Off Wall Street and onto the police

Posted on October 2, 2011 by David S. Meyer

A demonstration’s organizers win when media cover their issues as well as their events.  As the events in New York reach a broader audience, they also focus increasingly on policing.  Is this a victory?

Occupy Wall Street has inspired support across the country and drawn locals to events elsewhere in New York City, but the visible focus, always fuzzy, has moved from economic inequality to the police.   On Friday, more than 1,000 people marched on police headquarters in New York, protesting the videotaped pepper spraying of several demonstrators earlier in the week.

Yesterday, more than 1,500 set off across the Brooklyn Bridge; more than 700 people were arrested for blocking traffic when they veered into the traffic lanes.  The demonstrators say they were following the police.  There’s some credible suggestion that they were entrapped.  The New York Times (one of its freelancers was among the arrested) reports confusion, with some demonstrators thinking that the police were protecting them, while others wanted to claim the bridge:

There were no physical barriers, though, and at one point, the marchers began walking up the roadway with the police commanders in front of them – seeming, from a distance, as if they were leading the way. The Chief of Department Joseph J. Esposito, and a horde of other white-shirted commanders, were among them.

After allowing the protesters to walk about a third of the way to Brooklyn, the police then cut the marchers off and surrounded them with orange nets on both sides, trapping hundreds of people, said Mr. Dunn. As protesters at times chanted “white shirts, white shirts,” officers began making arrests, at one point plunging briefly into the crowd to grab a man.

With no authorized leaders, police can’t broker deals with the group, and the mass of demonstrators make their own choices about where to go and what to say without much in the way of guidance.

In the bigger picture, the Occupy Wall Street group, which includes considerable diversity in terms of goals and approaches to social change, can all agree on protesting pepper spray and mass arrests.  The question is whether this focus is good for an emerging movement?

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Occupied Wall Street

Posted on September 30, 2011 by David S. Meyer

Some of the demonstrators who promised to stay at the protest on Wall Street until their one demand was answered nearly two weeks ago are still there.  Several dozen are camping out in Zuccotti Park, a private park nearby, and many others are coming to visit.  Among the famous (at least to left-liberal activists) visitors are Michael Moore, Susan Sarandon, and Cornel West.  Noam Chomsky has sent an endorsement, which is now posted on Occupy Wall Street’s website.

Just what that one demand is remains completely unclear.  The organizers are vigorously committed to some kind of grassroots democracy, and this has made settling on any one thing–or even agreeing on a menu of policy remedies–practically impossible.  (Prove me wrong on this one.)  There is a consistent general concern with growing income inequality in America and the grossly disproportionate political power of the rich.  The communiques from the demonstrators are said to speak for the “99 percent.”

Meanwhile, the business of business on Wall Street (and elsewhere) has continued, apparently uninterrupted.  Surely, some people who work downtown have stopped by for education, entertainment, or to express support, but the markets are unaffected.

So, what is it all about?  The protesters who’ve issued statements or appeared in interviews report on a range of individual and collective grievances with America, and sometimes with their lives.  The Wall Street action is the first chance they’ve seen to try to take collective action to make their worlds better.

The continued encampment has become a holder for grievances about inequality, the best site many people can find to stake their claims.  While some of the first protesters mean to start a nonviolent revolution to bring capitalism down, many other activists come with, uh, more modest goals.

More than 700 airline pilots marched in uniform, protesting the proposed merger between United and Continental Airlines, and stalled negotiations on their union’s contract.  In recent days, other unions have made appearances, showing support for the demonstrators and the action, and expressing their own spin on the political problem of inequality.

The persistence of the protesters, along with their resistance to settling on a small list of demands, has provided all kinds of other people with an opportunity to speak to broader audiences and to ride the anger and momentum of the protest–and public concern with inequality.  What the Wall Street action means, however, is still being negotiated through action.

