Saturday, November 12, 2011

on Tea Party {VS} Occupy

The Tea-Party wants to take over the country by exploiting the electoral process. The Occupy movement wants to reform a 'corporate' electoral process by supplanting it with direct democracy (one voter, one vote, no bundling.)

Which of these intentions can the general public grasp?

If, in the short term, the TP's, wherever & whenever they fail (which they will) & are rejected, they will be replaced in the longer term by an evolved Occupy+ combined with a growing union-based democracy. The TP's brutal antitax reductionism can't & won't resolve the ongoing crisis. Desperate to get the public to believe they're the original anti-government movement, whenever & wherever they become the (temporary) government, they become self-contradictory as well as self-defeating, sure to be challenged by an evolved Occupy+ dedicated to meeting people's real needs. The TP only serves (its own) relatively well-off individuals' needs. (The avg. TP member is 40+ & earns $40+K) Newly-announced bi-partisan-based 'moderate' 3rd-parties may propose 'moderate' tweaks.

Unions may be relatively weak now, but are growing again, stimulated by Occupy's 'energy' (that unions admit they admire & need) & engagement in public-needs projects (cf. moving homeless families into repaired abandoned houses.) Unions have already been supporting Occupy camps with needed showers, food, & clothes in return for Occupier participation in union strikes.

Some city administrations (Portland, Santa Rosa) have expressed sympathy with their Occupiers, but want them to vacate overnite while public-works depts. cleanse their campsites. Occupy Oakland will be allowed to stand vigils, but not camp overnight. In Manhattan, the Occupiers' of Zuccotti Park are being allowed overnite by the court, but not by the city administration http://news.yahoo.com/ court-order-allows-occupy-wall-st-protesters-back-135130959.html .

If Occupiers vacate city-limits & see to their own health & safety needs, becoming self-sustaining, they might even be tolerated as semi-autonomous. To do this, the Occupiers will need the * sympthetic loan of unused land & abandoned buildings & the means to develop self-sustaining communities (21st century versions of 19th-century communities like Amana, etc.) Building liveable communities may even win the broad public's approval, support, & cooperation.

Conclusion: The Tea-Party is a holding action pretending to be a long-term solution. The Occupation Movement is of indeterminate duration, but is dedicated to broad, long-term goals & humane reforms

*Occupy L.A. receives offer to decamp
By Kate Linthicum, Los Angeles Times

Los Angeles officials * have offered Occupy L.A. protesters a package of incentives that includes downtown office space and farmland in an attempt to persuade them to abandon their camp outside of City Hall, according to several demonstrators who have been in negotiations with the city.

The details of the proposal were revealed Monday during the demonstration's nightly general assembly meeting by Jim Lafferty, an attorney with the National Lawyers Guild who has been advocating on behalf of the protest since it began seven weeks ago. Lafferty said *city officials have offered protesters a $1-a-year lease on a 10,000-square-foot office space near City Hall. He said officials also promised land elsewhere for protesters who wish to farm, as well as additional housing for the contingent of homeless people who joined the camp.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/
la-me-1122-occupy-la-move-20111122,0,1592348.story
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