[Wamvan] Occupy Wall Street: The Most Important Thing in the World Now

[Natalie Hill]

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From: Manola Valle <manola.valle at gmail.com>
Date: Wed, Oct 12, 2011 at 7:50 PM
Subject: [ws-centre] Occupy Wall Street: The Most Important Thing in the
World Now
To: ws-centre at interchange.ubc.ca, liu-scholars at interchange.ubc.ca,
latam-grad-students at interchange.ubc.ca


FYI
Some of you might find this of interest.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Naomi Klein's Newsletter <newsletter at naomiklein.org>
Date: 2011/10/12
Subject: Occupy Wall Street: The Most Important Thing in the World Now
To: vivianecas at gmail.com



*In October's Newsletter:*

   - Naomi's Speech at Occupy Wall Street: "The Most Important Thing in the
   World Now" <#132fb30e2ccd3990_132f8c428ca1c41c_132f8af7a998ef26_ows>
   - Naomi Debates the OWS Protests in the *New York
Times*<#132fb30e2ccd3990_132f8c428ca1c41c_132f8af7a998ef26_nyt>
   - Naomi and Bill McKibben at *The Daily Beast* :"Obama's Pipeline
Mess"<#132fb30e2ccd3990_132f8c428ca1c41c_132f8af7a998ef26_pipeline>
   - Naomi's *Nation* Op-Ed on the London Riots: "Daylight Robbery, Meet
   Nighttime Robbery"<#132fb30e2ccd3990_132f8c428ca1c41c_132f8af7a998ef26_london>
   - Check Out Naomi's Recent Media Appearances to Discuss Occupy Wall
   Street <#132fb30e2ccd3990_132f8c428ca1c41c_132f8af7a998ef26_media>
   - How You Can Donate to Occupy Wall
Street<#132fb30e2ccd3990_132f8c428ca1c41c_132f8af7a998ef26_support>

 Occupy Wall Street: The Most Important Thing in the World Now
By Naomi Klein, The
Nation<http://www.thenation.com/article/163844/occupy-wall-street-most-important-thing-world-now>,
October 6, 2011<http://www.thenation.com/article/163844/occupy-wall-street-most-important-thing-world-now>

*I was honored to be invited to speak at Occupy Wall Street on Thursday,
October 6. Since amplification is (disgracefully) banned, and everything I
said had to be repeated by hundreds of people so others could hear (a.k.a.
"the human microphone"), what I actually said at Liberty Plaza had to be
very short. With that in mind, here is the longer, uncut version of the
speech.*

I love you.

And I didn’t just say that so that hundreds of you would shout "I love you"
back, though that is obviously a bonus feature of the human microphone. Say
unto others what you would have them say unto you, only way louder.

Yesterday, one of the speakers at the labor rally said: "We found each
other." That sentiment captures the beauty of what is being created here. A
wide-open space (as well as an idea so big it can’t be contained by any
space) for all the people who want a better world to find each other. We are
so grateful.

If there is one thing I know, it is that the 1 percent loves a crisis. When
people are panicked and desperate and no one seems to know what to do, that
is the ideal time to push through their wish list of pro-corporate policies:
privatizing education and social security, slashing public services, getting
rid of the last constraints on corporate power. Amidst the economic crisis,
this is happening the world over.

And there is only one thing that can block this tactic, and fortunately,
it’s a very big thing: the 99 percent. And that 99 percent is taking to the
streets from Madison to Madrid to say "No. We will not pay for your crisis."

That slogan began in Italy in 2008. It ricocheted to Greece and France and
Ireland and finally it has made its way to the square mile where the crisis
began.

"Why are they protesting?" ask the baffled pundits on TV. Meanwhile, the
rest of the world asks: "What took you so long?" "We’ve been wondering when
you were going to show up." And most of all: "Welcome."

Many people have drawn parallels between Occupy Wall Street and the
so-called anti-globalization protests that came to world attention in
Seattle in 1999. That was the last time a global, youth-led, decentralized
movement took direct aim at corporate power. And I am proud to have been
part of what we called "the movement of movements."

