“….What is the commonality? The, uh, the commonality is that whatever your view is, we feel that it’s not being heard in Washington….”

This morning we stopped by Occupy Kansas City in Penn Valley Park, across from the Federal Reserve Bank. There will be a march from Penn Valley Park to the the J.C. Nichols fountain at 47th and Main at 4:00 p.m. on Sunday, October 10th.

Occupy Kansas City in Penn Valley Park across from the Federal Reserve Bank.

In the background is John Salvest’s “temporary public monument” IOU/USA.

While at Occupy Kansas City we spoke with a few people:

Show Me Progress: …How long have you been out here?

Michael McConnell: Um, continuously, just since yesterday evening. But I was also here last weekend, uh, Friday through Sunday last weekend.

Show Me Progress: And what kind of response have you been getting?

Michael McConnell: Um, I’d say it, it tends slightly towards positive. We’ve gotten a lot of people, you know, like, “Get a job, go back to school.” Which most of us have jobs or are students, but, anyway, uh, we’ve had a handful of those, but we’ve also had a lot of people like honk and wave and give us fist pumps and thumbs up. And so I’d say, I’d say the, uh, positive responses outweigh the negative ones.

Show Me Progress: Yeah, and have, so have you noticed any increase in media, uh, attention?

Michael McConnell: Um, I guess so. I mean, you guys are here. Uh, we did, we did get one report the first day on, uh, Fox four. But, uh, we, we just had an article in the Kansas City Star. I think we had a few other, uh, blogs reporting, so, uh, a slight increase. But, I mean, like I said, since the first day we’ve had news, media presence.

Show Me Progress: Right, and they’re, they’re planning sort of a, a larger kind of, uh, a larger set of activities tomorrow, aren’t they?

Michael McConnell: Yeah.

Show Me Progress: Do you anticipate a little bigger crowd?

Michael McConnell: Oh, yeah. We did a march yesterday and handed out well over a thousand flyers, talking about the concert we’re having tomorrow. and so…

Show Me Progress: And there is a march tomorrow, too, isn’t there?

Michael McConnell: Yes, uh, and, uh, so I think because of the concert we’re gonna get an influx.

And then also, uh, when this started there were like five people on Twitter that were all like trying to start up their own. Uh, that coalesced into two. And they were, they were disagreeing about dates. So, uh, last Friday until today is what we were calling phase one. And then, uh, phase two starts tomorrow. And that’s just the people that, uh, that was occupy Memorial, uh and they wanted to start on October ninth, so that.            

Show Me Progress: Yeah, and, uh, so, you’re finding that this is sort of a collective decision making for this kind of thing. Where people get together and work it out, sort out [crosstalk], you’re gonna do this.  

Michael McConnell: Yeah, yeah. Uh, I…

Show Me Progress: So it’s very, it’s not a top down process.

Michael McConnell: No, not at all. And I keep hearing, uh, reports like from Fox calling us like a Democrat backed, uh, organization or something, but it’s not the case at all. I mean, we’ve got all, we’ve got all different views being expressed here. I mean, I’m reading [crosstalk]…

Show Me Progress: So, so obviously the Koch brothers aren’t funding you.

Michael McConnell: No. It was like five people on Twitter that started this and we’ve got really diverse views. [….] really, everything is being expressed here.

Show Me Progress: Yeah, and but, what is the commonality though, for people?

Michael McConnell: What is the commonality? The, uh, the commonality is that whatever your view is, we feel that it’s not being heard in Washington. Because, um, with corporate personhood and, um, no, no restrictions on campaign finances we think that, uh, it’s just corporations being represented in Washington. That whoever you vote for, they aren’t going to represent you, they’re going to represent whoever funds their election.

Show Me Progress: Uh, so, what’s your hopes, uh, what, what are your goals for, for this.              

Michael McConnell: Um, I’m not sure. Uh, I’ve heard talks about a, uh, constitutional amendment about getting the, uh, money out of politics. I’ve heard talk about ending corporate personhood. Uh, and I think that’s what makes this different than a lot of other protests, is that this is an ongoing conversation. Uh, it’s the, I mean, we didn’t all come here with one mission that we’re trying to, to, uh, see achieved. We all came here with one problem that we’re trying to find a solution to.

Blue Girl conducting an interview. The Federal Reserve Bank complex is in the background.

The central campsite. The Liberty Memorial is in the background.

Here’s an even better spokesman for the Occupy movement than the one I featured at Monday night’s event when Obama came to St. Louis. Molloff was fiery, but she made some outrageous sounding claims without taking the time to explain herself. Richard Trumka of the AFL-CIO spells out what he thinks the movement is about and what he believes the Occupiers should call for. His thoughts are not served up with jalapeno sauce, but they are hearty, healthy fare.

Yesterday, in New York City, via Occupy Wall Street:

Wall Street: they went after the wrong people (September 25, 2011)

….You know, the titans of arbitrage and other speculative financial alchemy could easily calm the seas by taking a few lousy percentage points in their top marginal tax rate. They won’t. Who do you think will spray protesters after they break public safety unions in the interest of accumulating an even higher proportion of wealth? Just asking.

