Occupy Wall Street: will the real Tea Party please stand up? ... by gimleteye

Yesterday's New York Times coverage of the protest movement, Occupy Wall Street, ends with a quote: "... there is a tension between this emotionally powerful movement... and the emptiness of the message itself so far."

The message isn't empty. The live stream feed of the movement has a compelling video, "Which Side Are You On". The video shows the massive police / robocop response to the protesters at the G-20 meeting in Pittsburgh. It recalls one of the most shameful moments in recent Miami history: the police response to the FTAA protests in 2003 when school teachers and retirees and students were herded on the streets downtown.

On the one hand, the police -- armed to the teeth-- were only doing their job. But what was that job? It wasn't just to enforce law and order. It was also to lend authority to suppression of a populist movement challenging a political and economic status quo that deformed our democracy.

In contrast to the free trade opponents, it is noteworthy that the Tea Party -- a political movement that presumably arose after the 2008 election -- is mainly the Republican Party and has been nowhere visible in the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations. As currently constructed, the Tea Party responds to funders from the radical right, including the Koch empire (that was featured in two fascinating news reports yesterday. One, in Counterpunch, deserves wide distribution: Koch Entertained Justice Thomas At His Private Club.)

Yesterday in Huffington Post, Josh Silver writes, "For the past forty years, the expansion of unchecked corporate power has taken over Washington and state capitals. Armies of industry funded lobbyists, PR firms, think tanks, fake "Astroturf" groups and billions in campaign contributions have quietly corrupted a vulnerable system of government and seized control.

This juggernaut has decimated basic consumer protections and created the biggest gap between rich and poor since the Great Depression. It created the financial meltdown and the Great Recession. It is why nearly 50 million Americans lack health insurance. It has created a political system that is more like a heroin addict: dependent on billions of dollars that determine who gets elected, which laws get passed, and which don't. Both major political parties are addicted and beholden."

Silver finds hope in a meeting last week, sponsored by Harvard Law School: "Conference on the Constitutional Convention". The co-chairs of the meeting, Larry Lessig and Mark McKinnon write: "Even if 34 states don’t call for a convention, history teaches that a real threat is often enough to get Congress to act. The only amendment in our history that changed the structure of Congress (the 17th, making the Senate an elected body) was proposed by Congress because the states were close (just one state short) to calling for a convention. If nothing else, the possibility of a body they can’t control is enough to get Congress to pay attention." (Watch Lessig's "Are Corporations People?" on YouTube.)

Citing that 76 percent of Republicans and 85 percent of Democrats opposed the Citizens United decision by the US Supreme Court-- that unleashed a tsunami of special interest money into a campaign and electoral system that is already badly deformed-- Silver calls for "the right and left (to) abandon the polarizing rhetoric from our leaders and our TV screens and join hands in support of a 21st century democracy reform agenda that reclaims our government from moneyed special interests. The future of our nation depends on it."

There is a message of hope and it is not an empty message.