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Excerpt from the Alter.net transcript of the Moyers/Hedges conversation.
BILL MOYERS: “They lost control of the park. The arrival in cold weather of individual tents, along with the numerous street people with mental impairment and addictions,” that you’re nothing if not honest in what you write, even about those people you support, “tore apart the community. Drug use as well as assaults and altercations became common.” So how is that square with what you said earlier that the Occupy Movement gave us a blueprint for how to fight back?
CHRIS HEDGES: Because this is the trajectory of all movements. You know, it’s not a linear progression upwards. And the civil rights movement is a perfect example of that. All sorts of failures, whether it’s in Albany, Mississippi or anywhere else. You know, there were all sorts of moments within the civil rights movement where King wasn’t even sure he was going to be able to hold it together. And what happened in Zuccotti is like what happened in 1765 when they rose up against the Stamp Act.
That became the kind of dress rehearsal for the rebellion of 1775, 1776, 1905. The uprising in Russia became again the kind of dress rehearsal. These movements, this process, it takes a very long time. I think the Occupy was movement and I was there.
I mean, I certainly understand why it imploded and its many faults and how at that size, consensus doesn’t work, everything else. And yet it triggered something. It triggered a kind of understanding of systems of power. It, I think, gave people a sense of their own personal power. Once we step out into a group and articulate these injustices and these grievances to a wider public, and of course they resonated with a mainstream. I don’t think it’s over. I don’t know how it’s going to mutate and change, one never knows. But, I think that it’s imperative that we keep that narrative alive by being out there because things are not getting better.
The state is not responding in a rational way to what’s happening. If they really wanted to break the back of the opposition movement, rather than sort of eradicating the 18 encampments, they would’ve gone back and looked at Roosevelt. There would’ve been forgiveness of all student debt, $1 trillion, there would’ve been a massive jobs program targeted at those under the age of 25, and there would’ve been a moratorium on more closures and bank repossessions of homes.
That would’ve been a rational response. Instead, the state has decided to speak exclusively in the language of force and violence to try and crush this movement while people continue this dissent.”
Occupy is far from over. Raising consciousness is but one step in the game plan.
Finding a way out of the the seemingly permanent global economic crisis is going to require looking at the factors that got us there. Noam Chomsky opines that the downfall really started in the 1970’s and has been on an ever increasing spiral of ruin ever since. One of the interesting parts of his article has to do with the division of the people into the Plutocrats and the Precariat.
“Plutonomy refers to the rich, those who buy luxury goods and so on, and that’s where the action is. They claimed that their plutonomy index was way outperforming the stock market. As for the rest, we set them adrift. We don’t really care about them. We don’t really need them. They have to be around to provide a powerful state, which will protect us and bail us out when we get into trouble, but other than that they essentially have no function. These days they’re sometimes called the “precariat” – people who live a precarious existence at the periphery of society. Only it’s not the periphery anymore. It’s becoming a very substantial part of society in the United States and indeed elsewhere. And this is considered a good thing.
So, for example, Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, at the time when he was still “Saint Alan” – hailed by the economics profession as one of the greatest economists of all time (this was before the crash for which he was substantially responsible) – was testifying to Congress in the Clinton years, and he explained the wonders of the great economy that he was supervising. He said a lot of its success was based substantially on what he called “growing worker insecurity”. If working people are insecure, if they’re part of the precariat, living precarious existences, they’re not going to make demands, they’re not going to try to get better wages, they won’t get improved benefits. We can kick ’em out, if we don’t need ’em. And that’s what’s called a “healthy” economy, technically speaking. And he was highly praised for this, greatly admired.
So the world is now indeed splitting into a plutonomy and a precariat – in the imagery of the Occupy movement, the 1 per cent and the 99 per cent. Not literal numbers, but the right picture. Now, the plutonomy is where the action is and it could continue like this.
If it does, the historic reversal that began in the 1970s could become irreversible. That’s where we’re heading. And the Occupy movement is the first real, major, popular reaction that could avert this. But it’s going to be necessary to face the fact that it’s a long, hard struggle. You don’t win victories tomorrow. You have to form the structures that will be sustained, that will go on through hard times and can win major victories. And there are a lot of things that can be done.”
Can we stem the tide? We must, otherwise our struggle will become the struggle of our children.
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