Occupy Movement: Next Step Convergence

Occupy Movement

Joel S. Hirschhorn - There is a growing convergence of thinking about where the US Occupy movement should go as a next step to turning its values, concerns and commitments into changing what most Americans see as broken government under control of corporate interests.  When it comes to political and social movements, history shows us that they usually fail not because they disappear, but rather because they become marginalized, unimportant despite a core group of committed people and groups.


They lose popular appeal and support or never expand beyond a small early group of supporters.  The nation and many supporters move on.  Other movements grab the interest of the most informed, dissident-type people seeking truth, justice or change.  A good example of such a failed contemporary movement is the 911 truth effort.  The groups, websites and true believers keep on pushing their objectives a decade after the historic event.  But the goal of revealing what really happened that the official government story does not divulge is like a moldy piece of forgotten food in the refrigerator.


Movement death by inattention happens despite good resources, charismatic leaders and even great organization and communication skills.  Critical mass of public support simply never materializes, in large measure because diverse segments of the population never buy into the central arguments of the movement. The Internet is littered with websites of activist groups that persist despite clear evidence of decay and wide disinterest.  True believers have a mission in life tied to their egos that prevent them from admitting defeat.  They do not move on.

The biggest mistake that passionate advocates for a cause make is overestimating their ability to reach critical mass and underestimating the competition of other movements with greater appeal which rob them of both attention and supporters.



Make no mistake; I totally and enthusiastically support the Occupy movement because it offers the prospect of producing reforms to fix our broken government and attracting very wide public support for a nonviolent Second American Revolution.  What worries me, however, is that many of its participants seem over confident, as if they cannot fail.  On the other hand, I have become impressed by a convergence of thinking about what the next big step for the Occupy movement can and should be.  I will briefly identify examples of this convergent thinking.


Canadian author Erich Koch has written a compelling article: An Objective for the U.S. Occupy Movement: A Constitutional Convention.  He buys into the view that the Occupy movement could embrace the thinking of Harvard Professor Lawrence Lessig who has presented the case for amendments to fix Congress.  Like others Koch is correct in saying that “No one in the movement would disagree with its main point: the fundamental problem is the corruption of Congress.”  Unlike others, Koch recognizes the path for obtaining reform constitutional amendments is using the provision in Article V for a convention of state delegates, having the same power as Congress in proposing amendments that still must be ratified by three-quarters of the states.  It has never been used despite many hundreds of state requests for a convention because, clearly, Congress and most status quo forces fear such a convention.


Koch cited a great article by Alesh Houdek: Has a Harvard Professor Mapped Out the Next Step for Occupy Wall Street?  Most is a review of Lessig’s book.  Correctly noted about using the convention option is “it bypasses the usual means of reform (Congress, presidential elections, etc.) which the lobbyists and other interested parties have learned so well to manipulate. And lastly, such a convention would be free to propose solutions that would otherwise be subject to be stricken as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.”  This is critical to understand.  Houdek concludes: “Properly presented, the strategies and aims of Lessig's book could make it the handbook the protesters have been looking for -- and provide a pathway for them to ride out the winter ahead.”



Dan Froomkin also has presented the same case in: Lawrence Lessig's New Book On Political Corruption Offers Protesters A Possible Manifesto.  He quoted what Lessig himself had said in an article about the Occupy movement and the concern that I share, namely that the Occupy movement “will become too diffuse and not focused" on the root issue of corruption of government.  And that the movement will only grow "if a wide range of people can be part of it."  This requires coalescing around an issue "as fundamental as the corruption of the system."  Only a constitutional amendment can fix the corrupting impact of money in politics.  This is also the focus of Dylan Ratigan’s fine effort, except that the use of the convention path has not been emphasized.



A specific call for an Article V convention was made by the pro-Occupy US Day of Rage group: “We are organizing a coordinated national campaign at local and state levels, including where necessary the occupation of state capitols, in order to demand an article V constitutional convention be called to restore representative democracy to our nation.”  A set of specific reforms to be fix the corruption-money problem are presented.


The 99 Percent Declaration group has also presented an important statementcentered on the call for a National General Assembly, where delegates would formulate a petition of a list of grievances that would be delivered to the main parts of the federal government on behalf of 99 percent of Americans.  A suggested list of grievances includes the need for constitutional amendments to achieve solutions, but only for a few of the issues.  Not explicitly acknowledged, however, is that constitutional amendments, not ordinary laws, would be necessary for other solutions, such as term limits for Congress and abandoning the Electoral College. Moreover, there is no specific recognition that serious amendment reforms will not be proposed by Congress, and that an Article V convention is needed.  Inattention to method was also the shortcoming of a similar list of solutions by Ralph Lopez.



