So, So, Sad.

[SEC=UGA]

Editor's Note: Naomi Wolf is a political activist and social critic whose most recent book is Give Me Liberty: A Handbook for American Revolutionaries. For more from Wolf, visit Project Syndicate or follow it on Facebook and Twitter.

 

By Naomi Wolf, Project Syndicate

 

NEW YORK – America’s politicians, it seems, have had their fill of democracy (The crap that is going on now is why the framers were not friends of a democratic society.) Across the country, police, acting under orders from local officials, are breaking up protest encampments set up (illegally, without the proper permits and in violation of many city codes and ordinances) by supporters of the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement – sometimes with shocking and utterly gratuitous violence (brought about by the OWS crowd breaking laws and city ordinances.)

 

In the worst incident so far, hundreds of police, dressed in riot gear, surrounded Occupy Oakland’s encampment and fired rubber bullets (which can be fatal), flash grenades, and tear-gas canisters – with some officers taking aim directly at demonstrators. The Occupy Oakland Twitter feed read like a report from Cairo’s Tahrir Square (She's exaggerating just a smidge): “they are surrounding us”; “hundreds and hundreds of police”; “there are armored vehicles and Hummers.” There were 170 arrests.

 

My own recent arrest, while obeying the terms of a permit and standing peacefully on a street in lower Manhattan, brought the reality of this crackdown close to home (This is the first permit they must ever have filed for.) America is waking up to what was built while it slept: private companies have hired away its police (JPMorgan Chase gave $4.6 million to the New York City Police Foundation)(Well, at least someone is helping to support the police so they can keep our communities safe and avoid layoffs of much needed personnel); the federal Department of Homeland Security has given small municipal police forces military-grade weapons systems; citizens’ rights to freedom of speech and assembly have been stealthily undermined by opaque permit requirements (that have been in effect for many, many, years.)

 

Suddenly, America looks like the rest of the furious, protesting, not-completely-free world (She is very prone to exaggeration.) Indeed, most commentators have not fully grasped that a world war is occurring. But it is unlike any previous war in human history: for the first time, people around the world are not identifying and organizing themselves along national or religious lines, but rather in terms of a global consciousness and demands for a peaceful life, a sustainable future, economic justice, and basic democracy (And a living wage, forgiveness of ALL debt, the destruction of the "ruling", "monied" class... Wait, didn't the Bolsheviks do something like this?) Their enemy is a global “corporatocracy” that has purchased governments and legislatures, created its own armed enforcers, engaged in systemic economic fraud, and plundered treasuries and ecosystems (oh, no!!!! What we really need is for everything to be free and for everyone to live in tents made from renewable materials and for everyone to have a living wage whether they work or not. I for one am also in favor of the 28 hour work week so that we can have full employment.)

Around the world, peaceful protesters are being demonized for being disruptive. But democracy is disruptive. Martin Luther King, Jr., argued that peaceful disruption of “business as usual” is healthy, because it exposes buried injustice, which can then be addressed. Protesters ideally should dedicate themselves to disciplined, nonviolent disruption in this spirit – especially disruption of traffic. This serves to keep provocateurs at bay, while highlighting the unjust militarization of the police response (Militarization and police response... scary, scary, stuff.)

 

Moreover, protest movements do not succeed in hours or days; they typically involve sitting down or “occupying” areas for the long hauls. That is one reason why protesters should raise their own money and hire their own lawyers. The corporatocracy is terrified that citizens will reclaim the rule of law (Yeah, GE is quaking in their collective boots... These dumbasses can't even cogently put together a list of demands, which is why they need, chuckle, a bunch of wealthy, high paid attornies to represent them.) In every country, protesters should field an army of attorneys.

 

Protesters should also make their own media, rather than relying on mainstream outlets to cover them. They should blog, tweet, write editorials and press releases, as well as log and document cases of police abuse (and the abusers).

 

There are, unfortunately, many documented cases of violent provocateurs infiltrating demonstrations in places like Toronto, Pittsburgh, London, and Athens – people whom one Greek described to me as “known unknowns.” Provocateurs, too, need to be photographed and logged, which is why it is important not to cover one’s face while protesting.

