Here's Why OWS Should Matter to You ...

Corporations are richer than ever. Rather than using that wealth to expand and grow, it is used to influence politicians to lower taxes.  What they cannot legally shelter in America is off-shored in tax havens.  Trillions of dollars just sitting there; not doing anything for anybody. Meanwhile, they are not hiring.

If the scared little bunnies have their way and OWS disappears, what exactly will encourage corporations to get the economy moving?  Removing business obstacles?  Okay, I'll bite.  Why would a tax and regulation free environment produce different results?  Wouldn't it result in corporations hoarding even more cash?  That's exactly what would happen.  You would have undrinkable water, Third World wages and corporations sitting on $6 trillion dollars instead of $2 trillion.

But you can vote, right? Thanks to Citizens United, you may never cast a vote in an honest election again. Money is speech -- and that's not a funny euphemism.  It is literally, legally protected free speech.  And who's got all the money? 

You ain't voting your way out of this, pally.

The only thing keeping you from slowly grinding down to a standard of living on par with the rest of the world -- which is $3/day -- is the push-back coming from OWS.  Now, I know a lot of you have bought into Red Scare 2.0 and are terrified that capitalism will suddenly disappear and all cars will be Trebants overnight.  Chill the fuck out and remember that you live in a country which cannot even agree to provide college educations and healthcare for its children.  I'm thinking Bolshevism -- or even European Socialism -- isn't much of a worry. If a politician even mentions extending unemployment, half the fucking country goes into cardiac arrest.  Communism is gonna spring forth from that?  The fuck it will.  And you fucking know it, so just stop.

The only thing OWS will accomplish is taking the boot off our collective necks just a little.  Protesters pushing back will get the bread crumbs flowing down line once more.  Companies will start hiring.  People will forget they were pissed off.  Don't believe me?  Which would you rather have, $2 trillion and 10,000,000 pissed off people at your door or $1 trillion and all the cool shit you had before?

... Unless you don't keep up the pressure; and then it gets worse.  Either come to terms with using your right hand for eating and the left for wiping, as does most of the world, or get good with the campers.  It's that fucking simple, really.

If OWS disappears, it may be twenty years or more before you have another legitimate election or real unemployment under 30%.  Those grubby hippies you like to tell to occupy a shower or a job may well be the only thing that keeps your ass in relative Western luxury.

Ain't that about a bitch for all you suave John Galt motherfuckers?

The Revolution Will Be Battery-powered

From the 2011 General Strike ..

... to the last General Strike in 1946

THE GENERAL STRIKE IN OAKLAND played out for viewers around the world in the wee hours courtesy of mobile phones, live streams and borrowed batteries.  CNN and Fox showed repeats of opinions programs that originally aired only hours earlier. The world leader in news isn't. The man holding the mobile read off the various agencies represented in the police lines: Concord, Alameda County, San Mateo, Belmont, Alameda, Colma, South San Francisco, Fremont.... Some estimates put the number of officers at three hundred; while others speculated as many as four hundred.

From a high altitude and without much first-hand knowledge, one might think this suggests Oakland is a law-and-order city, where the streets are kept safe by a steadfast, committed police force. But nothing could be further from the truth.  Oakland is quickly closing in on its 100th homicide in 2011.  And lest you think it is an off-year, consider that Oakland has only had fewer than 80 homicides in a calendar year twice since 1969. Homicides have exceeded 100 over twenty times in the same period of time. And it isn't merely a penchant for murder: There are, on average, 300 forcible rapes and 4,000 violent assaults per year in Oakland.

The fact of the matter is, Oakland is not a law-and-order crime-free city. In fact, OPD's own statistical data shows it is a national contender for Most Dangerous City in America. Can the place you call home boast 1,100 murders since Y2K and 4,000 since 1970?

OPD guards Huey Newton, after shooting him in a gunfight

The Oakland Police Department itself has a dodgy history. In the late 60s, the Black Panther Party, having tired of police brutality, resorted to engaging OPD in a gun battle. Forty years on, it is hard to consider a level of desperation where a group feels so abused that they shoot it out with a metropolitan police department to make a statement. And while it is true that the Panther's militancy was a sort of water seeking its own level, history bears out that Oakland Police were indeed abusive during that era.

The Rough Riders of the 1990s policed the streets using organized crime tactics. They beat the snot out of people, planted evidence, gave false testimony and took bribes. Tony Soprano with a badge. One of the Riders was affectionately known as "Choker" -- and not because he failed to produce in the clutch.

In July 2010, OPD announced a long and disturbing list of crimes it would no longer respond to when called; which included burglary, theft, loud music, embezzlement, vandalism and failing to register as a sex offender. When the police department for a city of nearly 400,000 with world class crime statistics declares it will no longer respond to somebody breaking in your house, it borders on being a failed municipality -- a true Wild West scenario.  Two months before that stunning announcement, an officer shot a deer in an East Oakland backyard just to watch it die. Had the deer only waited until the non-response announcement, it could have robbed the place without worry. Or could it ...

In October 2010, after responding to a burglar alarm -- you know, after saying they wouldn't -- an officer shot a family dog in its own backyard. The dog, like the deer before it, had committed no crime.

A federal report from 2011 stated that the Oakland Police Department drew weapons too frequently and too often without cause. On November 1, 2011, the Oakland Police Union released a press statement which said they were confused -- a fact which had been duly fucking noted by anybody with even a passing interest at least as late as the deer shooting and possibly as early as the 1920s, when OPD and OFD members were part of the "Klan revival" of the day.