But there are important differences too. For instance, we chose summits as
our targets: the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund,
the G8. Summits are transient by their nature, they only last a week. That
made us transient too. We’d appear, grab world headlines, then disappear.
And in the frenzy of hyper patriotism and militarism that followed the 9/11
attacks, it was easy to sweep us away completely, at least in North America.

Occupy Wall Street, on the other hand, has chosen a fixed target. And you
have put no end date on your presence here. This is wise. Only when you stay
put can you grow roots. This is crucial. It is a fact of the information age
that too many movements spring up like beautiful flowers but quickly die
off. It’s because they don’t have roots. And they don’t have long term plans
for how they are going to sustain themselves. So when storms come, they get
washed away.

Being horizontal and deeply democratic is wonderful. But these principles
are compatible with the hard work of building structures and institutions
that are sturdy enough to weather the storms ahead. I have great faith that
this will happen.

Something else this movement is doing right: You have committed yourselves
to non-violence. You have refused to give the media the images of broken
windows and street fights it craves so desperately. And that tremendous
discipline has meant that, again and again, the story has been the
disgraceful and unprovoked police brutality. Which we saw more of just last
night. Meanwhile, support for this movement grows and grows. More wisdom.

But the biggest difference a decade makes is that in 1999, we were taking on
capitalism at the peak of a frenzied economic boom. Unemployment was low,
stock portfolios were bulging. The media was drunk on easy money. Back then
it was all about start-ups, not shut downs.

We pointed out that the deregulation behind the frenzy came at a price. It
was damaging to labor standards. It was damaging to environmental standards.
Corporations were becoming more powerful than governments and that was
damaging to our democracies. But to be honest with you, while the good times
rolled, taking on an economic system based on greed was a tough sell, at
least in rich countries.

Ten years later, it seems as if there aren’t any more rich countries. Just a
whole lot of rich people. People who got rich looting the public wealth and
exhausting natural resources around the world.

The point is, today everyone can see that the system is deeply unjust and
careening out of control. Unfettered greed has trashed the global economy.
And it is trashing the natural world as well. We are overfishing our oceans,
polluting our water with fracking and deepwater drilling, turning to the
dirtiest forms of energy on the planet, like the Alberta tar sands. And the
atmosphere cannot absorb the amount of carbon we are putting into it,
creating dangerous warming. The new normal is serial disasters: economic and
ecological.

These are the facts on the ground. They are so blatant, so obvious, that it
is a lot easier to connect with the public than it was in 1999, and to build
the movement quickly.

We all know, or at least sense, that the world is upside down: we act as if
there is no end to what is actually finite—fossil fuels and the atmospheric
space to absorb their emissions. And we act as if there are strict and
immovable limits to what is actually bountiful—the financial resources to
build the kind of society we need.

The task of our time is to turn this around: to challenge this false
scarcity. To insist that we can afford to build a decent, inclusive
society—while at the same time, respect the real limits to what the earth
can take.

What climate change means is that we have to do this on a deadline. This
time our movement cannot get distracted, divided, burned out or swept away
by events. This time we have to succeed. And I’m not talking about
regulating the banks and increasing taxes on the rich, though that’s
important.

I am talking about changing the underlying values that govern our society.
That is hard to fit into a single media-friendly demand, and it’s also hard
to figure out how to do it. But it is no less urgent for being difficult.

That is what I see happening in this square. In the way you are feeding each
other, keeping each other warm, sharing information freely and proving
health care, meditation classes and empowerment training. My favorite sign
here says "I care about you." In a culture that trains people to avoid each
other’s gaze, to say, "Let them die," that is a deeply radical statement.

A few final thoughts. In this great struggle, here are some things that
don’t matter.

—What we wear.

—Whether we shake our fists or make peace signs.

—Whether we can fit our dreams for a better world into a media soundbite.

And here are a few things that do matter.

—Our courage.

—Our moral compass.

—How we treat each other.

