[Turkish] New York Belediye Başkanı Wall Street’i İşgal Et protestocularını zorla tahliye etti

New York Şehri Polisi dün gece Wall Street’i İşgal Et protestocularının kamp yerine baskın düzenledi ve 17 Eylül’den beri orada bulunan protestocuları zor kullanarak tahliye etti. Polis yetkilileri tarafından dikkatli bir biçimde koordine edilmiş bir saldırı olduğu kabul edilen ve Beyaz Saray’ın talimatıyla girişildiğinden kuşku duyulmaması gereken bu saldırı, Oakland’ı İşgal Et protestocularının zorla tahliye edilmelerinden bir gün sonra gerçekleştirildi. Ne var ki, protestocular yanlarında, NYPT’nin [New York Polis Teşkilatı] gece yarısı gerçekleştirdiği, dikkatle planlanmış olduğu anlaşılan baskın sırasında el koyduğu ve kasıtlı olarak tahrip ettiği çadırları ve eşyaları olmadığı halde, bugün (15 Kasım) öğleden sonra Zuccotti Parkı’na geri döndüler.



Polise bağıran bir protestocu

 Zuccotti Parkı’ndaki manzara ilk elde hem gergin hem de umut vericiydi. Protestocular kamp yerlerini kaybettikleri için demoralize olmamışlardı. Ortaya çıkan yeni koşullar altında görevlerini sürdürebilmeleri için kendi yönetim organlarını yeniden şekillendirerek, sahip oldukları yaratıcılık ve örgütlenme kapasitesini bir kez daha gösterdiler. Mutfak, bu kez Trinity Kilisesi mezarlığının önüne park etmiş olan bir kamyonun kasasında, yeniden faaliyete geçmiş durumda. Geceleri yatacak bir yere ihtiyacı olan yüzlerce insan için kalabilecekleri evler ayarlandı. Kalınacak yerlerin çoğu protestolara sempati duyan New Yorkluların protestoculara evlerini açmalarıyla sağlandı ancak diğer şehirlerde bulunan diğer kamp yerlerine gitmiş olan bazı protestocular da olabilir. Kamp yeri Zuccotti Parkı’nda ya da başka bir yerde yeniden kurulacak olsa da olmasa da, protestocular eylemlerinden vazgeçmiyorlar. Konuşmacılardan birinin yaptığı bir açıklama, protestocuların verdikleri mücadeleyi, Manhattan’ın merkezinde yer alan, sembol niteliği kazanmış bir kamp yerinin ötesine geçen bir mücadele olarak gördüklerini açıkça ortaya koyuyordu:

“Böyle bir hareket zor kullanılarak tahliye edilemez. Bazı politikacılar bizi kamusal alanlardan –kendi alanlarımızdan- fiziksel olarak çıkarabilirler ve fiziksel olarak, başarılı olabilirler. Ancak biz bir fikir savaşımı yürütüyoruz. Biz, siyasi yapılarımızın bize, halka, sadece elinde büyük servet ve güç toplamış olanlara değil, hepimize hizmet etmesi gerektiğini düşünüyoruz. Kongre, Wall Street’e göbekten bağlı olduğu için, komşularımızın evlerinden ve yüreklerinden dökülen güçlü öyküleri, yaşanan amansız ekonomik sıkıntı öykülerini göz ardı ettiği için, bu düşüncenin birçoğumuzda karşılık bulduğuna inanıyoruz. Bizim, içinde önem taşıdığımız bir demokrasi rüyamız var ve işte bu nedenle, bu kadar çok sayıda insan kendisini Wall Street’i İşgal Et ve %99 hareketiyle özdeşleştiriyor.”



Protestocular Zuccotti Parkı’ndan çıkarıldıktan sonra New York Polisiyle çatıştılar Fotoğraf: Lucas Jackson/Reuters

Bu gece, Zuccotti Parkı’nda yapılan genel toplantı, son zamanlarda yapılmış olan daha önceki toplantılardan çok daha kalabalıktı. Tahminime göre katılımcı sayısı 1000 ila 3000 kişi arasında değişiyordu. Belediye Başkanı Bloomberg’in giriştiği tahliye operasyonunun ironik bir sonucu, artık çadırlar kaldırılmış olduğundan meydanda halka açık bir toplantı düzenlemek için çok geniş bir alanın açılmış olmasıydı. Genel toplantıda, 17 Kasım Perşembe günü, Wall Street’i İşgal Et’in ortaya çıkışının ikinci ayında, New York Menkul Kıymetler Borsası önünde kitlesel bir yürüyüş düzenlenmesi kararı alındı.

Bugünkü toplantı, meydan birçoğu kask takmış olan yüzlerce polis tarafından kuşatılmış olduğu halde gerçekleştirildi. Meydan aynı zamanda bariyerlerle de çevrilmişti ve böylece polis protestocuların geçmelerine izin verilen tek giriş noktasını yakından izleyebiliyordu. Onlarca polis minibüsü ve naklen yayın aracı meydanı çepeçevre sarmıştı.

Hem bugün hem de daha önceki seferlerde dikkatimi çeken tuhaf bir durum, meydanda neredeyse hiç bir sol grubun yer almıyor olmasıydı. Hiç kuşkusuz sol gruplara üye olan kimi insanlar tekil bireyler ve bazen de internet “gazetecileri” olarak orada bulunuyorlardı ama bu gruplar eylemlerde örgütlü varlıklarıyla hemen hemen hiç yer almadılar. Meydanda, Birleşik Krallık’ta müteveffa Ted Grant’in önderliğini yaptığı, eski adıyla “Militan” grubunun farklı hiziplerini temsil eden iki küçük grubun yayın stantlarını gördüm. Wall Street’i İşgal Et protestocularının saflarında kendi düşünceleriyle mücadele vermek isteyen sosyalist bir siyasi hareketin burada en azından bir yayın standı açmasını beklenirdi. Ancak SWP [Sosyalist İşçi Partisi], Spartakist ya da Sosyalist Eşitlik Partisi gibi gruplar eylem alanında yoktular.

% 99 düşüncesi Amerika'nın popülist ve radikal geleneklerinden kaynaklanmaktadır. Ancak Marksist ve sosyalist bir geleneğin en azından iki kuşaktır var olmadığı ve emek hareketinin içinde bulunduğu uyuşukluk hali göz önüne alındığında, %99 düşüncesinin, muğlâk olarak formüle edilmiş bir biçimde de olsa, işçi sınıfının yerini tutan bir ilk adım olarak eklemlendiriliyor olmasının kaçınılmaz bir durum olduğu görülecektir. Bununla birlikte, toplumsal eşitsizliğe karşı oluşmuş olan yaygın duyarlılığın hareket tarafından eklemlenmiş olması, Amerika’nın siyasi yaşamında ileriye doğru atılmış önemli bir adımı temsil etmektedir. Bu, Amerika’nın bir toplum olarak Avrupa’nın daha yaşlı ülkelerinin sınıf sistemlerinden kaçınabildiği ve herhangi bir insanın çok çalışması ve gerekli enerjiyi göstermesi durumunda bir sonraki Warren Buffet olabileceği efsanesine kesin olarak bir son verildiği anlamına gelmektedir. Wall Street’i İşgal Et hareketiyle ilgili dikkat çekici husus, önderlerinin açıkça sergiledikleri tüm siyasi kafa karışıklığına rağmen, hareketin bizzat kapitalizmi siyasi söylemin gündemine yerleştirmiş olmasıdır. İdeolojik aygıtın ve devlet aygıtının bu sorunu gündem dışında tutabilmek için on yıllardır çok yoğun bir biçimde çaba gösterdiği dikkate alındığında, bunun küçük bir başarı olmadığı görülecektir. Aniden, 1960’lardan bu yana görülmeyen bir biçimde, alternatif bir ekonomik sistemin üzerinde düşünülmesine yönelik bir açıklık ortaya çıktı.

Hareket, şu anki haliyle, kökten toplumsal değişimi tetikleyebilmekten hâlâ uzaktır. Bunun olabilmesi, işçi sınıfının siyaset sahnesine çıkmasını ve siyaseti kapitalizmin sınırları içinde hapseden iki partili sistemden bir kopuşun yaşanmasını gerektirecektir. Bu, aynı zamanda sosyalist politikaların bilinçli bir biçimde eklemlenmesini ve devrimci bir önderliğin geliştirilmesini de gerektirecektir –ki bu, Wall Street’i İşgal Et’in anarşist kafa yapısına sahip önderliği için, hâlihazırda nefret edilen bir şeydir. Bununla birlikte, bunlar çoğunlukla kendi politik bakış açılarını hâlâ geliştirmekte olan genç insanlar. Biz Marksistler, bu insanlarla aramızda ne türden farklılıklar olursa olsun, onları çeşitli sol ve liberal örgütlerde yer alan profesyonel siyaset erbabıyla ve kiniklerle aynı kefeye koymayız. Bu bağlamda akla, gerek Nation Dergisi ve Moveon.org gibi gruplar gerekse de UAW [Birleşik Otomobil İşçileri Sendikası] gibi sendikaların bürokratları geliyor. Kısacası, bu harekette gördüğümüz sadece bir başlangıçtır, ama bu başlangıç daha şimdiden milyonlarca insanın hayal gücünü harekete geçirmiştir ve yaygınlaşma ve siyasi olarak olgunlaşma kapasitesine sahiptir.