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. –Mahatma Gandhi

I cut my political and protest movement teeth on the anti-apartheid divestiture movement of the early eighties.

I was thirteen years old when I became a liberal and a human rights advocate. I know this, because I can pinpoint the day on the calendar that I woke the hell up. It was June 16, 1976. That is the date of the Soweto Riots that sparked the undoing of the apartheid regime in South Africa. When Walter Cronkite told me about the riots, and showed me pictures of children — my generational peers — who had been killed by police because they revolted against the white-minority government decree that all school instruction would henceforth be taught in Afrikaans, the language of the white minority — well, that set my bearing “and that’s the way it is.”

From that day forward, I made it my business to know what was going on in that country, and to stay up to date on the struggle for freedom of the black majority. A year later, when Biko was killed, I sat shiva and wore black for a month. (It was 1977 and I listened to punk, so I can’t be sure anyone noticed that I was wearing black for a reason, but I was.)

When I went to college in 1980, there was an active anti-apartheid organization on campus, and I joined up. That is the movement I cut my political teeth on, and it just so happens that we won. In two decades, Nelson Mandela didn’t just walk out of prison on Robin Island, he walked into the presidency and he healed his nation with truth, reconcilliation and forgiveness. His election came 18 years after I first stenciled “FREE MANDELA” on a t-shirt. Change happens slowly. If it happens quickly, it yields chaos and the probability of the change turning out to be for the worse instead of the better approaches 1.

With the success we had in our efforts in mind, and with nothing but high hopes for the ground-shift that is afoot in the form of the Occupy Wall Street movement, I have been doing some thinking about what makes for success when social change is on the line. Call them BG’s rules for successful radicals, cribbed heavily from the Civil Rights Movement.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Occupy Wall Street movement is a real grass-roots movement that is actually rather eerily reminiscent of what they tried to sell the astroturf tea party as back in it’s nascent days. Now, the tea party was never a genuine movement, although it did attract some well-meaning and good-intentioned people, most of whom have since dropped out, once they got hip to the fact that the corporatists and theocrats were pulling the strings.

I happen to believe that the very fabric of the republic is in danger of being rendered rags, and I don’t want to see that happen, and not just because the nation owes me a pension at 55, either. I have been thinking about what we did in the eighties and in that context I offer some “lessons learned.”

• The traditional media is your enemy. As we have already seen, their first inclination was to ignore. Then Fox started mocking. Then the rest of the press eventually started paying attention – but they did their fair share of mocking, too. Especially Andrew Ross Sorkin of the New York Times. This deliberate and willful effort to ignore the protests and intentional failure to cover dissenting movements is a deliberate effort to cause confusion about what your movement is about within the mainstream, evening-news-and-morning-paper audiences. This is purposefully done in order to piss you off. If they can piss you off, they can make you appear unreasonable, and we all know what happens to unreasonable people…they either get negative attention, or they get rendered invisible.

• The movement will be infiltrated. Hell, it already has. While the press sends mixed messages or mocks dissident movements, the corporatists who are threatened by the movement are already busy putting operatives in your midst to both disrupt and co-opt.

• Only after infiltration is accomplished will the media start paying attention. Indeed, that is how you know they have succeeded in planting moles/operatives in your midst. The media won’t bother covering you until they know what the answers will be to the questions they ask. we have already seen this with Jesse LaGreca. How long do you think it will take for the M$M to get back to interviewing him on camera again?

• Politicians will start jumping on your bandwagon — just as soon as it looks safe to do so. At that point, they will start relating tales and waxing nostalgic about how Wall Street corruption is the very reason they got into politics in the first place, way back in seventh grade when they ran for student council.

• “Non-Partisan” entities will start writing checks – but their checks will come at a cost. They will “help you organize” and “plan strategy.” Once that happens, they control you and the threat you represented is effectively neutralized.

As I keep saying, I want the movement to succeed. I believe that too big to fail is too big to allow. Period. But for the movement to succeed, a few things need to happen.

• Proclaim the movement to be non-violent and stick to it. Denounce violence. Denounce it with a full-throated roar. The rabblerousers don’t help, in fact, the probability is at least .5, and approaches 1,  that they are plants and operatives sent to infiltrate and discredit your movement.

• Image matters. In fact, image is not half the battle, it is MOST of the battle. It’s a myth that Rosa Parks was simply exhausted after a long day at work and too tired to move, I don’t care what three different Women’s Studies professors insisted when the topic was brought up in class. No, Rosa Parks was active in the local chapter of the NAACP and she was chosen for the action because she was not threatening — light skinned, delicate features, slight, modest, soft-spoken; the kind of person who could make a person feel guilty for hating her on spec. In other words, she was the perfect face of the movement.

• Which brings us to: Pick a sympathetic face for your movement, but make god-damn sure the vetting is done beforehand.

• Decide on one media point person to do interviews and talk to the press. This person needs to be intelligent, quick-witted, attractive, well spoken and affable; someone who is capable of always putting their best face forward. This means looking good and speaking well and staying on message.

