Occupy Wall Street 3: Now What?

^^^ volume two of your memoirs

and yeah it's a huge and amazing victory for occupy that so many people in the country are now vociferously aware that they are getting screwed by something instead of just being thankful for their credit-bought toys and the theoretical promise of future rewards for service. in 2012 we need to keep the pressure on a million different linked points of american culture -- including! the institutional violence of the corporate oligarchy's footsoldiers in blue -- but i think we need to do it always with one eye, maybe two eyes, on the mass, and on the camera. it's really hard but the people on the ground are more than capable of it.

sorry one more: when i'm like BARRIERS YES, TRASH CANS YES, THROWING BACK CANISTERS NO, i don't mean to sound like i know what the right thing to do is in every police-confrontation situation; of course i don't. all i'm saying is, you know that stupid picture of mayor quan looking mournfully at the toppled plastic city hall and heaving a sigh for her city? everything the cops did that day was to get that picture. we have to be aware of this because we can't let them have pictures like that.

and yeah it's a huge and amazing victory for occupy that so many people in the country are now vociferously aware that they are getting screwed by something instead of just being thankful for their credit-bought toys and the theoretical promise of future rewards for service.

suspect that this has more to do with the natural effects of a prolonged recession than with occupy in particular (occupy being one of those effects), but yes, the "99%" language is extremely useful

I've been really surprised by how little Bey has been invoked w/r/t Zucotti to date. He seems like the clearest antecedent/"theorist" of how stuff was going down for a period.

LGS reads like a weatherman wandered into a critical theory conference while on an acid trip.

Bey's writing is great but on the other hand there's the whole pedo/NAMBLA thing

Yeah, there is that whole thing. But you know, anyone who has ever defended or lauded Allen Ginsberg would be lauding a NAMBLA-promoting pedo, too, so I kind of push that aspect of Bey out of my head.

Here's an interesting essay. That ISN'T hard to read or condescending. It's about the TAZ in our contemporary times.
http://anarchistnews.org/node/21363

but does that mean an activist shouldn't throw a tear gas canister back as an act of self defense?

I'm not that well-versed in the theory of mass movements. I can't recall ever reading a book on it. But I'd say that the answer entirely depends on the state of the society within which the mass movement is forming.

I'd say that if the mass of society feels its oppression and frustration to the point where armed insurrection starts looking like the only way to get justice (see: Libya, Syria), then images and messages of violent self-defense will be emboldening and encouraging to that mass, and an implicit "woo-hoo let's riot" is read as "let's throw off our oppressors". iow, it is positive. Not coincidentally, this is what the community of color is saying to you when they say, show us you will fight with us.

otoh, if the mass of society feels anxious and threatened, but has no clear concept of who their oppressors are or how they work, then they will rally to a message of justice, but only if it implies greater safety from the felt threat. iow, they desire a path ahead, but a safe path to a place of refuge. (This may be a huge confusion on their part, but a very human one.)

Because of who they are and how they think, the mass of Americans need the starkest possible contradiction to the propaganda of the power structure. The pictures of protestors calmly being maced by a strolling cop as they sit passively on the ground is just such a stark contradiction. It generates enormous power to trouoble the mass and make them think. The civil rights movement, at enormous human cost, learned how to wield this power.

The image of a masked young man in the middle of the street hurling a smoking tear gas canister at the police will only increase their anxiety and identify OWS as another threat, not an ally. - or at least not a safe ally, but more like their crazy friend in high school who keyed cars, turned over trash cans and wanted to streak at the graduation ceremony. They feel extremely queasy about such allies.

