Revealed: The Chase Campaign plan to take down US capitalism

[Rydher Profile]

here was a public letter to the mayor, the city council and the police department:

Dear Mayor Jean Quan, Oakland Police Department, and Oakland City Council,

As you probably know, Occupy Oakland is planning the occupation of a building on January 28th that will serve as a social center, convergence center, headquarters, free kitchen, and place of housing for Occupy Oakland. Like so many other people, Occupy Oakland is homeless while buildings remain vacant and unused. For Occupy this is in large part because of yourselves, having evicted us twice from public space that was rightfully ours. For others it is because of the housing bubble, predatory lending, the perpetual crises of capitalism, and far reaching histories of imperialism and systemic violence.

Source: http://occupyoaklandmoveinday.org/content/letter-mayor-opd-and-city-council-occupy-oaklands-move-day

The movement’s letter also claimed responsibility for shutting down the port and costing the city millions in expenditures and lost revenue. And they threatened to bring that same economic penalty to bear again, if they are not allowed to just take what they deem to be rightfully theirs.

The warning letter closes with explicit threats to “make your lives more miserable than you make ours”:

Since the beginning of the Occupy Movement when you have exacted violent repression on us we have proven that we are more powerful and diffuse than you. If you try to evict us again we will make your lives more miserable than you make ours.

This may be in one or more of the following forms:

-Blockading the airport indefinitely

-Occupying City Hall indefinitely

-Shutting down the Oakland ports

-Calling on anonymous for solidarity

It will be in our mutual interest if you respect our occupation by recognizing our residency and eminent domain. We are sure that we all look forward to the needs of Oakland’s people finally being met.


They printed and distributed information in Spanish and Chinese. The group also posted a YouTube video meant to help recruit people for the big day.


And last week, in advance of the move in event, Occupy Oakland published a list of approved “community guidelines” that includes some curious language, including terms familiar with those who support Marxism. It did not surprise this reporter to see that the word “comrade” appears in the two-page document five times, while “man” or “woman” does not show up anywhere.

Occupy Oakland Building Occupation Community Guidelines

These guidelines for the occupation of a community space are designed to start conversations about safety, equality, and respect – not provide an inflexible code for behavior. They are to be applied in the spirit of transformative justice, supporting reconciliation and redress, not punishment or value judgments.

The preamble wraps up with:

There are no cops here; everyone is security.

The actual guidelines are fairly simple, with only three published directives. (Which actually sound like good, common sense rules.)

1. Keep yourself and your community safe.

2. Treat others with respect.

3. Other suggestions:

a. Build it, don’t break it. This is our space, so let’s build it as we want to live in it. This includes breaking existing structures, removing items, and tagging, especially during the first few days. We would love if you brought artwork in from outside in the form of banners or signs that we can put up.
b. Medics at the wellness center (or first aid table/tent) have free safer sex supplies, get some if you need.

The Community Guidelines must have been too vague for some inside the organization. Apparently, the declaration “There are no cops here; everyone is security” required some additional clarification. Occupy Oakland followed up that document with something called, “Occupy Oakland Building Action 1/28- Potential grounds for exclusion from the building.”

Here are the potential actions that could get one removed from the building that Occupy Oakland was planning on seizing. (Again, most of these could be viewed as “common sense” regulations);

Individuals may be asked to leave the building in case of:

a. Sexual violence or harassment, i.e. sexual assault or repetitive unwanted advances, verbal or physical.

b. Repetitive theft.

c. Unwarranted physical assault. (Self-defense will not be automatic grounds for exclusion.)

d. Cooperation with the police in any form, including the incrimination of comrades through furnishing or analyzing potential video or photo evidence.

e. Persistent disruption, including threatening, intimidating, or derailing behavior.

e. No photography or video without consent. Deliberately and non-consensually pointing your camera at community members who may be doing something they don’t want public and posting in a public forum is grounds for exclusion from the building. Livestreamers, citizen journalists, other media, and all comrades, please capture footage in the media-approved zones and refrain from capturing images elsewhere in the occupied building, unless you receive consent from all comrades whose likeness, voice, or identity will potentially be captured.