We have picked a fight with the most powerful economic and political forces
on the planet. That’s frightening. And as this movement grows from strength
to strength, it will get more frightening. Always be aware that there will
be a temptation to shift to smaller targets—like, say, the person sitting
next to you at this meeting. After all, that is a battle that’s easier to
win.

Don’t give in to the temptation. I’m not saying don’t call each other on
shit. But this time, let’s treat each other as if we plan to work side by
side in struggle for many, many years to come. Because the task before will
demand nothing less.

Let’s treat this beautiful movement as if it is most important thing in the
world. Because it is. It really is.

*Note: Naomi’s speech also appeared in the* Occupied Wall Street Journal.

------------------------------

 Learning From Globalization Protests
By Naomi Klein, The New York
Times<http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/10/06/can-occupy-wall-street-spark-a-revolution/occupy-wall-st-learns-from-globalization-protests>,
October 6, 2011

*Naomi was asked by the *New York Times *to contribute to an edition of
"Room for Debate" about Occupy Wall Street: "The protesters are getting more
attention and expanding outside New York. What are they doing right, and
what are they missing?" Here is her response.*

I can’t help but compare the Occupy Wall Street protests to the movements
that sprang up against corporate globalization at the end of 1990s, most
visibly at the World Trade Organization summit in Seattle. Like today’s
protests, those demonstrations were also marked by innovative coalitions
among students, trade unions and environmentalists.

Here are the things I think today’s activists are doing better than we did
back then. We chose summits as our targets: the W.T.O., the International
Monetary Fund, the G-8. Summits are transient by nature, and that made us
transient too. We’d appear, grab world headlines, then disappear. After the
9/11 attacks, it was easy to sweep us away completely, at least in North
America.

Today’s protesters have chosen a fixed target: Wall Street, a symbol of the
corporate takeover of democracy. And they have put no end date on their
presence. This gives them time to put down roots, which is going to make it
a lot harder to sweep them away, even if they get kicked out of one physical
space.

Something else they are doing right: they have committed themselves to
nonviolence and to being good neighbors to local businesses. That means
broken windows and street fights aren’t upstaging the message in the media.
And when police attack peaceful occupiers (and the protesters catch it on
camera), it generates tremendous sympathy for the cause.

A lot of people seem very agitated about the fact that this movement doesn’t
have a list of soundbite-ready demands and media-ready spokespeople.
Personally I’m delighted that Occupy Wall Street hasn’t given in to the
hectoring for a list of "demands." This is a young movement still in the
process of determining just how powerful it is, and that power will
determine what demands are possible. Small movements have to settle for
small reforms: big ones have the freedom to dream.

------------------------------

 Obama's Pipeline Mess
By Naomi Klein and Bill McKibben, The Daily
Beast<http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/10/08/keystone-pipeline-and-obama-s-next-cronyism-scandal.html>,
October 8, 2011

<http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/10/08/keystone-pipeline-and-obama-s-next-cronyism-scandal.html>There’s
no denying that the Solyndra drama stinks—when you have executives
taking the Fifth and a political appointee pushing for loan restructuring
while his wife works for the company’s law firm, it’s pretty clear that it
won’t end well. The fact that the company made solar panels doesn’t make it
any better—green cronyism is still cronyism.

But there’s a far, far bigger Obama cronyism scandal breaking—and in this
case, there’s still time for the president to step in and stop it.

The story started coming out a few weeks ago when Nebraska activists
preparing for State Department hearings on the Keystone XL pipeline noticed
something odd. The hearings were actually being run by a private company
called Cardno Entrix—their name was even at the bottom of the State
Department official website. If you wanted to send in public comments, you
sent them to the company.

Upon further investigation, they learned two things: Cardno Entrix had in
fact been contracted to run the entire environmental-review process for the
pipeline. And if you go to the Cardno Entrix corporate website, it lists one
of their major clients as TransCanada, the very company building the
pipeline. That’s almost unbelievable.

