Occupy Wall Street 3: Now What?

mm.

Less than a week after she was incarcerated, Leah requested a way out of prison from her lawyer. Her lawyer returned with a subpoena for October 17, 2012. She entered that grand jury, spoke, and was released from prison that day.
The exact content of what Leah said is unknown. After leaving prison, she told very few people she was out. Leah did not inform known targets of the investigation of her release. When she did let people know that she was free, she asked for space from any questions. Those who did ask questions were rebuffed and told that she needed to recover before she could talk about what happened.
After delaying giving any answers to people, Leah left Portland. Most people do not know where she went. She has since made one statement to CAPR, in which she said safety concerns prevented her from saying what happened during the grand jury at which she appeared.
Leah did tell people that she answered “an anarchy sign” when asked what a circle-A means and described some man as “a neo-Nazi” who had attempted to infiltrate anarchist circles before being outed. According to Leah, when the prosecutor asked her about various things, she answered “I don’t know,” or “I don’t remember.” Beyond those questions, what Leah said remains unknown. Due to the secrecy of grand jury proceedings, short of information coming out in discovery, there is no definitive way of knowing what was said in the grand jury chamber.

http://notyrcisterpress.tumblr.com/post/34625748003/leah-lynn-plante-cooperates

http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_md6qivQVrK1r47bpd.jpg

yesssssssssssssssssssss

also i would be remiss in ignoring occupy sandy, obviously:

http://interoccupy.net/occupysandy/

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/11/nyregion/where-fema-fell-short-occupy-sandy-was-there.html?pagewanted=all

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/occupy-sandy-easy-give-victims-hurricane-article-1.1197605

http://abcnews.go.com/ABC_Univision/News/occupy-sandy-latino-soul-activism/story?id=17667896#.UJ3VSeTO36U

i gotta say, man

occupy sandy--among other things, very much in the lineage of Common Ground Relief after Katrina

occupy our homes

the rolling jubilee

there have been a lot of moments, especially in the last 8 months, that i've wondered how much i wanted to invest myself in whatever you want to call this thing, this project, this notion, this movement. still: for brief seconds of elation, like these, where i see and sense our collective momentum--so often hidden and so often unknown--as we press forward with our spirit of righteous anger and riotous joy, i can't help but think that a victory will come. the shape of that victory eludes me now, and i can only hope that the children of children i might bear find themselves in a better world than our own, but for this moment our moment will suffice. a breath is a breath, a win is a win, a step is a step. tomorrow is tomorrow.

Hoos, are you doing Sandy stuff at all? I think it's an incredible phenomenon.

The People's Bailout / Rolling Jubilee is really exciting and interesting.

Occupy Sandy has been getting a lot of great coverage - New York TImes, Wall Street Journal, CNN.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/11/nyregion/where-fema-fell-short-occupy-sandy-was-there.html

looking fwd to occupation of unspecified North Jersey Walmart on Black Friday

climate solidarity actions (Bryant Park next Saturday)

http://ht.ly/2tb1kD

Black Friday event source

http://www.corporateactionnetwork.org/campaigns/black-friday/events

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KeQNbyxWNtM&feature=youtu.be

this is a lot better than the orientation I got, fwiw

Kind of interesting to see the social media response to Occupy with all the media attention from Sandy -- lots of "right on, government SUX, individuals RULE" comments from conservatives. Which I guess probably overlaps with some of the views of some of the more anarcho elements of Occupy but for slightly different reasons?

Also, can anyone give me a little more info on the rockaway pipeline? I tend to think replacing more oil heat with natural gas is better than NOT doing so, and my approach to fossil fuels is that we kind of need to pursue short-term and long-term solutions at the same time and that we're not going to get everything running solar overnight (if ever).

Nice to see that these sites still exist:

http://occupywriters.com/

Went on a date with a nursing student who's working with Occupy Sandy on the weekends; those people are doing the best work. I'm incredibly impressed and excited by the way Occupy has, in many places, switched gears to a politically charged public service movement instead of just one of protest. I mean, I know that was a part of it from the beginning, but it seems in many places to now be the main focus of the movement, which I think is both generally incredible and politically more effective.

PS Big up HOOS for all your work in this area.

just realized that on tonight's Voices of the 99% broadcast i refer--accidentally, i swear to god--to "goldman sack"

goldman slacks, new from dockers.

v impressed with strike debt/rolling jubilee. Hearing Graeber talk about it on the radio actually did shift the way I think about consumer debt, although I don't agree with all of his ideas about debt.

PS Big up HOOS for all your work in this area.

― ENERGY FOOD (en i see kay), Sunday, November 18, 2012 4:32 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

occupy art, occupy museums

http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2012/11/19/occupy-art/

I have a hard time taking seriously people who are entirely creatures of the art market who say they are "fed up" with the art market.

why not?

Because they are inherently parts of that machine, while so many other people work outside that machine altogether. I actually like Jerry Saltz, but I still have found this to be a flaw with him, that he doesn't always seem fully aware of his insider-outsider status.

