On Wednesday afternoon, we marched out of Zuccotti Park, where the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators have bedded down for the duration. Drums were pounding and shouts of "Whose streets? Our streets!" "All day, all week, occupy Wall Street," and "This is what democracy looks like, that is what hypocrisy looks like!" rang out as we headed directly into New York City's version of a police state. The helicopters with the high-tech sensors and high-resolution cameras hovered in the distant sky, the security cams peered down from walls, the barriers the police had set up hemmed us in -- no street, just sidewalk for these demonstrators -- and the cops, scores of flexi-cuffs looped at their belts, were lined up all along the way, while empty buses wheeled past ready for future arrestees.

This was not exactly a shining Big Apple example of the "freedom" to demonstrate. It was demonstration as imprisonment and at certain moments, at least for this 67-year-old, it was claustrophobic. This is the way the state treats 15,000 terrorist suspects, not its own citizens.

Still, the energy and high spirits were staggering. The unions were out -- nurses, teachers, construction workers -- the bands were lively ("... down by the riverside, ain't gonna study war no more..."), and hand-made signs were everywhere and about everything under the sun: "Crime does pay in the USA -- on Wall Street," "When did the common good become a bad idea," "4 years in college, $100,000 in debt, for a hostess job," "Eat the rich," "Arab Spring to Wall Street Fall" (with the final "L" in "Fall" slipping off the sign), "We are the 99%," "Legalize online poker, occupy Wall St."

Amid the kaleidoscopic range of topics on those signs and in those chants and cries, one thing, one name, was largely missing: the president's. In those hours marching and at Foley Square amid the din of so many thousands of massed people, I saw one sign that said "Obama = Bush" and another that went something like "The Barack Obama we elected would be out here with us." That was it. Sayonara.

It's as if the spreading movement, made up of kids who might once have turned out for presidential candidate Obama, had left him and his administration in the dust. Like big labor, the left, and the media, the administration that loved its bankers to death (and got little enough in return for that embrace) is now playing catch-up with a ragtag bunch of protesters it wouldn't have thought twice about if they hadn't somehow caught the zeitgeist of this moment. (Don't forget that the Obama administration was similarly left scrambling and desperately behind events when it came to the demonstrators in Tahrir Square in Cairo last January.)

The best Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner could say a few days ago, when asked about his sympathies for the Occupy Wall Street movement, was: "I feel a lot of sympathy for what you might describe as a general sense among Americans that we've lost a sense of possibility." Really? White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley didn't know if the movement was exactly "helpful" for the White House agenda. Truly? And White House press spokesman Jay Carney commented blandly, "I would simply say that, to the extent that people are frustrated with the economic situation, we understand." Do you?

Suddenly, last Thursday, with news about the anti-Wall Street movement whipping up a storm, the Obama administration found itself out of breath and running hard to reposition itself. Vice President Joe Biden said, "The core is the bargain has been breached with the American people," while at his news conference addressing questions about the movement the president added, "I think it expresses the frustrations that the American people feel... [T]he protesters are giving voice to a more broad-based frustration about how our financial system works."

Still, those signs with everything but Barack Obama on them should be considered a warning. Recently, Ariel Dorfman, the Chilean writer and activist, penned a message from a man who died in the attacks of September 11th. His name was Salvador Allende, he was the elected president of Chile, and the "terrorists" on that day in 1973 were the Chilean military backed by the CIA. (Strangely enough, afterwards no one declared a global war on anyone.)

Dorfman, author most recently of Feeding on Dreams: Confessions of an Unrepentant Exile, channels warning words from "the dead" to Barack Obama. But mark my words, Allende's isn't the only warning to the president at this moment. Those kids in downtown Manhattan (and increasingly across the country and the world) are offering their own warning, and theirs, after a fashion, comes from the future, one in which Obama's presidency could someday be seen as little but an irrelevancy.
(c) 2011 Tom Engelhardt is co-founder of the American Empire Project. He is the author of The End of Victory Culture: a History of the Cold War and Beyond, as well as of a novel, The Last Days of Publishing. His most recent book is The American Way of War: How Bush's Wars Became Obama's (Haymarket Books).

AN OLD photo from World War I shows a company of German soldiers getting on the train on their way to the front. On the wall of the car somebody had scribbled: "viel Feind, viel Ehr'" ("The more enemies, the more Honor".)

