The Growth of the Occupy Movement in California

The Occupy movement has swept across the coun­try over the last month and has been a “shot in the arm” to activists looking to find an alternative to budget cuts and fiscal austerity. This summer the discussion was domina­ted by Democrats and Republicans arguing over whether the Federal budget should be cut by $43 billion or by $39 billion. The idea of no cuts at all or that taxes should be raised on the rich and corporations was nowhere to be found in either political party.

The Occupy movement has helped shift the politi­cal discussion and reminded us all that there are actually two Americas (1%-99%) with opposed interests. It has also been an important rallying point for revitalizing the left and resuscitating the fight against austerity both in the student movement and within labor.

Finally, the Occupy movement has been fiercely attac­ked and raided these past two months. In the East Bay Area, the Occupy Oakland encampment was raided on October 25th and later on Nov 8th; Occupy Cal was raided on Nov 9th. Occupy WallSt was raided on Nov 14th and now occupations at UCLA and UC Davis have been raided and students have been beaten and pepper sprayed. In general, city and campus administrations have ordered the encampments to be destroyed and have brutalized the occupiers along with their allies.

The news have highlighted the many who have been hit by rubber bullets, sprayed with tear gas, or beaten with police batons. This repression has shown that -in fact- the state or the campus administrations are not institutions for the 99%, but for the interests of the 1%.

These attacks on our free speech come after some of the biggest Occupy mobilizations of the year. First, the November 2nd “General Strike”, that brought out more than 30,000 youth and workers and paralyzed the Oakland City Port. Second, the OccupyCal Nov 9th protest of 3000 students and workers and encampment, and the Nov 17th mass mobilization to shut down the New York Stock Exchange.

For the moment, the repression has mostly helped galvanize the movement (and the Bay Area) in defense of both occupations. The work action at the ports of Oakland on November 2nd and the UC Berkeley Walkout of No­vember 9th (with many classes cancelled) highlight the willingness of a growing section of the working class to utilize more militant tools in opposition to the capitalist class (the 1%): the withholding of our labor and the paraly­sis of our work sites and campuses.

OccupyCal adopts demands and a call for Action:

OccupyCal (UC Berkeley) made a huge step forward on Nov. 15th, when a historical General Assembly of more than 2000 people adopted a set of clear demands and a call for action if the demands are not met:

·Stop cuts to public education. Reverse the fee hikes, layoffs, and cuts in all levels of public educa­tion to at least their 2009 levels;

·Refund education and public services by taxing the rich and the corporations;

·Fully implement affirmative action to stop the re-segregation of public education. Overturn Proposi­tion 209;

·Respect free speech and free assembly. No use of force against protesters on school sites.

As the occupations extend from days to weeks and now months, the need for clear demands has become evident for the occupation movement. It is necessary to articulate what we stand for in order to have a chance of surviving as a political force beyond the holidays and, most importantly, to last through the elections of Novem­ber 2012.

While political repression may have provided an organizing focus to the Occupy movement in defense of Occupy sites, it has also had the effect of isolating the mo­vement from its 99% base and moving the focus of Occupy away from the greed and excess of the 1% and into main­taining Occupy sites. This is a political challenge that cannot be overcome without Occupy beginning to take up concrete demands. The OccupyCal assembly has started the effort to synthesize demands that unite the Occupy movement and the campus constituents of the public edu­cation institutions. Let’s expand and publicize it!

The process of coming up with demands at Oc­cupyCal has shown that the Occupy movement is able to go beyond the rhetorical affirmation of our majority and can become an open space for political discussions on the issues that affect the working class and the oppressed communities. Demands, far from being a limitation to the political force or shape of the movement, help organize and mobilize our movement around concrete goals.

Furthermore, as people’s attention increasingly gets drawn to the elections in November 2012, forces in­volved in the occupations will become more vulnerable to the 2012 election messaging- that is unless we can begin to articulate a set of demands that fuel the occupations and prevent their co-optation.

For instance, Occupy could demand an increase in the tax rate on the top 1% wage earners, adopt de­mands regarding the nationalization of banks, and the expropriation of foreclosed homes to mobilize the entire community in action, like it did for the Nov. 2nd “Gene­ral Strike” and other actions. Similarly, if Jerry Brown’s trigger cuts impose additional furlough days on public education workers, educators, parents and students could occupy the School Boards and demand that they do not impose the furlough days. These sorts of actions that are linked to concrete demands will help deepen the Occupy movement’s base among workers and students.