There have been a few instances of very rough treatment by police, including aggressive use of pepper spray by a Deputy Inspector, all documented on videos that have gone viral–internationally.  The demonstrators are trying to balance ongoing protest against police brutality with efforts to reach  out to, recruit, and represent, the police.  It’s a difficult balance to manage, and longstanding local grievances with the police could overshadow the broader claims most demonstrators want to make.

A few issues that merit more attention:

1.  The Wall Street protesters have complained about being ignored or dismissed by mainstream media.  Although this may be a little overstated (see New York Times reports, for example), the protest has gotten much more attention overseas.  Most of the links above are from international media, and activist sites–and sympathetic amplifiers on Facebook and Twitter, have been much better at getting the word out.

2.  On Wall Street, activists have compared themselves to the Egyptian demonstrators in Tahrir Square, but this seems more than a little bit of overreach.  It’s certainly not clear that many want to bring the government down, for example.

3.  The Wall Street protest is already spreading, as allies around the country are staging their own occupations in Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia.  These aren’t yet massive groups, bu there are efforts in many many places.  See Occupy Together for an inventory of actions and links to sites and campaigns around the world.

4.  On the right, a great deal of activist attention has been sucked up in the Republican primary campaigns.  On the left, however, with President Obama unchallenged for the Democratic nomination, the Wall Street-style protests are the best bet that activists can see.  Expect more–for months.

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Irvine 11 verdict vindicates poor protest strategy

Posted on September 24, 2011 by David S. Meyer

An Orange County jury found 10 students guilty of two misdemeanor offenses for disrupting a speech by the Israeli ambassador, Michael Oren, at the University of California, Irvine (my school), more than a year ago.  Superior Court Judge Peter A. Wilson sentenced the students to three years of unsupervised probation.  If the students each complete 56 hours of community service within the year, the probation will be suspended.

Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackaukas’s foolish choice to charge and prosecute the students for an uncivil disruption of a campus activity stretched the news cycle for the event over more than a year, gave a name and a public profile to a group of young activists, and created a national audience for their views.  It’s hard to think that this is what he had in mind when he decided to charge them.  (A cynical view would suggest that the District Attorney saw this as a good issue for building his own political career.)

In contrast, the DA’s decision helped the protest succeed far beyond what the activists could have reasonably expected.  Members of the Muslim Students Union wanted to challenge Ambassador Oren’s visit in particular, and Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians in general.  The “popcorn protest” (staggered fits of shouted denunciations) interrupted the talk, as one after another of the protesters was escorted out of the auditorium.  The Ambassador ultimately delivered his remarks and took questions.

Take a look at the video of the disruption, and see if you think the students’ arguments got out clearly:

The university disciplined the disruptive students (individual penalties are not public), and banned the Muslim Students Organization from campus for one quarter for organizing the protest and concealing its efforts.

It could have ended there, but the DA rescued the students’ cause by charging them.  A simple Google search for news of the Irvine 11 verdict generates nearly 500 hits at this moment, across the country and around the world.  The students got to make their claims about Israel and its ambassador in court, getting far more attention than they would have otherwise.  The trial provided a focus for organizing for the past eighteen months or so, as supporters forged ties with sympathetic lawyers, the American Civil Liberties Union, and journalists, and made their case broadly.  With an appeal on the horizon, this will continue, as activists plan next steps in response to the verdict.  (See http://www.irvine11.com/ for details.)  I expect that they will organize around the selective prosecution of this protest, which surely looks to be based on the ideas, rather than the actions, of the protesters, and make extremely credible charges about the DA’s political motivations.  In short, DA Racklaukas did more for the protesters’ cause than they were able to do on their own.

DA Rackaukas should have to answer questions about his office’s resources, when there are quite serious crimes (one recent example) that demand his office’s attention.  Judge Wilson’s sentence, taking into account the actual magnitude of the crime and the sincerity of the students’ beliefs, hardly justifies the past year’s effort by the DA’s office.

[We’ve discussed this case before, here, here, here, and here.]

