Occupy Wall Street 3: Now What?

kind of o/t but i learned from a wtf podcast that marc maron and josh clover were roommates years ago? crazy world

has anyone from Occupy latched onto Jane's Addiction's "1%" yet

I have been holding onto that for when my MegaMillions ticket comes in.

possibly because most politically active students were engaging w/ much more pressing issues such as the liberation of palestine

lol you picked banging your head against a brick wall for yr #1 choice huh?

?

i'm just relating what people were busy engaging with, not what i personally thought was important at the time

right i mean imo there's a really interesting story to be told about how the anti-globalization movement became subsumed into the anti-war movement and how in some ways "occupy" as a sensibility came about as a tactical reaction to ten years of antiwar organizing, a resurgence of the focus on economic issues that's in some quarters beginning to rebroaden into targeting "neoliberalism" as such.

to this btw

if i can get at one more thing - one of the weaknesses of the "occupy" mindset (and by which i mean literally occupying spaces) is that it kind of doesn't make sense. sit-ins and whatnot in the civil rights movement make sense in my mind because they were basically protesting a lack of equal to certain facilities.

well occupation as a tactic is really at its most useful when whats being occupied is vital--it has a long history as a direct action tactic in labor particularly (aka "sit-down strikes") and i'm sure i don't need to tell you about the wave of occupations in california universities over the last 2-3 years. (reading an article about the race dynamic of california occupations a few months back was really interesting & enlightening, then i looked at the publication date--september 2009. jaw dropped.) i definitely feel like camping out wore out its usefulness months upon months ago, and whether it was useful at all beyond being a publicity stunt is definitely up for debate. i'd say it wasn't, and given the locations were public parks i'd even say that these occupations weren't really direct actions. there are no bodies on the gears mucking up the works when you're strumming your guitar in a tent that happens to be in the middle of downtown. when, on eviction day, we scrambled to save tents & their contents by moving them in front of the grandiose doors of the BoA & Wells Fargo branches across the street from the White House, that was verging a little closer to direct action, though again it's more symbolism than action (blocking the doors of one bank branch does nothing but get a camera or two, unless you're blocking specific people from doing something objectionable. that day we weren't.) occupying the wisconsin state house & working to actively disrupt the union-busting vote was direct action. we tried to blockade rightist members of the house from getting to the vote on the ryan budget (oh hi austerity i didn't see you there) and were, of course, summarily dragged away before causing too much diversion.

i'm just saying there are contexts in which occupation can be a worthy tactic, though regardless for the sake of effectiveness it ought to be short-lived and you sort of necessarily need demands. avoiding all of those things gave the insurrectionists & poetic theoreticians & insurrectionary poetic theoreticians a hard-on ("OUR DEMANDS ARE ALL THE DEMANDS") and let people of all stripes project their values onto a broad populist call, but in the long view it was kind of dumb. no exit strategy. i scrapped with riot shields to defend the square from eviction, and by the end of that long day--when some of my closest friends had been made homeless and earned crack skulls, broken ribs & jail cells at the hands of cops--i suddenly knew where one found the desire to break windows and throw back tear gas canisters. but even that night, tearful & nursing our bruises singing 'solidarity forever' at the bar, lots of us were saying that the eviction was in a sense 'overdue.' a friend said "fuck the cops. but at least now the real work can start again." that summed it up for me.

oh and just

and the some of the enduring images of both movements are similar in that they depended on a lack of provocation by the protestors

while this is certainly true (and i want to be exacting in the way i say this) it's important to remember that our histories are constructed, and that images that 'endure' can sometimes erase realities that don't fit the 'enduring' image as neatly.

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ltbwazf9Ke1qi1as6o1_500.jpg

it always takes lots of strategic prongs to get to victory, some more effective and some more historically enduring than others.

(i don't know the provenance of that image or even if it's real, i'm just using it to stand in for confrontational tactics used in social movements that have often later been remembered as mere extended kumbaya rallies)

dude hoos I went to college and took rhetoric classes and almost married a rhetoric phd, history is constructed yes but let's not use that to willfully ignore that it cuts both ways

(spotted it here atop what i thought was a pretty good, long inside-baseball-y article. posted it at 'anarchist people of color' and it provoked a pretty interesting discussion.)

let's not use that to willfully ignore that it cuts both ways

― the late great, Thursday, May 10, 2012 11:24 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

not tryin to willfully ignore anything here--what am i ignore accidentally?

you sort of necessarily need demands. avoiding all of those things gave the insurrectionists & poetic theoreticians & insurrectionary poetic theoreticians a hard-on ("OUR DEMANDS ARE ALL THE DEMANDS") and let people of all stripes project their values onto a broad populist call, but in the long view it was kind of dumb. no exit strategy.

feel like I took a load of shit for arguing this exact point last year

oh also just cause i don't know where else to post this, lol @ this

http://i.imgur.com/wz79E.jpg

also re: the occupation of the uc' those actions were carried out by grad students (recently) and undergrads (in the case of free speech movement)

the grad students were taking a collective stand as workers at that institution and basically striking at their workplace.

the FSM students were asserting that since sproul plaza was a designated public student space in a public school they had the right to free speech in that space (much flimsier claim imo)

traveling cross country to occupy wall street strikes me (hee hee)less a strike-type action and more of an act of conscience like chaining yourself to the gates of a nurse bomber base.