In those days, at the very start of what was to be the First World War, country after country was declaring war on Germany. The spirit of the graffito reflected the hubris of the supreme commander, Kaiser Wilhelm, who relied on the war plan of the legendary German General Staff. It was indeed an excellent war plan, and as excellent war plans are apt to do, it started going awry right from the beginning.

The foolish Kaiser now has the heirs he deserves. Israel's Deputy Prime Minister, Moshe Ya'alon, a former army Chief of Staff whose intelligence is below the average even of that rank, has announced that Israel could not possibly apologize to Turkey, even though its national interests may demand it, because it would hurt our "prestige."

Many enemies, much prestige.

It seems that we shall soon run out of friends whom we can turn into enemies to gather even more prestige.

LAST WEEK a black cat came between Israel and its second best friend: Germany.

High-ranking German officials confided to their Israeli colleagues that their Kanzlerin, Angela Merkel, was "furious" when she heard that the Israeli government had approved the building of 1100 housing units in Gilo, a neighborhood in occupied East Jerusalem. Just a few days earlier, the Quartet had invited Israel and the Palestinian Authority to restart negotiations and abstain from "provocations". If this is not a provocation, what is?

Merkel, generally a woman of placid equanimity, did not keep her rage to herself. She called Binyamin Netanyahu and gave him a severe dressing-down, something that had never happened before.

Until now, Germany has kept to a strict code of behavior towards Israel: after the unspeakable crimes committed by the Nazis against the Jews, there could be no criticism of any Israeli act, Germany would pay for a crucial component of Israel's armaments, Germany would suspend all moral criteria as far as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was concerned.

Not any more, it seems. We may be losing our only second-best friend.

THE CLASSIC example of "How to lose Friends and Alienate People" is, of course, our affair with Turkey.

David Ben-Gurion, the arch-architect of Israel, believed that peace with the Arabs was neither possible nor desirable. He devised an alternative: a ring to encircle the Arab world - an alliance of non-Arab allies. These included Iran (under the Shah), Ethiopia (under Haile Selassie), several other African states and, of course, Turkey (under the legacy of Kemal Ataturk).

Our relations with Turkey developed over the years into a very close marriage, especially cozy between the armed forces. Joint exercises, sales of lots of arms, intelligence sharing. While Israel was helping the Iraqi Kurds against Saddam Hussein, it helped Ankara to oppress the Turkish Kurds. Jerusalem seriously considered laying a pipeline under the sea from Turkey to bring in water, which Turkey has in abundance and Israel sorely needs.

Suddenly everything changed. Turkish-Israeli relations foundered like a ship hit squarely by a torpedo.

It started when the Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, abruptly got up and left a public dialogue with Shimon Peres in Davos. Israelis could understand that: not everybody can stand Peres.

But Avigdor Lieberman's Foreign Office decided to retaliate. His deputy, a genius by the name of Danny Ayalon, summoned the Turkish ambassador to his office for a rebuke and had him sit on a low sofa while towering above him on a high chair. The ambassador did not notice, but little Danny proudly explained his ploy to the assembled Israeli journalists. The Ambassador took his leave and went home.

Turkey reacted unofficially by sending the Mave Marmara to break the Gaza blockade. Nine Turks were killed. Turkey was in uproar. Erdogan demanded an apology. That's where the prestige came in.

One can argue, of course, that the whole business was a premeditated tactic of Erdogan's to change course and dump Israel for other allies. If so, it was even more stupid of our government to play into his hand.

WHEN THE Arab Spring broke out, Turkey jumped on the bandwagon and proposed a Turkish-Egyptian axis, reminiscent of the good old days of the Ottoman empire. Israel, on the other hand, stuck to its customary line.

Instead of realizing what was happening, our government clung to the shattered dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak. If it had come out immediately and wholeheartedly in favor of the revolution, it could, perhaps, have gained a foothold in Egyptian public opinion, which had come to detest Mubarak as a well paid American lackey who helped Israel in starving a million and a half Arab brothers in the Gaza Strip.

Israeli intelligence did not realize that we were facing a historic earthquake that would change the region. Actually, it never foresees or understands events in the Arab world, being blinded by its contempt for Arabs.

