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Occupy Wall Street: New Wave Of Globalized Resistance

By Peter Custers

03 November, 2011
Countercurrents.org

A View From Europe

The outpour of anger over the bailing out of banks and other financial institutions at the expense of the world’s poor was truly massive and virtually global. On October the 14th last, at the call amongst others of New York’s Occupy Wall Street movement, synchronic public protests were staged in over 900 cities worldwide. In Europe, the response was specially large in Italy and in Spain. A reported one hundred thousand people marched through the city of Rome, protesting the stringent austerity measures of Italy’s Berlusconi government. But the outpour of indignation was largest in Spain, which country has the most powerful anarchist tradition of any country in Europe. In Madrid, the multitude gathered at the Puerta del Sol square was estimated at some half a million people. But Barcelona, the city that in the late 1930s functioned as headquarters of Spain’s anarchist resistance against fascism, - the size of the crowd was very credible too, numbering perhaps sixty thousand. Numerous were the squares where small tent camps were erected by radical activists. Numerous the people showing they are no longer willing to stand by as politicians single-mindedly struggle to keep the world’s financial system afloat. Even the Netherlands, where extra-parliamentary resistance has been weak since the late eighties, saw the emergence of a modest ‘occupation’-camp. By the end of October, the square next to the Beurs (Stock Exchange) in Amsterdam was packed with tents and supportive facilities, including a communal kitchen run with food donated by the public.

Those who have been following events unfold are familiar with the saga. Yet it is worthwhile to recall briefly how the day of global resistance mid-October got shaped. Less than a month earlier, on September the 19th, several thousand activists had taken the unprecedented step of occupying a park located right opposite Wall Street’s Stock Exchange in New York, the world’s premier financial centre. The occupation’s core participants were not just motivated by a deep sense of outrage over Wall Street’s unchecked power. Through trainings they had also prepared themselves for the eventuality of police violence. At first, the government of President Obama and its Wall Street friends may have believed the initiative would peter out. However, the extent of support for the occupation became quickly visible after US media showed images of 7 hundred people being arrested on New York’s Brooklyn bridge, on October 1. Ever since, messages of solidarity have been pouring in for Occupy Wall Street from across the globe. Celebrities have travelled to the spot of the tent camp to express their support. And many American trade unions, including middle-of-the-road unions, have voiced agreement with the action. As polls have indicated, well over half the US’s population sympathizes with the movement and its goals. And although Obama has sought to sideline the movement by speaking about the public’s pent-up frustration, - nothing it seems could prevent the further spread of the new movement. Indeed, the saying that a single spark can start a prairie fire seems to accurately express what has happened this last month.

However, the call to action has not just come from New York. In fact, the proposal to protest on October the 14th originally hailed from Madrid in Spain, where activists in May last set up an independent camp community on the capital’s central square, the Puerta del Sol. And in fact, both Spanish and American protestors have repeatedly expressed their indebtedness to the events that took place in Egypt, in January/February. Clearly, the tent camp at Tahrir square in Cairo, with its elaborate, improvised provisions including doctors and medical aid, did not only function as the centre of the uprising of the Egyptian people against dictator Mubarak. It did not just inspire people throughout the Arab world to revolt against autocracy, but has helped even break the stupor which many people in the Western world have felt since the start of the financial crisis of 2008. Clearly, the tent camps in Cairo, Madrid and New York are part of the same chain, of a new surge of globalized resistance. This wave of globalized resistance is somewhat different in nature from the wave the world witnessed before. To recall: the idea of globalized resistance was first shaped in Seattle in 1999, where thousands of people from all over the globe gathered to prevent the WTO from holding its conference. The previous wave reached its peak in Genua where forty thousand people in 2001 staged direct resistance hoping to shut down the meeting of the G-8. And focused protests around world conferences have never died down. Yet with the mushrooming of this year’s urban tent camps, and with the synchronized protests staged October 14, - globalized resistance appears to have become more rooted, nationally and locally.

