After 10 years of war, a massive bail-out of Wall Street, and the worst recession since the Great Depression, Washington has run out of money.  As the pro-Israel lobby’s frantic efforts to foment war with Iran increase, the Obama administration is finally winding down the ill-conceived, immoral, counter-productive, and unsuccessful but hideously destructive wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  The U.S. military is reducing troop levels, not hiring new recruits.  Unable to find work, many Americans have thrown themselves into an effort re-invent the corrupt system that is failing them.

In a word, Occupy Wall Street, which owes so much to the Arab Spring, was – and is – brilliant.  It has reinvigorated a flagging antiwar movement and rekindled interest in progressive ideas and ideals.  On a conceptual level, with its emphasis on nonviolent protest, direct democracy, and direct action in support of economic justice, honest government, accountability, and an end to oppression, exploitation, and war, OWS has shown itself to be everything that official Washington and Wall Street are not.  Though corporate media outlets were slow to recognize the importance, authenticity, and vigor of the new popular movement, once they did the national security apparatus quickly began to coordinate efforts by municipal, county, and state law enforcement agencies around the nation to stifle OWS dissent.

In many cities, including New York, Seattle, and Oakland, unnecessary violence has characterized law enforcement reactions to OWS encampments and activities.  New York Police Department Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna, who was filmed pepper spraying, without provocation, a group of women standing in a police pen near Union Square on September 24, seemed to set the nasty tone.

CounterPunch author Pam Martens reported on October 10 that, “If you’re a Wall Street behemoth, there are endless opportunities to privatize profits and socialize losses beyond collecting trillions of dollars in bailouts from taxpayers. One of the ingenious methods that has remained below the public’s radar was started by the Rudy Giuliani administration in New York City in 1998. It’s called the Paid Detail Unit and it allows the New York Stock Exchange and Wall Street corporations, including those repeatedly charged with crimes, to order up a flank of New York’s finest with the ease of dialing the deli for a pastrami on rye.

“The corporations pay an average of $37 an hour (no medical, no pension benefit, no overtime pay) for a member of the NYPD, with gun, handcuffs and the ability to arrest. The officer is indemnified by the taxpayer, not the corporation.

“New York City gets a 10 percent administrative fee on top of the $37 per hour paid to the police. The City’s 2011 budget called for $1,184,000 in Paid Detail fees, meaning private corporations were paying wages of $11.8 million to police participating in the Paid Detail Unit. The program has more than doubled in revenue to the city since 2002.”

The taxpayer pays for each officer’s training, his uniform, his gun, and will pick up the legal tab for lawsuits resulting from official acts by police personnel following the illegal instructions of their corporate masters. Lawsuits have already sprung up from the program, according to Martens.  Bologna has been sued by OWS protesters.

Oakland police shot Scott Olsen, 24, in the head with a tear gas canister on October 25.  Olsen, a member of Veterans For Peace, was peacefully protesting when he was shot.  The former Marine who served two tours of duty in Iraq was hospitalized with a concussion and head trauma.

In Seattle, police pepper-sprayed 84-year-old Dorly Rainey, a 19-year-old pregnant woman, and a priest involved in nonviolent protest on November 15.

“Cops shoved their bicycles into the crowd.  . . .  If it had not been for my hero [Iraq Vet Caleb Walez] I would have been down on the ground and trampled,” Rainey told reporters.

In December, the Justice Department found reasonable cause to believe that Seattle PD engages in a pattern or practice of excessive force in violation of the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994. Oakland PD is currently under investigation for excessive use of force. NYPD is facing persistent calls for investigation of a stop and frisk policy that disproportionately targets Blacks and Latinos, while civil rights groups are calling for an investigation of NYPD’s monitoring of Muslims across the Northeast.

During a mid-November interview, Oakland mayor Jean Quan told the BBC that the crackdown on OWS was a coordinated effort involving the mayors of other major cities.

“I was recently on a conference call with 18 cities across the country who had the same situation where what had started as a political movement and a political encampment ended up being an encampment no longer in control by the people who started them,” said Ms. Quan.

In an article posted on the World Socialist Website, Andre Damon reported on November 17 that a, “spokesperson for the U.S. Conference of Mayors told Mother Jones magazine Wednesday that the call Ms. Quan mentioned was one of numerous conference calls—which included mayors and top police brass—that focused on discussing “efforts cities have made to accommodate the demonstrators and maintain public health and safety,” a statement that the real Mother Jones, labor activist and organizer Mary Harris, would have dismissed as ludicrous.

Nationwide, OWS arrests number well over 6,000 according to published reports, but given that the co-ordinated campaign against OWS involves copious amounts of disinformation and propaganda, all corporate media reports about OWS are best viewed with skeptical eye.

Author and journalist Chris Hedges limned the national security state’s strategy to contain, disrupt, and marginalize insurgencies and popular movements such as OWS in a February 13 Truthdig article.

“Physically eradicate the insurgents’ logistical base of operations to disrupt communication and organization. Dry up financial and material support. Create rival organizations … to discredit and purge the rebel leadership. Infiltrate the movement to foster internal divisions and rivalries. … Provoke the movement – or front groups acting in the name of the movement – to carry out actions such as vandalism and physical confrontations with the police that alienate the wider populace from the insurgency. Invent atrocities and repugnant acts supposedly carried out by the movement and plant these stories in the media. Finally, offer up a political alternative,” wrote Hedges.

OWS is a popular nonviolent movement, one which has much, much more in common with the Civil Rights Movement led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. than with the violent tactics of Tupamaros of Uruguay, the Irish Republican Army, or the Weather Underground, but some in government are determined to destroy it and are using many of the same tools they would employ were OWS a terrorist insurgency.  That mistake may prove profoundly detrimental to what remains of civil liberties in the USA.

Some municipal law enforcement agencies have avoided violence in dealing with OWS citizen activists.  Iowa, a state with a long history of progressive politics and one that has perhaps the strongest antiwar movement in the nation, responded to OWS in ways that other states and cities might profitably examine.  After Republican governor Terry Branstad refused to extend a permit for an Occupy Des Moines encampment on the state Capitol grounds, on October 9, Iowa State Patrol officers arrested more than 30 Occupiers who refused to leave.  Days later, Des Moines Mayor Frank Cownie stepped in and offered Occupy Des Moines (ODM) a city park on the opposite side of the Capitol complex.

“One of the original purposes of parks was for people to gather. We want you to feel like you can gather,” Cownie told ODM Occupiers on October 14. “I want my police force out chasing the bad guys and arresting criminals.”

The mayor’s administration and the Des Moines Police Department (DMPD) worked cooperatively with ODM for months, allowing the encampment to exist, inspecting the park regularly, talking with neighborhood residents, and respecting the rights of the Occupiers.

