Forum Post: Every Epoch Dreams the Next

It is perhaps brutal to say this but the effectiveness of the Occupy movement will be partially gaged by the reaction of the power structure. If it perceives a real threat it will react with brutality. (Boston last night is only small taste of what is to come). There will be efforts to discredit the movement by planting "agent provocateurs" to trigger violence as in Genoa 2001. The other tactic is to tame the movement with very domestic demands of which that have been proposed. These demands will tame the movement and enable party committees and union organizers to take the lead. The fact is that people are out in the street--as in Spain-- because they intuit that the whole system is finished and can not be "tweeked" any longer to benefit people. Let's call it what it is, a crisis of global capitalism. It must expand or die and rather than die, it will kill. Do not narrow the scope of this movement until it has had time to grow. The proposed demands address real issues but do not challenge the root of the problem which go far beyond the list of demands. Let the movement grow, open discussions without the red-baiting and ask the question what demands can we make that link us to the movements in other countries.... Spain and Italy, for instance have different laws not addressed by the demands. Yet, their problems are perhaps even worse than in the US. What is common? Here is where we will find the answer and here is where we will find the unity that will truly challenge the power elite. Do not narrow the growing awareness before its time. Walter Benjamin put it beautifully: Every epoch not only dreams the next, but while dreaming impels it towards wakefulness.