Ian Williams Anger can be power now build on it by Ian Williams Monday, November 28th, 2011 Sometimes, you

u just have to be there. I was in Wall Street when the protestors w ere allowed into the park minus sleeping bags and tents. As they waited while bi llionaire Mayor Mike Bloomberg went jurisdiction shopping to find a tame judge t o overthrow the earlier verdict that had ordered him to stop the eviction, it wa s fascinating to see the interaction between the occupiers and the public servan ts he had ordered to evict them. The normal cops, despite their brand-new riot he lmets, were friendly, laughing, bantering with the demonstrators, who had sedulous ly reached out to them, real as public workers threatened by budget cuts. In the background were the thugs, the senior officers. Old school cops with bull horns on this occasion, but pepper sprays on others, whose whole demeanour refle cted their visceral distaste for the occupiers and all they stood for. And behind them, of course, stood Bloomberg and the political leaders of most major cities in the United States, 18 of whom had co-ordinated a nationwide crackdown. Bloom berg, who has made his billions from Wall Street, was under particularly heavy s ocial and political pressure to remove the occupation that had started such a global avalanche of protest. However, Bloomberg and his cops would have served the bankers better by ignoring their whims. Instead, they inadvertently did the Occupy Wall Street movement a big favour, almost on a par with when a senior officer gratuitously pepper-spray ed three women in the early days. Even though the occupiers had had training fro m Norwegian ski-troop veterans and Alpinists about cold weather, New Yorks cold wou ld really have demanded Winter Soldiers, as Tom Payne would have recognised. The f orced evacuation made them honourable victims, who can build on their own conside rable success, which exceeded their wildest original expectations. The nationwide over-reaction of the police renewed support and interest. Their success is as a catalyst, igniting the various elements which had accumula ted. In some ways, the most puzzling question has been the deafening sound of si lence around the financial crisis. The occupation has brought the issue of inequ ality out from the vaults where the politicians, pundits and their plutocratic p ayrollers had hidden it. For example, quite possibly inspired by OWS, New York Judge Jed S Rakoff has bee n examining a Securities and Exchange Commission settlement with Citibank. Like most such boilerplate agreements, the defrauding companies agree to pay a cash s ettlement, without admitting to any wrongdoing. Rakoff has been having fun. Instead of rubber-stamping the settlement, he read it. Like all the other previous settlements, it included a promise not to do it again. Y et the SEC attorney had to admit that they had never ever brought any company be fore a judge for contempt of court when, over and over again, they broke the law . Set to a backdrop of a wacko Supreme Court decision that corporations are people when it comes to free speech or bribing politicians with campaign donations, the c ontrast with their lack of personhood when it comes to the criminal law has been rankling. So where does it go from here? One can only hope that now they are freed from th e chores of housekeeping and eccentric rituals of bonding hitherto involved in m aintaining the occupation, the OWS cadre does not go further into manifesto writ

ing. Some of the draft versions that have emerged read like pastiches of John Clee ses band of revolutionaries in Monty Pythons Life of Brian politically correct psy chobabble devoid of effective content. In many ways, that is better than if they knuckled down to serious manifesto-wri ting, which would have alienated not just the 57 varieties on the left, but all t he others who are united in detestation for what Wall Street has done, but disag ree about almost anything else. Despite the understandable disdain for the American political machine, anyone who is touch with reality will realise that motivating people to vote and forcing e lected politicians to take notice is the only way out of the impasse. If the Tea Party, representing a cultist minority, can wield so much influence over the Re publicans, then the sentiments represented by OWS can surely find expression in t he Democratic Party whose time-serving fifth columnists have so often represente d corporate interests. OWS can maintain the anger. It is up to others to focus it electorally and ensure that it is not dissipated in apocalyptic angry visions , or new age fatuities. One aspect of that is re-electing Barack Obama. At the time of his election, I w rote that he was not the second coming: but he wasnt the Anti-Christ. The Republi can line-up, beneath the clownish presentations, makes Lucifers lot look angelic.