Local lefties and Occupy Wall Street (OWS)

I found some interesting pieces while surfing local lefty websites.

Carl Davidson, a self-described Marxist and a leader of local lefties, posted a link to a piece on the USW management website entitled “One Marine Takes on 30 Cops to Protect Occupy Wall Street Protesters.”  Mr. Davidson added the comment “Taking the moral high ground…”  If you waste the 5:32 it takes to view the piece’s video, you find the title and Mr. Davidson’s comment are a tad misleading.  What you see is an alleged U.S. Marine ranting at NYPD officers doing almost nothing but watching this man shout at them.  Occasionally the police officers asked other people to keep moving so as not to block sidewalks and streets.

There are at least three places where Mr. Davidson writes of “fanning the flames.”  One post on Mr. Davidson’s Facebook wall points to “Occupy! Fanning the flames…,” a piece he wrote as co-chair of Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism [originally a splinter group of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA)].  You can learn more at Lefty links.  Commenting on another piece supporting the OWS gang, Mr. Davidson wrote, “Cool...Fan the flames! Also: Study! Teach! Organize!”  Leading off a piece he wrote for another of his websites, Mr. Davidson wrote, “Blocking Evictions, Fanning the Flames: A Report from Occupied Wall Street.”  In that piece Mr. Davidson also wrote of “fanning the flames of discontent.”

Getting back to the marine story, some lefties claim the alleged marine’s ranting was in response to alleged “police brutality.”  Even if you never experienced it personally as a kid, we all know the stories of playground bullies who run crying when the targets of their bullying finally defend themselves.  This pretty much describes a common lefty tactic, one used by the OWS gang.  The idea is to keep pushing and pushing buttons (“fanning the flames”) until the left’s target has no choice but to defend himself and then the left accuses the target of instigating violence.  The “proof” of the alleged police brutality is this video.  What you see is the OWS gang taunting the NYPD police officers and then lifting a barrier and pushing it back into the police officers.  Later, you see someone putting a sign very close to the head of a mounted police officer’s horse seconds before the horse stumbles and nearly falls to the ground.  Toward the end you hear one of the demonstrators shouting “Hey she is a woman.”  I’m guessing the demonstrator was referring to a woman he thought was involved in the scuffle and thought she should be treated differently because of her sex.  These are the same people who constantly tell us there’s absolutely no difference between men and women and they should be treated exactly the same regardless of the circumstances, even to the point of placing women in combat.  You have to appreciate the hypocrisy.  It’s unclear (not really) if the demonstrator would have been as concerned about a female police officer involved in the scuffle.

Consider the following exchange on Mr. Davidson’s Facebook wall (September 26/27, 2011) involving Randy Shannon, another local lefty leader.

David C Mace: “Capitalism has to go.  Merely taxing/regulating always fails in the end.”

Randy Shannon: “Divide and conquer. Take down the crazy bankers first.”

I’m especially thankful for Mr. Shannon’s comment.  After all, “Divide and conquer” is behind all the lefty “victim” groups formed along lines of age, ethnicity, income, sex, skin color, wealth, et cetera.

Getting back to Mr. Davidson’s piece on his “Keep On Keepin’ On” website, here are a few observations.

·       Elsewhere we’re told OWS is not “AstroTurf,” but consider the following excerpts from Mr. Davidson’s piece: “The closer we got to the financial district, the more workers with union jackets poured into the cars, in a militant and upbeat mood, ready to assert their power. … our small group got the word of an email blast from the national AFL-CIO, ‘Everyone who can, get down to Wall Street by 6 am.’ … I was with Pat Fry and Anne Mitchell, both SEIU staffers and [fellow] leaders of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism. … You could tell who was there from the jackets, caps and T-shirts-Teamsters, SEIU, the Transit Workers Union and many more. … the young occupiers rather quickly found that they had large and important allies.  That was evident in the rapid support they received from Leo Gerard of the Steelworkers, from Richard Trumka speaking for the AFL-CIO, from the 20,000 workers mobilized by New York’s unions in a solidarity march a week ago, and finally, from this morning’s dramatic intervention blocking the eviction. An important new alliance between a radicalizing youth movement and the more progressive wing of organized labor has been forged in the streets-and it was ongoing and open-ended.”

