1 Re: Wall Street Occupations and Global Counter Culture
      -- Will Colwell, Suzanne Ross
2 Re: Fed Up with Wall Street (Frankye Johnson)
3 Re: Occupy Wall Street - Debating Strategies
      -- David Worley, Gordon Fitch, Terence Cannon
4 Re: The Origins of Occupy Wall Street Explained
      -- Bill Benet
5 Re: Koch brothers in the Dock -- M. Breslin
6 Re: The Dead Begin to Speak Up in India -- Sue Lambert
7 Wall Street Occupied -- Peter Neil Carroll

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Re: Wall Street Occupations and Global Counterculture
From: Will Colwell

With much respect to Mark Naison and other 1960s
activists, it is odd to read about the making of a
global counter culture without the mention of punk and
hip hop.

In my 40s, I am half way between the baby boomer
activists and today's kids. The 60s may survive with the
Rainbow gatherings, but the infrastructure of today's
activists has much to do with the DIY ethos of
punk/hardcore/hip hop/riot grrrl. My generation has
never and at this point will not have much political
impact but we did have a huge impact within US culture.
At first, it was just setting up record labels,
fanzines, parties, shows, and eventually alternative
spaces/clubs. Now with this next generation of 20
somethings not being able to afford records or even
rent, the infrastructure that 1980s-90s activists had
created like food not bombs, squatting, and alternative
spaces for bands to play and crash has continued to the
present.

I have heard hip hop described as the cultural
expression of the defeat of the civil rights movement by
Reagan backlash. Hardcore punk is the scream of defeat
of the working class. Riot Grrrl is a reaction to the
second class status of women in hardcore. After folk
stopped screaming, we built the beginnings of a new
infra-structure. Today, many of the crusty punks i have
met seem to be violent alcoholic/drug addicts, but live
through train hopping, urban camping, and drug dealing.
The crusties are our 1930s Hobos. Unfortunately, they
too are creating a new infrastructure. My generation
created one partly for an artistic statement. Many in
this generation are creating a new counter cultural out
of economic survival. The crusties are not the only
segment in this generation. The crusties are a very
small minority, but they do represent the new economic
necessity being expressed in the new counter cultures.

These kids seem to be wonderfully informed by the
internet with a cultural pastiche of many sounds and
images. Many listen to Ambient Electronica and sit on
the floor for shows, rather than the slam dance pits of
my generation. Many are unemployed, exploring
alternatives like taking over old warehouses or setting
community gardens. I have even seen one young
multiracial group in Woonsocket, RI set up free fest
where people bring things to give away, rather than
having a yard sale.

I love this new generation. I pray that their new
counter culture has many more of the seeds for new
democracies.

Much thanks to Mark Naison. --- A Luta Continua,
Will C (Providence)

---


Re: Wall Street Occupations and Global Counterculture
From: Suzanne Ross

It's funny to read Mark Naison's comments just after I
returned a few hours ago from Liberty Plaza's Occupy
Wall Street with my 9 year old granddaughter. Soon after
we got there, my granddaughter said "This looks like
Woodstock". She's visited the Woodstock Museum many
times and so has a graphic impression of it. As I
thought about it, it did resemble Woodstock, especially
since it was raining. But it was, as Mark noted, much
more international. I met young people from all over the
world in my one hour stay there. Also, the publication
The Occupied Wall Street Journal is much more political
than the Woodstock messages were. Yes, counterculture,
but seemingly a bit more strategic in its focus though I
agree that counterculture can provide the environment
for political and strategic developments.

Thanks, Mark.

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Re: Fed Up with Wall Street

I like the sentiments in this; It's about time someone
make some noise around an issue that has a effect on us
all. Who among us, that isn't rich, do not want to see
change. Being both a civil rights and human rights
activist, I for one am glad someone has the backbone to
stand up for the right to life liberty and the pursuit
of happiness..."Direct Action Now." I hope that this
action be the start of some radically great.

Frankye Johnson

---

Re: Occupy Wall Street - Debating Strategies for Social
Change
From: David Worley

As my friend Lynn Y remarked when we visited the
encampment last week, this protest needs a focus in the
form of a simple demand or maybe two at most. She
suggested demanding that the big banks chip in some
fraction of a percent of their obscene profits this year
to jump start a massive public works jobs program. Or
perhaps, demand restoration of meaningful regulation
(Sarbanes-Oxley style) of the financial "service"
institutions. Or even just demand that they stop
blocking legislation to tax hedge fund profits like
regular income. Right now this is just a beautiful
publicity stunt, but it could get much bigger if it had
some teeth.

---

The carping, caviling, snarking, critiquing, and
negative theorizing that so many established liberal and
Left groups and people have emitted since they found out
about the Occupation have been most impressive. They
remind me a lot of the 1960s when the Old Left treated
the New Left and the Hippies that way. Maybe that's
where the current crop of carpers learned the practice.
They seem to have learned it well. Fortunately it seems
the movement, or whatever it is, doesn't need them.

