Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Occupy Oakland protesters split over violence

HOW CAN WE BECOME NONVIOLENT
AND STILL FUNCTION WITH DIGNITY
WITHIN A WORLD THAT LARGELY RUNS ON VIOLENCE AND CONFLICT?

Changing Our World's Systems Toward

Economic Justice And Greater Fairness

~~~~~~And Surviving

Tuesday, January 31, 2012
by Kevin Fagan and Justin Berton, San Francisco Chronicle


A masked protester joins the march through downtown Oakland before the demonstration turned violent Saturday.




For many Occupy activists outside Oakland and San Francisco, the violent clashes with police and destruction that attended protests in those cities over the past two weeks not only went against the Occupy message - they've started to undercut its essence.

Even within the cities, there is a deepening split between those who accept violence as a tactic and those who oppose it.

The conflict is turning into a wrestling match for the soul of the Occupy movement in the Bay Area. And it's become so pronounced that many who started out calling themselves Occupiers now refer to themselves as "99 percenters" instead.


"But now," Horaney said, "we've got this group that pretty much just wants to destroy things and make trouble."

"When I started to see what was happening Saturday, my heart just broke," Michele Horaney of Alameda, a member of the 99 Percent Solution activist group in the East Bay, said of the Occupy Oakland protest that devolved into an hours-long street battle with police. "There is so much good to be gotten, earned and kept from really solid, sincere efforts to make things change for the better.

Not Their Fault


For others, though, it's not a matter of protesters committing violence. Any destruction is in reaction to police repression of their efforts to seek economic equality, they say - and if violence happens, it's not really the protesters' fault.

"In any struggle for social justice, the people have been told to shut up and sit down," said Cat Brooks, an active Oakland Occupier. "I believe in a diversity of tactics. If you are fully aware of the risks, then you have to do what you have to do.


"I'm not condoning violence, and I'm not condemning it," she said. "I'm just saying that 99 percent of the time when violence happens, it's police who start it. And you have to do what you have to do."

Occupy roots

Occupy began last fall on Wall Street as a crusade against economic inequity, shrinkage of the middle class and what its backers perceived as corporate greed. As tent cities sprouted throughout the country, the leaderless movement gathered adherents from many stripes of protest, and today one of the more vigorous contingents advocates taking over empty buildings and resisting police.

This is particularly true in Oakland, where protesters protecting themselves with shields tried to take over the vacant Henry J. Kaiser Convention Center on Saturday. The confrontation turned into another melee with police firing tear gas, protesters flinging objects and people getting hurt on both sides. Activists eventually broke into City Hall, burned a U.S. flag and trashed parts of the building.

The week before, on Jan. 20, Occupiers broke into the abandoned Cathedral Hill Hotel in San Francisco after a peaceful day of marches in the Financial District, and were ejected after they threw bricks and other items at police.

Occupy San Francisco's General Assembly has voted to oppose violence as a tactic, but in Oakland - where there have been weekly "F- the police" marches - such proposals have fallen short of the consensus vote needed to pass. At protests in both cities, those who commit vandalism and throw rocks and other objects at officers are often opposed by other protesters who try to calm them down.


Other goals

Outside the two cities, there is little such debate among the 30-plus Occupy organizations from Santa Cruz to Concord and up to Santa Rosa.

There, the tactics have generally settled into marches and rallies to drive home a few central themes that include banking reform, making the rich and corporations pay more taxes and granting foreclosure relief.

Ellis Goldberg, a marketer who has staged Occupy-inspired rallies against banks in Dublin and San Ramon, has become so frustrated he now calls himself a "99 percenter" instead of an Occupier.



What we are protesting about has been totally obliterated by what is coming out of the television set," he said. "It's not just burning the American flag that is terrible - it's terrible that it's all getting totally off message. Trashing buildings and fighting with police is not what 99 percent of what the 99 percenters are about."