(ps: are flaming trash cans to burn off tear gas ~always~ destined to be misinterpreted as a sign that says "wooo let's riot"? pps: are police statements ~always~ destined to be taken as an actual account of the way shit went down by people who never get busted in the head?)

to briefly overgeneralize: yes. yes.

sterling do you mean a weatherman or a Weatherman? :)

aimless the point about different modes of communication and action being appropriate to different social and political contexts is one of those obvious but perceptive ones i'm surprised almost nobody has mentioned above. in other words: otm.

otoh, if the mass of society feels anxious and threatened, but has no clear concept of who their oppressors are or how they work, then they will rally to a message of justice, but only if it implies greater safety from the felt threat. iow, they desire a path ahead, but a safe path to a place of refuge. (This may be a huge confusion on their part, but a very human one.)

or: if the mass of society does not feel oppressed but is concerned about and wants to address certain specific issues in a constructive fashion, then they will rally to a message of justice, but only if it seems sensible and likely to achieve desirable ends.

take your capitalist running dogs and go back to your job at bain capital, bossman!

Thinking about Bey for me is weird, because it turns into thinking about the person I was when I first read him, and into thinking about how the sorts of visions he conjured up don't have a necessary place in the world, and how it felt to realize that.

i know it sounds totally namby-pamby to be all about PR

haha dude you are talking to the media team of odc i feel u

the point about different modes of communication and action being appropriate to different social and political context

i sorta thought i made it implicitly in my shit on movement building, but maybe it was too implicit

Any CEO will tell you, you have to control your brand in the marketplace. The USA is, more than anywhere in the world, consumerist and commercialized. The Violent Insurrection brand needs to be split off and developed seperately within the OWS family of brands, like GMC split off from Chevy.

^ joeks, bro

ha, my man:

legbacarrefour
Really dont share the faith in "radical transparency" that a lot of occupiers have. Sometimes, I dont wanna have a camera shoved in my face
23 minutes ago Favorite Retweet Reply

legbacarrefour
I hear "radical transparency" & I hear echoes of "radical self-reliance", the Burning Man ideal of "pull yourself up by your own bootstraps"
21 minutes ago

legbacarrefour
Or "radical self-expression" where radicalism gets conflated w/ magical self-actualization of white people
20 minutes ago

legbacarrefour
It seems more like radical transparency is about the self-actualization of people watching livestreams and their avatars than "democracy"
6 minutes ago

anyone heard this radio show?

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/mike-feder-occupied-territory/

I listened to Mike Feder in the '80s/90s on WBAI/Pacifica, really phenomenal talker and broadcaster.

http://www.cbssports.com/nfl/story/17077947/unless-you-want-to-alienate-target-audience-occupy-someplace-else

This is, in fact, an apolitical column. Or anti-political. Whatever it is, it's full of resentment that the Occupy movement would use our passion for the Super Bowl against us, infiltrating something we love so we have to focus on something they hate. And what they hate is the "right to work" legislation passed Wednesday by the Indiana senate, legislation that would make Indiana the first state in the Rust Belt to prohibit labor contracts that require workers to pay union dues.

If you're not into politics, so be it. I'm not here to tell you what "right to work" legislation would mean to Indiana for two reasons: One, I don't know. Two, I don't care. Not here. Not this week. Not at the Super Bowl, the single greatest annual event -- sports or otherwise -- in this country.

gregg doyel is PIG-BITIN' MAD about these darn occupiers ruining the super bowl!

i honestly can't make heads or tails of the tone of that piece

like one second i'm smdh @ a guy that doesn't get it, and the next i'm thinking he's pulling some deep-cover satire

Lots of you, most of you, won't be pleased to have your time wasted Sunday with coverage of the Occupy movement outside Lucas Oil Stadium. Lots of you probably are irritated that I'm wasting your time today, writing about the Occupy movement instead of Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski's ankle or Giants quarterback Eli Manning's legacy.

self-clown??

things like that schwartz essay are why ppl become libertarians in college.

would happily read 100 articles from reason magazine i fully disagree with before reading another article that uses terms like "the amerikan way."

hahaha truth bomb

http://motherjones.com/mojo/2012/01/occupy-oakland-black-panther-roots

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/02/02/416270/nfl-union-super-bowl-protests/

The union, which encouraged workers to meet with their state representatives in the days before the law passed and organized rallies outside the statehouse Wednesday, will pass out leaflets and pamphlets around Super Bowl village and Lucas Oil Stadium, the site of the game, Harris said.

http://a2.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/395592_130339110419914_100003314764100_138427_1009891760_n.jpg

would happily read 100 articles from reason magazine i fully disagree with before reading another article that uses terms like "the amerikan way."