During November and December, as their plans for direct action during the weeks before the Iowa Caucuses advanced, Des Moines Catholic Workers and other experienced local peace and social justice activists worked with ODM Occupiers to conduct several nonviolence training sessions.

Kathleen McQuillen of the American Friends Service Committee in Des Moines, and Frank Cordaro of the Des Moines Catholic Worker facilitated a three-hour nonviolence training workshop at the Des Moines Valley Friends Meeting House on December 4.

“What we’ve got going for us is that we have collectively said to each other and to the world that, ‘We’re going to be nonviolent.  For this day, for this action, this group is going to be nonviolent.’  That empowers us,” Cordaro told activists during a small group session at Friends House.

“This is entry-level civil disobedience, there’s minimal risk.  I’m not saying that it’s insignificant, but it’s not that serious.  If we were taking on serious risk, we’d do a lot more than three hours training,” said the former priest whose anti-nuclear weapons and antiwar activism in the USA and in Europe spans decades and began long before he left the priesthood in 2003 after 18 years.

From their encampment at Stewart Square Park and rented space in a building in Des Moines’ East Village, ODM Occupiers, along with Catholic Workers, representatives of Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement, and members of several local churches and peace and justice organizations mounted a vigorous and sustained campaign of nonviolent direct action that involved several marches on and occupations of local banks and protests at both Democratic Party and Republican Party campaign events and candidate campaign headquarters during the run up to the Iowa Caucuses.  The Occupy the Iowa Caucuses coalition developed and maintained communications and cooperation with municipal law enforcement agencies in the Des Moines area, attracted over a hundred OWS movement activists from across the nation, conducted nonviolent direct actions, and staged a Peoples Caucus that attracted hundreds of activists, interested onlookers, and media personnel from around the world.

Between October 9 and January 3, local police forces made more than 100 Occupy-related arrests, and DMPD costs alone in regular and overtime pay for officers monitoring dozens of Occupy actions amounted to more than $75,000.  But the Iowa Occupiers training in and commitment to Jesusonian/Gandhian/Kingian nonviolence proved remarkably successful.  No violent confrontations between municipal police officers and occupiers occurred – not even one.  Police officers respected the rights of Occupy activists, and Occupy activists cooperated peacefully with police.

That’s an accomplishment that all Americans can be proud of.  It’s also a model that other cities and states might well examine and seek to emulate as spring approaches.

The OWS movement is evolving, and the continuing commitment to nonviolence is essential to its success.

Nonviolence, peaceful evolution rather than violent revolution, is what democracy looks like – when Americans work together for the common good during a crisis.

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On January 13th the Atlanta Jewish Times featured a column by its owner-publisher suggesting that Israel might someday need to “order a hit” on the president of the United States.

In the column, publisher Andrew Adler describes a scenario in which Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu would need to “give the go-ahead for U.S. based Mossad agents to take out a president deemed unfriendly to Israel.”

The purpose? So that the vice president could then take office and dictate U.S. policies that would help the Jewish state “obliterate its enemies.”
Adler writes that it is highly likely that the idea “has been discussed in Israel’s most inner circles.”

Numerous Jewish leaders quickly condemned Adler, who has now apologized for the column, resigned, and put the newspaper up for sale. An Israeli columnist noted that the hatred being stirred up against Obama is similar to conditions in Israel that led to the murder of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by a Jewish extremist.

Many of those criticizing Adler claim that he had defamed Israel by suggesting that it would ever do such a thing. Abe Foxman, head of the Jewish Anti-Defamation League (ADL) proclaimed: “There is absolutely no excuse, no justification, no rationalization for this kind of rhetoric. It doesn’t even belong in fiction.”

In reality, however, Adler’s expectation that Israel’s inner circles have explored such a course of action, and would be willing to undertake it, may be entirely accurate. The fact is that Israel has killed and plotted to assassinate people throughout the world; a number have been Americans. One alleged plot was chillingly similar to Adler’s suggestion.

There is evidence that in 1991 an Israeli undercover team planned to assassinate a U.S. President. The intended victim was George Herbert Walker Bush.

The first person to write of the plot was a former 11-term Republican Congressman from Illinois, Paul Findley. In a 1992 article in the Washington Report for Middle East Affairs, Findley described the alleged scheme and how it was revealed.

Findley writes that the U.S. Secret Service had received a warning that elements of Israel’s spy agency might target Bush when he went to Madrid for the opening day of the peace conference to be held that year.

According to Findley, a former Mossad agent named Victor Ostrovsky who had written a book exposing Israel’s spy agency told a group of Canadian parliamentarians that he had received secret intelligence suggesting that the “the Mossad’s hatred of Bush – and support for Vice President Dan Quayle – might lead to an attempt on the president’s life.”
Israel considered Quayle much closer to Israel than Bush. Bush had particularly angered Israel by attempting to pressure Israel into ending its illegal settlement expansion on confiscated Palestinian land by withholding loan guarantees until Israel ended this practice.

Findley writes that Ostrovsky’s statements were relayed to Findley’s friend and former colleague Paul “Pete” McCloskey, a prominent former Republican Congressman from California who had recently been named by Bush to the National and Community Service Commission.

McCloskey, a decorated Marine veteran and graduate of Stanford law school who had at one time been considered a presidential contender, flew to Ottawa to debrief Ostrovsky in person and evaluate his information.

Findley reports that Ostrovsky told McCloskey that the Mossad wanted “to do everything possible to preserve a state of war between Israel and its neighbors, assassinating President Bush, if necessary.” Ostrovsky said that a PR campaign was already underway in both Israel and the United States to “prepare public acceptance of Dan Quayle as president.”

Convinced that Ostrovsky was legitimate and his information significant, McCloskey jumped on the next flight to Washington, where he reported Ostrovsky’s intelligence to the Secret Service and State Department.

The apparent plot never went forward, perhaps because Ostrovsky and McCloskey had given it away.

Ostrovsky gave more details about the plot two years later in his 1994 book, “The Other Side of Deception: A Rogue Agent Exposes the Mossad’s Secret Agenda,” published by HarperCollins.

In the book Ostrovsky writes that an extremist group within Mossad was responsible for the plan. He says they kept the plan secret from then Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, though they believed that Shamir would have ordered such a hit himself if he hadn’t been constrained by politics. In the lead-up to Israel’s 1948 founding war, Shamir had headed up a terrorist group known for its assassinations.

In his review of Ostrovsky’s book, Ambassador Andrew Killgore, a retired career foreign service officer and publisher of the Washington Report, called the book an “insider’s probing exposé of some Middle East realities that have been hidden too long from all but Israeli eyes.”

Ostrovsky writes that the Israelis planned a “false flag” operation in which they would pin the assassination on Palestinians. They kidnapped three Palestinian militants from Beirut who were to be the scapegoats, took them to Israel’s Negev desert, and held them incommunicado.

