OWS linking with day to day working peoples struggles

It is great news. Around the country there is a greater and greater turn of the OWS movement to the day to day struggles of working people and to linking with the struggle to stop foreclosures. Last I heard there were scores of occupations and rallies outside homes that were threatened with foreclosure and with their occupants being evicted. In my last post to this blog I reported on the refusal of Sheriffs in one area to evict the people from their homes. Here in Chicago at one time last year the Sheriff refused to let his department evict people. This turn of the OWS movement to link with the working peoples struggles is great.

Just a couple of details I would like to raise. One is that we should I believe take the stance that the owners/occupants of the homes should under no conditions leave their homes. They are their homes whatever some piece of paper from a bank might claim. Most of these are fraudulent and even if not, basic justice demands that nobody can be evicted from their home.

The other detail I would like to raise is on tactics. Surrounding a home and preventing the owners from being evicted is a great step forward. However it is a defensive tactic. As well as maintaining this tactic we should move onto the offensive. We should demand the cancellation of all debts to the financial institutions and the nationalization of all financial institutions as this would allow us then to see who had robbed what and allow us to cancel the mortgage debts or at least make them manageable so that everybody could have a home.

We should also go on the offensive in another way. Identify all who are involved in the decisions to evict people and who made the decisions on the terms of loans etc. Then go to the workplaces and homes and clubs and churches of these people and distribute flyer's explaining that these people, name them, are making the decisions to make people homeless. Get the information also of how much money these people are making. Go to the neighborhoods of these people also and ask all those who work in the neighborhoods to boycott these people, not sell them any goods in the stores, refuse to sell them any gas, refuse to repair their homes or machines etc., etc. These people are prepared to throw hundreds of thousands into homelessness. They must be identified and cut off from the day to day workings of society.

As the recent examples I have given of the role of Sheriff's departs make clear there is potentially support for this approach even among the cops. Here again is where tactics come in. It would be the greatest mistake if the approach of attacking the cops at every turn were to be carried out in this struggle. Many of the cops are in debt over their heads on their own homes. Many of them are sympathetic to people who are threatened with eviction. As the defensive struggle to keep the people in their homes takes on a more offensive character this can also be used to weaken the 1%'s hold over their own state apparatus. These are some suggestions as to how to take the movement another step forward.

Sean.