"We had 50 people in front of banks in San Ramon two weeks ago, and we have been telling people for months about $156 billion bonuses Wall Street executives got last year on the backs of the rest of us, but do we get press?" Goldberg said. "No. Instead, we turn on our TV and there are pictures of people breaking into City Hall.

Oakland debate

At Frank Ogawa Plaza on Sunday evening, members discussed the impact of the repeated clashes with police and considered the movement's future.

Barucha Peller, one of Occupy Oakland's key organizers, said the group was the victim of police brutality and had no intention of reaching an accommodation with law enforcement, ever.

"I think it's impossible," she said. "If someone shot you in the head, beat you and your family, would you negotiate with that person? That's terrorism."

Standing nearby, Mike Rufo, 50, disagreed. "It'd be reconciliation," he told Peller.

Rufo, an energy-efficiency consultant who has helped organize the delivery of portable toilets to the plaza, said the cycle of conflict had not resulted in progress for either side.

"If you're not willing to sit down and try and work through it, I don't see where we can go," he said.

Off message

Rufo said the Occupy Oakland movement, which he has supported since October, had strayed from its core principles - fighting economic inequality - and was distracted by continual run-ins with police. He hoped the group would shift course and authorize members to meet with city representatives.

"Beating up on each other with the city of Oakland, I don't see where that's going," Rufo said. "They don't have deep pockets either."

Brooks said the goal is more complex than that.

"It helps those who oppose us to portray this movement as a bunch of violent, crazy people, and that's just not the truth," she said. "Occupy didn't invent what's happening now - this has always happened in social justice movements. What we really need to do now is engage more of the masses."



E-mail the writers at kfagan@sfchronicle.com and jberton@sfchronicle.com.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/01/30/MN7E1N0JU1.DTL&ao=2#ixzz1l2DLT3z2

This article appeared on page A - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle



Monday, January 23, 2012

COFFEE: Is It Good or Safe? CAFE LIFE Doesn't Discriminate Between Homeless and Housed People


Maybe Humanity's Unity And Growth
Hangs On The Culture of Coffee Beans?

Papal advisers told Pope Clement VIII that coffee was the antithesis of communion wine. He disagreed, and laid the foundation for the strictest of Catholic traditions: coffee hour.





Around Occupy Santa Cruz, and in fact all around town in the City of Santa Cruz, there has been a refreshed QUESTIONING: to Coffee or not to Coffee? People were taught that it's like a drug and if overused, like a dangerous drug. Yet in recent years, one is just as likely to read in the newsprint of commerce that Coffee is GOOD FOR YOU as you are to read otherwise.

Because I often work with and around homeless people, I forgot it was "unhealthy", and so have developed a "habit" which requires a cup of Joe every morning. Among the actually and truly "poor" in our area, both coffee and candy don't get put through the psychic ringer of critical popular opinion when mentioned, as it does in other circles. I have to be careful about sugar, I'm told I am someone who could become diabetic if I am not careful with my blood sugar. So I DO be careful. On the other hand, I understand the greater tolerance of people who generally and essentially have NOTHING, and who thus show gratitude (generally) when people share with them, even if what is shared are these quasi-sinful chemicals.

I've been thinking about how different this scenario -- open-early coffeehouses in every business district -- has changed the face of our day to day commerce. It seems apparent that the stricter the downtowns and shopping malls get about "move along and spend", about not sitting nor "loitering" nor "lodging"; then the more abundance comes to cafe-land. More customers, more cups of caffeine drunk.

But a hot cup of coffee isn't really the main attraction!

It seems to me that the larger, housed population has followed homeless people's lead where it comes to coffee drinking. In short, people are using the acceptance of coffee drinking to create and expand social space.

Homeless people have been obliged to cultivate acceptance by the Barista folks, in order to turn their coffee drinking spots into their living rooms, their dens, their offices, and even -- tho' harder to accomplish -- their bathrooms. And now in 2012, everyone else seems to be doing it, too.

Rents are high, here where my family lives in the County of Santa Cruz. So the people who must work for their means of support are being forced into ever-smaller, or ever more populated, homes.

