Changing the conversation PHOTO: Patrick Briggs

Changing the conversation

Occupy Pasadena claims the physical space needed to imagine a way toward cooperation over competition

By Bert Newton 12/01/2011

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The corporate media and established political class complain that the Occupy Wall Street movement has no clear demands. In response, Dahlia Lithwick, in her brilliant editorial in Slate last month, “Occupy the No Spin Zone,” points out that the movement refuses to fashion its message for the political and economic elite, who daily demonstrate their refusal to hear anything that does not fit their formulation of reality. 
 
Emphasizing that the message of the movement is clear to anyone who does not expend enormous mental energy trying not to hear it, she sums up one hope of the movement beautifully: “Maybe the days of explaining the patently obvious to the transparently compromised are behind us.”
 
This refusal to meet the establishment on its terms, to make demands that implicitly affirm the current system that has impoverished so many, constitutes more than stubborn protest; it arises out of a desire for a different kind of world.
 
The movement has focused not on demands, but on occupying space. By reclaiming and occupying physical space, we can clear the mental space we need to re-imagine the world and reform our own minds.
 
For generations, our minds have been formed and occupied by the values and ideology of a market-based economy and culture. To make this mental occupation possible, our communities also had to be geographically formed around market interests. The final outcome in the US is a society in which the commons are quickly being taken over –– occupied –– by the corporations, and much of daily life is dictated by commercial forces.
 
Globally, the past two decades have seen aggressive attempts by corporations to take over schools, libraries, parks, energy and water systems and anything else they think they can squeeze money out of to add to their already gargantuan wealth. Some of these attempts have been successful and have led to disastrous consequences, such as in Lima, Peru. There, the poor wound up having to pay private vendors $3 per one cubic foot of water, which was contaminated and which they had to carry, while the affluent paid 30 cents for clean tap water. 
 
Other attempts at corporate takeover have failed, such as in Cochabamba, Bolivia, where the people organized mass demonstrations that drove Bechtel Co. out of the country.
 
Here at home, we have experienced similar disasters of privatization, such as the failed attempt to privatize the electricity market in California. The attempt failed, but not before corporations absconded with more than $40 billion of taxpayer money.
 
Despite all of these failures and disasters, privatization ideology continues to capture the minds of much of the political class, such as Obama’s Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, who aims to transform the public school systems of the nation into profit-making ventures for corporate elites.
 
The Occupy movement has arisen as a counter-offensive to reclaim physical and mental space to retrain our minds and transform our society into one of cooperation rather than competition. That is why our encampments have formed egalitarian communities with general assemblies operated by consensus. In a culture accustomed to sound bites, fast food and all manner of instant gratification, this whole project appears too slow and unfocused; and to be honest, the movement has encountered many problems and is still shaky in terms of sustainability. But the Occupy movement has already changed the national conversation, previously dominated by a fake budget crisis, and it is the only movement to come along in many years that has attempted to strike at the heart of the beast in the hope of making another world possible.
 
I recently joined the new Occupy Pasadena branch of the movement. We have not yet started an encampment and do not know if we will, but we have initiated an outdoor general assembly and street actions that reclaim space for democracy and free speech.
 
Our Web site, http://www.occupypasadena.org, lists our meetings and actions.
 
I joined not out of a firm confidence that we will be successful in achieving any specific demands, but rather out of a firm conviction that the only way out of the political, economic and environmental crises of our times is to re-form ourselves and our society.
Bert Newton has lived in Pasadena for 20 years, attended Fuller Seminary, attends Pasadena Mennonite Church and participates in Occupy Pasadena.

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Comments

Thank you Bert for a thought and action-provoking article! I think you're spot-on about the larger issue that the Occupy movement is pointing to, and how we can all benefit from redirecting our energies and actions towards collaboration for the common good.

posted by ciscovive on 12/05/11 @ 11:21 p.m.

Thank you so much for writing this article. I have been struggling, as of late, to explain the agenda and sustainability of this movement. Your words have truly helped me refocus and affirm my conviction to support this movement and to continue to (dare I say, "fight") for social reform.

posted by notpowerless on 12/06/11 @ 08:41 a.m.

Thank you, Bert, for an insightful article. I particularly appreciate your examples from across the 2/3 wold of how resistance to corporatization can actually work.

So often, in this country are so brainwashed by corporation-think that we are unable to see other options. What would happen if the average American resisted the corporate takeover of public spaces? The occupy movement is asking vitally important questions that the mainstream politicians have failed to ask--or they have given us answers like Romney's that "corporations are people."

This is a vital turning point for the movement and I eager to see how protesters are able move from occupying parks and streets to occupying our consciences with regard to the future of our society.

posted by KateKlo on 12/06/11 @ 10:35 a.m.

Bert, I appreciate you bringing to light disastrous efforts globally of corporate takeovers of public services. However, it’s not just the “corporate media and established political class” who complain about the lack of a clear agenda among the occupiers. Apart from my hearing actual Occupy LA protesters on NPR complain about the inability to come up with a clear agenda two months into the protest, I and others have been concerned about the effectiveness of a protest without a clear statement of what’s desired. Protests, in my mind, are a form of communication, and any communication without a clear point of what’s wanted or what the “listener” should know, believe or do is not effective communication. The most effective historical protests I know of demanded clear things: end the war; end segregation in the South, etc. If one’s best response is to declare that the point of the protests is so ”patently obvious” that those of us who don’t see otherwise can be dismissed as “transparently compromised”, then that strikes me as smug preaching to the converted with a hand waving dismissal of everyone who doesn’t “get it”, which in my mind has never achieved anything of note.

When I was first exposed to Occupy, I searched and searched for a common, concrete demand or proposal among the protesters, and honestly couldn’t find one. Saying that there was greed in corporate America does not obviously inform me about anything concrete that should be done about it. I then went down to Occupy LA and saw posters promoting animal rights, an end to genetically modified food, an end to the drug war, general hostility to corporations, opposition to war in general, etc., etc. If someone walked into that protest for the first time without hearing anything about it, I’d be amazed if they could remotely articulate what precisely the protesters were calling for or precisely what they were protesting against (They are not the richest 1%? OK, what then?). My concern is that an unclear protest just becomes an angst fest without really putting any real pressure on any concrete proposal to do anything good in society, and ends up being a placebo for some people (though not all protesters) to feel like they’ve done something substantive (earning their street protest street cred) when they really haven’t, and distracting attention from real, achievable goals.

posted by ronmorales on 12/06/11 @ 12:26 p.m.

Thanks Bert for articulating what so many of us have struggled to try to define. This really jumpstarted a conversation with my teens tonight. The lights went on!! Awesome- thank you!!

posted by milosgrandma on 12/06/11 @ 08:04 p.m.

Thanks Bert, for the thoughtful article. This is a valuable addition to the dialog about this important issue. You so clearly define the tension between corporate interests and human interests. I like how you list the areas where corporations are challenging community control. This is a complex area of social concern and we have to understand there are no simple solutions or explanations that will make everyone happy. Thanks so much.

posted by stevengibson on 12/06/11 @ 08:11 p.m.

People over profits! Awesome article Bert.

posted by pablooliva on 12/06/11 @ 09:36 p.m.

Well-researched and well-said, thank you so much for exposing the tragedy of impoverishment of most of the world by the few beneficiaries of corporate takeover of media, banking, politics, and even zeitgeist.

posted by andr on 12/09/11 @ 06:39 p.m.
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