Practical Post Scarcity by Open Source Ecology

http://vimeo.com/33701676

by Open Source Ecology

Bill Moyers on Occupy Wall Street

Occupy Buddha: Reflections on Occupy Wall Street

from The Huffington Post

by Lewis Richmond

The word “Buddha” means to wake up. More precisely it means to see what is really going on (in other words, “dharma”), and understand that it has always been so. The Occupy Wall Street movement and its 1,000 offshoots worldwide is that kind of awakening. Its overarching theme is inequality: rich and poor, haves and have-nots, just and unjust. It has always been so, but the scale of it varies through time. In the U.S., the objective reality and statistical fact of this economic divide has been brewing since the 1980s (for an excellent historical perspective, see this article by Bill Moyers in The Nation magazine).

But now in times of unemployment and bread-line level deprivation, that reality has broken through the veil of public unknowing, taken form as the Occupy movement and has been transmitted at light speed from city to city courtesy of social media and the web.

Many of my Buddhist friends are sympathetic to this movement, and want to help. Many of them, like me, were themselves youthful demonstrators once, long ago when the issues were civil rights and the Vietnam war. Just as now, that awakening in the 1960s was to perennial truths to which we had up to then been oblivious. “Black people in the South can’t vote! They are oppressed!” Yes, as they had been forever. “This war is unjust. It’s horrible! The innocent die!”–another perennial truth. In those days it was television, rather than the internet, that broadcast these truths into everyone’s living rooms and woke us up.

I was once one of those youthful anti-war protestors, linking hands and facing down riot police armed with batons and guns. We self-righteously referred to the police in those days as “pigs,” ignoring the unwiseness of hurling such insults at a phalanx of heavily armed men. We too were beaten, bloodied, and in a few cases killed. When I look back through the lens of my own youth at today’s protestors and their pithy slogans (“We are the 99%”) I see myself.

However, we Buddhists all need to remember that Gautama was in his time a one-percenter or worse–he was, after all, a prince. He had his own awakening from unknowing (or so the accounts of his life tell) when he walked out of the palace as though for the first time and saw what was really happening — “People are old and poor! People are sick! They die! Look, a monk!” This is an archetypal moment (referred to in Buddhist literature as the “four sightings”); I think it happens in some fashion for each generation–an onrush of awakening that keeps societies from sinking totally into the quicksand of their own corruption.

My Buddhist friends think of conveying well-meaning instructions to today’s Occupiers about non-violence, compassion, and meditation, so they will not become angry in the face of the injustice they see. This is good, but I am not sure that is exactly the right medicine. Maybe it is good that they are angry. Maybe they don’t need meditation instruction just now. Gautama, after all, was not schooled in meditation when he experienced the four sightings. He just opened his eyes, which anyone can do.

Others say the Occupiers need a goal, demands, a program. Perhaps. I’m not sure today’s protestors need anything right now except to be appreciated for the truths they are speaking and the role they are playing at this critical time in the development of human consciousness. They have already discovered what the Buddha taught in his second Noble Truth — that the root cause of our unnecessary suffering is grasping, clinging, selfishness, and greed — often for money, sometimes for emotional or physical safety, nearly always for power. The energy of greed is the prime distorter of human community. The Buddha clearly saw this.

My feeling is that we are seeing the first raw beginnings and baby steps of a giant leap forward, one that will transcend and outgrow whatever form the Occupy movement is currently taking. Let it develop, let it learn what nourishment it needs. If it needs or wants our gray-haired advice — and it may not — then let it ask. I am ready if anyone asks, knowing that my time on the barricades was long ago and that I may not know the answers. If no-one asks, I am content to be watchful, to appreciate, and to allow this fervent historical moment to unfold.

One last note: much later, when I had become a Buddhist teacher, I met a policeman who had been on that police line where I demonstrated in front of the Oakland, California Army Induction Center so long ago. By now he too was a Buddhist. He told me how it was for him back then. “We were scared,” he said. “We didn’t know who you were or what you would do. We didn’t know what weapons you had or whether you would riot. And when you started screaming at us and calling us pigs, we got mad. We weren’t pigs (well, a few of us were brutes, he admitted) we were just people trying to do a job. I understood that you were angry, but I didn’t like being called a pig. I wasn’t a pig.”

The policemen, the firemen, the teachers, the workers everywhere — they are all part of the 99%. And more to the point, this really isn’t just about the 99%, it is about the 100% — in other words, all of us. Who knows what Gautama was like in the years before he walked out of the palace. He may have been a self-satisfied aristocratic twit — until he woke up. People can change. That is the unwritten liner note to the 2nd Noble Truth — the deep truth of human suffering is for everyone, it is about the 100%. For Buddhists, this 100% is not just human beings, but everything living, the air and the clouds, even the whole earth itself.