Meantime, we should wait a second before signing onto all the claims the defendants are making about their actions and the law.  Just because DA Rackaukas is wrong, it doesn’t mean that the Irvine 11’s supporters are all right.  Free speech, as my colleague Erwin Chemerinsky has noted, doesn’t mean unrestricted freedom to shout down another speaker.  (Were the proto-Tea Party shout-downs at health care town meetings the best expression of American democracy?)  Sincere beliefs don’t immunize a person from criminal prosecution–even if we agree with those beliefs.  Stop for a second and think about someone whose views you despise who could make exactly those arguments.

And calling an action “civil disobedience” doesn’t protect the disobedient from trial or penalty.  (Henry Thoreau went to jail before someone paid his poll taxes; Martin Luther King went to jail dozens of times.)

I think the American Civil Liberties Union’s reaction, as reported by the Daily Pilot, was only partly right:

The executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California said he is “deeply troubled” by the conviction and by the district attorney’s decision to charge the students with a crime.

“If allowed to stand, this will undoubtedly intimidate students in Orange County and across the state, and discourage them from engaging in any controversial speech or protest for fear of criminal charges,” Hector Villagra said.

“The extraordinary resources required for the criminal prosecution and trial of these 10 young men — including having the head of the district attorney’s homicide division leading the effort — would have been better used to fight crimes that endanger the residents of Orange County than to chill speech and discourage student activism,” he said.

Will the prosecution and sentencing have a chilling effect on free speech on campus, as Mr. Villagra suggests?  I’m not convinced.  Student activists for any cause will have learned that a small splash on campus can garner national (and international) attention and provide a stable platform for their ideas and organizing efforts.

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Framing capital punishment

Posted on September 22, 2011 by David S. Meyer

The execution of Troy Davis, a convicted murderer who proclaimed his innocence to the moment of his death, gave us a window on the practice of the death penalty in the United States.  But Davis was not the only person executed yesterday.

The state of Texas killed Lawrence Russell Brewer, a white supremacist convicted of killing a black man by chaining him to the back of his car and dragging him along a bumpy road.  Brewer didn’t make a statement before his execution, but reporters noticed a tear at the edge of one eye.  Brewer’s execution was in the news, largely as contrast to that of Davis, but the anti-death penalty movement did not trumpet the disturbing facts of his crime.

Advocacy groups pick their examples to dramatize the claims they want to make.  (See our discussion of poster children for the DREAM Act.)  Troy Davis, a black man convicted of murdering a white police officer, Mark MacPhail, helped the anti-death penalty movement make many points sharply.

There was no physical evidence in Davis’s case, and all but two of the non-police eyewitnesses from the trial recanted their testimony, reporting that they were pressured to implicate Davis.  Nine people have sworn affidavits that one of those who did not recant,  Sylvester Coles, was in fact responsible for the murder.

Davis’s case helps advocates raise issues of wrongful conviction, procedural fairness, and race–all in addition to general concerns about the death penalty.

Troy Davis won support from those who oppose the death penalty in general, like Amnesty International and Pope Benedict XVI, but also from those who generally support the death penalty, including former FBI Director William Sessions. The facts in the Davis case were so egregious that one didn’t have to oppose the death penalty to oppose his execution.

The Davis case became a focus for organizing against the death penalty, and groups protested and held vigils, while advocates explored every route for redress offered by the legal system.  They tried to stop the execution, organizing around the slogan, “too much doubt,” but–without doubt–many activists at the core of the campaign would oppose the death penalty in any case.

The advocacy point is that advocates for abolishing the death penalty could build a broader coalition with Davis’s case than with most of the people who are executed each year.  (Indeed, there are likely some people who generally oppose the death penalty prepared to make an exception in Brewer’s case.)

There is a moral case to be made against the death penalty, one that has never commanded a majority of public support in the United States–and indeed, probably not in most of the long list of countries that have abandoned the death penalty (list).  All other rich countries have done so.

