By Charles Davis and Medea Benjamin
In an age when U.S. power can be projected through private mercenary armies and unmanned Predator drones, the U.S. military need no longer rely on massive, conventional ground forces to pursue its imperial agenda, a fact President Barack Obama is now acknowledging. But make no mistake: while the tactics may be changing, the U.S. taxpayer – and poor foreigners abroad – will still be saddled with overblown military budgets and militaristic policies.
“The deeds of occupier and occupied alike suggest that there come cruel times when to save a nation’s deepest values one must disobey the state.” ~ Robert O. Paxton, Vichy France
Today, the second largest city in the country went on record in support of the OccupyTogether movement. The city council didn’t just vote in support of OccupyLA, they also called into question corporate personhood and the banking industry. They connected to people’s movement with their own inability to act on city-wide banking regulation. This caused [...]
A lot has changed since we started occupying Wall Street 24 days ago.
Voices take much longer to echo through the masses of bodies in Liberty Plaza,
requiring two or three layers of repetition via the people’s microphone. The kitchen
staff, once limited largely to serving the now-famous “occu-pie” pizzas (99% cheese,
1% pepperoni) lovingly designed by Libretto’s, are now cooking full-balanced, vegan
meals, composting the scraps, and washing the dishes through an on-site grey-water
system.
When I was in junior high, I read the Foundation Series by Isaac Asimov. It laid out a vision of the rise and fall of empires that had a profound impact on my understanding of macro-history. Reading Andre Gunder-Frank’s ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age in college provided me factual underpinnings for my understanding [...]
All of our messages are intertwined. While some may question the utility of staying in the streets without “unified demands,” the people of Occupy Wall Street understand that the only way to make real change is to challenge the system by standing up and being counted. In public. Watch Medea’s interview on #OccupyWallStreet with Oz [...]
Friday, January 6, 2012
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