Still, from a European point of view one critical note needs perhaps to be placed: the apparent lack of an organic connection between the day of global protests - and ongoing people’s actions in Greece. Whereas Greece is facing a straight economic disaster due to the policies its government is forced to pursue, - activists who gathered to protest in Athens on October 14 were poor in numbers. Instead, there was a near unanimous popular response to the two-day general strike which Greece’s trade unions called several days later, October 19 and 20. All public services were shut, schools and custom offices were closed, and state hospitals were running on emergency staff. Even traffic controllers staged a walk-out! Further, the choice of the two dates for the general strike was logical, since the Greek Parliament on October 20 was scheduled to vote on new austerity measures aimed at securing continued international payments towards the country’s external debt. And the days were marked by open defiance. Thus, on October the 20th, one of the unions linked to Greece’s Communist Party (KKE), called Pame, staged a symbolic encirclement at Athens’ Syntagma square, - around the Parliament building where voting was scheduled for that day. Contrary to the globalized protests staged on October 14, - the stiff resistance waged by the Greek population against externally induced austerity measures is very poorly reported internationally. And although the protests at times are marred by conflicts within the Greek Left carried over from history, - the flexibility in the forms of, largely nonviolent action the Greek population combines (occupations and strikes) is exemplary, to say the least.

How then to evaluate the significance of this new wave of globalized resistance? Two points stand out forcefully, even as events are still unfolding. First – the activists of Occupy Wall Streets and their European counterparts have very well succeeded in communicating their outrage over what’s arguably the biggest scandal in contemporary history. The documentary movie ‘Inside Job’ directed by Charles Ferguson makes the point well. The deregulation of the world’s financial sector implemented since the 1980s has basically had two results. On the one hand, banks and other financial institutions have engaged in reckless speculation at the expense of the public, i.e. of small savers and pension-holders, the banks’ depositors, - and at the risk of a near-global financial collapse. On the other hand, those who have devised these policies – people like Allen Greenspan, the former head of the US Federal Reserve, and Larry Summers whom Obama has appointed his chief economic chief advisor (!) - have not only gone scot-free. They have amply benefited from their dangerous policies. And whereas the big banks have been bailed out, and are continuing to be bailed out – the latest candidate in Europe is Belgium’s Dexia bank, – very little has been done for the victims of recklessness. Many tens of millions of people have lost their jobs worldwide, as many have sunk into indebtedness – but not a single one of those bankers who pocketed tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in personal property has been legally charged.

There is yet a second point the Wall Street occupiers make that appears to hold much political significance. One of the slogans put forward by the activists says they represent the voice of 99 percent – versus the interests of 1 percent. This slogan surely refers to the fact that a very small minority during the era of globalization has amassed ever more wealth, even as most people have not benefited. Yet Wall Street occupiers in venting these figures also target the fact that Western democracy increasingly lacks substance, i.e. that much of the decision-making over the bailing out of the banks has occurred without any say for the public, or even for their formal representatives, the parliamentarians. Literally trillions of Dollars were handed out in 2008/2009 to leading Western banks in order to prevent a financial collapse. Yet lawmakers either were not informed, or only afterwards meekly registered their consent. Where political leaders and public opinion builders ever project an image of Western societies as being highly democratic – the new wave of globalized resistance severely questions the quality of Western democracy. Indeed, the urban tent camps erected from New York and Oakland to Amsterdam and beyond do endeavor to practice an alternative form of democracy, - one respecting everybody’s voice and rights. This democracy via plenary camp meetings held on a daily basis does not necessarily result in clarity over the path towards social change. Yet in challenging formal democracy the activists do effectively challenge conventional views.

Dr. Peter Custers

(political economist/theoretician on militarism)

Leiden, the Netherlands, November 1, 2011

www.petercusters.nl

 

 



 


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