Letter to a Friend who Introduced Me to Bill Whittle

My friend Frank sent me a Bill Whittle video, or at least the link: 

http://www.youtube.com/embed/OAOrT0OcHh0?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&showsearch=0&showi

He just passed it along and added: "Folks, here's another good one....please watch."   I had never heard of Bill Whittle.  So I checked Wikipedia.  The article had been deleted.

Dear Frank:

You have to know that I am part of the 99%.  I went to Washington twice in the last several months to keep the planet safe from the 1%.  This is the 1%:  They control 40% of the wealth in our country including the government.  They take in 90% of the income.  This 1% also owns and controls the media … Fox News.  Kids are not stupid or lazy.  They just see a better economic system can come into being.  The way it is working now, 25 million people want full-time employment.   Our system does not provide that.  That is a failure of capitalism.  Our nation accounts for 5% of the world’s population but warehouses 25% of the world’s prisoners.  Do you think we cannot do better? 

This is a revolution.  It cannot be stopped.

New York City to California ... Tahrir Square ... The Empire Strikes Back

In New York the police are hemming in protesters with one of the several tools of repression that empire has always turned to ... military force in the form of police action.  Meanwhile at the University of California, Davis, similar exhibitions of empire's desperation were on display as peaceful student protesters were "pepper-sprayed" in shock video fashion.  Bloomberg in New York is claiming victory.  UC officials are claiming they are merely promoting order.  The order of empire is maintained by violence, whether it be the poverty of many so that the ruling elites may preserve "their share", or whether it be the economic system held on track in order to reward the few while disciplining the labor force  to expect less and less and in the process, teaching workers to blame themselves for their plight.   One candidate for President asserts boldly, "It is your fault if you do not have a job."  Don't believe the lies of empire.

Meanwhile the media owned and controlled by the ruling elites continues its mission of repression with characterizations of "Occupy" that are now going beyond ridicule to outright maligning with lies.  I visited Occupy DC.  I did not see, as Bill O'reilly reported, public masturbation, drug use and rape.  Rather, I witnessed a community coming together in order to meet the needs of the homeless and those in need of food.  The established community, maintained by violence, is not able to provide these basic needs.  There was a free library there too, similar to the one at Occupy Wall Street that Mayor Bloomberg incinerated.  And this bibilocide occurred after thirteen public libraries in New York were closed and 300 library personnel were liberated from employment by the Mayor.  The Occupy library stood as the only resource for books in the neighborhood available to parents who wanted materials for their children.  Moreover, the local Borders was no longer there.  Empire decided that the free library had to go ... another bonfire of the vanities.

Occupy ... the antidote to asset stripping

Yesterday marked two long months since the "Occupy Wall Street" movement kicked off.  We have witnessed the stages of reaction from the ruling elites as expressed within the corporate media.  In the beginning, Occupy was ignored.  Then came pundit ridicule.  Now we are witnessing the stage of active resistance in which police forces in cities across the nation are hemming in demonstrators, incinerating their personal belongings and otherwise being utilized to make Occupy go away.  Each attempt only results in demonstrators' adaptation and in increasing numbers of socially conscious people who "get it."  The contradictions between the capitalist class and the rest of us have reached a level in which stability through the anesthesia of personal peace and affluence as promulgated by the corporate media is wearing off.  When one percent of our citizens control 40% of the wealth and 90% of the shared income, the center cannot hold.  This is a revolution.  We may not be hearing strains of the "Internationale" but this impulse of correction has its own anthems of rap and drums and chants. 

Washington DC Keystone XL Pipe Line Protest and Occupy DC

I just returned from DC where I rallied with more than 10,000 activists as we surrounded the White House to force President Obama to reject the Keystone XL Pipe Line. This project out of hell would transport Alberta, Canada Tar Sands oil to a Texas Gulf port for sale overseas.  At the time that I wrote a letter to the editor of several local newspapers, there were only 4,000 activists signed up to take part in this follow-up of the Tar Sands Action. Back in August and early September 1,253 of us were arrested at the White House in civil disobedience action.  This time thousands showed up along with a strong contingent from Occupy DC.     

The event began in Lafayette Park directly across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House.  The President, we were given to understand, was golfing with several members of the White House staff.  There were speakers including James Hansen, Obama's chief climate scientist, Melonie Cline, the Canadian journalist and several others including the president of the Hip Hop Caucus, and the leader of the spiritual group The Sojourners.  And of course there was Bill Mckibben, the founder of 350.org, the organizer of the Tar Sands Action at the White House.  I couldn't get over the number of cameras and video journalists who were documenting the largest climate activist even of the century.

There were several bands.  One played before the surrounding; the other entertained and engaged us after the surrounding of the White House.  A band playing and singing, "Now is The Time", greeted us as we reconvened in Lafayette Park following the White House surrounding.

We were broken up in to three groups. We were instructed to march behind the orange flag, the brown flag and the red flag.  Thus arranged, we broke off east and west to completely encircle the White House.  Activists/artists  had prepared a large black balloon pipe line that they carried as a float that encircled the White House.  One marcher was costumed as a polar bear.  Activists carried blue signs that displayed environment messages gleaned from President Obama's 2008 campaign.  "The oceans would stop rising and the earth would begin to heal."

I also had a chance to visit Theo, a friend at Occupy DC.  We had cups of coffee and then went on patrol picking up debris from the walk ways.  There were artists and drummers during the evening.