[lbo-talk] OWS: Barack Obama and the failure of capitalist 'democracy'

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Fri Oct 7 17:46:53 PDT 2011


Re " the Occupy movement."

The struggles of the '60s were not called the Lunch Counter Movement. To call this " the "Occupy movement" tends to blunt its importance and give undue importance to its eventual replacement by other episodes. See Eric's response yesterday to a question I raised. Focus not on the present but on the future, which means thinking about how people indifferent circustances and with different reources around the country will build on what has happened _after_ the Occupation is over, or at least fades from the headlines. There have been posts on this list on the failure of the Wisconsin protests, measured by false assumptions of what "success" would have been there. This is why I sneered to myself and deleted that post yesterday (I forget the writer) that questioned my argument that OWS was seriously linked to Wisconsin. OWS has already triumphed. Any further achievements are just decoration. We no longer need to defend and explain it; and its meaning lies not in anything anyone can say now but in our own actions over the months and years to come.

Carrol

On 10/7/2011 7:15 PM, shag carpet bomb wrote:
> recommended by @occupywallSt
> http://vimeo.com/20355767
>
> the only question is,will OWS still get love from Charles Brown once
> he sees this attack on Barack?
>
>
> the video is an overview of the way that radical and progressive
> social movements are co-opted, where the two parties play good cop/bad
> cop, with the democrats pretending to be for reforms that meet the
> demands of the movement, etc.
>
> According to Taryn: "This video was recommended by @OccupyWallSt.
> Obviously, this is a leaderless movement and this is not an official
> statement. But this framing of the issues is consistent with a good
> deal of what I hear from many of the occupiers. It's almost two hours
> long, but interesting in its own right and, I think, useful if you're
> looking to understand the Occupy movement."
>



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