Occupy 2012 Roundup: NDAA, Victories Against Corporate Personhood, Descending on DC, General Strike! | NationofChange

Nathan Schneider

Waging Nonviolence / Video Feature

Published: Friday 6 January 2012

This is a tall order, but if people can remember that political power begins in themselves, perhaps it’s not as tall as it sounds.

The Oc­cupy move­ment is busy. Far from being dor­mant for the win­ter, oc­cu­piers are find­ing them­selves with all sorts of new ac­tions, chal­lenges and plans. Though most of the 24-hour en­camp­ments have ended, the move­ment is be­gin­ning to focus much more on ac­tions di­rected to­ward con­crete de­mands. Last night I at­tended Oc­cupy Wall Street’s Spokes Coun­cil—now fi­nally ac­tive after weeks of tur­moil—and caught the above video of doc­u­men­tar­ian Michael Moore’s un­planned speech. In it, he re­minded the 100 or so peo­ple pre­sent that the fight ahead is a long one, and that they’re only just get­ting started. Here’s a glimpse at how the fight will be un­fold­ing in the com­ing months:

• On New Year’s Day, Pres­i­dent Obama signed into law the lat­est Na­tional De­fense Au­tho­riza­tion Act, which in­cludes new pow­ers for de­tain­ing US cit­i­zens and fur­ther en­trenches the prison at Guan­tanamo Bay in Amer­i­can pol­icy. Oc­cu­piers, some of whom see the new pow­ers as likely to be di­rected at them, mounted a rov­ing protest in New York on Jan­u­ary 3. NDAA will also be a focus of the Oc­cupy Con­gress ac­tion in Wash­ing­ton on Jan­u­ary 17, which has re­port­edly just se­cured per­mis­sion from the Park Po­lice to hold a protest.

• The day after Oc­cupy Wall Street’s Gen­eral As­sem­bly passed a Res­o­lu­tion to End Cor­po­rate Per­son­hood by con­sen­sus, the New York City Coun­cil ap­proved its own res­o­lu­tion against cor­po­rate per­son­hood on Jan­u­ary 4. This comes after sim­i­lar res­o­lu­tions in sev­eral cities, in­clud­ing Los An­ge­les, as well as Mon­tana’s vow to up­hold a ban on cor­po­rate cam­paign con­tri­bu­tions, de­spite the Supreme Court’s Cit­i­zens United de­ci­sion. Cor­po­rate per­son­hood is the focus of Oc­cupy the Courts, a na­tion­wide day of ac­tion on Jan­u­ary 20, the eve of the sec­ond an­niver­sary of Cit­i­zens United, spear­headed by the pre­ex­ist­ing coali­tion Move to Amend.
• A num­ber of events are planned around Mar­tin Luther King Day, in­clud­ing a world­wide “can­dle­light vigil for unity” on Jan­u­ary 15, protests at all 13 Fed­eral Re­serve sites around the coun­try on Jan­u­ary 16, and Oc­cupy 4 Jobsac­tions on Jan­u­ary 14 and 16—which pur­port to ful­fill King’s hope just be­fore his death to mount a mass ac­tion against un­em­ploy­ment. Posters about Oc­cupy 4 Jobs are among the first Oc­cupy posters I’ve seen in my pre­dom­i­nately African-Amer­i­can neigh­bor­hood, sug­gest­ing that the move­ment is en­larg­ing its de­mo­graphic reach.
• Oc­cupy Wash­ing­ton DC, the oc­cu­pa­tion at Free­dom Plaza that began on Oc­to­ber 6, has just an­nounced plans for its own “Phase II,” which in­cludes sev­eral new or­ga­niz­ing spaces, an Oc­cupy Media pro­ject, a “co-op­er­a­tive sub-econ­omy” fundrais­ing pro­gram, and NOW DC, a re­newed na­tional oc­cu­pa­tion in Wash­ing­ton start­ing on April 1.
• Chicago will see ac­tion in the spring, too, with protests being planned for the G8 and NATO sum­mits May 19–21 by an­ti­war groups like United for Peace & Jus­tice and UNAC. Oc­cupy Chicago has called for a sub­se­quent Oc­cupy Spring mo­bi­liza­tion on April 7.
• On May 1, there’s a call for Oc­cupy May Day—a world­wide gen­eral strike.Thou­sands have al­ready signed up on Face­book.

The defin­ing chal­lenge that the move­ment in the US will face in 2012 will al­most cer­tainly be the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. With bil­lions of dol­lars being poured into di­rect­ing the whole coun­try’s at­ten­tion at the can­di­dates non­stop, the Oc­cupy move­ment has to find a way to make the is­sues that mat­ter to it take prece­dence over the per­son­al­i­ties and ad­ver­tise­ments of pres­i­den­tial hope­fuls. Oc­cu­piers in Iowa, who called on peo­ple to vote “un­com­mit­ted” in the cau­cuses, ap­pear to have had lit­tle im­pact at the polls. (Oc­cupy the New Hamp­shire Pri­mary is now gear­ing up with some­what dif­fer­ent tac­tics.) It is al­ready taken as a given in the move­ment that there will be mas­sive protests at both Re­pub­li­can and De­mo­c­ra­tic con­ven­tions. But if these are to be con­struc­tive, rather than sim­ply chaotic, the move­ment will need to be able to offer peo­ple some­thing more hope­ful, more com­pelling and more tan­gi­ble than any pres­i­den­tial can­di­date can promise to de­liver.
This is a tall order, but if peo­ple can re­mem­ber that po­lit­i­cal power be­gins in them­selves, per­haps it’s not as tall as it sounds.

Occupy 2012 Roundup: NDAA, Victories Against Corporate Personhood, Descending on DC, General Strike! | NationofChange