Occupy Denver…October 15, 2011…with a message from Rabbi Michael Lerner

Note…

Occup Denver Demonstration - October 15, 2011

Posted below is a message from Rabbi Michael Lerner, founder and moving force of the Tikkun Movement. A difficult person who can be as factional in his dealings with folks to the left of him as he accuses them of being, Lerner is still, a voice of Jewish humanism and one which I respect.  A little too enthusiastic about Barack Obama and off the mark on his defense of NATO in Libya, he’s shown a great deal of courage on the Israeli-Palestinian issue and on the American political scene in general. Below is his statement on `Occupy Wall Street’, which is produced below in full and unedited.

I am not so concerned as Lerner seems to be about the failure,  up until now, for this movement to come up with a clear message. This one of the criticisms of `Occupy Wall Street’ already coming from the right. No need to respond to them. They fear any manifestation of mass activity and  are becoming increasingly nervous about the growth of this movement both in the USA and worldwide. And they should be. At this point what we have is a a global outbreak of pervasive anger and frustration. The target is not so vague, not in the least: it is the policies of finance capital and the political system that more and more promotes it at the expense of just about everyone… ie…the 99% the demonstrators claim to represent (and do). And more specific demands will emerge –and i do think in large measure – these demands will dominate the 2012 presidential elections, something that would not have happened (or not have happened to such a degree had this movement not exploded.

Many of those `taking the lead’ in all this are young people who four years ago were the backbone of Obama’s

How did this picture get here? It's from the Denver MLK march in January... Still - a direct link between the Arab Revolt of 2011 and `Occupy Denver'... it all started in a small town in central Tunisia called Sidibouzid which ignited both a young unemployed man's body - and a global movement for economic and political justice. ...`for reals'., as my daughters used to say when they were younger

history presidential bid; the faith they had in Obama has evaporated with the president’s weak leadeship, his failure to challenge Wall Street at home and his complicity with the Pentagon abroad. Many have moved from the ballot box to the street which they have taken to quite comfortably. Many of them might vote for Obama, but it is pretty clear that they won’t work for him the same way they did in 2008, making the president’s bid for re-election that much more complicated.

Here in Denver yesterday a massive demonstration – I believe as many as 5000 people marched through downtown Denver – first past the local offices of the federal reserve, then down 17th street – one of two of Denver’s financial centers. The demonstration came the day after the city and the state removed the `tent city’ which had been erected by Occupy Denver activists. According to the press several dozen demonstrators were arrested. That was on Friday. After yesterday’s demonstration which was spirited but entirely peaceful, several hundred people stayed behind between Colfax and 14th Ave on Broadway. There were some arrests made as the demonstrators refused to leave the street.

All the photos here are from yesterday’s Denver demonstration…just one of at least, according to Lerner, nearly 1000 demonstrations worldwide….and next week there will be more and the demos in cities already participating will be even bigger.

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The Message and Strategy that is Needed by Occupy Wall Street

by Rabbi Michael Lerner

Occupy Denver Demonstration - October 15, 2011

On October 15th, Occupy Wall Street will demonstrate in concert over 951 cities in 82 countries and counting as people around the globe protest in an international day of solidarity against the greed and corruption of the 1%.

Occupy Wall Street is a people powered movement that began on September 17, 2011 in Liberty Square in Manhattan’s Financial District, and has spread to over 100 cities in the United States and actions in over 1,500 cities globally.  OWS is fighting back against the corrosive power of major banks and multinational corporations on the democratic process, and the role of Wall Street in creating an economic collapse that caused the greatest recession in generations. The movement is inspired by uprisings in Egypt,Tunisia, Spain, Greece, Italy and the UK, and aims to expose how the richest 1% of people who are writing the rules of the global economy and are imposing an agenda of neoliberalism and economic inequality.

