Noam Chomsky - Occupy

Occupy

Noam Chomsky

Occupied Media Pamphlet Series | Zuccotti Park Press

Brooklyn

Copyright 2012 by Noam Chomsky

All Rights Reserved.

Produced and edited by Greg Ruggiero

Cover design by R. Black

This publication is a joint project of Adelante Alliance
and Essential Information

Archived by the Tamiment Collection at New York University

eISBN: 978-1-884519-10-9

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Dedicated to the 6,705 people who have been arrested supporting Occupy to date, from the first 80 arrested marching in New York on September 24, 2011, to the woman arrested in Sacramento on March 6, 2012, for throwing flower petals.* May our numbers swell and increase.

* Torey Van Oot, Occupy protester arrested for throwing flower petals in Capitol, Sacramento Bee , March 6, 2012.

Occupying with Chomsky

by Greg Ruggiero

Occupy, says Noam Chomsky, is the first major public response to thirty years of class war, a people-powered movement that began in New York City on September 17, 2011, and rapidly spread to thousands of locations worldwide. Although most of the original sites have been raided by police, transitionedcontinues to organize, continues to carry out direct actions as it transitions from occupying tent camps to occupying the conscience of the nation.

In this e-book version of Occupy , Chomsky points out that one of the movements greatest successes has been simply to put the inequalities of everyday life on the national agenda, influencing reporting, public perception and language itself. Referencing a January 2012 Pew Research Center report on public perceptions of class conflict within the United States, Chomsky notes that inequalities in the country have risen to historically unprecedented heights. The Pew study finds that about two-thirds of the U.S. population now believes there are very strong or strong conflicts between the rich and the pooran increase of 19 percentage points since 2009.

Occupy has changed the national conversation, and it is important to acknowledge all the people who camped out, marched or went to jail to help make it happen. As of today, April 27, 2012, at least 6,925 people in 113 U.S. cities have been arrested while engaged in movement-related activity. Making headlines is not the movements goal, but the word choice indicates that the narrative can be changedand altering the narrative is a necessary victory toward transforming everything else.

The plight of those without resources, those without a voice, those without access to power, those traditionally ignored, has now become the focus of greater national attention and widespread indignation. Their stories are being told, and anyone who can read and understand cannot help but deplore the cruelties endured by millions of people in an economy that for decades has been shaped, coded, and enforced by the rich. Another recent example: The New York Times recently published a front-page story about an elderly couple in Dixfield, Maine, who had fallen behind on paying their heating bills. When, during the dead of winter, their back debt hit around $700, the oil company cut them off, knowing that doing so might literally kill two people. The oil man said he agonized over his decision, and when he got off the phone with the couple he thought to himself, Are these people going to be found frozen?

In the same issue, just a few pages later, appeared a column discussing multimillionaire Mitt Romneys statement that he was not concerned about the very poor because there is a safety net for them. The writer responds to Romneys assurance with these words: Where to begin? First, a report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities last month pointed out that Romneys budget proposals would take a chainsaw to that safety net.

How did we in the United States get to this point? Its not Third World misery, says Chomsky, but its not what it ought to be in a rich society, the richest in the world, in fact, with plenty of wealth around, which people can see, just not in their pockets. And Chomsky credits Occupy for helping to bring these issues to the fore. You can say that its now almost a standard framework of discussion. Even the terminology is accepted. Thats a big shift.

Driving the shift are Occupys relentless and increasingly creative actions in hundreds of cities, including occupying foreclosed homes and disrupting auctions where peoples stolen homes are sold off to the highest bidder. These actions not only expose the heartlessness and inhumanity of the system; they offer meaningful solidarity to those being crushed by it. As preexisting anti-foreclosure organizations and Occupy merge, wrotes Laura Gottesdeiner in March 2012, the campaign is spreading to nearly every major city, with front-lawn occupations, eviction defense teams or auction blockades currently underway in Boston, Tampa, Maui, Detroit, Nashville, Birmingham, New York City, Washington D.C., Chicago, Cleveland, Atlanta, Minneapolis, Delaware and cities across California.

Chomsky speaks to the many options and opportunities that exist to change the system, and he points to examples in which the movements vision has already impacted city council proposals, debates and resolutions, such as the case of New York City Council Resolution 1172, which formally opposes corporate personhood and calls for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to permanently ban it. The resolution creates clear dividing lines between the rights of corporations and the rights of citizens, and it adds to the momentum produced by a growing list of citiesincluding Los Angeles, Oakland, Albany and Boulder that have passed similar resolutions.

Underling Occupys success has been its focus on the daily details of organizing. Major protests, civil disobedience and arrests are key parts of movement strategy, but the day-to-day activities of discussion, working groups and general assemblies are the deep structure, the ongoing forces adding mass and momentum to Occupys wave. The locales number in the hundreds, perhaps thousands. In New York City theres Occupy Wall Street, but theres also Occupy Brooklyn, Occupy Sunset Park, Occupy the Bronx, Occupy Long Island, Occupy the Hood and campus organizing like Occupy Columbia University. Its truly gone global, even reaching places like New Guinea. And online technology, like that used to create InterOccupy.org, is connecting Occupy forces around the country and helping to facilitate regional gatherings, strategies and actions.

What makes this all the more remarkable is that despite the inevitable repression, as Chomsky calls itthe pushback of police brutality, mass arrests, trumped-up charges, restrictive city ordinances, surveillance, infiltration and raidsthe movement continues to organize, occupying new fronts from inner-city neighborhoods and local courtrooms to the halls of Congress and the Justice Department. Simply continuing in the face of repression can be considered an achievement. With a presence in hundreds of cities, mounting numbers of arrests and big plans for more actions up to the presidential elections and beyond, the movement is also very much occupying the court system and challenging the political nature of government repression.

Occupys tenacity and spread as a movement demonstrate the degree to which huge numbers of people no longer believe the system listens or responds to ordinary people. The economic recession is linked to a recession of democracy. The latter is a recession so profound that many politicians no longer hide the fact that they do not listen. During a Republican presidential debate moderated by CNN anchor Anderson Cooper, for example, one of the candidates was asked an immigration-related question. When he ignored the question and rambled on about something else, Cooper pushed him to answer. Dismissing Cooper, the politician snarled, You get to ask the questions, I get to answer like I want to, drawing loud boos from the live audience.