while i certainly applaud the bravery of these acts i don't think banking per se is as morally indefensible as mutual assured destruction and i think a lot of people are happy that things like banks and investment and retirement funds exist

feel like I took a load of shit for arguing this exact point last year

― Roger Barfing (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, May 10, 2012 11:33 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

tbh i was one of the ones with a short-sighted ALL THE DEMANDS boner, so mea culpa

nuclear bomber base

haha i was confused

iirc norman mailer said in armies of the night that the desire to fight back was just the secret desire to be a cop

lol

I hate norman mailer

i don't think banking per se is as morally indefensible as mutual assured destruction and i think a lot of people are happy that things like banks and investment and retirement funds exist

― the late great, Thursday, May 10, 2012 11:37 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

right i mean even most anarchists i know aren't opposed to banking as such, proudhon's Big Idea was basically a credit union financed with taxes on large businesses.

well i see you agree with me on the tent city thing and i agree with you on occupation to some extent, i mean tienamen square is probably the bravest thing i've witness in my lifetime and the pentagon sit-in and subsequent hunger strike in prison (daniel berrigan led iirc) detailed in armies of the night always moves me to tears, also very impressed w/ the british antinuclear movement of the 80s

but yeah anyway i went to one OWS thing in San Diego and the vibe was more burning man than anything else

I remember protesting at the rnc in 96 (San Diego) dancing w some dude dressed as a giant cigarette, those were the days

afaict you hate everything but arthur magazine shakey

pay closer attention

nah i'm good

at the RNC there was a roped-off "protest zone" we were content to sit in, i guess my generation was just pretty complacent compared to yours hoos, what can i say it was the clinton years and i guess we just figured the bush era was behind us!

I remember protesting at the rnc in 96 (San Diego) dancing w some dude dressed as a giant cigarette, those were the days

― the late great, Thursday, May 10, 2012 11:52 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol

i guess my generation was just pretty complacent compared to yours hoos, what can i say it was the clinton years

haha i remember in 2004 i was mad kerry lost in part bcz it robbed me of the opportunity to prove my radicalism by protesting a DEMOCRATIC president

the night before the election me and my socialist friends had pledged to lead an antiwar march through the quad NO MATTER WHO WINS

i think it was literally mr butts from doonesbury and iirc correctly he was all over the place that year, think somebody on the ticket had big tobacco connections?

as weird radical extralegal ultraparticipatory communitarian social experiments the camps were useful inasmuch as they helped burn away the crust of alienation and disconnection that decades of corporate rule builds around one's civic sense; as protest they were eventually pretty inert, i guess. but they were always full of people planning/executing protests outside their borders. and they provided something to point cameras at 24/7. which eventually became a liability, of course.

they helped burn away the crust of alienation and disconnection that decades of corporate rule builds around one's civic sense

defffffffffff

i think this is true but can sometimes forget

thx for the remindner

http://i.imgur.com/M7SRe.jpg

^ proud of having spent 4 minutes on this btw

the nurses union + tom morello rally is back on at Daley after a stink was raised

http://www.nationalnursesunited.org/press/entry/chicago-mayor-emanuel-agrees-to-let-nurses-rally-in-daley-plaza/#.T62rtbEGEKY.facebook

'resist the G8 chicago' shared w/status "mayor 1% just blinked. don't fuck with nurses."

I was really happy to hear about that

i think a lot of people are happy that things like banks and investment and retirement funds exist

Until they're wiped out by corrupt speculation, of course.

Don't get me wrong, I don't want to "smash the state" entirely bcz I know I'll be eating dog food if I make it to 70, stateless.

Reform, as beautiful as a rock in a cop's face.

right i mean my mantra, rather than 'smash the state' tends to be 'supersede the state' precisely bcz "hey congrats you smashed the state, now wtf are you gonna do about the lady across the street who's been relying on social security checks to buy groceries"

of course, of course

jesus said "no usury" not "no loans"

and i mean "supersede" imo implies a shit ton more legwork and internal "figuring our shit out" than "smash" but that's worth it i think

First protest activity in Chicago around this weekend's NATO meeting--rushing the building that houses Obama HQ:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/natosummit/chi-protesters-march-outside-obama-campaign-headquarters-20120514,0,86274.story

jesus said "no usury" not "no loans"

― the late great, Saturday, May 12, 2012 1:33 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Well I don't know what the definition of usury was in biblical times, but in european christendom it literally meant the charging of any interest at all. Without interest, you basically don't have loans.

There are also things that are effectively loans but avoid the letter of the law on interest: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/07/realestate/07nati.html

Sure, there's a whole discipline of "Islamic Finance" designed to get around things like anti-usury religious laws.

Of course it's very much a technicality -- the borrower will (likely) pay the same amount over the purchase price over the lifetime of the islamic loan. Actually I wonder if the banks might charge even more for it.

God bless the Catholic Workers.

well you do have loans w/o interest, there was an interesting article i read awhile back by an anthropologist who was talking about how evidence pointed to credit predating currency, giving loans is a form of insurance. if you have capital just sitting around doing nothing you're inclined to loan it out because you don't know if you might need to collect on it in the future

so like picture two tribes meeting to trade. one's got furs and skins and the other's got dried meats. suppose the meat tribe shows up empty handed one summer, what's the other tribe going to do? stockpile the furs in a cave where they might rot? no, they'll just hand off the furs w/ the understanding that they'll get paid back in the future, because you'd rather have the promise of more meat next summer than a pile of useless furs sitting around.

also in european christendom there *were* loans so i don't know what you're talking about hurting