Occupy Wall Street 3: Now What?

as someone who spent a lot of time with the Oakland Commune, I have to agree with Chris here. 'diversity of tactics' as invoked at the GAs was always specifically made in reference to the camp's position on violent protesters, who a lot of the regulars weren't willing to question due to the popular 'fuck the police' feeling around Oakland (understandable). know people like to assume everything is always provoked, but there really has been a group of Black Bloc kids only showing up to the marches, destroying things so aimlessly that it hardly qualifies as a 'tactic', basically rendering useless anything of value accomplished

and I think tactically-speaking, a diversity of tactics, if meaning tactics that contradict each other symbolically, is dysfunctional. house divided against itself etc

diversity in all other respects is good, but a unified movement can't be both violent and nonviolent. you have to pick one.

Violence (intentionally breaking shit) is self-defeating, tis true

Let us make (even SOME of) our money go away, and they will bleed.

more eyerolliness re: Occupy Oakland

"You are blight, don't you see it?" retorted Aaron Merritt, a 39-year-old graphic designer.

The young Occupier shot back: "You're in the matrix. You've been indoctrinated."

*sigh*

you're totally ridiculous dude.

xpost

also i can pretty much promise that nothing will come out of the occupy oakland movement from here on out.

Did jail solidarity today.

Mike, the Iraq vet, had his bullshit felony assault on a police officer charge dropped (what do you meaaaaaaan the cops invented a reason to target our loudest organizer of resistance to the eviction?) and he was released. Prosecutor tried to push a stay-away order on him for the whole District, effectively sending him back home to Alaska, but the judge only granted a stay-away from the Square itself.

Shangry, the Afghanistan vet with a fractured skull and a twice broken arm thanks to a police beating ("everything went black, then I woke up and I was getting choked, then I woke up and I was in the hospital"), has been denied medication throughout the weekend. Doctors fought with the cops to have him stay in the hospital for treatment, but cops wheeled him out and kept him at central. Judge, citing his prior arrests for CD in other states, thinks he's a "flight risk" will hold him for four more days til his hearing.

Ken, the artist who was beaten for sitting in a chair reading a book as a peaceful defense of the anarchist library, finally ate food today after his weekend hunger strike--"I'm a vegan. Apparently they starve vegans in DC jails."

There's an abandoned warehouse near Chinatown. Soon it's ours.

damn man

stay safe out there

ken also had his "felony assault on a police officer" charge dropped, btw, when our lawyer used two windows running youtubedoubler to show the cops 4 simultaneous multi-angle videos of his unprovoked assault and unresisted arrest

Nothing like making the judge an eyewitness to help establish your case.

my most popular tweet on eviction day, quoting our livestreamer:

hoosteen
"they came at me with riot shields and I was like 'I came out of Connecticut Hardcore, yo, let's do this.'"

there was a 10 year old girl that got trampled on saturday when they fucked up kettling us. she's still in the hospital. i keep hearing her screams in my head when i walk home at night. that's a problem, right?

oh god

motherfuck the police

HOOS, you might consider writing a short manifesto and leaving it on ilx as a means of collecting yr thoughts?

there was a 10 year old girl that got trampled on saturday when they fucked up kettling us. she's still in the hospital. i keep hearing her screams in my head when i walk home at night. that's a problem, right?

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Monday, February 6, 2012 10:32 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

christ.

http://occupydc.org/this-friday-and-saturday-occupy-cpac-liberate-discourse/

Good luck with the weekend's activities

amen, go get em

https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/396388_10150559708579401_29303624400_8993774_166091710_n.jpg

This just showed up in my fb feed. It is obtuse and OWS-related. I don't get it, but I figure maybe you guys would?

Chris Hedges got himself in some hot water with a screed in TruthDig with the unappetizing title of "The Cancer in Occupy," in which he bashes the radical tactics of the Black Bloc anarchists in Oakland last month.

http://www.ww4report.com/node/10812

So a person who posted this picture would disagree with Hedges Black Bloc-bashing?