I remember the innocent days when regular folks could buy a piece for $3m. now it's all about money.

^this

jeez, next you guys are gonna tell me the renaissance popes were bad guys too

they were renaissance men, also sometimes soldiers and crossdressers.

i liked the way the awl put it, "rich people ruin even the things that are expressly for rich people"

nice, link?

nm sure I can find it

it was just a throwaway line here http://www.theawl.com/2012/11/a-recent-history-of-the-new-niceness

http://www.theawl.com/2012/11/a-recent-history-of-the-new-niceness

ha, my wife came up with the term "fashionably nice" a couple of years ago in reference to an attitude she was noticing among young artists and gallery people

thx for the positive vibes, guys. <3

http://occupywallst.org/article/give-walmart-organizer-fund/

http://distilleryimage7.instagram.com/e24a57fe359a11e2a7ed22000a1f8f24_7.jpg

garment sweatshop fire in Bangladesh kills over 100; company is a supplier to Walmart, H&M, Hilfiger etc.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/26/world/asia/bangladesh-fire-kills-more-than-100-and-injures-many.html

Thought followers of this thread might find Jefferson's letter to onetime dope MC William Henry Harrison interesting:

http://www.adl.org/education/curriculum_connections/Excerpt_Jefferson1803.asp

Does Graeber talk about this at all? Basically Jefferson decided that the US should make Native Americans dependent on consumer goods and get them into debt so they could then use the debt to take their land. Kind of amazing. (btw only used an adl link because that was the first place I found the text of the letter).

very interesting.

i'm so mad i forgot to tell my extended metaphor story linking simpson-bowles to genghis khan on the air tonight

EXTENDED METAPHOR STORY YALL

today i saw a minivan in my neighborhood with three bumper stickers: OCCUPY WALL STREET, LABOR CREATES ALL WEALTH and... VOTE YES [on mn's recently failed anti gay marriage amendment] ONE MAN, ONE WOMAN

i live around the corner from a catholic church...

hoos doin hour of radio gab w/out notes? v impressive, kid

http://www.wired.com/opinion/2012/12/a-eulogy-for-occupy/all/

wow. that's a pretty brutal article.

down here we're all passing it around and comiserating. truest thing i've read about this stuff in as long as i can think of.

By DC, the last eviction I wrote about, not even I could stay outside this need anymore. We all stood on the police line, cold and wet and sad, 12 hours into the rainy eviction. We took blows and kicks from riot police and SWAT rather than step on the people behind us that had slipped in the mud. We had relearned in each argument and every pitched tent that the fundamental job of humans is to care for one another, to keep each other whole and safe.

https://twitter.com/quinnnorton/status/279332051411402752

lol

so, now what?

well.

i think the strength of occupy--and i think quinn's awesome piece has given me the courage to use that word without scare quotes to subtly distance me from the worst of it--is that it represented a moment of unity between people fighting a lot of different enemies. it was a season of fraternity where we could stand in uneasy alliance knowing that whether homeless addict or college student, union mom or fired yuppie, we had a common antagonist in an industry that gladly bought our debt and our government while we drowned.

i think those pre-occupy issue silos are recalcifying, and i think the fact that there's a democrat in the white house is keeping many liberals & democrats from stepping into the streets where they might have in case of a mccain or romney victory, else being equal.

the alter-globalization movement of the late 90s was folded into the international anti-war movement, which i will kind of never forgive either for, because like occupy those two movements represented moments of unification between enormous and varied constituencies that were largely squandered. the anti-war movement such as it is has slowly faltered and faded into irrelevance for a number of reasons, but i do think it's significant that the players in it have reappeared in the last year as the weekend warriors* have faded. throughout the last year there's been a sense both that this is *something new* and that the "new activists" have ~something to learn~ from the ostensible "old guard" that's been around for somewhere between 11-13 years.

i think we've opened new fronts, with varying degrees of long-term viability, on things like consumer debt and eviction defense. quinn touches briefly on those. there have been people using direct action to fight unjust evictions and foreclosures for years, but the occupy brand-name has brought those fights new attention, and i think that attention in itself leads to more victories than might otherwise be possible. my friends think aloud about eviction defense direct action becoming the stuff of mass movement, the leading edge of a change in our cultural understanding of housing and community and ownership and capital(ism), but this strikes me as optimistic.

ultimately i think quinn gets it right, even if it is a little eye-roll-y and romantic for our cynical culture. we're from a broken future to tell a broken past that its time is up, and if we work fast enough we can do better. or, if you like, the batsignal got it right too.

WE ARE A CRY
FROM THE HEART
OF THE WORLD
WE ARE UNSTOPPABLE
ANOTHER WORLD IS POSSIBLE

and i think what we do now is continue to fight our silo'd battles with what i hope are the significant reinforcements made possible by some of the newest alliances. in my mind class struggle and the environmental battles are deeply bound up together, and it's sort of my mission to make their links clearer to other people so that hopefully we can build more bridges between those two movements. maybe if the working class can save the world we'll get to run it for a while.