Advocates haven’t abandoned the moral argument, but spend more time focused on additional arguments that might win additional support: the high cost of administering the death penalty; the possibility of wrongful conviction; and the racially disparate sentencing of people accused of crimes.

The death penalty has been on its last legs in the United States since the 1970s, when it was banned by the Supreme Court for four years.  (See the Death Penalty Information Center for comprehensive information on the practice of capital punishment in the United States.)  What’s not clear is how many executions will take place in the interim.

Full disclosure: My opposition to the death penalty began when, as a preschooler, I watched an episode of Superman in which Clark Kent, using his clandestine superpowers, conducted his own lie detector test of a man on death row who was, in fact, innocent.  That possibility, of wrongful conviction, was enough for me at 5, to be wary about government executions.  Although I’ve learned a fair amount about the practice of capital punishment since, nothing has shaken this view.

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Roseanne takes it to Wall Street

Posted on September 21, 2011 by David S. Meyer

Roseanne, the comedian, actress, producer, and a sort of populist progressive, dropped in on the Wall Street occupation, and delivered brief prepared remarks, then improvised.   I got the link from someone on Facebook, because her appearance didn’t make much of an impact in national news.

It’s hard to get a sense of just what’s going on in the Wall Street occupation, which has clearly drawn far smaller numbers than the initiators called for.  I got a brief report from a veteran of the 1979 protest, who expressed disappointment with the event and the state of progressive politics in general.  He said the numbers were small, the event disorganized, and the demands completely unclear.  The demonstrators projected entitlement, naivete, and political isolation, he said (I paraphrase).  To the extent the occupation has appeared in mainstream media, this evaluation seems common (Business Insider has published updates.)

These days, we don’t have to wait for a newsletter or memoir to hear what the activists say and think.   Occupy Wall Street has been publishing updates at least daily.  (I bet they tweet more frequently.)  And Global Revolution has been providing a livestream feed of events.  The story I’ve gotten is that a few people have continued the occupation, generating numbers in the low hundreds for events during the week, and a few people have been arrested.  Police haven’t allowed the demonstrators to put up anything resembling protection from the elements, like tarps and tents, and a few additional protests have sparked here and there.  Note that both Roseanne and Occupy Wall Street stress that the police, working people not big bankers or capitalists, are not the enemy, but potential allies.  It doesn’t look like that yet.

So, what are we to make of all this?  I’d note the critical importance of old-fashioned organizing, recruiting organizations and people, arguing about demands, and working the media, in getting a coherent event organized and a message out.  The attractive promise of base democracy and spontaneous events that the new media suggests practically means that all kinds of people with all kinds of politics can claim to speak for the protest, and those not yet deeply committed are unlikely to find ready handles to latch onto.  Meanwhile, bloggers working laptops powered by small portable generators can get their word out, reporting events that larger media outlets are well-prepared to ignore, but the audiences they reach are, uh, limited.

Wall Street has long seemed an attractive target for protesters, but it’s hard to go beyond the event.  In 1967, for example, the Yippies asked for a tour of the exchange and threw a few hundred (real and fake) dollar bills over the side of the gallery to watch the traders scramble; some did.  It’s good street theater–and there must be some good photos somewhere–but what was the political demand?  or impact?

It’s tough for activists to figure out a piece of global capitalism to challenge effectively.  (Meetings of supranational institutions like the World Bank, the G-20,  or the IMF have been great for events.)  Wall Street is a tough target, conceptually as well as physically.  All sorts of businesses go to the stock exchange to raise capital, including companies that claim to be green and humane.  Increasingly, with more and more training online and brokers offices scattered out to New Jersey and beyond, even making a show of trying to interrupt the practice of global business is more elusive.  And explaining what you want can seem inordinately vague–which is even worse than utopian.

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Took it to Wall Street

Posted on September 19, 2011 by David S. Meyer

The financial capital of the United States is an attractive and difficult target for activists.  Nearly 32 years ago, on Sunday, October 28, 1979 (the anniversary of the great stock market crash), the antinuclear Clamshell Alliance staged a legal demonstration.  On Monday, activists staged a large civil disobedience action.  I was there.