I guess?

Oh, I see. He previously advocated to Black Bloc and then flip-flopped.

“The Black Bloc can say they are attacking cops, but what they are really doing is destroying the Occupy movement,” the writer and environmental activist Derrick Jensen told me when I reached him by phone in California. “If their real target actually was the cops and not the Occupy movement, the Black Bloc would make their actions completely separate from Occupy, instead of effectively using these others as a human shield. Their attacks on cops are simply a means to an end, which is to destroy a movement that doesn’t fit their ideological standard.”

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_cancer_of_occupy_20120206/

When Hedges wrote about the Greeks, notorious for their black blocs, he praised them for “getting it.” Indeed, according to Hedges, they knew what to do. In Hedges own words:

“They know what to do when they are told their pensions, benefits and jobs have to be cut to pay corporate banks, which screwed them in the first place. Call a general strike. Riot. Shut down the city centers. Toss the bastards out. Do not be afraid of the language of class warfare—the rich versus the poor, the oligarchs versus the citizens, the capitalists versus the proletariat. The Greeks, unlike most of us, get it.”

Apparently for Hedges, that’s good enough for the Greeks. But, by God, don’t you dare bring this filthy resistance to his home! You might accidentally (horror of horrors!) break a window!

http://news.infoshop.org/article.php?story=20120207100008741

woops sorry, quote is from this piece

http://www.revolutionbythebook.akpress.org/to-be-fair-he-is-a-journalist-a-short-response-to-chris-hedges-on-the-black-bloc/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

the hedges piece makes the apparently endlessly renewable error of thinking that "the black bloc" is some kind of evil club with weekly meetings (and of assuming that all the property damage in the oakland incident was caused by people specifically setting out to break shit, when -- not that i was there -- i suspect at least some of it was caused by people who got hit in the head by cops until they got angry, which like i said upthread is why the cops were hitting them in the head) but here's the kind of thing i really don't get, from one of the hedges denunciations:

It was a welcome sight in today’s age of non-violent fundamentalism, where so many are beset with the crippling belief that if we just get beat up badly enough we’ll attract “the masses” with our moral superiority and somehow the wealthy and powerful will recognize the error of their ways and give us the world back that they’ve so successfully turned into their nightmarish, authoritarian, and wasted playground.

okay, it's easy to sneer at nonviolence (because it's wimpy) and at "the masses" (because they're hypnotized), but like what is your counterproposal? if a couple hundred people in bandanas just get rowdy enough the wealthy and powerful will become terrified and abandon their infinite supply of weapons and their tacit popular support? the "liberation" that supporters of violent tactics crow about is real, but it only happens for the people on the street and it only lasts until they get thrown in jail; it doesn't affect society at all (except to make it easier for the police to convince most of the country that their violence is justified). so i can't help but read it as essentially selfish: of a piece with the american corporate-culture ethos of isolated self-actualization, which never compromises and never violates the sanctity and beauty of the individual, and got the last bunch of righteously rioting young people to vote for reagan.

maybe there's an expectation -- not a totally insane one! -- that the Coming Ecological Apocalypse will do the work of destroying society for us, so all we have to do is raise our consciousnesses and prepare to live in the new world rather than bore ourselves trying to change this one, but i dunno if that's a bet i want to make.

(ha hoos and i linked the same piece. as for the greek contradiction, i dunno, i'm not defending hedges specifically. i've always liked him tho! he came out of the seminary and is thus literally preachy, which is why his essay on the AVN awards is a billion times worse than david foster wallace's, but i think his war coverage is righteous.)

yeah i kinda scratched my head at that particular quote too. it's a long argument tho about what really forces state change, with gandhi & MLK in one corner and franz fanon in the other, i guess.

and bad PR is a material and political fact no matter its fairness

i'm not getting billy clubbed tho so i guess i'll keep mum

his essay on the AVN awards

as in, porn?

