OCCUPY Your City

Brave New Films has produced a great video. Pass it on:



The growth of this movement is generating mounting concern within American ruling circles. This was expressed Tuesday in an article by New York Times financial columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin, who quoted a Wall Street CEO worried about his “personal safety” and warned that the protest constituted “a warning shot about the kind of civil unrest that may emerge—as we’ve seen in some European countries—if our economy continues to struggle.”

It is not the bankers who have to fear for their personal safety, but the demonstrators, who have been subjected repeatedly to police brutality and mass arrests for exercising their free speech rights.

Nonetheless, Sorkin’s warning about civil unrest is entirely justified. These are among the first prominent social protests in the United States in more than 30 years. Most of those involved in the occupations have never seen significant struggles for social change in their lifetimes. Coming on the heels of the mass demonstrations in Wisconsin last February, they signal the reemergence of open class struggle in the United States, the center of world capitalism.