I’m particularly proud that young Jews have created Sukkot, the temporary huts that Jews are supposed to live in for 7 days (the holiday started Wednesday night) in order to detach from the material security provided by our homes, to re-identify ourselves as a people that has mostly been homeless for most of our history, and to remind ourselves that all the accomplishments of material security are meaningless unless shared with everyone else. So on this Shabbat of Sukkot Jews around the world read King Solomon’s biblical Book of Ecclesiastes with its message that all the striving for power and wealth is pointless, that we are here for a very short while, and that all we can do while here is to maximize love and generosity (ok, that last part was more Lerner than King Solomon, but I’m hoping he would agree). Tikkunista Jews are challenging the establishment Jews, some of whom run the very institutions that all of us supporting Occupy Wall Street hope to see replaced by a more just order.

The media, trying to discredit us, says we don’t know what we are for, only what we are against. So I believe there is much to be gained were we to embrace the following 20 second sound byte for “what we are for.”

We want to replace a society based on selfishness and materialism with a society based on caring for each other and

Hickenlooper is Colorado's governor, John Hickenlooper who in the same breath, visited the Occupy Denver tent camp claiming that he believes in `free speech' while ordering the state patrol to tear down the tent city while he was speaking... thus the unkind poster, of which there were many similar ones yesterday

caring for the planet. We want a new bottom line so that institutions, corporations, government policies, and even personal behavior is judged rational or productive or efficient not only by how much money or power gets generated, but also by how much love and kindness, generosity and caring, environmental and ethical behavior, and how much we are able to respond to the universe with awe, wonder and radical amazement the grandeur and mystery of all Being. To take the first steps, we want to eliminate ban all money from elections except that supplied by government on an equal basis to all major candidates, require free and equal time for the candidates and prohibit buying other time or space, and require corporations to get a new corporate charter once every five years which they can only get if they can prove a satisfactory history of environmental and social responsibility to a jury of ordinary citizens. We call this the Environmental and Social Responsibility Amendment to the US Constitution (ESRA). We want to replace the mistaken notion that homeland security can be achieve through a strategy of world domination by our corporations suppoted by the US military and intelligence services with a strategy of generosity and caring for others in the world that will start by launching a Global Marshall Plan that dedicates 1-2% of our GMP ever year for the next twenty to once and for all eliminate global poverty homelessnes, hunger, inadequate education and inadequate health care–knowing that this, not an expanded militarr, is what will give us security. And we want a NEW New Deal that provides a job for everyone who wants to work, jobs that rebuild our environment and our infrastructre, and jobs that allow us to take better care of educating our youth and caring for the aged. That’s what we are for! And you can read more about them at www.spiritualprogressives.org

Ok, it was two minutes instead of 20 seconds, but we deserve that amount of time night after night on national media, and lots more space on print media.

Occupy Denver Demonstration - October 15, 2011

Strategy? Two key directions. For direct action, we need to begin non-violent sit-ins aimed at disrupting the normal operations of those corporations that have acted illegally and immorally, but gotten away with it because their friends control the Democratic Party as well as the Repbulican. We can’t just occupy parks, we need to escalate our activity in a totally non-violent way. For a longer term strategy, we need to run a candidate or a series of candidates (different ones in different states) to challenge Obama in the Democratic presidential primaries, else the power-brokers will continue to ignore the progressive sentiments of the American majority, telling themselves that since we have no electoral alternative, we’ll always be there for the Democratic power brokers no mater how badly they ignore the needs of the 99%.  And we can use that kind of campaign to do in the Democatic Party what the Tea Party did inside of the Republican Party: push for a worldview that is coherent and clear, and policies that embody that worldview even if those policies can’t yet get majority support.

The big problem facing us is how to take the millions of Americans who are ready to in this new direction to work together coherently. Yet we can rejoice the first step has been taken: Americans coming out of the closet of despair and calling for a world of justice, peace and caring for each other and for the planet.

Occupy Denver Demonstration - October 15, 2011

–Rabbi Michael Lerner is editor of Tikkun Magazine and Chair of the Network of Spiritual Progressives. Author of the NY Times best seller The Left Hand of God: Taking Back our Country from the Religious Right (Harper, 2006), his next book forthcoming in November is Embracing Israel/Palestine: A strategy for Middle East Peace.  RabbiLerner@Tikkun.org

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Links:

Shocking Truth About `Occupy’ Police Disruptions…