yeah. it's in his kinda hysterically titled collection EMPIRE OF ILLUSION: THE END OF LITERACY AND THE TRIUMPH OF SPECTACLE

hmm. sounds a bit savonarola for my tastes

Here's where I can plug (again) the Taylor Branch bio of MLK for an analysis of how and why worked and failed. MLK had the unenviable task of staying ahead of a movement that was no longer coherent by 1967 and 1968, not to mention how the Vietnam War (MLK and his inner circle were as tortured about opposing it publicly as LBJ was in sending more troops), white backlash, and black frustration with the pace of federal aid put shall we say considerable strain on nonviolence as a tactic.

xp Yeah, I feel like this is really an argument for people on the ground but everything I read by the AK/black bloc crowd (as opposed to people who, when pushed, might retaliate with violence) makes me think they're dangerous, dogmatic assholes who should be sidelined as much as possible.

xxp fair. i can't find the right screencapture of woody allen telling carol kane "i'm a bigot, but, for the left".

yeah. it's in his kinda hysterically titled collection EMPIRE OF ILLUSION: THE END OF LITERACY AND THE TRIUMPH OF SPECTACLE

― the "intenterface" (difficult listening hour), Wednesday, February 8, 2012 5:15 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

loll

btw that AK Press piece links to a 3-part video of harsha walia talking about the black bloc for about 20 mins, she's pretty on point and kills it imo

"The Greeks, unlike most of us, get it."

I think most OWS would agree with this statement, at least in broad outline. The Greeks know the banks and capitalists are "more equal" citizens and they revolt at this injustice.

The difficulty is that other part of the statement, that most of "us", in the sense of most Americans, don't get it and those Americans who don't won't have a sudden satori by watching someone smashing things. You have to nurse them, like toddlers who are perfectly happy running out in front of a car, until they are able to recognize the world they live in and see the source of dangers.

You do not treat toddlers like adults, nor should OWS. You can't just skip ahead to the point where you'd prefer to be; you have to get there from here.

what is your counterproposal? if a couple hundred people in bandanas just get rowdy enough the wealthy and powerful will become terrified and abandon their infinite supply of weapons and their tacit popular support? the "liberation" that supporters of violent tactics crow about is real, but it only happens for the people on the street and it only lasts until they get thrown in jail; it doesn't affect society at all (except to make it easier for the police to convince most of the country that their violence is justified).

people i know who bloc up would probably respond that property destruction on a one-action scale isn't intended to start "the revolution." it's symbolic in the way a march is symbolic--a signal that "people are resisting (insert target), some more militantly than others"--and an implicit (often explicit via statements) call for solidarity actions.

the counterproposal isn't "riot, then we win!" targeted property destruction is (should be, shouldn't be, i haven't decided, but IS) a part of a bloc's toolbox that includes de-arrest, hard block defense of passive resisters, and a willingness to fight back. i think the counterproposal is "let's provide some resistance to the violent arm of capital to remind people that their monopoly on violence and authority deserves to be challenged."

so i can't help but read it as essentially selfish: of a piece with the american corporate-culture ethos of isolated self-actualization, which never compromises and never violates the sanctity and beauty of the individual

this is a well heard critique, i think bookchin or somebody wrote an essay called "against lifestyle anarchism" that largely made this point.

Listening now here at my desky job

Chris Hedges and Kristof Lopaur of Occupy Oakland debate black bloc, militancy and tactics.

http://www.kpfa.org/home

it's symbolic in the way a march is symbolic--a signal that "people are resisting (insert target), some more militantly than others"

I wish it were that easy. Symbols are not always universally read the same way by everyone.

Consider this (target) a moment. It may have its own symbolic structure that makes "these people resist (target)" a very ugly and ominous message to those who accept the alternative symbolism of (target). When symbolisms compete in this way, you need to undermine the competition by exposing how and where it doesn't match reality. Violence against "the guardians of law and order" merely strengthens their hand -- until you have widely damaged or destroyed their pretense of being the guardians of the good and the right.

