Occupy Wall Street 3: Now What?

RATS RAISE BABY AS THEIR OWN

― spiced with KNOWING THAT YOU'VE PAID YOUR BILLS (I DIED), Thursday, January 12, 2012 5:28 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

lol

so while i was livetweeting the GA found out that the mayor is now imploring park service to evict us

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-mayor-calls-on-national-park-service-to-remove-occupy-protesters-from-mcpherson-square/2012/01/12/gIQAdAmeuP_story.html

we are of course 5 days before this

http://www.occupyyourcongress.info/wp-content/gallery/poster_images/poster.png

park service reiterating that we have the right to stay

gray obv just washing his hands here

trying to blame any havoc to come on #j17 on park service

was livetweeting the GA when a greek jouro @'d me on the story and it was like "holy fuck"

i almost want us to get kicked out this weekend ~just~ so i can smile when five thousand reinforcements show up on monday

ok this totally made my night

http://i43.tinypic.com/jac078.png

fuck yeah

Finally feeling well enough to participate. If all works out, I might come along to the #j17

Kids arrested on campus yesterday afternoon, some of whom were students. We're trying to find out why, under what circumstances.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-buzz/post/protesters-file-for-permit-to-occupy-congress-jan-17/2011/12/28/gIQAQlcYMP_blog.html

typical comments

i forget who it was on the sandbox that asked about a good introductory read on the politics that have informed OWS (& anarchism more broadly) but after recommending it in that instance i'm re-reading david graeber's "direct action" and i wanna rescind anything else i recommended--this is really all you need to get the gist. i mean, hell--

The main point, thought, is that--unlike some of the classical works of Proudhon, Kropotkin, Rocker, Malatesta, De Santillan, and others, written in the shadow of Marxism--contemporary anarchist 'theory,' such as it is, is most explicitly not intended to provide a comprehensive understanding that will instruct others in the proper conduct of revolution. It is not an ideology, a theory of history. It tends, rather, towards a kind of inspirational, creative play.

It is more than anything else an extrapolation from and imaginative projection of certain forms of practice: the experience of working in a small affinity group becomes the model for Primitivists' idealizations of the hunter/gatherer band, assumed to be the only social unit for most of human history; the experience of real experiments in worker control becomes the basis for an imaginary planet in a science fiction story; the experience of sisterhood becomes the model for a matriarchal pagan religion; the experience of a wild moment of collective poetic inspiration or even a particularly good party becomes the inspiration for the idea of a Temporary Autonomous Zone.

Even when contemporary anarchists turn to Marxism, their overwhelming favorite theorists are the Situationists Vaneigem & Debord, the Marxist theorists closest to the avant-garde tradition, who tried to unify theory, art and life.

graeber does his best not to take credit for ows but from what I've seen he really does deserve a lot of credit for ensuring the initial GA took place, which is more than anything responsible for the way this turned out differently than yr average one and done protest

in which an anarchist refuses to be a leader

seriously though, everybody read "direct action"

the first half is like the great novel that could have come out of the battle of seattle, and the second half is incisive stuff like the above

oh also, not that i know anything about this

https://p.twimg.com/AjFxrMkCEAERGyg.jpg

fuck d1c3ytr00p btw

i just started graeber's debt book and it's awesome too. highly recommended and easy to read.

fuck d1c3ytr00p btw

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Saturday, January 14, 2012 6:56 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

rescinding this, was written in a fit of piqe

pique, even

Jan 20 & 21 in NYC, Occupy the Courts and Corporations:

http://ows.re-configure.org/

and tonight there's a candlelight march from St John the Divine to Riverside Church? for hardy souls (20 degrees).

abd today at 3 there's a march in Brooklyn from Sunset Park to the courthouse. They really need to get the word out earlier on this stuff so people can make plans.

woop woop

http://j17live.org/

so, the rundown then.

http://occupycapitolhill.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/occupy-congress-002.png?w=640&h=1024

hastags to follow today, january 17th, if you're into that kind of thing:

#J17
#OccupyCongress
#ConnectTheDots -- specifically for links on wall st/gov't collusion in the great american sellout

we've got a team of 12, myself included (@hoosteen), livetweeting all day from the ground at teach-ins, the multi-occupation GA, squads covering our variously arrestable afternoon direct actions ("the day's more aggressive lobbying"), and our evening march.

we're gonna have 50+ livestreams available to choose from at http://www.j17live.org

i might be on al-jazeera at some point.

wall street pr has been with us all weekend working on prep and messaging. chicago and LA and SD all rolled in tonight. boston and miami and st louis are all expected in early tomorrow morning on buses and planes.

tonight i ran into a guy i worked a summer job with 10 years ago. he's here because he's sick of "money that talks louder than me."

the word from mcp is that we've got near 300 tents. another 100 at freedom plaza. rumblings that people might try to keep tents in places we don't already have tents, places with "national" in the name.

this is gonna be good.

