OWS movement must take up a program for the 99% and tactics to win it. The danger is isolation.

This is what the Tea baggers are saying about the OWS movement:

"Occupy Uses Human Shields – Veterans, Women, the Young, the Old, the Disabled. The Occupy activists haven't relied on veterans alone. They have also tried to use "weak" people as sympathetic human shields – the old, the young, and disabled."

and

".....the Occupy activists have not just yearned for confrontations with police; they have planned them. In at least two cities, they have sent military veterans – in uniform, thus violating military code – to the front of protest marches in order to provoke police and to be the first targets if and when police do use force."

"Clashes with the police affirm the activists fantasy – that they are the leading a revolution, that the truths they speak are so potent that the "1 percent" must use force to suppress them."

The Tea Baggers are an amorphous bunch dominated by right wing capitalist elements and racists. Michael Savage, the homophobic right wing bigot talk show host is a big supporter.  This crowd has been silenced to a large degree by the OWS movement but at this point there is a much more insidious danger to the rise of a genuine independent movement and that is the more liberal elements of the status quo, the Democrats and the trade Union hierarchy that is desperate to have their man Obama elected next year.

This is a much more powerful force at this point in time than the Tea Baggers.  Alongside this we have the fringe element, the middle and upper middle class pseudo revolutionaries whose strategy it is to smash a few windows and commit random acts of violence in their belief that a more violent response from the state spurs workers in to action.  They are not part of the movement in the sense that they do not participate in the decision making process of the movement and their actions are not borne of the collective.  They are undemocratic as their decisions to take actions that have major consequences for the movement are made in secret and outside of the movement and their actions strengthen the role of the provocateurs.

The movement must police itself, organize its own security to protect itself not only from the state but from individual adventurism that harms the movement and acts to increase its isolation from the mass of the population from the 99%.

If the OWS movement fails to draw in to its ranks the millions of workers who have and are suffering as the result of a bankrupt economic system the movement will not be successful.  The almost obsessive desire to claim no leadership is a weakness of the movement. There is already a leadership. Not formally recognizing it, setting limits on its activity and holding its feet to the fire from below is ignoring reality. As one person put it, decisions are being made inside rooms and "zipped up tents" believe me. I am not saying that the reason for this denial that leadership exists has its roots in rotten soil, many of those with this view have a genuine philosophical aversion to leadership and are well intentioned and courageous individuals, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions as they say---our enemies are well organized with solid structures and so should we be.

The Wall Street Journal reports yesterday that the unemployment rate for makes between  25 and 34 is 14.4%, more than double that before the crash. For high school graduates between 20 and 24 its even worse with unemployment in that group at 22.4%.  The share of men aged 24 to 34 living with their parents has increased also as folks have lost homes as well as jobs and is at the highest level since 1960. These are official figures, the reality is much worse.

The education system, bad enough before the crash, only graduated 50% of black and Latino high school students compared to 75% of whites while Phillip Jackson who leads the Black Star Project in Chicago that aims to help black youth stay in school claims 75% to 80% of young black men in Chicago are unemployed. This is a catastrophe.

Millions are losing their homes as well as the bankers take them back.  We have not lost our homes, they have been stolen from us; they are still there.

The OWS movement must take up a program of demands or goals for the society we want in order to draw in the millions of workers who are suffering from the perils of the bankrupt capitalist system. If we do not do this, the movement will become isolated and the state with the help of the Democratic Party and the Labor hierarchy will derail it and in the case of its most militant wing smash it. This is why strikes have been defeated, the Labor hierarchy refuses to generalize the disputes leaving locals and workers isolated and alone in the struggle against global capital and its corporations.

Jobs, education, housing, ending the wars and the incarceration of the youth are issues that are on people's minds.  The slogan "We are the 99%" has hit a nerve, it is a slogan that has some class content to it as opposed to "We are one".  It recognizes that there is a 1% that makes the decisions in society and take in all the wealth and that the 99% have no say. We must always point out that Wall Street has two political parties that carry out its agenda, Republicans and Democrats. We have argued on this blog for the creation of 99% clubs or some such structures in our communities and neighborhoods that can take the movement forward, make it permanent even as it ebbs temporarily. What do you think about this?

Having a set of goals, and demanding what we want and expect a civilized society to provide we can then draw the tactical conclusions. Occupy the institutions which make the decisions that attack the working class on these fronts, occupy the educational institutions which make the decisions about the schools etc. and occupy the schools and libraries that are threatened with closure. Surround and defend the homes that are threatened with foreclosure, do this in cooperation with the people who live in these homes and ask them not to leave these homes and offer to defend them. Ooccupy the workplaces such as banks etc which make the decisions about foreclosures and where the workers jobs are threatened and do so in cooperation with the workers.  

It is important and necessary to occupy the headquarters of the Democratic and Republican parties in our communities as these are the political vehicles that carry out the agenda of the 1%.  This is particularly necessary where the Democrats are concerned as this party tries, increasingly unsuccessfully to convince us it is not a party of Wall Street.

We are not in a revolutionary situation.  The OWS movement is still a small percentage of the 99%.  For us to take from the 1% what is ours, to end an economic system that if left to itself will destroy the environment and end life as we know it on this planet, the OW movement must not allow itself to be isolated from the working class majority that can ensure victory and to avoid that it must have structure and clearly defined goals.