Occupy Oakland makes plans for citywide general strike

By Scott Johnson and Angela Woodall

SAN JOSE MERCURY

OAKLAND -- Occupy Oakland protesters debated Thursday evening the practical difficulties of organizing a citywide general strike with the aim of shutting down the city of Oakland on Nov. 2. Speakers urged teachers, students, union members and workers of all stripes to participate in whatever way they could, and said the entire world was watching Oakland. "Oakland is the vanguard and epicenter of the Occupy movement," said Clarence Thomas, a member of the powerful International Longshoreman and Warehouse Union who urged the hundreds of assembled people to support the strike.

Protesters said the aim of the strike was to involve Oakland more aggressively in the global Occupy movement, and to help mobilize millions of Americans to protest against what they see as the excesses of Wall Street, unfair banking regulations and disparities in the nation's health care system.

The call for a strike originated Wednesday evening during a General Assembly which drew at least a thousand people from all walks of life to Oakland's Frank Ogawa Plaza, which protesters had turned into a de-facto camp site before police kicked them out last week. Many people said they felt mobilized to participate after seeing videos and pictures from Tuesday night's violence, when at least 200 riot police from around the Bay Area clashed with protesters, lobbing tear gas, flash-bang grenades and so-called "nonlethal" projectiles to attempt to corral and contain them.

Scott Olsen, a U.S. Marine

Marine corporal and Iraqi war veteran remained in intensive care at Highland Hospital after suffering critical wounds to the head from an unidentified police projectile. His condition was improving but as of Thursday evening he remained unable to talk.

Spurred on by Olsen's injury, the actions of the police and the relative absence of Mayor Jean Quan from the debate, the calls for a general strike gained momentum as the week progressed. Oakland last had a general strike over half a century ago, in 1946, when unions shut the city down for 56 hours. Bars were allowed to remain open, but could only serve beer. Jukeboxes were left to play, but had to be placed on public sidewalks so the maximum number of people could enjoy the music. A commonly heard song was "Pistol Packin' Mama, Lay that Pistol Down," a national hit at the time.

Today's protesters say the next step is to involve as many local and national unions, community organizations, churches and student movements in the shortest time possible.

"We're going to have to do a lot of work, but we understand the importance of it," said Josie Camacho, executive secretary and treasurer of the Alameda Labor Council, which has 120 affiliated unions and claims over 100,000 Bay Area members. "This movement has its own momentum," Camacho said, adding that she and others were urging the AFL-CIO to join their ranks.

Some who support the movement have nevertheless expressed concern about the implications of a major strike.

"There are a lot of people in this city who are struggling to hold on to their jobs," said Noweli Alexander, an East Oakland resident and comptroller at a local design company. "I support this strike, but there needs to be more discussion about the economic consequences."

Pastor George Cummings with Imani Community Church in Oakland and a leader with the Oakland Community Organizations, or OCO, a federation of congregations, schools, and allied community organizations, representing more than 40,000 families in Oakland, said the organization had not yet taken a stand on the proposed strike.

However, Cummings continued, "As a leader of OCO, to the extent that the sentiments of the movement attempt to hold the financial institutions accountable, then we would support that," Cummings said.

So far, both a nurses association and an Oakland teachers union have come out strongly in support of the Oakland protest's goals, but have fallen short of giving their full endorsement for a general strike. Some teachers have expressed support for the strike, but said they would not bring students along for reasons of "legal liability."

"However energetic we are about the cause, we also are law-abiding organizations that are very cautious," said Matthew Goldstein, president of the Peralta Federation of Teachers, which represents faculty at the four East Bay schools in the Peralta Community College District. The union planned to discuss the strike with its members and with its parent organization, the California Federation of Teachers, before deciding whether to participate.

"A general strike on the order of the 1946 general strike in Oakland is an ambitious goal, especially in just a few days," Goldstein said. "It requires groundwork to be laid. There is still much to be determined."

"I'll definitely be here," said Max Bell Alper, a member of United Here 2850, a hotel and hospitality workers union, headquartered near Frank Ogawa Plaza.