Alex Steiner, 16 Kasım 2011

Share:

Read More

New York Mayor evicts Occupy Wall Street protesters

The New York City Police raided the Occupy Wall Street encampment last night and evicted the protesters who had been there since Sept 17. This followed by one day the eviction of protesters at Occupy Oakland in what was acknowledged by police officials as a carefully coordinated assault undoubtedly stemming from the White House. But by this afternoon (Nov 15) the protesters were back at Zuccotti Park, though without their tents or their property, which had been confiscated and wantonly destroyed by the NYPD during their carefully planned raid in the middle of the night.

Protester shouting at police

The scene at Zuccotti Park was at once both tense and hopeful. The protesters were not demoralized by the loss of their encampment. They have once again shown their capacity for inventiveness and organization by reconfiguring their governing bodies so that they could continue their functions under the new circumstances. The kitchen was back in operation, this time from the back of a truck parked in front of the Trinity Church cemetery two blocks south on Broadway. Housing arrangement were being made for hundreds who need a place to sleep for the night. Most of the housing arrangements are in the homes of sympathetic New Yorkers but some might be going to other encampments in other cities. Whether the encampment reemerges at Zuccotti Park or elsewhere, the protesters are not going away. A statement from one of the speakers made it clear that they see their struggle as transcending the immediate symbol of an encampment in downtown Manhattan:



“Such a movement cannot be evicted. Some politicians may physically remove us from public spaces – our spaces – and, physically, they may succeed. But we are engaged in a battle over ideas. Our idea is that our political structures should serve us, the people – all of us, not just those who have amassed great wealth and power. We believe this idea resonates with so many of us because Congress, beholden to Wall Street, has ignored the powerful stories pouring out from the homes and hearts of our neighbors, stories of unrelenting economic suffering. Our dream for a democracy in which we matter is why so many people have come to identify with Occupy Wall Street and the 99% movement.”

Protesters clash with New York Police after being removed from Zuccotti Park Photograph: Lucas Jackson/Reuters

The General Assembly at Zuccotti Park tonight was much larger than recent ones. I would estimate the crowd at between 1000 – 3000 people. One ironic outcome of Mayor Bloomberg’s eviction is that now that tents are gone there is plenty of space for holding a public meeting in this square. The General Assembly resolved to stage a massive march on the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday, Nov 17, the two month anniversary of the start of Occupy Wall Street.

Today’s meeting took place as the square was surrounded by hundreds of police, many of them wearing riot helmets. It was also barricaded so that the police could closely monitor the one entrance point protesters were allowed to pass through. Dozens of police vans and news trucks surrounded the square.

One curious fact that I noticed both today and on previous occasions is the almost complete absence of any of the left groups. To be sure some of them are there as individuals and occasionally as Internet "journalists",  but they hardly ever have any sort of organized presence. I did see literature tables from two small groups representing different factions of what used to be the “Militant” group in the UK, lead by the late Ted Grant. One would think that if a socialist political movement was interested in battling over its ideas among the Occupy Wall Street protesters it would have at least set up a literature table.  But groups like the SWP, Spartacist, or the Socialist Equality Party are nowhere to be found.

The idea of the 99% comes out of America’s populist and radical traditions. But given the absence for at least two generations of a tradition of Marxism and socialism, and the quiesence of the labor movement, it was all but inevitable that the idea of the 99% would be articulated as an initial, if vaguely formulated stand in for the working class. Nevertheless the articulation of widespread sentiment against social inequality marks an important step forward in the American political psyche. It means that the myth of America as a society that has escaped the class systems of the older countries of Europe, and where anyone, as long as they apply themselves with hard work and energy, can become the next Warren Buffet, is once and for all put to pasture. The remarkable thing about the Occupy Wall Street movement is that despite all the political confusion its leaders evince, it has placed capitalism itself on the agenda of political discourse. That is no small accomplishment considering that the full weight of the ideological and state apparatus has worked overtime for decades to keep that question off the agenda. Suddenly there is an openness to a consideration of an alternative economic system the likes of which have not been seen since the 1960s.

The movement as it stands now is still far from being able to induce fundamental social change. That will require the entry of the working class onto the political stage and a break from the two party system that has trapped politics within the confines of capitalism. It will also require the conscious articulation of socialist policies and the development of a revolutionary leadership, something that is currently anathema to the anarchist-minded leadership of Occupy Wall Street. However, these are mostly young people who are still developing their political outlook. Whatever differences we Marxists have with them, we do not place them in the same camp as the professional political operatives and cynics who populate various left and liberal organizations. Outfits like the Nation Magazine and Moveon.org as well as the bureaucrats of unions like the UAW come to mind in this context. In short, what we have in this movement is just a beginning, but one that has already captured the imagination of millions and has the capacity to spread and mature politically.

The following are interviews at Occupy Wall Street that I conducted this past Saturday, prior to the eviction.

Alex Steiner, Nov. 16, 2011 

Interview with an iron worker at Occupy Wall Street

Free health care song at Occupy Wall Street

Tour of Zuccotti Park: interview with Occupy Nova Scotia

Share:

Read More

Eyewitness report from Oakland

Oakland Occupy Dispersed, but then…


Oakland Erupts!


Police Attack Protestors In the Streets

Oakland, very late on Tuesday the 25th of October 2011 --

It all took place under the endlessly circling helicopters, like giant gnats, flapping, buzzing, shining their threatening lights. It made me remember the line from a 1980s song, "I wish I had a rocket launcher."
The Oakland Occupy, a peaceful and well organized encampment of about 200 or so in front of Oakland's City Hall, was violently attacked and dispersed by 500 cops at 4:45 am this (Tuesday)morning. The Oakland police, backed up by cops from 13 other jurisdictions, including UC Berkeley cops and the California Highway patrol, moved in with tear gas, flash grenades, rubber bullets and even armored vehicles. At least three people were injured, including one hospitalized with a head wound.

Approximately 105 people arrested at the dispersal were still being held as of 4 pm, most charged with standard protest charges such as "refusing to leave the scene of a riot," according to representatives from the National Lawyers Guild, who have been acting as legal monitors. These may be cited and released, but some face more serious charges, and could be arraigned this week.

"This Is What A Police State Looks Like," said the Oscar Grant Plaza Gazette, which promises to keep publishing despite the dispersal. But the dispersal was just the beginning, as this evening's events showed. According to news reports, another hundred or so arrests have been added tonight, charges as yet unknown.

After the dispersal, a rally was called for and held at 4 pm on the steps of the main Oakland Public Library on 14th St, several blocks down from the Occupy site (which was now barricaded off and guarded by cops). The library was significant, since the Occupy and other protestors have sharply opposed the recent threats of Oakland's "left" liberal Mayor Jean Quan to close libraries, a threat which was used to force concessions from city workers. On an Occupy support march, which wound its way through Oakland's streets last Saturday to protest the threatened dispersal, marchers stopped in front of the library and chanted, "Shut down OPD, not the public library," to smiles and cheers from library workers. Then today, as the rally formed up, we were told that the the Oakland PD had asked the library to close its doors in advance of the expected rally. Library workers proudly refused to do so, to cheers from the crowd.

As the rally outside the library gained strength, supporters quickly filled 14th St below the library steps. Chants of "Every week, every day, the Occupy is here to stay," rose up from arriving supporters, and the rally vowed to march up 14th to re-take the Occupy site in Oscar Grant (officially Frank Ogawa) Plaza. Using "mic check" repetition, the rally vowed that, "whatever happens tonight, we meet again, every night, at 6 pm, at 14th and Broadway."
On the way to 14th and Broadway tonight, the plan was to wind our way West a few blocks to the local municipal jail at 7th and Broadway, to give some support to our detained comrades inside. As we marched closer to the jail, changing the route at least once to out-flank a major police barricade on Broadway, images of the storming of the Bastille came to mind, and I think the cops were thinking about that as well. They seemed almost desperate to keep us from getting to that jail.

As we rounded the corner at 8th and Washington, now only about two blocks from the jail, there was a thin blue line of 10 or so cops blocking the street. The crowd pushed up and many began to flow around the police line. After some billy-club poking, the line broke up, people poured through, and the cops were quickly surrounded, along with a handful of civilian vehicles that were caught there. Protestors and cops shouted and cops jabbed for a few minutes until all of a sudden three cops were bent over beating and containing someone. Enraged, the crowd surrounding the cops broke into a chant of "let them go." (It turned out it was two arrestees.)

While all this was going on, many marchers had moved on up the block, and once again made a turn to avoid a second and more formidable line of cops, complete with motorcycles and patrol cars, guarding the jail. The Occupyers' principle of consensus and no leaders seemed to alternatively work well, and then break down into disorganization; but then it usually picked up and found a united path again.

In this instance, while some marchers were shouting "let them go" and surrounding the cops, others were trying to get marchers to move on, not realizing that the cops had two prisoners down on the street. For a while marchers were separated into two groups, but then, the second line of cops moved in to rescue their now paint-spattered brethren, and all hell broke loose. This was the first battle of the evening, as police opened fire with flash-bang grenades and tear gas. The police then retreated with their prisoners, and the marchers reconnected and decided to keep moving, this time heading toward Oscar Grant Plaza, as darkness began to fall.