Occupy Buddha!

Occupy New Zealand Camps Raided By Authorities After Court Ruling

from The Huffington Post

AUCKLAND, New Zealand — Authorities have effectively shut down the Occupy movement in New Zealand’s largest city after more than 100 days of protest.

Auckland Council officers and police Monday confiscated cars, tents and camping gear from more than 50 protesters at four sites in Auckland. The raid came after a local court ruled authorities could remove property from people who were illegally camping.

Police arrested three people in Aotea Square during the raids.

Occupy encampments remain in other New Zealand cities. Protesters in this country joined the movement that began last September in New York as a protest against social and financial inequality.

Auckland Council spokesman Glyn Walters said protesters can return to the sites but are no longer allowed to camp there.

Occupy Wall Street West: New Movement Rises In San Francisco

from The Huffington Post

by Robin Wilkey

For those who assumed the Occupy movement had fizzled out in San Francisco, think again.

This Friday, Occupy Wall Street West — a continuation of Occupy San Francisco — plans to march through San Francisco’s Financial District. According to a the group, more than 55 organizations, including the San Francisco Labor Council, Code Pink, Iraq Veterans Against the War and the Rainforest Action Network, will support Friday’s march and attendance is expected to reach into the thousands.

Last Fall, Occupy San Francisco and Occupy Oakland gained national attention when police clashed violently with protesters, raising questions about police brutality. Public support for the movement has wavered in recent months, but activists hope Friday’s event will invigorate its spirit.

“Friday’s march is expected to be the largest Occupy Wall Street march that San Francisco has seen yet,” said Occupy Wall Street West group member Stardust. According to Stardust, the movement has not gone away but has been gathering momentum.

“If you have a centrally organized structure that is pounded, it takes a while to recover,” he told The Huffington Post. “Police and politicians targeted the tent camps. But if they were trying to shut down Occupy Wall Street, they severely miscalculated. Now the movement has moved from out of the camps and into society.”

Since the dismantling of its various tent camps, Occupy Wall Street West has focused on community outreach with food drives, neighborhood meetings, bank shutdowns and a committee to help those in need find affordable housing. “We’ve been working with community groups, neighborhoods and universities,” he said. “The core group has remained but now we’re reaching more and more of the 99 percent.”

Friday’s events are timed to begin with the opening of the stock market and will include a demonstration at the Ninth District of Appeals in San Francisco, a march on the banks, speakers, a flash mob and a street party at Justin Herman Plaza.

‘Occupy Congress’ Protesters Swarm Capitol Hill To Represent The 99 Percent

from The Huffington Post

by Michael McAuliff

A diverse crowd of hundreds from around the country descended on Capitol Hill Tuesday as the Occupy movement tried to get its point across to a Congress returning from a long recess.

“We came to add to the numbers, to be heard,” said Rosetta Star, a social entrepreneur from Asheville, N.C. “We came to inspire others; we came to inspire our children. We came because we can’t sit still and pretend like nothing is going wrong, when we feel like the collective bus of the country is getting driven off a cliff.”

Star, who with her husband, Jack, runs the restaurant Rosetta’s Kitchen and a compostable packaging firm, Jack’s Boxes, as well as a third business, said she wanted Congress to stop paying the majority of its attention to the most fortunate.

“Our systems are flawed by a for-profit mentality, and therefore the needs of the masses are being ignored for the profits of the few,” said Star, who is managing to make a go of her own entrepreneurial ventures while balancing activism.

“We make a living between hustling for those three different small businesses,” said Star, who traveled to Washington with her four children and one of their friends, as well as her father. “We even make a living enough that we got a hotel when we came to Occupy.”

“Grandpa and the boys camped” though, she added.

Ryan Blackwell, 18, of Columbia, Mo., said he joined up with Occupy D.C. a week before Thanksgiving, much to his parents’ displeasure. “Let’s just say I had to defriend them on Facebook,” he said.

For all his difficulty with his family, Blackwell saw in Tuesday’s gathering a chance for his voice to be heard. “It’s gorgeous,” he said, referring to a crowd that started small, but was well into the hundreds by early afternoon. “We want our rights back.”

Like Star, the teenager pointed to a growing economic disparity in America, but also named as infringements things such as the recent passage of the National Defense Authorization Act, which codifies indefinite military detention of American terrorism suspects. “It’s evil,” he said.