Alper said his family was hit hard by the recession and housing crisis. Occupy Oakland, he said, was an inspiration. "It looks like we're on course to be the next 1946."

Aristotle


BY BILLY COLLINS B. 1941 Billy Collins






This is the beginning.


Almost anything can happen.


This is where you find


the creation of light, a fish wriggling onto land,


the first word of Paradise Lost on an empty page.


Think of an egg, the letter A,


a woman ironing on a bare stage


as the heavy curtain rises.


This is the very beginning.


The first-person narrator introduces himself,


tells us about his lineage.


The mezzo-soprano stands in the wings.


Here the climbers are studying a map


or pulling on their long woolen socks.


This is early on, years before the Ark, dawn.


The profile of an animal is being smeared


on the wall of a cave,


and you have not yet learned to crawl.


This is the opening, the gambit,


a pawn moving forward an inch.


This is your first night with her,


your first night without her.


This is the first part


where the wheels begin to turn,


where the elevator begins its ascent,


before the doors lurch apart.






This is the middle.


Things have had time to get complicated,


messy, really. Nothing is simple anymore.


Cities have sprouted up along the rivers


teeming with people at cross-purposesi


a million schemes, a million wild looks.


Disappointment unshoulders his knapsack


here and pitches his ragged tent.


This is the sticky part where the plot congeals,


where the action suddenly reverses


or swerves off in an outrageous direction.


Here the narrator devotes a long paragraph


to why Miriam does not want Edward's child.


Someone hides a letter under a pillow.


Here the aria rises to a pitch,


a song of betrayal, salted with revenge.


And the climbing party is stuck on a ledge


halfway up the mountain.


This is the bridge, the painful modulation.


This is the thick of things.


So much is crowded into the middlei


the guitars of Spain, piles of ripe avocados,


Russian uniforms, noisy parties,


lakeside kisses, arguments heard through a walli


too much to name, too much to think about.






And this is the end,


the car running out of road,


the river losing its name in an ocean,


the long nose of the photographed horse


touching the white electronic line.


This is the colophon, the last elephant in the parade,


the empty wheelchair,


and pigeons floating down in the evening.


Here the stage is littered with bodies,


the narrator leads the characters to their cells,


and the climbers are in their graves.


It is me hitting the period


and you closing the book.


It is Sylvia Plath in the kitchen


and St. Clement with an anchor around his neck.


This is the final bit


thinning away to nothing.


This is the end, according to Aristotle,


what we have all been waiting for,


what everything comes down to,


the destination we cannot help imagining,


a streak of light in the sky,


a hat on a peg, and outside the cabin, falling leaves.

Rise of the Anti-Obama

Herman Cain has jolted the Republican race and is under attack from black leaders. In this week's Newsweek, he calls Obama a "terrible" leader—and says skin color has no place in politics.

DAILY BEAST EDITORIAL

Herman Cain is, according to several new polls, the most popular Republican candidate for president. What’s his secret? “I think of this stuff as I go,” he says. “My messages are spontaneous.”

This week’s Newsweek profiles the candidate who came from nowhere, both politically and personally. Cain boasts a dream biography for any presidential contender: a self-made success story who was born to poor parents, he amassed his fortune with only his business acumen and relentless work ethic to guide him. Now the man who sees himself as the “ABC”—American black conservative—believes he can unseat President Obama. Obama, Cain tells Newsweek, is a “terrible leader," and Cain presents his own pity-free, get-to-work conservative values as the alternative he thinks Americans are looking for. His sudden and unforeseen rise has jolted the Republican race, and enthralled a restive GOP electorate that wants the establishment out—but can't seem to bear the managerial, moderate Mitt Romney.

But Cain's ideology is already proving divisive. Interviews with many black voters and leaders, from Jesse Jackson to Harry Belafonte, show that Cain, the self-described “CEO of Self,” is up against a powerful contingent that wants a different kind of ABC: anyone but Cain.

