<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body dir="auto"><div><br><br>Sent from my iPhone</div><div><br>Begin forwarded message:<br><br></div><blockquote type="cite"><div><b>From:</b> Dan Clore <<a href="mailto:clore@columbia-center.org">clore@columbia-center.org</a>><br><b>Date:</b> December 15, 2012, 10:31:24 PM CST<br><b>To:</b> <<a href="mailto:smygo@yahoogroups.com">smygo@yahoogroups.com</a>>, <<a href="mailto:secularhumanist@yahoogroups.com">secularhumanist@yahoogroups.com</a>><br><b>Subject:</b> <b>[smygo] Occupy Ron Paul</b><br><b>Reply-To:</b> <<a href="mailto:smygo@yahoogroups.com">smygo@yahoogroups.com</a>><br><br></div></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><div><span>News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:</span><br><span><a href="http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo">http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo</a></span><br><span></span><br><span><a href="http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/occupy-ron-paul/">http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/occupy-ron-paul/</a></span><br><span>Occupy Ron Paul</span><br><span>The retiring congressman's revolution wasn't just about the Republican </span><br><span>Party.</span><br><span>By Michael Tracey • December 13, 2012</span><br><span></span><br><span>Every four years, the Radisson Hotel in Manchester, New Hampshire serves </span><br><span>as a hub for national media activity ahead of the state’s presidential </span><br><span>primary. On January 8, 2012, journalists milling about the hotel could </span><br><span>occasionally be overheard snickering at the strange melange of street </span><br><span>protesters that had flooded Manchester’s downtown area: Ron Paul people, </span><br><span>Occupy people, and assorted miscreants. These categories were not </span><br><span>mutually exclusive.</span><br><span></span><br><span>Across the street from the hotel, at Veterans Park, the loosely-knit </span><br><span>Occupy New Hampshire collective had established their encampment–a kind </span><br><span>of outdoor public festival. The first person I encountered there was 21 </span><br><span>year-old Manchester resident John Cullen, who wore a green armband </span><br><span>signaling affiliation with OccupyNH (though of course there was no </span><br><span>formal “membership”). Cullen told me he’d recently been pepper-sprayed </span><br><span>by police at the Port of Oakland during a nationwide day of </span><br><span>demonstrations. “I was actually trying to get out of there at that </span><br><span>point,” he said; by coincidence, his family had been visiting members of </span><br><span>their church in the Oakland area, and while Cullen supported Occupy, he </span><br><span>wasn’t particularly eager to get doused with painful chemicals for the </span><br><span>cause.</span><br><span></span><br><span>When I mentioned I’d be attending a Ron Paul campaign event at the </span><br><span>University of New Hampshire in Durham later that evening, Cullen smiled </span><br><span>and unzipped his jacket to reveal a classic “Ron Paul reEVOLution” </span><br><span>T-shirt. In fact, he announced, it was only several hours prior that </span><br><span>he’d participated in a group “sign-wave” outside Murphy’s Taproom, a </span><br><span>major gathering point for Ron Paul people in the area. “When Ron Paul </span><br><span>gets the Occupiers on his side,” he beamed, “Ron Paul is not going to be </span><br><span>stopped. You can’t stop him.”</span><br><span></span><br><span>Cullen had wanted to go to the UNH rally but lacked transportation. So I </span><br><span>offered to give him a ride. Traffic that night was surprisingly </span><br><span>horrendous; we missed the first bit of Paul’s speech, barely making it </span><br><span>in time to hear the congressman remark on Iran sanctions and ask the </span><br><span>crowd how they would like it if one day Chinese drones started bombing </span><br><span>American targets. Afterwards, hundreds of people waited in line for the </span><br><span>candidate, who seemed perfectly happy to oblige all those who desired </span><br><span>photos. Cullen waited in this queue and later relayed his interaction </span><br><span>with Ron Paul. “You’re a beautiful man,” he reported telling him as they </span><br><span>posed for the camera. Ron Paul then inquired about the green armband, </span><br><span>and Cullen replied that it stood for Occupy New Hampshire. “Thank you </span><br><span>for participating in the democratic process,” Paul commented, cheerfully.</span><br><span></span><br><span>—</span><br><span></span><br><span>On the very first night of the Zuccotti Park occupation in September </span><br><span>2011, when participants had scant conception of what Occupy would soon </span><br><span>become, Ron Paul people showed up and argued with Marxists about whether </span><br><span>they were entitled to stay. They stayed. One might say Ron Paul people </span><br><span>played a more integral role to the inception of Occupy than conventional </span><br><span>Democrats or liberals, many of whom scorned the inscrutable </span><br><span>demonstration in its first weeks. The journalist Arun Gupta, who </span><br><span>co-founded the Occupied Wall Street Journal in New York City and later </span><br><span>embarked on a tour of Occupy sites across America, told me he’d see </span><br><span>clusters of Ron Paul supporters and various libertarians virtually </span><br><span>everywhere he went. Such folks “tended to be better represented and </span><br><span>integrated in red states,” Gupta said–Cheyenne, Boise, Tulsa, Little </span><br><span>Rock, Louisville, Charleston, etc.