A Civil War Is Breaking Out Within Occupy Wall Street Over Supporting Obama
by Buck Sexton


Occupy Wall Street is becoming mired in an ideological civil war just as it seeks to reestablish itself as a dominant force in American political discourse and openly pushes for a crippling general strike on May 1st.

What’s behind the various Occupy Wall Street (OWS) factions engaging in online squabbles and tweet battles? Believe it or not, Barack Obama. Within the movement, there are those who believe the established Left is trying to co-opt OWS to get President Barack Obama reelected. And it’s causing quite the stir.

In fact, Adbusters — a prominent force in the movement — is calling it a “Battle for the Soul of Occupy.” It is railing against groups like Moveon.org for seeking to piggyback on the enthusiasm and digital organization of the Occupiers to ensure the status quo in the federal government continues for four more years.

(Author’s note: This OWS struggle is already a chapter in my upcoming ebook, “Occupy: American Spring, The Making of a Revolution,” available next week on April 24th.)

Occupy Wall Street Fighting Over Barack Obama Support and

But the Occupiers aren’t taking this usurpation lightly. Since Adbusters wrote an article decrying the phenomenon, Occupiers have been rallying to the meme of “Jump, jump, jump over the body of the old dead left.”

Adbusters has even tried to create a sort of cautionary tale for OWS followers by advancing the idea that the Tea Party is now a co-opted movement of Beltway Republicans — a fate they claim could befall Occupy with Democrats:

“First they silenced our uprising with a media blackout… then they smashed our encampments with midnight paramilitary raids… and now they’re threatening to neutralize our insurgency with an insidious campaign of donor money and co-optation. This counter-strategy worked to kill off the Tea Party’s outrage and turn it into a puppet of the Republican Party. Will the same happen with Occupy Wall Street? Will our insurgency turn into the Democrats’ Tea Party pet?”

If Obama partisans have been on a stealth mission of Occupy Wall Street co-option, this is wholly unsurprising. That the institutional left (unions, community organizers, liberal media) would disingenuously promote the regime in power while pretending to stand apart from the process is as logical as it is deeply cynical. Even anarchists should know it’s easier to get what you want when you control the levers of power.

Not so, it seems. The Occupiers’ media reaction thus far has been more Jacobin than Jerry Garcia, as even Adbusters is willing to call out Occupy-leaning establishment leftists as heretics:

“Will you allow Occupy to become a project of the old left, the same cabal of old world thinkers who have blunted the possibility of revolution for decades? Will you allow MoveOn, The Nation and Ben & Jerry to put the brakes on our Spring Offensive and turn our struggle into a “99% Spring” reelection campaign for President Obama?

The ideological vanguard of the Occupy movement is particularly upset about a group called “The 99% Spring.” You can check them out for yourself here. As for what they want, this snippet from their site is predictably grandiose:

“This spring we rise! We will reshape our country with our own hands and feet, bodies and hearts. We will take non-violent action in the spirit of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Gandhi to forge a new destiny one block, one neighborhood, one city, one state at a time.”

Instead of welcoming this group as another faction in the Occupy ranks, many bloggers are leveling accusations that the 99% Spring is a front for the Obama re-election campaign.” Some are calling it “Spring99% Astroturf.” Others claim it is a Moveon.org front group.

Occupy Wall Street Fighting Over Barack Obama Support and

Despite its rhetorical flourishes, so far Spring99% has been unimpressive according to many who would otherwise be supportive of their message. The planned week of training in preparation for massive May Day protests ended yesterday, and the socialist agitators in attendance complained of boredom and disorganization.

Yet amidst all this, some have a sneaking suspicion that the Occupiers doth protest too much about the 99% Spring. While OWS has always claimed to be acting outside the traditional political channels, from its earliest days it was intertwined with labor unions and community organizers. It was happy to take on established leftists then. The current protestations of ideological purity — in a movement with no official ideology — seem more reactionary than anything else.

The Occupiers know that if they are seen as working in favor of a political party — the one that has been in power for over three years no less! — their whole “we stand against the powers that be” vibe is in trouble. But as the Occupy movement is a creature of the political left, much of it will of course work for Democratic Party interests in one way or another. And some big names in the movement have already given up the pretense that this is not the case.