Presuming that "the people resist the (insert enemy)" is already accepted as the correct framework that no one will misunderstand is a dangerous assumption. This is a consequence of living in a radicalized bubble, similar to the reactionary bubble in the corporate board rooms.

oh and

maybe there's an expectation -- not a totally insane one! -- that the Coming Ecological Apocalypse will do the work of destroying society for us, so all we have to do is raise our consciousnesses and prepare to live in the new world rather than bore ourselves trying to change this one, but i dunno if that's a bet i want to make.

― the "intenterface" (difficult listening hour), Wednesday, February 8, 2012 5:08 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i mean afaict to varying degrees of apocalyptism this is precisely what "building the new world in the shell of the old" is about--or as graeber says, "we'll build our world and fight against yours--the last person out of the state can turn out the lights."

optimistic, to put it kindly, but i like it.

When symbolisms compete in this way, you need to undermine the competition by exposing how and where it doesn't match reality. Violence against "the guardians of law and order" merely strengthens their hand -- until you have widely damaged or destroyed their pretense of being the guardians of the good and the right.

agree completely--nuance and punctures of the veil, though, are profoundly difficult to convey through the mainstream media. it's the job of people like me to stand in front of the camera or mic and convey the nuance of the intended message as carefully as possible, and for all my team's efforts flacking and rehearsing it's still always worth celebrating when anything approaching a critique actually appears in the media. getting the phrase "violently evicted"--an admission that the police were violent, god forbid--into a headline about our eviction bought me a beer at the bar that night.

so it's hard to get basic facts out, to say nothing of the difficult process of dismantling deeply embedded cultural symbolism in an attempt to explain a broken window. no doubt it's a challenge. i still think it's worth doing.

When symbolisms compete in this way, you need to undermine the competition by exposing how and where it doesn't match reality. Violence against "the guardians of law and order" merely strengthens their hand -- until you have widely damaged or destroyed their pretense of being the guardians of the good and the right.

i've known very few people who view the police in unambiguously positive terms. most non-radical americans seem to regard the authoritarian and often violent nature of police forces as as a necessary evil. i.e., the idea seems to be that police forces are absolutely necessary for the stable functioning of society and that they do accomplish real good, but that they also inflict a lot of "collateral damage" in the process. therefore, simply showing that the police can be dangerously, unreasonably violent does little to change anyone's perception of them. we all knew that going in.

americans have become so accustomed to this compromise that their default position seems to be "don't do anything around cops that might be seen as challenging them." such behavior is seen as foolishly "asking for it", since the police's propensity for violence is assumed and accepted. no one seems to question the impact this default position has on functional civil rights.

this puts activists in a very difficult position. in order to change american hearts and minds, you'd have to show somehow that police forces aren't also accomplishing the good traditionally ascribed to them. i say this because any violence endured by intransigent activists will automatically be seen as the natural consequences of foolishly "asking for it". exceptions made for nice old white ladies and kids, of course, but there aren't too many of those at the front lines.

There are around 800,000 cops in America. Something like 30,000 cases of police brutality reported in 2006. You have to assume that some of those are false, but you also have to assume that some don't get reported, so I'm fine with 30,000. That's like 3%. Now obviously, a number of those cases of police brutality are going to be attributable to the same bad cop. So, less than 3%. That's a goddamned good rate!

waht

It's a very good rate. Most cops are out there doing good and fighting crimes. The cops who are doing evil need to be brought to justice. There are some definite problems there. But all told, it's real easy to just look at the headlines and say "fuck the police" when one of them does something wrong and forget about all that are out there protecting you.

"cops who are doing good" vs. "cops who are doing evil" is a great way to completely ignore the the institutional and societal factors that make police brutality more or less likely to occur.

first of all, your blanket assumption that the false reports and the non-reports 'cancel each other out' is ridiculous. second of all, do you think that 'only 3 out of every 100 cops brutalizes someone' would be something that any other western democracy could actually sell as a good thing?