LIFEBOAT TOGETHER!

From all, according to their abilities;
FROM ALL, ACCORDING TO THEIR ABILITIES;

To all, according to their needs!
TO ALL, ACCORDING TO THEIR NEEDS!

Marx said that.
MARX SAID THAT.

Not Groucho, but Karl.
NOT GROUCHO, BUT KARL.

The problem is…
THE PROBLEM IS…

Who will determine the need?
WHO WILL DETERMINE THE NEED?

That has always been a problem. …
THAT HAS ALWAYS BEEN A PROBLEM. …

Where to draw the line. …
WHERE TO DRAW THE LINE. …

Who will judge the judges?
WHO WILL JUDGE THE JUDGES?

Even the Romans said so!
EVEN THE ROMANS SAID SO!

This is where…
THIS IS WHERE…

Humility comes in. …
HUMILITY COMES IN. …

This is where…
THIS IS WHERE…

Reverence for life
REVERENCE FOR LIFE

And Truth
AND TRUTH

Comes in. …
COMES IN. …

This is where
THIS IS WHERE

We reach for our highest selves!
WE REACH FOR OUR HIGHEST SELVES!

Because the stakes are monumental!
BECAUSE THE STAKES ARE MONUMENTAL!

We are star-beings in the making
WE ARE STAR-BEINGS IN THE MAKING

of a glorious universe–
OF A GLORIOUS UNIVERSE–

Unfolding, ever evolving…
UNFOLDING, EVER EVOLVING…

A hymnal of Creation–
A HYMNAL OF CREATION–

forging the world to come
FORGING THE WORLD TO COME.

“Every atom belonging to me,
EVERY ATOM BELONGING TO ME,

As good belongs to you.
AS GOOD BELONGS TO YOU.”

Whitman said that.
WHITMAN SAID THAT.

And he was right.
AND HE WAS RIGHT.

We are partners in creation.
WE ARE PARTNERS IN CREATION

With Creation itself
WITH CREATION ITSELF.

We just said that.
WE JUST SAID THAT.

And we say loud and clear
AND WE SAY LOUD AND CLEAR:

We demand the right
WE DEMAND THE RIGHT

To occupy our lives;
TO OCCUPY OUR LIVES;

To care for our planet-mother;
TO CARE FOR OUR PLANET-MOTHER;

And to care for one another
AND TO CARE FOR ONE ANOTHER.

To nurture the best that is in us,
TO NURTURE THE BEST THAT IS IN US,

And the best that is yet to be
AND THE BEST THAT IS YET TO BE.

We want no Lords and Ladies
WE WANT NO LORDS AND LADIES

Telling us how to live!
TELLING US HOW TO LIVE!

Striving, ever striving,
STRIVING, EVER STRIVING,

To reach for the stars with compassion,
TO REACH FOR THE STARS WITH COMPASSION,

With a song of liberty;
WITH A SONG OF LIBERTY;

Growing in knowledge and wisdom,
GROWING IN KNOWLEDGE AND WISDOM,

With hearts that are brave and free
WITH HEARTS THAT ARE BRAVE AND FREE.

Let us be those people!
LET US BE THOSE PEOPLE!

Let us be such people!
LET US BE SUCH PEOPLE!

We are becoming such people!
WE ARE BECOMING SUCH PEOPLE!

Now we are the people!
NOW WE ARE THE PEOPLE!

We, the People!
WE, THE PEOPLE!

We, the People!
WE, THE PEOPLE!

We, the People!
WE, THE PEOPLE!

When I first arrived at the occupied parks at 9:30 Saturday night, the encampments were noticeably thinned from just days earlier.  Given that Mayor Sam Adams (who claims “support” for the Occupy movement) ordered the eviction in part to “clean” the parks so as to be able to reopen them to the “public,” campers had worked through the day to clean the parks themselves.  This left substantially fewer tents erected within the parks.  And as I traversed further through the camp, in a driving and chilling rain, I found only a few hundred occupiers gathered for an open mic.  This all left the initial impression that the camp would likely fall soon after the eviction deadline lapsed.

