Chris Hedges Archives - Occupy Toronto

TRNN’s “Is Public Ownership the Solution?”

Occupy Toronto 01 August 2012 by Michael Holloway Big banks and financial institutions are too big to fail – and too big to regulate. Everyone knows that too-big-to-fail bank lobbyists on ‘K street’ are writing the regulation that is supposed to prevent another banking collapse – like that which happened in 2007-08. Everyone knows that the US congress is so awash in corporate acsh that getting real regulation passed is next to impossible. Good regulation law that does get passed in times of great crisis (“Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act” – 2010) gets watered down so it is meaningless in application. Today’s news that JP Morgan is gambling in the Billions and has lost 5 billion one one deal then made it all back on another in these still ‘black’ derivative markets shows the world that the next crisis is likely to be bigger than the last. As I high-lighted earlier here – in the “Chris Hedges talk with Occupy Wall Street activist Kevin Zeese” article from July 5th, “Our job is to build pockets of resistance so that when the flash point arrives, people will have a place to go,” Zeese said.” That ‘flash point’ may wait to until the next massive bust in this stupid economy. Nest occupiers, nest. Great interview on all this and more from The Real News Network (TRNN) – Executive Producer Paul Jay interviews Gar Alperovitz, professor of political economy at the University of Maryland. Is Public Ownership the Solution? References: OccupyToronto, 05 July 2012, “Chris Hedges with Kevin Zeese: mass movement key to disobedience tactic’s success“: http://occupyto.org/2012/07/chris-hedges-with-kevin-zeese-mass-movement-key-to-disobedience-tactics-success/ Zero Hedge, 07 July 2012, “JPMorgan To Clawback Bonuses, Will Announce CIO Loss Just Over $5 Billion“: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/jpmorgan-clawback-bonuses-will-announce-cio-loss-just-over-5-billion The Real News Network, 13 July 2012, “Is Public Ownership the Solution?“:http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=8449 United States Government, 05 January 2010 “Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act“: http://www.sec.gov/about/laws/wallstreetreform-cpa.pdf mh...

Chris Hedges with Kevin Zeese: mass movement key to disobedience tactic’s success

Occupy Toronto 05 July 2012 by Michael Holloway Truthdig: ”Occupy Will Be Back” 18 June 2012 by Chris Hedges Chris Hedges interviews Kevin Zeese, “..one of the original organizers of the Occupy encampment in Freedom Plaza in Washington, D.C. …”. Zeese says, “..breaking the enforcement structure, which almost always comes through nonviolent civil disobedience, increases your chances of success by 60 percent. …” These last three paragraphs of the article caught my eye especially, “Our job is to build pockets of resistance so that when the flash point arrives, people will have a place to go,” Zeese said. “Our job is to stand for transformation, shifting power from concentrated wealth to the people. As long as we keep annunciating and fighting for this, whether we are talking about health care, finance, empire, housing, we will succeed. “We will only accomplish this by becoming a mass movement,” he said. “It will not work if we become a fringe movement. Mass movements have to be diverse. If you build a movement around one ethnic group, or one class group, it is easier for the power structure and the police to figure out what we will do next. With diversity you get creativity of tactics. And creativity of tactics is critical to our success. With diversity you bring to the movement different histories, different ideas, different identities, different experiences and different forms of nonviolent tactics. “The object is to shift people from the power structure to our side, whether it is media, business, youth, labor or police,” he went on. “We must break the enforcement structure. In the book ‘Why Civil Resistance Works,’ a review of resistance efforts over the last 100 years, breaking the enforcement structure, which almost always comes through nonviolent civil disobedience, increases your chances of success by 60 percent. We need to divide the police. This is critical. And only a mass movement that is nonviolent and diverse, that draws on all segments of society, has any hope of achieving this. If we can build that, we can win.” Read the whole article, “Occupy Will Be Back” at Truthdig – http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/occupy_will_be_back_20120618// By Kevin Zeese, at Global Research.ca – http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=listByAuthor&authorFirst=Kevin&authorName=Zeese mh...