The result was that Egyptian crowds attacked the Israeli embassy, forcing the ambassador and his staff to flee the country, and that saboteurs repeatedly blew up the pipeline that transports Egyptian gas to Israel at very low prices (probably negotiated after due bribes were paid to the right people.)

People here are now saying that the Egyptian public has always been against the peace with Israel, through no fault of ours. That is quite untrue. I was in Cairo a few days after Anwar Sadat's historic visit to Jerusalem and found the Egyptian capital delirious with joy. Countless Israelis have visited Egypt since then and have been received always and everywhere with utmost friendliness. It was only when Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories became more and more oppressive that Egyptians started to feel betrayed.

Lieberman and Co. have lost Turkey and are losing Egypt, our two stalwart allies in the region, and have insulted, humiliated and trodden on the toes of a dozen other nations. But they have undoubtedly gained much prestige.

PEOPLE WHO look for logic in politics often arrive at conspiracy theories.

When the present government coalition was set up, Lieberman asked for the ministries of immigrants' absorption, justice, interior security (police) and foreign affairs.

Immigrants - that was natural. His voters are mainly immigrants from the former Soviet Union. Justice and police - also natural. The police are conducting an endless investigation against him concerning mysterious funds that he and his very young daughter have received from Eastern European sources.

But the foreign office? What for? Why not the far more prestigious Ministry of Defense or the immensely powerful finance ministry?

One of my acquaintances has come up with a theory: what if the Russians...

Lieberman spends a lot of his time in Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and his native Moldova. Who else but Russia has an interest in destroying the international standing of Israel, one of the closest allies of the United States? Wouldn't it have been rational for Vladimir Putin to...

But that is, of course, a joke. Not only is Lieberman known as an upright Israeli patriot, so patriotic that no one can stand next to him, but no handler in Moscow would accept as his agent a man with shifty eyes, who speaks with a thick Russian accent.

No, there must be another reason. But which?

A FOREIGN journalist asked me the other day: "but what do they think?"

"They" - Netanyahu, Lieberman et al - are losing all our remaining friends, humiliating Barack Obama on the way. They sabotage the resumption of peace negotiations. They sprinkle settlements everywhere.

If the Two-State solution is finally made impossible, what remains? A unified state from the Mediterranean to the Jordan? What kind of state would that be? They are dead set against a bi-national state, which would be the total negation of Zionism. An apartheid state? How long could that last?

The only "rational" alternative would be total ethnic cleansing, the driving out of 5.5 million Palestinians from the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and Israel proper. Is that possible? Would the world tolerate it, unless it is distracted by an invasion from Mars?

The answer is: "they" just don't think very much at all. Israelis have been conditioned by their experience to think in the very short term. As the Americans say: "A statesman thinks about the next generation, a politician thinks about the next election." Or as the Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann used to say: "The future will come and care for the future."

There is no national debate, only a vague desire to keep everything. Rightist Zionists want to hold on to all of historical Palestine, leftist Zionists want to hold on to as much of it as possible. That's as far as the thinking goes.

"Hello, you've reached the people of the United States of America. We're away from our desks right now, and perhaps for good -- so instead of leaving a message for us, we encourage you to take your messages directly to the halls of power for their consideration. If you require immediate assistance, do not ask the agents of governments or corporations, but organize in your own communities instead. For directory assistance, get out in the streets and talk to others concerned about the direction of the nation and world. To be connected to an operator, follow the protest signs and/or the smell of teargas in the financial districts across the country. And if you should become disconnected ... we are very happy to welcome you home to the movement!"

Our "interesting times" just got much more interesting. Is it actually possible that the "sleeping giant" that is the American people is finally beginning to join the rest of the world and show a genuine pulse? To be sure, we've been pretty well shell-shocked on these shores in the new millennium, and overall we've been less directly impacted by the ongoing effects of "The Age of Austerity, Degradation, and Warfare" than many others. Our lives of relative privilege in the U.S. also mean that we have farther to fall, and indeed many are finally feeling the fuller brunt of the crisis. Is it too late? Definitely not. Do we need to act immediately? Unquestionably, yes.

Enter the "Occupy Everything" movement. Fanning out from Wall Street, the symbolic epicenter of speculative greed and financial brinksmanship, the concept of occupying space en masse to protest social inequality and environmental devastation has proliferated across the nation. This is, indeed, becoming a full-fledged "occupation" -- which is a doubly poignant notion, considering that one of the trigger issues in the movement is unemployment and a rampant sense of job insecurity. People without work are literally finding a true occupation.

