Obama's Osawatomie speech

"Here, finally, is the Barack Obama many of us thought we had elected in 2008." -- Robert Reich

If you had any doubts that the Occupy Movement was impacting the presidential elections, check out President Obama's Osawatomie (Kansas) speech made yesterday as protesters occupied the National Mall. Obama channeled trust-busting Teddy Roosevelt in a rousing bit of populism aimed directly at Wall Street greed and the growing wealth gap that remains the biggest threat to democracy.

Inequality...distorts our democracy. It gives an outsized voice to the few who can afford high-priced lobbyists and unlimited campaign contributions, and runs the risk of selling out our democracy to the highest bidder. And it leaves everyone else rightly suspicious that the system in Washington is rigged against them - that our elected representatives aren’t looking out for the interests of most Americans.

The speech was hailed by liberal economist Robert Reich as "the most important economic speech of his presidency." Reich's in-depth analysis of the speech ends with a most telling statement:

"Here, finally, is the Barack Obama many of us thought we had elected in 2008."

Obama tipped his hat to the occupiers. But in a strange attempt to be balanced, he lumps them together with the T-Party that was the spawn of the very forces the president seems to be criticizing.

Throughout the country, it has sparked protests and political movements - from the Tea Party to the people who have been occupying the streets of New York and other cities.

Okay, I admit that there's not much there there. That's typical of a timid Obama who has always carefully distanced himself from his activist base and from black and Latino communities (except when foot soldiers are needed to turn out the vote). But at least he's recognizing Occupy as a force in other ways besides Justice Dept. phone calls to 18 city mayors, advising them how to disburse the 99-ers from city parks. Hopefully, by next November, any Democratic politicians who hope to get elected will have to at least give positive recognition to OWS and its leadership in the fight against the Wall Street profiteers.

While I'll leave it to the progressive economists like Reich and Krugman to analyze the entire speech, there are many parts of it that are troubling and confusing. One is the "New Nationalism" theme which smacks of saber-rattling (TR's imperialistic specialty). Obama even invokes the Race To The Top theme --not about test-driven school reform this time-- but about global competition with China. The speech offers little hope to those of us who see the Afghan war not only as the main threat to world peace and stability, but as one of the prime sources of the current economic crisis.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Visiting a wealthy suburban school

"This is a school? I thought it was a museum." -- Terence Lewis, 17, a senior at Furness High in South Philadelphia

Chicago Rep. Cynthia Soto

“We need explanations, specific explanations” for the decisions to close or restructure the schools. -- Chicago News Co-Op

GOP candidate Buddy Roemer

"I believe that Mitt Romney represents the one percent and I believe that Newt Gingrich is the lobbyist for the one percent." -- ThinkProgress

Operation 'Urban Shield'

The use of anti-terror techniques to suppress a civilian protest complemented harsh police measures demonstrated across the country against the nationwide “Occupy” movement, from firing tear gas canisters and rubber bullets into unarmed crowds to blasting demonstrators with the LRAD sound cannon. -- Max Blumenthal, MondoWeiss

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Students from Cleveland High visit the Occupy L.A. site at City Hall to ask questions for their civics class.

Occupy L.A.

"It fits in with everything we're doing," said Rebecca Williams, an English literature teacher at the Reseda school. "It's a real-life movement — history in the making." --L.A. Times

Education lagging for Mexican students in N.Y.

“We are stanching an educational hemorrhage, but only partially,” said Robert C. Smith, a sociology professor at the City University of New York who studies the local Mexican population. “The worst outcomes are still possible." -- New York Times

Call him 'Grover'

"...has Bill Gates become the liberals' Grover Norquist? Just as Norquist, elected by and accountable to no one, tied the hands of the "supercommittee" with his no-new-taxes pledge, Gates undermines the authority of school boards with his pro-charter, pro-privatization contract." Philly.com

Condi Rice on Racism

"It is a birth defect with which this country was born out of slavery; we're never really going to be race blind.." -- Face the Nation

Emma Sullivan (quoting Gandhi)

