"The Purpose of Occupy Wall Street Is to Occupy Wall Street" / Michael Moore
Published on Thursday, March 15, 2012 by The Nation
The Purpose of Occupy Wall Street Is to Occupy Wall Street
by Michael Moore
By purposely not creating a formal, hierarchical organization with rules and dues and structure and charismatic leaders and spokespeople—all the things their parents told them they would need in order to get anything done—this new way allowed people from all over the country to feel like they were part of the rebellion by simply deciding that they were part of the rebellion. You want to occupy your local bank—do it! You want to occupy your college board of trustees—done! You want to occupy Oakland or Cincinnati or Grass Valley—be our guest! This is your movement, and you can make it what you want it to be.
In the old days, if you were starting a movement, you had to first educate the public about the problem you were trying to fix, and then you had to persuade them to join you. To move America toward a nonracist, nonsexist, nonhomophobic, peace-seeking nation took years—decades—and we’re still not there. But with Occupy Wall Street, you don’t have to convince the majority of Americans that greed rules Wall Street, that the banks have no one’s interests but their own at heart or that corporate America is out to squeeze every last bit of labor and wages out of everyone’s pocket. Everybody gets it. Even those who oppose it. The hardest part of this or any movement—building a majority—has already happened. The people are with us. So now what do we do?
Here’s what we don’t do: don’t turn Occupy Wall Street into another bureaucratic, top-down organization. That will certainly kill it. Baby boomers who grew up working within traditional organizations need to calm down and not shoehorn this movement into the old paradigm of “Let’s elect people to office and then lobby them to pass good laws!” Let Occupy take its natural course. The candidates for office that we need are in this movement. (Are you one of them? Why not? Someone has to do it, and it would be better if it was you!) The laws that must be enacted to make this a more just nation will come in due time. And not ten years from now; some of this will happen this year. The leading candidate for Congress from my hometown of Flint, Michigan, has already taken a pledge to make “getting money out of politics” his top goal once in office. Others have joined him. We need to vote for them and then hold them to it.
But right now, Occupy has to continue as a bold, in-your-face movement—occupying banks, corporate headquarters, board meetings, campuses and Wall Street itself. We need weekly—if not daily—nonviolent assaults right on Wall Street. You have no idea how many people across the country would come to New York City to participate in wave after wave of arrests as they/we attempt to shut down the murderous, thieving machine that is Wall Street. Forty-five thousand people a year die simply because they don’t have health insurance. Do you think they have any relatives, friends, neighbors, parishioners who might be a little upset? How about the 4 million people losing their homes to the banks? Or the millions of students being crushed by debt? I think we could organize a few of them to shut down Wall Street.
And in town after town across America, people need to do similar things, but on a local level. Evictions of people who have been foreclosed upon must be met by citizens occupying the front door of the repossessed home and nonviolently blocking the bank from tossing the family out to the curb. When a neighbor can’t get the medical procedure she needs, people in town must occupy the hospital or the lobby of the insurance company. When a university raises students’ tuition for the umpteenth time, those students must occupy the administration’s office until the board of trustees relents.
MORE AT...........
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/03/15-7?print
= new reply since forum marked as read
Mike? About that baby boomer thing...
...
Chicago Democratic Convention, 1968
Washington DC, 1969
Kent State, 1970
'nuff said? We have lots of fun ahead of us. Stay poz, yeh?
☮ccupy
