Occupy L.A.... Or Not

Joke's on me. When I got home I had an irresistible urge to wash my car... so at least I accomplished that. Oh, and the best thing about my trip downtown to Occupy L.A. today was that KCRW played a great new Tom Waits song as I was driving home.

I went alone. None of my friends would come. "It's too early." "It's too late." "I'm hung over." "Howie who?... this is a bad connection; call back some other time." Screw them, I was energized. After all I went to the first big Tea Party rally in L.A.; and if I couldn't go to Wall Street for the real thing, I would go share a little solidarity with my L.A. brothers and sisters. I even drove through Historic Filipinotown and Angeleno Heights to get that working class camaraderie in full gear. And just as I was leaving the phone rang and it was a kid I know from New York who's in town and wanted to get together. I shouldn't call him a kid anymore. He's a grownup now... and a lawyer who manages rock bands. I was positive he'd want to drive over with me. "OccupyWallStreet," he repeated tentatively. "I think I heard of them. Kind of salsa-punk?" I explained. He passed. But he promised to read the Nick Kristof piece in the NY Times.

After flying around the world this year to cover street protests from Cairo to Morocco, reporting on the latest “uprising” was easier: I took the subway.

The "Occupy Wall Street" movement has taken over a park in Manhattan’s financial district and turned it into a revolutionary camp. Hundreds of young people chant slogans against “banksters” or corporate tycoons. Occasionally, a few even pull off their clothes, which always draws news cameras.

“Occupy Wall Street” was initially treated as a joke, but after a couple of weeks it’s gaining traction. The crowds are still tiny by protest standards-- mostly in the hundreds, swelling during periodic marches-- but similar occupations are bubbling up in Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Washington. David Paterson, the former New York governor, dropped by, and labor unions are lending increasing support.

I tweeted that the protest reminded me a bit of Tahrir Square in Cairo, and that raised eyebrows. True, no bullets are whizzing around, and the movement won’t unseat any dictators. But there is the same cohort of alienated young people, and the same savvy use of Twitter and other social media to recruit more participants. Most of all, there’s a similar tide of youthful frustration with a political and economic system that protesters regard as broken, corrupt, unresponsive and unaccountable.

“This was absolutely inspired by Tahrir Square, by the Arab Spring movement,” said Tyler Combelic, 27, a Web designer from Brooklyn who is a spokesman for the occupiers. “Enough is enough!”

The protesters are dazzling in their Internet skills, and impressive in their organization. The square is divided into a reception area, a media zone, a medical clinic, a library and a cafeteria. The protesters’ Web site includes links allowing supporters anywhere in the world to go online and order pizzas (vegan preferred) from a local pizzeria that delivers them to the square.

In a tribute to the ingenuity of capitalism, the pizzeria quickly added a new item to its menu: the “OccuPie special.”

Where the movement falters is in its demands: It doesn’t really have any. The participants pursue causes that are sometimes quixotic-- like the protester who calls for removing Andrew Jackson from the $20 bill because of his brutality to American Indians. So let me try to help.

I don’t share the antimarket sentiments of many of the protesters. Banks are invaluable institutions that, when functioning properly, move capital to its best use and raise living standards. But it’s also true that soaring leverage not only nurtured soaring bank profits in good years, but also soaring risks for the public in bad years.

In effect, the banks socialized risk and privatized profits. Securitizing mortgages, for example, made many bankers wealthy while ultimately leaving governments indebted and citizens homeless.

We’ve seen that inadequately regulated, too-big-to-fail banks can undermine the public interest rather than serve it-- and in the last few years, banks got away with murder. It’s infuriating to see bankers who were rescued by taxpayers now moan about regulations intended to prevent the next bail-out. And it’s important that protesters spotlight rising inequality: does it feel right to anyone that the top 1 percent of Americans now possess a greater collective net worth than the entire bottom 90 percent?