Frances Fox Piven, the grande dame of contemporary American Marxists, has made it clear, officially or not, that the Occupy movement has always been on Barack Obama’s side and always will be. Piven wrote in the nation in early April that:

”Of course, they [Occupiers] should refrain from attacks on Obama. After all, think of how bad things would be with Romney as president and Tea Party Republicans controlling both houses of Congress…I, for one, hope the movement forces Obama to pay for its support, in desperately needed economic, political and environmental reforms.”

No surprises there. Piven and company feign complete disillusionment with the state while fighting for the statist agenda of Barack Obama.
Occupy Wall Street Fighting Over Barack Obama Support and

Black Bloc Protestors

Regardless of the hemming and hawing over Spring99%’s authenticity, or lack thereof, nobody involved in the process seems to have any doubt about the stakes for Occupy Wall Street this Spring. The Canadian rabble-rousers of Adbusters offer this assessment:

“We are now in a battle for the soul of Occupy… a fight to the finish between the impotent old left and the new vibrant, horizontal left who launched Occupy Wall Street from the bottom-up and who dreams of real democracy and another world.”

And since no Occupy pep-talk this Spring would be complete without a reference to the social upheaval and widespread protests of the past, Adbusters adds that:

“It’s up to you to decide if our movement goes the way of Paris ’68, the dust bin of could-have-been-insurrections, or something more daring, more inspiring, something not yet dreamed.”

Take that in for a moment. The General Strike of May 1968 in France involved millions of workers and almost brought down the government of Charles De Gaulle. If that’s not disruptive enough, perhaps the famed Paris Commune of 1870 — which ended in horrific bloodshed — is more the desired end game.

Occupy Wall Street talks openly about fomenting similar revolution here. Whether allied with Obama and the Democrats or not, it’s time the rest of America began to take them seriously.

A Civil War Is Breaking Out Within Occupy Wall Street Over Supporting Obama
by Buck Sexton


Occupy Wall Street is becoming mired in an ideological civil war just as it seeks to reestablish itself as a dominant force in American political discourse and openly pushes for a crippling general strike on May 1st.

What’s behind the various Occupy Wall Street (OWS) factions engaging in online squabbles and tweet battles? Believe it or not, Barack Obama. Within the movement, there are those who believe the established Left is trying to co-opt OWS to get President Barack Obama reelected. And it’s causing quite the stir.

In fact, Adbusters — a prominent force in the movement — is calling it a “Battle for the Soul of Occupy.” It is railing against groups like Moveon.org for seeking to piggyback on the enthusiasm and digital organization of the Occupiers to ensure the status quo in the federal government continues for four more years.

(Author’s note: This OWS struggle is already a chapter in my upcoming ebook, “Occupy: American Spring, The Making of a Revolution,” available next week on April 24th.)

Occupy Wall Street Fighting Over Barack Obama Support and

But the Occupiers aren’t taking this usurpation lightly. Since Adbusters wrote an article decrying the phenomenon, Occupiers have been rallying to the meme of “Jump, jump, jump over the body of the old dead left.”

Adbusters has even tried to create a sort of cautionary tale for OWS followers by advancing the idea that the Tea Party is now a co-opted movement of Beltway Republicans — a fate they claim could befall Occupy with Democrats:

“First they silenced our uprising with a media blackout… then they smashed our encampments with midnight paramilitary raids… and now they’re threatening to neutralize our insurgency with an insidious campaign of donor money and co-optation. This counter-strategy worked to kill off the Tea Party’s outrage and turn it into a puppet of the Republican Party. Will the same happen with Occupy Wall Street? Will our insurgency turn into the Democrats’ Tea Party pet?”

If Obama partisans have been on a stealth mission of Occupy Wall Street co-option, this is wholly unsurprising. That the institutional left (unions, community organizers, liberal media) would disingenuously promote the regime in power while pretending to stand apart from the process is as logical as it is deeply cynical. Even anarchists should know it’s easier to get what you want when you control the levers of power.

Not so, it seems. The Occupiers’ media reaction thus far has been more Jacobin than Jerry Garcia, as even Adbusters is willing to call out Occupy-leaning establishment leftists as heretics:

“Will you allow Occupy to become a project of the old left, the same cabal of old world thinkers who have blunted the possibility of revolution for decades? Will you allow MoveOn, The Nation and Ben & Jerry to put the brakes on our Spring Offensive and turn our struggle into a “99% Spring” reelection campaign for President Obama?