“Meanwhile,” Killgore writes, “Mossad-generated threats on the president’s life, seemingly from Palestinians, were leaked. These were designed to throw suspicion on the organization of rogue Palestinian terrorist Abu Nidal. Names and descriptions of the three terrorists were leaked to Spanish police so that, if the plot was successful, blame would automatically fall on them.”

Ostrovsky reports that after the assassination plot was eventually cancelled, the three Palestinian prisoners were “terminated.”

If the plot had gone forward, this would not have been the first time that Israel targeted Americans for death. Nor would it be the first false flag operation.

•    In 1954 the Mossad planned to firebomb American installations, libraries, and other gathering places in Egypt. The Muslim Brotherhood was to be blamed for the attacks, thus causing American animosity toward Egypt. An accidental early detonation of one of the devices caused the plot, known as the Lavon Affair, to unravel before it could kill or mutilate the intended Americans.
•    In 1967 Israeli air and sea forces perpetrated an almost two-hour assault in which they tried to sink a US Navy ship with a crew of 294. While the attack failed to sink the ship, it succeeded in killing 34 Americans and injuring 174. Some analysts have conjectured that this was also a false-flag operation; it is highly likely that Egypt would have been blamed for the attack if the ship had gone down.
•    In 1973 Israeli fighter pilots were ordered to shoot down an unarmed U.S. reconnaissance plane (at the time the U.S. was delivering massive weaponry to Israel to prevent it from losing the “Yom Kippur” war with Egypt and Syria). While the Israelis were unable to reach the altitude of the U.S. plane, they did manage that same year to shoot down a civilian Libyan airliner that had strayed over Israeli territory, killing 104 men, women, and children. One was an American.
•    In 1990 a Canadian-American scientist and father of seven, Gerald Bull, was assassinated in Belgium. All indications are that it was an Israeli Mossad hit team that drilled five bullets into the back of his head and neck. (Israel has assassinated a number of scientists of various nationalities. The most recent is a 32-year-old Iranian father with a young son.)
•    In 2003 it came out that Israeli leaders had officially decided to undertake assassination operations on U.S. soil. An FBI spokesman, queried about the Israeli plans, said only: “This is a policy matter. We only enforce federal laws.”
•    In recent years a growing number of American peace activists have been intentionally killed, maimed, and injured by Israeli forces, including 23-year-old Rachel Corrie, 21-year-old Brian Avery, 37-year-old Tristan Anderson, 21-year-old Emily Henoschowitz, and 21-year-old Furkan Dogan.

All of this has been minimally reported in the U.S. press. While major news media from England to Israel to Australia covered the Jewish Times’ apparent endorsement of a possible Israeli assassination of a U.S. President, the scandal has been largely missing from U.S. media. Even Atlanta’s AP bureau inexplicably initially decided not to write a report on it, only finally sending out a story many days later.

Such news omissions concerning Israeli partisans are not rare. In 2004 a fanatic Israel loyalist wrote a letter saying that he was going to burn down Presbyterian churches while worshippers were inside (he was furious at the Presbyterian Church’s decision to divest from companies profiting from the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestinian land).         This grisly threat also received minimal media play.

Despite Israeli violence against Americans (even while American taxpayers have given Israel far more of our tax money than to any other nation) American presidential candidates, with the exception of Ron Paul, continue to vie over who is most devoted to Israel.

It is ironic that Adler considers Obama so bad for Israel, given that Israeli analysts have rated him second only to Mitt Romney in his fidelity to Israel. And Obama has now released a seven-minute video that may catapult our first African-American president into first place in pandering to an apartheid nation.

But perhaps he’ll be safe from assassins.

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Omar Barghouti is a member of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel’s (PACBI) Founding Committee and Steering Committee.  From January 4-12 he embarked on a speaking tour.  He spoke in Seattle, the Bay Area, Santa Cruz, Sacramento, San Diego, Phoenix, and Los Angeles.

In Seattle, he spoke about how the patches of land left for Palestinians to live on are very much like the Bantustans of former apartheid South Africa.  Some highlights of his speech include:

“Israel can colonize land, but it cannot colonize people’s minds.  Hope will always be there that Palestine will be free.  This hope cannot be taken from people…The Jewish National Fund facilitates a policy making almost all of the land of Israel “Jewish-only” land.  It’s impossible for non-Jews to buy, or rent land on 93% of the land in Israel.  The indigenous Palestinians who are citizens of Israel cannot buy this land or even lease it.

The State of California pays 3.48 billion dollars a year to support Israel.  That amount could provide 42,254 affordable housing units to Californians, or train 57,766 in “green” jobs.  3.48 Billion could provide 2,818,173 uninsured people with primary health care…Since the United Nations fails to stand up for Palestinian rights, the BDS movement was created to ask people of conscience around the world to stand up for justice.

All people have an obligation to end complicity in crime.  Silence is complicity.  It is a moral obligation to end this complicity.  At the very least, “do no harm.”
Any dialogue between the oppressor and the oppressed should be in the context of co-resistance.  As long as oppression exists, we should have co-resistance, not co-existence.  We have to end oppression, and then we can live like normal human beings.

Trade Unions have joined the BDS (Boycott, Divest, Sanctions against Israel) movement in the UK, South Africa, Brazil, Scotland, France, Italy and Ireland.  Dockworkers in Oakland set a historic precedence when they refused to unload Israeli ships for 24 hours in response to the Freedom Flotilla Massacre of May 2010.

BDS yields effective results:  The Veolia, Alstom and Agrexco Campaigns have been very effective. The Codepink  Ahava actions and Adalah-NY Flashmobs are both very creative BDS campaigns.  Author Alice Walker and activist Judith Butler have both voiced support for BDS.  Living legend and Holocaust survivor Stephane Hessel (France) also strongly supports BDS.  Hessel is most known as the co-author of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights…Israel should not be allowed to speak on behalf of world Jewry.  It is a colonial state, an occupier, so it cannot speak on behalf of all world Jews.

The PACBI launched an official facebook page in mid-January.  www.facebook.com/PACBI. In a statement dated 2 January, the PACBI wrote: “…looking forward to 2012, we call on activists to intensify all aspects of BDS, but to especially focus, whenever possible, on academic boycott. Specifically, we call on faculty and student activists to pressure their academic organizations to end collaboration with complicit Israeli academic institutions or organizations, and not to organize or participate in conferences in Israel. Furthermore, we appeal to academics not to publish in Israeli academic journals and to withdraw from editorial boards of international journals based at Israeli universities. We also urge academics and students to oppose study-abroad programs that place students from the US and Europe at Israeli universities.  The ongoing campaign by California State University (CSU) faculty and students against the renewal of the CSU-Israel study abroad scheme is an inspiration.  In short, we call on BDS activists around the world to mobilize over the implementation of the academic boycott guidelines, and for those in Europe to rally against Israeli collaboration under FP7. As Archbishop Desmond tutu wrote in support of the University of Johannesburg’s boycott of Ben Gurion University:

Israeli Universities are an intimate part of the Israeli regime, by active choice. While Palestinians are not able to access universities and schools, Israeli universities produce the research, technology, arguments and leaders for maintaining the occupation.

