OK, so like, I guess Mr. Scott Brown has not bothered to officially announce that he’s officially announcing his reelection campaign that we’ve known for months that he’s been already doing, or something. Got that?

This Thursday, January 19th, on the two-year anniversary of the special election where we made the mistake of electing him, Scott Brown will be doing some sort of anticlimactic kickoff event or other, and we’ll be raising money for Elizabeth Warren.

Now, there’s an official money bomb page, where you can put in your pledge and have it automatically process your contribution on the 19th, but where the heck’s the fun in all that? If you like me, and want me to get credit for the donations (and if you don’t, that’s OK, go click on the official money bomb page link above), then either send me an email with your pledge amount for Thursday (lynne-at-leftinlowell.com if you don’t want to make it publicly) or in comments of this blog (if you don’t care), and then on Thursday come back to the blog and make a donation through my super fabulous, thermostaty, Left in Lowell for Warren page.

You know what, I changed my mind. Let’s use the official pledge site just this once, so we can all count towards whatever announcement of money raised the Warren campaign will make right after. So, go pledge, NOW. I’ll meet you over there. Just promise me that you’ll help me raise money for my little thermometer later on this spring. ^_^

Another opportunity for you to see Elizabeth Warren, and another opportunity to donate to her campaign. Small donations are key to a campaign like Elizabeth’s because people power, all of us (the 99%) speaking in one voice can fight the “rigged game” as she put it in this first TV ad, despite the money and the power stacked against us. Please, go donate! Remember, my goal is $500 by December! Can we get to $100 by this weekend?

This is a “bio ad” - the usual introductory ad candidates put out there, but it also showcases two other things: Elizabeth’s heartfelt belief that we should be able, as a country, to provide a level playing field (also her words), and that contrary to the accusations in the silly Karl Rove ad still running on our airwaves, she’s actually quite down to earth and accessible.

(To give Brown some credit, he denounced ads from “all outside groups” - but then, there’s been ads from the League of Conservation Voters against him on TV as well - talking about his actual record, rather than a Scary Voice Lady telling lies and exaggerations about the Occupy movement and calling his likely opponent “radical” and “elitist,” mind you. If he doesn’t like people talking about his actual record, maybe he oughtn’t have voted the way he did…and Brown sure didn’t go out of his way to denounce Karl Rove and the American Crossroads group, specifically, did he?)

You probably realize that for the most part, I don’t get too far into fundraising for candidates unless I really like them. It’s a lot of work to harangue you guys for money and I prefer the organizing part anyway. But Karl Rove’s fun little ad which I posted about previously has goaded me into creating an ActBlue Warren page for LeftinLowell. Particularly, I would like to set a goal and see if we can’t meet it! I would like to, by the end of December 2011, have raised $500 for Warren through this ActBlue page. I will place the thermometer on the sidebar as well.

Elizabeth has the poise, the intelligence, the speaking ability, and the issues on her side. But Scott Brown and his henchmen like Karl Rove have unlimited money they can raise. Brown has something like 10 mil in the bank just on his own. We need to compete on the money front at least a bit - though there is no substitute for the grassroots organizing that I know we’re going to do!

I put in my first $25, but it looks lonely in there. If you were thinking about donating to Warren, do it now! Click on our page to donate and help us reach our goal!

This Sunday Elizabeth Warren will be coming to Lowell for a meeting with people interested in volunteering for her campaign. Her previous stops have all been packed, so I expect this one to be no different. If you think you might want to support her, then you better be there!

I had planned on making a big endorsement announcement, and then some of the major candidates started dropping out (for which I am disappointed, as I like a good primary), so now it would just seem moot and bandwagonish to make a big fuss. But I endorse Warren for Senate, and will be working on her campaign.

The volunteer strategy event is Sunday, November 6th, 1:00 p.m. Registration begins at 12:30 p.m. It will take place at the Butler Middle School auditorium, 1140 Gorham Street.