The ideological vanguard of the Occupy movement is particularly upset about a group called “The 99% Spring.” You can check them out for yourself here. As for what they want, this snippet from their site is predictably grandiose:

“This spring we rise! We will reshape our country with our own hands and feet, bodies and hearts. We will take non-violent action in the spirit of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Gandhi to forge a new destiny one block, one neighborhood, one city, one state at a time.”

Instead of welcoming this group as another faction in the Occupy ranks, many bloggers are leveling accusations that the 99% Spring is a front for the Obama re-election campaign.” Some are calling it “Spring99% Astroturf.” Others claim it is a Moveon.org front group.

Occupy Wall Street Fighting Over Barack Obama Support and

Despite its rhetorical flourishes, so far Spring99% has been unimpressive according to many who would otherwise be supportive of their message. The planned week of training in preparation for massive May Day protests ended yesterday, and the socialist agitators in attendance complained of boredom and disorganization.

Yet amidst all this, some have a sneaking suspicion that the Occupiers doth protest too much about the 99% Spring. While OWS has always claimed to be acting outside the traditional political channels, from its earliest days it was intertwined with labor unions and community organizers. It was happy to take on established leftists then. The current protestations of ideological purity — in a movement with no official ideology — seem more reactionary than anything else.

The Occupiers know that if they are seen as working in favor of a political party — the one that has been in power for over three years no less! — their whole “we stand against the powers that be” vibe is in trouble. But as the Occupy movement is a creature of the political left, much of it will of course work for Democratic Party interests in one way or another. And some big names in the movement have already given up the pretense that this is not the case.

Frances Fox Piven, the grande dame of contemporary American Marxists, has made it clear, officially or not, that the Occupy movement has always been on Barack Obama’s side and always will be. Piven wrote in the nation in early April that:

”Of course, they [Occupiers] should refrain from attacks on Obama. After all, think of how bad things would be with Romney as president and Tea Party Republicans controlling both houses of Congress…I, for one, hope the movement forces Obama to pay for its support, in desperately needed economic, political and environmental reforms.”

No surprises there. Piven and company feign complete disillusionment with the state while fighting for the statist agenda of Barack Obama.
Occupy Wall Street Fighting Over Barack Obama Support and

Black Bloc Protestors

Regardless of the hemming and hawing over Spring99%’s authenticity, or lack thereof, nobody involved in the process seems to have any doubt about the stakes for Occupy Wall Street this Spring. The Canadian rabble-rousers of Adbusters offer this assessment:

“We are now in a battle for the soul of Occupy… a fight to the finish between the impotent old left and the new vibrant, horizontal left who launched Occupy Wall Street from the bottom-up and who dreams of real democracy and another world.”

And since no Occupy pep-talk this Spring would be complete without a reference to the social upheaval and widespread protests of the past, Adbusters adds that:

“It’s up to you to decide if our movement goes the way of Paris ’68, the dust bin of could-have-been-insurrections, or something more daring, more inspiring, something not yet dreamed.”

Take that in for a moment. The General Strike of May 1968 in France involved millions of workers and almost brought down the government of Charles De Gaulle. If that’s not disruptive enough, perhaps the famed Paris Commune of 1870 — which ended in horrific bloodshed — is more the desired end game.

Occupy Wall Street talks openly about fomenting similar revolution here. Whether allied with Obama and the Democrats or not, it’s time the rest of America began to take them seriously.

Civil War? Hilarious. Don't pop your cashews homie.


It's called political discussion. An effective movement requires a diversity of strategy and tactics. Democracy in action.



Occupy Wall Street is a leaderless resistance movement with people of many colors, genders and political persuasions. The one thing we all have in common is that We Are The 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%. We are using the revolutionary Arab Spring tactic to achieve our ends and encourage the use of nonviolence to maximize the safety of all participants.

This #ows movement empowers real people to create real change from the bottom up. We want to see a general assembly in every backyard, on every street corner because we don't need Wall Street and we don't need politicians to build a better society.

http://occupywallst.org/

So exactly what have they accompished so far?

A significant shift in the political discourse away from bogus up fears about the debt to real issues like inequality and jobs.


The Stunning Success of Occupy Wall Street

Marc Dixon

January 2, 2012


“I AM NOT YOUR ATM,” “No Bonuses for Big Banks,” and “Wall Street: Never Again” were among the placards carried by the thousands of protesters participating in what was dubbed as the biggest anti-Wall Street demonstration in decades. It was the spring of 2010. Richard Trumka, the President of the AFL-CIO, the rally’s lead sponsor, said he wanted to force a “which-side-are-you-on” movement for politicians when it came to Wall Street Reform. An impressive showing for sure, it still lacked much political punch. Later that year in the run-up to the midterm elections, progressive organizations put 175,000 people on the Washington Mall to call for jobs and for more accountability from politicians. Labor, civil rights, and numerous other groups made impassioned claim after impassioned claim. Few listened. The rally paled in comparison to the attention surrounding the novel protest group on the right, the Tea Party, or even the Daily Show’s commercialized “Rally to Restore Sanity” a few weeks later.

