Keeping the Big Picture in Mind

Most of you are aware of Occupy Wall Street going on now in New York and the hundreds of similar activities around the country. It is all about the undue influence of wealth in the politics of this country, and the resultant laws and policies favoring the wealthy and the large corporations that have resulted in the huge income disparity we now have between the wealthiest 1% and all the rest of us.

So, what does that have to do with transition in our local community? Transition Vashon came together to increase awareness of and develop appropriate community response to climate change, resource depletion, and the resulting economic dysfunction. The reason I am writing about this is that the corporate regime which has dominated US policy for the last 30 years is the very antithesis of what we are trying to do locally. Where we want a localized, personalized economy, they have developed a centralized, monopolized economy with fewer and fewer larger and larger players. Where we want to create resilience through diversity, they have specialized to the point that a disaster in one location can put the entire global economy in jeopardy. While we are concerned with the long-term health of the planet and future generations, they are primarily concerned with short term profit. I could go on, but suffice it to say that they are driving us towards oblivion at 90 mph!

It is likely that resource scarcity and more dramatic climatic events will create such political and economic instability that centralized corporate power will collapse of its own weight and utter irrelevance, but, until that happens, they will continue to make an already bad situation much worse. In particular, the economic and social dislocation they continue to cause is creating an anxious and fearful attitude amongst people that will make it doubly hard to make the cultural changes we will need to make to adapt to the changing world. That is why we need to support Occupy Wall Street.

Suspecting that the media was belittling or, at best, misconstruing what appeared to be a popular uprising, I went to Westlake Part in Seattle on Saturday afternoon to see for myself. What I found was a fairly orderly crowd of the usual left political rally folks. There was a lot of union representation, though no union agenda evident, and no political representation. Since there was a permitted indigenous people’s rally scheduled for the afternoon, there were a good number of them there too. It was clear that these people were caring for each other. They had a large tent where they dispensed free food and first aid. There has been no evidence that I have heard of that there were any large benefactors. The Mayor had expected that they might have to confront the unpermitted Occupy Together (with Wall St) folks, but the indigenous rally organizers asked that they be permitted to stay because their cause was synonymous with their own. It was very clear why everybody was there: they wanted the wealthy and the corporations to shape up or ship out. They expected them to be legally accountable for their actions, and to pay their fair share. Unlike most events I have attended in the last few years, there were no counter protestors.

The indigenous speakers rightly protested, again, the taking of their homelands and their marginalization therein, but spoke as well to the parallel crimes being committed today on Wall St. I got a sense of the nonpartisan nature of this crowd, when one speaker tried to say that Obama would be there for us if we got out in the streets and made our case. This crowd wasn’t buying that. Despite receiving a good deal of abuse while trying to state his case, he was still applauded when he finished. These people have a real bond, but it is clear that they are just as fed up with Democrats and they are with Republicans. Some union reps were given some time to speak and they went out of their way to say that they were there strictly in support of a popular movement and not to promote their own agenda. A representative of the Occupy Together group spoke of the egalitarian nature of their group: no leaders and meetings every afternoon with open attendance to decide by consensus what they would do next. To old style organizers, this sounds laughable and typically ultra leftist, but the fact is that it is working, not just locally, but nationally. There is something new here and it is very exciting!

You should go see for yourself. They will be there continuously, but they have an event planned for next Saturday, October 15th, at 12 noon at Westlake Park. As one of the indigenous speakers said, "It’s high time we get off of our fannies and do something!" The only thing we have going for us is a large show of bodies, and if there ever was a good time to be out there, it’s now. This is pivotal; get out there and be counted! Here is a link for more info:
www.meetup.com/occupytogether/Seattle-WA/390612/t/bn1/

Comments? terry@vashonloop.com