That set the pattern for most of the night. When we arrived at the site of the former encampment, it was barricaded off and guarded by a solid line of cops. (And City Hall was closed, even though tonight would have normally been a council meeting.) Protestors pushed up to the line, but very soon a sergeant was on the horn. "This is an unlawful assembly. If you do not leave the designated area within 5 minutes, you will be arrested. Chemical agents will be used. You could suffer serious injury." Just as the police were about to unleash a barrage of tear gas, protestor consensus worked again, and the march took off up Broadway and then swerved to go up Telegraph Ave. to avoid yet another line of cops.

We marched and marched, seeing no cops, and getting enthusiastic welcome from the drivers whose cars were stuck at intersections that the march was passing through. In the streets the whole way, this march had grown as people heard news reports on KPFA and came down to join it. Very hard to say, but I think its peak could have been 3,000.

After a stop at Snow Park, on the shore of Lake Merritt (the site of a second encampment, which was also removed early Tuesday morning), marchers headed back up to 14th and Broadway. That's when the serious battle erupted. This time, after the usual warning, marchers held their ground, and the cops unleashed a huge barrage of tear gas, which sent most of us off in different directions. At least one demonstrator was struck in the head by a tear gas canister.

The police were later quoted on local TV news as saying that they acted in self-defense, since they were being bombarded with rocks, bottles, and even knives. This is crap. I was watching the whole time from the outer edge of the crowd, and saw exactly one piece of something flying toward the cops. It was now about 8 pm, and my companion and I escaped the tear gas and called it a night. But many marchers, fewer in number each time, kept returning to the scene at 14th and Broadway. According to news reports, three more barrages of tear gas were fired at ever smaller groups of protestors, the last one around 11 pm. And the maddening drone of helicopters never seems to stop, just one price of living in a war zone.

The spirit and determination--and the numbers--of these protestors was impressive. One young marcher said to me, early in the march, that he'd been to several of the other Occupys around the country, but except for New York, Oakland was the only place that could produce a large protest such as this on the very next day after a police dispersal of their encampment.

As for consensus and "99 percent?" Those concepts will inevitably give way to a process of sorting out. The bulk of the Tea Party, the police rank-and-file, and Mayor Jean Quan are all in the 99 percent, as it is being defined. The General Assembly of the Oakland Occupy evolved, in its 2-weeks so far, a view of the police as the enemy who needed to be kept out of the encampment, and a decision-making process that involves a quorum of at least three to present a proposal, and a super majority (but not unanimity) to pass one.

For now though, the great value of this movement is that its aim is quite good. The one percent of Wall Street barons, the financiers who are the very peak of the imperialist ruling class, is exactly the clique that needs to be overthrown in a working class revolution which would expropriate, not just control, the banks. The aim is good, but the revolutionary consciousness is not quite there yet. Still, the consciousness is a bit better than what is suggested by one sign that I saw being held up at the library rally earlier today. It read, "Mayor Quan, and Oakland Police - Which Side Are You On?" I smiled and said to the sign holder, "I think they've already answered that question." He smiled back broadly, but still held the sign.

-- Chris Kinder, socialist and activist

Share:

Read More

Impresiones de la ocupación de Wall Street

Por Alex Steiner

06 de octubre 2011

Traducción de Antonio Baluarte

En el centro de Manhattan está Wall Street , preñado de la historia de los Estados Unidos. Aunque hoy en día Wall Street se conoce como el corazón financiero del capitalismo estadounidense,  comenzó como una muralla, al límite norte del asentamiento original holandés de Nueva Amsterdam. Los jóvenes manifestantes que se encuentran ahora en la tercera semana de su ocupación de Zuccotti Park eligieron su campamento también. Apenas a tres cuadras de sus tiendas de campaña se encuentra la razón de ese símbolo del capitalismo americano, el New York Stock Exchange.

En diagonal, a través de la calle de las columnas de mármol de la Bolsa de Valores,hay una gigantesca estatua del fundador de la república estadounidense, George Washington. Él está de pie en las escalinatas del Federal Hall, el lugar donde fue juramentado como el primer Presidente de la República. Otro padre fundador está enterrado aún más cerca del sitio del campamento de los manifestantes - Alexander Hamilton, el arquitecto de los Estados Unidos , del First National Bank, está descansando en el cementerio de Trinity Church. 

Otro bloque más o menos por la calle y la vuelta de la esquina de la Bolsa de Valores se encuentra levantadas las gigantescas murallas fortificadas de la Reserva Federal de Nueva York, sede de lo que es quizás el mayor tesoro de lingotes de oro en el mundo, por un valor aproximadamente de 7.000 toneladas. Más que esto, aquí es donde la mayor parte de la política económica de los Estados Unidos se lleva a cabo, a partir de la fijación de los tipos de cambio de monedas extranjeras a la transferencia de miles de millones de dólares entre los bancos sobre una base diaria. El edificio también organizó, junto con el Departamento del Tesoro en Washington, algunos de los encuentros que reunió a los jefes de la Reserva Federal y el Tesoro con el CEO de los mayores bancos del país para elaborar los términos de lo que eventualmente se convirtió en el plan de rescate del TARP de los bancos tras la crisis provocada por el colapso de Lehman Brothers en 2008.

Esto nos lleva a una consideración de lo que está pasando en el Zuccotti Park. Varios miles de manifestantes están diciendo que han tenido suficiente. Están cansados ​​de ver a miles de millones de dólares que se utiliza para rescatar a los bancos cuyas prácticas fraudulentas en los años anteriores los dejó en posesión de bienes masivos, cuyo valor bajó repentinamente a cero. Al otro lado del rescate bancario realizado tanto por las administraciones de Bush y Obama, ha sido el empobrecimiento de decenas de millones de personas, especialmente de los jóvenes. Mi impresión, como resultado de hablar con algunos de los manifestantes y la audiencia que entrevisté es que la gran mayoría de los ocupantes de Wall Street no ve ningún futuro para sí mismos en virtud de este sistema económico conocido como capitalismo.

También me impresionó el espíritu de la inventiva y la lucha de estos jóvenes. Ellos, frente a grandes dificultades, han sido capaces de mantener una ciudad de carpas en el centro de Manhattan, en un inhóspito "parque" que es en realidad una plaza de concreto con poco o nada de servicios, que no sean la hierba y los árboles, y no hay baños públicos o fuentes de agua. Lo que sí hay son  algunas mesas y sillas que normalmente son ocupadas por los trabajadores de oficina sorbiendo su café de la mañana, los jugadores de ajedrez o sitios de tomar de los magnates de Wall Street para los cuartos. De alguna manera este grupo ha logrado alimentarse a sí mismo, con la ayuda de los vecinos que han donado alimentos.

Se las arreglaron para mantener seca  la cara en las implacables lluvias de otoño en Nueva York,  gracias a unas lonas que ellos han secuestrado. Sin electricidad, han conseguido crear un centro de comunicaciones, alimentado por un generador portátil, donde varias personas están ocupadas en la cima dándolo vuelta durante todo el día, llueva o haga sol, esparciendo su mensaje a los sitios de redes sociales en todo el mundo.

Se han creado comités encargados de confección de carteles, impresión de una versión satírica de The Wall Street Journal, y la organización de las marchas y actos de desobediencia civil. Hay un ruido constante de tambores y otros instrumentos en una esquina donde puedes encontrar juerguistas traspasado por los sonidos rítmicos. Hay incluso una biblioteca libre repleta de libros donados, disponible para quien quiera leerlos. Lo más destacado de cada noche es lo que ellos llaman una "Asamblea General", un experimento de participación democrática donde todo el mundo que quiera puede hablar y contribuir a la discusión. A las decisiones se llega a través de un torturante proceso de consenso.


La policía ha prohibido el uso de megáfonos o equipos de audio por lo que es extremadamente difícil de mantener reuniones al aire libre. Sin embargo, los manifestantes han vuelto a encontrar una ingeniosa manera de sortear este obstáculo legal para la democracia participativa. Una persona habla, la  que es a su vez, estrechamente rodeada de cientos de facilitadores. Luego, estos animadores hacen eco con su voz, de las palabras del hablante, de manera que la multitud que los rodea puede conocer de la demanda. El procedimiento me recuerda a la brillante película de Truffaut, Fahrenheit 451, (basada en una historia igual de brillante, de Ray Bradbury), donde en un futuro cuando la lectura o la impresión de los libros están prohibidos, un grupo de personas que se dedican a la preservación de la literatura mediante memorizar libros enteros que ya no pueden ser impresos o a los cuales ya no se puede  acceder físicamente. Se han convertido en libros de vida así como a los facilitadores en la Ocupada Wall Street se han convertido en megáfonos vivientes.

La política de los manifestantes, en la medida en que la articulan, es ciertamente ingenua y contradictoria. He visto pronunciamientos que a la vez que sonaban muy radicales, llamando a poner fin a la plutocracia que maneja este país, junto con otros signos ("Emitir la ley para trabajos  ya") que indica que la luna de miel con Obama en que muchos jóvenes en 2008, aunque mal herida, no puede ser completamente terminada para algunos. Los manifestantes OWS han hecho hincapié en que  desprecian el proceso político y han evitado deliberadamente la presentación de una serie de demandas. Lo que indica claramente han sido inspirados por el ejemplo de las manifestaciones masivas en la plaza Tahrir de El Cairo a principios de este año y la plaza Syntagma, en Atenas. Ellos consideran  su acción como la chispa de la Revolución Americana.