Author Scott Turow has presented: How Occupy Wall Street Can Restore Clout of the 99%.  His recommendation to the Occupy movement is “work across the nation for a constitutional amendment requiring Congress to regulate the expenditure of private money on elections.  … The best antidote to this imbalance of income and influence would be to greatly reduce the role of private funding in our elections.  …As for the Occupy Wall Street movement, it has been criticized by some for not having a realistic agenda, even though polling shows that millions of Americans, including me, are sympathetic to the basic message of the protests.”  His prescription: “rally around a single goal and reinvigorate their movement.”  Fine, but missing from his analysis is the recognition that Congress will never propose reform amendments, only an Article V convention will do the job.


This sampling of recent writings clearly shows convergent thinking that the Occupy movement can and should focus on key reform constitutional amendments and, second, that some better informed critical thinkers recognize, this requires advocacy for using the Article V convention option that Congress has refused to honor.


As to Occupy movement success, I want again to emphasize that there is always competition for the attention and support of concerned Americans who recognize how broken our system is.  In particular, the well financed Americans Elect effort is impressive.  Because it is offering an alternative path to nominating a presidential candidate in 2012, over 2 million Americans have already signed up to be delegates for a web convention, with millions more very likely as the mainstream media keeps giving this effort attention.  The Get Money Out campaign has over 250,000 signatories.


Disgust with the two-party plutocracy is surely shared by Occupy participants and supporters.  But for movement success based on enticing many millions of Americans, the Occupy movement cannot ignore competition such as Americans Elect.  This means that the Occupy movement must explicitly start making the case to the broad public why their effort can achieve more of what is needed.  This is easily done.


Here are some key concepts that the Occupy movement could use.  No matter who is nominated by Americans Elect, the odds are that either the better financed Democrat or Republican candidate will win the presidency.  This may just require spending even more millions of dollars on campaigns.  And whoever is nominated by the group will likely be strongly linked to one of the two major parties, rather than some courageous reformer and enemy of the status quo.  Moreover, this group does not offer a realistic path to getting the key reforms of the system that most of us see critically needed, such as constitutional amendments, already recognized by many Occupy supporters.


A sign of trouble for the Occupy movement is a recent national poll that found: “In the latest survey, 33 percent voiced support for Occupy Wall Street, down from 35 percent in a previous poll, while opposition to the movement climbed from 36 percent to 45 percent. Twenty-two percent were unsure.”  These results are worse thanearlier polls.  From the left, Chris Bowers commented: “the decline in Occupy Wall Street's image is probably more connected to the increasingly negative coverage of the clashes between protesters and police than it is to declining support for movement's message.”  Now is the time to move the message from what is wrong to solutions, using an Occupy Congress approach.  Otherwise, this view from theconservative right might prevail: “OWS will linger … but I’d argue we’ve seen the movement’s high tide. It will now recede into a mere annoying shadow of itself as support is withdrawn by political figures and organizations.”


True, Occupy movement success is not inevitable.  The movement must better define what success means and how it can be achieved if it is to attract and keep the support of many millions of Americans.  It needs specificity for its solutions that ordinary Americans can relate to.  Never underestimate the power and commitment of status quo forces to maintain control over the political, government and economic system that has so harmed most Americans.  The fight against the Occupy movement mostly seen as local police violence against peaceful demonstrators and protesters as well disinformation from some news outlets and pundits are nothing compared to what could be mounted if the movement is viewed as more threatening to the status quo delusional democracy with its delusional prosperity.

[Contact Joel S. Hirschhorn through delusionaldemocracy.com.]

Jobless and Clueless

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Joel S. Hirschhorn--When Americans who are the most victimized by our cruel economy still believe in something that is demonstrably no longer true, they are deeply delusional. They desperately want to believe in something once great about American society.  The reality is that upward economic mobility has been destroyed, replaced by widely observable downward mobility.  Some of the mostly younger jobless that have embraced the Occupy Wall Street and related Occupy efforts know the truth.

Consider the results of a new survey of unemployed adults this month:

“More than half of those polled said that they had experienced emotional or mental health problems like anxiety or depression because of their lack of work, and nearly half said that they had felt embarrassed or ashamed not to have jobs.”

“More than a third said that they had had more conflicts or arguments with family and friends because of being jobless.”

“Threats of foreclosure or eviction were reported by a fifth of the unemployed, and one in eight said that they had moved in with relatives or friends.”

“More than half said that they lacked health insurance.”

“A fifth said that they had received food from a nonprofit organization.”

“Nearly two-thirds said they would probably not have enough money to live comfortably during retirement.  More than half said that they had taken money out of savings or retirement accounts.”

“7 in 10 of those receiving unemployment benefits said that they feared their benefits would run out before they could find new jobs.”

So far, all those results paint an unsurprising profile of unemployed, suffering Americans.

