MEDIA ROOTS – Felipe Messina of Media Roots speaks with Alexa O’Brien of US Day of Rage and Co-Organiser of Occupy
Wall Street to ask her about the origins of the Occupy Wall Street
movement and its looming interface with MoveOn and the Democratic Party,
our broken U.S. electoral system, the false left/right paradigm of our
U.S. two-party dictatorship, and what we can do about all of this
through collective action and the taking of the public square,
physically and digitally.
***
MR:
“Alexa O’Brien, with US Day of Rage, is co-organiser at the Liberty
Square Occupy Wall Street sit-ins, protests, and encampment, begun on September
17, 2011. Alexa, thank you very much for
your time.”
USDOR: “Oh,
thank you for inviting me.”
MR:
“US Day of Rage organised simultaneous actions across the United States with other groups to
raise awareness of the growing inequality facing the working-class in the
United States (and globally). Um, can
you talk about how the organisations came together in the beginning, at the
outset?”
USDOR: “This
is a really interesting story. And, um,
you know, US Day of Rage started on March 10th. That’s when the profile US Day of Rage and
the profile #USDOR, which is a hashtag that we also used on Twitter, um, in the
subsequent weeks, were parked, essentially.
Um, and, you know, one night I had been covering Bahrain and Egypt, but
Bahrain very intimately for several months.
Um, and, you know, we’d be at work, ‘cos I work a full-time job and
having, you know, friends of mine on Twitter emailing me pictures of, you know,
heads blown open. And, sort of,
understanding that, you know, my own country had a Fifth Fleet there and that
this was sort of at the, um, a couple months into Cablegate. Sort of, seeing those revolutions sort of unfold
and, um. And, so, you know, watching the
activity in Wisconsin on March 10th, you know, what I saw was,
essentially, a really dangerous level of cynicism towards government. And, really, actually, also the complete
blockade of political engagement by what are, essentially, corporate
interests. Um, and so, you know, we
started the profile and, much like many things this year, this year has been
like a magical year. It’s, it’s been a
very bizarre year. We got a thousand
followers within a week. It was very
weird. And we knew at that point, US Day
of Rage knew that we had, we had a responsibility because we had the kind of,
um, what we believed was, sort of, level-headedness and ability to, sort of,
get to core problems. Um, so we wanted
to create a space for Americans to be able to voice their grievances against
government without the ideological clap-trap that you find in the corporate
media. You know, these, sort of, like,
spectacles of arguments.”
MR:
“Right. I’ve heard David Graeber
speak on programmes like Democracy Now! talking about Adbusters, um, kind of
initiating a lot of the Occupy Wall Street actions. Was that similar to your experience? Was that someone that, uh, did you work with
David Graeber and Adbusters and those folks?”
USDOR: “Well,
Adbusters is a magazine and, you know, uh, the, saving our nation from becoming
a totalitarian nightmare isn’t a competition and it’s not a sporting
event. So, certainly, many people have
played a role in Occupy Wall Street. And
Occupy Wall Street at this point is, you can be parents, but once your
children, you know, you give birth to your children and they, they hit a
certain age, you know, they become autonomous creatures. And that’s what Occupy Wall Street is now. And we respect it as such. Um, I’m not sure I, I understand what Mr.
Graeber’s role was in, I don’t know much about him. I did see him at General Assembly meetings. It’s my own experience that, um, you know, I
look at Occupy Wall Street from this perspective: there were a few people within the General
Assembly that acted in an independent fashion, except for the Food Committee, um,
headed by Chris Underscore and, um, also the Tactical Committee, um, that, basically,
you know, combed Lower Manhattan, sort of, trying to, uh, ascertain
logistics. Um, there were mostly
independent people who took it upon themselves to organise things so that the
protest was safe. For one thing, you
know, the General Assembly, prior to September 17th, didn’t have any
consensus on whether or not it was violent or non-violent in ideology. You know, we, at US Day of Rage, organised
all the non-violent civil disobedience actions.