When I was busy raising my children not too many years back, we were living near Barson and Ocean Streets in a small, converted (from motor court), subsidized, 9-unit apartment building on a one-block residential street near the gateway to this town's Boardwalk and the crowded Beach Flats neighborhood. I came to realize that within any given year, my neighbors each and all took turns inviting relatives or friends to sleep on their kitchen floors. I'm saying, there wasn't even enough space to offer "couch surfing", yet the nature of our transient and fluctuating society means sometimes we have to put people up.

And we who live "below the poverty line" nonetheless live within the same pressures and expectations as those who feel they are still in a middle class. Poor people ALSO have guests who have driven a long way to see their gran'kids or nephews, and who can't afford a hotel room (especially here, most of the year!). Poor people also want the chances to do a favor for their mechanics or their chimney rebuilder or the person from church who shortly needs a ride to the airport in the wee hours, just like people with an adequate income, they want to survive in this society.

They just don't have much to work with, but they live within the same societal pressures, demands and expectations. People who are housed but poor, who have to move, are likely to be homeless for a few months, unless they have relatives who are better off (or some similar pressure-release valve). And this "few months" assumption presumes there won't be FURTHER stressors in the transition.

For much more than a decade now, homeless people and other poor or low income people have been using the cafe scene as an extension of our homes and workplaces, because we had no choice. It seems this wasn't very often noticed -- the bad word, "homeless" was used more and more to talk ONLY about those already destroyed on the streets, or those with a bad attitude (sooner or later everyone has a bad day...) or those who appear to be bums or drunks or loaded and very confused.

I am NOT a different person when I am homeless than I am when I am housed. My goals, my values remain the same. I spend a LOT longer looking for places to go to the bathroom, but I am still a human being. As we wake up and smell the coffee, we could look around, and begin to notice people at the cafe -- reading the paper, paying their bills, interviewing a future employee, looking for a space away from the younger children for a moment, hoping to make a new friend -- homeless or housed, we are learning to share by extending our lives into what had been considered "public" space. As we learn to share in such an "organized" situation where the rules are known and the cost of a Cup o' Joe is a few dollars, we are also learning to take care of ourselves without the security blanket of private housing. And THIS gives me hope: hope that more and more people will become free to check out the Occupy Movement and in other ways plan for a more self-and-others future; and more people will realize they don't need as much STUFF as they've been taught to have; and more of us will realize that the distinctions between housed and homeless people are mostly imagined.


Friday, January 13, 2012

Leaderless Leaders: Occupy the World, Vacate the Porta Potties, get with the plumbers and builders asap

The People's Record

by Shamus Cooke

FOR THE PEOPLE, BY THE PEOPLE - AN ONGOING CHRONICLE OF THE OCCUPY MOVEMENT
Shamus Cooke photoTheory and Practice in the “Occupy Movement”  by Shamus Cooke  For a movement that started with one strategy and  a couple of slogans, Occupy has preformed brilliantly. Having based  itself on the examples of Egypt and Wisconsin, the Occupy Movement has  raised the political consciousness of millions and created a large layer  of new activists. But the uninterrupted string of successes of Egypt  and Tunisia haven’t materialized for Occupy. We’re in a lull period.  Next steps are being considered and some tactics are being re-thought. This is where revolutionary theory comes into play: a  set of ideas that help guide action. Sometimes theory is learned  unconsciously, where it resembles a set of non-ideological “assumptions”  about movement building and politics. Occupy’s theory began mostly with  assumptions, many of them true. One assumption was that previous political theories  have failed — that past social movements contained deep ideological  flaws. There is more than some truth in these conclusions, but other  truths were thrown out as well. The youth who built Occupy were born as the Berlin  Wall was falling; “communism” had failed. Mass disillusion followed the  loss of a socialist movement that had inspired dozens of revolutions in  Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Europe when half the globe declared  itself for “socialism.” Many socialist-leaning countries inflicted heavy  damage on capitalism while a few had crushed it outright. The United States spent the 20th