But *The New York
Times<http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/08/science/earth/08pipeline.html>
* took the story a step further yesterday. It turns out that TransCanada
actually recommended the firm to the State Department, and that TransCanada
had "managed the bidding process" that ended up picking Entrix. As the *
Times* put it, with considerable understatement, the arrangement involved
"flouting the intent of a federal law meant to ensure an impartial
environmental analysis of major projects." They quoted a Tulane law
professor who specializes in environmental oversight who spoke in plainer
language: Cardno Entrix had a "financial interest in the outcome of the
project. Their primary loyalty is getting this project through, in the way
the client wants."

In other words: The pipeline company recommended the firm they wanted to
review them, a firm that listed the pipeline company as one of their major
clients. Perhaps—just perhaps—that explains why the review found that
Keystone XL would have "limited adverse environmental impacts," a finding
somewhat at odds with the conclusion of 20 of the nation’s top scientists
who wrote the president this summer to say it would be an environmental
disaster.

And perhaps it’s why the report notes only briefly in an addendum the
disastrous spill of tar sands oil in the Kalamazoo River last year—35 miles
of the river remains closed, and so far the taxpayers have shelled out $500
million to help clean up. Is there any way (besides reading the newspapers
and talking to local officials) that Cardno Entrix could possibly have known
about the Kalamazoo spill? Well yes. Cardno Entrix—get ready for it—was in
fact hired by that pipeline company to assess the damage of that spill.

This is quite possibly the biggest potential scandal of the Obama years. But
there’s a danger that it will go ignored for three reasons.

First, it’s so incredibly blatant that it’s hard to believe—neither of us
are naifs, but we are still astonished that they’d show their industry bias
this clearly. There were plenty of other signs, of course—emails released
last week, for instance, showed Department officials cheerleading for the
pipeline. But the Entrix connection is truly mind-boggling. It’s the kind of
thing Dick Cheney might have done, on a particularly sloppy day.

Second, the Republicans that have done such a noisy job of drawing attention
to Solyndra will, we predict, studiously ignore the Keystone scandal. Why?
Because the project’s biggest backers include the Chamber of Commerce and
the Koch Brothers<http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/oct/05/koch-keystone-xl-pipeline>.
We’re guessing cronyism gets a pass when it’s on behalf of the oil
industry—in slightly less obvious guises, the old boy network has been
steering subsidies to the fossil-fuel industry for decades.

Third, the officials in charge seem utterly unconcerned about the conflicts
of interest that have plagued this project from the start. Hillary Clinton
has stood by while her former deputy campaign manager took a job as
TransCanada’s chief lobbyist; stories late last week on DeSmogBlog found
several big-money bundlers from Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign
working for lobbyists under contract to TransCanada.

And Obama? Obama’s said nothing about Keystone all year long. Not when 1,253
people were arrested outside his door in late summer, the biggest
civil-disobedience protests in 30 years. Not when 10 of his fellow Nobel
Peace laureates wrote to tell him the pipeline was immoral. Not now that
this scandal is breaking, even though he promised the "most transparent"
administration ever.

We already knew that Keystone XL was filthy in environmental terms. James
Hansen, our foremost climatologist, said earlier this year that if the
Canadian tar sands are heavily tapped, it’s "essentially game over for the
climate."

But now it turns out to be just as filthy politically. Filthy on a scale
that demands real action—at the very least, Barack Obama must demand a new,
thoroughly independent, expert review of the project. Better yet, he should
use it as the perfect excuse to pull the plug on the whole damn project.

Think about how lousy Obama looks in those pictures celebrating Solynda’s
brand-new factory. Now imagine how much worse he will look after Keystone XL
spills for the first time, and the media remembers that TransCanada got to
pick a company it had in its back pocket to conduct the environmental
review.

Here’s the little bit of contingent good news: The crime is still in
progress. It’s as if TransCanada has robbed the bank, but the getaway car is
stuck in traffic. Obama can still make the arrest. If he doesn’t, we’ll know
an awful lot about him. Maybe more than we really want to.