To my surprise, I found little on the web about the demonstration and civil disobedience event (blog posts, archives, The Harvard Crimson, which was part of an antinuclear campaign which enjoyed significant successes (no nuclear plants licensed in the United States since that time.)  What follows are some recollections.  I welcome corrections from veterans and people who have better files.

Protests at nuclear plants and construction sites became common in the 1970s and, partly as a result, became less visible.  The movement against nuclear power was coordinated largely by regional coalitions, and was based around small local affinity groups of 10-30 people, who trained together and came to trust each other.  There was a radical democratic ethos that prized consensus, which made it very difficult for the movement as a whole to innovate.

The Wall Street campaign, coordinated by a “Manhattan Project” group, was an attempt to do so.  Cindy Girvani Leerer explains the thinking underneath the effort:

The time had come to move toward more decentralized actions that would target the economics of nuclear power and the funding of the Seabrook nuke in order to make the building of nukes less profitable and attractive, to make explicit connections with other movements to combat the “divide and conquer” strategy of corporate capitalism, and to promote conversations about building a nuclear free future and a better society. If money swears, we would swear back. This economic focus occurred on several fronts, including legislative challenges to passing “construction work in progress” charges onto consumers (see article on CWIP) and direct action educational campaigns.

This was the rationale behind the Wall Street Action, a direct action campaign focusing on both nuclear power and weapons as a symptom of an economic and energy system that exploited people for profit.  A group of Seacoast, NH Clamshell activists joined with activists from the War Resisters League in NY to develop the campaign which emphasized educating participants and the public about the economics of the nuclear industry and connections with other struggles. Organizers met with diverse groups to build a coalition for the campaign, eventually receiving endorsements from women’s, labor, Native American, African American, socialist, nonviolent, and anti-nuclear and environmental groups.

The Sunday demonstration (I recall a quote of 20,000 attendees) was much like other large events, with a stage, entertainment, and speeches.  The tight space made it feel more

Pete Seeger singing at Barack Obama's inauguration

intimate and intense.  Pete Seeger was there, as he often was, playing banjo and singing songs from the labor, peace, and civil rights movements.  (He was an old-timer then, with more than thirty years in cultural activism.  At right, he’s still doing the same thing.)  I remember somewhat better a younger singer, who wrote a song for the Wall Street event.  Here’s the chorus:

Take it to Wall Street, New York Town

Just ride right up in your limousine and sit yourself right down.

Grab a seat on the exchange with the Bulls and the Bears

It’s the Capitol of Capital, the Buck Stops there.

(It was a catchy, easy tune as well; readers will be glad that my technical ignorance will spare them my rendition of it.   I can find absolutely no trace of this clever song on the web. I think the singer/writer’s name was Al Giordano.  If this is right, he’s been an activist journalist for decades now.)

The protesters had all engaged in nonviolence training exercises, but the police were better prepared.  They closed off most access points, but allowed people who looked like they belonged walk through to work.  They filtered most of us out easily, but a few people in suits walked through and sat down on the street, awaiting arrest.  Daniel Ellsberg was one.

Some groups had come with chains and locks.  The police came with bolt cutters and buses.  They carried demonstrators who wouldn’t walk away on stretchers, and put them on buses to arraignment.  Most of the police were focused, purposeful, and polite.  On the buses, some even put on antinuclear buttons.  Over 1,000 people were arrested, and those who cooperated, providing names and contact information, were out of jail by nightfall.  Those who refused to cooperate spent several days in jail.  I believe most charges were dismissed.

The presidential campaign was already taking off, and both candidates announced their support for nuclear power.  Ronald Reagan won in a landslide, and the movement shifted most of its efforts to campaigns against nuclear weapons.

Remember, no nuclear plant has been licensed since.

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Take it to Wall Street

Posted on September 18, 2011 by David S. Meyer

Left activists have decided to target big business, as well as the government. Yesterday, in an event that was  months in the making, (at least) hundreds have attempted to occupy Wall Street.

