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SYNDICATED COLUMN: Revolution Versus Reform

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Ted Rall

The Rift Within Occupy

Editors and readers expect pundits to weigh in on the brutal eviction of Occupy Wall Street from New York’s Zuccotti Park. People will ask: Does this mean the beginning of the end for the Occupy movement?

No.

Now that we’ve dispensed with that, let’s discuss a major rift within the movement: Reformists versus revolutionaries.

Revolutionaries want to overthrow the government. They want to get rid of existing economic, political and social relations and create new ones. Both the Republicans and the Democrats are enemies.

Reformists want radical changes too. For example, Occupiers want to eliminate the corrupting influence of corporate money on politics. Unlike revolutionaries, however, they are OK with the basic structure of the system: the Constitution, Congress, 50 states, capitalism, and so on. They are willing to work with establishment liberals (MoveOn.org, Amy Goodman, The Nation, Mother Jones, etc.) and the Democratic Party.

You can see the reform-vs.-revolution split whenever Occupiers discuss actions and demands.

Reformists say: Let’s move our accounts from banks to credit unions. Encourage Black Friday shoppers to buy from locally-owned businesses. Demand that Congress pass a constitutional amendment abolishing corporate personhood. Restore the Glass-Steagall Act.

Those tactics leave revolutionaries cold. They don’t want to nibble around the edges of a system they despise. If revolutionaries get their way, there won’t be a Congress. Members of the House and Senate will go to jail. No one will need to boycott banks or choose which merchants are least malevolent.

Capitalism won’t exist.

Revolution frightens the reformists. They worry about chaos, violence and dislocation. They’re right to be concerned. Bad as things are now, these might look like the good old days after buildings begin burning.

Revolutionaries point to the history of previous reform movements. Sure, progressives win victories during times of social unrest: concessions to labor during the early 1900s, the New Deal of the 1930s, the civil rights, antiwar and social movements of the 1960s.

But they don’t stick.

As soon as the crowds of demonstrators go home—since the 1980s, right-wingers roll back the results of those hard-won battles while liberals stand aside. Democrats like Clinton and Obama even roll back welfare, worker rights, environmental regulations and privacy rights. If you want radical change to last, revolutionaries argue, you have to change everything when you have the chance.

Right now, we have the chance.

2012 is shaping up to be our Year of Revolution.

Reformers see the system as broken and in need of repair. For revolutionaries, whether or not the system can be fixed is beside the point. The system itself is the problem. Revolutionaries don’t believe that corporations, unfairness, inequality and violent monstrosities such as the U.S. invasion of Iraq have corrupted an otherwise laudable system. They think the system is inherently unfair, corrupt and violent; that unfairness, corruption and violence are the system.

If you have owned a car, you have considered revolution versus reform.

Motorists whose cars break down from time to time must weigh the same two questions as Occupiers are facing with the political system:

Is it reformable?

Is it redeemable?

For your car the question is: Is it reformable, i.e. worth fixing? Need a new fan belt? Sure. Need a new engine? It might be cheaper (or not cost much more) to buy another car.

The existential question—is it redeemable?—goes to the question of whether it was a crappy car in the first place. In other words, should it be fixed? No matter how much work you put into it, a Hummer is still a gas guzzler. Trade it in. Better yet, set it on fire.

I think the U.S. is both unreformable and irredeemable. Many members of Occupy agree with me. But at least as many seem to believe there are aspects of this dying country worth saving.

Occupation ideology centers around two loci: economic unfairness and corporate influence.

Economic injustice manifests itself in numerous forms. Occupiers focus on income inequality. The richest one percent collect 90 percent of national income, the most on record in the U.S. and one of the highest disparities between rich and poor in the First World.

We think of ourselves as living in a prosperous country—but few Americans get to live the good life. We like to think the U.S. has a vast middle class. If that was true in the past, it isn’t now. New Census data “places 100 million people—one in three Americans—either in poverty or in the fretful zone just above it,” said a shocking report in the November 18th New York Times.