------------------------------

 Daylight Robbery, Meet Nighttime Robbery
By Naomi Klein, The
Nation<http://www.thenation.com/article/162809/daylight-robbery-meet-nighttime-robbery>,
August 16, 2011<http://www.thenation.com/article/162809/daylight-robbery-meet-nighttime-robbery>

I keep hearing comparisons between the London riots and riots in other
European cities—window smashing in Athens or car bonfires in Paris. And
there are parallels, to be sure: a spark set by police violence, a
generation that feels forgotten.

But those events were marked by mass destruction; the looting was minor.
There have, however, been other mass lootings in recent years, and perhaps
we should talk about them too. There was Baghdad in the aftermath of the US
invasion—a frenzy of arson and looting that emptied libraries and museums.
The factories got hit too. In 2004 I visited one that used to make
refrigerators. Its workers had stripped it of everything valuable, then
torched it so thoroughly that the warehouse was a sculpture of buckled sheet
metal.

Back then the people on cable news thought looting was highly political.
They said this is what happens when a regime has no legitimacy in the eyes
of the people. After watching for so long as Saddam and his sons helped
themselves to whatever and whomever they wanted, many regular Iraqis felt
they had earned the right to take a few things for themselves. But London
isn’t Baghdad, and British Prime Minister David Cameron is hardly Saddam, so
surely there is nothing to learn there.

How about a democratic example then? Argentina, circa 2001. The economy was
in freefall and thousands of people living in rough neighborhoods (which had
been thriving manufacturing zones before the neoliberal era) stormed
foreign-owned superstores. They came out pushing shopping carts overflowing
with the goods they could no longer afford—clothes, electronics, meat. The
government called a "state of siege" to restore order; the people didn’t
like that and overthrew the government.

Argentina’s mass looting was called El Saqueo—the sacking. That was
politically significant because it was the very same word used to describe
what that country’s elites had done by selling off the country’s national
assets in flagrantly corrupt privatization deals, hiding their money
offshore, then passing on the bill to the people with a brutal austerity
package. Argentines understood that the saqueo of the shopping centers would
not have happened without the bigger saqueo of the country, and that the
real gangsters were the ones in charge.

But England is not Latin America, and its riots are not political, or so we
keep hearing. They are just about lawless kids taking advantage of a
situation to take what isn’t theirs. And British society, Cameron tells us,
abhors that kind of behavior.

This is said in all seriousness. As if the massive bank bailouts never
happened, followed by the defiant record bonuses. Followed by the emergency
G-8 and G-20 meetings, when the leaders decided, collectively, not to do
anything to punish the bankers for any of this, nor to do anything serious
to prevent a similar crisis from happening again. Instead they would all go
home to their respective countries and force sacrifices on the most
vulnerable. They would do this by firing public sector workers, scapegoating
teachers, closing libraries, upping tuitions, rolling back union contracts,
creating rush privatizations of public assets and decreasing pensions—mix
the cocktail for where you live. And who is on television lecturing about
the need to give up these "entitlements"? The bankers and hedge-fund
managers, of course.

This is the global Saqueo, a time of great taking. Fueled by a pathological
sense of entitlement, this looting has all been done with the lights left
on, as if there was nothing at all to hide. There are some nagging fears,
however. In early July, the Wall Street Journal, citing a new poll, reported
that 94 percent of millionaires were afraid of "violence in the streets."
This, it turns out, was a reasonable fear.

Of course London’s riots weren’t a political protest. But the people
committing nighttime robbery sure as hell know that their elites have been
committing daytime robbery. Saqueos are contagious.

The Tories are right when they say the rioting is not about the cuts. But it
has a great deal to do with what those cuts represent: being cut off. Locked
away in a ballooning underclass with the few escape routes previously
offered—a union job, a good affordable education—being rapidly sealed off.
The cuts are a message. They are saying to whole sectors of society: you are
stuck where you are, much like the migrants and refugees we turn away at our
increasingly fortressed borders.

David Cameron’s response to the riots is to make this locking-out literal:
evictions from public housing, threats to cut off communication tools and
outrageous jail terms (five months to a woman for receiving a stolen pair of
shorts). The message is once again being sent: disappear, and do it quietly.

