"Occupy Wall Street" Demonstrations' Place in History plus Two Short Stories

Today's posting includes a piece by Steve Fraser published in the Palm Beach Post on October 18, dealing with the "Occupy Wall Street" demonstrations, looked at from a historical context.  Oddly, when it was originally published in the Los Angeles Times, it did not include the words "what Karl Marx called" which appeared in the last sentence of the Post version.  Perhaps that paper's editorial staff felt that mentioning Karl Marx might cause some readers to suspect the writer was a Marxist and thereby discredit his commentary.  I have no idea whether Fraser is a Marxist, Maoist or a Martian, but I am glad that the Post left this language in.  This kind of subtle censorship takes place all the time and is not good.  Anyway, here is Fraser's article, as it appeared on the Op-Ed page of the Palm Beach Post.   I found it interesting.
  

Once Again in America, the '99 Percent’ Speak Up

Steve Fraser 

(Steve Fraser teaches history at Columbia University and is the author of "Wall Street: America's Dream Palace." This was distributed by the Los Angeles Times.) 

The only thing surprising about Occupy Wall Street is that it didn't happen sooner. The U.S. has a long history of friction over policies that enable an elite to thrive at the expense of ordinary people.

The earliest tensions emerged after the Revolutionary War, when Jeffersonians raised alarms about "moneycrats" and their counter-revolutionary intrigues. They meant Alexander Hamilton and his confederates, who favored a British-style system of merchant capitalism that Jeffersonians feared would undo the democratic and egalitarian promise of the Revolution.

In the first half of the 19th century, followers of Andrew Jackson inveighed against the Second Bank of the United States, otherwise known as "the monster bank." They feared the bank was part of a systematic monopolizing of financial resources by a politically privileged elite. Later in the 19th century, Populists decried the overweening power of the Wall Street "devil fish." When Democratic Party candidate William Jennings Bryan vowed during his presidential campaign in 1896 that mankind would not be "crucified on a cross of gold," the "Boy Orator of the Platte" was taking aim at Wall Street.

At the turn of the 20th century, the antitrust movement captured the imagination of small-businessmen, consumers and working people. The trust they worried most about was "the money trust." Captained by J.P. Morgan, the trust was subjected to congressional investigations, excoriated in exposés by "muckraking" journalists and depicted by cartoonists as a cabal of prehensile Visigoths in death-heads. As the new, widespread movements made clear, everyone but Wall Street was suffering the consequences of a system of proliferating abuses perpetrated by "the Street."

The long tradition of protest that the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators have tapped into had perhaps its finest hour during the Depression. Then as now, there was no question in the minds of the "99 percent" that Wall Street was principally to blame for the country's crisis.  In addition to rallies and marches of the unemployed, there were hundreds of sit-down strikes inside industrial plants, foreclosures forestalled by infuriated neighbors and occupations - even seizures - of private property. In response, the New Deal was launched, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt announced his determination to unseat "economic royalists."

In recent years, protest by ordinary people against the culture of wealth accumulation had largely died off. We had grown fearful of using phrases like "class warfare," "plutocracy," "robber baron" and "ruling class" to identify the sources of economic exploitation and oppression. That spirit of protest is back, and just in time.

At a march I recently attended, the signs spoke to a reemerging willingness to combat the economic divide. "The Middle Class is Too Big To Fail," one proclaimed. "Eat the Rich, Feed the Poor," read another. It would be foolish to predict how lasting this Occupy Wall Street moment will be and just where (if anywhere) it's heading. Some observers have worried that the movement is too diffuse, that it doesn't have a clear-cut set of demands and that its anger is unfocused. It is far too soon to conclude that, with the protests on Wall Street, our pitiful age of acquiescence has ended.

Still, it would be equally foolish to dismiss the powerful American tradition the demonstrators of this moment have tapped into. In the past, Wall Street has functioned as an icon of revulsion, inciting anger, stoking up energies and summoning visions of a new world that might save the New World.  It could play that role again today. In 1932, three years into the Depression, most Americans were more demoralized than mobilized. A few years later, all that had changed and the political class had to scurry to keep up. Occupy Wall Street may prove the opening act in an unfolding drama of renewed resistance to and rebellion against what Karl Marx called "the Vatican of capitalism."



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This posting also includes two short stories and a description of my role as a Crusader.   