Esta no es una revolución  pero es imposible predecir cómo este movimiento va a mostrar sus efectos. Hay indicios de que los manifestantes han aprovechado una vena de la ira contra las injusticias de la vida en la  América del siglo XXI que ha estado hirviendo a fuego lento durante años. Sus acciones ya han inspirado a otras protestas en otras ciudades. Asistimos una vista previa de esta acción en los plantones en Madison, Wisconsin, a principios de este año. Desafortunadamente ese movimiento fue desviado por la burocracia sindical y el Partido Demócrata que incitaron abandonar sus protestas y poner su energía en una campaña de más valor. A los manifestantes OWS no será tan fácil desviarlos. Sin embargo, su rechazo de la acción política es a la vez su fuerza y ​​su debilidad.

Lo que se considera la política normal en este país, el apoyo a uno u otro de los dos partidos burgueses, sin duda merece una dosis fuerte de desprecio. Pero que por sí misma hace poco para lograr el tipo de sociedad más justa que los manifestantes imaginan. De hecho, puede servir como una invitación para los demagogos y oportunistas de varias clases para venir y llenar el vacío. Y aunque he visto pocos indicios de  la confluencia habitual de los grupos de la izquierda en el campamento, su presencia se hincha cada vez que hay una marcha de protesta o alguna otra acción. El partido neo-estalinista de los Trabajadores del Mundo se ha manifestado al igual que la Organización Socialista Internacional (ISO). Hubo mucho entusiasmo hoy en la anticipación de los representantes de los sindicatos a venir mañana para mostrar su apoyo.

 Por supuesto, los publicistas de la burocracia sindical que se unirán a la marcha de mañana van a estar aquí para tratar de canalizar este movimiento hacia atrás en la seguridad de convertir las protestas en inofensivas y por el apoyo al Partido Demócrata. La ingenuidad evidenciada en los manifestantes, que  podrían esperar otra cosa de la burocracia sindical, no es sorprendente. Ellos vienen de una generación casi totalmente desprovista de cualquier cultura o de educación política histórica.

Los que han entrado en contacto con la política, ha sido en gran medida a los movimientos de protesta de la última década, el movimiento anti-guerra, el movimiento de justicia global, etc.  han recogido una educación en gran medida gracias a los sitios de redes sociales en Internet y al ejemplo de Egipto y Grecia. Independientemente de sus orígenes, ya sea de la clase trabajadora o clase media,  han llegado a la misma coyuntura en este tercer año de la mayor crisis económica del sistema capitalista desde la Gran Depresión. En su mayoría son desempleados o subempleados, y no ven un futuro para sí mismos en una sociedad que los ha bombardeado desde el nacimiento con imágenes de una utopía de los consumidores de Iphones y centros de entretenimiento en el hogar. El sueño americano se ha convertido para ellos en una pesadilla.

Ellos han resucitado muchos de los símbolos y las imágenes de la contracultura de 1960 y movimiento de protesta. Esto es evidente para cualquier visitante a Zuccotti Park, que tiene la edad suficiente para recordar la estética de los hippies y las consignas de los radicales de la década de 1960. Este endeudamiento con las imágenes de otra época era prácticamente inevitable, dado que la década de 1960 representó el último período de gran agitación política en este país. Sin embargo, este es un movimiento muy diferente a la contracultura de 1960. No está tanto para protestar por la injusticia  que nuestro país inflige a los demás en el extranjero - aunque esto tampoco no está ausente, - pero su objetivo principal es la injusticia infligida a ellos y a sus amigos y familiares. No son los hijos e hijas de la clase media acomodada enajenados por la cultura de la banalidad burguesa. Son personas que no ven un futuro para sí mismos sin un cambio fundamental en la sociedad y que están dispuestos a poner sus vidas para que esto suceda.

El sábado pasado 700 de ellos fueron detenidos en el Puente de Brooklyn después de entrar en una trampa tendida por la policía de Nueva York. (En realidad, la policía los llevó en su marcha sobre el puente, no les dijo que estaban entrando en una zona de tráfico limitado, y luego cuando estaban a un  1 / 3 de camino sobre el puente vieron que estaban rodeados, atrapados por las redes y detenidos. ) Las detenciones masivas han hecho poco para amortiguar sus espíritus.

************************************************** ******************************
Actualización:
Yo escribí las impresiones  un par de días atrás, pero como la situación en Wall Street es muy dinámica y cambia todos los días ,quería añadir algunas reflexiones sobre los hechos hasta el día de hoy (06 de octubre).

La marcha de Foley Square en Miércoles, 05 de octubre, era enorme y llevó a  gran número de trabajadores y estudiantes en apoyo de los manifestantes. Según algunas estimaciones, había una multitud de 20.000 o más. Como se predijo, la burocracia sindical salió y se quedó con los políticos del Partido Demócrata en un patético intento de canalizar la furia de los manifestantes de nuevo con el apoyo a Obama y el Partido Demócrata. Por lo que pude observar más tarde, esa noche una gran mayoría de los manifestantes no quiere saber nada de ella. Su actitud podría resumirse en una de las pancartas que vi en Zuccotti Park esa noche: "La guerra de clase por delante".

La debilidad de los manifestantes estuvo también en evidencia por la noche. Un grupo de anarquistas pronto anunciaron que iban a marchar a la famosa estatua del toro de Wall Street y  paró el tráfico en el proceso. Varios cientos de jóvenes fueron por las estrechas calles del distrito financiero  buscando el toro. Al menos  muchos policías les siguieron. Cuando por fin llegamos al toro, que fue cerrada por barricadas de la policía por todos lados y varios agentes de policía fueron asignados a pie dentro de las barricadas y proteger el toro a toda costa, como si el destino de la civilización occidental dependía de ellos y su capacidad para proteger el toro de cualquier daño. Este fue sin duda uno de los episodios más divertidos del día. Después un par de los miembros más francos de la marcha del grupo fueron hacia el toro, se detuvo a los mismos, las medidas se agotaron y todo el mundo se dirigió a Zuccotti Park.

Sin embargo, esa misma tarde otro grupo de manifestantes demostró más notable ingenuidad que ha caracterizado a esta ocupación desde el principio. Un proyector situado en algún lugar en el Zuccotti Park (no pude encontrar la ubicación exacta) fue transmitido en la calle diagonal frente a un edificio alto que carecía de ventanas, una característica común a muchos edificios comerciales construidos durante los años 1960 y 1970 en Manhattan. Este artefacto convirtió la pared de este edificio en una pantalla perfecta para un anuncio gigante. ¿Cuáles fueron las palabras que brillaban en este improvisado cartel?

Romper la ley del valor
Abolir el capitalismo



Así que parece que el hombre más odiado y temido por la clase capitalista, cuyas teorías se pensaba que eran obsoletas y que nunca podría hacerse un lugar en el suelo anti-filosófico de América - Karl Marx - ha vuelto y tiene algo que decir a los jóvenes y los trabajadores de este país. No quiero hacer más de este incidente que se justifica. Todavía hay un largo camino por recorrer en el camino de repetir algunas palabras de Marx en la asimilación de todas las implicaciones de su trabajo. Pero sí existe una indicación de que hay talvez ahora una receptividad a las ideas de este hombre, más que en cualquier momento de nuestra historia reciente. La calidad irónica de este desarrollo sólo puede ser apreciada si se considera la reacción a los acontecimientos de Wall Street de algunos de nuestros blogeros radicales, un tema que va a llegar a la brevedad.


Estamos en solidaridad con los manifestantes Ocupar Wall Street. Su espíritu y la creatividad es digna de admiración y compartan sus objetivos. Pero nosotros no nuestra responsabilidad como revolucionarios marxistas y si no les advierte de los peligros de ignorar la lucha política y la historia y la herencia teórica de quienes los precedieron en la lucha por el socialismo. Tomo nota de que una serie de bloggers radicales han tomado exactamente el camino opuesto. Ellos están cayendo sobre sí mismos con las palabras de adulación a los manifestantes y condenar a cualquiera que introduce aún más suave, con buenas intenciones críticas. Por ejemplo, un blogger radical lanzó una fuerte crítica de la ISO para la simple mención de que los manifestantes tienen algunas lecciones que aprender. Él escribió:

"... Hay una desconexión real entre los jóvenes activistas que buscan el cambio social fundamental, y grupos como el ISO que se consideran de alguna manera mejor calificado para dirigir esas luchas, ya que han logrado algún tipo de conocimiento superior del marxismo, o porque son conscientemente siguiendo el ejemplo de Lenin o Trotsky en lugar de los experimentos de tropiezo y tentativas de los jóvenes en el parque de la libertad. "

Aunque no creo que la ISO será capaz de educar a este movimiento, sin duda piensan que pueden utilizar la educación y el análisis de Marx sobre la crisis del capitalismo y la asimilación de la obra de Lenin y Trotsky, es por lo menos un comienzo. La demagogia en el comentario de este blogero consiste en la contraposición de una educación en la historia y la teoría del marxismo a la creatividad natural y la espontaneidad del movimiento de masas. Pero esto es un razonamiento falaz. Esperamos que, incluso con una educación en el marxismo, la revolución tendrá que enfrentarse a tropiezos y errores y de sus participantes a aprender de sus experiencias. Pero no todos los errores son necesarios y no todos los tropiezos tienen un efecto saludable en sus participantes. A veces, errores tienen consecuencias desastrosas. Los que van en una situación de ciegos y privados de la teoría o la historia inevitablemente se quedan en el camino a pesar de su valor y la inventiva. Esta ha sido la experiencia de todas las revoluciones anteriores y no esperamos que sea diferente en el siglo 21.

