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

[Ken Burch]

300. And Occupy wasn't dissing those groups-nor was I,actually.

Many union people and Code Pink people and members of the other groups JOINED Occupy, or supported it from without. It was what brought everybody together at that point. There was never a question of Occupy OR the old groups.

The problem was that, in the fall of 2010 and winter of 2011, when OWS emerged(and when the Wisconsin uprising happened), there had been near-collapse in activism. Had OWS and the Wisconsin rebels not emerged(partly as a result, nothing it was talking about would be in the public discourse today.

Remember, at the time, our "Democratic" president was abandoning everything and doing all he could to get activism brought to a halt. He pretty much ordered his OWN "movement", Organizing for America, to go out of existence(that movement no longer has much of any supporters or any goals...it's dead).

Virtually everybody who joined OWS had backed what was happening in Wisconsin, btw...and had done so while the national leadership of our party was hoping the Wisconsin revolt would die(as Obama proved by refusing to support it).

The need was for an independent force...because the leadership of the Democratic party, a party I've supported most of my adult life, was not defending its core supporters, and was gaining nothing fore REFUSING to defend them. It was pursuing a "center" that everyone knew didn't exist.

I'd see this all much more differently if our party, at its top levels, was a fighting populist party. But it stopped being that when it focused on being "pro-business" and "fiscally responsible"-when our leaders, in short, joined the other side.

It's only the outsider groups, only the rebels, that can really effectively work for change...allying with any part of the establishment forces you to obey the establishment. I wish it weren't so, but that's the reality we work within, my friend.
The way the party congressional leadership treats the Congressional Black, Populist, and Progressive caucuses(I.E., fighting against them at every turn) and heroes like Dennis Kucinich bears me out on this.