the hazard of common interests

Amy Goodman:

...The bailed-out Wall Street megabank JP Morgan Chase gave a tax-deductible $4.6m donation to the New York City Police Foundation, which has protesters asking: who is the NYPD paid to protect, the public or the corporations? The 99% or the 1%?

Marina Sitrin, part of Occupy Wall Street's legal working group, told me that the protest was going to be based at Chase Plaza, but the NYPD pre-emptively closed it. The protesters moved to Zuccotti Park, which they renamed Liberty Square.

According to an undated press release on JP Morgan Chase's website, in response to the $4.6m donation:

"New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly sent CEO and Chairman Jamie Dimon a note expressing 'profound gratitude' for the company's donation."

Given the size of the donation, and the police harassment and violence against the protesters, we must question how Kelly shows his gratitude.

But dust-ups like this tend to attract players on all sides:

...The process through which a potentially powerful movement may be co-opted and controlled is slight and subtle. If Occupy Wall Street hopes to strive for the 99%, it must not submit to the 1%, in any capacity.

The Occupy movement must prevent what happened to the Tea Party movement to happen to it. Whatever ideological stance you may have, the Tea Party movement started as a grass roots movement, largely a result of anti-Federal Reserve protests. They were quickly co-opted with philanthropic money and political party endorsements.

For the Occupy Movement to build up and become a true force for change, it must avoid and reject the organizational and financial ‘contributions’ of institutions: be they political parties, non-profits, or philanthropic foundations. The efforts are subtle, but effective: they seek to organize, professionalize, and institutionalize a movement, push forward the issues they desire, which render the movement useless for true liberation, as these are among the very institutions the movement should be geared against.

This is not simply about “Wall Street,” this is about POWER. Those who have power, and those who don’t. When those who have power offer a hand in your struggle, their other hand holds a dagger. Remain grassroots, remain decentralized, remain outside and away from party politics, remain away from financial dependence. Freedom is not merely in the aim, it’s in the action...

Ah, the Ring of Power problem. In order to be free of the Ring, you have to find a few hobbits to carry it to Mount Doom and actually toss it in. But little people who want to stay little in the world of the Big Time are very hard to find.