Prediction: The May 1st "general strike" is going to be an enormous flop.

[Ken Burch]

254. I AM a member of the Democratic Party and a supporter of Occupy

They haven't done a purge of registered Democrats or anything. Occupy isn't a Stalinist organization with rigid pseudo-party discipline.

I've never heard of anyone being attacked by Occupy simply because they were personally campaigning for Democrats.

All that Occupy is saying, as I understand it, is that they won't formally ENDORSE the Democratic Party. What's so terrible about that? They couldn't formally endorse and still work for their OWN agenda. They'd be expected to just toe the line.

Occupy, as a group, has to be independent of ANY party to matter.

It's like the early 60's Civil Rights movement. Had that movement simply backed JFK from the start, it would have folded its tents and not even tried to end Jim Crow. There would have been no Freedom Rides, no civil disobedience, no public calls to end segregation at all. It would have been just "wait 'til after the '64 election", which would have meant giving up on EVER ending Jim Crow.

The same was the case with the labor movement prior to 1935...with suffragists at the turn of the century...and with the LGBT movement. Formally endorsing and allying with a party means accepting that party's discipline and stopping when that party tells you to stop. It means settling for nothing.

That's what Occupy is trying to avoid. And that's where I fear the 99% Spring, like the now-extinct "Organizing For America" group that was the post-election version of the "Obama movement", will end up...that it will absorb Occupy's followers, then disband them. Why should a true activist want such a thing?

Doing what a political party's leaders tell you to do always means slowing down and, eventually, giving up. That's what "moderation" is code for:surrender.

I will be supporting Occupy AND working for the Obama-Biden ticket(as well as other Democrats). But I will always do that with the understanding that the two things must be kept separate.