The final three “infractions” raise red flags.

Cooperation with the police in any form

What if your comrade is raped or violently assaulted inside the confines of the building? Will you not be able to give a witness statement or testify in court against the attacker without losing your Occupy Oakland citizenship?

Persistent disruption, including threatening, intimidating, or derailing behavior.

If you do inside the building what the group does outside of the building, you can be kicked out?

No photography or video without consent.

Again, this is a “do as we say, not as we do” regulation.

What happens if someone is accused of violating any of the six “crimes” listed above? How will it be decided that they shall be removed from the new society?

There is a procedure posted.

Guidelines for exclusion from the building are to be applied on a case-by-case basis, with security reserving the right to exclude someone who is presenting an immediate danger. Decisions by the security committee, medics, and others who act to exclude an individual are accountable to the Building General Assembly. Exclusion may potentially also be referred to the Building General Assembly to be voted on, with a 90% consensus of the community required to determine the terms of an individual’s exclusion from the space.

Contrary to the American criminal justice system where federal cases mandate a 100 percent guilty verdict by a jury in order to convict, the Occupy Wall Street community will vote on the accusations and if 90 percent agree with the charges, a guilty verdict is rendered. That guilty verdict sentences the person to be banished from the Occupy building.

One wonders if the ACLU will be allowed to represent any of the Occupiers charged with violating the rules of the building?

Will the accused be considered “innocent until proven guilty?”

As the day breaks on the west coast, the Occupy Oakland group is reportedly bailing out many of those arrested overnight and preparing for the activities planned for the remainder of the move in day festival. According to a posting from late Saturday night:

Oakland Rise Up Festival is on for Sunday at Oscar Grant Plaza.
All events will happen as scheduled.



It is fairly safe to assume that the Oakland Police will be on hand for 8am’s “Breakfast, coffee, and morning workshops.”

[Rydher Profile]

Of course since the OWS protests aren't against capitalism. I'm sure there won't be an organized protest to coincide with this on June 5th.

Critics of capitalism call global protest in June

Thousands of critics of capitalism meeting in Brazil called Sunday for a worldwide protest in June to press for concrete steps to tackle the global economic crisis.

The World Social Forum wrapped up a five-day meeting in this southern Brazilian city, urging citizens to "take to the streets on June 5" for the global action, which would be in support of social and environmental justice.

The forum also announced a "peoples' summit" of social movements to be held in parallel with the high-level UN conference on sustainable development scheduled next June 20-22 in Rio.

The Rio+20 summit, the fourth major gathering on sustainable development since 1972, will press world leaders to commit themselves to creating a social and "green economy," with priority being given to eradicating hunger.

But World Social Forum participants, including representatives of the Arab Spring, Spain's "Indignant" movement, Occupy Wall Street, and students from Chile, sharply criticized the concept of "a green economy" that would allow multinational corporations to reap the profit.

"The political and economic elites are the one percent who control the world and we are the one percent seeking to change it. Where are the (other) 98 percent?" said Chico Whitaker, one of the Forum's founders.

"There are many who are happy because each time they get more consumer goods, but many are concerned and unsatisfied. The challenge for us is to speak with them."

"If we do not raise the issue of inequality, we won't solve the problems," said Venezuelan sociologist Edgardo Lander.

"If the system is not capable of redistributing and deal with inequality, we have to do it ourselves," agreed Sam Halvorsen, of the Occupy London movement.

The Forum is an alliance of social movements opposed to the World Economic Forum, the annual gathering of the world's economic and political elites held at the same time in the Swiss resort of Davos.

Addressing the gathering Thursday, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff appealed for "a development model that articulates growth and job creation, battles poverty and decreases inequalities," and advocates for the "sustainable use and preservation of natural resources."