It is time to take a stand to end all forms of complicity with Israeli academic and cultural institutions; they are key partners in the Israeli regime of occupation, colonialism and apartheid.”

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As Egypt marks the first anniversary of the January 25 revolution, we must remember that the primary driving force in Egyptian electoral politics has not changed. The same energy that propelled hundreds of thousands to peacefully demonstrate for weeks against Hosni Mubarak, and later against the military council, fuels the hopes of Egypt’s young people, especially working people.

Every poll and survey indicates that Egyptians want equitable and honest social and economic development. And real, sustainable development begins with young people. They have the energy, the openness, and the hope to turn ideas into reality.

Nowhere is this truer than in Egypt and other countries in the Middle East and North Africa whose underdevelopment squanders talent, restrains ambition, and fosters instability. Nearly one in five people living in the Middle East and North Africa is between ages 15 and 24. It is this group that will build the next generation of businesses and civic institutions, infusing them with their own attitudes and expectations.

Investment in the youth of Egypt and the Middle East has the greatest potential return. However, a large and sustained commitment by governments and nongovernmental organizations will be needed to initiate, program, and monitor this public investment—a challenge in today’s fiscal environment. But my organization believes it is a reasonable, even self-evident, investment compared to what we might have to spend should the hopes and expectations of today’s demonstrators again be frustrated. More than just a voice, youth in the Middle East need resources to forge their own futures.

In Egypt and other countries, investment in social and economic development can accelerate the transformation into a more democratic, civilian-dominated state that at the same time can be influenced and shaped by Islamist groups and shared religious attitudes. Such a state may be less pro-Western in the narrow sense of that term. It will pursue an independent foreign policy and may challenge US priorities on occasion. But it will be much more able to participate in and contribute to the social, political, and economic development of the international community. Turkey has successfully made this transformation and, like Turkey, Egypt is a culturally and religiously rich society driven by youthful energy. If Western values are about representative and accountable institutions that release and effectively channel the pursuit of universally shared values, a democratic Egypt infused with the great values of Islam is sure to be a friend of the United States.

Engaging Middle East youth, and the political parties and religious groups they join, is a tremendous opportunity for all of us. These are active citizens and creative workers. Their energy, whether motivated by religious or secular hopes, will create and sustain change for the long term. As a nation and a member of the international community, we must do what we can to eliminate roadblocks to the legitimate desires and energies of Egypt’s young citizens.

Dr. Arthur B. Keys is President and CEO of International Relief & Development, a global development organization based in Arlington, Virginia. He is the recipient of the William Sloane Coffin Award for Justice and Peace from Yale Divinity School.

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Tareq, a Syrian American graphic designer living in Silicon Valley, says his life has “completely changed 100 percent over the past year,” a change he credits to protests in Egypt’s Tahrir Square exactly one year ago today. That date has since been enshrined as a pivotal moment in the evolution of the Arab Spring.

The toppling of Tunisia’s Zine Al-Abidine Ben Ali and Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak, followed by the fall of Libyan strongman Moammar Ghaddafi have defined what Tareq, who requested that his last name be withheld because of safety concerns for relatives in Syria, calls “the most important time of the region’s history.”

“[These events] have broken the barriers of fear for Arab Americans and Arabs abroad against oppression and reinforced pride in being Arab,” says Tareq, before striking a note of caution.

The road ahead, he says, is long and unpredictable. Events in his native Syria, where an ongoing struggle to oust President Bashar Al-Assad has claimed over 5,000 lives, checks his optimism.

Mohammed Bouazizi was not unlike many young Tunisians. A recent college graduate, he was reduced to selling fruit to support himself and his family. On December 17, 2010, Bouazizi immolated himself to protest policies blamed for rising unemployment and poverty.

That singular event launched a wave of protests, beginning in Tunisia and rapidly spreading across the region, culminating in an 18-day rally that drew on Egyptians of all stripes and from all corners who descended on Tahrir and eventually succeeded in ending Mubarak’s 30-year rule.

Egyptians have since celebrated their gains, recently holding the country’s first, if controversial, democratic elections, with the moderate Egyptian Brotherhood sweeping into power ahead of secular and more religiously conservative rivals.
Tunisia also held elections in October 2011, with the moderate Islamist Ennahda Movement winning a majority of the vote.

But for others in the region — including Bahrain, Yemen, and Syria — the ripple effects of the Arab Spring continues to make waves.

“These uprisings toppled the whole idea of Arab equals terrorist, backwards, or illiterate,” said Momen El-Husseiny, an Egyptian and currently a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California, Berkeley in Architecture and Global Metropolitan Studies. “All these notions that had been so potent were no longer so. We are now in communication with the entire world,” he said.

El-Husseiny, who spent the past year in Egypt and recently returned to Berkeley to complete his dissertation, said he immediately saw those changes within himself and in others.
Mokhtar Alkhanshali, of Yemeni descent, says the Arab Spring has altered the way Arabs are seen globally, dispelling widespread notions including that of Arab women being absent from the realm of civic engagement.

Nobel Peace Prize winner and head of the Yemeni organization Women Journalists Without Chains, Tawakkol Karaman, he noted, was “one of the first voices that came out in this movement in Yemen,” having “led the first protests in front of the University of Sanaa.”

Women also played an active and prominent role in Egypt’s Tahrir protests. Such actions, broadcast for a global audience thanks to the proliferation of mobile technology and social media, “changed the face of Arabs,” says Alkhanshali.

“For a Yemeni woman to be the first Arab woman and youngest person to win a Nobel Peace Prize, and play such a role…I feel very proud of that,” he added.
Alkhanshali shared another experience, one closer to home, that spoke to the new light under which Arabs are now being seen. It was last Halloween, he explained, when he encountered a stranger dressed in military fatigues and a Kiffyeh, a traditional unisex headscarf.

“He told me he was a Libyan revolutionary,” Alkhanshali recalled, saying it was then he realized that mainstream society was beginning to replace the image of Arabs as “riding camels and oppressing women” to “fighters for democracy.”

“I take my daughter to a (private) Arabic school,” says Hany Elhak, originally from Egypt and now living in San Jose. Recalling the events of the past year, he says that when the revolution first swept through Tunisia, students and parents with roots spanning the entire Arab world celebrated.

