Occupy Wall Street: Plan - B

David Seaton's News Links

Foreclosure is a national tragedy and a relentless drag on economic growth. Jobs can’t be created until demand increases, and demand won’t increase until consumers get out of debt, and housing is the biggest obstacle. If we had healthy institutions, the White House, both parties in Congress, the leaders of the biggest banks, and consumer groups would have sat down together and worked out a solution that keeps millions of people in their homes without wiping their debts completely clean. But we don’t, and so the history of the past few years has been written by Rick Santelli and Occupy Wall Street. George Packer - New Yorker

The big question that people who want to change things have to ask themselves over and over is "what is to be done". That is the question that OWS must ask itself and answer quickly if it doesn't want to peter out into irrelevance... something that would be tragic if it were to occur.

The role of OWS is pedagogical, it is about raising awareness, consciousness. This is the terrain of what is known as the "propaganda of the deed". A practical, non-violent, American illustration of this would be the lunch counter sit-ins and  freedom riders of the Civil Rights Movement, photogenic action which captured the attention of the media daily and soon the imagination and the "hearts and minds" of the American people. These acts were the thin wedge that opened up the conscience and the consciousness of Americans and changed the face of America.

In my opinion the tragedy of mass foreclosures and thousands upon thousands of Americans being evicted from their homes in the midst of the gravest economic crisis since the Great Depression is an issue that has the same transformational potential.

Here is another quote from George Packer's article, that shows that political work is waiting to be done:

There’s no powerful D.C. lobby supporting Americans in Foreclosure, no mass movement of underwater mortgagees. Like unemployment, it’s a trauma that isolates people, leaving them to fend for themselves.

Few things could be more inspiring of compassion, empathy and fellow feeling than watching men, women and children being torn from their homes and ejected into the streets... only a heart of stone (and there are plenty of those) could fail to be moved by such a sight. Anyone who stands up for them and defends them is bound to win the sympathy and support of most decent human beings.

Showing the evicted -- or the about to be evicted-- that they are not alone, not leaving them to fend for themselves, would be the fulcrum that could turn the OWS into a powerful lever for changing the political life of America forever, in the same way that the Civil Rights Movement did.

How would this defense take place?

On one hand it would require an army of lawyers working pro bono to review all paper work leading to the foreclosures as much of it appears to be shoddy, slapdash and even outrageously fraudulent. Organizing this army of investigators and putting them on the case would win the gratitude and even the love of millions of Americans.

The next line of defense would be direct actions of non-violent, civil disobedience. Sit-ins, where dozens, hopefully hundreds, of activists would have to be carted away, one at a time, by police before the eviction could ever take place... with all the media recording it... every day, everywhere in America. The impact would be tremendous, transformational.

During these months of occupations, friendships of the like-minded without number have been made and a huge network of the politically conscious has been created. This instrument should be put to use in a way that connects in solidarity with the deepest fears of their fellow citizens. In doing this, a much, much more powerful instrument will be created, one that could forever change and purify the face of American politics. DS