We made sure in early August that there were actually, uh, videos of
civil disobedience talks. Um, so that
people who we reached through digital outreach, um, were able to understand, at
least, de-escalation tactics or the idea of non-violent civil disobedience. The Arts & Culture Committee, Lorenzo
and, uh, you know, Jez Bold, I mean, there’s so many people in the Arts &
Culture Committee, they were just, and the Outreach Committee, they were
phenomenal. I think what ended up
happening, and this is my understanding, I mean, there’s a lot of untold
stories and, perhaps, they should remain untold because it doesn’t really
matter. But, if you look at what digital
did for this, digital, essentially, magnified the outreach of this particular
action of people in New York. You know,
the act of Take the Square, Antibanks, US Day of Rage, WL Central, ROAR
Magazine, I mean, all of these, uh, magnified the, and created an exponential
awareness and outreach for this action, so that it became what it was.”
MR:
“What I’m interested in is this further magnification of the entire
Occupy Wall Street, um, and as MoveOn.org, for example, seems to, uh, begin,
uh, its involvement. Um, well, I
understand Occupy Wall Street as an umbrella brand, uh, basically for the
organic, grassroots, uh, the one thing in common is the horizontalist
philosophy of the General Assemblies of everyday people participating in, uh,
this Wall Street Occupation. Um, and I
understand the OccupyWallStreet.org as a, basically, an unofficial de facto
online resource. And that website lists
various links, um, from the NYC General Assembly to the We Are the 99% to, your
organisation, US Day of Rage. Um, what
impressed me about the interviews that I’ve heard from you, Alexa, are the, um,
the critique of the electoral system and, uh, the need for electoral reform,
which, since the Occupy Wall Street protests have been magnified, it seems to
have largely been absent. Is this
something that I’m missing? Or is this,
uh, how do you see this playing out?”
USDOR: “Well,
you know, one of the things I always say, and, you know, and I quite mean it,
you know, I’m a nobody. And I’m not
master of the universe, you know? To me
this—”
MR:
“Sure.”
USDOR: “—act
is an act of conscience. I can’t see
into the future. I do know that it’s my
moral responsibility, as a citizen, and especially someone who, you know, while
I did raise children, I don’t have any children that I’m responsible for, at
present. And, therefore, I have much
more, I feel like I have more responsibility, you know, myself, because I can
take the risk of sticking my neck out and not having to worry about feeding
babies. You know?”
MR:
“Sure.”
USDOR: “So, to
say this like really specifically, um, US Day of Rage has always had one
demand, right? You know, free and fair
elections essentially remedy a myriad ills and abuses of a government that
preys on the resources and the spirits of citizens. Why were Americans so afraid before September
17th? One of the most
beautiful parts of this whole Occupation Movement across the country is that
Americans are starting to lose the fear.
You know, what is the public square?
There are several institutions to democratic society and, you know, we
don’t have an opinion on the Left or the Right in any kind of sense. Like, really, frankly, the ideological
bitchfest, excuse my language, of corporate media is really, actually, not the
Left or the Right. It’s, it’s a
corporate spectacle. It doesn’t really
represent the hearts and minds of millions of Americans about what’s really in
their self-interest.”
MR:
“Right.”
USDOR: “So,
the public square, the press, our elections, these are institutions that
underpin the stability and the justness of a society, especially, a democratic
society. So, when you have protests that
are conducted like photo opportunities for stars and celebrities where you’re
kettled into, essentially, cattle cages and you, you know, hoist your rubber
bracelet and say, you know, your piece, it does nothing.”
MR:
“Right.”
USDOR: “And we
knew that. We knew that. So, in order to reform our elections we knew
we had to start at the most basic, uh, point of the citizen, which is the
public square. You know, I was joking
around with one of the founders of Take the Square like, probably, in maybe
April and saying, you know, he was like, ‘well, what about take the square in America.’ And I was like, ‘are you talking about Take the Walmart? Like, what?
Which squares are you talking about? Because civic space in the United States is
completely fiscalised.”
MR:
“Right, you were talking about that in an interview on The Morning Mix
with Davey D and, uh, that was something that gave him pause. Can you talk more about that?”