The Occupy movement can become a social force that can give a concrete expression to the general idea of “we will not pay for their crisis”. This can polarize and make increasingly clear the opposite interests of the 99% and the 1% and can pressure union leaderships to stop accep­ting concessions and to rely on the social power of the vast majority, the 99%, to fight back the attacks.

Some will say that there is a danger in raising demands because they fear that the movement will de­mobilize once they are met. Nevertheless, we say, if our demands are met, we will bring new ones until all our needs are met. For socialists that means continuing this fight well beyond taxing the rich or stopping the budget cuts and until we end the system that is at the root of all these problems: capitalism.

Let’s spread and organize for a strike and day of action early in the Spring of 2012.

While Nov. 2nd did not rise to the level of an organized General Strike by workers in Oakland, the fact that the term was given such broad use in the media and among activists helped resuscitate strikes as a viable and necessary tool for the working class to fight back.

Now, we need to publicize and organize around the OccupyCal call for a statewide day of action and strikes in the Spring (possibly February 1st or March 1st). This is our chance to use an action to unite all the Occupy Assemblies in California and the public education sec­tors that have been increasingly active against the cuts. Mobilizing around these actions and demands is a way to maintain and strengthen our bases of power- the different Occupy Assemblies (Cal, Oakland, SF, etc) – and to form base committees in all schools and workplaces to discuss our current problems and demands, and bring them to the Occupy general assemblies.

Build a political alternative to overcome the crisis.

This brings us to the second challenge the Occupy movement must contend with, the Democratic Party, the institutions which support it (trade unions, NGOs, liberal organizations) and the bi-partisan system of domination.. While to date Occupy has been explicit in not suppor­ting any candidate running for office, it is clear that the Democratic Party and its broad progressive network of supporters (groups like MoveOn.org and Progressive Democrats of America) see the Occupy movement as a chance to revitalize their political base in the run up to the 2012 election. Democratic officials have been explicit in conceiving of the Occupy movement as the Democratic Party’s version of the Tea Party. Despite activists’ effort to keep Occupy outside the realm of both political parties, unless Occupy poses itself as both a political and organi­zational alternative to the Democrats, it will see its forces and impact dwindling as the election approaches and as the pressure to vote for the “lesser evil” re-emerges.

Occupy can try to ignore the elections, but its au­dience will not. Occupy will need to pose an alternative in this year’s election and take political positions in oppo­sition to BOTH Republicans and Democrats (the parties of the 1%) if it is to maintain an independent life over the coming year. Concretely, this means Occupy will have to deal with the question of building a third party (Labor party, The 99% party) in the coming months.

The struggle of the Occupy movement is not only an economic struggle for increased taxation or funding, it is a political struggle to remove the representatives of the 1% from power and replace them with real democratic control from below. As socialists, we see the decisions be­ing made within the General Assemblies of Occupy sites across the country as far more representative of the real interests of students and workers than any government run for the 1%. The Occupy movement offers the promi­se of not just economic alternatives, but also of political alternatives to the way society is run. Today, the ruling class holds the political strings of the system and controls the State, but if “We are the 99%”, why should we let the 1% control our lives and destroy our future?

For socialists, the promise of Occupy goes beyond the 100s of thousands who have participated in it or the 100s of millions who support its message of outrage at the unfairness of a system that works only for the wealthy and the connected.

For socialists, the Occupy movement provides the basis for building a truly independent and democratic working class movement, a movement that is not depen­dent on the Democratic Party for deciding what its aims should be or what is possible. The very fact that this movement poses the interests of the 99% of this country against the narrow interests of the top 1% is another op­portunity to put forward the simple Marxist principle that the interests of the majority class (the working class) are fundamentally opposite to the interests of the minority class (the capitalist class).

In a nutshell, the Occupy movement provides a clear basis to revive Marxism as the political touchstone for thousands of workers and students across the country. Rebuilding a strong revolutionary socialist current in the United States is not just good for the Occupy movement, but essential for the possibility of overturning the profit system (capitalism) and replacing it with a society based on human need.

Related articles: 

– They got bailed out, we got sold out: http://www.litci.org/en/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1917:they-got-bailed-out-we-got-sold-out&catid=19:usa

– The “arguments” and strategy of the 1%: http://www.litci.org/en/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1918:the-arguments-and-strategy-of-the-1&catid=19:usa

– What next for the Occupy Movement?: http://www.litci.org/en/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1921:what-next-for-the-occupy-movement&catid=19:usa