“It’s not about color,” Cain says. “It’s going to be about the content of your ideas.” And Cains ideas are nothing less than a wholesale repudiation of liberal American ideas. His “9-9-9” plan would shift the tax burden so that 30 million Americans who currently make too little to pay any taxes at all would suddenly find themselves owing Uncle Sam. “How do you define poor?” Cain asks. “I define poor [as] you have no money to eat and you have no shelter. That’s poor.”

 Cain has even come close to saying that many of those who are poor choose to be, and he bristles at the implication that he is advocating policies that are disadvantageous to people who grew up in circumstances like his. He tells Newsweek he became a Republican in 1996, when he made an appearance in Harlem with Jack Kemp, then Bob Dole’s running mate. At Sylvia’s, a legendary Harlem eatery, an African-American man who was one of a group of Democrats said something like: “There’s no such thing as a black Republican. You guys must be Uncle Toms.”

Cain was deeply offended. “I said nobody had a right to tell me how to think and how to vote,” he says. “I was so adamant that I registered as a Republican.” His first foray into politics was characteristically ambitious: he announced a presidential run in 1999, but dropped out shortly after and endorsed Steve Forbes. Today the former CEO of Godfather's Pizza thinks his moment has finally arrived.

Cain has spent most of his life individualizing the message of the civil-rights movement and insisting color should not play a role in modern politics. But such a view may begin to sound naive if his candidacy continues to alienate African-Americans. In the past week, Cain has had to fend off challenges from multiple black luminaries, including Cornel West, who accused Cain of “coldness toward poor people,” and Syracuse professor Boyce Watkins, who on CNN called him “the perfect racist.”

Georgetown professor Michael Eric Dyson told Newsweek he thinks of Cain as “Jimmy Stewart in blackface.” “He’s Mr. Smith goes to Washington. The good ol’ boy you just love. He’s the black man white people would prefer over Obama, and he’s the black man that is more like them and who thinks like them. He makes them feel they aren’t racist because they support him at this level and not Obama.’’

“I’m pretty sure African-Americans don’t take Cain seriously, but I’m not sure about white people,” Belafonte tells Newsweek.

Singer and civil-rights activist Harry Belafonte, who made headlines when he called Cain a “bad apple” during a recent interview with Joy Behar, says it’s impossible to accept Cain as a black candidate with those politics. “I’m pretty sure African-Americans don’t take Cain seriously, but I’m not sure about white people,” Belafonte tells Newsweek. “They believe this black man is the real deal. He isn’t. Anyone who says what he says isn’t.”

Cain has fired back at his critics—and in doing so, only inflamed the controversy. “He’s been on that banana boat too long,” he says in response to Belafonte, accusing the 84-year-old performer of trying to “intimidate” people of color who might even consider supporting his candidacy. “Harry Belafonte called me a bad apple. Now he knows he’s not going to shut me up.” And speaking to other media outlets earlier this week, he said West had “been in academia too long” and was hung up on “symbolic stuff.”

Jesse Jackson doesn’t think much of Cain’s politics, either, but he does find fascinating the idea of Cain winning the Republican nomination and choosing Bachmann or Perry as a running mate. “That would be an interesting race if it is between him and Barack," says Jackson. "Black people, and all people, will decide what side of history they are on when it comes to voting this election. It can’t be about complexion.”

Allen draws a Crowd!

Woody Allen gets his groove back with Midnight in Paris after years of declineVeteran director joins $100m club with his acclaimed new picture despite being written off by critics

Andrew Pulver guardian.co.uk,

Woody Allen and actor Lea Seydoux attend the Midnight In Paris premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in May. Photograph: Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images

 

Despite years of critical derision and a general perception that his career is in terminal decline, Woody Allen has confounded his critics by engineering a commercial renaissance – joining the $100m club in the process.

Allen's 41st feature as director, Midnight in Paris, which is due for release in the UK on Friday, is already his highest-grossing picture: its worldwide take stands at more than $107.4m (£68.7m).

Allen has not reached these heights at the box office since the mid-80s, when Hannah and Her Sisters took $40.1m in the US, compared with Midnight in Paris's $54.4m. Manhattan (1979) and Annie Hall (1977) are the next highest, with $39.9m and $38.3m respectively.