Candido Grzywoski, one of the founders and a coordinator of the Forum, said the urgency of the global economic crisis and the popular indignation around the world "gave us more unity in diversity."

The Forum, which drew around 40,000 participants this year, has its roots in 1999 street protests in the US city of Seattle during a World Trade Organization meeting but it settled in Porto Alegre as its regular venue 12 years ago when it drew 20,000 activists from around the world.

Next year, it will be held in Cairo.

Source: http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.218bcf7fdf123da81f848acd32746026.6e1&show_article=1

[Rydher Profile]

OWS Inspiration Mag Calls for May Occupation of Chicago G8 in the ‘Tradition’ of 1968



CNSNews.com:

Adbusters, the radical, Vancouver-based anti-consumerist magazine, credited by many media outlets for launching the Occupy Wall Street protests, has put out an ad calling for 50,000 protestors to “Occupy” the G8 summit in May.

The Adbusters ad shows a picture of policemen beating up a defenseless protestor, and comes with the caption: “In the Tradition of the Chicago 8.” The Chicago 8 were radicals who incited riots in Chicago during the 1968 Democratic convention. The 1968 convention unrest became so legendary that the band Crosby, Stills, Nash (and Young) wrote a song about it called “Chicago.” The “tradition” of the Chicago 8 included calling for displays of public fornication and attacking police.

Adbusters:

Hey you redeemers, rebels and radicals out there,

Against the backdrop of a global uprising that is simmering in dozens of countries and thousands of cities and towns, the G8 and NATO will hold a rare simultaneous summit in Chicago this May. The world’s military and political elites, heads of state, 7,500 officials from 80 nations, and more than 2,500 journalists will be there.

And so will we.

On May 1, 50,000 people from all over the world will flock to Chicago, set up tents, kitchens, peaceful barricades and #OCCUPYCHICAGO for a month. With a bit of luck, we’ll pull off the biggest multinational occupation of a summit meeting the world has ever seen.

And this time around we’re not going to put up with the kind of police repression that happened during the Democratic National Convention protests in Chicago, 1968 … nor will we abide by any phony restrictions the City of Chicago may want to impose on our first amendment rights. We’ll go there with our heads held high and assemble for a month-long people’s summit … we’ll march and chant and sing and shout and exercise our right to tell our elected representatives what we want … the constitution will be our guide.

And when the G8 and NATO meet behind closed doors on May 19, we’ll be ready with our demands: a Robin Hood Tax … a ban on high frequency ‘flash’ trading … a binding climate change accord … a three strikes and you’re out law for corporate criminals … an all out initiative for a nuclear-free Middle East … whatever we decide in our general assemblies and in our global internet brainstorm – we the people will set the agenda for the next few years and demand our leaders carry it out.

And if they don’t listen … if they ignore us and put our demands on the back burner like they’ve done so many times before … then, with Gandhian ferocity, we’ll flashmob the streets, shut down stock exchanges, campuses, corporate headquarters and cities across the globe … we’ll make the price of doing business as usual too much to bear.

Jammers, pack your tents, muster up your courage and prepare for a big bang in Chicago this Spring. If we don’t stand up now and fight now for a different kind of future we may not have much of a future … so let’s live without dead time for a month in May and see what happens …

for the wild,
Culture Jammers HQ

CNSNews includes a helpful video reminder of what 1968 looked like:



Source: http://www.theblaze.com/stories/ows-inspiration-mag-calls-for-may-occupation-of-chicago-g8-in-the-tradition-of-1968/

[Rydher Profile]

Trying to figure out how this connects with the supposed original intent of the protest. It's almost like they used a theme that everyone can relate to, sucked people in, then morphed into something else.

