League of Left Wing Voters

One opinion you hear frequently from some Occupiers is that the world as we now know it is doomed either way. The world economic/financial system is designed to destroy itself, predicated as it is on endless growth despite the finite nature of the resources on which it depends. Sometimes you'll hear that we're all responsible for this- as if I could somehow overcome the vast wastefulness of the entire system just by being a little more conscientious on a daily basis. The truth is that there is so much inertia built into the system that it is not within my power or your power or even the power of millions of people acting collectively to substantially reduce the destructive nature of the current system- unless that collective effort is focused on ending the power of that system entirely. As that is obviously such a tall order, the odds are long. So if we don't succeed, what happens?

When the resources start to run out, the results are liable to be catastrophic. Unfortunately, much of the suffering caused by those catastrophes will fall square on the shoulders of the 99%. The elites will be able to insulate themselves for quite some time from the effects of the disasters caused by their own seemingly limitless appetites. They will continue to have their police forces and their military forces to protect them, most likely with an ever-increasing level of violence as the structures of civil society begin to weaken. The first warlords of the Dark Ages were often the same people who had held positions of power under the Roman Empire, and the elite of the new Dark Age will probably look much like the current elite. What will be different is daily life for you and me- not enough food or water, no civil liberties, no check on the power of the authorities, no respite from warfare and famine and a life more closely resembling serfdom than we would like to imagine.

That grim picture may not be accurate, but it's not impossible. For those of us who think it's likely, resistance to the current system is not a matter of idealism. It's a last-ditch attempt to avoid disaster.

Occupy Homes MN (an Occupy Minneapolis working group) just succeeded in saving the home of Marine veteran Bobby Hull. It looks like this must have scared someone in authority into taking a harder line.

Right on the heels of this important victory, Minneapolis police drove up to an Occupy Homes picket on behalf of homeowner Monique White, and arrested Occupy Homes organizer Ben Egerman. You can see the video footage right here. They walk right up to him, ask him “are you Ben?” and then put the cuffs on with no further explanation. When confronted by the protesters, the police claim he was trespassing- by protesting on the sidewalk in front of a bank just like everyone else there.

The arresting officer knew who Ben was, walked right up to him, and pulled him out of the crowd. There's no way they'll be able to make a trespassing charge stick, so this arrest is about one thing and one thing only- intimidation. They think they can scare us into stopping our fight, by arresting the people they think are our leaders. They're totally wrong. The Occupy Movement is leaderless so that any one of us can be a leader when needed. Arresting one organizer will make no difference. By going and arresting whoever the bank asks them to arrest, the police just make themselves look corrupt and powerless.

Occupy Homes and Occupy Minneapolis won't back down. When the police behave like hired thugs, mercenaries for the big banks, they don't inspire any fear- just the determination to stand strong.

The tragedy of pseudo-democracy is that the truth isn't actively suppressed. It's just rendered ineffective. The corporate media poses as a legitimate “free press,” when in reality it is simply a part of the establishment. It spends almost all of its energy on irrelevant nonsense, creating the impression that there is no news. When a story is so big that it cannot be ignored, it is misrepresented. The result is that the far majority of the population is kept in a perpetual condition of ignorant apathy. People believe what they see on the TV; they don't look any further.

If you do look a little deeper on your own, what you find out is very different. Take a look at this video of the violence in Greece. You won't see legions of unemployable masked hooligans tossing Molotov cocktails at the hard-pressed police. What you'll see is a peaceful protest march, made up of ordinary Greek people from all walks of life. And then you'll see the riot police, driving straight into those people and opening fire with some kind of so-called “less lethal” rounds.

This is the ultimate act of criminality- a government using its police officers like an army of gangsters to suppress a peaceful march through outright violence. Maybe now you'll have some context for what happened later, when some of those who were pushed too far decided to fight back rather than just letting themselves be abused. As an eyewitness to these events made clear, masked “Black Bloc” weren't the only ones throwing stones and waging street battles with the criminals in the Greek riot police. Plenty of ordinary middle-class people joined them, concluding that they no longer had any other choice. After seeing this video, can you blame them?

Did you know that the Department of Homeland Security considers “alternative media” to be “extremist”? And what is it that makes it so extreme? According to the “Domestic Extremism Lexicon,” alternative media is:

“A term used to describe various information sources that provide a forum for interpretations of events and issues that differ radically from those presented in mass media products and outlets.”

You read that right. If you provide information that deviates from the approved “mass media product,” you are an extremist by definition. Does that sound like the United States to you? It sure doesn't to me. But on the other hand, it does make sense, if you compare the accounts of the Oakland violence presented in most of the corporate media with those presented by eyewitnesses.

Not that Occupy Oakland is an unbiased source, but you have to understand how the “mass media products” are actually put together. All they do is paraphrase official press releases. So if the Oakland PD- a completely discredited source for many reasons- puts out a press release accusing protesters of using “improvised explosive devices,” the newspapers and TV stations don't check for themselves. They don't review any of the livestream footage, which shows no such thing. All they do is quote the press release. They'll often throw in a quote or two from an “outraged citizen” to illustrate how Occupy Oakland is supposedly hated by all fine upstanding people. And all those “non-extremists” out there who like their information spoon-fed and predigested are given propaganda disguised as news. Many of them are even gullible enough to believe it.

So, there are not currently many “objective news sources.” This blog certainly isn't one. But everyone should understand that the choice is not between “real news” and “extremist propaganda.” The choice is actually between “official propaganda” and “alternative propaganda.” I personally look at both, and there is this difference between them.

Occupy's propaganda is frequently supported by actual video of the events, and broadly speaking the video tends to support our “alternative interpretation.” The official propaganda or “mass media product” is mostly just regurgitated press releases with no evidence. Which source sounds more reliable to you?

In closing, I'd like to include a quote from the National Lawyer's Guild. They're not an objective source either, but they're also not Occupy, so this is at least a third-party interpretation. Does this sound like what the “mass media products” have been telling you?

“Police violently attacked activists with chemical weapons, so called Less-Lethal munitions, and physical assaults. Hundreds were arrested unlawfully, without opportunity to disperse, and then detained for many hours on the street and then in buses, in stress positions, and without bathrooms, food or water. Once in jail, protesters faced inhumanely crowded conditions, abusive treatment and were denied access to legal counsel. Many remain unaccounted for, though certainly arrested and awaiting booking two days after being detained.

It is appalling that the OPD continues to violate the law and its own policies... The police instigated the confrontation by immediately attacking the march with chemical agents, flashbang bombs, and a volley of rifle or shotgun-fired projectiles.”