OWS. Good news as movement seeks to orient more to working class and confront direct attacks of 1% on 99%.

It is very good news to hear that more OWS groups are moving to prevent the direct attacks of the 1% on the 99%. I hear that OWS groups in New York and Illinois are already doing this. But it is not only sections of the OWS movement that is doing this. Here in Chicago there are church and other groups working against foreclosures and evictions.

Maybe it is the task of the OWS movement at this time to try and move forward to more of an orientation to the working class, more clear and specific demands such as do not leave your homes, no foreclosures, build a united front along these lines and as part of this mass direct action such as occupations but where these would be directly aimed at protecting peoples homes, improving peoples wages and benefits, and making the 1% pay. Not just direct actions such as occupying city centers but direct actions to prevent people being evicted, fired, etc. I feel that building a united front of struggle along these lines is what is needed. The struggle for this approach would open up further debate and discussion in the OWS movement, there would be differences and debate but this if carried out in a Comradely fashion would be healthy. Anyway discussions and debate already exists in the OWS.

I think these suggestions are not ultra left. By this I mean they are not so left as to cut off the mass of the OWS movement and isolate it from the broader working class movement. Nor are they sectarian in that they are making abstract calls for revolution when the movement has not reached this stage yet. Nor are they opportunist as they put forward mass direct action and the refusal of people to leave their homes etc., and directly challenge the aims of the 1% and identify the 1% for its crimes and demand that they must be held to account, and so make clear the difference with the policies of the union leaderships and the Democratic Party. As I have said in the past I believe that part of our job is to develop positions at specific times which take the movement forward, help it sink deeper roots in the working class, and this means protecting the movement from sectarianism, ultra leftism and opportunism.

Sean.