[Rydher Profile]

It’s Coming: Union, Leftist Leaders Announce ‘99% Spring?’… and Training in ‘Places of Worship’

Since Occupy Wall Street seemingly went into hibernation (we note seemingly because the movement keeps popping up despite what some national outlets are reporting), The Blaze has brought you plenty of analysis theorizing that the spring could be an even bigger time for the movement. Now, it looks like those theories have been confirmed: the unions and other leftists have announced a “99% spring.”



“We are at a crossroads as a country,” a letter on the site dedicated to the new movement (http://the99spring.com/letter.html) says. “We have a choice to make. Greater wealth for a few or opportunity for many. Tax breaks for the richest or a fair shot for the rest of us. A government that can be bought by the highest bidder, or a democracy that is truly of the people, by the people, and for the people.”

It continues: “The choice is in our hands. This spring, we will act on that choice and rise up in the tradition of our forefathers and foremothers. We will not be complicit with the suffering in our families for another year. We will prepare ourselves for sustained non-violent direct action.”

That “preparation” looks like a week-long training session from April 9-15. But not just any training session, this training session will be held across the country and will reportedly feature meetings in “places of worship:”

From April 9-15 we will gather across America, 100,000 strong, in homes, places of worship, campuses and the streets to join together in the work of reclaiming our country. We will organize trainings to:

Tell the story of our economy: how we got here, who’s responsible, what a different future could look like, and what we can do about it
Learn the history of non-violent direct action, and
Get into action on our own campaigns to win change.

“This spring we rise!” the website declares. “We will reshape our country with our own hands and feet, bodies and hearts. We will take non-violent action in the spirit of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Gandhi to forge a new destiny one block, one neighborhood, one city, one state at a time.”



So just who exactly is behind this? The letter contains “signers” that will be familiar to you. Or at least their organizations will. And it’s a buffet of far leftists, unions, and even the communist group Working Families Party. Oh, and of course Van Jones:

- Sarita Gupta
Jobs With Justice
- Bob King
United Auto Workers
- George Goehl
National Peoples Action
- Ai-jen Poo
National Domestic Workers Alliance
- Justin Ruben
MoveOn.org
- Mary Kay Henry
Service Employees International Union
- Van Jones and Natalie Foster
Rebuild the Dream
- Phil Radford
Greenpeace
- Leo Gerard
United Steel Workers
- Daniel Cantor
Working Families Party
- Bruce Klipple
United Electrical Workers Union

But while Bob King of the United Auto Workers (UAW) is a signer of the letter, might the union be behind it more than it’s letting on? It would seem so. The Daily Caller was able to download a cache of files from the UAW website last week that point to a high level of organizing:

[A] series of files The Daily Caller downloaded from the United Auto Workers website indicate that the organized labor powerhouse is behind the effort.

The files, downloaded Sunday, include campaign talking points, a fill-in-the-blank press release template for participating organizations and an advance look at the social media campaign the organizers plan for Facebook and Twitter.

Also included is a “FYI” letter designed for endorsers to distribute, complete with a blank space at the top of the list of participating groups. Filling in a given organization’s name lends the impression that it, not the UAW, is the campaign’s driving force.

A Google cache indicates that the files were available on an unprotected area of the UAW’s web server at least as early as February 16. They disappeared from public view Monday.

The Caller was able to capture the information before it was deleted:

Uaw 99 Percent Spring Daily Caller
http://www.scribd.com/doc/82245269/Uaw-99-Percent-Spring-Daily-Caller

Also interesting? It appears the domain for the 99% Spring was registered by the leftist group MoveOn.org (also a signer of the letter).

“We will rise this spring, because we DO hold these truths to be self evident,” the 99% Spring site concludes, “that all men and women are created equal, that we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

Get ready

Source: http://www.theblaze.com/stories/its-coming-union-leftist-leaders-announce-99-spring-and-traning-in-places-of-worship/

[Rydher Profile]

SEIU Helps Occupy ‘Abolish Capitalism’

It’s been nearly a year since The Blaze broke the story of SEIU strategist Stephen Lerner’s campaign of economic terrorism. Lerner outlined, in audio captured by The Blaze, a secret plan to destroy a major bank with the intent of crashing the stock market.

