Question Of The Season: Which Side Are You On?

Ever hear of a police officer treating a teabagger disrespectfully at one of their hateful rallies? Even when they showed up at them with guns? Any teabaggers ever get pepper-sprayed in the face? Yesterday we found out that the two chief financiers of the astro-turfed fake "movement." the Koch Brothers, were making their billions while illegally trading with Iran and doing business by bribing foreign tyrants all over the world. Anyone think they'll be pepper-sprayed? Just before Bloomberg blew the whistle on the Kochs, economists Joseph Stigliz and Jeff Madrick showed up, impromptu, at OccupyWallStreet (see video above) for a good old fashioned teach-on. Is this threatening, more threatening that the practices of the Kochs? Well, of course it is... it's revolutionary. The powers that be don't want to hear "We have too many regulations stopping democracy & not enough regulations stopping Wall Street from misbehaving... The balance of rights has been distorted. We bailed out the banks with the understanding that there would be a restoration of lending. All there was was a restoration of bonuses." And, as the NY Times pointed out Sunday, the NYPD white shirts have taken in on themselves to roll out the old fashioned police brutality on behalf of the Wall Street/K Street Conservative Consensus.


Michael Moore, like many of us, is asking our congressional representatives to pick sides. That's going to be excruciating for many of them, not knowing what exactly our side stands for or where it's going... what's likely to happen. Some of the more intrepid Blue America candidates have already led the way. On Saturday former (and future) Ohio Congresswoman Mary Jo Kilroy (one of the Democrats on the House Financial Services Committee who fought for re-regulating the banksters), while blogging at Crooks and Liars answered a question about her thoughts on OccupyWallStreet with this statement:

"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."

Ed Potosnak isn't an anarchist or even a revolutionary; he teaches school, runs a small construction business and worked as a policy advisor for Congressman Mike Honda. And he's running in a moderate suburban New Jersey district where people commute to their jobs on Wall Street. I asked him what he thinks about the occupation of Wall Street just up the road from his home. I admire the forthrightness and logic of his response:

"These protests are striking-- I support the movement to hold Wall Street accountable. The OccupyWallStreet protest stands in contrast to the Koch Brother’s prompted Tea Party gatherings I have seen. The Wall Street gatherings are comprised of diverse people, frustrations, and solutions. The protesters in NYC represent the tens of millions who have been adversely affected by the greed and recklessness of Wall Street and Big Banks.

Media criticisms of the group’s lack of focus are ridiculous. What are they expecting, an OccupyWallStreet TV commercial and jingle? The focus of these REAL people is Wall Street and the pain our families and businesses are enduring at their hand.

When I was in High School I boycotted McDonald’s for using polystyrene and you know what, they changed. Consumers are powerful when they stand up to the Big Guys. Together ordinary people can provoke changes the government has failed to accomplish by coming together, standing up, and pushing back. Hopefully Congress will fight back too, I know I will.

John Waltz, our candidate in Kalamazoo who's battling it out with reactionary plutocrat Fred Upton, one of the richest men in Congress-- all of which was inherited. While Upton's company continues to ships tens of thousands of American jobs overseas to low wage hell-holes, Waltz is campaigning for bringing jobs back to the American heartland... to places like Michigan. And he's fired up over OccupyWallStreet. Fight The Power!

You can only beat someone down for so long before they get up and start fighting back. It seems that 2011 has been the year that the mass of folks who make up this nation became tired of being beat down. Call it the year of revolution if you like, but the fact is we are tired of being held hostage to policies that favor Wall Street, corporations, and the wealthy.

Let me make it clear though this is not class envy because it is part of the American spirit to succeed. The problem we face though is that for many years the prevailing attitude is that once you make it to the top you pull up the ladder to make sure no one else can make it up. This runs against the grain of who we are as a nation and it is time we get back to the practice of holding a hand out to help others up rather than giving them a boot in the face.

From woman’s suffrage to the civil rights movement, our nation’s history has answered the call of injustice by standing up and fighting back. Fittingly Saul Alinsky once said that history is a series of revolutions and my friends our generation is fighting with all our might for economic justice.

I fully support the Occupy Wall Street movement and I say it is time to occupy Washington D.C. Let us remember that it was the politicians who created deregulation policies that allowed Wall Street to get away with the crimes they partook in that ended up destroying our economy.

Waltz has a genuine plutocrat, from a self-styled aristocratic family, to battle and Potosnak is fighting it out with a slick-talking career politician who goes back and forth between putting on a moderate outfit or a radical outfit depending on who he's addressing that evening. Nick Ruiz is taking on an actual member of Michele Bachmann's Tea Party Caucus, Sandy Adams, generally considered the most ignorant member of the entire Congress. Nick stands in complete solidarity with the OccupyWallStreet movement and feels the need to channel their energy into the political system.

The Occupy Wall Street phenomenon is a fragile chance to channel positive, practical energy into the heart of America's problems. But will it?

Will activists realize they are only as effective as the representatives they elect? Will they focus on the electoral process that puts representatives in the position to help people or hurt them? Will activists reject media and politicians who ignore representative democracy and replace it with propaganda and royalty committees who negotiate secret deals that secure the security of the status quo corporate trough and crony spa steam room?

And if activists do all this-- will it be enough to breathe new life into American democracy?

Yes, but only if they are willing to become truly political by engaging in the politics of electing names and personalities that will politically activate the collective energy that Occupy Wall Street represents.

Yep, there's an inside/outside strategy that progressives need to keep activated... the way self-serving reactionaries and their astro-turfed faux-movements do. Sunday Richard Eskow explained how big a mistake it was for progressives to think that because Obama had been elected, all would go well. It hasn't and Obama isn't representing the same energy or even the same interests that OccupyWallStreet is all about.

This movement can help encourage genuinely progressive politicians at the local, state, and national levels. Because it's independent, it can also keep the pressure up to make sure they carry out their promises. The President and his staff seem to resent pressure from the left, but they're responding-- and his new left-leaning approach could help him, too.

That still leaves a lot of questions unanswered: How should this independent movement be organized? How much of its efforts should be "inside the Beltway" and how much should focus on the rest of the country? Is there a role for a third party? How can the labor movement help-- and be helped-- by such a movement? How can grassroots actions like the Wisconsin sit-ins and #OccupyWallStreet be supported and expanded? Do we need primary challenges in 2012 or later?

Those questions and others are the reason why we're gathering next week in Washington for the "Take Back the American Dream" conference to have a series of in-depth conversations.

But a little self-congratulation is in order, along with the soul-searching. Four years ago the country elected a different kind of President-- one with some explicitly progressive positions-- and gave him both houses of Congress. That's a pretty huge accomplishment, whatever's happened since.

Since then we've seen the uprisings in Wisconsin, the failure of austerity economics in Europe, and the sudden appearance of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Like the old saying goes, this could be the start of something big. In other words, it's almost prom night. Once the dancing starts, will progressives follow ... or lead?

Waltz, Potosnak, Ruiz and Kilroy are all Blue America-endorsed candidates. You can find the 4 of them on this page... in case you were wondering.