Announced by the anti-corporate group, Adbusters, the hacktivist group, Anonymous posted a youtube video in support.  Over time, others joined in, organizing around the event.

Claiming inspiration from the Arab Spring, the project’s open source site, Occupy Wall Street, called for sustained mass action in lower Manhattan–and announced that they planned to stay and make a new world:

On September 17, 20,000 of us will descend on Wall Street, the iconic financial center of America, set up a peaceful encampment, hold a people’s assembly to decide what our one demand will be, and carry out an agenda of full-spectrum, absolutely nonviolent civil disobedience the likes of which the country has not seen since the freedom marches of the 1960s.

From our encampment we will launch daily smart mob forays all over lower Manhattan … peaceful, creative happenings in front of Goldman Sachs; the SEC; the Federal Reserve; the New York Stock Exchange … and maybe even, if we can figure out where they’re being held, at the sites of Obama’s private $38,500 per person fundraising events happening somewhere in Manhattan on Sept. 19 and 20.

Our strategy will be that of the master strategist Sun Tzu: “appear at points which the enemy must hasten to defend; march swiftly to places where you are not expected.”

With a bit of luck, and if fate is on our side, we may be able to turn all of lower Manhattan into a site of passionate democratic contestation – an American Tahrir Square.

(Wall Street is an obvious, attractive, and very difficult target for activists.  There was a march on Wall Street against the Federal bailout of large financial firms in 2008, organized by critics on the left, and a large antinuclear power rally and civil disobedience action in 1979 [more on this later].  It’s relatively easy for a large police force to shut off access to the Financial district’s narrow streets, and to clear activists out.  Armed, coordinated, equipped, and better trained police forces can stage mass arrests reasonably quickly, carting demonstrators out in plastic handcuffs or on stretchers.)

Calls for the action circulated on all sorts of social media, including Facebook, Youtube, and Twitter, the event as been widely publicized.  But no one applied for a permit.  As a result, New York police were well-prepared to deny access to most of the area (NY 1 Reports).  As with most large actions, people with many different perspectives are participating.  The New York Times that both anarchists and followers of the proto-fascist Lyndon LaRouche (singing patriotic songs) also attended–with their own plans and purposes.

It seems clear that it will be very difficult for any group to control the message that comes out of this event, and for this reason, the larger groups have stayed away.

United for Peace and Justice, for example, has announced a broad anti-corporate campaign, kicking off next week, which lists many events–but not the Wall Street demonstration.

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Ronald Reagan sold out conservative movements

Posted on September 15, 2011 by David S. Meyer

Successful politicians exploit, buy off, and sell out the movements that animate their campaigns.  And Ronald Reagan was a successful politician.  He came into the presidency as the embodiment of a conservative movement coalition, and left, dismissed by movement leaders as a “useful idiot,” by Howard Phillips, chair of the Conservative Caucus.

As aspirants for the Republican presidential nomination invoke President Reagan’s name, and seek to outflank each other on the right to claim his mantle, it’s worthwhile to remember how (and how severely) his presidency frustrated the conservative movements of the time.  (Although it certainly didn’t please people on the left.)

Candidate Ronald Reagan, a two-term governor of California (where he presided over the largest tax increase in California history), tried to ride and unite several conservative movements to the Republican presidential nomination, in a challenge to incumbent Gerald Ford (who employed Dick Cheney as his chief of staff) in 1976.  The effort failed, but damaged Ford.  By 1980, Reagan had the strongest claim among the Republican hopefuls as the conservative movement candidate.

Candidate Reagan pledged fealty to the religious right, promising to bring back prayer in the schools and end legal access to abortion.  He rode the then-rising tide of anti-tax advocacy, promising to reduce taxes and the size of government, and to eliminate the federal budget deficit.  He campaigned for massive increases in military spending and promised a tougher line against the Soviet Union, in adherence to the conservative movement’s line on foreign policy.