One of my wiser friends who avoided going downtown with me, simply said, "I think the NY protest is different. L.A. doesn't know from Wall Street." How right she was! I didn't really know exactly where City Hall was. I mean, like, I know the area it's in... near the Disney Center. So I drove there and parked and figured I'd walk around and either see a commotion or ask someone. Lucky for me five happy-go-lucky lesbians around my age where walking up the hill while I was coming to grips with the fact that the parking meter was not only in effect on Saturdays, but that it takes twenty-five cents for every 10 minutes. And they excuse no increased COLAs by telling seniors there's zero inflation! Anyway, the friendliest of the crew told me City Hall was exactly 3 blocks away and on the very street-- First-- I was on and "see that giant tower-- that's it. But be prepared for some abuse." Abuse? "Is this your Prius? Some guy at the mic is yelling about what self-satisfied assholes Prius owners are." She owns one too. I guessed that was why they were headed in the opposite direction.

The first thing I saw when I got down the hill was a dozen or so young Ron Paul activists waving signs about The Fed and about Ron Paul at passing cars. Half of them were Hispanic and very passionate and melodramatic. I'm guessing they haven't read much of Dave Neiwert's stuff about Ron Paul. Oh, well... I wasn't about to let some skunks spoil my picnic. Into the little park I went. And the little park was... filled with Ron Paul activists. And Revolutionary Communist Party, USA activists. It was filled with the people who stand in front of the post office and rant and rave and bother everyone going to mail a package. And they had a small, inadequate sound system-- and an audience. The audience was busy making signs and posters. Apparently this protest is about making signs and posters. And they were cool.

Reading them was the best part. Some managed to get entire political philosophies on them. Others just said stuff like "John Galt Can Go To Hell," "No Banks Period," "The Invisible Hand Bitch-Slapped Us," "Occupy Wall Street, Not Iraq and Afghanistan." One said "Free Hugs For Activists." Oddly I saw a ton of Joy Division shirts.

And there was a lot of ranting and raving about a "resource based economy" by very well-rehearsed quasi-professional street speakers. Either the Paulistas or the Bob Avakian Communists; hard to tell. I read the morning session was better and not run by the lunatics. I missed the beginning because I was hosting the newest Blue America candidate, Mary Jo Kilroy, at Crooks and Liars. Digby asked her what she thinks of the Occupy Wall Street/We Are The 99% movement before I could.

Mary Jo: The protests on Wall Street demonstrate the anger and discontent that remains around the country over the damage to the economy that reckless Wall Street behavior caused, the lack of accountability, the lack of jobs, and the stranglehold that corporate money has on our political process. I share that anger. And the 99% of us need a voice in Washington. I will work for jobs, to protect people's homes, their savings, their Social Security and pensions. I want to make sure young people have a future. I disagree with the protesters who say that they don't believe in voting. It is a power that people in other countries fight to achieve. And the protesters, while for the 99%, do not seem to have a clear demand or political agenda. In 2010, the Tea Party seemed to harness some of the same anger but used it politically to defeat Democrats, and to push the deficit as the country's main problem rather than the loss of jobs.

Digby: Well, the difference is that the Tea Party was organized and promoted by corporations and corporate media that backs the Republican Party and this is a genuine grassroots uprising. I think those always start from this emotional sense of dissent and then grow more organized with time. It's only been a couple of weeks, after all.

It's terrible that there's such a sense of despair about the system that some people don't think voting helps anymore, but I understand where it's coming from. After the high of 2008, there was bound to be a let-down among the young and idealistic in any case-- and the let-down has been much more precipitous than it needed to be. It's beyond political-- their lives are really being impacted.

I hope you are able to articulate the feelings of these protesters in your campaign. People need to see that politicians "get it" and if they do, I think they'll support them. Nobody wants to give up on the government-- they're just not feeling heard there.

I think your voice will be important.