Lerner’s plan clearly envisioned the activism that would come to be known as Occupy Wall Street.

Here’s how Business Insider described The Blaze revelation at the time:

Lerner said that unions and community organizations are, for all intents and purposes, dead. The only way to achieve their goals, therefore–the redistribution of wealth and the return of “$17 trillion” stolen from the middle class by Wall Street–is to “destabilize the country.”

Lerner’s plan is to organize a mass, coordinated “strike” on mortgage, student loan, and local government debt payments–thus bringing the banks to the edge of insolvency and forcing them to renegotiate the terms of the loans. This destabilization and turmoil, Lerner hopes, will also crash the stock market, isolating the banking class and allowing for a transfer of power.

Lerner’s plan starts by attacking JP Morgan Chase in early May, with demonstrations on Wall Street, protests at the annual shareholder meeting, and then calls for a coordinated mortgage strike.

Lerner also says explicitly that, although the attack will benefit labor unions, it cannot be seen as being organized by them. It must therefore be run by community organizations.

As the year went on, Lerner beat the same drum. Our follow-up reports in September and October revealed Lerner’s enthusiasm for the escalation of protests, the breaking of laws, and the rules for creating mass economic chaos.

Breitbart.com has received exclusive tape of an Occupy Strategy Session at New York University, billed as a group talk on “The Abolition of Capitalism.” One of the headline speakers at this session was Stephen Lerner, former leader and International Board Member of the SEIU and frequent Obama White House visitor. Lerner argued in favor of people not paying their mortgages and “occupying” their homes; he spoke in favor of invading annual shareholders meetings to shut them down. But his big goal was to get workers to shut down their workplaces. That’s where the SEIU agenda and the Occupy agenda truly meet: once workers begin to occupy.

Here are the relevant portions of the transcript:

Let me just throw out a couple ideas here. One, I think a theme here that’s really important is Occupy Homes as a key part of the stew in multiple spheres. There’s eviction defense, there’s folks who are moving back into homes that they were evicted from that have been sitting empty, there’s community organizing, there’s a fight with Fannie and Freddie, but this notion that millions of people are losing their homes and we can physically help them save it, very important … This second question, this question of moving money, which has mainly been an individual act so far, you know, move your account out of a bank, getting institutions, schools, universities, school boards, to move money out of banks as a way to put them into either credit unions or things that do economic development, it captures both what is wrong with finance capital, but then it’s something everybody can do … In fact, it’s infused by the energy of somebody that just got thrown in jail for trying to keep their home …

Annual meetings, shareholder meetings. We have this wonderful myth that goes on which is corporations get together and they so-called have shareholders vote on what’s gonna happen … Maybe our goal ought to be able to shut down as many of the shareholder meetings as possible. Inside and outside, saying this is where they gather to make the decisions about the fate of the world, and we’re sick and tired of them doing it in a little room. So why don’t we all go to those meetings? $5 a share right now, Bank of America … The eyes of the nation will see the first convention in Charlotte, which is thousands of people coming to the Bank of American meeting saying “Let’s shut it down … Who the hell are these people to be meeting and deciding our fate without us there?”

But here’s the real crux of the matter:

How do we give workers the confidence? … How do we create a mood in the nation where we’re occupying our workplaces, where we’re shutting down our workplaces? … Where workers are sitting in, where workers are shutting down their places of work, and when the police come, when the injunctions come, we’re all there with them, so we can really deal with part of the reason that the economy’s so screwed up … which is a few people have got all the power. Think stew, think hope, death to the Stockholm Syndrome!

Lerner wasn’t the only one preaching this communist propaganda. The panel’s title told the whole story. This was an anti-capitalism panel. Lerner’s fellow panel members included David Graeber, who billed himself as “one of the original mobilizers behind Occupy Wall Street.” Graeber announced, “It strikes me that if one is going to pursue this to its logical conclusion, the only way to have a genuinely democratic society would also be to abolish capitalism and the state.”