JL 
                    

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Three Rooms

Sid Bolotin

 
    

I.
The room was about 8’ by 10’ with a bed along the wall opposite the doorway occupying most of the space. An old, painted chest of drawers to the right of the entrance faced the bed. To the left of the doorway two steps lead to the closed door with the peeling paint behind which rose a flight of stairs leading to the attic of the two story wood frame house. In the end wall between the bed and the chest worn, tattered lace curtains vainly attempted to mask the room’s single dirt-streaked, multi-paned window with the one broken pane. The 10’ high plaster ceiling had long ago degraded to a grayish, sooty coloring.  The dark, yellow, stained plaster walls completed the room’s Spartan décor that was in keeping with the dilapidated two-family structure that stood behind a row of similar houses that lined old Route 3 as it weaved through Plymouth, MA. Through the window as he fought off sleep each night, 8-year old Sidney would watch the blizzard of moths that swarmed the brightness of the towering lights of the gas station that fronted the roadway. During each summer’s visit he was sure that his grandfather’s house was old enough and run down enough to have been built by the Pilgrims themselves. Everything smacked of being poor, but Sidney never saw that. He bathed in the love and caring that blanketed him during his summer visits to escape Boston’s heat.

II.

The room at the end of the apartment’s short, dark, linoleum-floored hallway contained a pullout sofa-bed along the left wall. The opposite, right wall separating this space from his mother’s bedroom was made up of two, white-painted French doors with multi-paned glass inserts. The wall opposite the door-less entrance contained two, side-by-side bay windows that over-looked the hedges in the narrow space between the two buildings. Along the wall adjacent to the doorway was a small closet whose door could barely open before colliding with the end of the sleep-sofa. The non-descript yellowing wallpaper was complimented by the off-white paint on the windowsills and the room’s trim moldings. The well-polished wooden floor of this 10’ by 10’ space was covered by a cheap scatter rug that was clean, but very faded. A simple pole lamp that looked like a leafless tree was planted between the couch and the left window in a struggle to augment the tiny light glaring down from its ceiling mount. The 10-foot high ceiling’s plaster was crisscrossed with a lacework of old cracks that had been patched again and again. A small floor model black and white TV stood watch between the windows, and a shabby, but clean overstuffed chair stood by the right-hand bay window in front of the French doors. A red bridge table and its accompanying chair was set up in front of the right hand French door to serve as a play table or a desk for the young boy whenever the room was not in use as a waiting room for his mother’s customers while they awaited their turn in the kitchen-turned-beauty-parlor. The widowed mother’s struggles to stay off of welfare demanded that the boy cooperate by sharing his room with her customers. 

III.

The 13’ by 15’ master bedroom looks out over the lake through a triple bay window that sits above a blue-cushioned, custom-built window seat. The beige, textured tile floor is caressed by two, deep-blue shaded area rugs. A colossal, 8’ high, 5’ wide armoire with a wiped, white finish is positioned on the wall opposite the doorway to face the king-sized bed along the wall to the left of the door. An 8’ tall, silk Fichus tree sits between the armoire and the bay window. The window to the right of the armoire sits directly across from the entrance and looks out on a red-blossomed Hibiscus tree. Satiny fabric with blue and ivory stripping covers the cornices over each window with lamberginies framing the windows for half their height. Two blue-upholstered Queen Ann chairs sit in front of the window beside the armoire. A glass-topped, skirted table sits between them with candles and family photos atop the glass. Two shaded lamps rest upon the large night tables that embrace the bed whose off-white, textured, arced headboard crowns the collection. The comforter ensemble matches the fabric on the window treatments, and multiple throw-pillows accent the décor. Similarly, an array of blue and white pillows on the window seat complete the overall decoration. As the 70-year old man lies in the bed watching the fan swirl lazily on its mount from the vaulted ceiling, he ponders about bedrooms.  

                                                        

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Crusader   

As of late I find myself to be a Crusader.  I don’t carry a lance or mace; my weaponry just includes this blog, Email and whatever else comes in handy.  

As some followers of www.Jackspotpourri.com may recall, I was having some difficulty in getting the community in which I live to properly clean my sidewalk.  Recently, I became aware that the community’s sidewalks would be power-washed next month and that once-yearly cleanings would be replaced with twice-yearly cleanings.  It is claimed that all of that would have happened anyway, but whether or not that is the case, it’s nice to believe my efforts were in some tiny way influential. 

Also mentioned in the blog has been my objection to the sale of local NPR station WXEL to Classical South Florida and the resulting diminishing of NPR news and interview programming as well as local and public service programming available to Palm Beach County residents.  As of now, I have registered a strong complaint with the Federal Communications Commission and am attempting to gather further support from the Palm Beach County Commission and my Representative in the Congress, Ted Deutch. 

It would be nice to also have the support of Congressmen Rooney and West, many of whose constituents reside in the County, but it has been my experience that Congressmen ignore any communications from those who do not vote in their district. Specifically, WXEL’s sale has taken away the pleasure I formerly experienced by being able to listen to NPR’s “Morning Edition” as I sipped my morning coffee.  That’s what got me started.  I will keep you advised of any progress on this issue on which I continue to be a Crusader.  

