The “Occupy” Movement: Symbol of World War

Even in democracies, government and business are intertwined and are fighting, paramilitary style, against their own people. Citizens need to defend themselves against them.

It seems like politicians in the United States have had their fill of democracy. All across the country, members of the Occupy Wall Street movement set up tent cities, and on orders from local governments, the police tear them down and evict the protesters — sometimes with shockingly unnecessary brutality. In the worst case thus far, hundreds of police clad in body armor cleared the Oakland encampment, firing rubber bullets (which can cause fatalities), stun grenades and tear gas.

Several police officers deliberately targeted individual protesters. The Twitter reports from Occupy Oakland read like dispatches from Tahrir Square in Cairo: “We’re being surrounded,” “Hundreds of police,” “They’re sending in armored vehicles.” So far, 170 have been arrested.

Not long ago, I was arrested myself as I stood peacefully on a Manhattan street. That was what brought home the reality of this brutal crackdown to me. America is awakening to see what has happened while it so peacefully napped: Its police forces have been replaced by private security contractors (mega-bank JP Morgan Chase made a $4.6 million donation to the New York City Police Foundation); the Homeland Security Agency has outfitted small municipal police departments with military-style weapons systems; freedom of speech and the right to assemble have been insidiously degraded by nebulous and arcane permit procedures.

Suddenly, the United States has begun to look a lot like the rest of the outraged, protesting and not-so-free world. Many haven’t really realized that a new world war has started. It is distinguished from all preceding world wars in history by the fact that, for the first time, its soldiers don’t identify with a particular nation or religious preference.

What counts here is a global consciousness and demand for a peaceful life, a sustainable future, economic justice and basic democracy. Its enemy is the entanglement of government and business — a global corporatocracy that now owns the governments and the lawmakers. This corporatocracy requires its own armed force, is involved in systematic economic crime and is proceeding to plunder national treasuries as well as ecological systems.

Peaceful demonstrations against it are taking place all over the world. Democracy is an irritant: Martin Luther King felt that it was healthy to upset the normal course of things, albeit in a peaceful way, so that hidden injustice could be exposed and then rooted out.

Ideally, protesters should practice disciplined, peaceful disorder — especially in disrupting traffic. Provocateurs who are fenced off may serve to highlight the unjustified militarization of police tactics. Extended sit-ins are also necessary, as is long-term occupation of larger areas.

That’s why it’s necessary for demonstrators to engage their own attorneys, paid for with their own money. They should have an army of lawyers standing by. The thought that citizens might take back their basic rights produces fear and loathing in the corporatocracy.

“Would it not be easier … for the government to dissolve the people and elect another?”

Likewise, the protesters should form their own media outlets rather than relying on reports put out by the established media. They should blog, Twitter, write press releases and editorials, publicize cases of police brutality and name names. Unfortunately, there are many documented cases of violent provocateurs who have infiltrated demonstrations in cities like Toronto, Pittsburgh, London and Athens. But provocateurs must also be photographed and identified; therefore, demonstrators need to mask their identities in public.

Protesters in a democracy should establish local email channels and begin voter registration drives. They should publicize how many new voter registrations they have produced. And they need to vote repressive politicians or those prone to resorting to violence out of office. They should likewise support their local representatives who have hesitated to use violence (such as those in Albany, New York) and those who respect the people’s right to express opinions and publicly assemble.

Many of the demonstrators have insisted on the necessity to remain without leaders. That, however, is a mistake. Demonstrators should elect representatives for a limited “term of office” and train them to interact with the media and negotiate with government officials. Their protests should take the same form as the kind of new civil society they wish to create. The idea is to create a new city in the midst of the current corrupt one and to demonstrate that it is one that reflects a majority of society and isn’t just a destructive fringe group.

Citizens have been obliged to keep a low profile for decades — whether as part of a fantasy world characterized by mindless consumption or as part of a world full of poverty and corruption — and were urged to leave governing to the privileged elite. Protest, however, is transformational precisely because people come forward and meet face-to-face in order to create new institutions, relationships and organizations.

After the communists in East Germany brutally repressed workers’ demonstrations there in 1953, Bertolt Brecht asked the question, “Would it not be easier … for the government to dissolve the people and elect another?” In the United States and far too many other nations, governments apparently take Brecht’s ironic question too seriously.