Yotam Marom, an Occupy Zuccotti Park “veteran,” said, “Capitalism doesn’t wither away just because we don’t like it. It’s something you that you have to crash into and have an alternative to.”

Steve Max, a community organizer who worked closely with the revolutionary group Students for a Democratic Society, the parent group that spawned the Weathermen Underground, was also present. This is the same fellow who said after 9/11 that this was an opportunity to push the socialist program – because, after all, “How can anyone now say that they are for national security but not health funding”? He has walked in the same circles as President Obama.

At this event, Max grabbed the mic and said that he understood political violence. Members of the audience also argued in favor of political violence, citing the beauty of the Weathermen Underground.

This is where the unions and the Occupy movement and the academy all come together under one big anti-capitalist umbrella. Lerner, representing labor, says that the job of labor is to shut down business; Occupy says that its job is to smash the machines of capitalism; academia provides them the forum to recruit.

Video
http://content.bitsontherun.com/previews/IwlGdBZ5-svqBtzyp

Sources: http://www.theblaze.com/stories/video-reveals-occupy-strategy-to-abolish-capitalism-with-seiu-help/ & http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/03/04/SEIU-lerner-Occupy

[Spock Profile]

I'm a capitalist, but I agree with and love this quote,

capitalism without heart is just as evil as communism

[Rydher Profile]

Communists/Socialists/Marxists? Why would you say that?


This winter, we refocused our energies on fostering ties with local communities, saving homes from corrupt banks and jobs from greedy corporations, and building and expanding our horizontal infrastructure. This #GlobalSpring, we will take the streets again. On May 1st, Occupy Wall Street has called for a General Strike. We are calling on everyone who supports the cause of economic justice and true democracy to take part: No Work, No School, No Housework, No Shopping, No Banking - and most importantly, TAKE THE STREETS!



We are getting ready. Planning is already underway in dozens of cities. Labor organizers, immigrants’ rights groups, artists, Occupiers, faith leaders, and more have all joined in the discussion to get ready. Now, all we need is you. Keep reading to find out how you can get involved!

May 1st, also known as International Workers' Day, is the annual commemoration of the 1886 Haymarket Massacre in Chicago, when Chicago police fired on workers during a General Strike for the eight-hour workday.

Source: http://occupywallst.org/article/6-ways-to-get-ready-may-1st-general-strike/

[Rydher Profile]

Stephen Lerner Reveals Next Steps: Student Loan Strikes & Crash Shareholder Mtgs

Regular readers of this site will know the name Stephen Lerner. For those who don’t, here’s a quick refresher: he’s the SEIU organizer who The Blaze revealed almost a year to the day as the man behind the early stages of the Occupy movement. Back then, he admitted to wanting to bring down financial institutions and collapse the system. Now he’s back with an op-ed in the liberal magazine The Nation, and he‘s outlining what’s coming next.

“Occupy has cracked open the door that lets us imagine that another world is possible,” Lerner writes, before bragging about the countless arrests of those within the movement. “Thousands of arrests, months of protest and acts of incredible personal risk and sacrifice have put inequality and Wall Street’s out-of-control political and economic power on center stage. As activity ratchets up this spring, the challenge is to get more people pushing that door open ever wider.”

So what does “pushing that door open wider” look like? How about organizing massive student loan strikes and crashing annual shareholder meetings.

Student loan strikes

Lerner justifies the strike idea like this:

Students and their families now have nearly a trillion dollars of debt, with average debt totaling over $25,000. The explosion in student debt is a direct outgrowth of the defunding of education in state after state. Unlike corporate and other debt, student debt is excluded from bankruptcy relief, strangling students for life. Reducing student debt load and the interest rates applied to it would save hundreds of billions of dollars in debt payments. It’s a first step to creating equal access to education and giving students a fair start without a lifetime burden.