Finally, there is a local issue in my community concerning its recently purchased pool furniture.  I have strongly stated my position, and that of many other residents, on the Community’s Message Board, by Email and at meetings, continuing my role as a Crusader.  

Jack Lippman


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The Man With The Bright Pink Cane

Harvey Sage

(Read Harvey’s e-book, Tuna Food, available on Amazon for under $3).

Killing President Yusaff, the first Muslim American president, would be easy. Abdul ridiculed all the defensive security attempts at protection. His method was fool proof and easy, as befitted the Arab Master assassin. As soon as Yusaff stepped to the podium he was a dead man.

Approaching the building housing his perch, Abdul nodded to his temporary neighbors. He’d be leaving them soon after the deed he’d been hired for was done. He walked with a cane, a bright pink cane, painted by him to focus others’ attention from his face and non-descript build. Abdul’s way was to blend. He’d been blending for years, a craft he learned as a child in the mountains of Pakistan. Blend, kill, and disappear. He nodded and entered the building, tightly clutching the small package to his chest. This piece was essential, the final element in the weapon’s construction. The package contained a small block of something called C-4.

Abdul placed the components on the table and spent two hours fitting and fixing till it was complete. He went to his window and looked at the Washington Monument two miles away. From this height it was easy to see he had a straight run. With the GPS settings and the electric motor humming, this was cake. He sat, admired his completed handiwork, praised Allah, and ate supper.

President Yusaff knew he was a top priority target of the Brotherhood. They hated him with a fervent intensity exceeding their hate for Christians, Jews, and other infidels. Yusaff was one of their own who didn’t subscribe to Shariah law. He was an apostate who melded in with the majority of people in the world, a reasonable man, a kind and gentle man who acted like he was Christ’s ambassador to chaotic earth. He was popular in the US and throughout the world, always preferring reason and logic to force and weaponry. The Brotherhood seethed, hired Abdul and paid him to eliminate the son of satan who stood in their way for world mastery. For, truth be told, because of this turncoat Muslim and his ways of peace, people were starting to like followers of Islam again. Even the long standing Israeli Palestinian feud was on the verge of being amicably resolved. “Praise Allah, this cannot be allowed to come to pass! “screamed the Brotherhood whose concept of negotiating was to froth at the mouth and spit in the other side’s face before slitting their throats.

Yusaff bravely confronted the risks and made plans to address the nation on Memorial Day at the Mall. Security would be tight and all possible means to protect the president would be employed. Every imaginable exigency had been thought of and addressed.

All except one.

Memorial Day was overcast. There was a threat of thunderstorms. Undeterred, a million souls gathered at the Mall to praise and hear the President. Security kept searching, seeking and looking for viable threats. The media was out in full force. And the man with the bright pink cane went out for a stroll smiling at his neighbors. He looked at the ominous sky but felt no threat to his plan. His weapon worked well - rain or shine. Praise Allah.

President Yusaff prepared himself for the speech and the following festivities marking this memorable day. After checking on security, latest menace internet traffic, his tie and his hair he did one more thing. Yusaff fell to his face, praying to Allah for guidance and protection as he did His will. Then he rose, girded for battle, a messenger of peace against the satanic forces of violence.

Abdul set the GPS coordinates on the weapon’s computer, double checked that the half ounce payload of C-4 explosive was firmly fastened and then started the electric motor. He watched the TV coverage of the event and saw the president, surrounded by his secret service people approach the podium. Soon. Abdul smiled. The apostate was throwing caution to the winds. Surely he must realize his death was imminent!

As the president began his heartfelt speech Abdul opened his window and launched the drone, destination the bullet proofed glass enclosure surrounding President Yusaff. Upon impact the C-4 would blow the whole shebang to smithereens. There wouldn’t be enough of Yusaff left to fill a spoon. He went back to the TV to watch the fun.

Weather people don’t always get it right. On this day their prediction of clouds but no rain was mainly correct. By chance, laws of nature, or act of Allah there was a bolt of lightning that came from the sky and struck a weird looking flying object. Some observers noticed the sharp change in the drone’s trajectory. Its GPS coordinates, so carefully set by Abdul, were nullified and, formatted by the manufacturer to aid retrieval of errant drones, did a reciprocal. In other words, it went back to its launching site.

Boy, was Abdul ever surprised! Horrified is a better word. Grabbing his cane Abdul flailed away at the incoming flying bomb. He cursed both the drone and Allah with his last frenzied breath.

Later, after police investigated what was left of the goo-splattered loft, they found a piece of hand clutching a bright pink cane.

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JL

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