Chris Hedges: A Movement Too Big to Fail

from truthdig:



A Movement Too Big to Fail

Posted on Oct 17, 2011
By Chris Hedges


There is no danger that the protesters who have occupied squares, parks and plazas across the nation in defiance of the corporate state will be co-opted by the Democratic Party or groups like MoveOn. The faux liberal reformers, whose abject failure to stand up for the rights of the poor and the working class, have signed on to this movement because they fear becoming irrelevant. Union leaders, who pull down salaries five times that of the rank and file as they bargain away rights and benefits, know the foundations are shaking. So do Democratic politicians from Barack Obama to Nancy Pelosi. So do the array of “liberal” groups and institutions, including the press, that have worked to funnel discontented voters back into the swamp of electoral politics and mocked those who called for profound structural reform.

Resistance, real resistance, to the corporate state was displayed when a couple of thousand protesters, clutching mops and brooms, early Friday morning forced the owners of Zuccotti Park and the New York City police to back down from a proposed attempt to expel them in order to “clean” the premises. These protesters in that one glorious moment did what the traditional “liberal” establishment has steadily refused to do—fight back. And it was deeply moving to watch the corporate rats scamper back to their holes on Wall Street. It lent a whole new meaning to the phrase “too big to fail.”

Tinkering with the corporate state will not work. We will either be plunged into neo-feudalism and environmental catastrophe or we will wrest power from corporate hands. This radical message, one that demands a reversal of the corporate coup, is one the power elite, including the liberal class, is desperately trying to thwart. But the liberal class has no credibility left. It collaborated with corporate lobbyists to neglect the rights of tens of millions of Americans, as well as the innocents in our imperial wars. The best that liberals can do is sheepishly pretend this is what they wanted all along. Groups such as MoveOn and organized labor will find themselves without a constituency unless they at least pay lip service to the protests. The Teamsters’ arrival Friday morning to help defend the park signaled an infusion of this new radicalism into moribund unions rather than a co-opting of the protest movement by the traditional liberal establishment. The union bosses, in short, had no choice.

The Occupy Wall Street movement, like all radical movements, has obliterated the narrow political parameters. It proposes something new. It will not make concessions with corrupt systems of corporate power. It holds fast to moral imperatives regardless of the cost. It confronts authority out of a sense of responsibility. It is not interested in formal positions of power. It is not seeking office. It is not trying to get people to vote. It has no resources. It can’t carry suitcases of money to congressional offices or run millions of dollars of advertisements. All it can do is ask us to use our bodies and voices, often at personal risk, to fight back. It has no other way of defying the corporate state. This rebellion creates a real community instead of a managed or virtual one. It affirms our dignity. It permits us to become free and independent human beings. ...........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/a_movement_too_big_to_fail_20111017/

A voice for our times.

TAKE IT TO THE STREETS!
Whose streets? OUR streets!

-Laelth

No artificial ingredients. All Natural.

I wish I could recommend this 1000 times.

...Kick.

Also, E-mail'ing and FB'ing the link.

This part would make a great section of a speech, if only we had someone with the balls to run and say it:

What kind of nation is it that spends far more to kill enemy combatants and Afghan and Iraqi civilians than it does to help its own citizens who live below the poverty line? What kind of nation is it that permits corporations to hold sick children hostage while their parents frantically bankrupt themselves to save their sons and daughters? What kind of nation is it that tosses its mentally ill onto urban heating grates? What kind of nation is it that abandons its unemployed while it loots its treasury on behalf of speculators? What kind of nation is it that ignores due process to torture and assassinate its own citizens? What kind of nation is it that refuses to halt the destruction of the ecosystem by the fossil fuel industry, dooming our children and our children’s children?

Chis Hedges is the best writer in America today.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzULm4d8h8w

Almost two hours, but well worth it!

I remember the movement (speaking of the anti-war, civil rights and women's movements as part of a greater whole!) of the 60s being beaten down by the Nixon count-revolution, then the depressions of the 1970s and 1980s. Those recessions / depressions were a strategy to get young people bogged down into survival issues.

Interests isn't unifying. I'm a Liberal, I believe in capitalism, I just believe capitalism needs to be fixed/reformed. I don't believe in cronyism. Hedges acts as if this ISN'T what Liberals wanted all along. MANY of the proposals by OWS have Liberals support. Glass-Steagal, halting foreclosures, taxing the rich, student loan leniency, and even getting corporations out of Govt.

