Delegates/Voting

[judyspoons]

In light of the recent post on Facebook in the name of the official Occupy Chicago movement, that was essentially a eulogy for Steve Jobs, a man that profited over the disgusting exploitation of workers, I am proposing that we vote on delegates to represent us on committees if we can't participate ourselves. We should also vote on the 'leaders' of this supposed 'leaderless' movement. I do acknowledge the hard work that individuals have invested in organizing thus far, but in order for this movement to be successful, we need to be able to critique our actions/process and adapt accordingly. The lack of organization is astounding. I realize that these things don't come together over night, but I feel like we are floundering about aimlessly and we are at a crucial point with so much potential, and we are just letting that potential slip through our disorganized fingers. The Facebook statement was completely contradictory to the message of our movement. The fact that it was put up in the name of Occupy Chicago is absolutely infuriating. It makes us look like unorganized idiots. We need to think about our message and how we are presenting the movement to the masses. No one wants to join a bunch of people who don't know (or at least appear not to know) what they are talking about.

 

Obviously there are a great number of us that can't be out there 24/7, even though we'd like to, because of obligations that keep us from doing so. We should all have a voice and be represented accurately when we cannot be present ourselves. We should have a voice in what is said publicly in the name of our movement. I think the most feasible means by which to do that is to vote on delegates (who are recallable) to handle such tasks, not only in social media, but in the news media, and even those that run the GA's. We can't all be there but our voices deserve to be heard and as it stands having informal 'leaders' (as we do now) means that no one is held accountable. Isn't this what we are fighting against?

[Billy]

     I think it was Einstein that said " insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results ". If you want to make this movement look like everything else that has come before it don't be surprised when we don't cause any real change.

 

     Yes there are many people that are not getting involved in this movement because it doesn't look like something that Fox News tells them it should look like. If you design our new system around them you are catering to the lowest common denominator.

 

     If anyone knows of a link to an online version of that statement that was passed out at the 7pm meeting 10/6/11 from the NYC occupation please link it here because I think it applies to this topic. It did an excellent job of saying what I just said only better and with prettier words.

[Terry Littleton]

“As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies. As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members. That our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors. That a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people, and the Earth, and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power.

We come to you at a time when corporations — which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality — run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here as is our right to let these facts be known.

They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage.

They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give executives exorbitant bonuses.

They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in workplaces based on age, the color of one’s skin, sex, gender identity, and sexual orientation.

They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization.

They have profited off the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless animals, and actively hide these practices.

They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions.

They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is, itself, a human right.

They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut worker’s health care and pay.

They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people with none of the culpability or responsibility.

They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams, but look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance.

They have sold our privacy as a commodity.

They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press.

They have deliberately declined to recall faulty products, endangering lives in pursuit of profit.

They determine economic policy despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce.

They have donated large sums of money to politicians, who are responsible for regulating them.

They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil.

They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save people’s lives, or provide relief in order to protect investments that have

already turned a substantial profit.

They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit.

They purposefully kept people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media.

They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners, even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt.

They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad.

They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas.

They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government contracts.

To the people of the world,

We, the New York City general assembly occupying Wall Street in Liberty Square, urge you to assert your power.

Exercise your right to peaceably assemble, occupy public space, create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone.

To all communities that take action and form groups in the spirit of direct democracy, we offer support, documentation, and all of the resources at our disposal.

Join us and make your voices heard.”

[Terry Littleton]

http://current.com/shows/count.....all-street

[judyspoons]

I am absolutely opposed to repeating the same mistakes, but the democratic process of the Occupy Chicago movement is not democratic at all. It does not allow for all people to participate equally or share their opinions. It has not addressed the issues of race, gender, or sexual orientation or even considered these factors and how different groups are represented. It is becoming entirely bureaucratic. Why do certain individuals have all the say over what is presented on our website, Twitter, and Facebook accounts? It is ignorant posts like the Steve Jobs post that highlight how little some individuals (in leadership roles) know about politics or even the point of this movement. As things are organized now, the movement in Chicago is repeating the same mistakes as the government that we are protesting, namely, having people in roles of power and influence that are not representing the popular masses.

I am not suggesting that my proposal is the absolute solution, it would obviously need to be fleshed out and applied in a practical way, but the important point is that we all need to critique our process and figure out how to make this movement more effective. The Occupy movements in several other cities are drawing HUNDREDS at the start, and we are lucky to see 100 on a good day. We need to educate ourselves and evaluate our methods of organization and recruitment.