At last year’s G-20 "austerity summit" in Toronto, the protests turned into
riots and multiple cop cars burned. It was nothing by London 2011 standards,
but it was still shocking to us Canadians. The big controversy then was that
the government had spent $675 million on summit "security" (yet they still
couldn’t seem to put out those fires). At the time, many of us pointed out
that the pricey new arsenal that the police had acquired—water cannons,
sound cannons, tear gas and rubber bullets—wasn’t just meant for the
protesters in the streets. Its long-term use would be to discipline the
poor, who in the new era of austerity would have dangerously little to lose.

This is what David Cameron got wrong: you can't cut police budgets at the
same time as you cut everything else. Because when you rob people of what
little they have, in order to protect the interests of those who have more
than anyone deserves, you should expect resistance—whether organized
protests or spontaneous looting.

And that’s not politics. It’s physics.

------------------------------

 Check Out Naomi's Recent Media Appearances to Discuss Occupy Wall Street

 While in New York visiting Occupy Wall Street over the past week, Naomi had
the opportunity to discuss the movement on a number of great programs that
you can watch and listen to online. She talked about the dismissive media
coverage of the protests with Amy Goodman on Democracy
Now!<http://www.democracynow.org/2011/10/6/naomi_klein_protesters_are_seeking_change>,
and she discussed the significance and potential of the growing
movement on Rachel
Maddow with guest host Ezra
Klein<http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908#44811000>,
as well as on MSNBC's Up with Chris
Hayes<http://upwithchrishayes.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/10/08/8224212-saturdays-show>.
(On Part 2<http://upwithchrishayes.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/10/08/8225055-the-rest-of-saturdays-show>of
her Up with Chris Hayes appearance, Naomi and her fellow panelists
also
pondered the legacy of Steve Jobs, recalling some of the themes of *No Logo*,
as well as the Solyndra "scandal" and recent developments in the fight to
stop the Keystone XL pipeline.) Naomi also discussed Occupy Wall Street with
Citizen Radio and the Majority Report's Sam Seder, which you can listen to
here<http://wearecitizenradio.com/2011/10/07/20111007-citizen-radio-joins-sam-seder-and-naomi-klein-from-occupy-wall-street/>,
and in a "Great Minds" interview on The Big Picture with Thom Hartmann (you
can watch Part 1 here <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWSRFlyeQ2Y> and Part
2 here <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhQTsBb-Fws>).

------------------------------

 How You Can Donate to Occupy Wall Street

 For anyone wishing to support the Occupy Wall Street protestors in Liberty
Plaza, New York City, there are several ways to donate. You can give
directly to the NYC General Assembly helping to organize the occupation; you
can also order food (preferably vegan and vegetarian) from a number of local
restaurants to be delivered to the Plaza, or you can sign up to host laundry
and showers for the protestors. Click here for more information about all of
these options <http://nycga.cc/donate/>. Of course, you can also donate
yourself by coming to Liberty Plaza <http://nycga.cc/?page_id=399> and
joining the movement -- click here to find a carpool to the
protests<http://www.facebook.com/pages/Carpool-to-Occupy-Wallstreet/222614057794752?sk=notes>--
or by learning more about the Occupy Wall Street-inspired actions
happening
all across the United States <http://www.occupytogether.org/>, in
Canada<http://www.facebook.com/OccupyToronto>,
and worldwide.

------------------------------
To subscribe to this newsletter, visit
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Twitter<http://twitter.com/NaomiAKlein>and she is also on
Facebook <http://www.facebook.com/pages/Naomi-Klein/12400234918>.
------------------------------

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-- 
Manuela Valle
Magíster in Social Psychology, Universidad Arcis (Chile)
Master of Arts in Women's and Gender Studies, University of British
Columbia
PhD Candidate, Women's and Gender Studies, University of British Columbia
Liu Scholar, Liu Institute for Global Issues

http://postdictadura.blogspot.com/
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