 

Protesters in democracies should create email lists locally, combine the lists nationally, and start registering voters. They should tell their representatives how many voters they have registered in each district – and they should organize to oust politicians who are brutal or repressive. And they should support those – as in Albany, New York, for instance, where police and the local prosecutor refused to crack down on protesters – who respect the rights to free speech and assembly (This is good government and a good power structure because they are on my side.)

 

Many protesters insist in remaining leaderless, which is a mistake. A leader does not have to sit atop a hierarchy: a leader can be a simple representative. Protesters should elect representatives for a finite “term,” just like in any democracy, and train them to talk to the press and to negotiate with politicians (Actually, they need a power structure, a hierarchy of people that CAN lead this group of rabble. But, a hierarchy is bad, so they will continue to languish.)

 

Protests should model the kind of civil society that their participants want to create (A society that refuse to feed the homeless and other's who are not "active" participants in OWS.) In lower Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park, for example, there is a library and a kitchen; food is donated; kids are invited to sleep over; and teach-ins are organized. Musicians should bring instruments, and the atmosphere should be joyful and positive. Protesters should clean up after themselves. The idea is to build a new city within the corrupt city, and to show that it reflects the majority of society, not a marginal, destructive fringe (Like, they should help the homeless and others who need help, instead of shutting down kitchens to deprive those homeless of much needed sustenance. And, in forming this city they should not have to use the restrooms of the corporate powers who are repressing them, they should not have to use the airwaves of the corporate entities who are repressing them, they should detach from the power grid of the corporate entities who are repressing them, they should not buy merchandise or use merchandise from the corporate powers who are repressing them...)

 

After all, what is most profound about these protest movements is not their demands, but rather the nascent infrastructure of a common humanity (common humanity means having segregated areas for people of different genders, sexual orientation or color... understood.) For decades, citizens have been told to keep their heads down – whether in a consumerist fantasy world or in poverty and drudgery – and leave leadership to the elites (Funny, I've never been told that.) Protest is transformative precisely because people emerge, encounter one another face-to-face, and, in re-learning the habits of freedom, build new institutions, relationships, and organizations (Half assed organizations, relationships and institutions that are so amorphous that one would be lucky to see an type of cohesion in them. But, if that organization can get me a unicorn and free food and shelter, I'm game.)

 

None of that cannot happen in an atmosphere of political and police violence against peaceful democratic protesters (I'm having trouble with the double negative.) As Bertolt Brecht famously asked, following the East German Communists’ brutal crackdown on protesting workers in June 1953, “Would it not be easier…for the government to dissolve the people and elect another?” Across America, and in too many other countries, supposedly democratic leaders seem to be taking Brecht’s ironic question all too seriously.

 

The views expressed in this article are solely those of Naomi Wolf(and SEC=UGA). Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2011.

Edited November 1, 2011 by SEC=UGA

[WaterMan]

Everytime I read the italics I hear banjos in my head so I had to stop.

[SEC=UGA]

Everytime I read the italics I hear banjos in my head so I had to stop.

 

They weren't in your head. I'm watching you. You got a purty mouth.

[delusions of grandeur]

So because a group of overidealistic protesters can't figure out exactly what they want, you're using that as an excuse for police violence and corporate kickbacks? More than ever, the primary allegiance of the police is to maintain the power hierarchy in place, generate reveune, and far less to serve the people like you and me...

 

And sorry, but the whole argument that they shouldn't be using corporate products if they don't like them is a pretty dumb argument. You can't get anything done without having to rely on corporations. That's how it's set up.

 

I'm vaguely familiar with some of the feminist works of Naomi Wolf, and while she might fall into some of the same idealistic and less-realistic traps of the protestors, it doesn't make the issues any less valid, does it?

 

I mean, just because some protestors don't know how to fix it, doesn't mean it shouldn't be fixed... Just because a subsect of unruly youth has broken the law, doesn't make it any better for those who enforce the law to break it themselves...

[WaterMan]

They weren't in your head. I'm watching you. You got a purty mouth.