I spent most of Friday during the day in Boston, at Dewey Square, taking in OccupyBoston. I brought all the donations I could scrounge up (for instance, my entire adult history in mothballed bed comforters and towels) and hoped to hang around and get some video interviews and stories I could tell. Instead I wound up volunteering for a web project they needed - I thought my time would be better spent utilizing my skills as a developer rather than working on Occupy content and publicity for a small, local blog.

I haven’t written much here on the Occupy movement in the last few weeks, though I’ve been more than keenly following it online. There are so many thoughts swirling around in my head that I’ve been paralyzed from writing an essay-length post about it, although if you follow my Twitter account, the Facebook page which features many of the tweets, or keep up with @leftinlowell on the left sidebar here, you’ll know that I’ve been a very active author about OccupyBoston and OWS in the 140-character arena.

I could write a lot (and may yet) about what I found at Dewey Square on Friday - the strong sense of community, amazing solidarity, the organic means of organizing they employ - but many others have written about that already and you can find reams of pixels devoted to covering the news and day to day life of Occupiers.

But this afternoon, I found the 140 character limit failing me, and as I said in a direct response to an inquiry, needed a full blog post to explain my feelings and thoughts, specifically regarding the pressures that the Occupy movement is and will face in the coming weeks and months. Via @BostonPhoenix, I found this short description (and full video) of a Harvard political panel hastily formed to facilitate a discussion of the Occupy movement, including visiting fellow Ed Rendell, former Governor of Pennsylvania.

A far greater percentage of the audience than of the panel had actually spent signiicant time at an Occupation — Williamson has spent time at #OccupyBoston — but that didn’t stop anyone from speculating or projecting.

Rendell is not alone — especially and not surprisingly among Democratic politicians — in wishing that some of the enthusiasm of Occupy would carry over to the ballot box. What Democratic politicians have been very slow to acknowledge is that many Occupiers are as sick of Democrats as they are with banks — and are not enthusiastic about the possibilities of a two-party system they see as being hopelessly corrupted by corporate campaign contributions.

As a thoroughly committed progressive electoral political activist, I have, and will continue to, volunteer my time to electing good candidates at all levels of government, turning out the vote, encouraging voter participation, and going to the polls myself. It’s the least I can do for my democracy. But as an electoral activist, one who also has some experience in movement politics (the anti-war Bush era) I want to caution the Occupation against giving in too much to the powerful forces that would love to squeeze out this amazing energy for their own use.

There are so many pieces of evidence I could use to back that up. The most obvious is to look at what happened to the Tea Party movement. Although I am in total opposition to just about everything the TP stands for, the movement at its inception was grassroots at its core, expressing anger at the status quo. (I don’t argue about the need for such anger, but the TP is, at least in its current incarnation, gravely wrong on who was to blame.) Even one of its founders, a conservative blogger, now repudiates what it’s become - a front group for the financial backers of the Republican party and its politicians.

Or look at the Obama 2008 campaign. The enthusiasm of young volunteers and voters was part of the reason he was propelled to such heights of popularity. They were fired up, ready to go. And when they got there…they got some of what they wanted, sure. At least a modicum of health care reform. A half-measures stimulus package for jobs that turned out to be only partly effective - because the downturn was steeper than anyone knew, and because a third or more of the stimulus was ineffective tax cuts instead of direct stimulus spending. He has had a weak stomach for the fight…the opposite of a firm, demanding executive branch leader that we so need…instead, “capitulating” and “pre-compromising” are the catchphrases that come to mind about Obama’s first term.

Obama also put Wall Street execs into his economic brain trust. Wall St certainly doesn’t love this president, but if you were looking for them to enact policies against greed and corruption, you were sorely disappointed…besides the Elizabeth Warren-driven Consumer Protection Agency, we extracted no price from the financiers - not jail time pursued where possible, nor reigning their excess in, or asking them to pay their fair share of their own ridiculous bailouts.

The last of which, along with prolonged unemployment woes, prompted the Occupation movement to begin with.

If I have any advice for the burgeoning Occupy movement - if I could make any appeal at all to them that would matter (and by them, I do mean us, since I will continue to do what I can to support it), it would be this: if you allow yourselves to be coopted and pressured to work on elections, driven by the necessarily short-term thinking of electoral activism, you will be distracted from your larger goal, and you will be disappointed, time and again.