USDOR: “You
know we look at problems, like, structurally and in terms of how, what gives
people, what enfranchises people? ‘Cos
people always say, ‘well, Americans are apathetic.’ And I don’t doubt that there aren’t apathetic
citizens in different countries across the globe. But it’s really, Americans are demoralised
because they know, that on some level, that their elections are a farce. They know that the legislation that we put
out there is a gross aberration of the will of the citizens. And, you know, it’s like a bad marriage, you
know, you don’t have to even get too complicated about it. If my spouse is off stealing money from our
bank account, cheating at, you know, with 15 other people, you know, I’m not
gonna be emotionally engaged. I might
stay married. But I’m not gonna engage
in the marriage in an authentic, full-bodied way. Well, similarly, with Americans in government. You know, if our government is out there
cheating on us, you know, lying to us, spending our money without talking to
us, and then giving us some kind of excuse.
Americans disengage ‘cos it’s a lie.”
MR:
“Right. You know, I’ve seen
images from the Occupy Wall Street protests in New York and elsewhere
indicating people are tired of the two-party system. Yet, it’s st-, the, uh, that disaffection
with the two-party system or the false left/right paradigm is not really
something that I hear on the media and not even on the progressive media. Mostly, of course, there’s gonna be, uh,
discussion and illuminating complaints with the war, you know, anti-war
messages and, uh, with economic inequality, anti-Wall Street messages, but the
electoral process seems to be something that’s kind of taboo. It’s not really discussed. And as we move towards, uh, the 2012 Election
year, it just seems like we’re heading towards another year where, uh, we might
end up with the same type of, uh, leaders in power. Is this something that you see? Does US Day of Rage address this?”
USDOR: “Well,
we do. I mean we have a plan. Basically, we are basically taking, firstly,
we took a couple weeks, just simply getting grounded again, um, into phase
two. I mean, phase two for us, just to
be clear, I mean we called the Occupation of, we endorsed the call for the Occupation
of Wall Street because when we talk about taking the money out of politics you
wanna go right to the source. And, like,
let’s be honest. Who are, you know,
let’s talk about the pseudo-Left, so to speak.
You know the Democratic Party, I mean, who are their backers? It’s Wall Street.”
MR:
“Right.”
USDOR: “You
know the Republican Party. Who are their backers? It’s Wall Street. I mean, these are fickle interests. You know, they don’t really care about the
Left or the Right. They just care about
themselves. So, second to that, you
know, we are basically organising now for a call to an Article V Constitutional
Convention. And what that means is, most
Americans don’t know this, ‘cos we’ve never done one. But the framers created a method for escaping
from what they called ‘captured government.’
And that’s what we have now is a government captured by factions. Okay, so, think about government. Right?”
MR:
“M-hm.”
USDOR: “Think
about the Constitution. You and I could
sit here and pretend we’re on Crossfire and we—”
MR:
“Right.”
USDOR: “—could
talk about the difference between Executive power, which is the power to fight
wars, versus Legislative. But, really,
is there any difference when both are owned by Goldman Sachs?”
MR:
“Not much.”
USDOR: “No,
there isn’t. So, it, it’s a breakdown of
checks and balances. So, they created
this Article V Constitutional Convention capability, which means that if 34 States
pass resolutions, at the state level, calling for a Convention, all sides would
have the opportunity to talk about the changes they believe would restore
democracy. And, so, we could bypass
Congress and the Senate and the Executive and the Judicial branch and just get
this done. You know, overturn corporate
personhood, you know, overturn Citizens United.
Or, you know, it’ll, it can happen in one amendment. The point is that, the Department of Homeland
Security, the FBI, the NYPD, in conjunction with the CIA, whom they work with,
they all defend, look, Wall Street’s still blockaded. You know, on September 17th the
NYPD occupied Wall Street. You know,
it’s pro-, they will protect banks and corporations’ First Amendment rights
under Citizens United. But they’ll Mace
a girl on a sidewalk who’s peaceably standing there in dissent against the
system that doesn’t represent her and gawd knows what else. You know?”
MR:
“Exactly. That’s right. This reminds me of, you know, I’ve heard,
earlier this year, Ralph Nader talk about, um, I think he talked about a
Constitutional Convention for, um, revoking the, uh, corporate personhood. Is this the same, is this same process that,
are you aware of Ralph Nader’s approach that he’s mentioned earlier this year?”
USDOR: “I’m
not aware of Mr. Nader’s approach with regards to a Constitutional
Convention. I do know that he has, sort
of, nine points for electoral reform.
