Video- ‘OWS must seek change in US regime’

A political analyst says that the Occupy movements must push for a regime change in the US government which misrepresents American citizens by supporting the “top one percent”.

Press TV has conducted an exclusive interview with Tighe Barry from Codepink about the main theme of the Occupy movements which have purportedly spread across major US cities.

The following is a transcript of the interview.

Press TV: We need to focus a little bit about what is really going on in terms of police tactics that are used, because there has been an upsurge in these Occupy protests. There is a title in the story of the Occupy Burlington shooting in the online edition of The Post Chronicle, and that says, “Blood Evidence, Mob Grows dangerous”. This piece went on to say that the ‘Occupy protests’ mobs are becoming dangerous’. Is this a concerted effort to portray the protest movements as a nuisance, and the protesters as mobs and problem makers? What do you think of it?

Barry: Well, let me just say, first of all, thank you very much for having me on your program.

And I’d like to just remind people that the police are a tool of the elite class here in the United States. For example, they claim that the Occupy D.C. movement caused violence outside of our Washington D.C. convention center on the weekend past.

The actual fact of the matter was that three protesters were run over by a car of one of the elite class. And all the people were asking for is that the police do their job and take the information from the driver.

Instead, they let the driver go off, and they arrest the people that are there. There were over 30 arrests there. And they called our group “violent”.

We know where the violence stems from. This was a [Coop Brothers] elite party group. There was a meeting in Washington D.C. We were there in our rights to protest outside the convention center. They are violent, as they always are violent – these reactionaries – and they cause violence. But the police only reacted to it towards us.

Press TV: And that could be a problem. We’ve had our correspondent actually tell us there have been people in civilian clothes inside the protest movements – since the Occupy protests movements backed by Wall Street protests – that are mixed in with the people. Perhaps we’re seeing this be a tactic used to egg on the protesters in terms of being entangled in the violence, and then, obviously, smearing this campaign.

Let’s put it this way. As an American, I’m sure you pay taxes if you’re employed – you have taxes taken out of your paycheck. The focus on the protests movements have been taken to the “super committee” in which they are against further cuts to federal safety programs like Social Security and Medicare – actually, the two biggest organizations the US government owes money to. How worried should Americans be that when they retire they’re not going to have any money left there, which was taken out of their paychecks? Some are saying this is illegal.

Barry: It is illegal, and the “super committee” is totally undemocratic. It goes against our constitution. People are right in protesting the “super committee”. We just had an anti-“super committee” hearing at Freedom Plaza in Occupy Washington D.C., and we come up with totally different results.

When you see the democratic party talking about cutting Social Security, cutting Medicare, you see the “party of the people”, supposedly, calling for these cuts, you see an end to the system. There is no representation in Washington D.C.

The original revolution, as it was in the United States, was about taxation without representation. We in Washington D.C. experience taxation without representation every single day as we are deprived of our right to vote.

What we see, the people are not represented in Congress or in the White House. We see it as a problem that we as a people need to address, and we are addressing it. We’re addressing it in the most peaceful way that we can.

Of course, there’s going to be pushback by the police, there’s going to be pushback by government, there’s going to be a pushback by those people that want to keep the status quo. But they will fail and the people will win in the end.

Press TV: How are they going to win if there’s no representation at this point? Isn’t it the perfect time for there to be a third party which many are saying? I don’t know if you’ve watched the presidential GOP debate…you had Rick Perry with the gaff that he gave not remembering the name of that third organization…and then you have [Herman] Cain on the other side, he doesn’t allow Muslims in his cabinet of which he doesn’t have a team. I mean, is that the future that America is looking for in terms of leading the way?

Barry: No, absolutely not. These jokers will lose in the end. But that’s not the point. The point is we need to have an end to the regime.

In Tahrir Square, they said the same thing to the Egyptian people: you have no focus; you don’t know what you really want. The focus was not the end of Mubarak. The focus was the end of a regime.

We need to change the way we do business day to day in this country. We need to start looking out for the “99 percent”, and not the top “one percent” controlling all the money, all the power and depriving us, the “99 percent” of our daily lives.