century fighting  these movements: the Korean and Vietnam wars, the failed invasion of  Cuba, the dirty wars in Central America, countless CIA coups in South  America, Africa, Asia and elsewhere (the history of the CIA is a history  of fighting “socialism” by any means necessary). A U.S. domestic war  was waged by the FBI and police against socialists and other left  activists during McCarthy’s Red Scare of the 1950s. Nuclear war against  the USSR and China was a button push away during the Cuban Missile  Crisis. All of this madness was in the name of fighting socialism and  revolution. The U.S. wars against these socialist movements was  not irrational. A very real fear existed that capitalism was in danger —  that corporations would instead be run in the public interest. In some  countries capitalism was destroyed. But what replaced it seemed no  better, and in some cases worse. Why? The popular (corporate)  explanation is that any break from capitalism equals “authoritarianism.”  Another popular argument is that without rich people running the  economy it would cease to run; there is no alternative to capitalism, we  were told. This analysis is biased, shallow, and stupid. The truth makes far more sense anyway. To this day no wealthy country has had a successful  socialist revolution. Many have come close, especially several European  countries before and after WWI and WWII. The 1968 general strike in  France pinned capitalism to the floor, but its life was spared;  corporations were allowed to continue to run social life, the super-rich  remained so. Real socialism cannot exist in a poor country. If  Haiti implemented a “socialist” economy tomorrow it would still suffer  under post-earthquake rubble, mass homelessness and life-sucking  poverty. A “healthy democracy” cannot exist in these conditions. A  socialist economy cannot transform mud into gold. But capitalism took centuries to transform poor  countries into rich ones, and even today a tiny minority of rich  countries dominate a hundred plus poor capitalist nations. Poor  capitalist countries — like their poor socialist counterparts — suffer  from a chronic democracy deficit, forever destined to remain poor. If Haiti were to leave capitalism, however, it would  be allowed to escape the profit motive of development; items could be  built with social need in mind, not simply profit. China and Russia were  able to develop into powerful countries by escaping capitalism.  Eventually, however, their undemocratic leaders decided to give  capitalism a second chance; these leaders wanted to exchange their  bureaucratic privileges —access to better food and nicer cars, etc. —  for the billions of dollars that come with ownership rights (it’s no  coincidence that China and Russia are #2 and #3 on the “nations with the  most billionaires” list). Occupy is right not to embrace the fake socialism of  the past, undemocratic as it was. But past socialist experiments  contained progressive elements that shouldn’t be forgotten. For example, revolutionaries learned that they could  not let a tiny group of super-rich shareholders own and run giant  corporations that employed thousands of workers and made socially useful  goods. Instead, these companies could be made into public utilities,  run by the workers, engineers, and office staff that already do all the  work for the benefit of society in general. Revolutionaries also learned that organization and  collective action was instrumental in overcoming the organized  opposition of the rich. Capitalism can only be overthrown by a real  revolution that draws into action the majority of working people, using  the tactics of mass demonstrations, mass strikes, mass civil  disobedience, and other mass actions that help to give shape,  organization, and unity to working people. Once a powerful and united  movement emerges, it must ultimately challenge the corporate elite  nationally, which means wresting the levers of state power from their  hands and using new organizational methods to make the  post-revolutionary country more democratic. How have these lessons been ignored by Occupy? In reaction to the non-democratic USSR, Occupy  eschews “centralization” in favor of “decentralization.” Instead of  decentralization simply meaning “democracy,” in practice it often means  “disorganization” and extreme individualism. Any powerful social  movement must inevitably be organized; and although Occupy seems to  realize this with its useful experiments in direct democracy, the  movement as a whole remains incredibly disorganized and uncoordinated. This is important insofar as disorganization prevents  collective action. The Pre-Occupy Movement — what little there was —  consisted of “issue-based activism,” i.e., different groups working  disconnectedly towards various goals. Occupy has the power to change  this, to create real power for working people. Initially, Occupy had  united all the various left groups while bringing in new blood. But the  old habits of issue-based, fragmented activism were hard to break. Many Occupiers are content with “autonomous” actions,  i.e., small groups acting independently of a larger body towards  various ends. Small actions have their time and place, but a powerful  movement is one that inspires. Working people are given hope when they  sense that a movement is able to achieve victories for working people,  i.e., when it is powerful. And working people are only truly powerful  when they are united and acting collectively in massive numbers (the  corporate elite uses divide and conquer tactics for a reason). One reason that Occupy is fearful of centralization  (organization) is because being organized inevitably creates leaders.  