Roland Fellot, 52, a health inspector from Silver Spring, Md., volunteered to carry a sign calling for the reinstatement of the Glass-Steagall Act, the measure repealed during the Clinton administration that allowed banks and investment houses to unite their businesses. Many blame the measure for allowing banks to get infected with the toxic mortgage assets that sparked the 2008 meltdown.

“The connection to Occupy is that when the backers of removing this actually got their way and they did away with it, that was just a typical example of the top 1 percent, the wealthy, influencing enough politicians here on Capitol Hill to get what they want,” Fellot said.

But he said the message demonstrators want to convey is larger than a bill or two.

“The Occupy movement and the issue about 1 percent is so much beyond just one or two acts. It’s about the whole system,” Fellot said. “The super wealthy have always been heard, and they’ve usually gotten what they wanted. What’s happened of late is they’re the only ones who get heard.”

“Congress has been screwing us for far too long, and I’m not okay with that, and neither are a lot of people,” said Deejay Paredi, 20, of Charlotte, N.C., also singling out the NDAA, which President Obama signed on New Year’s Eve.

“It’s really taking our rights away, and most Americans do not even realize what’s going on,” Paredi said. “So I feel like it’s up to those of us who are aware to make ourselves heard. Most of this I feel is being done on the down-low. Unless you actually care and are actually interested in what’s happening in the government — most people aren’t and don’t care — you don’t know that this is happening.”

The crowd was largely calm, although a handful of people were arrested for apparently testing the limits of the boundaries set by Capitol Police. One man, William Griffin, was charged with assault on a police officer, a police spokeswoman said. Members of the protest tweeted at the time that police instigated the altercation. Nathaniel Schrier, Clinton Boyd and Heron Boyce were charged with crossing a police line, said Sgt. Kimberly Schneider.

Prostesters also walked the halls of Congress without apparent incident, visiting members’ offices, although many lawmakers still had not yet returned to work. By Tuesday afternoon, hundreds of protesters spread out through the halls.

Overall, the protest had much the feel of 2009’s Tea Party rallies, minus the tri-corner hats. There were even a handful of the “Don’t Tread On Me” flags that have become iconic for the conservative movement.

Rosetta Star said the atmosphere did not surprise her. “I believe that the Occupy movement and the Tea Party movement have a huge amount in common,” she said, noting that she has reached out to more traditionally conservative groups in her community on the belief that they share similar problems.

“If we could figure out what we all have in common, then we could truly be the 99 percent,” she said. “The 99 percent right now is a slogan that’s been taken but hasn’t actually been represented. People are trying to, and it’s true that the negative situations are being experienced by the 99 percent.”

Star said she thought moments like Tuesday’s protest would help raise that awareness.

“I believe that we are going to hit a tipping point, and it’s kind of un-ignorable and unavoidable,” she said, with her 3-year-old clambering around on her back. “The tipping point for me would be when 99 percent of the people become politically active, they participate on some level with what’s happening around them in the world that they’re living in, other than just their own families immediate needs.”

One big difference between the Tea Party and the Occupy movement is that the Tea Party was organized in part as a deliberate electoral effort that helped the Republican Party take over the House of Representatives in 2010. It is not clear what impact Occupy will have in the fall’s campaign season, although Democrats have been trying to harness at least some of the energy and feelings expressed by the movement.

Still, Star said that she will keep at it whether others do or not.

“I will always fight the good fight regardless of the expected outcome so that I can always feel clear looking at myself in the mirror, and looking back and reflecting on my own life and my own choices,” she said. “Apathy is the worst poison in my mind.”

Michael McAuliff covers politics and Congress for The Huffington Post. Talk to him on Facebook.

TO REWIRE WITH RENEWABLES THE 99% MUST END THE TYRANNY OF OIL, GAS AND COAL

from Realizing The Future

by Steve Liptay
December 1, 2011

As 2012 approaches and movement strategies are being shaped within the 99% movement and the climate justice movement, we stand at a pivotal moment in history. The climate crisis is bearing down on us stronger than ever, the ecological crisis is deepening, and economic, social and environmental injustices are escalating. With our hijacked democracy in gridlock we’ve taken to the streets and sparked what many, including Dr. Cornel West, would describe as a ‘deep democratic awakening’. How do we yield the paradigm level changes that are needed to heal the earth and make our human world both just and sustainable? That’s the question of our time. None-the-less, solving the climate crisis will require us to rewire the globe with renewable energy and put an end to the tyranny of oil, gas and coal. To do this I propose that the 99% movement and the climate justice movement initiate a sustained civil disobedience campaign targeting climate deniers in the U.S. Congress to dramatize the need for their ouster.