[judyspoons]

Below is the NYC Pamphlet, and I agree with it wholeheartedly. I apologize if I was not clear in my first post. And in response to Billy, the way Occupy Chicago is organized now is doing exactly what the pamphlet warns against. The point is to have a true democracy, whether it should be a direct democracy or representative democracy is debatable. That is the difference between what I am proposing and the way the US government runs. We do not live under a truly democratic state. As things stand now, the same bureaucratic processes are present in our movement. We are not a leaderless movement in practice. In theory, we'd like to be, but in practice we are not. I would love if this were actually a leaderless movement. There are individuals who run the GA's, as well as those who present our message to the public. They already represent the masses but it is done informally and thus they aren't held accountable. If individuals are going to represent us, as is currently happening, those individuals need to be chosen democratically. I would sincerely love to hear alternatives and encourage everyone to consider these issues and come up with ways to address them.

 

The NYC Pamphlet:

'THEY DON’T GET IT….

 

When the media talk about Occupy Wall Street, they often do so with disdain: a movement that has no leaders, no set of demands, can’t be taken seriously. In a typical article, the New York Times quoted an ‘expert’ saying, “if the movement is to have lasting impact, it will have to develop leaders and clear demands”,  and another one who stated that the passions have to be “channeled into institutions”. (NYT, 10/4)   Their message to you is clear: ‘Go back to ‘politics as usual’, follow leaders, work within institutions, become foot-soldiers for the Democratic party and the unions in elections and other campaigns that change nothing at all, that don’t question the power structures that prop up this insane money-system.

They don’t get it that the absence of leaders in this movement is not a weakness but a strength, testifying to our collective determination, to our refusal to remain followers. They don’t get it that the absence of a narrow set of demands that can be recuperated by this or that institution, results from our understanding  that the problem lies much deeper.  That there are no quick fixes for a system that produces growing inequality, mass unemployment and misery, wars and ecological disasters.

If these problems could be solved by electing wiser politicians, adopting better laws etc, ‘politics as usual’ might be the way to go. But they can’t be solved that way. Politicians everywhere are bound by higher laws, the laws of capital.  That’s why governments everywhere, regardless of their political color, are imposing austerity, forcing the working population to sacrifice so that more can be paid to the owners of capital. In fact the harshest cuts of wages and pensions and jobs are implemented by a ‘socialist’ government (in Greece). Politicians on the left may clamor for massive public spending  but that would only mean that we would made poorer in a different way, through inflation.

There are no quick fixes because the system itself is obsolete. Pain and suffering are sometimes unavoidable but capitalism creates ever more pain that is easily avoidable, that only exists because in this society, profit trumps human needs.  Two billion people on this planet are unemployed because capitalism has no need for them. Hundreds of millions live in slums, because building decent houses for them is not profitable. Millions die of hunger  because it’s not profitable to feed them. Everyone knows our planet is in danger and yet capitalism is continuing to destroy it in its desperate hunt for profit. Productivity never was higher, yet poverty increases. The know-how and resources are there for every inhabitant of this planet to live a decent life but that would not be profitable. Abundance has become possible but capitalism can’t handle abundance.  It needs scarcity. Abundance in capitalism means overproduction, crisis, misery. This is insane. It must stop.

 

WE HAVE TO THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX

Capitalism is not “the end of history” but just a transient phase. It has changed the world but now no longer fits into it. We have to accept the fact that capitalism offers no perspective, no future. We have to prepare for a post-capitalist world, in which human relations are no longer commercial transactions, in which goods no longer represent a quantity of money but a concrete means to satisfy real human needs. A world in which competing corporations and warring nations are replaced by a human community that uses the resources of all for the benefit of all. We call that communism but it has nothing in common with the state-capitalist regimes that exist or existed in Russia, China and Cuba. Nothing is changed fundamentally if capitalists are replaced with bureaucrats with supposedly better intentions. Those regimes were not only thoroughly undemocratic, they also perpetuated wage-labor, exploitation and oppression of the vast majority of the population.  The change must go deeper and must emancipate the oppressed, make them part of a real democracy instead of the sham that exist today.

In 2011, ten years after the attacks on New York that launched a decade of fear and demoralization, a breach has been opened. From Tunis to Cairo to Athens to Madrid to Santiago to New York, a fever is spreading. After taking it on the chin for so long, the working class, employed or unemployed, is beginning to rise up. We’re not gonna take it anymore! Something has changed. True, the Occupy Wall Street movement will not last forever. At some point, it will end, without any  clear victory. But it’s just the beginning.  This dynamic will continue and will gather strength. Be a part of it!

 

INTERNATIONALIST PERSPECTIVE'