New Clear Vision

Expanding the 99 Percent to Encompass the World

by David Krieger

The Occupy movement is demonstrating its durability and perseverance. Like a Daruma doll, each time it is knocked off balance it serenely pops back up. The movement has been seeking justice for the 99 percent, and justice is an essential element of peace.

For decades, our country has been in permanent preparation for war, spending over half of the total annual discretionary funds that Congress allocates on “defense,” our euphemism for war. World military expenditures exceed $1.5 trillion annually, and the United States spends more than half of this amount, more than the rest of the world combined.

The United States has been engaged in wars around the globe, from Korea to Vietnam, from El Salvador to Nicaragua, from Serbia to Afghanistan, from Iraq to Libya. In all of these wars, many in the 1 percent reap financial gains. (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…)

What if Peace Were Popular?

by Reba Parker

Some of you may be thinking that peace is too important to popularize. I would beg to differ. In the fall of 2011, Charleston Peace One Day, a non-profit located in Charleston, South Carolina took on a strategic mission to do just that. The campaign was called PEACE HAPPENS, setting forth a Call to Action asking people to “do something for peace.”   During peace week, September 14-21, 2011, over 80 groups planned their own unique initiatives for peace. Recall that Charleston is where the American Civil War started (we just celebrated our Sesquicentennial) and is currently ranked forty-second on the U.S. Index of Peace. Most would think we have a long way to go, but nothing is holding us back — except maybe old, outdated images and definitions of peace, and a bit of lingering intolerant history. (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…)

Public Pressure Is Slowly Ending the War in Afghanistan

by David Swanson

Lessons on Building Community and Restoring Peace

by Robert C. Koehler

In our techno-saturated society, we have the casual capacity to capture any unfolding event on film — even an act of shocking violence — and send images of the live action around the globe just by whipping out a cell phone.

Two years ago, Chicago’s Fenger High School had its 15 minutes of horrific fame when the beating death of one of its students, an honor student named Derrion Albert — waiting for a bus after school, caught suddenly in a surge of gang violence, savagely beaten with two-by-fours and railroad ties — was recorded on someone’s cell camera and became an international spectacle.

What we lack, it would seem, is the capacity to do anything about the violence itself. We remain trapped within a context of thought that reduces our interaction with the world, and ourselves, to winning or losing, domination or defeat. (more…)

From Growth and Domination to Sustainability and Cooperation

by Peter Bergel

On Tuesday night a reported 100,000 Americans joined Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz for a national conversation about breaking the partisan gridlock in Washington, DC. It was another great example of the growing willingness of ordinary people to reclaim their power from those to whom they have delegated it, only to see it abused.

Schultz was a suitable leader for this conversation because he had recently organized CEOs from more than a hundred companies to halt contributions to U.S. political campaigns until DC office holders stop their political wrangling and behave in a financially responsible manner. He also encouraged those who joined him to spend their money to stimulate growth in their own industries. (more…)