It's September 17, 2013 in New York City's
Zuccotti Park. The park is crowded (and mottled) with the same diverse, mixed-age, chanting, sign-carrying crew who launched the Occupy Wall Street movement exactly two years
earlier. Is this simply an anniversary, a nostalgic commemoration of that
once-vibrant movement? Or is this something new and different? Let's listen
more closely to what they're chanting.
"Hey, hey, ho, ho. Corrupt duopoly's gotta go."
"Repulsives are red, Degenerates
blue. Since neither one serves us, we've
joined D.U."
Say what? While clearly related, this
focus on parties is NOT standard Occupy. And what the Guy Fawkes is D.U.? Glad
you asked me that. Let's backtrack a bit to the present day.
As a more gray-bearded specimen of Occupier, I
deeply miss the OWS movement. Occupy had something--an energy, an excitement, an
experimentalism, a power to unify, a capacity to raise hope and consciousness--that's
sorely missing from today's political scene.
Nor is my craving for the next Occupy, which
millions probably share, a matter of mere nostalgia. While Occupy's been in absentia, at least where a forceful media
presence is concerned, the abuses of government of, by, and for the 1% have
only worsened, and our government veers dangerously toward fascism in defense
of those same abuses. Our political system clearly remains broken, our two
major parties are plainly much more part of the problem than of its solution,
and third parties show no evidence of gaining traction--at least not fast enough
to meet our worsening crisis. For me, only a mass movement capable of changing
the conversation--a movement like OWS--can save us from our political morass.
Fortunately, the materials to build the next,
logical successor to Occupy lie readily at hand. Now, both U.S. and worldwide
citizens owe Occupy a boundless debt for its achievements in raising consciousness
and providing exemplars of popular unity and predominantly peaceful revolt. Due
to OWS, the statistically rough but politically incisive diagnosis of "99% versus
1%" now pervades our public consciousness, available to provoke torment even in
those politicians quickest to violate its spirit. Occupy made talk of class war--and
the simple fact that most of us have been on losing end of a long, undeclared
one--respectable political discourse. And in the process, Occupy built networks
of followers ready to be mobilized rapidly (as the Occupy Sandy hurricane
response proved) in service of its mutual-aid ideals.
Where Occupy failed, if judged as a political
movement, was in its never making a set of political demands consistent with
improving the political and economic lot of the 99% or using its weighty
numbers (counting both activists AND sympathizers) to give these demands
electoral teeth. Now granted, neither of our corporate-money-corrupted major
parties offered any real support or sympathy to Occupy; and without their
support, it's hard to see how an OWS agenda might have gained traction. But in
denouncing that very fact--that neither party of the corrupt "duopoly" serves
the public or the common good--lies a new, revitalizing mission for Occupy. Let's
put "the duopoly" in the new Occupy's peaceful but rebellious crosshairs, just
as the previous Occupy zeroed in on "corporatism" or "the 1%."
But let's NOT call the new movement Occupy. In the
spirit of Jesus, who cautioned against putting new wine in old skins, let's
find an appropriate skin for the heady new vintage of fighting duopoly. Let's
choose a name that honors the OWS commitment to democracy, but also carries all
the "Occupy" connotations of feistily reclaiming We the people's rightful possessions
from unjust entrenched power. In this regard, I warmly recommend "Democracy
Unchained" (a name no other group seems yet to have claimed) for the new
movement. Not only does the name suggest how our corrupt Democrat-Republican
duopoly has imprisoned democracy, but the two initial letter of "Democracy
Unchained" happen to be the first two letters of the word "duopoly." This
creates endless possibilities for signs, slogans, and logos. For example, I can
already picture a movement logo where the first two letters of the word "DUOPOLY"
are broken from the rest of the word by a chain whose own links are broken;
this image could be captioned, "Break the chains of duopoly."
And despite pursuing a political strategy that ultimately
involves partisanship, I see prospects for Democracy Unchained maintaining much
of the refreshing nonpartisan unity that delighted participants in Occupy. How?
By pursuing the attack on the duopoly from BOTH ends of the political spectrum,
and by having a left-wing branch fostering collaboration between progressive Democrats
and Greens, and a right-wing branch doing the same between sane Republicans and
Libertarians. So, that's already four parties under the Democracy Unchained
umbrella, and I see no reason independents wouldn't wish to join as well.
So, what would unite Democracy Unchained supporters
of differing political perspectives, and how would they work to enact change?
Well, to answer the first question, I see all these participants, beyond a
common conviction that the duopoly is NOT serving us, sharing three basic
demands for reform:
(1) We must eliminate the excessive, malignant
influence of money on electoral campaigns and public policy.
(2) We must let the best, most up-to-date science,
rather than fossil fuel interests, dictate energy and environmental policy.
(3) We need an informed, democratic debate on U.S.
militarism and the extent of security and surveillance measures required to
fight terrorism.
Those strike me already as VERY substantial grounds
of unity for building a pro-democracy movement. But don't we then run up
against the same problem that dogged Occupy:
How do these politically disparate types, agreed on a basic problem (or
small set of problems), act together for political change. My answer, hinted at
above, is that they DON'T act together--or, if we may speak paradoxically, they
act together SEPARATELY. By this I mean that just as there are two parties in
the duopoly, there are two ends of the political spectrum, left and right, from
which to go about reforming it. On the leftward end, as on the rightward, there
are two groups saner and more public-spirited than the duopoly, yet politically
marginalized by the duopoly, who have a clear interest in uniting efforts to
fight it. On the left I mean progressive Democrats and Greens, and on the right
I mean saner Republicans and Libertarians. By each set of groups joining forces--but
separately from the groups on the opposite political wing--they further the aims
of the Democracy Unchained movement while working in their own political comfort
zone.
In practice, this would work by collaborative voting
strategies. If no suitably progressive Democratic candidate was available, D.U.
member Democrats would agree to vote for a Green. Greens, in turn would throw their
support behind strongly progressive Democrats with real prospects of being
elected. On the right wing, D.U. member Republicans would pursue a similar strategy
with Libertarians. If these efforts proved insufficient to reform either party
of the duopoly, the Democrat-Green and Republican-Libertarian alliances would
reserve the option of forming new political parties. In my previous OpEdNews
article, where I discussed a Blue-Green Revolt movement and a Blue-Green Party,
I was speaking of the left-wing alliance and party respectively. As I'm a
progressive, I didn't try to work out potential names for the corresponding right-wing
alliance and party, but I'm sure Republicans and Libertarians would have no
trouble doing so. And whatever our basic political differences, I'd be proud to
work with them in a Democracy Unchained movement that served the common good.
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