Now, consider the result that blew my mind, the reason I am writing this, because more people need to understand something critical about delusional thinking that ultimately makes getting deep, sorely needed reforms of our government and political system extremely difficult.  Without that our economy will stay awful, unfair, promoting even more economic inequality.

“Two-thirds of those surveyed said that they still believed it was possible to start out poor in this country, work hard and become rich — only a little lower than the three-quarters of all Americans” not in the unemployed category who held the same view and were surveyed at the same time.  In fact, considerable research in recent years has consistently found that upward mobility in the USis no longer a hallmark of the society.  Indeed, there is more upward mobility inCanada and a number of European countries than in the US.  Moreover, the jobless more than most should be able to comprehend the ugly reality that downward economic mobility is now a large part of American society.

No surprise that the cover story on the new Time magazine is What Ever Happened To Upward Mobility?  The basic theme of the article is that the US is no longer an “opportunity society.”  In other words, our country is no longer a place where everyone, if he or she works hard enough, can get ahead.  But despite this reality, conservatives and Republicans love to publicly proclaim that the US still offers everyone upward economic mobility.

Those two-thirds of the unemployed will probably pay a steep price for their false optimism about their country.  They are likely to fall prey to the political propaganda of either Democrats or Republicans.  If they are delusional about the American Dream, are they also delusional about other things that may stand in the way of them getting a job?  Rather than feel ashamed or embarrassed about being jobless they should get some feedback from others so they can fix their thinking.

As Ezra Klein noted: “Americans are in the odd position of fervently believing in upward mobility while not actually having very much of it.  Europeans, conversely, don't really believe in economic mobility but have plenty of it.”

Those jobless with this delusional thinking, refusing to think critically, judge the facts and come to a hurtful conclusion, are not the ones I expect to be participating in or supporting the Occupy Wall Street protesters, about three-quarters of whom now disapprove of Mr. Obama’s performance as president. Though the Occupy protesters speak of the rich 1 percent, that is a big underestimate.  As Anne Applebaum correctly noted “Despite all the loud talk of the ‘1 per cent’ of Americans who, according to a recent study, receive about 17 per cent of the income, a percentage which has more than doubled since 1979, the existence of a very small group of very rich people has never bothered Americans. But the fact that some 20 per cent of Americans now receive some 53 per cent of the income is devastating.”  Becoming part of even that larger group of rich Americans is now more difficult than ever.

Do unemployed have the right kind of jobs to aspire to the top one percent of income earners?  Consider the jobs that account for the top one percent; the top four categories account for nearly 70 percent: corporate and business management not in the financial sector, medical, financial industry executives, and lawyers. This also shows how difficult it is to somehow negatively impact the one percent by protests by the Occupy movement.

In our delusional democracy with its delusional prosperity thinking that hard work, great ideas and superior performance will get you into the top one percent is self-delusion, even getting into the top 20 percent is a long shot.  The economic system is too rigged against economic justice.  Sure, every once in awhile someone starting out poor or average becomes superrich, but that is like winning a super lottery.  Best to stop believing in the rags-to-riches myth, unless the system is reformed.

A new report by a German foundation examined the nation members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, essentially the world’s democracies.  The US ranked terribly low for poverty and poverty prevention as well as income inequality.  Only Chile, Mexico and Turkey were ranked lower than the US.  What a story.

The US two-party plutocracy has allowed the rich and powerful to buy the political system.  Except for the rich, the results are dreadful.  This is why 89 percent do not trust that government will do the right thing.  The best solution is what you find at the getmoneyout.com website, a constitutional amendment to get money out of politics.

[Contact Joel S. Hirschhorn through delusionaldemocracy.com.]

Semantic propaganda feeds stupidity

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Joel S. Hirschhorn--We would already have had a much needed American revolution in response to the tyranny of the money-fed two-party plutocracy that is destroying the middle class except for one big problem: so much of the American population is just plain stupid.  Too stupid to behave like angry Greeks and rise up in the streets to rebel against the dysfunctional government.

In the never ending fight of Republicans and their cancerous (make that stupid) Tea Party members to gain even more control of the US political system, economy and culture they have fixed on another semantic weapon.  The latest attack on intelligence is the constant use of the term job creators in place of words like the rich or wealthy.  Not just plain Republicans in Congress are doing this, but especially the large crop of Republican presidential candidates.

This bit of cleverness surely was deemed necessary because much of the nation was beginning to appreciate the class warfare going on.  Rising economic inequality, unemployment set in concrete, and merging of the middle class into the poverty stricken lower class were all becoming clearer.

Keep this in mind: As Zuckerman pointed out, the US “experienced the loss of over 7 million jobs, wiping out every job gained since the year 2000.  From the moment the Obama administration came into office, there have been no net increases in full-time jobs, only in part-time jobs.  This is contrary to all previous recessions.  Employers are not recalling the workers they laid off from full-time employment.” Business sectors have discovered that they can maximize profits with smaller US work forces; they export jobs and their capital investments.  And they benefit from all kinds of tax loopholes protected by Republicans so that they pay very little if any US taxes.