But as the evening progressed, the crowds slowly began to mount.  In fact, as it progressed past 11:00 p.m., the parks filled to capacity.  At that point it was clear that the discussions and demonstrations ongoing on how best to resist arrest would not be immediately needed.  Buoyed by arriving peace activists, encircling bicyclists, and others expressing solidarity with Occupy Portland, the crowds spilled out of the parks and onto the adjacent blocks.  And as the 12:01 a.m. expulsion deadline neared, crowds eagerly chanted the final countdown, creating an atmosphere more akin to New Year’s Eve.

By 2:00 a.m., with the crowds still in the thousands, riot police began to move on the occupiers.  Mounted patrolmen accompanied by the threat of tear gas were employed in an effort to push the crowds out of the streets and back into the parks.  But after a thirty-minute standoff and isolated skirmishes, the police pulled back and the crowds filled into the streets surrounding the parks.  In the wake of the retreating armored police, drum circles formed, as protesters jubilantly danced to chants of “Whose streets?  Our streets.”

By 5:00 am—the normal opening time of the city’s parks—thousands still remained on the streets, creating barricades and holding protective lines against the police.  And within a little less than an hour, the police had retreated fully from the streets, leaving the protesters to dismantle their barricades and triumphantly return to the occupied parks to chants of: “What does victory look like?  This is what victory looks like.”  Walking through the parks, I could see new tents being erected and energized campers working on a further cleaning of the park.

By midday, however, the police had returned to the parks in force.  Interrupting a general assembly meeting, riot police slowly forced all occupiers out of the parks with shoves and the interspersed baton strike.  Soon the encampments in all three parks were cleared of campers.  The raid left more than 50 protesters arrested.  (But as is always the case, police were uncertain of exactly how many people they had managed to detain during the day).  At least one protester was taken to the hospital after sustaining blows to the chest from a police truncheon.

As word spread of the midday police action, hundreds of protesters returned to the park blocks.  Growing to a thousand or more, the protesters settled into an occupation of a street block just west of the cleared parks for the next several hours.  A general assembly meeting was then held in the blocked street, as the riot police in formation mere feet away repeatedly broadcast calls threatening tear gas and arrest.  Debates followed over whether to seek to hold onto the street, or regroup at another location.  As dusk fell, the protesters agreed to leave the street and march to an adjacent city square, with many expressing interest in ultimately moving to the campus of Portland State University.

Although necessitated by the afternoon police action, the discussion over the next phase of the struggle and movement had begun prior to Sunday.  Multiple occupiers had already begun to express an interest in staging future occupations of vacant buildings, as has been seen in other Occupy movements across the country.  In addition, discussion and planning was also underway on the national day of action this coming Thursday, in which attempts will be made to occupy commercial banks.

Thus, although ultimately cleared out of their encampments, Occupy Portland demonstrated its continuing relevance as a vibrant and powerful movement.  For if nothing else, the battle Saturday night and early Sunday morning confirmed that the movement has strong support within the city and is more than capable of mobilizing sizable masses to stymie police action.  Beyond question then, Occupy Portland will continue to be a force in the national Occupy movement.

As with human perception of life itself, experiencing freedom carries an ineffable quality, a wordless grandeur.

“Human language is like a cracked kettle drum on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, when what we long to do is make music that will move the stars to pity.” — Gustave Flaubert

Through it all, the immanent quality of and inchoate longing for freedom remains within us: Although present, it is not always in plain view. Its presence in our lives is, perhaps, best summed up by this Irish aphorism:

“Mrs. O’Kelly, do you believe in fairies?”
“No, I don’t — but they’re there.”

Over and over again, too many well-intentioned sorts continue to insist that it is imperative that we inform the nice people of the middle class (nice people who, given the nature of imperium, willingly feed off the blood of empire like the charges of a vampire) that there are well mannered working people on site at OWS encampments–not only spittle-launching, leftist radicals.

Excuse me, but, for many years now, so-called “crazy” leftist radicals have been damn near the only ones who have had the clarity of mind to give a cogent critique of empire, have been willing to point out the exploitive, soul-demeaning mode of existence inherent to the militarist/national security/corporate/consumer/ duopolistic state–and, as a result, we have been marginalized, entirely excluded from mainstream debate and discussion.

