Duty to Warn

Feeling angry about being betrayed by a corrupt government owned by rich and corporate elites has driven the Occupy Wall Street movement. Emphasizing how the top one percent has prospered incredibly while the bottom 99 percent have been screwed royally is supported by countless data. New data show this is a global phenomenon and that even in the worst of economic times the wealthiest make out like the bandits they are, and there are a lot more of them than one percent.

Globally, millionaires and billionaires now control 38.5 percent of the world’s wealth, according to the latest Global Wealth Report from Credit Suisse. Never have so few owned so much. There are 29.7 million people in the world with household net worth of $1 million or more; they represent less than 1 percent of the world’s population, actually just .4 percent of 7 billion people.

Veteran For Peace member, Scott Olsen, a Marine Corps veteran twice deployed to Iraq, is in hospital now in stable but serious condition with a fractured skull, struck by a police projectile fired into a crowd in downtown Oakland, California in the early morning hours of today. Other people were injured in the assault and many were arrested after Oakland police in riot gear were ordered to evict people encamped in the ongoing "Occupy Oakland" movement. Olsen is also a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War.

VFP members are involved with dozens of these local "occupy movement" encampments and we support them fully. In Boston, for example, our members, wearing VFP shirts and carrying VFP flags, stood between a line of police and the encampment, urging police to "join the 99%" and not evict the protesters. In that case, several of our members were banged and bruised when the police decided instead to carry out their eviction orders.

Americans should urge their local chambers of commerce to disavow their connections with the policies of the US Chamber, and we should call for the firing of its CEO, Tom Donohue, said Kevin Zeese, an organizer for Stop The Machine which is one of two occupations in Washington, DC. “The Chamber of Commerce has always been conservative but it’s become right-wing, Karl- Rove- conservative since Donohue has come along.”

Those of us occupying Freedom Plaza marched several blocks to the Newseum where Donohue and AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka appeared on ABC’s Sunday morning talk show. When we ‘greeted’ them, we seemed nonexistent to Donohue.

Tunisian trade unionist and activist Jamel Betaeb, winner of the 2011 Democracy Award from the National Endowment for Democracy, spoke with the Columbus Free Press Sunday evening at Freedom Plaza, as a few Arab Spring revolutionaries visited about 70 American Autumn revolutionaries and activists gathered on Freedom Plaza, one of two Occupy DC sites.

Wary of being co opted by big unions and the Democratic Party, the Occupy Movement is nonetheless a progressive form of populism. Betaeb and others like him inspire us. They are our counterparts in a global movement for fairness and justice. Our concern about good jobs for our communities is not based on xenophobic anger and fear.

The global upheaval that is the Occupy Movement is hopefully in the process of changing---and saving---the world.

Through the astonishing power of creative non-violence, it has the magic and moxie to defeat the failing forces of corporate greed.

A long-term agenda seems to be emerging: social justice, racial and gender equality, ecological survival, true democracy, an end to war, and so much more. "When the power of love overcomes the love of power," said Jimi Hendrix, "the world will know peace."

Such a moment must come now in the nick of time, as the corporate ways of greed and violence pitch us to the precipice of self-extinction.

At that edge sits a sinister technology, a poisoned cancerous power that continues to harm us all even as 3 of its cores melt and spew at Fukushima.

Atomic energy, the so-called "Peaceful Atom", has failed on all fronts.

Once sold as "too cheap to meter," it's now the world's most expensive electric generator.

Once embraced as a corporate bonanza, it cannot obtain private liability insurance.

Once hyped as the world's energy savior, it cannot attract private investment.

The commentator and writer spoke to the Stop The Machine contingent of Occupy DC today, saying this movement is part of the “march of democracy” that continues to this day, taking some steps forward while also, unfortunately, taking steps backward.

Hightower, who writes about the Occupy Movement in the November edition of his newsletter, the Hightower Lowdown, disagrees with what some commentators have said about it.

“You’re being condemned even by some progressives for not having an agenda. Well, hello ? Wall Street is in the movement’s name. Seems like an agenda to me. Right now, protest is the issue. Just being here is a big part of the battle.”

Hightower said there is no rush for having a list of demands or a manifesto. He said during the American Revolution it was years before that happened.

Will it find a voice to articulate not merely the pain of the struggling middle class but the endemic unfairness and racism of inescapable poverty? “Everyone is important,” read the sign of an elderly protester. My God, what if it were true? What if we could see, in the desperate thrashing of the abandoned class, everyone’s future, that of the 99 percent and that of the 1 percent?

Let the Occupy movement become such a merging of voices that it reaches and changes the rigged game of American democracy and puts the collective failure of the system, in all its manifestations — from environmental collapse to our doomed wars and the hubris of empire to the violence in our streets — at the forefront of our media and our consciousness. Let the movement be the first tremor of a new awareness that dehumanizes no one.

Daryl Lamont Jenkins is involved with Occupy Philadelphia, and is the founder of One People’s Project, an anti-racist organization. He’s also involved with Occupy the Hood. He spoke with the Columbus Free Press at Freedom Plaza, one of two Occupy DC sites. “This is our way of encouraging people in the Black and Hispanic communities and poorer communities to know--- straight up---‘this is about you.’ Matter of fact, we’ve been the 99 percent for a very long time.”

Jenkins said it’s not a case of being segregated. It’s a matter of connecting various occupations around the nation with people in the nearby communities who might not recognize their affinity with people protesting and camping out in their cities.

Oct 20 ----If Occupy DC is doing this, why aren’t we ? About 25 activists shut down a branch of Citibank on K Street this afternoon amid the high-rise offices of lobbyists. People in expensive business suits walked past as we chanted, “ Hey, Citibank, stop all foreclosures. Hey CEOs, pay all your taxes…”

Management there apparently instruct their staff to shut down during protests in order to prevent persuaded customers from closing their accounts. And closing accounts is exactly what we intend to get an increasingly greater number of people to join us in doing, whether it’s here in D.C. or in Columbus.

Three days before we vote down SB-5, there will be an international Move Your Money day of action.