New Clear Vision

Building Sustainable Resistance Movements

by Matt Meyer

Just as police were attacking Occupy spaces in Oakland, Portland, New York City, and elsewhere, and various mainstream (and even some left-leaning) pundits were declaring the demise of the Occupy movement, new initiatives and new life was being breathed fresh into grassroots spaces. In less than one week following the dismantling of several prominent 24-hour occupations, and the arresting of some key activists, substantial achievements were being made. New York’s “flagship site” convened a day-long series of mass, nonviolent direct actions, from a morning civil disobedience at the Stock Exchange, to afternoon “speak-outs” on the trains crossing several different subway lines and many miles throughout the City’s boroughs. (more…)

What Are YOU Doing to Live Well and Contribute to the Cause?

by Jan Hart

The Occupy movement is alive, credible and growing in the United States and the world. International in scope, the Occupy movement began just a few months ago in New York City, followed by San Francisco.  A few weeks later the protests had spread to 95 cities across 82 countries and over 600 communities in the U.S. Ordinary people are standing up to a system that they feel is unequal and unfair. The recent eviction at Zuccotti Park serves only to make the movement stronger. In a world where the wealthy elite, the 1 %, have all the power and control, 99 % of the people feel powerless to effect changes that would make their lives better. (more…)

Undoing the Hijacking of the First Amendment

by Robert Reich

A funny thing happened to the First Amendment on its way to the public forum. According to the Supreme Court, money is now speech and corporations are now people. But when real people without money assemble to express their dissatisfaction with the political consequences of this, they’re treated as public nuisances and evicted.

First things first. The Supreme Court’s rulings that money is speech and corporations are people have now opened the floodgates to unlimited (and often secret) political contributions from millionaires and billionaires. Consider the Koch brothers (worth $25 billion each), who are bankrolling the Tea Party and already running millions of dollars worth of ads against Democrats. (more…)

Holding Space as OWS Camps Come Under Assault

by Randall Amster

As the Occupy Movement gains strength and garners worldwide support, the predominant anti-OWS tactic of authority is becoming clear: decimate as many Occupy camps as possible, in the hope that this delivers a fatal blow to the movement’s momentum. It is an outmoded, heavy-handed tack, one that starkly illuminates the gap between the casual brutality of the 1% and the core aspirations of the 99%.

And it will ultimately fail.

At each turn, the sweeping of the encampments — many of which have become little “utopian experiments” in themselves and working models for an alternative society — has only served to galvanize the resolve of Occupiers and drive even greater numbers out into the streets and parks. Mass arrests aim to make activists pay a personal price for their open defiance, but they also yield greater degrees of movement solidarity and radicalize demonstrators across generational and cultural lines. (more…)

From Relative Peace to Universal Wellbeing

by Randall Amster

Decades ago, on the eve of a period of widespread societal upheaval, Bob Dylan famously intoned that “the order is rapidly fading.” For a time, this appeared to be so: around the world people were in the streets, revolution was in the air, and structures of oppression were being openly contested. The headiness of those days brought many advances and opened up significant space for later movements to operate, yet in the final analysis somehow it all delivered us into even higher degrees of wealth stratification and greater consolidation of power. The order had flickered, but not quite faded, and in the end reasserted itself stronger than before.

Today we stand poised at a not-dissimilar crossroads. While perhaps no one has yet penned a Dylan-esque anthem of the movement — although stalwarts such as David Rovics and Emma’s Revolution have dropped some poignant opening stanzas — a mass chorus of voices is drawing lines in the sand literally everywhere: public spaces, workplaces, shipping ports, shopping malls, community centers, corporate banks, schoolrooms, boardrooms, and more. The Occupy Movement has transcended the narrow confines of Zuccotti Park, and in doing so has seemingly asserted itself wherever the forces of elitism and subjugation rear their heads. As Frederick Douglass said, “power concedes nothing without demand,” and whatever else transpires in the days ahead it can at least be said that the movement has reminded us all of this basic tenet. (more…)

The Occupiers Strike a Responsive Chord

by Robert Reich

A combination of police crackdowns and bad weather are testing the young Occupy movement. But rumors of its demise are premature, to say the least. Although numbers are hard to come by, anecdotal evidence suggests the movement is growing.

As importantly, the movement has already changed the public debate in America.

Consider, for example, last week’s Congressional Budget Office report on widening disparities of income in America. It was hardly news — it’s already well known that the top 1 percent now gets 20 percent of the nation’s income, up from 9 percent in the late 1970s. But it’s the first time such news made the front page of the nation’s major newspapers. (more…)