This historical bird's eye view makes OPD's actions in the early morning hours of November 3rd all the more confusing. Those familiar with downtown Oakland know it is a veritable ghost town late at night.  There are no all night shops.  There is no hustle and bustle. There is nobody going home from work. In practical terms, if 100 or 1000 people wanted to stand in the middle of Broadway at 1 am, it wouldn't much matter. What, you think Lionel Wilson still holds court in that Googie coffee shop or Big Bill Knowland is still spitting on the little people from his Tribune Tower perch? Those days are gone, vato. At long last, at least downtown on a routine night, Gertrude Stein is right: There is no there there -- unless the Foot Locker is being looted. And from what I saw last night, the Foot Locker was intact.

So we are left with the lingering question:  What the fuck, OPD?  At the very least, there are clearly more important things for them to do -- like responding to burglaries, dispatching family dogs to doggie heaven or preventing any of the 100+ homicides that happen each year. On its surface, one would think they would be more likely to seek out aid from neighboring departments to help sort out the actual crime problem. Instead, they use resources beyond their means to take and re-take an intersection that is largely empty and unused in the wee hours. Interestingly, this form of deficit spending does not evoke the passions of, say, healthcare. We got money to put them hippies on blast around here somewheres.

Fucking brilliant, right?

OPD protects and serves better through chemistry

The temptation, then, is to dismiss it all as poor resource allocation and bad management. And while OPD is no doubt poorly managed, the heart of the matter is mandate. A kid getting clipped on 94th Ave poses no threat to an establishment. Neither does a stolen 1991 Camry. When watching the live stream of the after-hours aftermath of the 2011 Oakland general strike, seeing a veritable army of 400 law enforcement officers from multiple agencies in full battle gear surround and pounce on peacefully assembled unarmed protesters seeking redress of grievances, it becomes clear that the primary purpose of the police is to protect the status quo. 

Police herd strikers during 1934 General Strike

The actions of law enforcement agencies across the nation in response to OWS has nothing to do with law and order or right and wrong. The push-back exists outside morality, which is left for the suckers and rubes that assume a system they were born into and had no choice in creating or operating is good for no reason other than they are a part of it. Those unable to excite themselves into willful ignorance with petty jabs like get a job placate themselves with the equally-meaningless platitudes freedom isn't free and my country, right or wrong. Duopoly-think has overtaken America: Fox or CNN; Coke or Pepsi. When understanding politics required more work than we were willing to do, a simple color system emerged and now defines entire states: Red or blue.

The bloody Bay Area general strike of 1934 was a reaction to a show of overwhelming force by authorities. 5,000 National Guardsmen patrolled Bay Area waterfronts, setting up machine gun nests. Fascist vigilantes, the Tea Baggers of the Depression era, raided union offices, set fires, called people Commies, homos and mockingly advocated everybody simply get a fucking job. Finnish immigrant workers were beaten with baseball bats in Berkeley. A noose was hung from city hall in Hayward with a banner that said simply, "Red's Beware" (sic). In 2011, establishment apologists hang their banners and nooses across a tweeting blogoshphere, amusing themselves endlessly with petty jabs:

"All of these hippies trying to occupy cities need to occupy a shower and a barber's chair. They look absolutely ridiculous."

"Dear Hippies Occupy your own homes & get a job Thanks"

"Going to bed. I have to occupy the workplace tomorrow. You hippies should try that... And showering."

"I wish those goddamn #OccupyOakland hippies would occupy a shower once in a while. There's only so much patchouli I can take."

Defenders of the status quo are driven to what DH Lawerence called a "crisis" by words like hippy, shower, patchouli. Feeling better bathed soothes their fevered brow, so to speak. But is the smugness gleaned from smelling better than a man sleeping in a tent a suitable substitute for critical thinking?  Is there any less sophisticated method of sorting out complex matters than dividing by smell? 


We have reduced ourselves to intellectual toddlers choosing between one of two primary colors and sniffing buttholes. By 2016, Presidential candidates may resort to urinating on each other's podiums during debates. By 2020, humping will determine elections.


As most of the anti-OWS language is not only so similar but also so consistently applied to anything outside accepted social norms since the late 60s, one can conclude that it says far more about the so-called washed than the intended targets of their insults.  They have picked or inherited their political color, sky zombie, news outlet and soda of choice. They have sniffed the opposition and detected patchouli. Or, more likely, their preferred news agency told them the scent of patchouli was in the air. Neither fuck nor thought need be given. History will tell us if their meaningless lashing out was a peculiar form of whistling past the graveyard, Stockholm Syndrome or good old stupidity. That they fail to see the humor in collectively retweeting pissy comments bemoaning collectivism speaks volumes.

Out of morbid curiosity, I checked out CNN's website after the first flash bangs in Oakland last night. The lead story was something about Condi Rice being creeped out by Gadaffi crushing on her. The Fox News site featured the latest information about 15 year old speculation of sexy talk. Instead, I was informed by a dude with a phone and Twitter in a browser set to refresh every ten seconds. The feed from the local ABC affiliate's helicopter conveniently drops a few minutes before OPD throws tear gas. The reason given is always the same: Damn thing is running out of fuel. This isn't bad reporting any more than the Oakland Police are bad at crowd control. It is deliberately shaping the perception of history-in-the making through omission and misrepresentation to protect the status quo.

But the future will not be shaped by retweeting ablution advice or by multi-million dollar news outlets pushing celebrity gossip. It will be shaped by guys with $50 phones running down the street at 3 AM as the cops are about to pounce, shouting "I got 10,000 viewers on Ustream and my Droid's about to die ... you got a battery?".