To end the extraction and burning of fossil fuels it is necessary to put a rising price on carbon pollution. For Americans, this means that rewiring our country with renewable energy will require the U.S. Congress and our President pass a new law that taxes the most profitable industry in the history of the world. The revenue generated would then be distributed in its entirety on a per capita basis back to the American people to buffer rising energy costs. A monthly dividend check would give the 99% the ability to become more energy efficient and afford the transition to renewable energy. A highly centralized energy sector in which the 1% have become richer and richer would be transformed into a highly decentralized sector in which the 99% power their lives with rooftop solar panels and a host of other renewable energy technologies. This policy is called ‘fee-and-dividend’ – you can download a PDF of a legislative proposal at: www.citizensclimatelobby.org/. If enacted, the thriving fossil fuel industry could potentially be put to an end in the matter of a decade.

Electing a Congress to pass ‘fee-and-dividend’ would require a massive and sustained civil disobedience campaign to shine a light on the urgency of climate change. One of the central lessons we can take away from the Tar Sands Action campaign to oppose the Keystone XL pipeline is that civil disobedience gets the goods. A 2-week long sit-in at the White House led to 1,253 arrests and an explosion in media hits. During the sit-in and in the weeks to follow the American people were educated by our mass media and social media – they learned the who, what, where, when and why of the tar sands in Alberta, Canada. The media and the American people began to evaluate the costs and the benefits of the proposed pipeline and the events that unfolded were nothing short of remarkable. The big environmental groups came together against Keystone, Republicans and Democrats found common ground in opposition, the New York Times wrote a timely editorial and an in-depth investigation of pipeline safety, Nobel laureates a wrote letter to the President, and a State Department scandal broke (among other developments). The Obama administration responded by sending the pipeline proposal back to the drawing board, promising a thorough and independent review that will include climate change. If we had instead decided to pass around a petition, hold permitted protests, submit op-eds to the newspapers, and make phone calls to our elected officials this fight would very likely not have gained the momentum it needed. Of course I think we all wish it weren’t the case, but as history has proven over and over there comes a time when we have no other choice but to take a stand. As the Tar Sands Action and the Occupy movement have demonstrated, it is time for direct action.

If our movements were to get behind this line of reasoning, I believe that it would leads us into a sustained civil disobedience campaign targeting the U.S. House and Senate calling for 1. an immediate end to all fossil fuel subsidies and 2. a comprehensive renewable energy bill centered around ‘fee-and-dividend’. It would trigger a grassroots mobilization with all hands on deck and everyone playing to their strengths. On the ground it would likely mean occupying House and Senate offices and disrupting debate in Congress from the House gallery and the Senate gallery. In addition, mic checking and bird-dogging Congress’ climate deniers would help maintain pressure when Congress was not in session.

A few months ago I disrupted the House of Representatives with 8 others on the day that Power Shift 2011 began. (Here’s a video.) Our intent was to spark a conversation within Power Shift about the need for civil disobedience in the climate movement and to speak directly to our elected officials about the urgency that the climate crisis demands. We were handcuffed by the Capitol police and transported to a D.C. police station where they booked and held us for the afternoon and early evening. In the end, we all took a settlement offer, completed 32-hours of community service for a non-profit of our choosing, and waited out a 4-month stay away from the Capitol grounds. It was a minor sacrifice relative to the suffering endured today by our frontline communities and the suffering to come if we continue to extract and burn fossil fuels. As I look back, disrupting Congress with my fist raised and singing ‘We Shall Overcome’ was the possibly first time I felt fully engaged as an American citizen.

If we were to begin this campaign when Congress reconvened in January 2012 it could potentially put a proposal to end fossil fuel subsidies up for a vote during the 112th Congress and make ‘fee-and-dividend’ a key election issue in November. While ending fossil fuel subsidies would do little to curb carbon pollution and would only reduce the national debt by an estimated $122 billion over 10-years, it would be a small step in the right direction. Putting a significant price on carbon would get us on the path to a renewable energy future and put the fossil fuel industry in the grave where it belongs. Maybe we’d achieve one or both of these goals during the 112th and 113th Congresses, maybe we wouldn’t. What’s critical is that we start to wake up our elected officials and fellow Americans who are asleep at the wheel on climate change. Now is our hour. It’s up to us to end the tyranny of oil, gas, and coal.

Steve Liptay
@Liptay

1/21/12 Occupy Oregon General Assembly

from Occupy Eugene Media

by vnelson

On Saturday, January 21, 2012, from 5:00 pm to 10 pm, Occupiers from all over Oregon will gather in Salem to rally with representatives from Astoria, Bend, Eugene, Salem, Portland, Seaside, and all other Oregon Cities to prepare for Occupy the Legislature on February 1st.