Let us have a little rendezvous with reality; otherwise, the operatives of the status quo will frame the narrative, once again, and will claim victory by co-option. This is the method by which the capitalist status quo has maintained its inverted totalitarian set-up since the popular uprisings of the 1960′s, by means of generous economic rewards (the perks and privileges of the corporate state) for its defacto propagandists and exclusion from the official narrative for dissenters. Don’t buy into the false narrative.

Personally, I refuse to eschew the designation of anti-capitalist radical. You cannot shame me for knowing where the bodies of empire are buried and who laid them in their graves. To the landfill of history with capitalism–the wasteful, cracked-brained economic system that created said landfill.

The preening liars at Fox News and other well-rewarded propagandists of state capitalism will disseminate lies, big and small, regardless of our actions; that is what they do. Be cautioned: Never tap dance for the approval of a lying, manipulative, power mad fascist. Once, you begin to do so you co-sign his narrative–thus he owns your hapless ass.

“I’ve been absolutely terrified every moment of my life- 
and I’ve never let it keep me from doing a single thing I wanted to do.” — Georgia O’Keefe

Accordingly, the lessons of the 1960s, e.g., COINTELPRO operations reveal that when street and riot police are ordered to pull back, as in Oakland, agent provocateurs will infiltrate mass political gatherings. Withal: You can bet those masked bastards shouting hate-speak and breaking windows are cops. He is there to draw the cameras of the corporate media towards the scenes of chaos and strife that he seeds in order to turn bourgeois sentiment against reform movements that might change their lives for the better, to create the false narrative that the police are the only bulwark the middle class has against destruction-sowing crazies, who, if given free reign, will leave in rubble and ashes everything they hold dear.

To avoid being falsely labeled: First, endeavor, by inward searching and outward (even failed) endeavor, to know who you are. Then lay claim to your own identity. Otherwise, garnering the clarity required to apprehend what you’re up against becomes difficult.

The Greek word for one of the three figures representing The Fates is Moira–which translates into portion. And that is key to grasping what is happening from Cairo to Athens to New York City to Oakland. Ergo, people are rising up and fighting for the rightful and just portion of their lives and fates that have been increasingly commandeered and controlled by a corrupt elite whose rule has, heretofore, been sustained by a disproportionate distribution of wealth, privilege and power.

Across Greece, people have awaken to the knowledge that passivity is slavery–that capitalism is economic cannibalism. State capitalism, also, devours the dignity of its victims. Yet, after a time, a number of people will rise up against exploitation and will demand their portion of fate.

At this point in time, the term “general strike” holds a deep and resonate appeal. The word “general” suggests that the isolation of daily life experienced under the atomizing circumstances of globalized corporate capitalism can be upended–that there can be a sense of unity–that a movement en mass is possible (yet not a mass movement to war, but a movement en mass towards equity and fairness) by beginning, at long last, to “strike” back–to counterpunch with focused blows those who have kept the harsh, inequitable order of the present era in place by means of intimidation and bribery.

Capitalism–you are a rotting, flesh-eating zombie–there are sacred spark stippling the air around you; these sparks are borne of flames of sacred vehemence. For too long, people have been bled dry by the heart-desiccating aspirations and dehumanizing modes of economic coercion that maintain the neoliberal paradigm. Moreover, the flames of resistance are only fanned when your apologists claim that the system in place provides the best, in fact, the only way to exist in the world and attempt to smother its growing fury with police state tactics.

The stakes are great. Much has been stolen from us: essential qualities, more valuable than money. As the populace of the corporate/consumer state, we have been induced, by means of small bribes and hyper-authoritarian coercion, to sign a social contract that sells our essential nature on the cheap i.e., to be defined (hence diminished) as a consumer, a commuter, an employee, a Republican, a Democrat, a member of a demographic group, a cipher, a sucker, a bystander in one’s own fate.

Don’t let any system define you, narrow, then appropriate, your innate and essential self towards exploitive agendas, as does the present societal set-up, for the incommensurate profits of a self-serving few–who, in turn, insist that your objections to the situation are unreasonable, outrageous, untoward–too crazy to be uttered in decent company. In short, a system in which its operatives demand that you stay in your place and not question the motives and actions of your betters.