This is the culmination of a 40-year-old trend. The rich have gotten richer at our expense. The tipping point was reached when the federal government did absolutely nothing to help distressed homeowners. Instead, Bush and Obama doled out hundreds of billions of dollars to the same banks that were pushing fraudulent mortgages, illegally refusing to refinance, and forging fake legal documents to foreclose and evict people who lost their jobs because executives wanted to pay themselves huge raises.

As the Occupy chant goes: “Banks got bailed out; we got sold out!”

I can imagine reform coming out of the existing Democratic-Republican duopoly.

It’s not going to happen. But I can imagine it. Theoretically.

As happened in the 1930s and 1960s, enough political and business leaders might become scared enough of the increasingly angry and desperate American citizenry to force through some good things. Perhaps they could be persuaded to concede a moratorium on foreclosures, bigger no-time-limit unemployment benefits, a real healthcare plan, maybe a little income redistribution through the tax code.

The odds of meaningful change coming out of this system are so long that only a psycho would bet on it. The traditional rift among the ruling classes between liberals (be nice to the poor or they’ll kill us) and conservatives (kill the poor) has skewed too far to the right. Reform is impossible.

Beyond that, I can’t see how reform could last. After they won, the Occupiers would go home. With the pressure turned off, corporate media would renew their systematic campaign of pro-business propaganda coupled with vapid entertainment designed to lull us back into a Prozac-induced waking slumber.

Sooner rather than later, the corporate chieftains and their pet Republicans and phony Democrats would get back into power. They’d roll back the reforms.

At a recent OWS rally protesters carried signs that read: “I will never be able to buy a house.” “I will never get out of debt.” “I will never get a job in this economy.” Does anyone seriously think that this system—these Democrats—these Republicans—this media—will fix these problems?

Amending the Constitution won’t do the trick. Electing better officials isn’t enough.

Yes, the system is broken. But that’s not the main point. The system is irredeemable.

Nothing short of revolution will do.

(Ted Rall is the author of “The Anti-American Manifesto.” His website is tedrall.com.)

COPYRIGHT 2011 TED RALL

Occupy the Hamptons Update

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Ted Rall

When I was at Stop the Machine/Occupy DC in October, I began asking myself: what am I doing here? (Call it my Admiral Stockdale moment.) The Occupy movement is local. I rushed back to New York to start something closer to home.

Turns out others had already had the same idea. Occupy the Hamptons began the week I got back. It has a nascent website (though it does not yet officially speak for the movement since it is not consensus based). It has a regular meeting: Sundays at 3 by the windmill in Sag Harbor. Indoor space is in the works so we can transition out of the wind, rain (and soon snow).

The last few weeks have been productive. Working groups have been tasked with coming up with Direct Actions in the Hamptons—a resort area that, despite its reputation as a playground for the 1%, has one of the highest poverty rates in the country.

I’m on the Working Group tasked with developing a draft proposal for a Declaration of the Occupation of the Hamptons. It was a process but we’re ready to present it to the General Assembly this Sunday.

The discussion over the Declaration brought out some divisions about tactics and ideology among Occupiers that the movement as a whole is going to need to address in the coming weeks and months before 2012.

2012 will likely be the Year of Revolution.

Or, as my friend Cole Smithey likes to say, it’ll be on like donkey-kong.

It’s 1968 all over again. Now, as then, the absurdity and uselessness of the electoral system will be in sharp relief as the Democrats and Republicans debate every issue except those that matter.

Divisions in the movement reflect those in society:

Between reformists and revolutionaries
Between nationalists and revolutionaries
Between those who worry about alienating the right and liberals, vs. revolutionaries
Between those drawn to the national struggle and those who understand that this time, the revolution has been radically localized

It’s going to be a bumpy ride.

This will be the most important year of your life. Make the most of it.

Clear your schedule.
Learn how to escape a tear gas attack.

It’s on.

SYNDICATED COLUMN: Our F— You System of Government

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Ted Rall

Anti-Occupy Crackdowns Highlight Lack of Services

Governments are supposed to fulfill the basic needs of their citizens. Ours doesn’t pretend to try.

Sick? Too bad.

Can’t find a job? Tough.

Broke? Can’t afford rent? We don’t give a crap.

Forget “e pluribus unum.” We need a more accurate motto.

We live under a f— you system.