In office, Reagan continued to pay lip service to the movements that made his candidacy successful, but he also, increasingly as his term went on, trimmed his agenda to what seemed politically possible.

Putting prayer in the schools and outlawing abortion depended upon the Supreme Court, and two of President Reagan’s appointees (Sandra Day O’Connor and William Kennedy) consistently supported court precedent on those issues, demonstrating an institutionally conservative approach to social change–rather than a movement conservative approach.  Reagan regularly addressed the anti-abortion crusaders at the annual March for Life demonstrations–by telephone hook-up, but pursued their agenda in a more moderate way than they demanded.

President Reagan cut income taxes dramatically when he entered office and, contrary to supply side dogma, revenues decreased and the deficit ballooned.  Reagan presided over several substantial tax increases over the rest of his term.  Federal spending increased dramatically, as did the size of government.  Part of this was the result of unprecedented peacetime military spending, but President Reagan flinched at the idea of harsh cuts to most federal programs (see budget director David Stockman’s memoir of the period).

Increased military spending snaked through the Pentagon for the rest of the 1980s, but President Reagan’s confrontational stance toward the Soviet Union abated before the end of his first term, partly a reaction to the nuclear freeze movement.  Incoming Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev received a note from Reagan, hand-delivered by Vice President George Bush, just as he took office.  Reagan agreed to cuts in strategic nuclear weapons, and was ready to trade away even more nuclear weapons if the Soviets would accept his dream of space based anti-missile weapons (“Star Wars”).  His conservative supporters were appalled, and questioned his lucidity on the matter.

Ask about immigration reform.  President Reagan signed a comprehensive immigration bill that legalized millions of undocumented immigrants.

My point?  I’m not seeking to reconstruct the Reagan presidency as moderate.  Ronald Reagan governed as a conservative, and was the prime target for movements of the left at the time.

Rather, I mean to  point out how successful politicians are willing to compromise on their movement supporters’ vital matters of principle.  Republican presidential hopefuls are terrified of even acknowledging this as a possibility, preferring a plaster saint as iconic hero to the real two-term president.

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Obama backburners the environmental movement

Posted on September 9, 2011 by David S. Meyer

Darryl Hannah arrested outside White House

Successful politicians exploit, buy off, and sell out the movements that animate their campaigns.  And Barack Obama has been a successful politician.

Partly because of his soaring campaign rhetoric, partly because of his personal background, and partly because of his rather limited record in American politics, social movements of the left organized around Barack Obama’s candidacy as a gain all by itself.  (When he and his primary opponent, Hillary Clinton, detailed specific plans, Clinton’s were consistently more liberal.)  The election of a president named Barack, rather than George or Bill or John or James symbolically promised a great break with the past.  Activists imagined a similarly dramatic break with the past on policy matters.

And they were disappointed.

Supporters of health care reform lamented the absence of a public option in the president’s bill; civil libertarians continue to wait for President Obama to make good on his promise to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay.  Gay and lesbian activists steamed when he put the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” on a slow track; immigration activists mobilized while he failed to offer any comprehensive reform bill, and seemed to invest little in the DREAM Act.  Peace activists watched the dollars and casualties roll on up in Iraq and Afghanistan.  And environmentalists have seen little progress on the greener economy candidate Obama promised.

Once in office, like most politicians, Barack Obama has focused more on the voters he thinks might stray than those he assumes he can take for granted.  He tacked back to push for policy reforms on gay and lesbian rights and immigration, because he saw the prospects of gains in policy or politics.  But he’s left environmentalists hanging, on issues big and small.

And what are they to do?  President Obama, in contrast to almost all of the Republican presidential aspirants, says that he believes that human activity is contributing to climate change, and that human action can help ameliorate the adverse impact of changing climate.  Will the environmentalists desert him?  For whom?  The environmental movement is largely comprised of the educated middle-class, who tend to vote, but they’re unlikely to defect to anyone who can get the Republican nomination.  Obama seems to count on this.