We will have an agenda discussion, which will include political involvement tactics, non-violent civil disobedience, and logistics.

We will be discussing housing options for people coming from outside of the Salem regions, so we can make sure thousands of Oregonians can be present on the first in a timely fashion.

Inspired by Occupy Wall Street, affinity groups from Unified Oregon Occupations are holding a General Assembly, following the nationwide Occupy the Courts Solidarity demonstration, on the steps of the Capitol Building in Salem.

If we show Solidarity, we can have an action similar to the protests in Madison, Wisconsin.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Wisconsin_protests

Corporations are NOT people. Money is NOT Speech. ALEC and profit driven lobbyists will no longer control our government. The time has come to make these truths evident to the Capital.

Exercise your freedom and challenge systemic oppression. Occupy Multiply!

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Occupy-the-Legislature-Oregon/269113373145794?ref=ts&sk=wall

Anonymous: The Occupy Earth Proclamation.

Welcome to the Emergent Reality Network.
Please stand by for a public service announcement.
Please be advised that you have been advised.
Tomorrow has been canceled due to the lack of interest.
Thank you for your participation in humanity.
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.
This is a recording.

This is, The Occupy Earth Proclamation: and I quote:
We are, One people. We share, One planet. We have, One common dream. We want, to live in peace. We choose, to protect and heal the Earth. We choose, to create a better world for all. We will do, our best to make that dream come true. We will change, what needs to be changed. We will learn, to love, share and forgive. We are, One people, we want to live, and we, will. end quote: we offer this as a pledge as a Personal Commitment:

We So Declare: We are, aware that human activities are seriously endangering the fragile ecosystems of our planet. We are, aware of the widening gap between the haves and the have-nots. We are, aware of the need to redirect our energies to protect and restore the global Web of Life. We Choose, to begin right now, to rethink our ways and values, and change what needs to be changed in ourselves and of those around us.

We So Declare: We want the year 2012; to be, a symbol for a New Beginning; a turning point in the local and global efforts now underway, to create a better world based on equality, justice and a sustainable planet; ­a world in which Peace on Earth prevails.

We So Declare: We want the year 2012; to be the year of understanding, that we are, all individually responsible for the kind of future we will, create for our children and for countless generations to come. We will, participate in initiatives, locally and globally, to transform our world and protect this Jewel of Life, we call, Earth. We agree, with this Occupy Earth Proclamation and personally commit ourselves to do, all that we can, to spread it throughout the world and help make the universally shared dream of Peace, Love and Harmony on Earth come true.
Of this, We So Declare:

Next Stop: Occupy Congress #J17

from Crooks & Liars

by Diane Sweet

Occupation of the United States Capitol on January 17, 2012 will Highlight Corruption in America’s Political System

Harnessing the considerable power of the Occupy Wall Street movement, protestors from all over the country are being called to participate in “Occupy Congress” next week. It is the next stage in the widespread public protest that began last September in New York.

On January 17th, an Occupy “Call to Action” urges protestors to convene beginning at 9 a.m. EST on the West Front Lawn at Capitol Hill in an effort to bring the movement’s message to the doorstep of Congressional lawmakers.

Rallying against corporate greed and corruption, the “99 percent” will arrive on Martin Luther King’s birthday weekend to participate in a day of organized protests. According to the Occupy Congress website, the day’s activities will include Teach-ins, an Open Mic, a Multi-Occupation General Assembly, Idea Sharing Sessions, and a DC Voting Rights Vigil. The day will end with an “OCCUParty.”

“Come to the U.S. Capitol on January 17th to protest the greatest calling of our time: A democracy in crisis,” states the message in the video above. The video opens with the words, “You Can’t Evict an Idea,” referring to the eviction of Occupy Wall Street protestors from encampments in many U.S. cities in recent weeks.

“When members of Congress return from their recess, they will be taught a lesson in what democracy
looks like.”

The Occupy Wall Street website describes its mission as “a leaderless resistance movement with people of many colors, genders and political persuasions. The one thing we all have in common is that We Are The 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%.”

Occupy Congress Event Schedule

-9am – Converge at West Front Lawn at Capitol Hill
(Meetings with Representatives concurrent)

-10 am – Training for volunteers on De-escalation,
Legal Observing, Medical, Direct Action

-11 am – Teach-ins and Open Mic start and go all day

-12 noon – Multi-Occupation General Assembly

-2 pm – Open Activities and Idea Sharing Sessions

-*6pm* – Occupy Congress Rally and Protest and DC Voting Rights Vigil

-8pm – 11pm – OCCUParty

More scheduling information as well as sign in information if you wish to teach, share an idea, give a speech or a musical performace at Occupy Congress.