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Student, refuses to apologize to Kan. Gov. after tweet

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

University of California, Davis Police Lt. John Pike uses pepper spray to move Occupy UC Davis protesters while blocking their exit from the school's quad Friday

Charles J. Kelly

A former Baltimore Police Department lieutenant who wrote the department's use of force guidelines, said pepper spray is a "compliance tool" that can be used on subjects who do not resist, and is preferable to simply lifting protesters "When you start picking up human bodies you risk hurting them... What I'm looking at is fairly standard police procedure..." -- Daily Kos

Newt Gingrich tells jobless at OWS

'Go get a job right after you take a bath,'" continued Gingrich, to loud applause from the audience. -- At Family Forum in Iowa

Best Practices aren't...

"There is no such thing as best practices... One of the most common reasons for pursuing best practices in a given area is to avoid having to 'reinvent the wheel.' Think about it like this – if nobody ever reinvented the wheel, we’d still be riding around on wooden rims." -- Mike Myatt at Forbes

UFW co-founder, Delores Huerta 

“Yes we have got to occupy Wall Street. We’ve go to do that, but we’ve also got to occupy the school board, right? And we’ve got to occupy the city council, right? And we’ve got occupy the Congress, right? Because this is where the decisions are made; where our money is going to go... Sí se puede — we can do it.” -- Democracy Now!

What? Attacks on Occupiers were coordinated by Obama's people?

Mayor Quan with peace dove in hand.

Yes they were. The simultaneous and unprovoked, often violent attacks on the anti-Wall St. protesters these past three weeks, were the product of a well-coordinated plan, originating inside the Obama administration. I had suspected as much when I learned that Mayor Jean Quan was at the White House the morning of the violent police assault on peaceful protesters in Oakland which resulted in the wounding of an Iraq Marine veteran.

Rick Ellis, at the Minneapolis Top News Examiner, quotes a Justice Dept. official:

According to this official, in several recent conference calls and briefings, local police agencies were advised to seek a legal reason to evict residents of tent cities, focusing on zoning laws and existing curfew rules. Agencies were also advised to demonstrate a massive show of police force, including large numbers in riot gear. In particular, the FBI reportedly advised on press relations, with one presentation suggesting that any moves to evict protesters be coordinated for a time when the press was the least likely to be present.

Quan admitted in a BBC interview, that her raid on the Oakland Occupy encampment, came after a conference call with leaders in 18 cities. Quan, who at first was apologetic about the violent raids, now claims she ordered them because "anarchists" had taken over leadership of the movement.

Quan's actions have now been repudiated by long-time adviser and friend Dan Siegel, who has resigned in protest.

One interesting sidebar: It appears that Justice Dept. and White House PR team waited until Obama was out of D.C. and traveling abroad before moving against the 99 percenters. Was this to shield him from the fallout once the story broke?

Ohio leads the way: Pay attention Obama

"Ohio voters just gave public school teachers something they haven’t received in a while — respect," writes Valerie Strauss at the Answer Sheet.  

Across the country, several other Republican-backed measures were also dealt setbacks, including a crackdown on voting rights in Maine. In Wake County, N.C., voters dealt a blow to the racist Republican clique that had taken over the school board by electing a progressive Democrat and educator, Kevin Hill. In Mississippi, voters rejected an amendment to the State Constitution that would have banned virtually all abortions and some forms of birth control by declaring a fertilized human egg to be a legal person. Michigan voters recalled Rep. Paul Scott who was a front man for T-Party gov, Rick Snyder and a pal of Michelle Rhee. The new law repealed in Ohio would have severely limited the bargaining rights of more than 350,000 teachers, firefighters, police officers and other public employees.

Lots of credit for its defeat goes to the Occupy Movement and the unions for re-framing the current national political debate and turning out the troops. Big losers were the Koch Bros. and other corporate interests who spent millions to pass the union-busting bill.