Divisive and un-necessary. Hedges has an agenda of his own.

Edit for another similarity: Also environmentalism, increased public services, Wall St. regulation, etc etc. See leaked manifesto here: http://news.yahoo.com/occupy-wall-street-draft-manifesto-183205447.html?bouchon=501,ny

the liberals have the notion that somehow capital growth 'in an environmentally friendly way' (in other words NIMBY wink, wink) can solve environmental problems - Things like cap & trade are totally useless and that is why Hedges said what he said and I believe he's right.....

100 percent. Liberals have bought into the questioning of "sound science" and the jobs vs. environmental benefits cost ratio.

I don't care for the sneering tone of the article. He contrasts "liberals" with the unspoken radicals and the "liberals" are found wanting. Perhaps he should reflect on the fact that the liberals he hates so much were the radicals of a generation ago. It's dishonest to attack "liberals" without mentioning the fact that modern establishment liberalism traces its past not to FDR, but to the New Left. Some of us, born after the 60s, don't identify with that period, but with the liberal establishment that preceded it. The FDR-Truman-Kennedy-Johnson coalition performed miracles for America. It's insulting to think that everyone on the left except the radicals are simpering dilettantes who simply bow to right-wing demands.

What I wrote is a bit divisive, but it's also true. The author seems to want to act as an inverse tea party, in that he wants to ridicule those who don't consider themselves radicals into becoming radicalized. I don't accept that strategy as valid. I generally look at the old FDR coalition as having made a good start from FDR to LBJ. I would prefer less sneering and ideological purity and more pragmatism. I find limiting money in politics as completely as possible to be inherently pragmatic. I also find a good standard of living for Americans to be pragmatic. Why? It's impossible to have a functioning democracy unless the people have the leisure time and the actual freedom to make it work. This is a better starting point than some kind of ideological recriminations.

Who among our current politicians have your interests at heart?

My interest is in a true meritocracy that exists to serve its people and give them equal, and maximum, opportunity to succeed. I guess I'm a bit of an idealist, but it's always been what I want.

I support OWS. Personally wondered what has taken so long. It's true the left lacks strong leaders But worry about the wisdom of alienating fellow liberals. How will that play out during the election?

a liberal. He's a leftist. those 2 terms are diametrically opposed to one another.

I believe the comment you posted saying you're a 'liberal who believes in capitalism' confirms what Mr. Hedges says about liberalism in this country.

It is the exploitation of capitalism. It is using the one loophole that capitalism never intended: Greed. Currency in its purest form is a system of give and take, trading something for something else. Capitalism was never meant for people to horde wealth by exploiting loopholes that were never even fathomed 200 years prior. Washington and Franklin weren't sending their cash overseas to the Cayman Islands where they could keep it tax free, etc. or the numerous other ways that the super-wealthy find to continue to horde the wealth.

its not like there isn't millions of liberals who wouldn't fight for a cause like this or many of the other battles that should have been fought but the clear lack of liberal leadership have hurt our cause.

Not allowing others to define who they are has got to be a trick.

Chris Hedges says that they don't need his advice and I think he is right but I sure hope people like him, Cornel West and Naomi Klein are considered valuable resources by the group at Liberty Plaza.

We are the 99%

""There is no danger that the protesters who have occupied squares, parks and plazas across the nation in defiance of the corporate state will be co-opted by the Democratic Party or groups like MoveOn.
The faux liberal reformers, whose abject failure to stand up for the rights of the poor and the working class, have signed on to this movement because they fear becoming irrelevant""

What pundits don't seem to grasp is that the movement is beyond our individual shortcomings. Yes, each one of us is affected by losing their job, losing their right to bargain, disappointed in the lack of a public option in health care, the inequity of the tax system, destruction of public education. All those are reason alone to protest.

But it's much bigger. It's our self-worth, our intelligence, our ideals and self-esteem that have been beaten to death over the past 30 years, thanks to the GOP's greedy over-reaching capitalism that creates 1 percent winners and 99 percent losers; and the Democratic Party's liberal core that has sold out, given up and tried in futility to play their game.

It may come as news to some, but the Democratic Party is dead and has been since the last gasp of hope died when Obama's actions became contrary to his rhetoric. Now it is grasping at straws again, also in futility, while the pundits once again play along, thinking OWS energy and spirit can be co-opted and turned into votes for more futility.

A corner has been turned, and a sense of real hope is returning. It's time to hold a funeral service for both parties.

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