11.11.2011

OWS Says 'Enough of This Bull...'

On Wend. a small group of Occupy Wall Street activists engaged in a near-successful corrida against the Wall Street Bull. The matador and the bull both survived to fight another day. Street theater, pictures worth thousands of words, a spark in the growing fire.

Another spark was the article on OWS joining an Assembly of Struggles in Athens. Those gathered in a basement in the neighborhood of Exarcheia talked about parks, public kitchens, and barter bazaars. They even seemed pretty hopeful.

A common theme, a common trajectory of events that echo Thomas Jeffereson's prediction of things to come. The Greeks are a bit ahead of we Norte Americanos on the revolution curve, the Argentinians are well ahead of us all. Today another technocrat was installed by the bankers in Italy. As Benito Mussolini once said, "Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power."

That evening’s meeting in Athens is hopefully a sign of things to come: a global resistance movement coming together to face global problems. It’s being built right now around the particular needs of local communities, of people who are learning to organize themselves and resist in the course of providing for one another. Street theater in NYC, organizing in Athens and sad news from Burlington Vt. and Oakland where, like Vancouver, tragedy, wrought of our culture's woes, has landed on the occupiers door step.

"Individuals have international duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience. Therefore [individual citizens] have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity from occurring" -- Nuremberg War Crime Tribunal, 1950