While the movement is non-partisan and crosses party lines, especially in Ohio, the trend is becoming clearer. The victory in Ohio, like those in Wisconsin, is energizing the labor movement and should help Democrats in 2012. But today's Democratic Party, especially its big-city mayors, appears to be as nervous about the movement as are Republicans. In Chicago, for example, Mayor Emanuel has a similar approach towards unions, teachers and other public employees as Republican governors in Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan and New Jersey. Until last night, Obama was silent on the events in Ohio.  His achilles heel is his failed education policies which amount to little more than a Bush re-hash of austerity, privatization and mass teacher firings, while using the rhetoric of reform. There needs to be a shake up in the Dept. of Education and a rethinking of anti-teacher and anti-union Race To The Top.

This morning, in what one AP journalist called, "a signal of the issue's national resonance", White House spokesman Jay Carney issued a statement saying President Barack Obama "congratulates the people of Ohio for standing up for workers and defeating efforts to strip away collective bargaining rights, and commends the teachers, firefighters, nurses, police officers and other workers who took a stand to defend those rights."

Remember Mitt Romney visited Ohio recently and said he was not sure where he stood on the issue. A day later, he said he stood against the labor unions and collective bargaining rights for teachers and other public employees. After yesterday's shellacking, Ohio's T-Party Gov. Kasich was contrite and is now claims he will throw his support the state's workers. Here's hoping Pres. Obama is watching all this closely and drawing the appropriate lessons. His road to victory in 2012 should be apparent by now.

Occupy Movement: Reframing the school reform debate

Taking it to the DOE

The Occupy Movement in NY has refocused the whole school reform narrative and has transformed power relationships. Where only a few months ago Mayor Bloomberg and his hand-picked administrators were able to exercise control over "public" meetings, silencing opposition from teachers, parents and community members, and dominating the mainstream media, the new movement has changed things.

Yesterday, Occupy the DOE forces made their voices heard. NY1 reports [Video]:

 A couple hundred activists belonging to a group called "Occupy the DOE," including many teachers, spent Monday night on the steps of the Department of Education headquarters in Lower Manhattan to shout demands for improving the schools. Other DOE employees, public school students and their parents also took part in the protest.

This morning's  N.Y.Times quotes Occupy organizer Leia Petty who says the grass-roots group started as a grade-in last month in Zuccotti Park to address a growing list of issues with the Education Department that included overcrowded classrooms, teacher layoffs and school closings. Yet after the Oct. 25 meeting, it was clear that Occupy the DOE struck a chord with the public, and a nerve with the city’s top education officials.

"We want to create an agenda for the 99 percent, to strategize actions,” said Ms. Petty, 30, a high school guidance counselor from Bushwick, Brooklyn. “We came together today to realize that agenda.”

The Washington Post Business Section and Bloomberg News are also keeping a close watch on the Occupy Movement.

I heart New York

Oakland fallout

Call for a general strike

Give lots of credit to Oakland protesters for having the courage and discipline to regroup  peacefully last night in the amphitheater in front of City Hall. Thankfully they haven't let the outrageous assault by Mayor Quan's cops terrorize them or divert them from their mission. It would be too easy to make police brutality THE issue now. Instead the 99ers spent several hours planning for a meeting today to discuss the mechanics for a general strike next week.

The Oakland Tribune reports:

After Tuesday night's violence, hundreds of Oakland residents appeared to have come out to help transform Occupy Oakland from a relatively disorganized, loose-knit movement to a broad-based community drive to implement a general strike. What the protesters are hoping for is the support of unions, teachers, students and workers to shut down the city next Wednesday.

"I think the police brutality drew a lot of people out of the hills and into the streets," said Josh Chavanne, 29, a freelance Web designer from Oakland. "There is nothing like a little inhumanity to turn on people's humanity."

Who's advising Quan?

I can't help wondering who advised Mayor Quan -- "I've got it. Let's attack protest with rubber bullets, gas, and flash grenades. That'll work." -- Quan who is now facing a growing recall movement, denies she was in on the planning for, what Morning Joe's Mike Barnicle called, "a police riot." It turns out that Tuesday morning, while plans were being made for the attack on the protests, Quan was actually at the White House on "city business."