Those are, as far as I understand, you know, I’m a human being, I don’t
know everything, so hopefully, I’m not getting this wrong, but, you know a lot
of them have to do with, like, getting rid of earmarks, open ballot access,
holiday voting for working people, so that they can actually vote, uh, honest
and open debates, you know, full and balanced representation. I mean, there’s a lo-, tightly drawn
districts. You know, those are all very
honourable suggestions. I mean, part of
the reason and, I’m gonna take a deep breath, so I don’t completely talk your
ear off here. Um, we really wanna
just cut to the chase. You know, like, let’s
just make it so that corporations are not people in the eyes of the law. Or if they are that they are liable for the
same things that people are.”
MR:
“Right. And, uh, kind of going
over the point that I mentioned earlier about us living in a kind of a false
left/right paradigm, where people perceive the Republicans as the bad guys and
the Democrats as the good guys and, uh, the choices being limited to those two
and with this opportunity for consciousness-raising with the whole Wall Street
occupations spreading across the country, it seems like a really good
opportunity for people to, kind of, look beyond that. And, yet, we’re still, most people are still
gonna vote, so it just seems kind of logical to expand the two-party
system. Is that, would that be a
half-measure, in your view? Or is that
something that US Day of Rage looks at?
USDOR: “It’s not
a half-measure. I mean, any kind of
political engagement that restores democracy we don’t consider a
half-measure. I mean, listen, we’re
human beings. A lot of us are working
people who are just normal, average everyday citizens. And so, you know, we support and we engage
with the larger discussions from other groups, other Constitutional Convention
groups, other people who wanna reform our elections, even, you know, the
General Assembly at New York City. I
mean, we’re individual members of that body.
So, no, I mean, I hope that any group that wants to engage in electoral
reform approach us and we will approach them because united, you know, we can
actually get this done.”
MR:
“Yes, so—“
USDOR: “And
the other thing, too, is that we have a way of getting it done.”
MR:
“Yeah, that’s exactly right. And
with the whole Occupation Wall Street spreading across the country and, if the
Occupations persist, it seems like the Article V Constitutional Convention can
seem like a very likely possibility.”
USDOR: “It’s
true. And also, you know, social media
has also done wonders in many, many areas and sectors of America’s political
conscience. You know, take, for example,
an American I have great respect for, Brandon Neely, a former Gitmo guard, who
found his, people who he was a prison guard and detained at Guantanamo. He reached out to them several years ago and
made direct amends to them over Facebook.”
MR:
“Oh, wow.”
USDOR: “So,
the reality of social media, which I think some, the press is just beginning to
understand is, you shouldn’t torture people.
But you cannot torture people today because we will find you and we will
see your face on Twitter and Facebook.
Now, Neely is a, a vanguard. I
mean, he’s spoken out about Gitmo, so I’m not talking about Mr. Neely per
se. But I’m saying, you know this,
earlier on in the year, um, WL Central and myself and on the media, the Senator
from Hawaii Tweeted me to confirm that a Republican had placed the anonymous
hold on the Whistleblower Protection Act.
So, there are a lot of things that you could do with social media that
we couldn’t do before. And we’re, we
just can’t wait to get to it when it comes to the Article V Constitutional
Convention.”
MR:
“So, you don’t have any fears that a large organisation like
MoveOn.org might subvert the more grassroots, radical, message of the, um,
loosely collective Occupy Wall Street folks?”
USDOR: “What
I’ve learned strategically with things like this is that, you know, it wouldn’t
surprise me if the American, you know, I’m talking in a general way. Right?”
MR:
“Right.”
USDOR: “If the American brain, it needs to unravel
from the partisan, you know, the culture
war is over, everybody lost. Right?”
MR:
“Right.”
USDOR: “The
culture war they’ve grown up with. But
the reality of it is that the game generation, the internet generation, does
not trust traditional forms of organised politics. You know, we have learned how to engage with
each other through weak social ties online and that has also transferred into
our lifestyle. So, we might lose a few
more rounds. Hopefully, the U.S.
government won’t take drastic action.
Um, I think with this movement into the political sq-, into the civic
square we have started to change the game.
