Occupy Wall Street 3: Now What?

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?

woah you don't need to be a black bloc defender to find that really naive! a whole swathe of the screwed up stuff police do will never get classed as "brutality" on a stat sheet

xp damn

if anything my position is that anti-cop tactics are sort of attacking the symptom and not the cause. the ideology of the average police officer is probably not to my liking but they are carrying out orders after all. what is truly sick and brutal is what we have asked our cops to do to us

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?

It's an amazing rate for ANYthing. It's an amazing rate for not fucking up a grilled cheese sandwich, ffs.

...

Its pretty amazing that that serial killer only killed 6 of the 10,000 people he interacted with during his life. He's a good dude, such an amazing rate.

I'm not saying that police brutality isn't a horrible, horrible problem that needs to be addressed! Just so you understand me. It really does break my heart. But what I'm in opposition to is the reactionary stance that when it occurs, people all of the sudden get up in arms and say "fuck the police."

"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.

― I DIED, Wednesday, February 8, 2012 12:04 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

if anything my position is that anti-cop tactics are sort of attacking the symptom and not the cause. the ideology of the average police officer is probably not to my liking but they are carrying out orders after all. what is truly sick and brutal is what we have asked our cops to do to us

― Critique of Pure Moods (goole), Wednesday, February 8, 2012 12:08 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I DIED and goole OTM. cops are just workers like any other. the problems we have with police brutality and oppression are institutional, a product of our collective unwillingness to demand more and better, to police the police.

cops are just workers like any other.

i don't agree with this, just fyi. they are workers, but really very different from any other!

politicians are just hard working dudes w/ a job too

investment bankers...just workers like any other

in the sense that i was using the terms, politicians and investment bankers very specifically aren't workers. rather, they're organizers and users ("exploiters" if you wish) of the labor and wealth of others.

cops, otoh, are no different from garbagemen, postal works, firefighters, county road guys, etc. physical laborers who do the heavy lifting demanded by society at large.

workers with a monopoly on the application of violence

xp

cops get to shoot people and lock them up

xp heh

the application of violence is something they 'use and exploit'. they are in a socially privileged position, even if it might not have the prestige factor of finance or politics.

beachville does planting evidence, extracting false confessions, falsifying records, stealing from suspects, etc. count as police brutality, just curious

It's an amazing rate for ANYthing. It's an amazing rate for not fucking up a grilled cheese sandwich, ffs.

bear in mind that a police brutality case is the difference between "we only fucked up 3% of our grilled cheese sandwiches" and "only 3% of the grilled cheese sandwiches we serves resulted in lawsuits against our restaurant"

serveD not serves

personally I get really irritated with the whole "cops are regular people just doing their jobs" schtick - the kind of people who want to be cops, in general, are violence-prone authority-fetishists.

Fair points all. I was mostly just trying to come at things from the pov that contenderizer mentions above.

But also from a perspective of respecting the police. My neighbor's a cop. I love her and respect what she provides for America.

I've been pissed off for a while because a fb friend who is an OWSer has been posting tons and tons of police brutality stuff and I feel like it's really unfair to cops to overwhelm yourself with that perspective.

maybe you should go to some ows events and see for yourself

it's not really 'a perspective' it's 'things that have been happening, a lot'

workers with a monopoly on the application of violence

― max buzzword (Shakey Mo Collier), Wednesday, February 8, 2012 12:26 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

cops get to shoot people and lock them up

― Critique of Pure Moods (goole), Wednesday, February 8, 2012 12:27 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the application of violence is something they 'use and exploit'. they are in a socially privileged position, even if it might not have the prestige factor of finance or politics.

― iatee, Wednesday, February 8, 2012 12:27 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah, but only postal workers get to handle mail, and only firefighters get to fight fires. you know, in an "authorized" fashion. so sure, cops are authorized to use violence. they're so authorized because we've collectively decided that the ability to legally employ violence is necessary to the maintenance of social order. obvious example of the "armed felon", etc.

though cops do get this special dispensation, they're still just ordinary workers doing a difficult and dangerous job that we collectively and "officially" demand be done. same isn't really true of investment bankers. that's more the example of self-interested capitalism recognizing an opportunity from the sidelines and swooping in for the kill. there's no basic, active social demand for market speculation, the way there is for food, water, housing and safe streets.

we need a finance industry on some level and we need police. we don't need highly leveraged market speculation or police brutality.

personally I get really irritated with the whole "cops are regular people just doing their jobs" schtick - the kind of people who want to be cops, in general, are violence-prone authority-fetishists.

― max buzzword (Shakey Mo Collier), Wednesday, February 8, 2012 12:33 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i kind of agree, but nonetheless reject that generalization as meaningful in this context. police forces don't gain their power from the tendency of "violence-prone authority fetishists" to gather in packs. they gain their power from the demands that we the people place on our government. they exist because we collectively demand that they exist. they are violent because we demand that they be granted the license to employ violence. if we're troubled by this, our anger is better directed at the culture that enables and accepts such police behavior than at individual cops. blaming cops for violent authoritarianism in civil policing is like blaming soldiers for war. genuine "bad apples" excepted, of course...

cops are just workers like any others who can arbitrarily whack you with a baton/tase you and pay no price for it.

the kind of people who want to be cops

they gain their power from the demands that we the people place on our government. they exist because we collectively demand that they exist. they are violent because we demand that they be granted the license to employ violence.

first two points = sure yes. last point = eh, not so sure about that

we need a finance industry on some level and we need police. we don't need highly leveraged market speculation or police brutality.

― iatee, Wednesday, February 8, 2012 12:41 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"highly leveraged market speculation" is an industry in itself. it exists because the mechanisms of capitalism encourage and reward it. we do not directly demand it (in the way that we demand road maintenance, mail delivery and police protection), but we get it anyway as a product of other things we do demand.

"police brutality" is a crime. it is to be expected that certain individuals will "screw up", will abuse whatever power is granted them. to the extent that this is what we're talking about and we have sufficient mechanisms to identify and prevent it, then it's not a big deal, socially speaking. to the extent that it's endemic, unpunished, denied and/or the product of institutional neglect, arrogance or corruption, then it is a big deal and we have an obligation to address it.

it's a mistake, though, to compare an industry with an error.

the industry is an error!

cops are just workers like any others who can arbitrarily whack you with a baton/tase you and pay no price for it.

― Literal Facepalms (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, February 8, 2012 12:46 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the failure of american society and government to adequately police its own police forces is not the fault of those police forces. it's the fault of american society and government at large. if postal workers were allowed to whack you with impunity, i'm sure we'd have a corresponding with postal brutality. we need to police the police. we don't need to demonize them as "the jackbooted enemies of freedom" or w/e.