There are a few reasons for this, some inevitable in any circumstance, like the fact that we cannot all agree, even with those we agree, 100% of the time. I eased out of the anti-war movement because of the 2006 campaign for Governor Deval Patrick, swept up in the enthusiasm of what he was trying to accomplish, and believing that I could be more effective as an electoral activist than trying to change the stubborn mind of the Bush administration on its war policies. Choose between bashing my head on a wall repeatedly, or use a hammer to break through? Give me that hammer!

And in some ways, in some campaigns, you can be more effective as an electoral activist; ask for, and receive, real and lasting change. I am largely proud of my Governor, and the work I did to elect him. He has been an effective economic leader to say the least, nevermind his progressive support for gay rights, and for most social programs (your mileage may vary). But even I have had my enthusiasm for his tenure brutally dampened at times, especially now, that he, who should be smart enough to know better, has been on the forefront of the impending legalization of casinos. I have been disappointed, even in the best of our leaders, enough to distract me from more far-reaching goals.

If I can be disappointed in someone like Deval Patrick, just imagine the disappointment around a second term of Obama.

You can’t take on everything. Neither individuals, nor movements, can afford to be divided in their efforts or their aims. And in the end, electing more and better leaders will not change the system. That system is so broken, electing a Patrick or a Warren or this or that individual is like a plank trying to hold back a tide. The system needs fundamental uprooting and replanting, and no amount of progressive electoral politics (save the entire corps of incumbents being ousted and replaced wholesale at once by a massive grassroots effort of small donors and volunteers) will truly address the core problem at hand.

Electoral politics is about fraying the cloth of the “system” at the edges; Occupation should be about reweaving the entire bolt.

I have some ideas to propose (well one overarching, giant idea, really) of how Occupy can do this, for once, and for all. It’s an uphill battle so massive, so stacked against us, so big of an effort that just to think it makes me shiver in fear and excitement. But it is the only inevitable conclusion I can come to when thinking about the future of our country and how to right all the wrongs. I am talking about a constitutional amendment to rescind corporate personhood and the ruling of the Supreme Court that money equals speech.

All of what is broken with our system is about money and influence in our politics. Global climate change cannot be addressed because of the massive amount of money being pumped into stopping the regulation, and reversal of, carbon dependence. Economic justice is being thwarted by financial contributions from banks and Wall Street, so that the concept of going back to Clinton-era taxes on the wealthy and capital gains (money making money, as opposed to work making money) is nigh impossible to argue. And so on, and so on, and so on. If in a democracy being elected depends on monetary support, and people with more money can support more heavily than the rest of the 99%, then who will ever listen to the 99%?

A constitutional amendment is a big hill to climb. It’s a long-term hill, it could take a decade. It could take more. The money arrayed against such an act would be astounding - if you think Wall Street spends money on politics now, wait until you try this out.

However, no amount of cash is going to convince the American people that the system is working as it is, or that Citizens United was a good idea, or that corporations should have rights as though they were people. If lasting change is what Occupy seeks, than the moment is now.

But whatever form, and eventual goal, this movement takes on (if indeed it does not peter out after we see the economy rebound after some new temporary economic bandaid that puts off the inevitable real crash that I feel is coming) it needs to think beyond 2012. Beyond 2014, or 2016. Beyond the cyclical electoral process.

If that means fighting the pressure from Democratic politicians to elect them, as well as ignoring the temptation to help enact near-term policy bandaids, then as a staunch Democrat, I say, so be it. What you lose in short term gain is far exceeded by the long term possibilities.

I can’t help thinking that much of our future is dependent on what this nascent movement called Occupation does next (but no pressure!). And, I would love to be able to say at the end of all of this, “Our Democracy is dead…long live our Democracy.”

Rep. Niki Tsongas is, apparently, making an announcement at 1pm this afternoon in Lowell that she will endorse Elizabeth Warren for Senate, behind the UMass-Lowell Inn and Conference center at 50 Warren Court.