And since much of Occupy is “anti-authoritarian” (again in response to  the failed USSR), “leaders” are not welcome. But leaders exist within  Occupy regardless of intentions; saying that Occupy is a “leaderless  movement” does not make it so. The inevitable leaders of Occupy are those who  dedicate their time to the movement, organize events, are spokespeople,  those who help set agendas for meetings or actions, those who set up and  run web pages, etc. In reality there already exists a spectrum of  leadership that is essential to keeping the movement functioning. Occupy needs both leaders and organization while  still operating entirely democratically. It already has leaders who  refuse to accept the title as such, much like Noam Chomsky does, the  famous anti-authoritarian and leader of the anarchist left, who thinks  that by saying he is “not a leader,” he ceases to be one. In reality his  massive authority continues to exist outside of his humble intentions. Occupy seems, at times, so fearful of power or  creating leaders that many Occupiers would focus on neutering the  movement, so as to prevent Occupy from ever having real power, and  therefore preventing the movement from ever making real change. The left  has long suffered from the self-induced fear that, if we have actual  power, we’ll become like our oppressors, since “absolute power corrupts  absolutely” (a hangover from yet another shallow analysis of past  socialist experiments). In Occupy, this expresses itself by a fanatical fear  of the movement being co-opted. Yes, Occupy should be wary of Democratic  Party representatives in sheep’s clothing, but this fear has infected  and has spread throughout Occupy and now includes internal finger  pointing and accusations of “co-opting,” creating more unnecessary  divisiveness. It is a healthy impulse to strive towards greater  democracy and away from charisma-based leadership, but any idea taken to  its extreme can become nonsense. To denounce real organization and  leadership “on principle” is to vastly oversimplify the real processes  of movement building while erecting unnecessary barriers in Occupy’s  path to real power. To self-mutilate a movement because of  leader-paranoia is similar to euthanize a puppy because of its  potentially dangerous sharp teeth. In fact, true leaders can only emerge  in the context of real democracy; both need the other. There is no blueprint for movement building, but  general principles can be erected based on the revolutionary experiences  of the past. The key strategies of Occupy should be based on those  ideas that unify and promote collective action against the 1%. Ultimately Occupy needs to organize for power; we  need a greater power to displace the current power of the 1%. This  doesn’t mean that we must adopt the same forms of power utilized by the  state, but that new ones must be created, while using EVERY opportunity  within the existing structure to organize, educate, and mobilize working  people. Luckily, an upcoming action has the potential to put  the above ideas into action. The current struggle of the Longview,  Washington ILWU Local 21 is a chance to see real power in action. The  Longview Longshoremen have asked for Occupy’s support to create massive  mobilizations against the union busting corporate-conglomerate EGT.  Hopefully this action has the potential to unite Occupy in practice over  a concrete struggle. If the action— or actions— are effective it will  prove that Occupy needs to organize and mobilize in large numbers over  issues that connect with working people — proving that theory is best  learned in action. Shamus Cooke is a social worker, trade unionist, and writer for Workers Action (www.workerscompass.org)


Theory and Practice in

the “Occupy Movement”

by Shamus Cooke


For a movement that started with one strategy and a couple of slogans, Occupy has preformed brilliantly. Having based itself on the examples of Egypt and Wisconsin, the Occupy Movement has raised the political consciousness of millions and created a large layer of new activists. But the uninterrupted string of successes of Egypt and Tunisia haven’t materialized for Occupy. We’re in a lull period. Next steps are being considered and some tactics are being re-thought.