In contrast, a radical sensibility insists you must inhabit an inner landscape wherein no state, corporation–nor any type of extant system holds dominion over your essential self–that you inhabit a landscape that is best navigated by your own interior lode star. Therefore, you have no obligation to justify your existence to any man or system. To even attempt to do so would deliver an injustice to your heart, for this is a state of being as impossible to quantify as a flight of imagination–yet it exist within as immanent as the architecture of desire.

“The main interest in life and work is to become someone else that you were not in the beginning. If you knew when you began a book what would you say at the end, do you think that you would have the courage to write it?” — Foucault

Who will you meet, where will you travel, what battles will be enjoined and what loves surrendered to as you write the Book of Your Being? What thoughts and feelings will be discovered therein?

Will the words you etch upon the finite moments of your time on this earth evoke deep yearning, like Wordsworth’s limning of his longing to see beyond the prison walls of quotidian experience?

[…]I’d rather be
A pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.
excerpt, The World Is Too Much with Us

–William Wordsworth

Or will you refuse to rise, when commanded to do so, as did Rosa Parks on her fateful bus commute through the Jim Crow-demeaned streets of 1950s Montgomery, Alabama; or will you be seized by holy lamentation, like Allen Ginsberg, as he howled anguished prosody into the pity-devoid face of the devouring Moloch of the commodified empire; or will your genius be revealed like the impertinent flutter of Groucho Marx’s eyebrows on the screen of Depression era movie houses; or will you reclaim your own heart by the act of telling off some son-of-a-bitch of a boss, as you quit a dead end, heart-deadening job and then resolve to join the defiant multitudes at an OWS encampment?

Mainly, are you prepared to surrender to the everyday miracle that transpires when one, fleetingly, finds the resolve to open one’s being to the uncertainties of freedom–when one chooses to break the hold of those fear-bestowing, resentment-besotted demons of banality known as Easy Cynicism, Displaced Resentment, and Habitual Passivity–those disingenuous, corporate/consumer state bards of the Bardo–whose (extant and internalized) narratives have sustained late capitalism.

“Cynicism is just another mode of conformity”. — Theodor W. Adorno

Don’t delay: Act as if your life–if not the survival of the planet–depends on it, because, at this point, it does.

… once in a lifetime/ the longed for tidal wave/ of justice can rise up…
So hope for a great sea-change…
Believe in miracles…

– Irish Nobel Prize laureate Seamus Heaney, from the poem “The Cure”

The miraculous and magical rise of the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) tidal wave has suspended us in a threshold between a no-longer and a not-yet. The call for justice initiated by American youth echoes around the globe. Ours is a time of transition; exploring similar transitional moments in history could be instructive.

I recently watched the acclaimed fictionalized film Battle of Seattle with a 22-year-old who has been at Occupy Santa Rosa numerous times, here in Sonoma County, Northern California. The film evoked memories from the l968 Chicago National Democratic Convention, where I was in the streets and then briefly in jail. I was not in Seattle for the 1999 actions against the international gathering of the World Trade Organization, though I followed them in the media. By studying those two historical events, we can apply lessons from them to today’s rapidly unfolding national and global OWS movement.

What might their differences and similarities be and how can we avoid the problems of those previous events and harvest wisdom from them? All three have been mass mobilizations that dramatically changed history. They are each a battle for better futures that are possible.

I began visiting Occupy Santa Rosa on Oct. 15, when some 3000 energized people gathered outside City Hall and went on a march through downtown. Though Santa Rosa is a medium-sized city of some 165,000, our gathering was the sixth largest in the United States at that time.

The differences in the Chicago, Seattle, and Occupy events are numerous, including geographical, chronological, and duration. Chicago and Seattle failed to remain non-violent, for a variety of reasons, thus limiting their successes. Though some Occupy sites have experienced police violence–such as Oakland, New York, and San Francisco—here in Sonoma County and in other sites at least the protestors have tended to remain non-violent. If that peacefulness continues, the movement will grow and include more of the 99 percent.

One similarity in these three eruptions is that they have been mass uprisings of direct democracy challenging the domination of the many by the few. Then the state used its police power to subdue the constitutional First Amendment freedoms of speech and assembly exercised by those seeking justice.