I watched her closely as she fiercely advocated for the creation of a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and Wall Street reform, efforts that I was proud to join with her in advancing. They said it couldn’t be done. But, because she stood up to the big banks on Wall Street we passed historic protections for middle class families.

In the Senate, she will fight to level the playing field so that average people have a voice. She sees an America that invests in people, with educational opportunities that don’t require a lifetime of crushing debt, where entrepreneurs take an idea and start a business without becoming bogged down in red tape, and a place where our sense of fairness dictates that everyone pays their share in contributing to our economic recovery.

In the more than two hundred year history of our Commonwealth only four women have gone to Washington to represent Massachusetts in Congress. I am proud to be one of them. As I often say, women can’t win unless they run. Women make up a majority of our state’s population, yet it is no secret that Massachusetts has historically struggled to elect women to federal office. We’re going to change that right here, right now, by electing Elizabeth Warren as the first woman to represent Massachusetts in the United States Senate.

This is just ahead of tomorrow’s debate at UMass Lowell, so, all in all, interesting timing (and likely not coincidence). I’m planning to be at the debate tomorrow (I’ll live Tweet, blog, or video stream it, not sure yet). Stay tuned. (Any votes for a particular type of coverage? Anyone know if it’ll be televised anywhere?)

On a side note, Marty must be beside himself with glee being at the center of all this political hubbub again. In a month, he announces a polling partnership between UML and the first primary debate (albeit partnering with the Herald apparently means putting GOP operatives on the panel in a Democratic primary), and Tsongas’ announcement happens at UML as well. I think he misses his political life, don’t you?

Parking was a bitch at the kickoff meeting happening now for Progressive Massachusetts, because it’s pretty packed! If I were a corporatist Dem or a Republican, I’d be worried. Progressive activists are in this for the long haul, in a truly grassroots effort. In conjunction with my previous post on Occupy Wall Street, if fairness and opportunity are not brought back to our political system, a movement like this will snowball into real change. Today seems like a good start.

If you are interested in my micro-reporting from the event, keep an eye on the Twitter feed to the left, or at Twitter. I’ll be sending out a feed all afternoon as long as I have battery!

(Live blogging has turned into Twitter feeds. Time marches on…)

I’ve been following (mostly online) the Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Boston protests since nearly the beginning. They got traction and coverage on blogs and Twitter long before the media was covering it - in fact, before the unprovoked pepper spray incidents that made the news, the only place to read about what was happening was online.

The media complained that they weren’t cohesive enough and there wasn’t news to cover. Well, that has quickly changed and evolved. For starters, there were some very bad decisions from the NYPD - both institutionally, and by some idiot individuals - which put the protests on the map for the media, and solidified the motivation of participants and supporters. What’s more, it seems the organic sort of organizing that has sprung up has - and I have to use the word evolved again - to meet the challenges of running a protest, dealing with the media, finding a set of demands to articulate why they are angry and not going to take it any more. OWS has spokespeople and media tents and a strong online presence - all while being relatively leadersless in the traditional sense.

In some ways, my personal cynicism alert flag is up. (Yeah, I know, I’m too young to be truly cynical…) I spent years organizing with the peace movement against the Iraq war, butting my head up against the sheer stubbornness of the Bush administration and, later, Obama’s. After all, GitMo is still open, the USA PATRIOT Act was reauthorized and is being used to spy on Americans without due process, we’re still in our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan though with some troop drawdown, and Obama even unilaterally bombed, for right or wrong, Libya, without the consent of Congress.

The only satisfaction we got out of our fight was that most of the American public got on our side after a while. But it still reelected Bush and let itself be lied to about Kerry’s war record and ability to lead, and we never got a truly different kind of leader to replace him in 2008, either. Obama put Wall St executives in charge of the economy even after it was evident they were full of shit.

But there is something really interesting happening with Occupy[America]. For one thing, it’s just average citizens (not diehard liberals or extremely informed people like me) who are protesting. Photo after photo, interview after interview, this is very evident.