• Resist those “non-partisan” entities and their giant checkbooks. Better you stay independent.

• Stay focused on the greed, corruption and social inequality that the plutocracy embodies. This is the part that gives me the greatest amount of heartburn. I’m not seeing focus, and until there is focus, the movement won’t be taken seriously. Don’t get sidetracked by other stuff…Squirrel! In other words, fight one battle at a time. Win one before you try to fight ten at once. I’m sure the Free Mumia kids are already on the scene, but really, what does their cause have to do with this? Nothing. Nothing tangible, anyway. Let me say it one more time, because it’s really fucking important: STAY. FOCUSED.

• Accept that the movement has already been infiltrated and comport yourselves accordingly. Never completely trust anyone who wasn’t there before the beginning.

• Internalize this: “Believe none of what you hear and only half of what you see,” and make it your mantra. Our corporate overlords are masters of illusion and they are out to control you and co-opt your movement. They will do whatever they need to in order to achieve that goal, and employ any means necess
  ary to make sure you fail.

• Take your inspiration from the lowly army ant…enough of them will pick an elephant’s carcass clean. Go forth and be those ants.

That’s it. That’s what a battle-weary veteran of a previous campaign has to offer. I can also tell you that nothing, absolutely nothing, feels better than changing the world. One victory nearly twenty years ago, that took twenty years to fight, is still keeping me going. I never completely give up, because I know what’s possible.

I hope, in thirty-five years or so, these protesters have a similar tale of success to tell their kids and grandkids who are righteously pissed about  something, because the republic itself — and the issue of our future, whether we reclaim “We, the people,” or become serfs in a corpocracy — is riding on their success.

I stopped by Kiener Plaza in downtown St. Louis Monday and talked to a few of the new residents there. They’re organized: got tents set up and have received plenty of food donations; have tarps ready for the first rain so that everything they own won’t end up soaked and moldy; meet as a group to decide on community policies and plan events. Monday, for example, they coordinated with a group of Wash. U. students to protest the Keystone Pipeline Project. 150-200 people showed up outside the Renaissance Hotel where Obama would be, urging him to veto the project. Wednesday at 4:00, they’re coordinating with MORE to protest at the Bank of America at Eighth and Market. They will demand that Bad for America take responsibility for the damage it has caused to our neighborhoods because of foreclosures.

As for their community policies, they are being scrupulous about following the rules and being model citizens. Despite the roar of the waterfall, they don’t use bullhorns at their meetings because that would require a $300 permit. Another example: they want to leave the plaza cleaner than they found it. Bill Stough dropped by and handed Carmalene Jackson a broom and dustpan.

The word the protesters had as of Monday afternoon, though, was that sometime Monday night the police would be citing them for staying on the city property.

Via Balloon Juice:

“Zero arrested for bankrupting the country. 700 arrested for walking on a bridge.”

Repeat it. Rinse. Repeat.

And here’s another, somewhat related, from a comment at the same place:

“I won’t believe corporations are people until Texas executes one.”

That is all.

Occupy Wall Street came to St. Louis on Saturday–and to 85 other cities, Mike Kiepe (pictured in the first photo) was telling me as we stood in front of the Federal Reserve Building at 411 Locust. Protesters across the country say they are there for the 99 percent of Americans who are being slowly squashed by the wealthiest one percent. As Obama pointed out, if pointing out the greediness of the top one percent is class warfare, then we’re proud to be warriors.

Four Missouri Progressive Action Group members were the first on the scene, but that’s only because we and four other early birds didn’t check the Facebook page late enough to know that the bulk of the protesters were meeting first at a nearby bar before showing up en masse. The MOPAG people had to leave for their monthly meeting before the bulk of the crowd arrived, but before they left, STLToday stopped by, interviewed those who were there, and polished off their article with a quote from Susan Cunningham (on the left in the top picture).

Ironically, an EMT named Paul (in the plaid shirt) told us that he was the one who had gotten on the Occupy STL Facebook page and selected the Federal Reserve Building as the site of the protest, but then he and his wife, a nurse, missed the announcement of the general meeting first.

KMOV-TV perked up and took an interest:

http://www.kmov.com/templates/belo_embedWrapper.js?storyid=130870348&pos=top&swfw=470http://swfs.bimvid.com/bimvid_player-3_2_7.swf?x-bim-callletters=KMOVhttp://www.kmov.com/templates/belo_embedWrapper.js?storyid=130870348&pos=bottom

If you really want to know the latest on where the group is, go find them on Twitter. For one thing, it looks like the action is switching to Kiener Plaza–and to Bank of America close by.

And if you want to see the latest on Occupy Wall Street, look here,  here, and here–among a host of places.

Protesters prepare for a sudden rainstorm

Day Eight

The New York movement caught fire when Tony Baloney pepper sprayed those young women, the videotape went viral, and the media finally had to take up the story. Marie Antoinette could have told Anthony Bologna that sometimes discretion is the better part of valor. And that sometimes a bully’s action comes back to bite the entire top one percent in the ass.