“People were bringing in food… We never felt that close,” he says, adding that a resurgent pride in Arab American identity and culture, long overshadowed by conflict in the region and fears of terrorism at home, were evident in recent protests in San Francisco.

“During demonstrations in support of the Syrian struggle, there have been Yemeni’s, Egyptians, everyone there in solidarity. There has definitely been a renewed sense of Pan Arabism, a sense of Arab pride,” noted Tareq.

And inspiration. For if nothing else, the Arab Spring helped precipitate what has become the largest protest movement to hit America since the Vietnam War.

At a recent Occupy Oakland rally, Tareq remembers hearing protestors chanting “The people want to topple Wall Street.” That chant, he says, found its precedent in Tahrir and Tunis, where protestors cried, Asha’ab ureed isqaat anizaam. “The people want to topple the regime.”

“Of course we can’t take the credit, but I do believe that if the Arab revolutions were not this powerful, the Occupy movement would not have been (as powerful) either,” he notes.
Arabs across San Francisco and the Bay Area are preparing to commemorate the anniversary of the Arab Spring with an event that organizers say will “bring the community together… to reflect on this last year of revolution in Egypt and honor all Arab struggles.”

Janaan Attia, a community organizer and one of the individuals responsible for putting on Wednesday’s event in the city’s Mission District, says it is “vital that Arabs gather and connect” with one another.

Discussions are sure to touch on issues of democracy and the continuing violence in countries like Syria, though many are hopeful and say they’d like to return when conditions improve.
Others are more cautious.

“I’m sure we will see democratic states,” said Tareq in reference to Syria, “but unfortunately (the violence) will continue. We won’t get democracy for free.”

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Early in January, Democratic Congressman Dennis Kucinich and his wife Elizabeth visited Orange County on a fundraising trip. The couple was hosted at the Anaheim Hills residence of community members Elie and Samia Khawam. Approximately 50 supporters and friends attended the successful event.

The congressman spoke about the serious issues confronting our nation. He asserted his unwavering opposition to unnecessary wars such as the war on Afghanistan, his support for the middle class and his support for a balanced and fair policy on Occupied Palestine.

Mr. Kucinich stated that the Obama administration is being subjected to an immense pressure from Israel and its lobby in the USA to attack Iran.

When asked if would support Congressman Ron Paul in his bid for presidency of the United States, Congressman Kucinich stated that as a Democrat, he cannot officially endorse a Republican candidate like Dr. Paul. However, Mr. Kucinich stated that his views on foreign policy are close to those of Dr. Paul, and that he “wishes Dr. Paul well.”

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We don’t miss out on David Ignatius, because he is believed to be wired into the US security establishment. He can go seriously wrong – for example, on Pakistan’s ISI or the Afghan war – but we should still read him so that we can read between his lines. Indeed, DI’s column in today’s WaPo weighing the prospects of an Israeli military strike on Iran makes strange reading.

Ignatius’ opinion piece keeps upfront the possibility of an Israeli military strike on Iran in the coming 3-month period. He speculates that Iran may not retaliate, but may simply roll over like the Ugandans did in 1976 or the Syrians in 2007 when the valorous Israeli jets appeared on their skies.

Even more curious is Ignatius’ outline of the US thinking. As per DI, Barack Obama will bestir himself only if Iran attacks US military assets or targets American interests or threatens Israel’s security! That is, Obama will remain stand-offish so long as Iran lumps the Israeli strike.

The most hilarious part in DI’s column is that Israel too knows it is not possible to substantially damage Iran’s nuclear programme and so it may have to return for “another strike in a few years.” That is to say, Israelis (and Obama) would expect the Iranians to be like sitting ducks for the Israelis to come and bomb the daylights out of them every now and then!

And, why would Iran be so very afraid? Because, according to DI, Iranians are nervous that any retaliation might trigger US retribution which would cause a collapse of the feeble Islamic regime!

Why is DI allowing his byline to be trifled with? Evidently, all this is a bit of ‘coercive diplomacy’, whilst the Obama administration really hopes is to cajole Tehran to “finally open serious negotiations for a formula to verifiably guarantee that its nuclear program will remain a civilian one.”

But then, it is crystal clear by now that coercive diplomacy won’t work with Iran. Whereas, constructive engagement can, as the recent back channel contacts during the fracas over the Strait of Hormuz testifies. Iran is past the point of being militarily threatened. In fact, a military option doesn’t really exist.

Divested of western propaganda, Iranian revolution enjoys a substantial social base. Also, the Islamic revolution represents national aspirations which are embedded deep in Iran’s social and political history. The great social mobility that the revolution generated makes its foundations virtually unshakeable. The self-styled Iran analysts and pro-Israeli polemists in the US who are a dime a dozen today cannot comprehend this.

The Belfer Centre for Science and International Affairs in Harvard recently published a masterly policy brief titled “Attacking Iran: Lessons from the Iran-Iraq War”. In sum, Iran is probably one of  a handful of countries today which have the capacity to switch back and forth from a conventional war to a “people’s war”. If Saddam Hussein were alive, he could have advised the Americans and the Israelis about the hazards of getting entangled in Iran’s “people’s war”.

Israeli professionals who know what war is about and the surprises that wars can hold and ultimately, what wars could turn out to be (despite meticulous planning), are capable of grasping this grim reality. Israel can’t win this war of attrition with Iran. Diplomacy is the only alternative available.

Courtesy M K Bhadrakumar

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I only recently learned of Illinois Governor Pat Quinn’s trip to Israel this past summer (2011) for a ‘week-long educational mission where he sealed two important agreements and received briefings from high-ranking Israeli officials, academic experts and business leaders on topics ranging from high-tech development (read Motorola), energy, water conservation and environmentalism (sic) to disaster preparedness, Iran, and U.S.-Israel relations.’ This is reported on the website of Jewish United Fund/Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago. The reader is expected, of course, to find the high-minded and triumphant tone of this article to be unproblematic.

The article states: “The Governor’s educational visit was part of a JUF initiative that, for the past two decades, has brought influential leaders to Israel.” Quinn signed a “formal agreement on academic cooperation between Ben Gurion University of the Negev in Beersheba and the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) to establish a wide-ranging partnership. The agreement will promote faculty and student exchanges, joint research, and other academic activities of mutual interest. The agreement greatly expands the existing relationship between the universities in the field of public health.”

Beyond principled opposition to such academic agreements between our public universities and those of the apartheid Jewish state, it’s important to note that the academic merit and social outcomes of such agreements are obviously limited by the political context that provokes fundamental opposition from advocates of social justice. In relation to Motorola, for example, it’s impossible to believe that there will be public discussion promoting the public interest regarding military applications in general or surveillance technology in particular.