The reasons behind the success of Midnight in Paris are open to debate. In recent years Allen's commercial credibility has been on the rise, with films such as Vicky Cristina Barcelona and Match Point performing well.

Mike Goodridge, the editor of industry trade magazine Screen International, said: "Midnight in Paris is a very accessible film, a light, frothy comedy that has certainly hit a nerve, especially in the US."

The film tells the story of an American novelist, played by Owen Wilson, who finds himself transported back to the mythical era of bohemian Paris between the wars that proved such an attraction to expat Americans at the time. There he meets Ernest Hemingway, F Scott Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein.

Goodridge suggested Allen's decision to make films in Europe might account for the easy tone of his current output. Since Match Point in 2005, he has made three films in London, one in Spain, one in France, and he is shooting his next in Rome.

"To me they're like postcards," added Goodridge. "It's about the most commercial thing you can do. He makes charming portraits of cities that are essentially for tourists."

It seems clear, however, that despite Allen's success, his reputation as a cinematic master is still suffering. Nick James, editor of the magazine Sight and Sound said: "The 1970s and 1980s were his golden period and there was a huge falling off in quality about 15 years ago."

According to James the final straw was his split with producer Jean Doumanian (whose last credited film with Allen was Small Time Crooks in 2000) which disrupted the film-maker's settled, New York-based production process.

The early noughties is generally considered Allen's lowest point, both critically and commercially. His 2001 film The Curse of the Jade Scorpion was his most expensive to date, costing $26m, but it took only $18m worldwide. Allen's next three films, Hollywood Ending, Anything Else and Melinda and Melinda, appeared to show a director in irreversible decline.

But James believes Allen has bounced back, saying Midnight in Paris is a significant creative achievement. "He has always tried to make intelligent cinema and he's tried to achieve the highest standards, so you have to respect that," said James. "Midnight in Paris is a return to a cinematic facility and grace – it's his least clumsy film for a long time."

Successful or not, nothing seems to hinder Allen's extraordinary ability to attract the cream of the world's acting talent to his movies. Goodridge said: "Even if his films have become very soft, he still has cachet. If you look at this body of his work as a whole, it's dazzling; he's still one of the great living film-makers. Actors still want a Woody Allen film on their CV."

Midnight in Paris is no different, with space found for Owen Wilson, Michael Sheen, Kathy Bates, Adrien Brody and Marion Cotillard, as well as a tiny cameo for Carla Bruni-Sarkozy.

Allen also has no problem keeping French cinema-goers on side, despite his new film's less than realistic view of life in the French capital.

Allen remains a fixture at the Cannes film festival (where Midnight in Paris had its world premiere in May) and France is Allen's biggest box office territory outside the US so far Midnight in Paris has taken €10.7m (£9.2m).

Allen has had to endure criticism, including from fellow director Robert Guédiguian who accused him of ignoring "poor Parisians earning below the minimum wage" but French film critic Agnès Poirier says few have been listening.

"His view of Paris is obviously an enchanted, Golden Age one – and if you accept it then the ride is very enjoyable," she said. "The French public always flock to see Woody Allen's films and they're not about to tire of him anytime soon."

 

It may be premature, though, to herald a full-scale Allen revival.

James said: "If we're being honest, he's not likely to return to his previous heights but there is a phenomenon of late flowering and I for one would be delighted if he made more films as fluid and graceful as this."

But, as Goodridge concludes, consistency has never been Allen's strong point, especially in recent years. "He is the most unpredictable film-maker in the world," he said. "The next one could be brilliant or it could be atrocious. You just don't know."

Woody Allen's six most successful films at the US box office

Midnight in Paris (2011) $54.4m

Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) $40.1m

Manhattan (1979) $39.9m

Annie Hall (1977) $38.3m

Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008, left) $23.2m

Match Point (2005) $23.1m

… and his six least successful

September (1987) $0.49m

 

Cassandra's Dream (2008) $0.97m

Another Woman (1988) $1.6m

Shadows and Fog (1992) $2.7m

Anything Else (2003) $3.21m

You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger (2010) $3.25m