Got a problem? The U.S. government has an all-purpose response to whatever ails you: f— you.

During the ’80s I drove a yellow taxi in New York. Then, as now, there were no public restrooms in the city. At 4 in the morning, with few restaurants or bars open, the coffee I drank to stay awake posed a significant challenge.

It was—it is—insane. People pee. People poop. As basic needs go, toilets are as basic as it gets. Yet the City of New York, with the biggest tax base of any municipality in the United States, didn’t provide any.

So I did what all taxi drivers did. What they still do. I found a side street and a spot between two parked cars. It went OK until a cop caught me peeing under the old elevated West Side Highway, which later collapsed due to lack of maintenance. Perhaps decades of taxi driver urine corroded the support beams.

“You can’t do that here,” said the policeman.

“Where am I supposed to go?” I asked him. “There’s aren’t any restrooms anywhere in town.”

“I know,” he replied before going to get his summons book from his cruiser.

The old “f— you.” We create the problem, then blame you for the results.

I ran away.

In recent days American mayors have been ordering heavily armed riot police to attack and rob peaceful members of encampments allied with Occupy Wall Street.

Like NYC, which won’t provide public restrooms but arrests public urinators, government officials and their media allies use their own refusal to provide basic public services to justify raids against Occupations.

In the middle of the night on November 15th NYPD goons stormed into Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan. They beat and pepper-sprayed members of Occupy Wall Street and destroyed the books in their library. Citing “unsanitary conditions,” New York’s billionaire mayor, Michael Bloomberg, then told reporters: “I have become increasingly concerned…that the occupation was coming to pose a health and fire safety hazard to the protesters and to the surrounding community.”

Four days before the police attack The New York Times had quoted a city health department statement worrying about the possible spread of norovirus, vomiting, diarrhea and tuberculosis: “It should go without saying that lots of people sleeping outside in a park as we head toward winter is not an ideal situation for anyone’s health.”

So why don’t they give the homeless some of the thousands of abandoned apartment units in New York?

Anyway, according to the Times: “Damp laundry and cardboard signs, left in the rain, have provided fertile ground for mold. Some protesters urinate in bottles, or occasionally a water-cooler jug, to avoid the lines at [the few] public restrooms.”

Of course, there’s an obvious solution: provide adequate bathroom facilities—not just for Occupy but for all New Yorkers. But that’s off the table under New York’s f— you system of government.

Doctors noted a new phenomenon called “Zuccotti cough.” Symptoms are similar to those of “Ground Zero cough” suffered by 9/11 first responders.

Zuccotti is 450 feet away from Ground Zero.

Which brings to mind the fact that the collapse of the World Trade Center towers released 400 tons of asbestos into the air. It was never cleaned up properly. Could Occupiers be suffering the results of sleeping in a should-have-been-Superfund site for two months?

We’ll never know. As under Bush, Obama’s EPA still won’t conduct a 9/11 environmental impact study.

Sick? Wanna know why? F— you.

One of the authorities’ most ironic complaints about the Occupations is that they attract the mentally ill, drug users and habitually homeless.

To listen to the mayors of Portland, Denver and New York, you’d think the Occupiers beamed in bums and nutcases from outer space.

When mentally disabled people seek help from their government, they get the usual answer: f— you.

When people addicted to drugs—drugs imported into the U.S. under the watchful eyes of corrupt border enforcement officers—ask their government for help, they are turned away. F— you again.

When people who lost their homes because their government said “f— you” to them rather than help turn to the same government to look for safe shelter, again they are told: “f— you.”

And then, after days and years and decades of shirking their responsibility to provide us with such staples of human survival as places to urinate and defecate and sleep, and food, and medical care, our “f— you” government has the amazing audacity to blame us, victims of their negligence and corruption and violence, for messing things up.

Which is why we are finally, at long last, starting to say “f— you” to them.

(Ted Rall is the author of “The Anti-American Manifesto.” His website is tedrall.com.)

COPYRIGHT 2011 TED RALL

Now NYPD is Burning Books

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Ted Rall

Just heard from someone there that NYC police thugs destroyed Occupy Wall Street’s library, which includes a number of my books.

I suppose I should be honored. They care!

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