Gordon Fitch

---

Re: Follow No Leaders

They smell bad? They wear odd clothes? They're just
acting out? They should not be taken seriously? Their
offices are always "shabby." I remember that from 1967,
when I was a leader of Stop the Draft Week. I don't
remember what deodorant I was wearing. But we stopped
the military draft.

Terence Cannon

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Re: The Origins of Occupy Wall Street Explained
From: Bill Benet

While this is a good interview, here is a link to a more
in- depth piece (which acknowledges the Adbusters call)
but which puts that call within the context of a longer
mobilization. I cannot verify the reality of either
posting but they do seem to mesh.

http://ampedstatus.org/a-report-from-the-frontlines-the-long-road-to-occupywallstreet-and-the-origins-of-the-99-movement/


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Re: Koch brothers in the Dock Over Trades with Iran
From: M. Breslin

The more light shining on the Koch brothers is all the
better for the United States of America and our Citizens.

Thanks.

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Re: The Dead Begin to Speak Up in India
From: Sue Lambert

While I admire and love Arundhati Roy, I am perplexed
why someone with such knowledge and wisdom would contend
that India is the "largest democracy" - this would mean
that the vast majority (as opposed to something less)
are literate, not illiterate as is the case. When vast
numbers cannot fill out the election ballot - what kind
of democracy is this? An elitist one, I say.

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Re: We Are the 99%: Protests Against Wall Street Spread
From: Laurel Macdowell

Well it is about time! May the protest live and grow and
make people think! After 30 or more years of neo-
conservatism, it is time for a change to a fairer, more
democratic and more sustainable society. Now you need
citizens to go and talk to their politicians in Congress
so they don't think these protests are a blip. And then
you need candidates in Nov. that represent the values of
the protesters. Time to turn it around.

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Wall Street Occupied

Sprawled, ample backsides on damp concrete, serious teachers
scribble red-ink comment down the weary margins of homework,
giving praise or encouragement, a checkmark, the letter grade
that causes a student's stomach to sink or swim, working
on the weekend in topsy-turvy times, pleading for their jobs.

They've come from Jersey City, Brooklyn, the Bronx, street smart,
accredited, knowing 1984 IS NOT AN INSTRUCTIONAL MANUAL.
They are fighting City Hall and the Governors in Trenton and Albany,
the vice-principals in charge of bondage and discipline, budget-cutters
who believe number two pencils are the wave of the future and must
be rationed to prevent printed vandalism in the boys' bathrooms.

This is Wall Street occupied by maniacs who haven't abandoned
hope for the young, the gray-headed high school algebra expert
reassigned by a clever administrator to teach pre-kindergarten classes
so maybe she'll feel so demeaned or bitter she'll surrender and quit
and be replaced by a less adroit but cheaper version so the dollar
saved is a dollar unearned; only the students will notice a difference.

A scraggily, black-bearded man is singing an anthem of hope
while holding a sign written on a scrap of cardboard torn off a box:
 
     BANK OF AMERICA
     MAKING AMERICA
     HOMELESS ONE CHILD
     AT A TIME

Someone starts drumming a bongo, a familiar tune rises,
yes, and a hundred voices lift the melody softly, humming
through the unsingable parts of the lyrical war cry
to the land of the free-repeat, land of the free-FREE, FREE!
Even patrolman Miele, armed with pistol, whistle, black baton,
who tells me his worries that the young will run amok
through Liberty Square, reveals a personal, tentative smile
at the outlaws who terrify politicians with our national anthem.

Amidst their soiled clothing, scruffy hair, no whiff of alcohol, tobacco,
no drift of weed yields that stupefying buzz of the old-time protests,
no distractions, no drama descends beyond the sheer reality of hope.
Wall Street, home of the Brooks Brothers' fictional individual
claiming constitutional rights to political purchase, is no random target.
The only words these corporations know, reports the Occupied Wall Street
Journal, is more. Reversing Jefferson's self-evident truths, life liberty
pursuit of happiness I AM A HUMAN BEING NOT A COMMODITY
a woman's placard announces. They are disemboweling every last
social service funded by the taxpayers. IGNORE ME/GO SHOPPING/
GREED KILLS.because they want that money themselves.

Ghosts of the Great Depression-gray men grimacing
on soup lines, apple sellers on city street corners,
Dorothea Lange's Okie mother, bread winners no longer
bringing home the bacon, forfeiting the love of their wives,
young women hoisting skirts over their knees for a nickel.
Not here, not now, not despairing, not yet, but hopeful,
extravagantly expectant-naïve, I hear the cynics chant,
foolish, idealistic, child-like dreamers-all true, of course.
They sing on, coming at last to the climax, home of the brave.

--Peter Neil Carroll
Belmont, California

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