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Wednesday, February 1, 2012 5:32 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

a thousand times yes. and it's not just the juvenile language, there's a divisive, condescending and simplistic slant to the whole mindset. the product of getting into an intellectual rut and fighting tooth and nail to stay there.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=qQanou_L0gY

would happily read 100 articles from reason magazine i fully disagree with before reading another article that uses terms like "the amerikan way."

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Wednesday, February 1, 2012 5:32 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

a thousand times yes. and it's not just the juvenile language, there's a divisive, condescending and simplistic slant to the whole mindset. the product of getting into an intellectual rut and fighting tooth and nail to stay there.

― his hands are a dirty fountain through which lives spurt (contenderizer), Thursday, February 2, 2012 8:29 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

he's just so fucking uncharitable. you'd think he was the perfect human the way he castigates just about everyone. it's like he wilfully denies the complexity of human motivation.

it's like he wilfully denies the complexity of human motivation.

― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Friday, February 3, 2012 4:48 AM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^^^^^ this is what spurned me from radical politics for years

pigs

http://www.salon.com/2012/02/02/occupy_oakland_protesters_denied_medication_in_jail/singleton/

Even as the Securities and Exchange Commission has stepped up its investigations of Wall Street, the agency has repeatedly allowed the biggest firms to avoid punishments.

here's a DC address that needs occupying.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/03/business/sec-is-avoiding-tough-sanctions-for-large-banks.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha2

the agency has repeatedly allowed the biggest firms to avoid punishments.

pigs

otm

Its up to Hoos to change the SEC

I am Hoos. (/spartacus)

ILX general fap for May 1st (after whatever)

pigs

http://www.salon.com/2012/02/02/occupy_oakland_protesters_denied_medication_in_jail/singleton/

― Literal Facepalms (Dr Morbius), Friday, February 3, 2012 2:32 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

There is some nasty behavior in this story, but the angle suggests that it's unusual for inmates (talking about jail, not prison) to be denied medicine for a day or two. The beatings were the awful part.

In my checkered past I've been in jail a couple times and I was denied meds. In New Orleans I had a little visit to the Orleans Parish Prison* (jails are called "parish prisons" in Louisiana) where I met a guy who I'm still friends with. He was HIV + and he went without meds for 2.5 days. He never once got to see a nurse or doctor, and he said guards just didn't respond to his telling them he needed meds.

I was only there for about 18 hours, during which time there was a guy w/ a bleeding head injury who never got to see a doctor. He hollered a lot, and tried talking to a deputy who sat down outside the cell, but the deputy slammed the solid metal door shut in his face.

In the worker's rights org I worked for, arrests were part of the job for some people, and they were always some new kind of terrible (except for one Quaker guy who the jailors apparently fawned over b/c he *looked* like Quaker, w/ the beard actual Quaker hat).

*Orleans Parish Prison = "OPP" which is pretty lol

just b/c it's not unusual for inmates to be denied medicine doesn't mean it's not awful.

Absolutely agree and nothing I said was meant to suggest otherwise. What led me to post was that the Salon story makes it sound like it is unusual by making it seem newsworthy that some people waited hours or a day for their meds. The horrible thing is that their stories are totally commonplace.

Just reread my earlier post and it wasn't that clear, sorry.

ah i see. you are right.

yo

motherFUCK the police

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/occupy-wall-street-in-dc/2012/01/30/gIQAebz9cQ_gallery.html#photo=14

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2012/02/occupy-dc-police-raid-camp/

^^^^ thank fuck i got some legitimacy in this headline

a dozen of my friends have broken bones and bruised ribs and gashes from barricades and violent induced stampedes and they have no fucking place to sleep and the media is losing their shit that the cops said some shit about a brick

fuck the mother fucking police

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/ushered-into-compliance/2012/02/04/gIQAiDvWqQ_graphic.html

yo real fucking talk riot cops rolling in on horseback while a helicopter buzzed us with a spotlight and we shielded up was a real "what the fuck is my life" moment