Occupy for the Old and Lazy

How going down to Zuccotti Park re-radicalized this old hippy

When people tell me that Bernie Sanders can’t win I smile. He already has.

Bernie Sanders’ movement began winning on September 17, 2011, when Occupy Wall Street was born. What that crazy, determined bunch of visionaries launched did not die when Bloomberg and his armed guards, the NYPD, forced the protesters out of Zuccotti Park. If anything, Bloomberg’s use of men with guns only reinforced all the points being made by the protesters.

AleXander and I are a couple of old hippies who went down to the park repeatedly during the two months that OWS held it. We agreed that we weren’t up for sleeping in the park but our OWS action was to pull our meager funds out of Chase Bank which benefitted from a $12 billion bailout while foreclosing on homes and wiping out small investors’ savings. The woman at Chase was mystified as to why we were closing our accounts. I don’t think Chase noticed our departure.

Amalgamated Bank

We moved our modest bit of money to Amalgamated Bank, the labor union bank founded in 1923 by the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America. It’s an anomaly; an honest bank. During OWS their downtown branch featured a banner supporting the movement. It’s not the most convenient bank as it only had four branches in Manhattan although ATM machines that don’t charge a fee for withdrawal from Amalgamated accounts are all over the place.

It’s not much but I feel better knowing that not even a tiny bit of my money is helping Chase build another bubble to wreck the economy again (what, you think they’re not?).

Supporting Progressive Policies

The corporate-owned media (ack) keeps pounding this false idea that the policies promoted by Bernie Sanders and other (actual) progressive candidates are radical and can’t possibly be implemented. Except that they have been in the past and successfully.

Only those benefitting from our current lack of regulation and oversight, you know who, are panicking at the thought that they might actually have to share some of the wealth that we, the workers — remember us? — have been generating for thirty years or more. There is a concerted effort using bought-and-paid-for media and “experts” to discount Sanders’ ideas and policies. And to some extent, it’s working. Since a vast majority of people simply ingest what they’re fed by such trusted sources as the television news, we see centrist candidates such as Hilary Clinton, Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg being touted as the “sensible” counter to the frustration and rage that gave us the current president.

And didn’t that work out just ducky in 2016? Hmmm?

Cue the Mic Check

Back in Zuccotti Park amplified sound systems were forbidden so another way had to be found to allow speakers to be heard by everyone. When a speaker started addressing the crowds they would call out “Mic Check” to cue the people closest to them to repeat what they’d said as loudly as possible so that the next ring of listeners would then repeat it and so on until everyone could hear.

Mic checking didn’t stop on November 15, 2011, when the police forced the last die-hard protesters out of Zuccotti Park.

Not everyone depends on MSNBC or Fox News or CNBC or CNN for their news and an incredibly resilient network of information-sharing is countering the propaganda being spewed hourly by mainstream media which, surprise, is owned and operated by entrenched corporate interests. Beyond what is happening at ground level among community organizers and determined young people like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, there is The Intercept — an online news publication dedicated to what it describes as “adversarial journalism” — as well a Democracy Today, TruthDig, Jacobin and so many many others.

And, yes, let’s just go back to Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, the former bartender who challenged and defeated a long-time Democratic incumbent in the primary and won a seat in the House of Representatives in 2018. AOC didn’t spring out of nowhere. She got her training as an organizer for, yes indeed, Bernie Sanders.

Unemployed, donating, phone-banking and canvassing

I’m no AOC but I’ve got time and can still throw $2.70 to the Sanders’ campaign every week or so. I ditched the Democratic party in 2016 after seeing how the DNC did everything it could to undermine Bernie’s campaign in the primary. I re-upped as a Democrat this past summer for one reason only: to vote for Bernie in the primary.

I believe, as Butler Shaffer has said, that the right-wing and the left-wing are wings on the same bird of prey.

The Democrats stopped representing the middle and working-class at least since Bill Clinton came up with his brilliant plan to “center” the Democratic Party. What he did was ram the party into the feeding trough next to the Republicans so that our government today represents the interests of whoever pays them the most.

Not losing sleep

I’m committed to supporting Bernie Sanders and any other truely progressive leaders. Unlike a lot of my fellow progressives, however, I’m not filled with despair as I see the establishment sharpening their knives to take down Sanders and anyone else daring to threaten their pile o’money.

They have Money. We have people.

We have a lot more people than the Money realizes and the Money remains blind to what’s actually happening in the world. The Money thinks it’s not on the same sinking ship as the rest of us. True, the Money is somewhat insulated from the consequences of their actions, but they’re going down, too. Also, the Money is old. The establishment is old. They foolishly pulled the ladder up behind them so they wouldn’t have to share and now there are millions of disenfranchised, radicalized, not-going-to-play-nice-anymore young people with trillions of dollars of student loan debt, crappy service jobs and no health care insurance who won’t go away just because the DNC manages to shaft Sanders again.

If they do. Which they might not. May we remind the good public servants in the DNC what just happened in Iowa and New Hampshire?

I’ve been reading a number of pieces that stress the need to back a candidate who the power brokers will work with.

Excuse me?

Let’s be clear; the only candidate that the power brokers are interested in working with is a candidate who puts their interests ahead of actual voters and constituents. You know; you, me, our families and friends. So, no, I’m not ready to bend over any further to placate an oligarchy that is determined to extract every bit of value from the 99%, destroying the habitable environment while they’re at it.

At any rate, if the planet remains a viable place for humans to live for another fifty years or so, the money is going down. The greedy, fear-driven, short-sighted (mostly) white men who are so determined to keep their stolen piles of money can only die with all their toys. They’re not drawing enough energy to their way of thinking and action to remain on top. They’re dying out and what will replace them is being shaped every day by the kind of thinking that brought us OWS, Bernie Sanders, Nina Turner, AOC, the Squad, Professor Cornel West, and a Green New Deal.

Hello, somebody!

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