Tag Archives: #OWS

More Christian Than Christians

Posted on by
Reply

A year ago when the Occupy Wall Street movement developed, it was easy to recognize a correlation between the church’s mission and #OWS’s. It’s participants were attempting to forge a different way of gathering that was egalitarian and grass roots. It’s decision making was communal and encouraged a type of shared leadership most churches can only dream of. And it represented a sense of radical equality and justice that is consistent with the gospel.

It was also easy to snipe at. Conservatives and Liberals both attacked the movement for not looking like more traditional movements or turning into a think tank that writes up public policy and lobbies for their adoption. By trying to live in a different way with different priorities and a different understanding of success, the beltway establishment, desperate to evaluate and judge the movement, criticized it for what it wasn’t. Perhaps because it didn’t understand what it is. It still doesn’t.

I’ve always thought there was much that it could teach those of us in church leadership (and here are other posts about #Occupy). Now I’m just overwhelmed. With Strike Debt and its new project, Rolling Jubilee, they’re doing what we’re supposed to be doing. As in specifically the very thing we ought to be doing: bringing justice, saving people, and destroying predators.

Rolling Jubilee – an ancient principle updated for the 21st Century

When I saw the announcement of the Rolling Jubilee a few weeks ago, I recognized something that would be troubling for many in the religiously-affiliated Judeo-Christian set: a secular organization organizing around our idea of jubilee. It raises those old arguments about whether something can be Christian or Jewish without it being about GOD, and new ones about the “spiritual but not religious” set. I do have some of those reactions.

I’d love to hear yours!

Here’s the thing, though. This question is honestly very important. It is made all the harder for us because we aren’t doing anything like this. Furthermore, it is good Christians who actually create this system of oppression, breaking the commands to charge no interest and to not exploit the weak. We aren’t bringing the Kingdom closer when we believe in personal ownership and ignore the cries of those in pain: two radically unChristian behaviors.

Is it possible that GOD is doing a new thing with new people because we aren’t getting the job done? Isn’t this what emergence looks like?

Occupy Government

Posted on by
Reply

First Amendment to the United States Constitution:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

With such a broad definition of what constitutes speech and who is protected by speech, I have to ask: then what part of not prohibiting “the right of the people peaceably to assemble” do they not understand?

 

The excuse of fear: “nonlethal” force and the powerful

Posted on by
Reply

In the week between when the world discovered Sgt. Shamar Thomas, some dudes went crazy.

The viral video of an Iraqi veteran chastising the New York police department for arming up against their own civilians as if it were a war zone was a wake-up call to the sleeping public.  These public protesters aren’t impudent and dangerous people.  The #Occupy movement is no mob.  Since the massacre at Kent State, we’ve watched the tug-of-war between protests in the U.S., which by world standards are about as dangerous as mimes pillow-fighting, and police sent out to defend the public.  When protests have gotten ugly what is revealed is the fear on the part of city officials to handle disruption.  The wrench in the machine is the most frightening thing.  They argue that it is about public safety, when it is about eliminating disruptions.  Gotta keep the trains running on time!

Sgt. Thomas preaches understanding to cops who have just man-handled protesters and, as you can see in the background, new cops come out wearing riot gear, and were moving in again.  But these words of his are the most chilling:

“They don’t have guns!”

Stop and think about this.  Get rid of your own visions and the idea of big crowds of people and just remember this one thing: these people aren’t packing.  Nor are they planning an assault on an enemy compound.  They are just people.

He asks why the police insist on beating up the unarmed citizens of his neighborhood and declares

“There’s no honor in this!”

If you haven’t seen it, watch it now.

This became a further stunningly gruesome reality in our country on Wednesday morning in Oakland. The indelible vision of unarmed protesters, attacked with rubber bullets and chemical weapons.  After cops had driven people out of the park, they tried to go back in, only to be further bombarded by tear gas and flash bombs.  The scene escalated to this widely circulated video.

I don’t envy the cops, or even the police force itself.  A few bad actors have abused their power in these protests, but it is these mayors and chiefs of police that have planned these engagements.  They have employed “nonlethal” force as some excuse that seems to say “well, we didn’t actually kill anybody” when the anybodies in question are unarmed civilians.  We only physically abused them, cracked a skull, pepper-sprayed them, and harassed them incessantly!

We cannot escape the power differential: that one group is prepared for war and the other is calling for peace and equality.  The irony should be lost on no one.

I don’t care where you are politically, but the sight of the brutality in Oakland is gruesome.  There is no honor in this.  There is no defense for this.  This is where the powerful, but morally weak run to when they are afraid.  Violence upon the powerless and morally just.

If we ask but one question: Of what are they afraid?  These people have no weapons.  They are sleeping in tents and marching to banks to close their accounts.  They are singing and protesting.  Of what are they really afraid?

Related articles
© 2011 Drew Downs.  All rights reserved

The Gilded Age of Media

Posted on by
Reply

When faced with something they find confusing, most journalists give up.  They don’t do the real legwork of engaging the story.  They write the “process story” instead.  You’ve read the kind in which the author doesn’t actually write the story about the intended subject’s work, but how confusing that work is.  They trot out tired tropes about nails and Jello and hammering something when they should be spending a few minutes actually engaging the material.  I’m just saying.

So we’ve now spent the last four weeks hearing from the news media that Occupy Wall Street has this messaging problem and “nobody” can explain what they want.  [Hello!  They actually wrote a document forever ago!] Blah blah.  Some stuff about how they have no goals or direction.  Blah blah.  Then something about what Republican congresspersons say about them.  Blah blah.  Then some personal anecdote revealing the journalist’s secret disdain for anything outside the norm of beltway horserace-jargoned politics.  Totally lazy and inappropriate.

Here’s the problem:

In late 2009, when people started a movement chanting the famous Reagan quote: “Government is not the solution to our problems, government is the problem” while complaining about having that said government collect any taxes at all, but were also (apparently) satisfied with the current tax rates (taxed enough already?), the media fawned all over them and now talk about the consistency of their message.

In late 2011, when people started a movement changing the famous Reagan quote to say: “Wall Street is not the solution to our problems, Wall Street is the problem” while complaining about said Wall Street’s collective dramatic windfall over the last 30 years at the expense of, well, virtually the entire country, suggesting we raise taxes on the top 1% and alter the lax regulated environment, the media got flummoxed and stared at each other totally confused and dumfounded.  What are they talking about?  It sounds like complete gibberish!

Credit: AP Photo/Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Curtis Compton

If you don’t have eyes to see the common themes in the above signs, then you can’t see.

Clearly the media has swallowed the blue pill and decided that a message that is anti-government and inconsistent about taxes is clear and concise, while a message that is anti-Wall Street excess and social contract devastation is some massive word jumble.  Clearly, the Tea Party, which began with the fervor of some ideological firebrands that are strongly libertarian was long ago co-opted into long-term conservative think tank arguments.  That the Tea Party is at once referencing both grassroots libertarians and die- hard social conservatives who have been in Washington for two decades should be more confusing to pundits.  And yet that message is taken for granted: it is not only domesticated, it is normal.  Average.  The way of conservative politics these days.

At the same time, the media is loath to examine the very substance of this rhetoric, instead, they would rather spend their time writing the horserace story about which Republican is up in the polls.  If they are forced to cover the #Occupy movement, they’ll just phone in a process story.  I mean, really, who wants to deal with the actual substance of income inequality and corporate greed.  That’s so…quaint.

Welcome to the new Gilded Age.

 

© 2011 Drew Downs.  All rights reserved