The Occupy Movement has proved to be a 21st century phenomenon. As each month goes by they have become more sophisticated, radicalising young people, trade unioinists and community groups – no where more so than in the USA. Now a new front is being opened in States with the ‘99% Spring’, launched in February this year. From April 9th to 15th ‘99% Spring’ intends to build a mass Occupy Movement, working from activists homes, churches, student campuses and union offices and training 10,000 activists.
The training events will include telling the story of how the US and world economy went pear shaped, how we got there and who was responsible; what a different future could look like and what working people can do about it.
The meetings will also cover non-violent direct action and how to get into action and campaigns to win change.
918 meetings are already planned across the USA. Each group will consist of around 10 people at each training session and figures already show that the numbers have exceeded expectations.
One interesting factor is the number of trade unions who have signed upto to support and co-sponsor the training events.
Unions already signed up include the once conservative Teamsters union, alongside the more radical United Steelworkers, Service Employees International Union, United Auto Workers, the hotel union UNITE-HERE, Communications Workers of America, American Federation of Teachers, United Electrical Workers Union and the food workers UFCW union.
The movement also has a professor in activist Lisa Fithian, who has been training anarchists how to protest and break the law for years.
As the 99% Spring manifesto states: ‘We are at a crossroads as a country. We have a choice to make. Greater wealth for a few or opportunity for many. Tax breaks for the richest or a fair shot for the rest of us. A government that can be bought by the highest bidder, or a democracy that is truly of the people, by the people, and for the people”.
Sounds like a good plan to me.
