Occupations unleash critical debate on capitalist crisis

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VOL. 29, NO. 12, DECEMBER 2011 WWW.SOCIALISTACTION.ORG U.S. / CANADA $1 The Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement has proven to be the political spark that ignited the pent-up anger and frustration of millions in the United States. It has awakened broad segments of the great majority who have suf­ fered deeply from a decades-long tidal wave of defeats inflicted by a degenerating world capitalist order that today has no room for con­ cessions, even of the token variety. The long-awaited American fightback, which will take a myriad of forms in the years ahead, is off to an inspiring start.

Coupled with multiplying rallies, marches, and occupations of every kind, the Occupy movement has unleashed a national discussion and debate among working people to deter­ mine how best to challenge the morally and economically bankrupt system and win.

The capitalist system’s elite and their govern­ ment servants, the now increasingly despised “one percent,” daily impose their solutions to the world economic crisis that they themselves created— more austerity, more cuts in social benefits, more layoffs, more wars, more assaults on the environment, more fore­ closures, more racist attacks on the Black, Latino, and immigrant communities and youth.

Their “solution” to the challenge posed by the Occupy movement is to try to make it disappear—to physically remove, in coordinated military-style police actions, the tents and encampment supplies, food, medical facilities, books that have been set up in cities across the country. From New York, Oakland, Salt Lake City, Portland, Den­ ver, St. Louis, Albany, Durham, and scores of other cit­ ies, to campus and neighborhood occupations, the spec­ tacle of peaceful protesters—from youth to 84-year-old grandmothers—being brutally clubbed, pepper sprayed, tear gassed, and arrested en masse has not been lost on the public.

Steven Senne / AP Lucas Jackson / Reuters Daily conversations in workplaces and wherever peo­ ple congregate register heightened interest in the occupi­ ers and general solidarity with their goals. Wall Street bosses have threatened immediate dismissal for clerical workers who might peek out of the windows to view the protests or take a cell-phone snapshot of them.

Oakland, Calif., Mayor Jean Quan and other public officials have publicly recounted their participation in national phone calls initiated by the U.S. Conference of Mayors to discuss how to disappear the occupiers. An Obama spokesperson aboard Air Force One told media representatives, according to The New York Times, that the president believed that the right to protest itself had to be balanced by government concerns regarding “sanita­ tion and public safety”!

Addressing a meeting of New York’s business leaders on Nov. 17, the day of the first nationally coordinated actions initiated by the original Occupy Wall Street Gen­ Storm anger! — 2 EU debt crisis — 3 Occupy reports — 5 New Greek gov’t — 5 NATO/G8 protest — 7 Fracking halted — 8 Canada news — 9 ‘Into the Abyss’ — 10 UAW contract — 10 Wisconsin recall — 11 Egypt rebellion — 12 (Left) Occupy Boston, Nov. 2. (Below) NY police clear Occupy Wall St. from Zuccotti Park on Nov. 15. eral Assembly, the perplexed and clueless billionaire Democrat-turned-Republicanturned-“Independent,” Mayor Michael Bloomberg, could only note that “the protests were a dire sign of the public’s economic fears.” Said Bloomberg, as re­ ported in the Nov. 18 New York Times, “The public is getting scared. They don’t know what to do, and they are going to strike out. They just know that the system isn’t working, and they don’t want to wait around.”

For Bloomberg and his bipartisan part­ ners, who look to the bipartisan congres­ sional “Super Committee” or Joint Select Committee [of 12 members of the House and Senate] on Deficit Reduction, there are no solutions other than massive aus­ terity for working people and more tril­ lion-dollar tax cuts for the rich. Theirs is the same logic applied the world over by a crisis-ridden capitalist order that has imposed draconian measures on the work­ ing masses in every sphere of social life to pay the debts of their failing banks, corpo­ rations and governments.

The OWS movement has cut deeply into the fabric of American life: • On Nov. 2, in Oakland, Calif., in response to the brutal 4 a.m. police attack on the Civic Center Occupy Oak­ land site, a mobilization or “general strike” of 20,000 trade unionists, youth, and other supporters filled the city streets, forced the closure of banks and other financial institutions, and shut down the Port of Oakland with the support of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union and some cheering and honking truck drivers. • On Nov. 17, where two days earlier carefully planned and orchestrated police violence and mass arrests closed down the Zuccotti Square Occupation, 10,000 CUNY and NYU students, and other OWS supporters rallied at Union Square and marched down Broadway to Foley Square for a rally that grew to over 30,000. The same numbers crossed the Brooklyn Bridge to call attention to (continued on page 4, in “Supercommittee fails, cuts coming anyway”)

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Leslloyd F. Alleyne / Journal Inquirer / AP and Occupy Hartford, some participants called for placing

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Debt crisis in See page 3 INSIDE SOCIALIST ACTION