Similarly, such an agreement cannot conceivably promote consideration of fundamental and historical water resource and environmental degradation issues pertaining to political conflict between Israel and Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan. It’s also highly unlikely that the essentially political nature of such an academic agreement would allow or encourage researchers to address the public health concerns of Palestinians, either as citizens of Israel or in the occupied territories; nor would they likely address, for example, the conditions of African immigrants in Israel who find themselves increasingly despised and unwanted.

A biased and discriminatory political agenda, dictated and limited by Israeli state interests and U.S. hegemonic interests in the region, is thus inevitably part and parcel of such academic agreements. The public university and its scholarly and scientific reputation is commandeered and exploited by the Israel Lobby in order to serve and legitimize that agenda.

Beyond this particular “academic exchange,” my perspective is informed by the principles of the BDS movement and the challenges inevitably presented to the movement by the Israel Lobby’s incessant pressure on public officials and institutions at all levels. As a long-term resident of Illinois and employee of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), I have been a journalist and activist regarding the manner in which Jewish and Zionist institutions have come to occupy the putatively public space of our public university—clearly to the detriment of dignity and justice for the Palestinians, as well as informed discussion in a democratic and scholarly context of the Israel/Palestine issue.

The developments noted above constitute egregious extensions of the Zionist infrastructure that has been promoted by the Israel Lobby in state government in general and in public higher education in Illinois. I would hope that this opportunistic, outrageous, and cynical agreement between Governor Quinn and Israeli officials creates a critical mass of awareness and potential activism within and beyond the BDS movement in Illinois. I would hope to see a clear response to the manner in which the Lobby feels entitled to self-righteously promote—without objection—what are repugnant and sectarian political interests in state politics and higher education—disingenuously and transparently framed in terms of technological, scientific, and economic development.

From my perspective as a Jewish pro-Palestinian activist in Urbana-Champaign, I have observed two primary developments: first, the establishment of a privately-funded Program for Jewish Culture and Society two decades ago and its attendant moral emphasis on the Holocaust and Jewish victimization in general; second, the use of PJCS as an institutional and moral umbrella for an Israel Lobby-funded and baldly propagandistic “Israel Studies Project,” which has moreover been clearly racist in its exclusion of Palestinian Israelis from its purview.

Blatant conflicts of interest regarding PJCS in relation to the Israel Lobby were obvious from the start, and dovetail with Governor Quinn’s junket. The promoters of PJCS were two professors with prominent positions in local Jewish institutions—religious, secular, and Zionist. One professor, Michael Shapiro, is the father of Daniel Shapiro, current U.S. ambassador to Israel.

In 2004, Michael Shapiro worked closely with Michael Kotzin, JUF Executive Vice President, to fund the Israel Studies Project, part of a state-wide effort by the Israel Lobby at both public and private universities. Kotzin wrote in the Forward in 2004 that the “manner in which Israel and the Middle East are taught about in the nation’s university classrooms has increasingly come to the fore as one of the most difficult and far-reaching challenges facing the Jewish community.” In translation, this is to say that the Lobby needs to take serious measures to intervene in academia to promote Israel’s interests, in response to students who are increasingly enlightened regarding the plight of the Palestinians.

Kotzin, a long-time Lobby apparatchik in Chicago, accompanied Governor Quinn to Israel, commenting “It is particularly gratifying to be here with Gov. Quinn today when that partnership moves to a new level.”Quinn’s group was addressed in Israel by Ambassador Shapiro, who tellingly “called his address to the group ‘his first official duty’ after arriving the day before to assume his responsibilities as U.S. Ambassador to Israel.”

I would add that the Urbana campus has also procured, for the past two academic years, a visiting Jewish-Israeli professor of Israel Studies whose position is by no means disinterestedly funded by the Schusterman Family Foundation and the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise(AICE). According to the Jewish Virtual Library, “The aim of the program is to present American students with a broad understanding of Israel’s history, society, politics, culture and relations with its neighbors and the broader international community.” In plainer language, the aim of this program—as of the Israel Studies Project at UIUC and the broader Israel Studies movement in general—is to promote a sanitized version of Zionism, Israel, and Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians. The current visiting professor at the Urbana Campus, Rhona Seidelman, has well-served this purpose.

It is unacceptable that a visiting professor essentially hired by the Israel Lobby is charged with teaching the one class offered at UIUC on the history of the Israel/Palestine conflict. Perhaps needless to say, UIUC has never hired a professor of Palestinian or Arab background specifically in relation to teaching and research regarding the topic of Israel/Palestine. Regarding any other oppressed minority, it would be unheard of for faculty members to be bought and paid for by interests promoting and justifying such oppression. But in the case of the Israel Lobby on campus, it is business as usual. At UIUC and other campuses in Illinois, the Lobby has de facto attempted to limit the institutional space within which Palestinian perspectives can be understood and legitimized.

The political proficiency and resources of the Israel Lobby in Illinois and elsewhere present formidable challenges to pro-Palestinian and BDS activists. Nevertheless, popular support for Israel, including among Jews and on campuses, is at an all-time low. The recent and welcome radicalization of the notion of “occupy,” combined with the principles and goals of the BDS movement, suggests assertive and persistent responses to Lobby business as usual on campus and in state government.

Article courtesy The Palestine Chronicle on-line

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Fifteen delegates of a coalition of Iowa peace and social justice organizations visited the Des Moines office of Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) on January 18 to ask the senator to take a firm stand against a war with Iran.

“Frankly, sir, we are alarmed,” Jeff Weiss, executive director of the Catholic Peace Ministry, told Harkin aide Tom Buttry during a telephone conference call.

Weiss expressed deep concern that Harkin had joined his 99 US Senate colleagues in voting for a punitive sanctions bill that targets Iran’s oil exports and the country’s central bank.  Weiss pointed out to Buttry that that former National Security Council analyst and principal White House aide on Iran Gary Sick has described the new sanctions as “an act of war.”

The National Defense Authorization Act of 2012, which President Obama signed into law on December 31, included an amendment authored by Sens. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and Mark Kirk (R-IL) that would place crippling economic sanctions on financial institutions that do business with the Iran Central Bank. The amendment unanimously passed the U.S. Senate in December by a vote of 100-0.

Weiss also noted that the Senate voted in favor of the harsher sanctions legislation in defiance of the Obama administration’s desire for latitude in negotiations.

“We are here to ask Senator Harkin to speak publicly about the need for diplomacy with Iran and to support the Obama administration’s position as much as it is about diplomacy,” said Weiss.

Dr. David Drake, representing Iowa Physicians for Social Responsibility (IPSR), read from a letter authored by the organization.

“Dear Senator, in the name of sanity – economic, psychological, and environmental – please speak out against the current war mongering against Iran.  The USA cannot afford to risk a war with Iran.  The US citizenry is war weary and economically frustrated.  The potential costs and consequences of a war far outweigh any imagined benefits.  We all know full well that Iran is not a nuclear threat.