There are so many people in this country who have been foreclosed on, laid off, unable to move forward, that a segment of them, with nothing left to lose, are truly taking the fight to the streets. Since they have nothing left to lose - no middle class lifestyle, no prospects - they have a lot to fight for. I always said the worst part about being an anti-war protester is that most of our citizens, even when sympathetic (and the majority was by the time I left that movement) are busy with their lives, making their livings, feeding their families, going to soccer games, and being generally content that things aren’t that bad for them, personally. There’s nothing wrong with this. It’s totally human, and what’s more, a legacy of the last century of American progress. We built the middle class. A country with a middle class able to make ends meet is a relatively politically stable country. It’s a good thing.

Which is why I think there is something different in the air.

Gradually, we’ve seen the erosion of the buying power and the salaries of the middle class. For so many decades before, our children did at least a little better than their parents. Then, since the Reagan era, we started to see the slide. We began to only tread water…then occasionally swallowed some. Then we began drowning, but we as a people were the last to see it happen.

Even in the 2008 economic meltdown, we failed to notice our lungs filling with something other than air.

This generation of young people really are the first who truly believe - nay, who know - they are not destined to do better than their parents. Unlike the spoiled kids of my generation (raised largely in the 80s and coming of age in the 90s), they see the coming tide sweeping over them and pulling them under the water before they even get a chance to begin. They are left behind. And they know that if they do nothing, it will only get worse. They have nothing left to lose.

They join every one of their older siblings, parents, grandparents who have lost a house, a job, a future, despite being of the generations born with more promise. For some of us older ones, we’ve experienced firsthand how it’s gonna be going forward if there are no changes. For the rest of us older ones, we are beginning to understand how fragile our position of comfort is. The OccupyWallSt movement presents this to us in bas-relief - the notion that the middle class is under siege and has been for quite some time.

The thing that is different from now from these previous movements is that the situation that has caused these long term problems is not going to be alleviated by last generation’s leaders. Obama is cut off at the knees to even patch a pathetic temporary band-aid (the jobs bill) on our economic slide by Republican intransigence. And even Obama’s half-measures would probably only prove to elongate the stagnation, not solve the underlying problem. We’re now seeing the gap between the wealthy and the rest of us reach the levels seen right before the 1929 crash. Eventually, this was going to get noticed by someone. By everyone.

Even the Tea Party movement, while misguided to the extreme, is an expression of this loss of power by the average person. Why did they catch fire? Despite being such a minority of even the Republican party? Because poor and middle class Republicans too are suffering in this economic climate, this class warfare on us by the super-wealthy. They just aren’t right on who to blame for this.

Most of America, on the other hand, already knows what and who is to blame. They already overwhelmingly want to see taxes raised back up on the uberwealthy. They know that Wall St needs taking down a peg or three, and that we need to go back to regulating our economic system so that the playing field becomes level again. They just need the energy to look up from their day to day struggles against the tide, to look up, and see that horizon again.

I don’t know where the Occupy movement is going to go. It seems to change and swell bigger by the day, though it could have an upper limit, I suppose. But if this truly is the moment where the American people reach the tipping point, if this is the straw that, finally, after 30 years of straws, breaks the camel’s back, then maybe we can make the changes without the economic crash that I have been foreseeing for years. That crash (which will make 2008 look like cakewalk) could still be coming. But if we organize enough in advance, if we can offer an alternative to the American people now, perhaps we will not lose a decade like they did in the Great Depression. After all, we have history to inform us how best to rebuild the American middle class and spread prosperity around to everyone.

So, occupy on! There may not be an immediate result, but it could offer a long term solution. Hats off to the most powerless among us.

“People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.” - V

The Center for Public Opinion will periodically sponsor political debates as part of its mission to promote civic engagement and an enhanced understanding of the political process.

UMass Lowell is hosting the First Massachusett’s Senate Democratic Primary race at Durgin Hall, 35 Wilder St., Lowell on Tuesday, Oct. 4 at 7 p.m. Please check back soon for additional information about the debate.

And polling, too. (more…)

Now that it’s official, the Senate race just got interesting!

If you’re interested, you can go to her website to sign up for updates, or to volunteer.