"99% Spring Movement Ignores Gandhi and King".... (OWS Declaration Invokes Gandhi and King)

(I wonder how this gap can be bridged?)


Ignoring Empire: King, Gandhi, and the 99% Spring
by Brian Terrell

‘99% Spring’ has been declared. ‘This spring, we will … rise up in the tradition of our forefathers and foremothers. We will not be complicit with the suffering in our families for another year. We will prepare ourselves for sustained non-violent direct action.’ The organizers of this effort list the many economic injustices and perils faced by America today and propose to train 100,000 activists ‘to join together in the work of reclaiming our country’ with methods of nonviolent direct action ‘We will take non-violent action in the spirit of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Gandhi to forge a new destiny one block, one neighborhood, one city, one state at a time.’

99% Spring will address such crucial issues as shrinking pension funds, skyrocketing student loans, foreclosures, budget cuts to schools, a poisoned environment, diminished collective bargaining rights, all ‘a result of rampant greed—the deliberate manipulation of our democracy and our economy by a tiny minority in the 1%, by those who amass ever more wealth and power at our expense.’ Some other critical matters, however, will not be addressed by 99% Spring.

The organizers of 99% Spring do not find room in their list of our country’s problems to include the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, spiraling spending military spending, new nuclear weapons built, or the role of militarism and colonialism on the economy and the toll it exacts on America’s working people in general. They pledge that they ‘will not be complicit with the suffering in our families,’ but do not express the same refusal to be complicit in the suffering of families in Afghanistan, Colombia, Palestine or the many other nations blighted, threatened and murdered by the same forces that 99% Spring decries here at home. Not to give the war as much as footnote is a startling omission, especially as recent polls show that a growing majority of Americans are against it. This omission may define 99% Spring more clearly than the proclamations surrounding it.

I know that neglecting to mention militarism might be justified to the satisfaction of many as a deliberate strategic choice. Of course, no one can do everything and no one can address every injustice. I accept, too, that in building a coalition that includes some labor unions that promote armaments contracts and organizations like MoveOn,org that regularly support candidates for office with decidedly pro-war agendas, silence on the threat of the military industrial congressional complex is required for the sake of unity. However prudent it may seem, though, this omission raises serious questions.

What is all the more disconcerting is that 99% Spring claims the spirit of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Gandhi. Neither of these teachers held that justice at home was possible in a country engaged in murder and thievery abroad

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Along with the spirits of Gandhi and King, 99% Spring invokes the example of Occupy Wall Street, a movement in which in many ways the words and work of these two prophets do resonate. In their ‘Declaration of Occupation of New York City,’ adopted by General Assemblies around the world, OWS lists these among the crimes of corporatism: ‘They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad. They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas. They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government contracts.’

More at:

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/03/29-0