My Governments

More than 40 protesters were detained and charged with criminal trespassing in Austin, Texas. They were also issued citations which essentially prevent them from returning to the protest site.

Press TV has conducted an interview with Saul Landau, with the Institute for Policy Studies from San Francisco, to further talk over the issue.

The video offers the opinions of two additional guests: Charles M. Young, founder of the This Can't Be Happening! website, and Mark Glenn who is with the Crescent and Cross Solidarity Movement. Below is the text of the interview:

Press TV: I want to look at from the American people's perspective. What has taken so long with everything that has been talked about on the program? Why did it take so long for the Americans to take to the streets? Do you think that they will reach a point where they will be getting something from their efforts?

Landau: I think one of the problems has been that there is no negotiating process here; there is no method by which the American people can now take their grievances and turn them into affective demands, in other words, there is no channels to mediate; there is no political party now that represents the demands of many millions of people.

We have watched all of us around the world as a small group of people have appropriated the lion share of the wealth of the world and have appropriated -- if you like the comments -- those elements that have been since Pericles at least defined as common to all of us: the earth, the fire, the air and the water.

I think the word in Spanish is indignados, the people who took to the streets in Spain are called the indignant ones, that is, their dignity has been affronted and this has been what has forced people out; there is nowhere else to turn. The American dream -- that idea that you will have a home, a job and a car -- is still available to you but when you are asleep not when you are awake and here are people with master's degrees and other kinds of advanced college degrees and have no jobs and not chance to get them.

Their housing has become precarious; there is almost 11 million people now on the verge of foreclosure in the United States. This is becoming a rather desperate population and it is spreading and people feel that their dignity has been affronted and naturally the police, in certain places like Oakland, behave as predictably, I guess, and they are firing a tear gas grenade and fracturing the skull of an Iraq war veteran.

In New York, one former veteran stood up and said, 'what are you people doing?'. The people, the protesters and the people who are occupying all these cities, are not armed; they are not threatening violence and yet the police behave as if these people are somehow unruly and of course, crime is now increasing in some of these cities because the police are deployed there where there is no threat to property or people.

So what is happening is the American people or some of them, I think, have awakened to this enormous monstrous wealth gap of 325 to 1 between the CEO and the bottom worker. Now this is a wealth gap that outdoes even those of the famous dictatorships of the Third World and it is becoming obscene.

Press TV: Where do you see this movement going? Can these occupy protests go from a movement to a revolution?

Landau: Well, I do not think it is a movement; it is a prolonged moment. A movement has specific demands; give us civil rights, the vote or get out of Vietnam. These are movements and they have demands and those demands can be satisfied when the government exceeds to them.

This is still a prolonged moment of people expressing their indignation and stating -- if you like -- general complaints about the treatment giving to bankers and Wall Street sleaze while poor people are given -- if you like -- the raw end of the deal.

This has not yet become a movement; from a movement it might develop into a politics but that will take time and we will see. At this point, I'm encouraged by the fact that people are getting away from their computer screens; getting away from their depressions and getting out into the streets and mixing up with other people and practicing democracy in a very real way.

Press TV: As cold weather sets in the Northeast, do American protesters have what it takes to sustain their movement?

Landau: I do not know if people will be able to sustain it. They may have to go and find better shelter during the cold storm but then they will return, I think, and they will be back again and even if they are driven out for a month or two months during the winter, this is not going to go away until something fundamental changes in the way this government is running; the way this economy is running and the way wealth is really portioning out or portioned throughout the population in the most unequal way that we have had since the Gilda Day over a hundred years ago.

Something has got to change in this country. It is the economy and it is the political system that have become dysfunctional while we waste our money with stupid wars and stupid military activities and stupid military production.

We are dying as a country [and] our infrastructure is eroding and if somebody does not wake up and get out of the state of denial, there is going to be more and more people pouring out to the streets throughout this country and indeed throughout much of the world.