None of this has happened in a vacuum, and undoubtedly there have been many precursors and warning signs of the coming struggle, from the WTO protests in Seattle in 1999 to the more recent mobilizations in Arizona against austerity and racism. Most notable perhaps is the Wisconsin example, which demonstrated the utility of broad-based "people power" actions in pushing back against the ravages of an economic system gone haywire. Critical observers might be able to plausibly say that they could even see this coming...

Yet this is clearly new and different. People aren't just rattling their cages, but are demanding that the penitentiary be dismantled altogether. This doesn't appear to be some parochial, NIMBY, single-issue protest that will melt away once a few minor concessions (or outright bribes) are granted to the affected class. It likely won't be beaten back by pepper spray and billy clubs, since you can't kill an idea. No, this moment of escalating occupation seemingly calls into question the entire imperialist operation, following Martin Luther King, Jr.'s insight that merely "flinging a coin to a beggar" is insufficient since "an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring."

Wall Street, You're Fired!

We've been waiting a long time for this, wondering: how much pain do Americans have to feel before they join the majority of the planet's inhabitants in recognizing the inherent injustice of a global system of production and consumption that pits the elites against everyone else and all of us against the earth itself? Our privilege, comfort, and cultural distractions have largely insulated us from the worst effects, including those that we are responsible for creating and visiting upon hapless, countless, nameless others. But there comes a point when even the bird in the gilded cage sees beyond the bars and recognizes its essential confinement.

The Occupy Wall Street demonstrations seem to be eliciting precisely that response. Indeed, even my local (and generally conservative) paper gets it, as evidenced by this recent editorial:

"The one mistake is for pundits to focus attention on the protesters themselves. That's exactly what Wall Street and oil speculators want -- to keep themselves off the hot seat. About 700 protesters were arrested this past Saturday but, to date, not a single arrest has been made from anywhere in the Wall Street districts regarding the Russian roulette they played with the lives of distant, faceless Americans spread out all over the country who are reeling in the wake of outright investor thievery and negligence."

A few years ago, such a statement would not have been forthcoming, or even possible. But in this climate -- which is rapidly changing in real time, both politically and ecologically -- it's becoming safer for the mainstream to openly oppose the power elite. Such is the virtue of a popular uprising, and when it catches hold widely across all demographics in a given society (as evidenced in Egypt and other locales), major restructuring becomes possible. The challenge will be to sustain it in the face of repression and/or concessions; the test of this will be precisely what makes today's uprising intriguing: its demands are potentially systemic and structural.

Thus, the aim is not to reform Wall Street (and its sponsors/allies within government, corporate America, and the military-industrial complex) but to tear down its misbegotten and historically tainted edifice altogether. No more profligate fatcats, unethical speculators, misery profiteers, or robber barons. Their sort of business is no longer welcome here; the exponential growth and expanding wealth gap model will cease operations immediately or be dismantled by the people who are suffering its indignities and depredations. Shades of one Mario Savio, circa 1964:

"There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part; you can't even passively take part, and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!"

In Case of Emergency, Break Glass?

Militant rhetoric notwithstanding, social movements have been schooled repeatedly on the double-edged nature of tactics perceived as confrontational or "violent" in any manner whatsoever. Smashing symbols of oppression has its appeal in a visceral sense, and can be used to galvanize energy around certain issues or targets -- the archetypal example being the shattering of a few corporate windows in Seattle as a means of drawing attention to the previously clandestine workings of the World Trade Organization. But there's a diminishing return involved, in which the direct act garners attention but mainly for the act itself without the larger context and specific grievances being equally reported. And this pattern clearly is more pronounced in the post 9/11 era, where even garden-variety acts of civil disobedience can raise the specter of being branded with the dreaded and media-enticing t-word.

On the other hand, dutifully marching in permitted rows and then going home to watch it on television doesn't exactly "get the goods" either. Orchestrated acts of disobedience possess a choreographed quality that can likewise strip away any deeper communication of the salient issues. So how exactly does a movement in the modern era demonstrate its forcefulness and resolve without alienating others or courting official demonization in the process? How do we convey the gravity of the issues and our rightful frustrations without becoming the very things we're struggling against -- namely intolerance, militarism, domination, and coercion? Unquestionably, the use of "force" from below raises different ethical questions than when it's deployed from above, yet in the minds of many undecided observers the distinction is murky.