La cuestión clave es cómo llegar a estas personas. No va a ser realizada por aquellos que dicen ser marxistas, conferencias por personas que les dicen que "debe" unirse o leer este sitio web. Tales esfuerzos causan risa teniendo en cuenta el reproche que merecen correctamente.

Aquí están algunas ideas para los manifestantes a considerar:

1. "Socialismo para los ricos, capitalismo para los pobres" -  es una forma muy popular de caracterizar el rescate de Wall Street por BushObama mientras que a decenas de millones de trabajadores y la clase media se han ejecutado la hipotec,por pérdida de empleos o no pueden encontrar trabajo. Sin embargo, hace que te preguntes: si el socialismo es bueno para los ricos, ¿por qué no se da para todo el mundo?

2.Ustedes necesitan saber a dónde van, si alguna vez va a llegar. Movimientos sin una meta no tienen una dirección, y se convierten en fácil presa para desviar o cooptar.

3."No creer en alguien que te dice que el sistema puede ser fijo y los políticos pueden ser presionados para hacer lo correcto. Nada es más peligroso que una crisis de ilusión. Lea lo que dice Wall Street y usted pronto verá que en  el mejor de los casos es de  hay un escenario para una década de depresión económica y  austeridad, asumiendo que no hay un crack en toda regla. ¡Una década! Para los jóvenes esto significa ser condenados a una vida arruinada - para no tener la oportunidad de una carrera, un trabajo estable, un lugar decente para vivir. No tenemos ningún interés en este sistema. No tenemos nada que perder - y todo para ganar - por deshacernos de él.

4.No crean en los que tienen interés en el sistema, especialmente los políticos demócratas y líderes empresariales de los sindicatos. Las únicas personas en las que podemos confiar son los que se encuentran en el mismo lado de la brecha económica como  nosotros mismos - la clase obrera.

5. Tenemos que estar organizados. Nuestros enemigos lo están. La Organización no es  enemiga de la democracia. Por el contrario, la democracia sin organización significa que la energía del movimiento se disipa, reducida a un mínimo común denominador. Esto significa que el movimiento nunca se plantea un serio desafío para el sistema, nunca van a más allá de ser un espectáculo político.


.

Share:

Read More

Impressions from Occupy Wall Street

By Alex Steiner
Oct 6, 2011


Wall Street in downtown Manhattan is pregnant with the history of the United States.  Although today Wall St. is known as the financial heart of American capitalism, it began as a fortified wall, the Northern boundary of the original Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam.  The young protesters who are now in the third week of their occupation of  Zuccotti Park chose their encampment well.  Barely three blocks from their tent city stands the grounds of that symbol of American capitalism, the New York Stock Exchange.  Diagonally across the street from the marble columns of the Stock Exchange is a giant statue of the founder of the American Republic, George Washington.  He is standing on the steps of Federal Hall,  the site where he was sworn in as the first President of this Republic. Another founding father lies buried even closer to the site of the protesters camp -  Alexander Hamilton, architect of the United States first National Bank, is resting in the churchyard of Trinity Church. Another block or so down the street and around the corner from the Stock Exchange stands the massive fortified walls of the New York Federal Reserve, home of what is perhaps the largest hoard of gold bullion in the world,  approximately 7000 tons worth. More to the point, this is where much of the economic policy of the United States is implemented,  from the setting of exchange rates with foreign currencies to the transfer of trillions of dollars between banks on a daily basis. The building also hosted, along with the Treasury Department in Washington, some of the meetings that brought together the heads of the Fed and the Treasury with the CEO's of the largest banks in the country to work out the terms of what eventually became the TARP bailout of the banks following the crisis precipitated by the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008.

This takes us back to a consideration of what is going on at Zuccotti Park.  Several thousand protesters are saying that they have had enough.  They are tired of seeing trillions of dollars being used to bail out the banks whose fraudulent practices in the preceding years left them holding massive assets whose value suddenly went to zero.  The other side of the bank bailout by both the Bush and Obama Administrations has been the impoverishment of tens of millions of people, particularly young people.  My impression as a result of talking with some of the protesters and hearing them interviewed is that the vast majority of those occupying Wall Street do not see any future for themselves under this economic system known as capitalism.

I was also struck by the inventiveness and fighting spirit of these young people.  They have, against great odds, been able to maintain a tent city in the middle of Manhattan, in an inhospitable "park" that is actually a concrete plaza with little in the way of amenities such as grass and trees and no public bathrooms or water fountains. What it does have are some tables and chairs that are normally occupied by office workers sipping their morning coffee or chess players taking on Wall Street tycoons for quarters. Somehow this group has managed to feed itself, with the help of neighbors donating food.  They managed to keep dry in the face of New York's relentless autumn rains thanks to some tarps (no pun intended) they sequestered from somewhere.  Without electricity they have managed to create a communications center, powered by a portable generator, where several people are busy on lap tops round the clock, rain or shine, spreading their message to social network sites all over the globe.  They have created committees in charge of making posters, printing a satirical version of the Wall Street Journal, and organizing their marches and acts of civil disobedience.  There is a constant thump of drums and other instruments in one corner where you can find revelers transfixed by the rhythmic sounds.  There is even a free library stocked with donated books, available for anyone who wants to read them. The highlight of each evening is what they call a "General Assembly" an experiment in participatory democracy wherein everyone who wishes to can speak and contribute to the discussion.  Decisions are arrived at through a torturous consensus process. 


The police have banned the use of megaphones or other audio equipment making it extremely difficult to hold meetings in the open air. But the protesters have once again found an ingenious way to get around this legal obstacle to participatory democracy.  One person speaks who is in turn closely surrounded by hundreds of facilitators.  The facilitators then echo back in one voice the words of the speaker so that the huge crowd surrounding them can hear the proceedings.  The proceedings reminded me of the brilliant movie by Truffaut, Fahrenheit 451, (based on an equally brilliant story by Ray Bradbury) where in a future when the reading or printing of books are banned,  a core group of people dedicate themselves to preserving literature by memorizing entire books that can no longer be printed or accessed physically. They have become living books just as the facilitators at Occupy Wall Street have become living megaphones.

The politics of the protesters, insofar as they articulate one,  is certainly naive and contradictory. I saw signs that at once sounded very radical, calling for an end to the plutocracy that runs this country, along with other signs ("Pass the F____ Jobs Bill Already") indicating that the honeymoon with Obama that many young people had in 2008, although badly bruised, may not be entirely over for some.  The OWS protesters have emphasized that they are contemptuous of the political process and have deliberately avoided putting forward a set of demands. They have clearly been inspired by the example of the massive demonstrations in Tahrir Square in Cairo earlier this year and Syntagma Square in Athens.  They see their action as the spark of the American Revolution.  

This is not a revolution at this point but it is impossible to predict how this movement will play itself out. There are signs that the protesters have tapped into a vein of anger against the inequities of life in 21st century America that has been simmering for years. Their actions have already inspired other protests in other cities.  We saw a preview of this action in the sit-ins in Madison, Wisconsin earlier this year. Unfortunately that movement was sidetracked by the labor bureaucracy and the Democratic Party into abandoning their protests and putting their energy into a worthless recall campaign. The OWS protesters will not be so easily sidetracked. But their rejection of political action is both their strength and their weakness.

What is considered normal politics in this country, support for one or the other of the two bourgeois parties, certainly deserves a heady dose of contempt.  But that by itself does little to bring about the kind of just society the protesters envision.  It can in fact serve as an invitation for demagogues and opportunists of various stripes to come in and fill the vacuum.  And though I saw little evidence of the usual confluence of left groups at the encampment, their presence swells each time there is a protest march or some other action.  The neo-Stalinist Workers World Party has been in evidence as has the International Socialist Organization (ISO).  There was much excitement today at the anticipation of representatives from the unions coming tomorrow to show their support.  Of course, the flacks from the trade union bureaucracy who will join the march tomorrow will be there to try to channel this movement back into the safety of harmless protests and support for the Democratic Party. The naiveté evidenced by the protesters, that they would expect anything else from the trade union bureaucracy, is hardly surprising. They come from a generation almost completely devoid of any political culture or historical education. What politics they have come into contact with has been largely the protest movements of the last decade, the anti-war movement, the global justice movement, etc. They have picked up an education largely on their own, thanks to the social networking sites on the Internet and the example of Egypt and Greece.  Whatever their background, be it working class or middle class, they have now come to the same juncture in this third year of the greatest economic crisis of the capitalist system since the Great Depression.  They are largely unemployed or underemployed and see no future for themselves in a society that has bombarded them from birth with images of a consumer utopia of iPhones and home entertainment centers. The American dream has for them become a nightmare.

They have resurrected many of the symbols and images of the 1960s counter culture and protest movement. This is obvious to any visitor to Zuccotti Park who is old enough to remember the aesthetics of the hippies and the slogans of the 1960s radicals. This borrowing of the imagery of another era was practically inevitable given that the 1960s represented the last great period of political turmoil in this country.  Nevertheless, this is a very a different movement than the 1960s counter culture.  They are not so much protesting the injustice that our country inflicts on others in foreign lands - although that is not absent either - but their primary target is the injustice inflicted on them and their friends and family.  They are not the sons and daughters of the affluent middle class alienated from the culture of bourgeois banality.  They are people who see no future for themselves without a fundamental change in society and they are willing to put their lives on the line to make that happen.  