Good luck, hoos and all

sounds good, way to start the year

go get em

^^^^^^

best of luck dude

meanwhile, my hometown occupy has been given notice to leave this morning

I can't watch streams, what's goin on?

spending freeze btw

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/17/occupy-wall-st-faces-its-own-economic-realities/

"in what observers are comparing to Frogger and Red Rover"

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2012/01/arrests-and-standoff-occupy-congress-turn-tense/47511/

what a fucking day

based on personal history, i know it was hoos that threw a smoke bomb at the white house

highlights

homies out front
https://p.twimg.com/AjYDDE9CEAEAswk.jpg

for the direct action of the day we split into 3 zones for the 3 buildings of congress, color-coded & matched to flags that led the groups: red flag, black flag, blue flag. i (predictably) rode with black flag for livetweeting, but it turned out to be the quietest of the three. red flag, home to a certain Issa--among the richest in congress, 90% of whose campaign contributions don't even come from his district, and also the guy who's trying to kick occupy dc off of federal land--wound up seeing the most action. this was outside.
https://p.twimg.com/AjZCug4CAAEDvjq.jpg

all 3 flags reconvened for the mass march. i was livetweeting & got this reply

@amorrissey
Aaron Morrissey
whatever, let us know when Fugazi gets there. MT @hoosteen: #blackflag now reuniting at the Capitol bldg. #occupycongress #j17
7 hours ago via Twitter for Mac

left for the march that would hit the 3 centers of power. got to the supreme court. it's illegal to hold political signs on the steps of the supreme court (iKNOWright?), and typically it gets you arrested--but the metro PD aren't big fans of mass arrests, sooo
http://a4.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/396500_324622100911186_100000901965251_1004922_1493147475_n.jpg

left SC for the white house, and passed the newseum on the way. the newseum has a giant 1st amendment faux-carved-into-stone. we stopped the march to mic check the whole thing, guided by a dozen bouncing laser pointers from the crowd:
https://p.twimg.com/AjZqCvBCQAAcfjc.jpg

"NDAA, we say no way!"
https://p.twimg.com/AjZx9UDCMAE2pB9.jpg

^^ a couple minutes after this some idiot (provocateur? too easy to blame all the stupid shit on fantasy provocateurs) threw a smoke bomb onto the lawn. there were about 30 seconds of panic as people at the gate thought we were being gassed--masks & hoods & goggles went up everywhere before we realized what was going on. predictably, this was all anybody heard about on fox news.

its impossible to have any real perspective on the day's events right now--in the next day or so we'll have a better sense of how it played, i imagine. suffice it to say i'm fucking exhausted, and that this kinda felt like a sneak peek at the G8 in chicago in may.

oh also, the prettiest girl in the world made me a shirt that says "talk radical to me, baby," and i am possibly in love

yay

make sure Issa lets you testify next week

haha

"I'm told that as of this morning, we’re approaching 200 tents in McPherson Square," said BIG HOOS, a 25-year-old McPherson Square protester who has been at the camp since its twelfth day. "The south lawn of McPherson, where we have our general assembly, stays empty by design so that we can have our meetings there. But the rest of the park is filling to the brim ... We do expect that a large number of folks coming for this action are going to be staying with us for the long haul." The city's other encampment, at Freedom Plaza, is also adding members, he said. Last week, Occupy D.C.'s S______ ______ told us each park has a capacity of 500 people.

HOOS stopped short of promising all those people would join in resisting any police effort to evict the protesters. But he said, quite diplomatically, "I know we will have people who are prepared to peacefully defend our space."

still feel v strange abt this kind of thing

also massive lolz

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lxz8f7EXjf1qg5xw5o1_500.jpg

when i tweeted abt this response was "shit! we've GOTTA stop putting our secrets in that truck!"

oh here's a nicer shot of the 1st amendment mic check from the front of the march, nb laser pointer

http://d3j5vwomefv46c.cloudfront.net/photos/full/498118687.jpg?Expires=1326872587&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIYVGSUJFNRFZBBTA&Signature=FvBX3ymFWZ5DJbhLagDOy0ikfKTfY57nq7e26UbTtBibwrRrpKskBwpDerWXw3G6s4xRcsLyZ-00KQatMNQZ3e7RUYV1TKMvij7rnta38m7iCy1scZAAZPy1n2wTXC0EOWABfx1cJIcsknpbjjWpeDDM3fWYayMHz1t6wbKPsKU_

haaa my homegirl made this

https://p.twimg.com/AjYdAptCIAAIN54.jpg

not rly sure i get why the military is above the goblet-swillers there, but

and church should be replaced in that hierarchy by entertainment media/advertising at this point

hoos your homegirl is a fan of gerd arntz!!

http://www.gerdarntz.org/content/gerd-arntz

You're leading an interesting and exciting life HOOS

You're leading an interesting and exciting life HOOS

4real

hoos your homegirl is a fan of gerd arntz!!

http://www.gerdarntz.org/content/gerd-arntz

― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Wednesday, January 18, 2012 11:42 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

fwhoah

awesome

oh i posted this in wdyll so forgive me for the repost but <333333

http://i44.tinypic.com/2duxh79.jpg

some idiot (provocateur? too easy to blame all the stupid shit on fantasy provocateurs) threw a smoke bomb onto the lawn.

eyewitnesses saying they saw a whiteshirt cop throw the smokebomb. can neither confirm nor deny.

my favorite chant of the day was in spanish, borrowed from south america, had a nice rhythm to it that had us all dancing down the street

a
anti
anticapitalista

oh and A.N.S.W.E.R. showed up and we all booed

we didn't "all" boo

just lots of us are not big fans of a buncha stalinists posing as a grassroots network

haven't actually watched this but friends are posting it on FB so

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QptAVWbm9c&feature=youtu.be

just lots of us are not big fans of a buncha stalinists posing as a grassroots network

<3 yeah fuck the RCP

nice to read yer updates, good luck

OWS greeting Obama at Apollo Theater 6pm tomorrow, but doubt I will be able to get near the place after work.

btw who are The World Can't Wait, and are they doing anything worthwhile?

KEEP ON KEEPIN' ON