OWS at the crossroads—the first amendment on the ropes, but all’s well in lalaland

PATRICE GREANVILLE

Kelsey De Santis and Justin Timberlake at the Marine Corps Ball. Disgraceful that the make-believe syndrome in America has reached such grotesque proportions. Is this what our Marines are fighting for?

BEEN ABSENT A WHILE, swamped with those inevitable “other” things we must attend to while keeping the dialog going. I missed the exchanges here. Anyhow, let’s get to business.

Don’t you all feel great this morning to live in this great and free republic-er, democracy-the very best in the world, and to see, also, that the American Dream is alive and well?

Yes, folks, fairy tales still happen in America. Where else could a lower middle class kid in a Marine uniform get a date with a Galactic-class celeb like Justin Timberlake, just by “asking”…? Only in America, folks. That’s why the media are giving this important story saturation coverage. Those willing to die to protect “our freedoms” can literally have anything in America—anything. Which is bunk, of course. Both subject and predicate. In a companion article on this site, my colleague Phil Rockstroh puts his finger on this scandalous pretense with his usual perspicacity:

Freedom rises despite cops and soldiers not because of them. And that is exactly why those who despise freedom propagate military hagiography and fetishize those wearing uniforms–so they can give the idea of liberty lip service as all the while they order it crushed. (See The Police State Makes Its Move: Retaining one’s humanity in the face of tyranny)

So while an innocent Marine has her dearest wish fulfilled, to the expected chorus of oohs and aahs by the prestitutes, our democracy keeps setting new standards of insubstantiality, with the vital First Amendment essentially voided by the creeping practice of “permissioning”—the custom of giving the authorities the “right” to grant permits to protest or congregate for political reasons, which is plainly absurd. Why should people need to ask permission to protest from those they’re precisely protesting against?

Now any Mayor, not to mention someone higher up in the plutocratic structure, a governor like a Scott Walker, or a Kasich, or an Andy Cuomo (a bastard and a phony positioning himself as the tip of the spear of a new Kennedyesque dynasty—or so they hope) can posture as a constitutional scholar and determine whether the First Amendment is operational or not. At this writing, no courts have refereed the issue (and we know how they may tilt at the very top, even if lower courts find the practice unconstitutional).

In any case, imperious bastards like NYC’s Bloomberg have been seeking excuses to shut down OWS ever since it started, and began to show its subversive promise. The usual character assassination script was promptly rolled out—

OWS was a “nuisance” (complaining neighbors were trotted out on cue by the obedient media, when in reality they are few and distant from the spot);
unsanitary conditions (a bald-faced lie) were a public health risk to one and all;
the occupiers prevented a MacDonalds (?) and similar establishments from carrying on its God-given right to do business (private property trumps citizens rights again);
criminals were seeking harbor in the sprawling “disorder”;
plus other picayune “reasons” that could be marshaled to justify forcible eviction—the burgos believing that by erasing a physical symbol the movement and the grievances would be decapitated.

Maybe the burgos decided to clamp down because things are getting out of control in burgoland: the Eurozone is unravelling, the unwashed are waking up to their plight, and there’s been a mutually reinforcing dynamic between protest groups in Europe, the Middle East, Latin America and elsewhere.

The two main options available to gloved tyrannies in the more developed world have always been low to moderate repression, and cooptation. They’re deploying both. Plus selective media omissions and distortions. But the protests will come and go for a while because the real progenitor is the burgo system itself, capitalism and its antisocial, anti-nature dynamic, which is now in its final and most pernicious phase, and spanning the globe, hence provoking global responses. Although uneven development has been the rule of economic history for centuries if not millennia, now the differences seem to have collapsed—as far as the masses are concerned—because the level of exploitation, criminality, illegitimacy and toxicity has reached simply unconscionable levels. A cancerous mafia has been running the world, and now the mask is finally melting away, with the heat self-applied.

What next for the burgos? The Winter may give them a respite, at least in the US, and a few reforms may also dampen the ardor of those who remain in the fold of Democratic party reformism (on this topic, see Shamus Cooke’s excellent, THE OCCUPY MOVEMENT NEEDS A GOOD FIGHT). And they will be tempted to devise ways of shutting down the Internet’s “seditious” capabilities. That’s why a resolute defense of the Internet and social media, in general, is critical to the success of this phase of the evolving movement.

In the Spring and Summer, new uprisings will likely take place, and if the movement has cogitated its tactical and strategic options well, sorted out the lessons of the first phase, a new level of more organized militancy may enter the stage. Concrete demands that can galvanize the workers are critical to the strengthening of the movement; otherwise labor will remain in the Democrats’ orbit. And, sooner rather than later, some sort of more disciplined formation must congeal. As I mentioned in a prior, what we need now is a national assembly to discuss a unity program, such delegates’ convention being the prelim to a people’s new charter of rights and governance.

The historic moment is there to be grabbed, but the window of opportunity is narrow, and, like a barrage, moving away from us.

Patrice Greanville is TGP’s founding editor.

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