This past Saturday 700 of them were arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge after walking into a trap set by the New York City Police. (The police actually led them on their march on the bridge, did not tell them they were walking into a restricted traffic area, and then when they were 1/3 of the way over the bridge they were surrounded,  trapped by nets and arrested.)  The mass arrests have done little to dampen their spirits.  

********************************************************************************

Update:
I wrote the above impressions a couple of days ago but as the situation on Wall Street is extremely dynamic and changes daily I wanted to add a few thoughts on the events up to today (Oct. 6).

The march to Foley Square on Wednesday, Oct 5, was massive and brought out large number of workers and students in support of the protesters.  Some estimates had the crowd at 20,000 or more. As predicted, the trade union bureaucracy came out and stood with Democratic Party politicians in a pathetic attempt to channel the fury of the marchers back to support for Obama and the Democratic Party.  From what I could observe later that evening, a large majority of the protesters will have none of it.  Their attitude could be summed up by one of the placards I saw in Zuccotti Park that evening: "Class War Ahead".   

The weakness of the protesters was also in evidence that evening.  A group of anarchists suddenly announced that they were going to march to the famous statue of the Wall Street bull and stop traffic in the process.  Several hundred young people took off through the narrow streets of the financial district looking for the bull.  At least as many police followed them.  When we finally got to the bull, it was closed off by police barricades on all sides and several police officers were assigned to stand inside the barricades and protect the bull at all costs as if the fate of Western Civilization depended on them and their ability to guard the bull from harm.  This was certainly one of the more amusing episodes of the day. After a couple of the more outspoken members of the group marching toward the bull got themselves arrested the action such as it was ran out of steam and everyone headed back to Zuccotti Park.  

However that same evening another group of protesters demonstrated more of the remarkable ingenuity that has marked this occupation from the beginning.  A projector located somewhere in Zuccotti Park (I could not find the exact location) was beamed diagonally against a tall building across the street that was devoid of windows, a feature common to many commercial buildings built during the 1960s and 1970s in Manhattan. This attribute turned the wall of this building into a perfect screen for a giant advertisement.  What were the words flashed on this improvised billboard? 

BREAK THE LAW OF VALUE

ABOLISH CAPITALISM

So it seems that the man most reviled and feared by the capitalist class, whose theories were thought to be obsolete and could never gain a foothold on the un-philosophical soil of America  - Karl Marx - has returned and has something to say to the youth and workers of this country. I do not want to make more of this one incident than is warranted. There is still a long way to go on the road from repeating a few words of Marx to assimilating the full implications of his work. But it does indicate that there is perhaps now a receptivity to the ideas of this man, more so than at any time in our recent history.  The ironic quality of this development can only be appreciated if we consider the reaction to the Wall Street events of some of our radical bloggers, a subject I will get to shortly.

We are in solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street protesters.  Their spirit and creativity is to be admired and we share their aims. But we would fail our responsibility as Marxists and revolutionaries if we did not warn them of the dangers of ignoring the political struggle and the history and theoretical heritage of those who preceded them in the struggle for socialism. I note that a number of radical bloggers have taken exactly the opposite tack. They are falling over themselves with words of adulation for the protesters and damning anyone who introduces even the mildest, well-intentioned criticism. For instance, one radical blogger launched into a sharp criticism of the ISO for merely mentioning that the protesters have some lessons to learn. He wrote,

"...there is a real disconnect between young activists who are seeking fundamental social change and groups like the ISO that see themselves as somehow better qualified to lead such struggles because they have achieved some kind of superior understanding of Marxism or because they are consciously following the example of Lenin or Trotsky rather than the stumbling and tentative experiments of the young people in Liberty Park."

While we do not think the ISO will be able to educate this movement, we certainly think that they can use an education and Marx's analysis of the crisis of capitalism and an assimilation of the work of Lenin and Trotsky is at least a beginning. The demagogy in this blogger's comment consists in his counterpoising an education in the history and theory of Marxism to the natural creativity and spontaneity of the mass movement. But this is fallacious reasoning. We expect that even with an education in Marxism, the revolution will still face stumbles and missteps and its participants will learn from their experiences. But not all missteps are necessary and not all stumbles have a salutary effect on their participants. Sometimes such missteps have disastrous consequences. Those who go into a situation blind and bereft of theory or history will inevitably fall by the wayside despite their courage and inventiveness. This has been the experience of every previous revolution and we do not expect it to be any different in the 21st century.

The critical question is how to reach these people. It will not be done by those claiming to be Marxists lecturing at people or telling them that they "must" join this party or read this web site. Such efforts will be laughed off and given the rebuke they properly deserve.

Here are some ideas for the protestors to consider:

1. “Socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor” – that's a widely popular way of characterizing the Wall Street bailout by BushObama while tens of millions of workers and middle class people have been foreclosed on, lost jobs or can't find work. But it makes you wonder: if socialism is good for the rich, why not have it for everyone?

2.You need to know where you're going if you're ever going to get there. Movements without a goal have no direction, and become easy to sidetrack or coopt.

3.Don't believe anyone who tells you the system can be fixed and the politicians can be pressured to do the right thing. Nothing is more dangerous in a crisis than wishful thinking. Read what Wall Street reads and you'll quickly see that the best case scenario is for a decade of economic slump and austerity, assuming there isn't an all-out crash. A decade! For young people this means being condemned to blighted lives – to never having a chance at a career, a steady job, a decent place to live. We have no stake in this system. We have nothing to lose – and everything to gain – by getting rid of it.

4.Don't believe those who have stakes in the system, especially Democratic politicians and business union leaders. The only people we can trust are those on the same side of the economic divide as ourselves – the working class.

5. We need to be organized. Our enemies are. Organization is not the enemy of democracy. On the contrary, democracy without organization means that the energy of the movement gets dissipated, reduced to a lowest common denominator. It means the movement will never pose a serious challenge to the system, will never get beyond being a political sideshow.

Police officers guarding the Wall Street bull

   

Some common posters

 

The media center



A view of the encampment



Table on Broadway

Meeting during a downpour

Symbolic flag

The New York Stock Exchange building two blocks away



Share:

Read More

On the 71st Anniversary of the Assassination of Trotsky

Front page of Aug. 24, 1940 edition of Socialist Appeal.

On August 20, 1940, Leon Trotsky was attacked by GPU assassin Ramon Mercader.  The murder was ordered by Stalin and represented the culmination of the Stalinist bureaucracy's destruction of the leadership of the October Revolution. The great revolutionary died from his wounds the next day, exactly 71 years ago.  The images above are of the front page of the August 24, 1940 edition of Socialist Appeal, the newspaper of the Socialist Workers Party.  This original edition of Socialist Appeal belonged to the late Larry Trainor, a veteran of the Socialist Workers Party who worked on the party press for many years.  

Below we are reprinting the speech James Cannon gave at the memorial meeting held in Trotsky's honor on August 28 in New York and attended by a crowd of 1,500.  It was first published in the Sept. 7, 1940 edition of Socialist Appeal. 

To the Memory of the Old Man

Comrade Trotsky's entire conscious life, from the time he entered the workers' movement in the provincial Russian town of Nikolayev at the age of eighteen up till the moment of his death in Mexico City forty-two years later, was completely dedicated to work and struggle for one central idea. He stood for the emancipation of the workers and all the oppressed people of the world, and the transformation of society from capitalism to socialism by means of a social revolution. In his conception, this liberating social revolution requires for success the leadership of a revolutionary political party of the workers' vanguard.

In his entire conscious life Comrade Trotsky never once diverged from that idea. He never doubted it, and never ceased to struggle for its realization. On his deathbed, in his last message to us, his disciples-his last testament-he proclaimed his confidence in his life-idea: "Tell our friends I am sure of the victory of the Fourth International - go forward!"
The whole world knows about his work and his testament. The cables of the press of the world have carried his last testament and made it known to the world's millions. And in the minds and hearts of all those throughout the world who grieve with us tonight one thought-one question-is uppermost: Will the movement which he created and inspired survive his death? Will his disciples be able to hold their ranks together, will they be able to carry out his testament and realize the emancipation of the oppressed through the victory of the Fourth International?

Without the slightest hesitation we give an affirmative answer to this question. Those enemies who predict a collapse of Trotsky's movement without Trotsky, and those weak-willed friends who fear it, only show that they do not understand Trotsky, what he was, what he signified, and what he left behind. Never has a bereaved family been left such a rich heritage as that which Comrade Trotsky, like a provident father, has left to the family of the Fourth International as trustees for all progressive humanity. A great heritage of ideas he has left to us; ideas which shall chart the struggle toward the great free future of all mankind. The mighty ideas of Trotsky are our program and our banner. They are a clear guide to action in all the complexities of our epoch, and a constant reassurance that we are right and that our victory is inevitable.

Trotsky himself believed that ideas are the greatest power in the world. Their authors may be killed, but ideas, once promulgated, live their own life. If they are correct ideas, they make their way through all obstacles. This was the central, dominating concept of Comrade Trotsky's philosophy. He explained it to us many, many times. He once wrote: "It is not the party that makes the program [the idea]; it is the program that makes the party." In a personal letter to me, he once wrote: "We work with the most correct and powerful ideas in the world, with inadequate numerical forces and material means. But correct ideas, in the long run, always conquer and make available for themselves the necessary material means and forces."