After all, if my optimistic reading of the potential of the Occupation Movement is correct, the aim is to shift the paradigm rather than accomplish small reforms or win minor concessions. To accomplish this, it will take more than the energies of dedicated activists around the nation (although that in itself would be an excellent start). There will need to be a critical mass of people and communities resisting business-as-usual and forging new sets of relationships to supplant the old ones that have taken us to the brink of cultural and ecological survivability. The proliferation of #occupy hashtags in nearly every city and town is inspiring and potent -- yet the movement still needs to reach beyond its current adherents to those wedded to the blind privilege of their manufactured, manipulated, medicated lives in the cradle of a dying empire.

A Bridge to Somewhere

This is the moment where a movement either peters out or finds its voice. The ruling elite can endure outbreaks of mass cage-rattling through a combination of repression, provocation, disinformation, and/or censorship. In the end, "the system" can always argue that it might not be perfect, but it's the only game in town capable of meeting life's needs for multitudes of people, and in any event the protestors are just spoiled kids blowing off steam with no real alternative at the ready. "700 arrested shutting down the Brooklyn Bridge" makes a great one-day headline, but if it isn't soon followed by "700 new ways to feed your family and have productive, meaningful lives" it's hard to sustain the public interest in this age of the 24-hour news cycle. Occupation is a strong tactic with definite therapeutic benefits, but it still requires that next (and perhaps harder) step of articulating a better world and not merely end empire.

The seeds are clearly in evidence: an ethical redistribution of wealth and power, sustainable and socially just lifeways, production for utility rather than profit, balancing human needs within the capacity of the biosphere, maximizing societal potential through opportunity and diversity, converting the waste of the war machine into the abundance of a peace economy, dismantling the architecture of oppression in favor of human and political rights, liberating the creativity of humankind from the shackles of eternal indebtedness, making education a universal blessing rather than an individual burden, halting the ravages of climate change, and restoring the planet's life-giving properties by reintegrating self, society, and nature.

Occupying the spaces and places of power and privilege is an outstanding first step that crucially links the U.S. with the myriad popular struggles that have been underway for some time now around the world. It has the look and feel of a "thousand flowers blooming" and represents the combined best virtues of decentralization and solidarity alike. If there are folks reading this still undecided about the efficacy of Occupation, it's at least worth wading out into the streets, since (as the saying goes) the only thing you have to lose is your chains. Let's face it: the window of time in which to act is rapidly closing. Even if we got shafted by those before us, it's still every generation's responsibility to leave the world in better shape than we found it. Indeed, you might even say that this is our highest calling and most worthwhile occupation.
(c) 2011 Randall Amster J.D., Ph.D., teaches peace studies at Prescott College and serves as the executive director of the Peace & Justice Studies Association. His most recent book is the co-edited volume "Building Cultures of Peace: Transdisciplinary Voices of Hope and Action" (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009).

I was honored to be invited to speak at Occupy Wall Street on Thursday night. Since amplification is (disgracefully) banned, and everything I say will have to be repeated by hundreds of people so others can hear (a.k.a. "the human microphone"), what I actually say at Liberty Plaza will have to be very short. With that in mind, here is the longer, uncut version of the speech.

I love you.

And I didn't just say that so that hundreds of you would shout "I love you" back, though that is obviously a bonus feature of the human microphone. Say unto others what you would have them say unto you, only way louder.

Yesterday, one of the speakers at the labor rally said: "We found each other." That sentiment captures the beauty of what is being created here. A wide-open space (as well as an idea so big it can't be contained by any space) for all the people who want a better world to find each other. We are so grateful.

If there is one thing I know, it is that the 1 percent loves a crisis. When people are panicked and desperate and no one seems to know what to do, that is the ideal time to push through their wish list of pro-corporate policies: privatizing education and social security, slashing public services, getting rid of the last constraints on corporate power. Amidst the economic crisis, this is happening the world over.

And there is only one thing that can block this tactic, and fortunately, it's a very big thing: the 99 percent. And that 99 percent is taking to the streets from Madison to Madrid to say "No. We will not pay for your crisis."

That slogan began in Italy in 2008. It ricocheted to Greece and France and Ireland and finally it has made its way to the square mile where the crisis began.

