Fellow 99%ers,
Our movement and struggle against the economic and utterly corrupt power of 1%, the disgusting social inequality the latter has engendered, stands currently at a precipice.
For months now we’ve assembled and occupied; we’ve protested and voiced our indignation at the government bailing out the richest financiers, bankers, and corporate shareholders while the rest of us lost our jobs, our homes, swallowed pay and benefit cuts, and have been plunged into poverty; we’ve demonstrated on the streets, in the schools, and committed to actions in the workplaces; we’ve achieved some of the most inspiring and radical actions in close to a decade. Most importantly, we’ve raised the stakes against this government of austerity for the majority and wealth redistribution upward to the infinitesimal minority.
The links the movement has made thus far with the unions and with the struggles of workers has been nothing short of exhilarating. It has breathed a sense of vitality, militancy, and renewed purpose back into thoughts and actions of the rank and file as the official leadership of the labor movement stultifies and vegetates in the face of momentous events and a brutal offensive against the working class and poor.
The rise and near global permeation of the movement is precisely why the federal and a multitude of city-governments across the USA worked in tandem to shut it down lest it become more powerful and an even greater threat to the parasitic interests of the 1%. It was fear, not their bogus premises of “unsanitary” conditions and other hokum spewed throughout the media that compelled them to put a stop to any and all expressions of democratic free speech.
One by one (but sometimes in coordinated fashion) the occupy camps fell to the sound of rubber bullets being fired, tear-gas canisters hitting the ground, storm-trooper boots clacking against the pavement, and the revving of bulldozer engines as they demolished both camps and personal possessions alike. The supposed right to speak out publicly and protest against the policies and actions of government and Wall St. as they attempt to make the poor majority pay for the failures of their system were revealed as categorically fraudulent.
Already the chief apologists (journalists and politicians alike) of the interests and power of the 1% have declaimed against the port shutdowns. They have argued that they do nothing to hurt the billionaire bankers but instead divide the people – the workers from the movement. Their fear of #Occupy becoming more than just symbolic protest-actions and transforming itself into a mass, militant social movement that takes aim directly at the bank accounts and wallets/purses of the bosses as the basis for making the 1% pay can scarcely be concealed. But it is what we’ve seen occur up and down the west coast between community activists and groups, #Occupy participants, and the rank and file of the International Longshore and Warehouse union and other workers’ organizations that holds such promise for the future.
Throughout the course of our struggle we learned quite a lot. For instance, the 1% aren’t prepared to listen. Not only that, they will hold on to their incredible wealth not just through political argument but by brute force, through sending in the police.
We learned that the 1% aren’t a local but a federally-coordinated force that can execute their assault on our lives in every state. But we also learned that our movement has a lot of support, from both the trade unions, then unorganized working class, and the youth. The question we are all asking, is what do we do now?
Local general assemblies have been our way of organizing in every city – lets take it to the next level and organize a national general assembly to debate and discuss the way forward.
The welcoming and involvement of rank-and file-soldiers adds an important dynamic to our struggle: linking the plight of mostly young people in many cases economically conscripted into military service in the defense of “freedom and democracy” abroad with the realities of unemployment, poverty, and, indeed, as rubber bullets confront them at home. Future mobilizations and actions need to ask how we can utilize their knowledge and training to help organize mass self-defense against police repression and violence brought on by the 1%.
Wall St. and their cronies in government have from the very beginning derided and belittled us for trying, even thinking, we could stop their assaults. Their flagrant and vicious attacks to disperse us is indicative of the fact that we’re starting to get to them, that we’re beginning to hit a little “too close to home.” Now we need to retaliate by turning up the heat ourselves, by taking our struggle to the next level in the way those on the west coast have and by generalizing such activities and extending them across the country – onto the streets, into the schools, and spanning workplaces.
#Occupy might be in a difficult spot at the moment (social movements throughout history have always had their ups and downs), but neither it nor the conditions that brought it into being have truly gone away. We have the power and the ability to revive it, to raise it back up and make it even stronger than before. Thus, a principal question that needs collective resolution is how can we form a more durable, permanent organization that can fight the 1% year round no matter what happens.
Despite the current severity of the attacks on our living standards, the prevalence of both under and unemployment, of worsening poverty for millions, the complicity and servility of Congress and the Obama administration in meeting only Wall St.’s needs, the ruling class has its sights set on rolling back even further throughout the next decade the historic social and political gains made throughout the course of a century of militant struggle. There will be ample opportunity in 2012 and in the years to come for us to stand up and say, “we won’t pay for your crisis!” and to follow it up with direct action necessary to win.
Yours in solidarity and struggle,
REVOLUTION: Socialist Youth Organization (USA)
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If you are interested in the ideas in this letter and would like to talk about them, go to www.revousa.org
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