A terrific new article by Jeff Reeves makes the case that unemployment will actually rise to over 10 percent, because of anticipated layoffs in the financial, technology, and aerospace and defense sectors.  The data are compelling.  All this despite high profits.

Apple is sitting on an amazing $76 BILLION in cash.  Other than understanding that people are paying too much for their products, just imagine if they invested a big fraction of that on moving manufacturing of its products from foreign countries to the US.  An enormous number of good jobs could be created here.

What were Republicans to do, especially as they used the current crisis surrounding the need to raise the national debt limit to seek huge cuts in federal spending affecting ordinary Americans and prevent higher taxes for the greedy rich and corporate forces?

What better way than to falsely claim and constantly presume that those that should be paying higher taxes are exactly the ones who create jobs and that they would not do so if hit by higher taxes.  In truth, this is a bold lie.  The richest Americans have been paying the lowest taxes in many decades and corporate profits have been enormous, and this reality has clearly had absolutely no positive impact on the unemployment and underemployment plaguing at least 30 million Americans and their family members.

Go back to the post-World War II era when the richest Americans paid very high taxes and you discover that jobs and fairly distributed wealth were created in abundance.

Neither wealth nor jobs trickle down from the Upper Class.  Proper government policies are required to prevent criminally large fractions of the nation’s wealth going to the most greedy and selfish elites.  Those NOT rich that support Republicans are very stupid; they have been brainwashed by the steady stream of Republican lies and propaganda that are used to serve the rich and corporate interests sustaining Republicans with much money.  The return on their investment has proven more than adequate to justify their endless input of money to Republicans.

We probably will soon see President Obama cave in and giver Republicans much of what they want.  There will be major cuts in federal programs that will place millions of Americans in even more precarious economic uncertainty and pain.  And there will probably be far too little increases in taxes on the rich and corporations.  Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security may all be cut in ways that harm many people.

Lies are constantly being fed to the public.  Will you be smart enough to see them for what they are?  The more you face this ugly, disturbing reality, the more embarrassed you will be about the US political system and, hopefully, the more inclined you will be to stop voting for any Republicans or Democrats and participating in our delusional democracy.

Thank You Cornel West

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by Joel S. Hirschhorn - The outspoken scholar and Princeton University professor Cornel West has been viciously attacked by many on the political left, especially supporters of President Obama.  Why?  Because he had the courage to call Obama a “black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs and a black puppet of corporate plutocrats.”   For more of West’s views see this article.



Most of the attention has been on the use of the word “black,” as if the black Cornel West had made a racist comment. In fact, West got it right because he and some other true progressives have condemned Obama for not being an authentic progressive.  Right again, Obama has never shown himself to be a true leftist progressive, even though many on the conservative right may think he is one.  West thinks Obama “has no backbone.”



It is not that Obama is not black enough, as some think West was saying.  It is about the dishonesty, deceit and corruptness of Obama.



What everyone should be praising West for is that he correctly made the point that Wall Street oligarchs and corporate plutocrats have stolen the US government by using vast sums of money to corrupt both Democrat and Republican politicians.



West just told the truth about Obama who got elected because as a candidate for president he received a huge sum from the most awful Wall Street company, Goldman Sachs.



What West has explained is that “poor and working people have low priority in US government policy including the Obama Administration.”  No surprise because West is definitely a true liberal progressive who has been making this kind of criticism very openly for a long time.  Indeed, if poor and working people, as well as all African Americans, would wake up to reality they would abandon Obama, even as the lesser evil.  Obama has told too many lies and done too many wrong things to deserve their support.



Nearly all members of Congress, both Republicans and Democrats, are nothing more than mascots of Wall Street oligarchs and puppets of corporate plutocrats, something that all intelligent Americans, including those in the Tea Party movement, should totally agree with.



Here is something else West said: "The tea party folk are right when they say the government is corrupt.  It is corrupt. Big business and banks have taken over government and corrupted it in deep ways....we've got to think seriously of third-party candidates, third formations, third parties."



Over at FutureofCapitalism.com this point was made: Obama “has basically enshrined the too-big-to-fail banks while also propping up GE and the firms that will benefit from ObamaCare.”  True enough.



We need many more people that get mass media attention to say the kind of things that West has said.  Americans need to be reminded incessantly that their government has been hijacked by rich and powerful elites.



With a corrupt two-party plutocracy elections no longer offer the promise of much needed reforms.  Odds are that Tea Party people will realize that their favored Republicans will also not deliver a rehabilitated, honest government serving the interests or ordinary Americans.



[Contact Joel S. Hirschhorn through delusionaldemocracy.com.]

(Opinions rendered in all op-eds are those of the writers and not necessarily those of this publication)