03) OCCUPY MOVEMENT WON'T BE SILENCED
Guest editorial from the Morning Star, Britain
Official explanations for the crackdown and dismantling of protest camps in various US cities do not hold water. Statements that the co‑ordinated removal of peaceful encampments was dictated by health and safety considerations or to prevent violence defy credibility. They are on a par with the St. Paul's Cathedral decision to close the church to worshippers because of health and safety risks posed by a few dozen tents pitched in its vicinity.
Everyone can imagine the response that would have emanated from London and Washington if the Ukrainian authorities had acted in a similar manner by sweeping their poster woman Yulia Tymoschenko and her pro‑democracy forces from Independence Square in Kiev in 2004 as they protested against ballot rigging and, on occasion, launched forays into parliament to intimidate MPs.
If there were indeed fears for health and safety, cleanliness or public sanitation regarding the Occupy Wall Street camp in New York's Zuccotti Park, the Frank Ogwaza Plaza camp in Oakland or similar settlements in Oregon, Vermont, Colorado, Utah and Missouri, the answer lay in the authorities' own hands.
They could have replicated what they did in Kiev in 2004, intervening to ensure that the happy campers did not lack for life's essentials. US finance paid on a daily basis for 5,000 tonnes of porridge and 10,000 loaves of bread, together with 300 portable toilets, tents with heaters, foam pads and sleeping bags. Even rubbish disposal was coordinated, with 11 lorries a day removing the protesters' detritus.
If such a sterling effort was good enough for pro‑democracy campaigners half a world away, surely it should be offered to US citizens in their own backyard to enable them to point out that the American Dream is turning into a nightmare for too many of them. However, it seems that, for Washington, neither charity nor solidarity begins at home. For them it's armed riot police and fire hoses to wash away any trace of their protest.
The authorities should come clean and admit that they are embarrassed by the presence of these witnesses to the injustice of the capitalist system and to the system's defence of the interests of society's richest 1 per cent over those of the other 99 per cent.
Capitalism's defenders are happiest when they deal in cliches and generalisations about freedom and democratic rights. They are less confident when protesters highlight specifics and draw attention to the vast rewards gained by the tiny elite in the face of hardships and tumbling living standards assailing the dispossessed majority.
After initial paralysis in the face of the mass protests in Cairo's Tahrir (Freedom) Square, following the upsurge in Tunisia, Washington tuned in to the talk of democracy and attempted to incorporate the Egyptian national liberation movement into its own historical narrative. It ignored the reality that ousted military dictator Hosni Mubarak had been a US tool, reliable and dependable in his brutality and corruption.
Egyptian popular sentiment against the dictatorship was echoed by angry denunciations of Washington for its protection and manipulation of Mubarak because of his complicity with Israel in holding back Arab liberation.
US citizens and Europeans launching their own mass protests against being treated as pawns by bankers don't languish under similar brutal dictatorship that oppressed Egyptians. But their economic and democratic complaints are valid and should not be silenced by authoritarian repression.
(The above article is from the December 1-31, 2011, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $30/year, or $15 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $45 US per year; other overseas readers - $45 US or $50 CDN per year. Send to People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, BC, V5L 3J1.)