In l968 I participated in activities in Grant Park and elsewhere in Chicago. This was after the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, Jr., during the history-changing l960s. Our peace movement eventually helped force the U.S. military out of the Vietnam War.

At the time I was a 24-year-old graduate student at the University of Chicago.

Seattle

Not having been in Seattle, I do not know how historically accurate Battle in Seattle is. I welcome feedback from those who were there or have studied this four-day event. The film has a ring of truth to it and reminds us how easily something conceived to follow the principles of non-violence as practiced by Gandhi, King, Quakers, and others can be re-directed by a few police agents and violence-promoting activists. If that were to happen in the Occupation movement, it would loose much of the support that it currently has. Its potential to gain more support among the 99 percent would be limited.

“I was thrilled and grateful to see the next generation picking up the mantle of activism,” said Angela Ford, a Seattle resident in 1999. “I knew that nothing would be the same in the country. At last, the issues of global corporate greed and plunder had surfaced here in the United States. It could no longer be ignored. It became part of public conversation.”

While watching Battle in Seattle, I thought about how unintended consequences can be numerous and far-reaching. Some people will get hurt. A pregnant wife of a police officer played by Woody Harrelson was accidentally caught up in a police attack on demonstrators and hit in the stomach by a policeman. She lost her beloved child.

Two of the strongest scenes in the film involve that policeman and one of the activist leaders. The policeman chases the young man and beats him without mercy, as revenge for his child’s death, until another policeman pulls him off. He later goes to the jail to apologize. “I don’t blame you,” the activist says, facing a third strike and life in prison. He stays on the high ground. His target is the WTO, not the police.

“If you don’t stand up and fight, everything that is beautiful will be taken away,” one of the women jailed in the Seattle film says to her partner, both of them bleeding from the police brutality.

The final scene in the film is inspiring; the activists are released from prison without charges. This happened to me when I was released from Cook County Jail in Chicago after my participation in the 1968 activities. A judge in Nashville, Tennessee, recently released occupiers illegally incarcerated by the police there.

People whose memories include Chicago’68 and Seattle’99 have been active in Occupy 2011, raising questions and concerns. A big difference between the current Occupy movement and the other two historical movements is that OWS occurs not only in one city but is national and increasingly global. It is also ongoing, rather than limited to a short time. All three have been youth-led.

At first the U.S. corporate press ignored OWS, even as the world press was covering it. Then they tried to ridicule it and reduce it with demeaning descriptions, such as “dirty hippies.” They are finally being forced to give it more balanced coverage, though they continue to fail in the responsibility of the media to offer context and analysis.

Santa Rosa

“Once the tents went up,” said Santa Rosa occupier Heather Williamson, 22, “it became more of a community and at times even a party feeling.” Encampments have also been described as evolving into villages that occupy public space. Others describe them as “learning communities of direct democracy.” People can learn how to disagree without being disagreeable and how to deal with their anger appropriately, as well as how to manage conflict and let things go. An historical example of such encampments might be during the Great Depression, when so many people were homeless, as they are today.

Among the many things that OWS does is to function as a school. One can learn the following: peer leadership, communication, setting boundaries, dealing with opponents not as enemies, building trust and relationships, living together with diverse people, developing self-confidence and one’s own voice, letting things go, dealing with difficult people, self-policing, speaking publicly, remaining calm, developing a sense of group identity and unity. OWS provides a public space within which people can have various kinds of encounters with each other.

“My voice is coming out easier,” explained Williamson, who is visiting Sonoma County from San Diego. “I’m learning to speak loud enough.” She and others attend classes and workshops on things such as non-violence, yoga, and how to interact with the police.

A sleeping giant, the so-called “Me Generation” or “Millennial Generation,” which I reached in college, seems to be awakening. Many are passive in class and some feel hopeless about their futures with substantial college debts, few jobs, and often having to move back home.

“This ain’t over yet,” wrote one 71-year-old friend on Oct. 30, as the Occupy Santa Rosa General Assembly decided to continue staying overnight, in spite of the threat of police eviction.

