Place: New York City

The emergence of a mass movement, the beginning of a new radicalization

     To the superficial eye Liberty Park (Zucotti Park) in lower Manhattan is a circus—a mass of people all packed together in one rather small city square, towered over by the gleaming multistory offices of the 1%, ringed by metal police barricades and overseen by a tall police tower at one end and a solid row of police vans along one side. Boxes, plastic bins and tarps covering all manner of equipment surround the perimeters, tents sprout like mushrooms down the middle. The park is a cacophony of sound.

And some of the Pharisees among the multitude said unto him, Master, rebuke thy disciples. And he answered and said unto them, I tell you that, if these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out. —Luke 19:39-40

     Actions sometimes have unintended consequences.

The main flaw of the Occupy Wall Street movement, according to the establishment media, has been that the protesters themselves have only been able to articulate a "vague" sense of grievance. This, it is argued, is evidenced in the protesters' disorganized and rather scattered complaints. What is it, the media bemoans, that all those demonstrators occupying city parks across the nation in an apparent protest of everything from the death penalty to corporate greed really want?

     New Politics’ co-editor, Betty Mandell, recently championed Social Security as a fundamental universal right rejecting any recourse to selectivity through means testing. This is the first line in any robust defense of this “entitlement,” the right to live in dignity with a modicum of comfort in retirement. What is upheld in this is the fundamental distinction between a social insurance program of deferred benefits and a social assistance program.

[reprinted by permission from Inside Higher Ed]

“Bill O’Reilly has connected the dots to identify me as being behind the occupation,” said Frances Fox Piven. “I’m sorry to say that’s not true.”

     #OccupyWallStreet has caused quite the media frenzy during the past three weeks. The protestors (this author included) who have been camping out in Liberty Plaza, formerly Zuccotti Park, are dedicated to staying and demonstrating for economic and social justice.

     The mainstream media and many liberal commentators such as Nicholas Kristof have criticized #OccupyWallStreet for its lack of structure and demands. “What exactly are they protesting?” they ask coyly, “I just don’t get it.”

On December 17th, 2010 Tunisian street vendor Mohammad Bouazizi lit himself on fire.

     Mohammad Bouazizi was twenty-six years old. He held a university degree, but was unable to find work for himself besides selling fruits and vegetables on the streets of Sidi Bouzid. On Wednesday, December 17th, the Tunisian police confiscated his merchandise and threatened to put him in jail for selling without a license—instead of pleading for his goods and livelihood as he had in the past, Mohammad Bouazizi doused himself in gasoline and lit himself on fire.

The following is a report from the Occupy Wall Street protest march from which I am now on the train returning home.

An overflow crowd at New York’s Brecht Forum on Sept. 18 commemorated the life of the late journalist, author, scholar, educator, activist, union organizer and frequent New Politics contributor Bob Fitch, who died in March after complications from a fall. Among the speakers were Bertell Ollman, Steve Bronner, Doug Henwood, Christian Parenti, Jonathan Fitch and NP‘s Michael Hirsch. Below are Hirsch’s remarks.

     An isolated Assembly race in underserved North central Brooklyn in an election off- year wouldn’t normally attract much interest — witness grudging coverage in The New York Times on the Saturday of the Labor Day weekend.

Several thousand teachers and their supporters rallied in Washington July 30, for the SOS (Save Our Schools) march, a grassroots effort organized by an Oakland CA science teacher.

Of all the profiles written about Bob Fitch during his lifetime—in Forbes Magazine, Monthly Labor Review, etc.—two of the best were penned by student journalists. In typical Fitch fashion, he made time for the students, sharing his experiences, insights and passions. Jessica Johnson met Fitch while interning for the late veteran labor journalist Martin Fishgold, a friend of Fitch and his fierce partisan.

New York City plans to have even more inaccessible taxis

         Conspiracy theorists often take evidence of government cover-ups as proof that a conspiracy occurred. Sometimes a conspiracy may indeed have occurred, but often the cover-up was designed to hide not some grand conspiracy, but malfeasance, incompetence, or wrong-doing.

Holy saffron! From February 12 to 27, New York City's Central Park was the site of an exhibition called "The Gates: Central Park New York 1979- 2005," by the artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude (C/J-C). The Gates consisted of 7503 vinyl structures straddling 23 miles of park pathways, each gate 16 feet high, resting on steel bases (the equivalent, the city boasted, of two thirds of the steel used in the Eiffel Tower), with orange drapes (described by C/J-C as "saffron") hanging down from the tops.

Though you wouldn’t know it from the mass media, which focuses its attention on the way teacher unions impede “educational innovation,” (e.g., standardized testing’s stranglehold; privatization; cuts in funding), we are witnessing a growing swell of reform in teacher unions. Transformation of both national teacher unions is absolutely essential to turn back the neoliberal program that the Obama administration is pushing.