But it’s like the traditional media.
It’s like, I’m not worried whether or not they’re covering us because
they are becoming obsolete.”
MR:
“M-hm.”
USDOR: “We are
getting our information from Davey D on Twitter and then listening to his radio
show, or our friends in Bahrain, or our friends in Egypt. So, more will be revealed.”
MR:
“Yeah, that’s interesting that, well, I heard the input from Egyptians
into the original organising for the Occupy Wall Street protests.”
USDOR: “Yeah,
well, it was really funny because right when we were starting to go viral in
Egypt there was like a billion Arabic comments on our Facebook profile. And it was really hilarious because it was
appealing to all the racism against Muslims, like, in certain parts of the
United States. So, we were sitting
here, we were like, we’re like, ‘we’re an American organisation.’ They’re like, the Egyptians found us and
they’re like giving us all this advice.
It was really funny. Um, but it’s
all good, you know? It’s all good.”
MR:
“They held, I was gonna say they held out for a long time in Egypt.”
USDOR: “Yeah.”
MR:
“ I’m hoping that the Occupy Wall Street Assemblies will hold out as
long as possible. I know it’s gonna
start getting very cold soon in New York and the East Coast.”
USDOR: “Well,
something to keep in mind, too, is that digital, the internet is a civic space. I mean, although it’s, in the United States,
it’s surveilled and commercialised and there’s no privacy. You know, there’s no privacy in the centre
square either. Did you see that large,
um, monitoring station that the NYPD set up?
It’s like East Germany. You
know?”
MR:
“That’s right.”
USDOR: “Before
the wall came down. So, you know, the
bottom line is this is really about Americans, whether they’re afraid or
not. You know?”
MR:
“M-hm.”
USDOR: “As
long as we’re not afraid we have nothing to worry about. You know, if we, so I, I’m not worried in a
certain sense, like, I trust the good, um, the good people of our country, as
the more connected they get, the less afraid they get.”
MR:
“That’s right.”
USDOR: “You
know, we might have a cold winter on the internet or out on the squares, but
everything’s gonna be okay if we just keep plugging forward.”
MR:
“Yeah, it seems like that’s the case.
The police tactics of repression of the right to assemble and protest,
to dissent, seem to be responded to very quickly, uh, with social media, the
illegal arrests, police brutality involving that pepper spraying, and the
kettling, of course, what looked like entrapment on the Brooklyn Bridge and so
forth. It seemed to be responded to by
the people very quickly and, uh, they seem to be trying to, the police seem to
have to adapt to that quick response from the people.”
USDOR:
“Yeah. I mean, one of the
discussions that we had early on because we endorsed, basically, the occupation
of public sidewalks early on because at the time, and the situation with
Zuccotti has become more sophisticated because a lot of civil rights attorneys
have come in and talked about easement laws.
But originally we endorsed a call to occupy public sidewalks because we
thought it was the clearest assertion of First Amendment rights. You know, the NYPD is a para-, one of the
largest paramilitary forces in the world.
They have helicopters that can see a cigarette from a mile away. They have trucks, I’ve been told, that can
see through walls. And they photograph
New Yorkers on a daily basis and keep those, you know, facial recognition
software. So, we’re talking about a
serious force here.”
MR:
“Yeah. That’s something to keep
in mind. Well, as I wrap up here do you
have any final comments that you’d like to add?”
USDOR:
“Yeah. I wanna say that, you
know, free and fair elections inspire good citizenship and public service
because they engage the intelligence and the genuine good will of the American
people. You know, they produce the kind
of stewardship our nation desperately needs right now because they insure that
citizens can influence their destiny and make genuine contributions to
society. It’s now or never. Either we do this now or wait a hundred years
and have our children grow up in a totalitarian nightmare.”
MR: “I agree. Alexa O’Brien with US
Day of Rage is co-organiser at the Liberty Square Occupy Wall Street
Occupation. Alexa, thank you very much
for your time.”
USDOR: “Thank
you so much. Have a wonderful evening.”
***
Interview and transcript by Felipe Messina for Media Roots
Photo by flickr user Sasha Y Kimel
THE WASHINGTON POST
MR:
“They held, I was gonna say they held out for a long time in Egypt.”