Then he plants the seed:

There is growing interest in Occupy and student groups in a student debt strike. The banks can’t foreclose on a brain or a degree. If a critical mass of student debtors—a million or more—pledged to refuse to pay, it would create a collection crisis that could force negotiations about reducing student debt.

Key phrase: “it would create a collection crisis.”

Crashing shareholder meetings

Student debt strikes are just the beginning, however. Lerner wants more, and that “more,” not surprisingly, involves greater collaboration with the unions.

“Starting with GE on April 25 in Detroit and moving on to Wells Fargo, Bank of America and dozens of other corporations in May and June, tens of thousands of people from Occupy, community organizations, unions and environmental groups will show up at the annual shareholder meetings of major corporations,” he explains. “Some people will be on the inside with proxies, and others will be massed in the streets, all delivering the message that it is no longer acceptable for giant, unaccountable corporations to decide the political and economic fate of the country.”

Key points: It’s starting April 25; it involves “tens of thousands” from unions and even environmental groups; and it will even involve people “on the inside.”

A movement in need of direction?

Lerner’s direction comes as the movement is awakening with fury — 73 were arrested at the movement‘s epicenter in New York City’s Zucotti Park over the weekend. And top-down direction seems to be what the willing Occupy foot soldiers are in need of. Consider that after the weekend fracas, the same problems of blurry vision and a lack of uniformity that plagued the movement in the fall sprang up once again.

“I’m really grateful to be part of a generation that wants change, ’cause we should all want change,” said Jennifer Campbell, a graduate student in documentary filmmaking at Hofstra University. “But I’m not sure what that change is, or if they know what that change is.”

“We’re going to keep going,” said Christopher Guerra, who has spent many nights at Zuccotti since the movement started last Sept. 17. He added, “It’s going to get interesting during the election cycle. We’re going to be more of a presence in the political world. I know we have a couple of people running for office.”

According to Mother Jones magazine, 10 candidates for House and Senate seats in the November elections have made Occupy part of their campaigns. They include Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren and Hakeem Jeffries, who is running for Congress in Brooklyn. But some Occupy supporters consider themselves anarchists who abjure electoral politics.

Sandra Nurse, a member of Occupy’s direct action working group, said she expects college students will have “a huge role to play this summer organizing around student debt.” She noted that the issue resonates both with students and with their parents and has the potential to broaden the movement. It‘s straight out of Lerner’s playbook.

But Ted Schulman, an Occupy protester who lives near Zuccotti, said his focus is the upcoming United Nation Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. He said he wants to “challenge the U.N. on what their vision of a green economy is.”

Harlem resident Kanene Holder said the movement is broader than any one issue. “This is not a beauty pageant,” she said. “We cannot homogenize this movement into one streamlined vision.”

“I understand the Occupy movement,” observer Brian Cummings of Iowa said. “I understand a lot of people’s frustration. I’m not sure how effective it is. … Nothing seems to be being accomplished.”

And that’s where Lerner comes in. In his conclusion, he embraced the confusion: “Emerging movements are complicated, exciting, messy, confusing and wonderful things to be a part of.”

Source: http://www.theblaze.com/stories/occupy-mastermind-stephen-lerner-reveals-next-steps-crash-shareholder-mtgs-student-loan-strikes/

[Rydher Profile]

Piven & Lerner’s Six Risky, Strategic Steps Forward for the Evicted Movement

It’s Springtime for Occupy! That means the brilliant cast of characters that brought you the noxious, multimillion dollar expense toSpringtime for Occupy! Frances Fox Piven & Stephen Lerners Six Risky, Strategic Steps Forward for the Evicted Movement the taxpayer are back for a second round. Two of The Blaze’s favorite leaders of civic unrest, arch-liberal sociologist Frances Fox Piven and SEIU labor organizer Stephen Lerner discussed how Occupy Wall Street will pivot to a far more local, intimate occupation this spring after being evicted from their public squatting grounds with rubber bullets and crews in post apocalyptic hazmat suits. In an in-depth interview with Democracynow.org, Piven and Learner lay out six integral steps that Occupy will be taking this spring to keep a pulse going.

