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Occupy Wall Street and mass protestation in USA

vendredi 11 novembre 2011

Occupy Wall Street and mass protestation in USA

US : End the Dictatorship of Wall Street !

Saturday, 8 October 2011.

China Worker

How can we take the struggle forward ?

Socialist Alternative (CWI supporters in the US)

All around the world attention has been drawn to the occupation of Wall Street. The protests have captured the imagination of thousands and inspired new occupations which are spreading across the U.S.

The police crackdown in New York, intended to intimidate this movement, completely failed to break our spirit. Now we are more determined than ever to fight. Inspired by the revolutionary upheavals in Egypt and across North Africa, as well as the mass youth occupations in Spain and Greece, protestors have taken to the streets of New York and cities across the U.S. to stand up to the domination of Wall Street and Big Business over our lives.

Below the surface there is deep anger in U.S. society which only seemed to be getting a twisted expression in the right-wing lunatics of the Tea Party. But the mass movement in Wisconsin this spring, and now the occupation of Wall Street provide a glimpse of the enormous potential to turn that anger into a progressive social movement.


How can we take the struggle forward ?

Many are occupying to “liberate space” in order to build a new, more equal and just community, hoping it will inspire others to follow. While the Wall Street occupation is an example of a community based on democracy, cooperation and solidarity, unfortunately the occupation alone will not be enough to build a mass movement capable of changing society.

Many have alluded to Egypt saying that a growing occupation with one basic demand is how the dictator was overthrown. But in fact, the situation was more complicated than that. In the week before Egypt’s dictator Mubarak was ousted, the working class entered the scene with decisive strike action paralyzing key parts of the economy.

The occupations in Spain and Greece have been much bigger than Wall Street, but they too need the more powerful forces of the working class to move into action in order to win. In Wisconsin, a huge occupation of the Capitol lasted for over 3 weeks and was at the center of mass demonstrations of the workers and youth. They could have won if that movement had moved toward a general strike of public sector workers to shut the state economy down.

Instead the Wisconsin battle was consciously derailed by the Democratic Party and the top union leadership by diverting the mass movement into a campaign to recall the Republicans from power in order to elect Democrats in their place. However, the Democrats, like the Republicans, are a party of Wall Street and Big Business, and they offer no solutions. We need an independent struggle which seeks to draw in the widest layers of workers and youth. United we have the power to withdraw our labor, stop “business as usual,” and hit the banks, corporations and ruling elite where it counts.

We need to build up the confidence to take such bold measures. That’s why Occupy Wall Street needs to call for mass demonstrations around key demands that address the burning issues that working people and youth face like jobs, education, healthcare and so on.

System Change

Not only the economy but society as a whole is in a deep crisis. Global capitalism is a failed system that cannot overcome the problems of growing inequality, poverty, mass unemployment, environmental destruction, and war which it creates. The movement has to challenge Wall Street and both parties of big business. We must stand up to their policies where they try to solve their economic crisis on our backs in order to maintain a system which only benefits the elite in the first place.

But we must also provide a clear alternative. We need to fundamentally transform society to one not based on profit but instead on meeting everyone’s basic human needs. The only real alternative to corporate greed and capitalism is democratic socialism where the economy, workplaces, and society as a whole is democratically run by and for the vast majority of people.

Join Socialist Alternative ! We Say :

* Spread the occupations across the U.S. and into schools and communities. For systematic, mass campaigning to mobilize the widest layer of workers, young people and labor unions into struggle.

* Organize weekend mass demonstrations that call for : No cuts to social services, A massive jobs creation program, Major tax hikes on the super-rich and big business, End the wars, Slash the military budget, and Defend union and democratic rights.

* Build up to the November 16-23 National Week of Action to combat the Congressional Super Committee plan for $1.5 trillion in cuts to social services. We demand jobs not cuts !

* Prepare to run independent anti-corporate, working-class candidates in 2012 to challenge the policies of the two parties of Wall Street as a first step towards forming a new party of the 99%, a mass workers’ party.

* End the dictatorship of Wall Street ! Bring the big banks that dominate the U.S. economy into public ownership and run them under the democratic management of elected representatives of their workers and the public. Compensation to be paid on the basis of proven need to small investors, not millionaires.

* Build the movement to replace the rotten system of capitalism with democratic socialism and create a new society based on human need.

Occupy New York contingent sets off on march to Washington

10 November 2011 - WSWS

A group of protesters from Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan have begun a two-week march to Washington. They hope to cover the 230 miles at a rate about 20 miles a day, picking up supporters in cities and towns along the way.

“We wanted to connect the occupations,” an organizer of the march, Michael Glazer, a young unemployed actor from Chicago, told the Daily News. “We are going to let the politicians know we are watching them. This isn’t business as usual any more.”

The march will go through Trenton, Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore, as well as smaller cities.

