October 22, 2011

A Movement Too Big to Fail


October 20, 2011

By Chris Hedges

There is no danger that the protesters who have occupied squares, parks and plazas across the nation in defiance of the corporate state will be co-opted by the Democratic Party or groups like MoveOn. The faux liberal reformers, whose abject failure to stand up for the rights of the poor and the working class, have signed on to this movement because they fear becoming irrelevant. Union leaders, who pull down salaries five times that of the rank and file as they bargain away rights and benefits, know the foundations are shaking. So do Democratic politicians from Barack Obama to Nancy Pelosi. So do the array of “liberal” groups and institutions, including the press, that have worked to funnel discontented voters back into the swamp of electoral politics and mocked those who called for profound structural reform.

Resistance Comes in All Forms

Resistance, real resistance, to the corporate state was displayed when a couple of thousand protesters, clutching mops and brooms, early Friday morning forced the owners of Zuccotti Park and the New York City police to back down from a proposed attempt to expel them in order to “clean” the premises. These protesters in that one glorious moment did what the traditional “liberal” establishment has steadily refused to do—fight back. And it was deeply moving to watch the corporate rats scamper back to their holes on Wall Street. It lent a whole new meaning to the phrase “too big to fail.”

Full article:http://peaceworker.dreamhosters.com/2011/10/a-movement-too-big-to-fail/

1 comment:

rich daniels said...

This is a very interesting piece by Chris Hedges; I wish I had someone to discuss it with, to volley back and forth about its strengths and its weaknesses. If he were here at the dining room table with me right now, I'd tell him how much I like and appreciate the piece, and then try to get him to talk in detail about Marx, and probably about his own religious beliefs.