Forum Post: Where does the movement go?

One core issue: As wealth becomes increasingly concentrated in the hands of the few, who have generally ensured that they pay minimal tax, at the expense of the increasingly poorer majority, who increasingly need social services to survive, the tax base continuously erodes, thus jeopardizing the social programs needed by the majority. The wealthy resist paying more tax and focus the debate on attacking social programs and those who need them. So teachers and unions come under attack, as do the jobless; as does Medicare, and Social Security, and pensions. I think this is one unifying feature of the new protest and why it has diverse appeal. The Republican response is to call the protesters “dangerous mobs” and say they are instigating class warfare. Unfortunately, the Republicans and the wealthy have been waging class warfare for decades, and they’re winning. The question is how far those who, whether they know it or not, are losing the war, can be pushed before they really do fight back.

I think the movement at present is diffuse and maybe unfocused to some degree largely because it is in the stage of creating awareness and awakening. I don’t think there is a strategy for where it goes next or what it’s program will be. Personally, I don’t think it can succeed in the political arena. The two party system, effectively manipulated and controlled by the plutocracy, is too entrenched. If the protest movement can’t succeed through the political process, what are the alternatives? One approach that should get some consideration is what I would call “The Network”, and by which I mean a decentralized, widespread, locally-focused movement. Because I don’t think we can change Washington, or Wall Street, I think the ultimate focus may need to be in local communities, where we live, spend our time, can organize at a grass-roots level, and can take local action. At the same time through social networking sites, there can be nationwide, even global, coordination, idea-sharing, and organizing. What kinds of things could be done at the local level? Examples could include:

• Monitoring (and participating in) local government to make sure its decisions do not support the plutocracy at the expense of the 99%. • Urging local boycotts and or demonstrations in front of local branches of banks, including disseminating educational flyers about the abusive nature of credit cards (another scheme to transfer wealth), the refusal of banks to adjust mortgages to help people avoid foreclosure, etc. • Urging boycotts of and disseminating educational flyers about corporations that engage in poor environmental or labor practices, etc. • Organizing teach-ins on campuses to further awareness-building and awakening. • Support local food banks, etc.; and expand local ways to help those in need. • Basically, all actions – and there are many more others will think of – that start to leave the current social/economic/political paradigm behind as broken and irrelevant, and start to replace it with a new model, a new way of being in society.