For all the handwringing over OWS’s lack of organization and clear demands, or its countercultural image, it has already succeeded at getting the public and politicians to consider issues that progressive groups have struggled to get on the radar for decades. The subject of media fascination since mid-October—Time magazine’s U.S. story of the year—OWS has in some ways done the unthinkable. It has got people talking about inequality. The eviction of local Occupy camps across the country puts the movement at a crossroads. While unquestionably meaningful and even life-changing for many of its participants, OWS’s broader impact on the political landscape will depend on its ability to infuse existing social movement organizations, ones built for political mobilization, with the direct action impulse and potent call for change.

Talking About Inequality. Successful social movements are good at political communication. With a flair for the dramatic and some media savvy, they can call attention to issues that have been ignored or organized out of politics and give them new life. “We Are the 99 Percent” brought attention to inequality, its causes and consequences, and the failings of our society for the many with a clarity and oomph that other movements had consistently failed to muster. It resonated far beyond the sprawling Occupy camps (more than 1,400 cities had Occupy Together “Meetups” as of mid-December). News stories on inequality have spiked in recent months. Polling suggests the increasing salience of the income inequality issue for average Americans. Democratic politicians have slowly followed their lead, from growing support for a Robin Hood tax to more progressive stances on tax reform in the states. President Obama channeled some of this energy in a recent speech, even referring to the average income of the top 1 percent. The growing economic disparities at the center of much of the protest will no doubt figure into the 2012 election cycle.

This much is a godsend for organizations on the left. Of course OWS is bigger than our current electoral politics. That is the point after all. OWS and local Occupy movements have sought to create a space where people could work issues out on their own and envision a more inclusive, democratic process free of corporate influence. OWS’s consensus-based or horizontal model has drawn much criticism in part because it is so out of the ordinary, as it marks a departure from everyday organizational life that is hard to place in conventional political terms. If these criticisms tend to miss the extensive planning that went into the original site selection and occupation or the effective use of technology as an organizational resource in its own right, they do hit on a larger point. While people are fed up with politics as usual, it is still difficult for many to make sense of and engage alternative political forms like OWS, even while agreeing with many of the issues. With the occupation of already shrunken public spaces becoming increasingly difficult, questions about the broader accessibility of OWS and its relations with other social movements are all the more critical.

Which Way Forward? Loose coalitions of Occupy, labor and progressive groups like MoveOn.org are beginning to capitalize on the momentum when it comes to more familiar forms of political mobilization. Early returns are promising. “Take Back the Capitol” actions in early December put protesters in front of House and Senate members, hitting on concrete policy issues like the jobs bill. Fledgling union-Occupy alliances have witnessed labor increasingly adopt the language and more disruptive tactics of Occupy, provide resources to local encampments, and Occupy protesters join ongoing union pickets.

Over its long history, the labor movement has often benefitted from the spark of younger, more innovative social movements, but it has never been easy. The recent west coast port actions are instructive. The combination of one of the more militant local Occupy movements in Oakland and a progressive labor union with a proud history of solidarity actions in the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) provides a best case scenario for far-reaching coalition work. Yet the mobilization by Occupy movements to shut down west coast ports, a key “economic apparatus of the 1 percent,” was met with resistance from ILWU leadership. Even for the more activist-inspired unions, the fears of liability for striking in breach of contract are significant. Unions’ embrace of disruptive tactics is hamstrung by highly restrictive labor laws. Moreover, the ILWU’s version of democratic process—members voting at a scheduled union meeting—did not align with the more flexible General Assembly model of Occupy.

Working across generations and distinct models of activism poses certain challenges and will take some time (and tense moments ahead) to get the kinks out. Yet, if history is any guide, even small changes in the direction of the younger innovators can have major consequences, both for unions and for progressive politics more generally. For labor leaders like Trumka, OWS and the public awakening to bread and butter issues like inequality has to be nothing short of amazing.

http://mobilizingideas.wordpress.com/2012/01/02/990/