99% Spring Training

Yesterday I attended a 99% spring training session. The goal is to educate citizens on the use of non violent direct action, allowing people to understand that it is a valuable tool that has led to many of the most meaningful social and economic changes we've seen throughout history.

If you have the time to attend on of these trainings, I really couldn't recommend it higher. Click here for a list of trainings in your area.

I also think that for liberal organizations to be investing serious resources into this type of training is very significant. There was a debate among occupy folks and others over how this should be perceived. Worries of attempts at co-option from the occupy movement are completely valid, but my hope is that it's going on the other direction. I couldn't agree any more with Alexis Goldstein's comments here:

"These organizations are encouraging thousands of people to undergo direct action training, without any electioneering diluting that goal, despite the fact that we are six months out from a presidential election," says Occupy the SEC's Alexis Goldstein. "This is unprecedented, amazing, and shows that there is an important focus on trainings and educations among groups that may have different strategies."

Goldstein adds that Occupy is fighting an information battle, and any effort to educate people on direct action is a positive act.

"If anything, this is Occupy 'co-opting' [MoveOn]," she says.

And having attended a training, I can say this is completely true. The videos shown and discussion of the financial crisis don't spare team D, and there is no discussion of electoral politics, something that's honestly rare based on my time working with the labor movement. Check it out, it's worth your time.

Occupying Throughout History

A really interesting take from David Dayen:

While occupying a public park or other physical space would appear to be a novel escalation of national discontent, it has actually accompanied other eras of frustration and rage throughout history. Unemployed Americans marched on Washington after the Panic of 1893, forming what was termed Coxey’s Army after Jacob Coxey, the leader of the protest. The Bonus Marchers did the same, seeking their World War I bonuses, and they occupied parts of Washington before getting booted by Gen. Douglas MacArthur. In 1968, the Poor People’s Campaign pledged to camp out in Washington, using actual sharecropper’s domiciles to build a shanty-town called “Resurrection City,” in a bid to achieve better economic outcomes. We will never know the potential success of this event, because Martin Luther King Jr., one of the lead organizers, was shot just before the start of the occupation, and the campaign never regained momentum. The Flint sit-down strike was a non-Washington example of occupations, an event most mirrored by the 2008 takeover of the Republic Windows and Doors building by the workers. And that brings us to the point that there are RECENT antecedents to Occupy Wall Street – the bank accountability campaign, actual protests on Wall Street in 2009 and 2010, the anti-foreclosure direct action movement, and so on.

The point is that there’s nothing particularly new about the premise of occupation. There’s also nothing new about the response – these have historically always caused a reaction by the authorities that led to arrests, beatings, and dismantling of the occupation sites. But in no case did that temper or end the movements which led to the occupations themselves. The common thread underlying these occupations is that they have come at a time of profound economic dislocation, and they heralded a new era of reforms aimed at ameliorating the situation. Coxey’s Army and the protests of the turn of the century occurred hand-in-hand with the Progressive Era; the Bonus Marchers and Flint sit-down strike happened during the Depression; the Poor People’s Campaign adjoined both the civil rights movement and the Great Society reforms. This always happens, in other words. And those occupations never defined the movements they inspired. The movements always multiplied and innovated and went beyond sitting down for rights.

It’s undeniable that this current occupation movement has shown that the right to assembly is under threat, and if you cannot assure this basic right, good luck with the economic agenda that undergirds the occupations. But that’s been true to a degree throughout history. People have been beaten, attacked, assailed, and physically removed for speaking out against injustice, for exercising the basic right to protest. This has arguably become more militarized in recent years, but the dynamic has always been there.

And so has the results. Occupation movements have always existed parallel to a larger movement that did eventually secure a series of rights and protections for the disenfranchised. John Heilemann has this cockamamie story about how Occupy Wall Street will bring us back to 1968, because for everyone in the traditional media, it’s always 1968. But a survey of the historical record shows that the more likely scenario is that this inspires a mass movement that leads to progressive reform, as it always has. The pendulum is swinging back from a time of Gilded Age stratification. This is a familiar theme and you’d think people with any sense of history would be aware of it.

This is also why I am disinclined to offer helpful hints to the Occupy protesters, or a game plan on how they should go about achieving or even determining their goals. The movement energy around occupations has always sustained itself and built a reform agenda. Mother Jones was a Coxey marcher. It’s endemic to a movement like this that it draws the activists most focused on progress and provides a space for them to figure out how to get there. Nobody on the sidelines has any better insight. So the best option is to just shut up and watch history take flight again.

General Strike!

(Image via @michaelwhitney)

Insanely busy, and had a pretty incredible last couple of days. In the meantime, keep your eyes out for this tomorrow:

OAKLAND -- From schools and downtown stores to the nation's fifth busiest port, Oakland is bracing for Wednesday's citywide general strike, a hastily planned and ambitious action called by Occupy protesters a day after police forcibly removed their City Hall encampment last week.

Occupy Oakland has since returned to Frank Ogawa Plaza, but the leaderless group is still asking workers and students in the city to take the day off to come downtown and protest economic inequality and corporate greed.

Major goals will be protesting at banks or corporations that refuse to shut down for the day, then marching in the evening to the Port of Oakland to try to shut down the night shift.

Some employees and businesses downtown, where the core activities are scheduled, intend to participate, while others plan to carry on as normal - hoping there won't be a resumption of last week's violent clashes between protesters and police.

General strike = HUGE fucking deal. Occupy Oakland's call is bold as hell. Best wishes to everyone in the bay area!