Though there was little doubt, OWS is not a “grass roots movement” and never was.  Heck, SEIU’s Stephen Lerner discussed something similar during “Left Forum 2011,” a conference Mr. Davidson also attended and spoke to.  Now that they think it’s going well, OWS backers are coming out of the shadows.

·       Mr. Davidson wrote, “Today’s students have to deal with $15-20,000 per year, a severe hardship for many, and a strong motivator behind the ‘Occupy!’ movement.”  Let’s go with this for a minute.  As I noted in a previous critique, Penn State (a state-related and subsidized school) tuition for the 2010-2011 school year was $14,412 to $18,604 for in-state students and from $26,276 to $31,110 for out-of-state students.  For in-state students, the tuition more than doubled (2.1 to 2.7 times) in constant dollars in 20 years.  To the best of my knowledge, “Wall St.” doesn’t set the price for college tuition, the schools do.  So why is “the ‘Occupy!’ movement” targeting “Wall St.” for this issue and not the colleges charging “$15-20,000 per year?”  Yes, that was a rhetorical question.

·       Mr. Davidson wrote, “The cops are way outnumbered and outmaneuvered.  All they can do is teargas the entire plaza, but then what?  That would create a fight shutting down the entire financial district. They’re not ready for it yet.”  Maybe it’s just me, but doesn’t this sound like someone looking for a confrontation and is trying to figure out how far his group needs to push (“fanning the flames”) police officers trying to keep sidewalks and streets open for the 99% of us (the real 99%, not the OWS version)?  It’s consistent with the “militant … mood” Mr. Davidson mentioned previously.

·       Mr. Davidson wrote, “You could tell that many protestors were from a new and fresh layer of young activists.  The reason?  Four huge American flags were constantly being waved over the drummers.”  If there were “huge American flags … constantly being waved,” you’ll find it was a planned tactic to address optics.  Here’s a post from the OWS website in early-October: “please listen!!! we need to get american flags in the hands of the protesters. it is imperative to the survival of the movement. please pass this word. when the soilders come, they will be less likely to fire upon those holding american flags. we must make this a patriotic movement to gain momentum and to disarm the government stance that the protesters are terroist. this will become a tactic to turn the majority against you. please, please pass this to any one you can, pass out as many flags as you can.”  These folks learned from mistakes of the past and knew photos/video of demonstrators burning and stomping on American flags would not be smart.  That said, I wonder how many of those waving American flags for the cameras also wore Che Guevara t-shirts.

·       Mr. Davidson continued, “There were also a few red flags, and Earth flag and several rainbow flags-but in a more seasoned left event, especially with a large proportion of anarchists, the American flags would not likely be there. [my emphasis]”  Himself a member of the “more seasoned left,” Mr. Davidson appears to concede “in a more seasoned left event … the American flags would not likely be there.”  I thought the “more seasoned left” loved America.

·       Mr. Davidson wrote, “The ‘human microphone’ was in play, a technique developed to counter situations where amplified sound equipment was banned.  A speaker would shout out a relatively short statement, and then it would be re-shouted in turn by the dozens around him or her, and reshouted again by much of the crowd, aiming their voices out into the streets.”  I heard on the radio what Mr. Davidson described and it sounded like part of a process to indoctrinate members of a cult; it was pretty creepy.

·      To demonstrate his sense of humor, Mr. Davidson wrote of “the GOP-dominated Congress and … a White House that too frequently conciliates with the right wing of both parties.”  “The GOP-dominated Congress?”  Seriously?  Democrats are the majority in the Senate, were the majority in both houses of Congress from 2007 through 2010, had a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate for a short time, and had/have a president since 2009.  As for “a White House that too frequently conciliates with the right wing of both parties,” I guess I missed all the conciliation by President Obama.  As I recall, Mr. Obama and congressional Democrats pretty much steamrolled Republicans for two years because Republicans had no power to stop them.  Obamacare and Dodd/Frank are only two – albeit very big - examples.  If he isn’t joking, perhaps Mr. Davidson could provide some nontrivial conciliation examples.

·       At least Mr. Davidson didn’t try to compare the OWS gang with the “Tea Party.”

In Peace, Friendship, Community, Cooperation, and Solidarity. <g>