Trotsky, a disciple of Marx, believed with Marx that "an idea, when it permeates the mass, becomes a material force." Believing that, Comrade Trotsky never doubted that his work would live after him. Believing that, he could proclaim on his deathbed his confidence in the future victory of the Fourth International which embodies his ideas. Those who doubt it do not know Trotsky.

Trotsky himself believed that his greatest significance, his greatest value, consisted not in his physical life, not in his epic deeds, which overshadow those of all heroic figures in history in their sweep and their grandeur-but in what he would leave behind him after the assassins had done their work. He knew that his doom was sealed, and he worked against time in order to leave everything possible to us, and through us to mankind. Throughout the eleven years of his last exile he chained himself to his desk like a galley slave and labored, as none of us knows how to labor, with such energy, such persistence and self-discipline, as only men of genius can labor. He worked against time to pour out through his pen the whole rich content of his mighty brain and preserve it in permanent written form for us, and for those who will come after us.

The whole Trotsky, like the whole Marx, is preserved in his books, his articles, and his letters. His voluminous correspondence, which contains some of his brightest thoughts and his most intimate personal feelings and sentiments, must now be collected and published. When that is done, when his letters are published alongside his books, his pamphlets, and his articles, we, and all those who join us in the liberation struggle of humanity, will still have our Old Man to help us.

He knew that the super-Borgia in the Kremlin, Cain-Stalin, who has destroyed the whole generation of the October Revolution, had marked him for assassination and would succeed sooner or later. That is why he worked so urgently. That is why he hastened to write out everything that was in his mind and get it down on paper in permanent form where nobody could destroy it.

Just the other night, I talked at the dinner table with one of the Old Man's faithful secretaries - a young comrade who had served him a long time and knew his personal life, as he lived it in his last years of exile, most intimately. I urged him to write his reminiscences without delay. I said: "We must all write everything we know about Trotsky. Everyone must record his recollections and his impressions. We must not forget that we moved in the orbit of the greatest figure of our time. Millions of people, generations yet to come, will be hungry for every scrap of information, every word, every impression that throws light on him, his ideas, his aims, and his personal life."

He answered: "I can write only about his personal qualities as I observed them; his methods of work, his humaneness, his generosity. But I can't write anything new about his ideas. They are already written. Everything he had to say, everything he had in his brain, is down on paper. He seemed to be determined to scoop down to the bottom of his mind, and take out everything and give it to the world in his writings. Very often, I remember, casual conversation on some subject would come up at the dinner table; an informal discussion would take place, and the Old Man would express some opinions new and fresh. Almost invariably the contributions of the dinner-table conversation would find expression a little later in a book, an article, or a letter."

They killed Trotsky not by one blow; not when this murderer, the agent of Stalin, drove the pickax through the back of his skull. That was only the final blow. They killed him by inches. They killed him many times. They killed him seven times when they killed his seven secretaries. They killed him four times when they killed his four children. They killed him when his old coworkers of the Russian Revolution were killed.

Yet he stood up to his tasks in spite of all that. Growing old and sick, he staggered through all these moral, emotional, and physical blows to complete his testament to humanity while he still had time. He gathered it all together-every thought, every idea, every lesson from his past experience-to lay up a literary treasure for us, a treasure that the moths and the rust cannot eat.

There was a profound difference between Trotsky and other great men of action and transitory political leaders who influenced great masses in their lifetime. The power of such people, almost all of them, was something personal, something incommunicable to others. Their influence did not survive their deaths. Just recall for a moment the great men of our generation or the generation just passed: Clemenceau, Hindenburg, Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt, Bryan. They had great masses following them and leaning upon them. But now they are dead; and all their influence died with them. Nothing remains but monuments and funeral eulogies. Nothing was distinctive about them but their personalities. They were opportunists, leaders for a day. They left no ideas to guide and inspire men when their bodies became dust, and their personalities became a memory.

Not so with Trotsky. Not so with him. He was different. He was also a great man of action, to be sure. His deeds are incorporated in the greatest revolution in the history of mankind. But, unlike the opportunists and leaders of a day, his deeds were inspired by great ideas, and these ideas still live. He not only made a revolution; he wrote its history and explained the basic laws which govern all revolutions. In his History of the Russian Revolution, which he considered his masterpiece, he gave us a guide for the making of new revolutions, or rather, for extending throughout the world the revolution that began in October 1917.

Trotsky, the great man of ideas, was himself the disciple of a still greater one-Marx. Trotsky did not originate or claim to originate the most fundamental ideas which he expounded. He built on the foundations laid by the great masons of the nineteenth century-Marx and Engels. In addition, he went through the great school of Lenin and learned from him. Trotsky's genius consisted in his complete assimilation of the ideas bequeathed by Marx, Engels, and Lenin. He mastered their method. He developed their ideas in modern conditions, and applied them in masterful fashion in the contemporary struggle of the proletariat. If you would understand Trotsky, you must know that he was a disciple of Marx, an orthodox Marxist. He fought under the banner of Marxism for forty-two years! During the last year of his life he laid everything else aside to fight a great political and theoretical battle in defence of Marxism in the ranks of the Fourth International! His very last article, which was left on his desk in unpolished form, the last article with which he occupied himself, was a defence of Marxism against contemporary revisionists and sceptics. The power of Trotsky, first of all and above all, was the power of Marxism.

Do you want a concrete illustration of the power of Marxist ideas? Just consider this: when Marx died in 1883, Trotsky was but four years old. Lenin was only fourteen. Neither could have known Marx, or anything about him. Yet both became great historical figures because of Marx, because Marx had circulated ideas in the world before they were born. Those ideas were living their own life. They shaped the lives of Lenin and Trotsky. Marx's ideas were with them and guided their every step when they made the greatest revolution in history.

So will the ideas of Trotsky, which are a development of the ideas of Marx, influence us, his disciples, who survive him today. They will shape the lives of far greater disciples who are yet to come, who do not yet know Trotsky's name. Some who are destined to be the greatest Trotskyists are playing in the schoolyards today. They will be nourished on Trotsky's ideas, as he and Lenin were nourished on the ideas of Marx and Engels.

Indeed, our movement in the United States took shape and grew up on his ideas without his physical presence, without even any communication in the first period. Trotsky was exiled and isolated in Alma Ata when we began our struggle for Trotskyism in this country in 1928. We had no contact with him, and for a long time did not know whether he was dead or alive. We didn't even have a collection of his writings. All we had was one single current document - his "Criticism of the Draft Program of the Comintern." That was enough. By the light of that single document we saw our way, began our struggle with supreme confidence, went through the split without faltering, built the framework of a national organization and established our weekly Trotskyist press. Our movement was built firmly from the very beginning and has remained firm because it was built on Trotsky's ideas. It was nearly a year before we were able to establish direct communication with the Old Man.

So with the sections of the Fourth International throughout the world. Only a very few individual comrades have ever met Trotsky face to face. Yet everywhere they knew him. In China, and across the broad oceans to Chile, Argentina, Brazil. In Australia, in practically every country of Europe. In the United States, Canada, Indochina, South Africa. They never saw him, but the ideas of Trotsky welded them all together in one uniform and firm world movement. So it will continue after his physical death. There is no room for doubt.

Trotsky's place in history is already established. He will stand forever on a historical eminence beside the other three great giants of the proletariat: Marx, Engels, and Lenin. It is possible, indeed it is quite probable, that in the historic memory of mankind, his name will evoke the warmest affection, the most heartfelt gratitude of all. Because he fought so long, against such a world of enemies, so honestly, so heroically, and with such selfless devotion!

Future generations of free humanity will look back with insatiable interest on this mad epoch of reaction and bloody violence and social change-this epoch of the death agony of one social system and the birth pangs of another. When they see through the historian's lens how the oppressed masses of the people everywhere were groping, blinded and confused, they will mention with unbounded love the name of the genius who gave us light, the great heart that gave us courage.

Of all the great men of our time, of all the public figures to whom the masses turned for guidance in these troubled terrible times, Trotsky alone explained things to us, he alone gave us light in the darkness. His brain alone unravelled the mysteries and complexities of our epoch. The great brain of Trotsky was what was feared by all his enemies. They couldn't cope with it. They couldn't answer it. In the incredibly horrible method by which they destroyed him there was hidden a deep symbol. They struck at his brain! But the richest products of that brain are still alive. They had already escaped and can never be recaptured and destroyed.

We do not minimize the blow that has been dealt to us, to our movement, and to the world. It is the worst calamity. We have lost something of immeasurable value that can never be regained. We have lost the inspiration of his physical presence, his wise counsel. All that is lost forever. The Russian people have suffered the most terrible blow of all. But by the very fact that the Stalinist camarilla had to kill Trotsky after eleven years, that they had to reach out from Moscow, exert all their energies and plans to destroy the life of Trotsky-that is the greatest testimony that Trotsky still lived in the hearts of the Russian people. They didn't believe the lies. They waited and hoped for his return. His words are still there. His memory is alive in their hearts.

Just a few days before the death of Comrade Trotsky the editors of the Russian Bulletin received a letter from Riga. It had been mailed before the incorporation of Latvia into the Soviet Union. It stated in simple words that Trotsky's "Open Letter to the Workers of the USSR"14 had reached them, and had lifted up their hearts with courage and shown them the way. The letter stated that the message of Trotsky had been memorized, word by word, and would be passed along by word of mouth no matter what might happen. We verily believe that the words of Trotsky will live longer in the Soviet Union than the bloody regime of Stalin. In the coming great day of liberation the message of Trotsky will be the banner of the Russian people.

