Saturday, October 29, 2011

Media Watch: Chris Hedges and Amy Goodman on OWS on Charlie Rose

In these two videos Charlie Rose talks OWS and the future of the growing global movement with Pulitzer prize winning author Chris Hedges and author Amy Goodman. The interview is in 2 parts.

(Part two after the jump.)

8 comments:

  1. All the folks on here who are banging on about Rawls should read Hedges' "Death of the Liberal Class," particularly the chapter on the academy.

    [You might also enjoy Gramsci's discussion of intellectuals in the Prison Notebooks as a companion piece. :) ]

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  2. Thanks, 99%

    I received this in an email today:

    “Dear colleagues,

    I forwarded the call for a November 2 National Day of Action in Solidarity with Occupy Oakland and in Defense of the Occupy Movement without mentioning that the OWS Labor Outreach Committee backed this call after former Local 10 ILWU President Jack Heyman discussed initiatives taken by ILWU and the Oakland labor movement for a general strike in support of Occupy Oakland and the movement in general. He made the point that the mobilization on November 2 is to the national Occupy movement what our mass mobilization to defend Zuccotti Park from Bloomberg's eviction order on October 12 was to the movement here in NYC. I've reproduced the call for labor action sent out by Jack Heyman below. We are asking organizations to endorse the day of action and turn out your members in a concerted effort to defend the Occupy movement, which has been subject to violent police attacks and evictions in major cities throughout the U.S. You can email endorsements to november2endorse@gmail.com, or through pages on facebook or tumblr . The OWS Direct Action Commitee will meet tomorrow to decide on a plan for concrete actions by OWS here in NYC. Stay tuned....”

    So the good news is that we here in New York are mobilizing for the general strike. For all of us this means not going to school, not teaching, etc. and spread the word. We have power! Exercise it! General strike!

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  3. Thanks for sharing the email with us Junius...and by the way I just want to go on record to say that this evening I have coined the name "Plutofascist Corporatism" to describe our bought and paid for Gov't. It's open source though, feel free to use it everywhere.

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  4. 99%

    The bad news is it doesn’t look like the unions are going to strike in Oakland since their contracts don’t allow it.

    Well, this may fizzle, but eventually, a general strike is what we need.

    Myself, I’m not showing up for shit on Wednesday.

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  5. Ever since I joined the IFCW as a 19 year old working a factory job as a teenager, I've never understood "no walk out no lock out" clauses. They've always seemed to me to betray the entire purpose of organized labor, striking is the only threat and your are legally bound not to do it?

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  7. You’re absolutely right, 99%. "Working class” people like you and I that, god knows how, found our way towards an education and philosophy have a lot of work to do—whether the working class people we came from understand it or not, and on their (ours!) behalf. (I know you already know this)

    But we will do the work, and we will contribute to the making of a better world. And others before us have, others after us will too.

    I can’t express how proud I am to see what’s happening around the world. I’m very happy. Bringing up Deleuze again, he said that all revolutions fail. But he made a distinction between revolutions and being revolutionary (Which we must become). This worldwide outsing (not outcry) makes me joyous. I’m very happy!

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  8. Here's to the worldwide outsing!

    No worries, friends. Technically Taft-Hartley made the general strike illegal, but that didn't stop the South Central Federation of Labor (AFL-CIO) from endorsing the GS during the Wisconsin Uprising back in March. The idea was that unions can't CALL for the GS (which is illegal), but they can endorse the GS (thereby shielding workers from the charge of wildcatting, which is also technically illegal under the Wagner Act). Not being a labor lawyer, I have no clue whether this argument holds water. But the fact is that rank and file workers have gone out on all kinds of wildcat strikes since 1932, and they could very easily do it again in this case. They don't need the union brass' permission. (The union brass has been screwing over the rank and file as long as there has been a union brass, which is precisely why rank and file workers should ditch bureaucratic unions and join the IWW -- but I digress...)

    Take heart. There will be a general strike yet!
    http://www.gstrike.org/

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