This is where revolutionary theory comes into play: a set of ideas that help guide action. Sometimes theory is learned unconsciously, where it resembles a set of non-ideological “assumptions” about movement building and politics. Occupy’s theory began mostly with assumptions, many of them true.

One assumption was that previous political theories have failed — that past social movements contained deep ideological flaws. There is more than some truth in these conclusions, but other truths were thrown out as well.

The youth who built Occupy were born as the Berlin Wall was falling; “communism” had failed. Mass disillusion followed the loss of a socialist movement that had inspired dozens of revolutions in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Europe when half the globe declared itself for “socialism.” Many socialist-leaning countries inflicted heavy damage on capitalism while a few had crushed it outright.

The United States spent the 20th century fighting these movements: the Korean and Vietnam wars, the failed invasion of Cuba, the dirty wars in Central America, countless CIA coups in South America, Africa, Asia and elsewhere (the history of the CIA is a history of fighting “socialism” by any means necessary). A U.S. domestic war was waged by the FBI and police against socialists and other left activists during McCarthy’s Red Scare of the 1950s. Nuclear war against the USSR and China was a button push away during the Cuban Missile Crisis. All of this madness was in the name of fighting socialism and revolution.

The U.S. wars against these socialist movements was not irrational. A very real fear existed that capitalism was in danger — that corporations would instead be run in the public interest. In some countries capitalism was destroyed. But what replaced it seemed no better, and in some cases worse. Why? The popular (corporate) explanation is that any break from capitalism equals “authoritarianism.” Another popular argument is that without rich people running the economy it would cease to run; there is no alternative to capitalism, we were told.

This analysis is biased, shallow, and stupid. The truth makes far more sense anyway.

To this day no wealthy country has had a successful socialist revolution. Many have come close, especially several European countries before and after WWI and WWII. The 1968 general strike in France pinned capitalism to the floor, but its life was spared; corporations were allowed to continue to run social life, the super-rich remained so.

Real socialism cannot exist in a poor country. If Haiti implemented a “socialist” economy tomorrow it would still suffer under post-earthquake rubble, mass homelessness and life-sucking poverty. A “healthy democracy” cannot exist in these conditions. A socialist economy cannot transform mud into gold.

But capitalism took centuries to transform poor countries into rich ones, and even today a tiny minority of rich countries dominate a hundred plus poor capitalist nations. Poor capitalist countries — like their poor socialist counterparts — suffer from a chronic democracy deficit, forever destined to remain poor.

If Haiti were to leave capitalism, however, it would be allowed to escape the profit motive of development; items could be built with social need in mind, not simply profit. China and Russia were able to develop into powerful countries by escaping capitalism. Eventually, however, their undemocratic leaders decided to give capitalism a second chance; these leaders wanted to exchange their bureaucratic privileges —access to better food and nicer cars, etc. — for the billions of dollars that come with ownership rights (it’s no coincidence that China and Russia are #2 and #3 on the “nations with the most billionaires” list).

Occupy is right not to embrace the fake socialism of the past, undemocratic as it was. But past socialist experiments contained progressive elements that shouldn’t be forgotten.

For example, revolutionaries learned that they could not let a tiny group of super-rich shareholders own and run giant corporations that employed thousands of workers and made socially useful goods. Instead, these companies could be made into public utilities, run by the workers, engineers, and office staff that already do all the work for the benefit of society in general.

Revolutionaries also learned that organization and collective action was instrumental in overcoming the organized opposition of the rich. Capitalism can only be overthrown by a real revolution that draws into action the majority of working people, using the tactics of mass demonstrations, mass strikes, mass civil disobedience, and other mass actions that help to give shape, organization, and unity to working people. Once a powerful and united movement emerges, it must ultimately challenge the corporate elite nationally, which means wresting the levers of state power from their hands and using new organizational methods to make the post-revolutionary country more democratic.

How have these lessons been ignored by Occupy?

In reaction to the non-democratic USSR, Occupy eschews “centralization” in favor of “decentralization.” Instead of decentralization simply meaning “democracy,” in practice it often means “disorganization” and extreme individualism. Any powerful social movement must inevitably be organized; and although Occupy seems to realize this with its useful experiments in direct democracy, the movement as a whole remains incredibly disorganized and uncoordinated.

