Occupy Wall Street:: It's spontaneously explosive

By Will Parry

Occupy Wall Street presents an unprecedented challenge to the corporations and financiers who oppress and exploit people the world over.

It is bigger than big. It is incredibly complex. Now well into its second month, it continues to develop daily and hourly.

This article is an initial appraisal of a dynamic movement whose ultimate impact, though uncertain, carries within it the hopes of humanity. Believe me, it is a subject to be approached with humility.

One report says ongoing demonstrations are taking place in more than 1,500 cities globally. Another report tells of actions in 951 cities in 82 countries. Still another tells of meetings in 1,383 cities in the U.S. alone.

In our own state, 600 in Tacoma took their protest to major banks. Other activists are occupying the streets of Bellingham, Olympia, Spokane, Tri-Cities, Wenatchee and Yakima, as well as Seattle. In Portland, organizers estimated a protest crowd at 10,000. In his monthly column (page 4), PSARA President Robby Stern tells of a meeting of 600 in modest Sequim, Washington.

At least since the Great Depression, nothing as spontaneously explosive as this has come along to shake up the masters of the universe.

The millions who are with the marchers do not have a five-point program. They are not united around a single political demand. What they do share is a common, bone deep anger at an unjust economy, where profit is God, and where 99 percent of the people are bled day in and day out by the wealthiest 1 percent.

“The movement doesn’t need a policy or legislative agenda to send its message,” wrote Katrina Vanden Heuvel in The Nation. “The thrust of what it seeks – fueled both by anger and by deep principles – has moral clarity. It wants corporate money out of politics. It wants the widening gap of income inequality to be narrowed substantially. And it wants meaningful solutions to the jobless crisis. In short, it wants a system that works for the 99 percent.”

“Everybody has different grievances, but we all feel the country is being lost,” said Frank Bader, 44, an unemployed Portland real estate title examiner.

In every major city, the authorities are responding to the non-violent occupations with a police presence. In response, there have been repeated examples of civil disobedience by heroic men and women, in the tradition of those who went to jail over Viet Nam and during the civil rights struggles.

In Oakland, the police were especially ugly, using tear gas and firing “non-lethal” rubber bullets indiscriminately. One victim was hospitalized in serious condition. The next morning the occupiers were back on the street – and the mayor apologized.

In New York, more than 700 were arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge. On another occasion, a police motorcycle ran over the leg of an attorney and video showed police wildly beating protesters with their batons and even charging horses into the crowd.

Also in New York, police strung orange netting across streets to trap protesting groups like schools of fish, a tactic described as “kettling.”

“They put up orange nets and tried to kettle us and we started running and they started tackling random people and handcuffing them. They were herding us like cattle,” said Kelly Brannon, 27.

Everywhere the occupiers’ cameras documented each confrontation.

In Seattle, in New York, everywhere, youth responded in numbers to the call to occupy parks and city squares and other public spaces. Many, including veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, were jobless and broke. Others were college graduates, over their heads in debt and unable to find a job. At one protest, Nate Smith carried a sign that read, “Seventeen and no future.”

“People want their voices to be heard,” said Peter Kass, 26, who works in a residential treatment facility. “You get strength in numbers. I’ll be a number.”

On October 5, in an organized expression of support, students at 90 U.S. colleges and universities walked out of class and held rallies and teach-ins.

Organized labor, which had already planned a week of intensive lobbying for jobs in the nation’s capital, noted the power of street protests to get the attention of the politicians.

“I think being in the streets and calling attention to issues is sometimes the only recourse you have because, God only knows, you can go to the Hill (Congress) and you can talk to a lot of people and see nothing ever happen,” said AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka..

The occupiers have the attention of those in power. And they plan to stay through a winter that looms raw as a second Valley Forge. This is not a “come to a demonstration and then go home” kind of operation.

We need to do all we can to see that it has staying power. If you can, join the nearest occupation in person. Listed on page ___ are other ways you can help. Young, middle-aged and old, men and women, the occupiers are out there for all of us.

Indeed, “we all have different grievances, but we all feel the country is being lost.”