Occupy DC partners with the SEIU and MoveOn.org

The Democrats and their allies in the liberal establishment are trying to co-opt the Occupy movement. This isn't paranoia: it's what they do (see: the antiwar movement).

Van Jones, who served as “green jobs” czar in the Obama White House and says he'd like to see his former boss serve an illegal third term, openly talks of exploiting the movement for electoral purposes, likening it to the Tea Party. The SEIU has straight up stolen Occupy's language, labeling the same president who told Wall Street bankers that “I'm protecting you” the candidate of the 99 percent. MoveOn.org . . . well, MoveOn.org is doing what MoveOn.org always does: exploiting the movement to build its email list and pocket more money from idiot liberals who think evil Republicans are entirely to blame for the status quo.

Many people within the Occupy movement have expressed fears about this attempted co-option. It's particularly a problem here in Washington, DC, where people paid to elect Democrats are some of the most active participants at the McPherson Square camp. While I was out of town this past weekend, I'm told concerns about co-option and Democratic infiltration were voiced by several folks at this past Saturday's meeting of the action committee – a committee that includes employees of the SEIU's Washington lobbying office as well as the co-founder of the Democratic Progressive Change Campaign Committee.

But were those voices heard? At the Monday general assembly, members of the action committee – which in the name of Occupy DC as a whole can approve or reject actions without seeking any form of consensus from the camp as a whole – announced that they had some news for us. Oh boy: they had agreed to back an upcoming “national day of action” sponsored by none other than the SEIU, MoveOn.org and Van Jones' Rebuild the Dream. The last such "day of action" resulted in the SEIU/Occupy DC rally at the KeyBridge calling on "obstructionists in Congress" to boost infrastructure spending -- by passing Obama's jobs bill, of course.

Same shit, different day.

“Some people think these groups are trying to co-opt the Occupy movement,” acknowledged one member of the committee who I know agrees with that assessment but, for whatever reason, doesn't view that as a reason not to cooperate with them.

“I think we should be co-opting them,” said another member of the committee.

That the issue of co-option is even being acknowledged is, I suppose, progress. But more than anything necessarily nefarious, the decision to embrace the co-opters -- aided, one can assume, by the fact one of the SEIU organizers of the event is on the action committee -- suggests there is some serious naivete at the McPherson camp, or perhaps just on the committee. Just as with the Key Bridge protest, occupiers will not be co-opting a rally they have had no hand in planning. Rather, they will be helping these liberal groups further their preferred narratives about what the Occupy movement stands for. It is their press releases that lazy journalists and pundits across the country will be relying on when discussions "what this all means," not some occupier's clever sign. It is Van Jones who will be invited on CNN to talk about the movement's "next steps.

Participating with such openly partisan organizations can only taint the movement, seemingly confirming not entirely unfounded suspicions that Occupy Wall Street and the occupations around the country it has inspired are but patchouli-infused get-out-the-vote operations for the Democrats. And for what?

The last action with the SEIU at the Key Bridge was a flop. The only message most Washingtonians received was courtesy local news station WTOP: avoid the Key Bridge, commuters, traffic's going to be a mess out there. That and the implication that the Occupy movement is an arm of organized labor and the Democrats.

Groups like Rebuild the Dream and the SEIU need the Occupy movement much more than it needs them. These groups need the appearance of energy and grassroots authenticity th movement can lend them; the SEIU, after all, has to bus people in to chant "sí se puede" at its boring rallies. The Occupy movement, by contrast, has nothing to gain by working with these groups. Indeed, it only stands to lose by associating itself with adjuncts for the Democratic Party and their brand of establishment-friendly, wave-a-sign-from-the-sidewalk activism.

In the comments to my last piece about Occupy DC's action committee, someone from the camp downplayed my concerns about the liberal-heavy makeup of the committee and its infiltration by people paid to elect Democrats. "Since the Key Bridge action, Occupy has not done a horizontal action with SEIU," they wrote, "so I would suggest people get past that issue [co-option] until someone tries to partner Occupy DC with another SEIU action."

Can we admit there's a problem now? Enabling a small group of people on the action committee to endorse events in the name of Occupy DC as a whole isn't working; the best actions, such as the occupation of Franklin School, were carried out by activists who avoided it altogether, while the actions that have come out of it are at best a mixed bag. There's no reason a major action of this nature -- one that need not be shrouded in secrecy -- should not have been presented at a general assembly.

Maybe trying to reach 100 percent consensus is a bad idea -- I'd like to see a requirement that major actions be agreed to by 80 to 90 percent of those attending a general assembly -- but then so is outsourcing control over which actions are "official" Occupy DC events to a committee composed of but 1 percent of the movement.

UPDATE: From The Washington Post's Greg Sargent, who spoke with SEIU President Mary Kay Henry about the planned protest:

One goal of the protests, Henry says, is to pressure Republicans to support Obama’s jobs creation proposals.

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“The reason we’re targeting Republicans is because this is about jobs,” she said. “The Republicans’ insistence that no revenue can be put on the table is the reason we’re not creating jobs in this country. We want to draw a stark contrast between a party that wants to scapegoat immigrants, attack public workers, and protect the rich, versus a president who has been saying he wants America to get back to work and that everybody should pay their fair share.”