This is important insofar as disorganization prevents collective action. The Pre-Occupy Movement — what little there was — consisted of “issue-based activism,” i.e., different groups working disconnectedly towards various goals. Occupy has the power to change this, to create real power for working people. Initially, Occupy had united all the various left groups while bringing in new blood. But the old habits of issue-based, fragmented activism were hard to break.

Many Occupiers are content with “autonomous” actions, i.e., small groups acting independently of a larger body towards various ends. Small actions have their time and place, but a powerful movement is one that inspires. Working people are given hope when they sense that a movement is able to achieve victories for working people, i.e., when it is powerful. And working people are only truly powerful when they are united and acting collectively in massive numbers (the corporate elite uses divide and conquer tactics for a reason).

One reason that Occupy is fearful of centralization (organization) is because being organized inevitably creates leaders. And since much of Occupy is “anti-authoritarian” (again in response to the failed USSR), “leaders” are not welcome. But leaders exist within Occupy regardless of intentions; saying that Occupy is a “leaderless movement” does not make it so.

The inevitable leaders of Occupy are those who dedicate their time to the movement, organize events, are spokespeople, those who help set agendas for meetings or actions, those who set up and run web pages, etc. In reality there already exists a spectrum of leadership that is essential to keeping the movement functioning.

Occupy needs both leaders and organization while still operating entirely democratically. It already has leaders who refuse to accept the title as such, much like Noam Chomsky does, the famous anti-authoritarian and leader of the anarchist left, who thinks that by saying he is “not a leader,” he ceases to be one. In reality his massive authority continues to exist outside of his humble intentions.

Occupy seems, at times, so fearful of power or creating leaders that many Occupiers would focus on neutering the movement, so as to prevent Occupy from ever having real power, and therefore preventing the movement from ever making real change. The left has long suffered from the self-induced fear that, if we have actual power, we’ll become like our oppressors, since “absolute power corrupts absolutely” (a hangover from yet another shallow analysis of past socialist experiments).

In Occupy, this expresses itself by a fanatical fear of the movement being co-opted. Yes, Occupy should be wary of Democratic Party representatives in sheep’s clothing, but this fear has infected and has spread throughout Occupy and now includes internal finger pointing and accusations of “co-opting,” creating more unnecessary divisiveness.

It is a healthy impulse to strive towards greater democracy and away from charisma-based leadership, but any idea taken to its extreme can become nonsense. To denounce real organization and leadership “on principle” is to vastly oversimplify the real processes of movement building while erecting unnecessary barriers in Occupy’s path to real power. To self-mutilate a movement because of leader-paranoia is similar to euthanize a puppy because of its potentially dangerous sharp teeth. In fact, true leaders can only emerge in the context of real democracy; both need the other.

There is no blueprint for movement building, but general principles can be erected based on the revolutionary experiences of the past. The key strategies of Occupy should be based on those ideas that unify and promote collective action against the 1%.

Ultimately Occupy needs to organize for power; we need a greater power to displace the current power of the 1%. This doesn’t mean that we must adopt the same forms of power utilized by the state, but that new ones must be created, while using EVERY opportunity within the existing structure to organize, educate, and mobilize working people.

Luckily, an upcoming action has the potential to put the above ideas into action. The current struggle of the Longview, Washington ILWU Local 21 is a chance to see real power in action. The Longview Longshoremen have asked for Occupy’s support to create massive mobilizations against the union busting corporate-conglomerate EGT. Hopefully this action has the potential to unite Occupy in practice over a concrete struggle. If the action— or actions— are effective it will prove that Occupy needs to organize and mobilize in large numbers over issues that connect with working people — proving that theory is best learned in action.