–while in “blue states” they typically </span><br><span>formed enclaves that were “tolerated” by the wider group.</span><br><span></span><br><span>A fair number of Occupy people in those days either had no opinion of or </span><br><span>actively disliked Ron Paul, but the undercurrents of support were </span><br><span>nonetheless noticeable, ranging from individuals who would wield </span><br><span>official campaign paraphernalia to others who would concede private </span><br><span>support only for narrow aspects of Ron Paul’s platform upon intense </span><br><span>questioning. One would more reliably come across vocal Ron Paul </span><br><span>supporters at Occupy events than vocal Obama supporters. It was not lost </span><br><span>on the Zuccotti Park crowd, for instance, that Ron Paul personally </span><br><span>expressed a measure of support for the movement earlier than most any </span><br><span>other national U.S. politician–aside from Sen. Bernie Sanders or Rep. </span><br><span>Dennis Kucinich. (Gary Johnson, then seeking the GOP nomination, made an </span><br><span>appearance at Zuccotti Park and had a generally positive impression.)</span><br><span></span><br><span>Signage bearing the Paul-derived “End the Fed” slogan was common around </span><br><span>Lower Manhattan during those frenzied weeks. Stories of Paul-Occupy </span><br><span>fusion emerged from around the country: in Los Angeles, a Ron Paul </span><br><span>activist successfully added an anti-Federal Reserve amendment to </span><br><span>OccupyLA’s working manifesto; an ultimately ill-fated “Ron Paul Tent” </span><br><span>was established for a time at OccupyPhilly. Ryan Hirsch, one of the lead </span><br><span>Occupy New Hampshire organizers I met last January, described himself </span><br><span>more-or-less as a disaffected progressive and was unsure if he’d bother </span><br><span>voting in the GOP primary. (Hirsch was the individual pictured here who </span><br><span>at a November 2011 campaign event in New Hampshire handed Barack Obama a </span><br><span>typewritten note. “Mr. President,” it read, “Over 4,000 peaceful </span><br><span>protesters have been arrested…”) But Hirsch ultimately did vote, for Ron </span><br><span>Paul. Not because he agreed with everything Ron Paul has ever said, but </span><br><span>because Paul spoke on so many critical issues that other candidates </span><br><span>systematically neglected: civil liberties, drug prohibition, the </span><br><span>military-industrial complex, criminal justice/police problems, </span><br><span>Wikileaks, internet freedom.</span><br><span></span><br><span>In October 2011, Paul told journalist Brian Doherty that he viewed the </span><br><span>nascent Occupy Wall Street movement as a “tremendous opportunity,” while </span><br><span>adding that “it is not necessarily advantageous to overemphasize </span><br><span>alliance with people the conservative voters don’t really want to talk </span><br><span>about.” Indeed, at the time Occupy was the subject of much derision in </span><br><span>right-wing media, with outlets such as <a href="http://Breitbart.com">Breitbart.com</a> and the Daily </span><br><span>Caller propagating endless incendiary anti-Occupy memes, often involving </span><br><span>sexual exploitation or human excrement. These were widely circulated on </span><br><span>the web and picked up by the talk-radio/Fox News nexus. Republican </span><br><span>presidential candidates eagerly piled on: Mitt Romney declared the </span><br><span>movement “dangerous,” while Newt Gingrich sneered–to the biggest </span><br><span>applause of the night at a Frank Luntz presidential forum–that Occupiers </span><br><span>ought to “Go get a job, right after you take a bath.” Ron Paul indicated </span><br><span>he was put off by that remark. “I’m not likely to be the one to say, </span><br><span>well, ‘Why don’t you get a bath and go get a job and quit crybabying.’ </span><br><span>No, I don’t like that at all.”</span><br><span></span><br><span>Paul was probably correct insofar as public outreach to Occupy at the </span><br><span>time would have been disadvantageous if his aim was to court registered </span><br><span>Iowa Republicans. But Ron Paul’s “affinity” with the movement, as he </span><br><span>described it, manifested from the outset. In September 2011 we spoke </span><br><span>after a campaign event at a New Hampshire old folks’ home. Some </span><br><span>supporters of his, I mentioned, had shown up to Zuccotti Park and were </span><br><span>spreading the message of liberty, so to say. “If they were demonstrating </span><br><span>peacefully,” Paul reacted, “and making a point, and arguing our case, </span><br><span>and drawing attention to the Fed–I would say, good!” Paul drew out his </span><br><span>inflection on the word “good,” as if to add–“and it’s about darn time!” </span><br><span>In subsequent weeks, he’d go on to speak favorably about Occupy in a </span><br><span>variety of venues: rebutting Herman Cain’s criticism during televised </span><br><span>debates, extolling the principle of civil disobedience at the National </span><br><span>Press Club and elsewhere. As the 2012 campaign dwindled, he started </span><br><span>invoking the problem of “police violence” more regularly–of intimate </span><br><span>concern to Occupiers–and emphasizing his commitment to “non-coercion,” </span><br><span>which is a central tenet of Occupy’s operational ethos.