IPSR called on Harkin to work to de-escalate tensions and promote peace in the Middle East and Southwest Asia and to work toward resolving the very real economic and environmental challenges confronting Americans at home.

Eloise Cranke of the Methodist Federation for Social Action called on Harkin and all members of the US Senate and other government officials “to immediately work with all deliberate speed toward a peaceful resolution of nuclear issues,” “to reject any first strike action by US armed forces anywhere,” and to, “pursue these peacemaking strategies with particular regard toward Iran.”

MFSA called on Harkin to “exercise your leadership in creating avenues of communication between the US and Iran in order to prevent a dangerous escalation of the current tensions.”

Mark Rosenbury of Plymouth Congregational Church Peace and Social Justice Committee told Harkin’s aide that he his wife Janet, “have seen the futility of the Vietnam War and the most recent Iraq War and we just hope that it doesn’t get repeated.”

Author and retired Drake University economics professor, Ismael Hossein-zada, a native of Iran who has lived and worked in the USA all of his adult life, read portions of a memo to President Obama authored by Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), a group of military, intelligence and foreign service officers: “We are seeing a replay of the ‘Iraq WMD threat.’ … The Israel lobby has been beating the drums for us to attack Iran for years. … Another long war is not in America’s or Israel’s interests, whatever Israel’s apologists claim.”

“I must just add one personal note.  Senator Harkin, because of your position on the [Appropriations Defense and State Foreign Operations] sub-committees, you have a unique opportunity to help prevent another calamitous war, probably regional and perhaps even global, and I hope and pray that you will not miss that opportunity,” said Hossein-zadeh.

Bob Brammer of the Catholic Peace Ministry and STAR*PAC noted that Harkin has often in the past been “a drum major for peace and human rights.”

Brammer called on Harkin to speak against war with Iran and to push for diplomacy.

“We need you now, Senator Harkin,” said Brammer.

Gilbert Landolt of the Des Moines Chapter 163 of Veterans for Peace called on Harkin, “a veteran himself, to stand with us on this and do whatever you can” to prevent a war with Iran.

Sherry Hutchison of the Des Moines Valley Friends Meeting criticized the recent sanctions provision passed by the Senate on the grounds that it violates the separation of powers doctrine.

“There are so many hawks in Congress.  I don’t know why they think perpetual war is something we ought to be doing,” said Hutchison, who also called on Harkin to speak out publicly against war with Iran.

Carolyn Uhlenhake-Walker of Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF)’s Des Moines chapter called on Harkin to ask the Senate to work to open a channel of communication with Iran.

“Not since 1979 have we had direct communication with Iran, and its time that we started talking about ways to work this out diplomatically,” said Uhlenhake-Walker.

Ed Bloomer represented the Des Moines Catholic Worker and Chapter 163 of Veterans for Peace.

“We believe it’s a rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight.  The money spent on arms that kill and maim could be used to rehab infrastructure here in the US and to address the problems we have here in inner cities.  We don’t want a war with Iran,” said Bloomer.

Buttry responded to the concerns expressed saying, in part, “As far as the Iran sanctions vote goes, let me say that Sen. Harkin did vote for the Iran sanctions amendment to the defense bill.  He ended up voting against the defense bill for different reasons.  While he is not particularly enthusiastic about Iran sanctions, I think the Senate vote was a function of, there had to be some kind of reaction to the increasing belligerence of Iran.”

Buttry mentioned a “violent crackdown by Iran’s leadership in the wake of an openly questionable election,” said Iran had “kicked IAEA inspectors out of Iran,” and spoke of Iranian nuclear facilities, “that aren’t under IAEA inspection.”

“While they’re not refining uranium up to a level for nuclear weapons yet, they’re refining it well beyond what one needs for a civilian facility,” said Buttry.

“The logical explanation is that they are working toward weaponizing uranium, not to mention the assassination plot of a Saudi diplomat in the United States.  They were planning to use force in the United States,” said Buttry.

“We have the international community on our side this time,” said Buttry.

Buttry characterized the situation as “a multilateral effort to deal with a country that is being openly belligerent to the entire international community.”

Buttry noted that Rick Santorum and other Republican primary candidates have engaged in heated campaign rhetoric, but, he said he could not think of a single circumstance in which Harkin would support a full on invasion of Iran.

His listeners in Harkin’s Des Moines office seemed to be unimpressed by his response.

“Even if everything you said had a kernel of truth to it, we are still in a situation where it is necessary for the United States of America to talk to Iran, because we are in a situation where there could be an incident and a shooting war, just like that,” responded Weiss.

“The Leon Panettas and the Robert Gates of the world are warning us against this, but it could be too late,” said Weiss.

Buttry was noncommittal regarding Harkin speaking or writing publicly or working in the Senate to counter the hawkish efforts of Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) who have announced plans for additional punitive legislation against Iran, but he agreed to relay the delegation’s concerns to Harkin.

Also participating in the delegation were Charles Day of Des Moines, Bill and Karen Stansbery of Ames, Karla Hansen of Clive, and John De Mott of Des Moines.

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Chanting “Put People First!” and “Where’s Mitt?” about one hundred Occupy the Caucus activists descended on former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign headquarters in Des Moines on the afternoon on December 28 and found that campaign officials had temporarily closed the office and locked the doors.

“Let’s check out all the exits and block ’em all,” shouted Frank Cordaro, a former priest, founder of the Des Moines Catholic Worker (DMCW) community, and long time peace and social justice activist.

The group then demanded that Romney release his federal tax returns as other candidates have and return the more than $61,000 they said his campaign has received from Well Fargo Bank and the bank’s employees.

“The corrosive influence of big money in politics has undermined the democratic principles of the Iowa Caucuses.  The whole concept of civil discourse is impossible when the issues and the candidates are hand-picked by the giant, unaccountable corporations that control our economy, our political system, and the mainstream media,” said Stephen Toothman of the Occupy Des Moines media committee.

“Direct action street protests are an effective way to advance Iowa values and supplement conventional forms of political participation, including voting,” said Toothman.

Occupy Des Moines, the DMCW community, and Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement (IowaCCI), an Iowa social justice organization, were prominent organizers of the Occupy the Caucus campaign, which was designed to open up the public discussion and put the focus on the issues that matter to most Americans, said Cordaro.  Cordaro, Toothman, and others repeatedly stressed that their actions would not interfere with Iowa Caucus voting.

Cordaro took a teaching role in three nonviolence training sessions organized for Occupy the Caucus volunteers during the planning period in the months before the campaign began.

Arianna Norris-Landry, a paralegal, came to Iowa from St. Louis, where she is a member of Occupy St. Louis.