Shamus Cooke is a social worker, trade unionist, and writer for Workers Action (www.workerscompass.org)


Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Men And Women's Differences Extend To Personality, Study Claims

Women Men

Posted: 1/9/12 05:56 PM ET







The research, conducted by Marco Del Giudice of Italy's University of Turin and Irwing and Tom Booth of the UK's University of Manchester, involved getting 10,000 Americans to take a questionnaire that measured 15 different personality traits. According to their analysis, men are far more dominant, reserved, utilitarian, vigilant, rule-conscious, and emotionally stable, while women are far more deferential, warm, trusting, sensitive, and emotionally "reactive." The two sexes were roughly the same when it came to perfectionism, liveliness, and abstract versus practical thinking.

"If you translate it into the simplest terms," said Irwing, "only 18 percent of men and women match in terms of personality profiles, and that's staggeringly different from the consensus view."

The consensus view, most persuasively set out in a 2005 study by Janet Shibley Hyde, a professor of psychology and women's studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, demonstrated through a meta-analysis of 46 other studies that men and women were actually very similar, not only in personality traits, but in other realms of supposed gender difference, like self-esteem, leadership, and math ability.

In the early 1970s, Hyde became one of the first researchers to focus on the psychology of women. "Before that, psychology had been a psychology of men," Hyde told The Huffington Post, and many theories had been developed based on entirely male samples. So she began to study women, and the differences between women and men, and was surprised at how small those differences turned out to be. "I mean, I was trying to study difference," Hyde said.

Hyde says the final figure Irwing, Del Giudice, and Booth came up with -- the "global sex difference" -- is "really uninterpretable, it doesn't mean anything."

In past studies on this topic, researchers would simply add up all the survey responses, according to Del Giudice. This led to imperfect results because of careless responses and misreadings. Through a sophisticated method called "structure equation modeling," the researchers claim they were able to remove this random error. When asked if he could translate this concept for a lay person, Irwing replied: "I teach courses on this and it takes me approximately 20 hours."

Past research also usually compared one variable at a time, Del Giudice said. He believes this method led to underestimations of the sex difference because when you actually combine all personality traits, with all their small discrepancies, the result is a much more significant difference. For example, if you were to examine the difference between men and women's body types using the traditional method, you would look at torso circumference and waist-hip ratios and torso-leg ratios, one by one. In Del Giudice's method, you would crunch all these figures into one much larger number. And that's what he did with personality.

"They kind of globbed together all these personality dimensions and said there was a big difference," Hyde said. "They're throwing together apples and oranges and dishwashers to get this thing in 15-dimensional space. We don't know what 15-dimensional space looks like."

But Del Giudice contends that his team didn't measure "a haphazard list of traits." Rather, they considered 15 facets that could offer a reasonably complete picture of a person's personality.

Irwing thinks that some researchers in the past may have been biased in their methods, in order to reduce any gender difference. "It's for totally laudable reasons," he said. "People are very concerned, or were very concerned, that women didn't get equal opportunities, and that there was a lot of bias in selection processes."

"People are afraid that studies like ours will turn the clock back," Irwing added.

____________________________________________

"Men and women are more

alike than different -- that's been

the consensus view for many years

among the researchers who study

personality differences between the

sexes." But a new study claims this

wisdom is wrong."

- researcher Paul Irwin

_____________________________________________________

Hyde is one of those people. "This huge difference is not only scientifically false," she said, "it has unfortunate consequences for places like the workplace and education and heterosexual romantic relationships."

But the authors stand by their results, and are currently drafting a lengthy response to Hyde's objections. "I think distorting science because of what you would like to believe, or because of what you think the political consequences are, is very dangerous," said Irwing.

The study doesn't speculate as to whether the alleged differences are due to nature or nurture, although Irwing points out the results are consistent with standard evolutionary theory. Even if these differences aren't indelibly printed in our genes, Hyde believes there's still cause for alarm.

If men and women have wildly different personalities, "then how can we do the same job men can, and deserve equal pay for equal work?" she asked. "A married couple have marital difficulties, and they go to the therapist, who says 'he's from Mars, you're from Venus, you'll never be able to communicate. It's hopeless.' If you have a gender similarities point of view, you just need to work on communicating.