So, some have begun to protest, to try to exert pressure and to keep their issues alive.  More than 1,000 activists have been arrested outside the White House so far, pointing to climate change in general as they oppose the specific authorization of a pipeline from Canada to Texas that would carry crude oil.

The Tar Sands Action group has staged repeated civil disobedience actions on the President’s doorstep, deploying celebrities in the movement, like writer Bill McKibben and NASA scientist, James Hansen, who have been crusading for action on climate change for years, and celebrities whose fame sometimes extends beyond the movement, like actress Darryl Hannah, above.

Meanwhile, with the environmentalists being hauled away outside, President Obama announced that he had ordered the EPA to abandon efforts to tighten controls on ozone in the air, even as his administrator, Lisa Jackson, had announced that current standards were inadequate and legally indefensible.  Al Gore has endorsed the civil disobedience action, criticizing the president along the way:

Instead of relying on science, President Obama appears to have bowed to pressure from polluters who did not want to bear the cost of implementing new restrictions on their harmful pollution—even though economists have shown that the US economy would benefit from the job creating investments associated with implementing the new technology. The result of the White House’s action will be increased medical bills for seniors with lung disease, more children developing asthma, and the continued degradation of our air quality.

Explicitly, the President has announced that he will postpone regulating environmental pollution to focus on short-term gains in jobs, a trade-off Republicans have been unwilling to make on the deficit.

Environmentalists have yet to find a way to exert effective political pressure.  As the campaign intensifies, absent a primary opponent for the president, they are unlikely to be able to do so.

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A day for Labor

Posted on September 7, 2011 by David S. Meyer

Successful politicians exploit, buy off, and sell out the movements that sometimes buoy their campaigns.  This American story is an old one, and it’s one that leaves activists disappointed, wary, and cynical, even especially about the politicians who do the most for them.

[Recall that candidate Abraham Lincoln promised to put the preservation of the union higher on his list of priorities than ending slavery, and that abolitionists criticized President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation (issued after two years of war), which ended slavery only in the territories that had seceded.]  And many do far less.

So, why is the American day to commemorate Labor held at the end of the summer, months after May Day, the workers’ celebration day virtually everywhere else in the world?  How do you turn a movement by creating an occasion for a cook-out?

President Grover Cleveland, a hard-money Democrat, and generally no friend to organized labor, signed a bill making Labor Day a national holiday at the end of June in 1894, at the height of the Populist movement, and just after the American Railway Union, led by Eugene Debs, had launched a boycott and strike, starting in Pullman, Illinois.  Protesting the Pullman Palace Car Company’s treatment of its workers, including harsh wage cuts, railway workers across the country refused to handle any train hauling a Pullman car.

The Federal government used an injunction, then troops, to battle the union and get the trains moving.  In July, just after announcing a national day to celebrate the contributions of American workers, President Cleveland ordered federal marshals–along with 12,000 Army troops, into Chicago to break up the strike.  Workers fought back, and 13 workers were killed, and at least several dozen injured.  Debs was tried for violating an injunction, and went to prison, where he discovered the writings of Karl Marx.  Clarence Darrow provided a vigorous, but unsuccessful, defense.

Debs would go to prison again, most notably for his opposition to US entry into World War I, and would run for president five times as a Socialist.

But I digress.  President Cleveland created a distinctly American Labor Day, explicitly not on May 1, which had already been the occasion for vigorous and disruptive workers’ activism.  (Read about the Haymarket affair.)  May Day remains the day for international workers mobilization.  Instead, our Labor Day is a time to mark the end of summer by cooking outdoors and shopping for school supplies.

The  US Department of Labor’s website gives credit for Labor Day to the American worker, but makes no mention of the Pullman Strike or the Haymarket demonstrations.

So, commemoration can actually be a way to neuter the historical memory.  See our discussions of commemorative days for Martin Luther King, Cesar Chavez, and Fred Korematsu, all significantly more difficult characters than what they’ve come to represent.

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