Occupy Salem And Occupy Portland Give Me a Lot To Think About--Part One

A Willamette Reds comrade recently brought it to my attention that I am now part of the Old Left. I'm not going to join the occupation movements by camping out, the general assemblies of the movement give me a headache and our left-wing rhetoric must sound like a foreign language to many who do participate actively in the movement. Still and all, the Old Left needs to support this movement and stay firm in our belief that socialism must replace capitalism. We must find new ways to communicate this message and, at the same, broaden our understanding of what socialism is and can be in light of what the young people have to teach us.

One question that has been nagging at me as I watch the young people arrive at the occupation sites on their skateboards or retirees find their way through the encampments is who is oppressed and how oppression is manifested. I have been helped in my thinking by an excellent article in the People's Voice about exploitation. Please read that article here.

From our standard Marxist understanding, the working class is oppressed as a class while exploitation as we understand it takes place in the workplace where people produce commodified goods and services under capitalist control. This is something basic or integral to capitalism. This is what socialism seeks to abolish. The young people and retirees are oppressed as a class. The state or federal worker who works across the street from the encampments is exploited as a worker and oppressed as a part of the working class. Those young people, the retirees and all of the workers also experience oppression as youth, as older people, as women, as gays, as national minorities, as the disabled and so on. This is never about who is "more oppressed," but is all about exposing all kinds of oppression and fighting it wherever and whatever it is. Capitalism and its attendant prejudices is the root of all oppression.

I am assuming that it is oppression and exploitation which drive most people to the occupation encampments. This causes me to reflect on my own experience with occupations, exploitation and oppression and this, in turn, highlights for me some differences between social movements in the late '60s and '70s and now. I'm going to bold what I think were significant motivations and steps in my own political development and contrast those, if I can, with the present day.

My first occupation took place in the early '70s at an arms manufacturing plant. I was part of a group of several hundred people who blocked a train that was going to pick up cluster bombs bound for Indochina. I have always been one to look at the downside of things: I knew that if the train ran us over we would be remembered, if we were arrested we would be supported, if we went to prison there would be a prisoner's rights movement and when we were released a movement would welcome us back. I could easily see that that occupation would be successful because so many people turned out. My Old Left elders welcomed me into a movement that took action. They invited me into a movement that schooled me, inspired me, loved me and demanded in turn that I school, inspire and love others. I could easily see that individual witness and "speaking truth to power" would move certain kinds of people, but that it was numbers--sheer numbers exercising the latent power of the people--who would shut down that plant. When someone patiently explained to me that workers could shut down the whole country and get a better deal if we used such tactics I instantly got the point and signed on.

But what got me there in the first place? I was a kid with strong and inexpressable class resentments. I could see a future which was either hopeful or hopeless, depending on the day. I had people in the Old Left who were willing to guide me. They taught me the rudiments of criticism and self-criticism, perhaps without meaning to, and they made it easy to trust others and be trusted. I learned that joining the movement would mean a life of comradeship and personal growth. This has proven to be true. Today I live that out with my comrades in Willamette Reds.

But there was something else. There were jobs and I had the reasonable expectation that I could get a union job and have some job security. I had the reasonable expectation that my union would fight for me. There was rent control and I knew that I could get a cheap apartment and live with others in some kind of collective or commune. My union job and my cheap collective apartment might allow me to enjoy music and art: the world was an exciting place for a young working class kid then. The heavy metal band The MC5 expressed all of my anger and angst, but that music--along with the blues and soul music--also promised me an alternative culture and a human future. When The MC5 sang, "I might be white but I can be bad too" I totally identified with the message. By in large that culture kept its promises. It invited me into the streets. And if all of that didn't work out, I knew that a social safety net would catch me as I fell and even there there were groups like the National Welfare Rights Organization and the Council of the Southern Mountains organizing poor people.

I knew that if I was forced into the military--and force was the only way I was going--a GI rights movement led by the Trotskyists would take care of me as best it could. The GI coffeehouse movement led by others on the left would support me. In so-called "middle America" then we didn't care that there was a near-fatal split in the antiwar movement taking place: good community organizers got people out to demonstrations regardless of who called the demonstration.

I knew that if I ended up in a factory or a coal mine--and I was certain that this would be my fate--I could expect militant union representation, as I've said above, but I also knew that wherever I landed there would be a strong worker-led rank-and- file movement. The Lordstown GM workers were constantly on wildcat. Detroit had the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement and other similar groups. The chant, "Be bad! Be bad! Be bad! Can't get nothin' if we ain't bad!" resonated with me as much as The MC5 did. Coal miners shut down the mines for weeks on end to block strip mining, win healthcare and better pensions, assert rights for Appalachia and stop bad contracts. Those miners took over their union and forced changes in the laws through direct action. Appalachia, America's internal colony, changed in front of us. I could see and feel these changes and I believed that we would all be okay if I lent a hand.