“Santa Rosa has the potential to be an early role model for other communities across the country,” he adds, “where the climate is right for the local governments and the Occupiers to find common ground and to energize many people in these communities to get involved. If this movement is going to be successful, it needs many people marching, making democratic decisions in General Assemblies, and taking action.” He later notes, “Democracy is never perfect, but we need to get as close to it as we can.”

He then concludes with some insights from depth psychology: “There is the wisdom of the elders who may advise against rash actions, but there is the wisdom of the youth that can carry the ball forward to new ground. Hopefully, the elder energy can check the reckless Puer Aeternus (eternal youth) energy and the youthful energy can check the stuck elder Senex ( cynical) energy. We need a full-throated debate about these important issues so that all of these energies can find a proper balance. Step by step we must discover how to refine the Occupy democratic process.”

Seattle apparently had conflicts among elected officials, like between its mayor and the governor of Washington, and between electeds and the police chief. Such conflicts have happened in the San Francisco Bay Area. Occupations here have received significant support from San Francisco supervisors, some of whom have attended, as well as support from other elected officials and politically powerful people. If the Occupation movement can develop further allies from members of labor unions, faith and community groups, and others, this will serve it well.

Oakland Mayor Jean Quan was once an activist herself, but she authorized what became the most vicious police riot against occupiers to date, seriously wounding an Iraq Marine veteran, Scott Olsen. Her former allies are calling on her to resign and her authority has eroded.

“Creating confrontations with supporters is a tactical and strategic mistake,” said former Sebastopol mayor Larry Robinson at a recent meeting. “Most everyone here in local government gets it. What the occupiers do is bear witness to the injustices and moral issues. The concentration of wealth and income distribution is morally wrong. It is leading to the downfall of what could be a great civilization. We should not alienate natural allies, which includes local businesses.” Robinson added that it is important not to demonize Santa Rosa and local government, but to keep the focus on Wall Street.

“From Arab Spring and the Occupy movement we need to learn that we cannot predict when things will open,” Robinson said. “There is a tipping point, and we need to be prepared for that opening.” He has been studying chaos theory and speaking to groups about it and the importance of accepting uncertainty.

Police weapons since Seattle’99 have evolved and gotten more violent, as revealed by the some 400 policemen from 17 precincts that were mobilized and used helicopters, armored vehicles, and shotguns firing projectiles against a much smaller, unarmed citizenry. Tactics used by the police in the film “Battle in Seattle” are currently being used or may soon be used against the occupations, including martial law, police infiltrators, declaring States of Emergency and curfews, and sending in the National Guard, some of whom will have been in combat in Iraq and/or Afghanistan.

America has become more violent since Chicago’68 and Seattle’99. As its morality has declined, its firepower has increased. Let’s not be naïve and innocent, especially given the enthusiasm of the youth, which has already been dashed by President Barak Obama becoming a manager of the wealthy 1 per cent.

As someone who lived in Chile during the democratically-elected government of President Salvador Allende in the early l970s, I experienced how quickly a country can go from having hundreds of thousands of people mobilized in the streets to a brutal dictatorship. In Chile I first heard the chant “The people united will never be defeated. (El pueble unido jamas sera vencido.) It was good to hear it again in the Seattle film and now at OWS occupations around the world, thus linking them to Chile.

Since Chicago’68 and Seattle’99 the gap between the rich and the poor in the U.S. has risen. Though the U.S. military has expanded its reach—with a budget about the same size as all the rest of the militaries in the world combined—U.S. power and prestige have declined with the rise of the rest, especially China, India, Russia, and Brazil. American power is possible only because of its world-wide fortress.

The Occupy movement could either stimulate a growth of more oppressive control of the 99 per cent by the 1 percent or a weakening or even overthrow of the Wall Street stranglehold. The rich and their protectors are certainly carefully calculating how to turn back the Occupy tide and continue exploiting the labor of the rest of us and the Earth’s bounty.

Chicago’68 was a turning point. Seattle’99 was a turning point. Now Occupy’11 continues that legacy of a mass uprising of democracy. If Occupy continues to grow, it has the potential to recall the U.S. back to some of its original democratic values of freedom, liberty, and justice for all.

There are those who are trying to set fire to the world.
We are in danger.
There is time only to work slowly.
There is no time now to love.

– Deena Metzger