Occupy Wall Street-bevegelsen (OWS) var inspirert av
Wisconsinopprøret, Los Indignados i Spania og den arabiske
våren. Resultatet har blitt at debatten om konsentrasjon av
rikdom, ulikhet og demokrati for alvor har fått et voldsomt
oppsving i USA. Bevegelsen, som startet med en håndfull
aktivister, har dermed fått mer gjennomslag enn den
amerikanske fagbevegelsen har greid på mange tiår.
Samtidig som at mange fagforeninger i USA var tidlig ute med
å støtte OWS, er det også store forskjeller i
ideologi mellom de to bevegelsene. For eksempel er mange i OWS
antikapitalistiske, noe de fleste fagforeninger ikke er. Samtidig
er det også mange i OWS som støtter en sterkt
libertariansk politikk, som er i sterk konflikt med de mer
sosialdemokratiske fagforeningene.
På Velferdskonferansen 2012 vil Dean Hubbard ta for seg
utviklingen av OWS-bevegelsen, samt hvordan viktige deler av
fagbevegelsen har utviklet samarbeidet med bevegelsen. Hva kan vi
lære av dette samarbeidet? Hvilke tendenser finner vi i den
nye bevegelsen, og hva er perspektivene og mulighetene
framover?
Dean Hubbard er seniorrådgiver i det amerikanske
transportarbeiderforbundet (TWU). Han har jobbet tett med Occupy
Wall Street både i USA og andre steder i verden. Han har
blant annet vært med på å mobilisere
fagbevegelsen i New York, Washington DC og Philadelfia. Han har
holdt appeller og skrevet artikler om tema som OWS-bevegelsen,
nyliberalismen og menneskerettigheter. Han har også bakgrunn
fra solidaritetsarbeid, både nasjonalt og internasjonalt.
Dean Hubbard kommer til Velferdskonferansen 2012.
Hele presentasjonen på engelsk:
The Occupy Wall Street movement, inspired in equal parts by the
Wisconsin uprising, the indigandos of Spain and the revolutions in
Egypt and Tunisia, has succeeded in moving the issues of
concentrated wealth, inequality, and the threat to democracy in the
United States to the heart of the national debate. By doing
so, a movement that began with a small
handful of anarchists achieved something the larger and
theoretically more powerful U.S. labor movement has tried but
largely failed to do for many years. While some unions were among
the earliest supporters of the Occupy movement, and share many of
its ideals, the two movements are also quite different. Unlike most
U.S. unions, many participants in the Occupy movement take an
explicitly anti-capitalist position. At the same time, other Occupy
activists display a strong streak of economic libertarianism, which
is at odds with the Social Democracy of many union members. The
Occupy movement makes a point of not having a set of demands or a
defined leadership, while trade unions are structured
representative bodies that carefully formulate programs and
demands. Are the strategies and tactics of these two
movements compatible? What do the tepid support of many
unions for the Occupy movement, and the naivete of many Occupy
activists about labor say about the capacities and ideologies of
their respective movements? What can the Occupy movement gain
from the involvement of organized labor, and vice versa? What can
the Occupy movement and U.S. unions learn from similar uprisings in
Europe and around the world?
Dean Hubbard is Senior Counsel to the Transport Workers Union of
America, AFL-CIO, an affiliate of the ITF. He has been
involved in supporting the Occupy mobilizations as a participant in
actions in New York, Washington DC and Philadelphia; in mobilizing
the support of his union for the movement around the U.S. and
globally; and in writing and speaking publicly about the Occupy
movement. Dean is also Co-Chair of the National Lawyers Guild
(NLG) Labor and Employment Committee. The NLG is a national
organization of progressive lawyers fighting to elevate human
rights over property interests. In that capacity, he has led
solidarity delegations of labor lawyers and trade unions to Cuba,
Mexico and other parts of Latin America for many years. As a
scholar, Dean has written and taught on domestic and international
impacts of neoliberal policy, human rights as a discursive frame
for social change organizing, the normative functions of labor and
employment law, and social policy and the arts.