Glazer has been part of the Occupy Wall Street encampment in New York for the past month. His comments are consistent with the militancy and determination that is characteristic of many of the young and unemployed protesters who have camped out in Manhattan and dozens of cities across the US as well as Canada, but they also highlight the growing need for a programmatic alternative to capitalist “business as usual.” Lobbying the big business politicians in Washington, if that is what is envisioned, will be worse than useless, sowing illusions in the two-party system instead of exposing it.

At the Zuccotti Park encampment, where the anti-Wall Street protests began almost two months ago, there are definite signs of growing pressures being brought to bear against the protesters by the media and capitalist politicians. New York Mayor Bloomberg has kept up a steady drumbeat of attacks, this week claiming that the protest is making life miserable for the residents of the surrounding area, and arguing that economic and social problems are not the responsibility of the bankers.

The media this week discovered what the New York Times called “rising concerns about crime.” Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post piled on with filthy claims that “It’s crime all the time at Zuccotti Park,” seizing on a few incidents and quoting unnamed “law enforcement sources.”

At the same time, local Democrats are trying the opposite tactic, swearing their support for Occupy Wall Street and using their money and influence to try to turn it into a pro-Democratic Party lobby.

On November 7 State Senator Adriano Espaillat and City Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez led hundreds of people on an 11-mile march from the heavily Hispanic Upper Manhattan neighborhood of Washington Heights down to Zuccotti Park. They were joined by local trade union officials.

Undoubtedly many workers joined this march to demonstrate their sympathy with the Occupy movement and their outrage over unemployment and inequality, but the record of the Democrats, from Washington Heights to Washington DC and the White House, has proved over many decades of bitter experience that this is a party of big business and Wall Street.

The WSWS has interviewed a number of Occupy Wall Street participants in the past few days.

Three supporters of Occupy Wall Street from New Jersey stopped to discuss the issues. Guido Sanchez, a teacher from Jersey City, and his partner George, who works in home health, had been to OWS previously but were now bringing Guido’s mother, Helen Sanchez, who lives in central New Jersey and manages a restaurant.

Helen, describing her first impression, said, “I think it is important and needs to grow. It must be stressful because they might come and take them out any time. Over the years I have demonstrated. I think we have lost a lot of freedom. Now people are arrested just for t-shirts they wear. The Patriot Act has to go away.”

George said, “I make appointments for Visiting Nurse Service. Visiting Nurse Service is very understaffed. I have more appointments to make than nurses to do visits. Nurses make evaluations to determine the health care and services that patients will need. There are changes needed for caring but the government is less and less willing to provide services the people need. Many people do not pay attention to this. The union does not pay attention to the problems.
Guido Sanchez

“I don’t feel the two-party system works. Obama has not done anything for me. When I voted for him, I felt like I was picking the lesser of two evils. The idea of a workers’ party would make sense—the current system does not.”

Guido added, “I guess there is hope that this is the beginning of a revolution that awakens people to how these structures work and how we are propping them up, how the two-party system is corrupt, and how the educational system is not designed to educate people. It has been broken for a long time and they essentially try to brainwash people to prop up the current structures.”
Arev Steffen

Arev Steffen, a student at Concordia College in Bronxville, NY, spoke to the WSWS. “I came here from Brazil, in the south near the border with Argentina, in 2008. I came in August just before the Wall Street collapse of Lehman Brothers. I thought Lula was a good president when he was first elected in Brazil, but after the second election the government is nothing but corruption.

“The Occupy Wall Street movement is international, and I support this. In my hometown of Porto Alegre in Brazil, there is a movement similar to what is happening here. They are occupying parks with tents and have made signs against the banks, corruption and capitalism. This has been going on in Rio de Janeiro as well.

“I know this was going on in Rio last week, although I don’t know what is going on there now. It wasn’t as big or threatening there as it is here so the police may not have attacked it. There are other places in Latin America where the Occupy Wall Street movement is going on. It is growing for sure. The international spread of this movement shows the system is corrupted at its roots. It shows the system of capitalism is not working.

“The awareness is the same internationally, and this is important for the people of the world. This movement is addressed to the working class.

“I believe Obama is a figurehead in government. He has proved he is on the other side.”
Sadye Stern

Sadye Stern, a student at NYU, said “I think the Occupy movement is a wonderful thing. The power is in people getting together and participating. The worst thing is for people to suffer together, individually, without any social movement.

“When you are in college you learn about things going on in history and how they are connected to things that are going on now. The interests of business dominate around the world, and they are sucking up the resources and quality of life everywhere.

“I was in Latin America. I studied the history of all the dictators in the 1970s and 80s. These dictatorships were conflated with the corporate interests. What I have been learning is that there is a really obvious power imbalance between the majority of the people and these business interests.

“I strongly supported Obama in 2008,” Sadye said, noting that his campaign had mobilized substantial support from ordinary people. “But what has happened since he got into office ? It feels like nothing has gotten better, and things have probably gotten worse. The past couple of months, I’ve been finding the Democrats and Republicans have very few differences. The working people need a new, legitimate source of representation.”

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