"Why are they protesting?" ask the baffled pundits on TV. Meanwhile, the rest of the world asks: "What took you so long?" "We've been wondering when you were going to show up." And most of all: "Welcome."

Many people have drawn parallels between Occupy Wall Street and the so-called anti-globalization protests that came to world attention in Seattle in 1999. That was the last time a global, youth-led, decentralized movement took direct aim at corporate power. And I am proud to have been part of what we called "the movement of movements."

But there are important differences too. For instance, we chose summits as our targets: the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund, the G8. Summits are transient by their nature, they only last a week. That made us transient too. We'd appear, grab world headlines, then disappear. And in the frenzy of hyper patriotism and militarism that followed the 9/11 attacks, it was easy to sweep us away completely, at least in North America.

Occupy Wall Street, on the other hand, has chosen a fixed target. And you have put no end date on your presence here. This is wise. Only when you stay put can you grow roots. This is crucial. It is a fact of the information age that too many movements spring up like beautiful flowers but quickly die off. It's because they don't have roots. And they don't have long term plans for how they are going to sustain themselves. So when storms come, they get washed away.

Being horizontal and deeply democratic is wonderful. But these principles are compatible with the hard work of building structures and institutions that are sturdy enough to weather the storms ahead. I have great faith that this will happen.

Something else this movement is doing right: You have committed yourselves to non-violence. You have refused to give the media the images of broken windows and street fights it craves so desperately. And that tremendous discipline has meant that, again and again, the story has been the disgraceful and unprovoked police brutality. Which we saw more of just last night. Meanwhile, support for this movement grows and grows. More wisdom.

But the biggest difference a decade makes is that in 1999, we were taking on capitalism at the peak of a frenzied economic boom. Unemployment was low, stock portfolios were bulging. The media was drunk on easy money. Back then it was all about start-ups, not shutdowns.

We pointed out that the deregulation behind the frenzy came at a price. It was damaging to labor standards. It was damaging to environmental standards. Corporations were becoming more powerful than governments and that was damaging to our democracies. But to be honest with you, while the good times rolled, taking on an economic system based on greed was a tough sell, at least in rich countries.

Ten years later, it seems as if there aren't any more rich countries. Just a whole lot of rich people. People who got rich looting the public wealth and exhausting natural resources around the world.

The point is, today everyone can see that the system is deeply unjust and careening out of control. Unfettered greed has trashed the global economy. And it is trashing the natural world as well. We are overfishing our oceans, polluting our water with fracking and deepwater drilling, turning to the dirtiest forms of energy on the planet, like the Alberta tar sands. And the atmosphere cannot absorb the amount of carbon we are putting into it, creating dangerous warming. The new normal is serial disasters: economic and ecological.

These are the facts on the ground. They are so blatant, so obvious, that it is a lot easier to connect with the public than it was in 1999, and to build the movement quickly.

We all know, or at least sense, that the world is upside down: we act as if there is no end to what is actually finite-fossil fuels and the atmospheric space to absorb their emissions. And we act as if there are strict and immovable limits to what is actually bountiful-the financial resources to build the kind of society we need.

The task of our time is to turn this around: to challenge this false scarcity. To insist that we can afford to build a decent, inclusive society-while at the same time, respect the real limits to what the earth can take.

What climate change means is that we have to do this on a deadline. This time our movement cannot get distracted, divided, burned out or swept away by events. This time we have to succeed. And I'm not talking about regulating the banks and increasing taxes on the rich, though that's important.

I am talking about changing the underlying values that govern our society. That is hard to fit into a single media-friendly demand, and it's also hard to figure out how to do it. But it is no less urgent for being difficult.

That is what I see happening in this square. In the way you are feeding each other, keeping each other warm, sharing information freely and proving health care, meditation classes and empowerment training. My favorite sign here says, "I care about you." In a culture that trains people to avoid each other's gaze, to say, "Let them die," that is a deeply radical statement.

A few final thoughts. In this great struggle, here are some things that don't matter.

* What we wear.

* Whether we shake our fists or make peace signs.

* Whether we can fit our dreams for a better world into a media soundbite.

Don't give in to the temptation. I'm not saying don't call each other on shit. But this time, let's treat each other as if we plan to work side by side in struggle for many, many years to come. Because the task before will demand nothing less.