I’m a legal observer and a peace marshal.  I’m never directly involved unless there is violence, said Norris-Landry.

“As a legal observer, I’m here today to see that Occupy stays nonviolent and that the cops stay nonviolent,” said Norris-Landry.

“Everybody here today knows this action is nonviolent.  Some have made up their minds to risk arrest.  They’re not looking to be arrested.  All they’re doing is asking to go inside a candidate’s headquarters and air their grievances.  That’s not illegal, but they’ve been locked out.  This is not a mob with pitchforks or guns.  All these people have is their voices,” said Norris-Landry.

“When you become a candidate, you involve yourself in public discourse, and that means you have to listen as well as talk.  That’s what they taught me in civics class, and in my legal classes that’s what they taught me.  A candidate is supposed to be responsive.  We have a representative government,” said Norris-Landry.  “Why doesn’t [Romney] listen to us?”

Bryan Hynes of Bronx, NY, said he was participating in the Occupy the Caucus campaign to protest the unfair distribution of wealth.

“The inequality is not accidental.  Our government is controlled by financial interests.  The 99 percent are not being represented by the government.  We’re told that if the interests of the rich are put first, we will get some benefit, but our experience, our lived experience, is that this does not happen,” said Hynes.

“I came here to visit my in-laws for Christmas.  I drove half way across the country and I am happy to lend my voice to this campaign,” said Haynes.

Former State Representative Ed Fallon, host of the Fallon Forum which airs on 98.3 WOW-fm and a prominent figure in Iowa peace and social justice circles, said that none of the candidates have seriously addressed the concerns raised by the Occupy Wall Street movement.

“There is no candidate with stronger corporate connections than Mitt Romney, and he needs to be held accountable.  His policies would continue to exacerbate the crisis in our country, and we need to remind people of that,” said Fallon.

John Frankling of Des Moines connected big money in politics and the economic crisis with the military industrial complex.

“We can’t afford to have everybody’s back around the world.  The time of the U.S. policing the world is over.  We’re broke.  It’s done.  If it keeps going on like it has been with our military we’ll end up like Russia,” said Frankling.

“We need to end these wars and all these military bases around the world and focus on what is going on here at home,” said Frankling.

When police arrived to confer with Romney campaign officials, the crowd, which had been chanting, “We are unstoppable; another world is possible!” took up a different chant. “Police need a raise!  Police need a raise!” shouted the activists.

Occupy Des Moines and the Occupy the Caucus campaign, in cooperation with various Iowa police departments, have challenged public perceptions about relations between Occupy movements and police departments across the nation.  In contrast to actions in New York, Chicago, Oakland, and other cities, there has been little or no violence between municipal law enforcement authorities in Iowa and Iowa Occupiers.  Though over 100 arrests have been made related to Occupy actions in the Des Moines area since October, with about half of the arrests occurring during the Occupy the Caucus campaign, and though the DMPD alone has spent more than $75,000 in responding to Occupy Des Moines actions, Occupy representatives and police spokespersons alike have commented publicly on the effectiveness of communications between Occupy and law enforcement agencies.

David Goodner, an organizer with Iowa CCI, was among the Occupy the Caucus activists who met with representatives from several local police departments at a pre-protest meeting to go over the plans for the action at Romney headquarters.

“We have open lines of communication.  They have my cell phone number, and I have their cell phone numbers,” said Des Moines Police Department (DMPD) Sgt. Chris Scott.

After Romney campaign officials demanded that the activists leave the property, DMPD officers spoke with the Occupiers and explained that they would be arrested if they did not leave.  DMPD officers then arrested and took into custody those who chose not to leave voluntarily.

Katie Rockey, 19, of Des Moines, Anthony Willhide, 25, of Plaquemines Parish, LA, Ed Bloomer, 64, of Des Moines, Nathan Harrington, 39, of Des Moines, the Rev. Peter Dougherty, 77, of Lansing, MI, Jalan Crossland, 41, of Ten Sleep, WY, and Jennifer Marsh, 38, of Iowa City were arrested, transported, and cited for misdemeanor trespassing at Romney campaign headquarters.

As police arrested the seven protesters, Sgt. Scott told reporters, “We’ve had an excellent relationship with the Occupy Des Moines folk.  If there’s any concerns they call us, and vice versa.”

While arrests were in progress at Romney headquarters, three activists slipped quietly away and walked about a block to a nearby Wells Fargo Bank.  The three were able to enter the bank before bank officials locked the doors when the main group of the Occupy the Caucus activists, numbering about 75, arrived a few minutes later along with dozens of reporters and broadcast media teams.

Inside the bank, Megan Felt, Rene Espeland, and Kathy Molitor presented bank officers with a letter demanding that Wells Fargo stop contributing thousands of dollars to political campaigns and start paying a fair share of taxes.

As the crowd gathered at the bank, The Independent Monitor approached a couple in a late model SUV as they were conducting a transaction at the bank’s drive-through.  Asked, through the open driver’s side window, “Any thoughts about this protest here at the bank today?”  Brenda Mouw of Des Moines responded saying, “Everybody has a right to free speech, and I think the people have a right to have their voices be heard.  It’s the American way.”

Occupy Des Moines activist Ross Grooters was unable to get into the bank to close his account.  Grooters walked up to the drive-through window, presented his bank card, and attempted to close his account there while mic-checking the crowd.

“The reason I am closing my account,” shouted Grooters, “is that Wells Fargo is corrupting my democracy!”

“They donated more money than the average American makes in a year to just one presidential candidate.  I can no longer do business with a company that makes their voice more important than my voice,” shouted Grooters.

As the crowd outside shouted, “Police need a raise!” and “Banks got bailed out – We got sold out!” inside the bank DMPD officers arrested Felt, 24, of Des Moines, Espeland, 50, of Des Moines; and Molitor, 54, of Cazenovia, WI.

Before they were transported and cited for misdemeanor trespassing, the three were able to speak to reporters.

“Mitt Romney and Wells Fargo are both symbolic of the corporate takeover of our political system and we demand that Romney return $61,500 in campaign contributions he took from Wells Fargo PAC, employees, and family members of employees in the 2012 election cycle to date, and that both Romney and Wells Fargo agree to full tax disclosure because we don’t think either one of them pays their fair share of taxes,” said Felt.

The mood of the direct action events at Romney’s campaign headquarters and at the bank might accurately be described as festive.  DMPD officers were courteous and respectful of the rights of the activists as they enforced the law and made 10 arrests.

As the action at the bank concluded, this reporter chanced to see that as he departed Cordaro paused momentarily to shake hands with a supervising DMPD officer.  Both men were smiling.

If there is a moral lesson in the Occupy the Caucuses campaign and a civics lesson for the nation, perhaps it is this: At the end of the day, a good-faith commitment to nonviolence is well worth the effort all around.

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