Category: Obama Administration

“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.” Abolitionist Frederick Douglass

When members of Occupy Oakland set a U.S. flag on fire at City Hall last week-end, I had a Yogi Berra moment: “Déjà vu all over again.”

This ritual intrinsic to late opposition to the war in Vietnam appears to have divided Northern California Occupiers. The San Francisco Chronicle called it a “wrestling match for the soul of the Occupy movement in the Bay Area.” I’m disappointed, of course, but I also think it serves a little too well the narrative of these protests offered by corporate media. Perhaps that's why it got so much coverage. It would be a misfortune if this ill-conceived action overshadowed attention to the hundreds of actions in protest of the corporatization of our country as personified by Wall Street.

What delighted me from the first about the Occupy movement is its imagination and ingenuity and, just as importantly, its focus on education rather than militancy and scorn. While there have been confrontations brought about by over-vigilant, militaristic policing, most Occupiers recognize that police are often tools of a tiny but powerful minority shaken to its roots by any challenge. In Roanoke, Virginia, there was an Occupy New Year’s Eve feast in which food was brought to firefighters, police, EMS workers and others in the public sector in thanks for their service. Other Occupiers have reached out to law enforcement as well. In Buffalo, Occupiers held a Police Appreciation Day and fed carrots to police horses.

Over at Firedoglake.com, there’s a contest until midnight Wednesday to recognize the myriad actions of the Occupy movement. You can pick ten actions from a long list, and there’ll be a final polling at the end to award one of five command post tents worth $5,000 each or media laptops equipped with webcams.

Among my favorite entries to the Firedoglake contest were such thought-provoking actions as a Nashville “funeral” for the Bill of Rights, a Louisville “wedding” for the U.S. Government and Corporate America, and Occupella caroling by the Organized Women of Occupy San Diego. Other actions demonstrated impressive tenacity. In Fairbanks, they still holding down a tent encampment in minus 42 degree F Alaskan weather---in their underwear! And in Cleveland, blocks from Lake Erie, they’re still tenting 24/7 despite being forced by police to leave one side open to the elements all the time.

While most of the action is targeted at Wall Street, Congress, the Supreme Court and corporations, President Obama hasn’t gotten off free. Occupy DC just protested outside the exclusive Alfalfa Club dinner that he attended. In Allentown, Pennsylvania, Occupiers protested his “heavy involvement with the Wall Street system” at the opening of his campaign headquarters. And more obscure individuals have been the focus of other actions. James Bopp, the attorney driving the Citizens United suit, found protestors at his office in Terre Haute. In Tampa, the accounting firm Watkins and Co. was “occupied” for its involvement with Florida politics. Occupiers demanded that the Fresno, California, school superintendent take a pay cut, too, if teachers were forced to.

How this will all turn out isn’t clear, but it’s not going away. Too many people have found common bonds in protesting favoritism and corruption in government and business. Cold weather may have driven many inside, but the points they raise have traction.

What seemed sad to me about the Oakland flag burning was that it seemed a gesture of cynical and nihilistic protestors in a movement that has by no means exhausted its energy and, yes, hope that things can change. I concur with Frederick Douglass that “power never concedes anything without a demand.” And the Occupy movement has for the most part voiced its demands in ways that command respect.

The question is whether we as a nation have the courage to engage them.

It may have seemed at first like a publicity stunt or a gift from above, but last year Coloradans at Vail and Beaver Creek mountains saw pink snow.

“When you skied a run, you turned and your tracks were pink,” Melissa Macdonald, executive director of the Eagle River Watershed, told the Vail Daily. It wasn’t to be confused with the ever-popular watermelon snow

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Lately, when I think of President Obama, King Solomon comes to mind.

From childhood, I was riveted by the story I heard in Sunday school about how the king determined which of two women was the real mother of a newborn infant by threatening to cleave it in half with a sword. Of course, the biological mother preferred to leave her baby whole even at the risk of not being able to care for it herself. At least, the baby would live.

President Obama should take a clue.

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I have two new heroes this week: Diane Ravitch and Dennis Kucinich don’t have a whole lot in common, but both of them exhibited the rare ability to hang onto their principles and change their minds at the same time. We could use more leaders like them.

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Years ago, when I was in a quandary about the direction of my career, I got some sound advice: Never fall in love with a corporation, because it’s constitutionally unable to reciprocate.

This week, the Supreme Court created a limited redress to that issue in Citizens United v the Federal Elections Commission, giving corporations unfettered permission to spend their general funds on the campaigns of politicians they favor, and turning them into “a real live boy” as Slate put it. Who says money can’t buy you love? If the Rehnquist court handed Republicans the presidency in 2000, it’s hard to believe the Roberts court hasn’t handed them the Congress in 2010.

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