The Occupy Movement Part Two: The Armies of the Day

Politics for Joe:
The Occupy Movement, Part Two
The Armies of the Day
12 October 2011
By: Hubert O’Hearn
For: Lake Superior News


I looked something up before writing this, the second of a five part series on the Occupy Movement that was the genius idea of a group of Canadians at AdBusters, came to birth on Wall Street and now is busily reproducing in parks, city squares and financial centres in the great cities of the world. Is it a revolution? Of course it is. Now before one starts imagining scenes of guerrilla warfare and screaming widows bearing slaughtered children, I remind you that Darwin’s Theory of Evolution was also a revolution and Darwin never fired a shot. So far, so peaceful, so good.

It all brings back childhood memories, of the last time thousands took to the streets and occupied buildings, city squares and the like. Not the Big Media one-time million man marches or vast prayer meetings or outdoor town halls - those are as instantaneous and instantaneously forgettable as any year’s Super Bowl. (Go ahead, name me any five plays from any individual Super Bowl. You can name one or two, but five? Exactly.) No, we’re talking about the sustained effort here - the long campaign that stretches across vast terrains of time and space, emergent from mist and ending in sunlight.

The last one of those was, dear God how time flies when we’d prefer it to walk, between 40 and 50 years ago. That long campaign was the one against the Vietnam War, which began with the distribution of the Port Huron Statement, written mostly by Tom Hayden, in New York’s Gramercy Park. (What is it with movements and New York parks anyway?) It ended with U.S. diplomats scrambling onto helicopters that landed on the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, now called Ho Chi Minh City.

That movement began as a student protest. Students had the most to lose in Vietnam, as they were right in the demographic sweet spot for drafting into the Army. All successful movements have to expand from their base and into other classes, ages and the professions. Which brings me to the piece of writing I looked up before starting this column.

Besides being one of the greatest American novelists of the 20th Century, Norman Mailer was an interesting character within his own life. He was a vain and violent soft-hearted liberal. Many of those adjectives don’t work easily together, and that’s exactly what made Mailer interesting. In 1967 and 1968, he wrote a series of pieces for Esquire magazine that were collected into The Armies of the Night. Mailer covered the protests, the demonstrations, the politics at the height of that movement. Brilliant stuff, as it would be when a great novelist turns his eyes and imagination to reporting.

Anyway, one evening Mailer was called upon to address a group preparing for a march on the Pentagon. Here is a portion of what he said and wrote. It ends with a naughty word. I apologize if either Mailer or I offend.

“We are gathered here” - shades of Lincoln in hippieland - “to make a move on Saturday to invest the Pentagon and halt and slow down its workings, and this will be at once a symbolic act and a real act” - he was roaring - “for real heads may possibly get hurt, and soldiers will be there to hold us back, and some of us may be arrested” - how, wondered the wise voice at the rear of this roaring voice, could one ever leave Washington now without going to jail? - “some blood conceivably will be shed. If I were the man in the government responsible for controlling this March, I would not know what to do.” Sonorously - “I would not wish to arrest too many or hurt anyone for fear the repercussions in the world would be too large for my bureaucrat’s heart to bear - it’s so full of shit.”

If the parallel lines aren’t obvious, the reader has no perspective. Perhaps the key phrase is, “I would not know what to do.” That seems to apply to both sides of the Occupy Movement. Big Media - by which I mean the New York Times, CNN’s ephemeral to the point of translucence Erin Burnett, and the major American and Canadian TV networks - spent the first two weeks since Occupy Wall Street began on September 17th telling readers and viewers that the Occupiers had “no agenda.” Then on October 5th, Keith Olbermann on Current TV’s Countdown read the first collective statement (http://current.com/shows/countdown/videos/special-comment-keith-reads-first-collective-statement-of-occupy-wall-street) of the Occupiers and there went that argument out the window.

I invite you to either listen to the statement or read the transcript on the Countdown site, but for those whose time is limited, here are the highlights:
1) corporations have taken self-interest over justice
2) the workplace has become corrupted through discrimination and outsourcing
3) the farming system has been undermined through monopolization
4) money has corrupted politics
5) economic policies have led to catastrophe
6) environmental cover-ups
7) the judiciary has been unduly influenced in granting corporations the same rights
as individuals

There is much more to it than that. Ultimately, if one were to breathe deep and pick one word to describe the entire statement, or indeed the movement as a whole, it would be Equality. Perhaps Balance might be better, but Equality has a nice legal ring to it. As pictures do speak a thousand words (and as I wrote that I realized I was close to a thousand words already), here is a map of the world showing economic balances country by country. Full credit to The Atlantic for putting this together:






What the map shows is what is known as the GINI coefficient. Put in layman’s terms, a country with a coefficient of .00 would have a perfect economic distribution: 80% of the people would control 80% of the economy, 10% would control 10% and so forth. The highest imbalance is .50. As you can see there are some countries whose imbalance is even greater that .50. Much like quarterback ratings it is possible to be more perfect (or imperfect in this case) than perfection. And so it is that certain African republics, including South Africa, have people with absolute no economic power whatsoever which takes them right off the charts, so to speak.

The U.S. is at a coefficient of .45, perilously close to that ultimate imbalance of .50. China, with absolutely no democracy and workers turning 12 hour shifts for tiny wages so that you, dear consumer, can get a nice deal on home furnishings, is at .415. Yes, Communist China is in better balance than the United States of America. As is Russia. As is Canada.

As is Canada? So what are we so upset about? Why are we planning to Occupy Toronto and other cities on October 15th? Our pale green splotch of a .30-.35 coefficient puts us in line with most of Western Europe, although not quite as green as Scandinavia. Two credible reasons:

1) We know a trend when we see one. Although Canadian banking regulations have defended us from the widespread debt crisis that set off the Wall Street bailouts, there is a strong perception that economically things are not going as well as they should. The Canadian Occupy movement is more to prepare for the future rather than repair the present.
2) The non-financial issues of the environment, justice and privacy are more likely to come to the forefront here. One hastens to mention that all of these do have economic impact and a huge impact at that, but the coefficient of issues is likely to parallel the GINI coefficient.

In any event, I have asked friends who will be at Occupy Toronto to report back to me on what is said and what is distributed. Because God knows I don’t trust our networks and newspapers to do it for me.

Part Three will be out in two days time. At that time I want to look at the “I do not know what to do”  issue from the side of the 1%. What is the specific threat to power, and how is the 1% responding? Please send me any comments you have or questions you want answered.

Be seeing you.