</span><br><span></span><br><span>That a candidate who routinely inveighed against the military-industrial </span><br><span>complex, “corporate fascism,” civil liberties infringements, and the </span><br><span>George W. Bush administration’s lies about Iraq while championing </span><br><span>Wikileaks, Bradley Manning, and the Occupy movement wound up attracting </span><br><span>support from elements of the American left is not terribly surprising. </span><br><span>But idiosyncratic right-wing elements of the Ron Paul coalition were </span><br><span>often quite exercised about those same subjects. What this crossover </span><br><span>dynamic suggests about the modern American political landscape remains </span><br><span>largely unexplored.</span><br><span></span><br><span>All of these unorthodox elements may be forsaken in coming months, </span><br><span>however, as the “Liberty Movement” orients itself to an existence </span><br><span>without Ron Paul as its congressional standard-bearer. He retires from </span><br><span>office on January 3. Those within the Ron Paul apparatus who insist on </span><br><span>merging into the Republican Party infrastructure risk abandoning the </span><br><span>legions of young people whose political consciousnesses were enlivened </span><br><span>by Ron Paul but who refuse to countenance the machinations and </span><br><span>deceptions associated with party politicking. They may have once been </span><br><span>willing to work with Republicans to help Ron Paul, but those volunteers </span><br><span>were always more “in” the GOP as a matter of practical necessity than </span><br><span>“of” it.</span><br><span></span><br><span>During his farewell address to Congress last month, Paul asked, “Why did </span><br><span>the big banks, the large corporations, and foreign banks and foreign </span><br><span>central banks get bailed out in 2008, and the middle class lost their </span><br><span>jobs and their homes?” He then cited the “gross discrepancy in wealth </span><br><span>distribution going from the middle class to the rich” as among “the </span><br><span>greatest dangers that the American people face today and impede the goal </span><br><span>of a free society,” echoing one of Occupy’s central themes–income equality.</span><br><span></span><br><span>Ever the adept politician, Ron Paul understands where public opinion is </span><br><span>heading, and he knows how to tailor an argument. He thus wisely plans to </span><br><span>continue focusing on youth outreach in post-congressional life. Perhaps </span><br><span>the preponderance of eccentric characters in Ron Paul’s own flock made </span><br><span>him more inclined to show the maligned Occupy movement a modicum of </span><br><span>respect, back when doing so was not an especially advisable tactic. This </span><br><span>may not have thrilled members of his campaign operation, but long-term, </span><br><span>the goodwill Ron Paul engendered among some unlikely constituencies may </span><br><span>prove worth the price.</span><br><span></span><br><span>Michael Tracey is a writer based in New York. His work has appeared in </span><br><span>The Nation, Reason, Mother Jones, and other publications. Follow him on </span><br><span>Twitter.</span><br><span></span><br><span></span><br><span>-- </span><br><span>Dan Clore</span><br><span></span><br><span>New book: _Weird Words: A Lovecraftian Lexicon_:</span><br><span><a href="http://tinyurl.com/yd3bxkw">http://tinyurl.com/yd3bxkw</a></span><br><span>My collected fiction: _The Unspeakable and Others_</span><br><span><a href="http://tinyurl.com/8puuzuc">http://tinyurl.com/8puuzuc</a></span><br><span>Lord Weÿrdgliffe & Necronomicon Page:</span><br><span><a href="http://tinyurl.com/292yz9">http://tinyurl.com/292yz9</a></span><br><span>News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:</span><br><span><a href="http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo">http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo</a></span><br><span></span><br><span>Skipper: Professor, will you tell these people who is</span><br><span>in charge on this island?</span><br><span>Professor: Why, no one.</span><br><span>Skipper: No one?</span><br><span>Thurston Howell III: No one? Good heavens, this is anarchy!</span><br><span>-- _Gilligan's Island_, episode #6, "President Gilligan"</span><br><span></span><br><span></span><br><span></span><br><span></span><br><span></span><br><span></span><br><span></span><br><span></span><br><span></span><br><span></span><br><span></span><br><span></span><br><span></span><br><span></span><br><span></span><br><span></span><br><span></span><br><span></span><br><span></span><br><span></span><br><span></span><br><span></span><br><span></span><br><span></span><br><span></span><br><span></span><br><span></span><br><span></span><br><span></span><br><span></span><br><span></span><br><span></span><br><span></span><br><span></span><br><span></span><br><span>------------------------------------</span><br><span></span><br><span>Yahoo! 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