That was more inspiring than what I saw at City Hall, though... what kind of revealed wisdom could I have possibly expected to see? I guess I'm a worked up because I've been reading the second edition of David Korten's fantabulous Agenda For A New Economy, a Declaration of Independence from Wall Street. It would serve all the protesters well-- not to mention the public. "Leadership for transformational change," he reminds us on page 1, "must come, as it always has, from outside the institutions of power." His book is a call for a national conversation, the one-- it appears-- OccupyWallStreet is getting started.

Most calls for action seek only to limit the excesses and deceptions of greedy bankers and financiers. We have yet to engage a much-needed national-conversation that addresses essential, yet unasked, questions. For example:

1- Do Wall Street institutions do anything so vital for the national interest as to justify opening the national purse strings and showering them with trillions of dollars in order to save them from the consequences of their own excess?

2- Is it possible that the whole Wall Street edifice is built on an illusion that has no substance yet carries deadly economic, social, and environmental consequences for the larger society?

3- Might there be other ways to provide necessary and beneficial financial services with greater effectiveness and at a lower cost?

I suspect most of us would answer, as Korten does, no, yes, yes. He says that "ultimately it comes down to a question of the values we believe the economy should serve. Should it give priority to money, or to life? To the fortunes of the few, or the well-being of all? ... Our future and that of our children depend on replacing the values and the institutions of the Wall Street economy with the culture and institutions of a New Economy designed to provide an adequate and satisfying livelihood for all people in balanced relationship to Earth's biosphere."

I guess that's what they were all doing and saying-- one way or the other-- downtown today too. Maybe I should call Amato and suggest he get everyone a copy of Korten's book instead of more pizza. Radiohead didn't play and there's still no articulated unified "aims" on Wall Street, but Outernational is promising to play in L.A. and they're way more to the point and, L.A. needs something like that to help get it up to speed with NY quicker anyway.

By the way, you won't find many as eloquent and as prescient as Van Jones in describing what's going on around OccupyWallStreet. This weekend at HuffPo he hit the mail right on the noggin:

Wall Street has long been the home of the biggest threat to American Democracy. Now it has become home to what may be our best hope for rescuing it.

For everyone who loves this country, for everyone whose heart is breaking for the growing ranks of the poor, for everyone who is seething at the unopposed demolition of America's working and middle class: the time has come to get off the fence.

A new generation has gone to the scene of the crimes committed against our future. The time has come for all people of good will to give our full-throated backing to the young people of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

The young heroes on Wall Street today baffle the world because they have issued no demands. The villains of Wall Street had their demands-- insisting upon a massive bailout for themselves in 2008, while they pocketed million dollar bonuses. The Wall Street protesters are not seeking a bailout for themselves; they are working to bail out democracy.

The American experiment in self-governance is at a moment of crisis. The political system thus far has proven itself incapable of responding to a once in a lifetime economic calamity. With income inequality and unemployment at the highest rates since the Great Depression, it's no wonder that almost 80 percent of the country thinks we're on the wrong track.

...The hundreds of young people from all five boroughs that camp out every night, in the heart of the financial district, in the rain and the cold, at risk of arrest, are providing the inspiration to draw more and more out of the shadows and into the bright light of the public square. The occupation grows larger and more diverse every day. Young people, the majority of whom are under 25 and have never before engaged in activism, are managing the arduous task of a consensus rules meeting with no sound system. The nightly general assemblies are attracting crowds in the thousands to stand amongst a group of their peers and debate our path forward as a people.

The occupation is a revival of a proud tradition of authentic, people-powered movements that have been dormant-- and that we need now more than ever. It is building into the kind of massive public demonstrations-- like those in Egypt, Madison, and Santiago-- that can shake the foundation of a system of power that has lost sight of the public good.

Now is our time to choose. Will we keep rewarding those whose financial manipulations have brought us to ruin? Or will we stand with those whose democratic innovations are breathing life into our finest ideals? Both groups are within blocks of each other in downtown Manhattan.

For the past 30 years, the country has stood behind the titans on Wall Street and their values. We listened when they said that their banks were too big too fail. Today, there is only one thing that's too big to fail: the dreams of this new generation, finding its voice in Liberty Park. All of America should now stand with them.