The whole world knows who killed Comrade Trotsky. The world knows that on his deathbed he accused Stalin and his GPU of the murder. The assassin's statement, prepared in advance of the crime, is the final proof, if more proof is needed, that the murder was a GPU job. It is a mere reiteration of the lies of the Moscow trials; a stupid police-minded attempt, at this late day, to rehabilitate the frame-ups which have been discredited in the eyes of the whole world. The motives for the assassination arose from the world reaction, the fear of revolution, and the traitors' sentiments of hatred and revenge. The English historian Macaulay remarked that apostates in all ages have manifested an exceptional malignity toward those whom they have betrayed. Stalin and his traitor gang were consumed by a mad hatred of the man who reminded them of their yesterday. Trotsky, the symbol of the great revolution, reminded them constantly of the cause they had deserted and betrayed, and they hated him for that. They hated him for all the great and good human qualities which he personified and to which they were completely alien. They were determined, at all cost, to do away with him.

Now I come to a part that is very painful, a thought which, I am sure, is in the minds of all of us. The moment we read of the success of the attack I am sure everyone among us asked: couldn't we have saved him a while longer? If we had tried harder, if we had done more for him - couldn't we have saved him? Dear comrades, let us not reproach ourselves. Comrade Trotsky was doomed and sentenced to death years ago. The betrayers of the revolution knew that the revolution lived in him, the tradition, the hope. All the resources of a powerful state, set in motion by the hatred and revenge of Stalin, were directed to the assassination of a single man without resources and with only a handful of close followers. All of his coworkers were killed; seven of his faithful secretaries; his four children. Yet, in spite of the fact that they marked him for death after his exile from Russia, we saved him for eleven years! Those were the most fruitful years of his whole life. Those were the years when he sat down in full maturity to devote himself to the task of summing up and casting in permanent literary form the results of his experiences and his thoughts.

Their dull police minds cannot know that Trotsky left the best of himself behind. Even in death he frustrated them. Because the thing they wanted most of all to kill-the memory and the hope of revolution-that Trotsky left behind him.

If you reproach yourself or us because this murder machine finally reached Trotsky and struck him down, you must remember that it is very hard to protect anyone from assassins. The assassin who stalks his victim night and day very often breaks through the greatest protections. Even Russian tsars and other rulers, surrounded by all the police powers of great states, could not always escape assassination by small bands of determined terrorists equipped with the most meager resources. This was the case more than once in Russia in the prerevolutionary days. And here, in the case of Trotsky, you had all that in reverse. All the resources were on the side of the assassins. A great state apparatus, converted into a murder machine, against one man and a few devoted disciples. So if they finally broke through, we have only to ask ourselves, did we do all we could to prevent it or postpone it? Yes, we did our best. In all conscience, we must say we did our best.

In the last weeks after the assault of May 24, we once again put on the agenda of our leading committee the question of the protection of Comrade Trotsky. Every comrade agreed that this is our most important task, most important for the masses of the whole world and for the future generations, that above all we do everything in our power to protect the life of our genius, our comrade, who helped and guided us so well. A delegation of party leaders made a visit to Mexico. It turned out to be our last visit. There, on that occasion, in consultation with him, we agreed upon a new campaign to strengthen the guard. We collected money in this country to fortify the house at the cost of thousands of dollars; all our members and sympathizers responded with great sacrifices and generosity.

And still the murder machine broke through. But those who helped even in the smallest degree, either financially or with their physical efforts, like our brave young comrades of the guard, will never be sorry for what they did to protect and help the Old Man.

At the hour Comrade Trotsky was finally struck down, I was returning by train from a special journey to Minneapolis. I had gone there for the purpose of arranging for new and especially qualified comrades to go down and strengthen the guard in Coyoacan. On the way home I sat in the railroad train with a feeling of satisfaction that the task of the trip had been accomplished, reinforcements of the guard had been provided for.

Then, as the train passed through Pennsylvania, about four o'clock in the morning, they brought the early papers with the news that the assassin had broken through the defences and driven a pickax into the brain of Comrade Trotsky. That was the beginning of a terrible day, the saddest day of our lives, when we waited, hour by hour, while the Old Man fought his last fight and struggled vainly with death. But even then, in that hour of terrible grief, when we received the fatal message over the long-distance telephone: "The Old Man is dead"-even then, we didn't permit ourselves to stop for weeping. We plunged immediately into the work to defend his memory and carry out his testament. And we worked harder than ever before, because for the first time we realized with full consciousness that we have to do it all now. We can't lean on the Old Man anymore. What is done now, we must do. That is the spirit in which we have got to work from now on.

The capitalist masters of the world instinctively understood the meaning of the name of Trotsky. The friend of the oppressed, the maker of revolutions, was the incarnation of all that they hated and feared! Even in death they revile him. Their newspapers splash their filth over his name. He was the world's exile in the time of reaction. No door was open to him anywhere except that of the Republic of Mexico. The fact that Trotsky was barred from all capitalist countries is in itself the clearest refutation of all the slanders of the Stalinists, of all their foul accusations that he betrayed the revolution, that he had turned against the workers. They never convinced the capitalist world of that. Not for a moment.

The capitalists - all kinds - fear and hate even his dead body! The doors of our great democracy are open to many political refugees, of course. All sorts of reactionaries; democratic scoundrels who betrayed and deserted their people; monarchists, and even fascists - they have all been welcomed in New York harbor. But not even the dead body of the friend of the oppressed could find asylum here! We shall not forget that! We shall nourish that grievance close to our hearts and in good time we shall take our revenge.

The great and powerful democracy of Roosevelt and Hull wouldn't let us bring his body here for the funeral. But he is here just the same. All of us feel that he is here in this hall tonight - not only in his great ideas, but also, especially tonight, in our memory of him as a man. We have a right to be proud that the best man of our time belonged to us, the greatest brain and strongest and most loyal heart. The class society we live in exalts the rascals, cheats, self-seekers, liars, and oppressors of the people. You can hardly name an intellectual representative of the decaying class society, of high or low degree, who is not a miserable hypocrite and contemptible coward, concerned first of all with his own inconsequential personal affairs and saving his own worthless skin. What a wretched tribe they are. There is no honesty, no inspiration, nothing in the whole of them. They have not a single man that can strike a spark in the heart of youth. Our Old Man was made of better stuff. Our Old Man was made of entirely different stuff. He towered above these pygmies in his moral grandeur.

Comrade Trotsky not only struggled for a new social order based on human solidarity as a future goal; he lived every day of his life according to its higher and nobler standards. They wouldn't let him be a citizen of any country. But, in truth, he was much more than that. He was already, in his mind and in his conduct, a citizen of the communist future of humanity. That memory of him as a man, as a comrade, is more precious than gold and rubies. We can hardly understand a man of that type living among us. We are all caught in the steel net of the class society with its inequalities, its contradictions, its conventionalities, its false values, its lies. The class society poisons and corrupts everything. We are all dwarfed and twisted and blinded by it. We can hardly visualize what human relations will be, we can hardly comprehend what the personality of man will be, in a free society.

Comrade Trotsky gave us an anticipatory picture. In him, in his personality as a man, as a human being, we caught a glimpse of the communist man that is to be. This memory of him as a man, as a comrade, is our greatest assurance that the spirit of man, striving for human solidarity, is unconquerable. In our terrible epoch many things will pass away. Capitalism and all its heroes will pass away. Stalin and Hitler and Roosevelt and Churchill, and all the lies and injustices and hypocrisy they signify, will pass away in blood and fire. But the spirit of the communist man which Comrade Trotsky represented will not pass away.

Destiny has made us, men of common clay, the most immediate disciples of Comrade Trotsky. We now become his heirs, and we are charged with the mission to carry out his testament. He had confidence in us. He assured us with his last words that we are right and that we will prevail. We need only have confidence in ourselves and in the ideas, the tradition, and the memory which he left us as our heritage.

We owe everything to him. We owe to him our political existence, our understanding, our faith in the future. We are not alone. There are others like us in all parts of the world. Always remember that. We are not alone. Trotsky has educated cadres of disciples in more than thirty countries. They are convinced to the marrow of their bones of their right to victory. They will not falter. Neither shall we falter. "I am sure of the victory of the Fourth International!" So said Comrade Trotsky in the last moment of his life. So are we sure.

Trotsky never doubted and we shall never doubt that, armed with his weapons, with his ideas, we shall lead the oppressed masses of the world out of the bloody welter of the war into a new socialist society. That is our testimony here tonight at the grave of Comrade Trotsky.

And here at his grave we testify also that we shall never forget his parting injunction - that we shield and cherish his warrior-wife, the faithful companion of all his struggles and wanderings. "Take care of her," he said, "she has been with me many years. Yes, we shall take care of her. Before everything else, we shall take care of Natalia.

We come now to the last word of farewell to our greatest comrade and teacher, who has now become our most glorious martyr. We do not deny the grief that constricts all our hearts. But ours is not the grief of prostration, the grief that saps the will. It is tempered by rage and hatred and determination. We shall transmute it into fighting energy to carry on the Old Man's fight. Let us say farewell to him in a manner worthy of his disciples, like good soldiers of Trotsky's army. Not crouching in weakness and despair, but standing upright with dry eyes and clenched fists. With the song of struggle and victory on our lips. With the song of confidence in Trotsky's Fourth International, the International Party that shall be the human race!

Share:

Read More