The six next strategic steps for The Occupy Movement are as follows according to Learner and Piven:

1. LOCALIZE: Move Protest into neighborhoods and schools.

“What people have been figuring out how to do is to move the protest into the neighborhoods, into the workplaces, into the schools.” ~Piven

2. OCCUPY FORECLOSED HOMES AND FACTORIES: Broaden agenda to those most affected by the economic collapse.
“I think, in the end, it may turn out that evicting the occupations was the precipitant of expanding the movement, because the movement’s agenda has broadened, and they’re now experimenting with reoccupying foreclosed homes, for example, with ways of rallying to the defense of workers who are locked out or on strike.”~Piven

3. RECRUIT YOUTH: Use the Universities and Professors as spearheads of Recruitment to broaden movement.
“And with the spring, I think there’s going to be a lot of protest in the universities and the colleges.
Young people are very responsive to the appeals of Occupy, to their cultural style.”~Piven

4. ORGANIZE WITH LABOR: Further integration between Occupy and the traditional Unions, teamsters and community organizing, leftist organizations.
Springtime for Occupy! Frances Fox Piven & Stephen Lerners Six Risky, Strategic Steps Forward for the Evicted Movement
“And I think it’s part of how we think about combining the horizontal energy and vision and passion of Occupy with the more vertical traditional community- and labor-based groups. And when the two of them meet, we’ll get the combustion of saying Wall Street is drowning the country, and they’re doing it in neighborhoods and communities all over.”~Lerner

5. OCCUPY DEMOCRATS: Specifically target the DNC convention, being held at Bank Of America Arena, to make a point that this is not a partisan movement. In spite of the fact that scores of Democrats have praised the Occupy movement, including President Obama.
“And occupiers and community groups and environmentalists and people from all over the country are going to be coming to Charlotte. And in a way, I think we can think about it as the first convention.”~Lerner

6. BUY STOCK: An example is given by Learner of “a lot of people” buying shares of Bank Of America and taking their shares to the annual shareholders meetings in San Francisco to vote on new polices for the company. This is named The Confront Corporate Power Movement.

“Bank of America shares were recently down to $5, so a lot of people have bought stock and are planning to go to that meeting and try to be citizen shareholder—taxpayer shareholders, and have a say.”~Lerner

Beyond this blueprint for spring anarchy, other bright ideas were flowing in the interview. Mr. Learner has seemingly solved the crippling sub-prime housing crisis by offering a utopian solution: banks pay for everyone’s mortgages. “So in the case of Bank of America and Wells Fargo, there’s millions of people who are underwater, 11 million, in their homes, meaning that their homes are worth less now when they bought them, and they’re drowning in the debt. So there’s a campaign to say, let’s force the banks to write down the principal on those mortgages by $300 billion so that folks can stay in their homes. And that would create a million jobs. It would save people $5,000 on average a year in mortgage payments” Lerner predicted. Piven offered an equally non-traditional solution to the housing crisis when she called for the occupation of foreclosed homes. “…they’re now experimenting with reoccupying foreclosed homes, for example, with ways of rallying to the defense of workers who are locked out or on strike.’’

It remains to be seen how deep the occupy movement will root itself into our American society. Piven fantasizes, ”Protest movements have a long life—10, 15 years—and they are what we have to rely on to take our country back.” Learner’s closing plea is unabashed in its socialist constructs, “Imagine building the kind of movement that can transform the country, that can really talk about redistributing wealth and power. And there’s never a better time to get involved.” We will soon see if the tent-bound progressive armies show up to answer the call.

Source: http://www.theblaze.com/stories/springtime-for-occupy-piven-lerners-six-risky-strategic-steps-forward-for-the-evicted-movement/