Occupy Wall Street 3: Now What?

of course they were

10 to 1 none of occ cleave's charges stick

On the police tactics in NYC on 5/1:

Snatch-and-grab police tactics intimidate crowds, but do not lead to the sort of dramatic mass arrest scenes that capture national headlines; it’s a more insidious form of crowd control. It is worth adding, however, that there was no shortage of police aggression: At one point I saw firsthand as a marcher was grabbed by police in the Lower East Side, his face slammed to the street. When pulled up and taken away, officers covered his face with his T-shirt so onlookers could not see the blood.

Then, after the mass evening march in New York had finished and no more than a thousand people had moved to the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial park at Manhattan’s southerly tip, the NYPD once again covered the area. Some remaining hundreds of the May Day participants had gathered for a mass general assembly; others milled around, sharing stories about the day or dancing to the ever-present drumbeats. The police encircled the small concrete park in time to disperse the relaxed crowd at 10 p.m., when the park closes. Clad in riot gear, the number of officers kept growing; hundreds and hundreds on foot and in vans surrounded the memorial park and every office building, street and corner. The NYPD is the seventh largest standing army in the world, and on the evening of May 1, New York felt like a city under military siege — it was terrifying.

http://www.salon.com/2012/05/03/the_nypd_may_day_siege/

Tho IMO we should be careful about "normalizing" their outrageous bullshit.

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Thursday, May 3, 2012 8:50 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Agree, but as you most certainly know it is hard to keep fighting back 24-7 so as to call them on this stuff. It's hard to compete with the money of Karl Rove's pals.

The NYPD is the seventh largest standing army in the world

really?

Okay, it's something Mayor Bloomberg said. What a dumb thing to say.

Is it not a true thing?

As an army, they would be somewhere in between Tunisia and Belgium.

yeah he basically made that up it's bullshit, unless he has some tricky definition of "standing army"

Bloomie is no Tricky

It's remarkably hard to get any intelligible google results for sitting or kneeling armies

i imagine he's including, like, school cops and subway workers

the NYPD like to stand so their incredible overweight is of maximum use in blockading intersections

People's Republic of China[37] 2,285,000

United States of America[189][190] 1,458,219

India[76][note f] 1,325,000

North Korea[126][note k] 1,106,000

Russian Federation[146][note o] 1,027,000

Republic of Korea[161][note r] 687,000

Turkey[179][180][181] 666,576

Pakistan[130][131] 617,000

NYPD 36,000

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83SLtpBiJjg&feature=youtu.be

3:02 on gave me goosebumps

Joshua Clover and 11 students facing significant jail time.

wow. Not good

If you check the Aggie's website:

According to the Yolo County District Attorney’s office a plea deal will be offered. Should they plead guilty they would receive a sentence of 80 hours of community service.

One of my closest homies wa arrested on mayday in NYC and we've finally tracked him down. He's being held at Rikers until his June 5th court date, bail remanded. Because he was in a fucking march.

Alerting any NY media that give a fuck?

fuckin conspiracy charges, always the heavyweight life-ruining thing in these kinds of raps. cuz you know damn well "obstructing movement in a public place" doesn't carry an 11-year max.

that was an xp to the UCD stuff, a month in jail for being on a march is a bad sign as well.

“The atmosphere teeters manically between carnival and riot — as demonstrators charged yet another police line on May Day afternoon, a small group diligently pushed the sound system along at the rear of the crowd, blasting music for the confrontation. The moment encapsulated the movement’s youthful, outlaw appeal: It gives participants the choice to dance or fight the cops — or both.”

http://www.sfweekly.com/2012-05-09/news/occupy-movement-protests-may-day-anarchy-black-bloc/

great goddamn piece

http://albany.patch.com/articles/university-of-california-files-lawsuit-against-14-alleged-occupy-the-farm-members#pdf-9875944

http://isoaklandburning.com/

I soak land burning?

(NOW SERVING SAN FRANSISCO AS WELL)

The moment encapsulated the movement’s youthful, outlaw appeal: It gives participants the choice to dance or fight the cops — or both

glad to see young people are still having fun, good luck convincing the 99% you have an actual political agenda

this guy

it's a piece written from the ground about an action and the ensuing tactical scuffles. the tactics in the piece are a handful among many others, some deeply engaged in the regulatory weeds & demands-making of reformism and others taking a dual power approach to build community strength for direct pushback & construction of alternatives. in a STUNNING FUCKIN TWIST, you don't get that context in this story about a single day of action.

you'd have to look that up for yourself, as the media isn't exactly trumpeting our work from the rooftops. i can help if you're curious.

i'm just saying i know a lot of people who hate banks and wall st who aren't going to be very impressed w fighting cops or staging street theatre

i liked "dance or fight the cops" as a bit of rhetorical flourish & a semi-poetic description of the inevitable carnival-esque atmosphere of big actions that often wind up in escalations of cop violence. it "sums up the movement" in an impressionistic sense, not in any factual way.

can i just

Disc: 1
1. Something's Got to Give, Matt Pless
2. Come On, Come On, Come On, Jackson Browne
3. Occupation Freedom, George Martinez & The Global Block Collective
4. People Have The Power (Live In Marseille), Patti Smith
5. Love Anthem (Only Love), My Pet Dragon
6. The Panic is On, Loudon Wainwright III
7. Occulture, Cosmonaut
8. Save Us, Papercranes (feat. Rain Phoenix)
9. Smile (Get Up and Sing), Jay Samel
10. This Is What America Looks Like, Tenderflex (DJ Logic & David Maurice) feat. Dynasty Electric, Ayler Young and Jay Rodriguez
11. Big Little Wolfs, Aeroplane Pageant
12. Agent 99, Alex Emanuel
13. Safety In Numbers, Deborah Harry
14. Hey, can I Sleep On Your Futon?, Richard Barone
15. Occupy Wall Street "Here Here Here", Black Dragon
16. White Gold, Ladytron
17. Greed, Gabriel Aldort
18. Against The Machine, Taj Weekes & Adowa
19. The Young Idealists, Lloyd Cole20.A Peaceful Solution, Willie Nelson
Disc: 2
1. The Time They Are a-Changin', Michael Moore
2. The World Is On Fire, Ace Reporter
3. Latter Days, The Middle Eight
4. Turn The Lights On, Chroma
5. Which Side Are You On? Ani DiFranco
6. Well May The World Go, Tao Rodriguez-Seeger
7. Unified Tribes, Thievery Corporation
8. Robber Barons, Thee Oh Sees
9. Saving Up To Go Bankrupt, Mike Rimbaud
10. Hell No (I'm Not Alright), Nanci Griffith
11. We Stand As One, Joseph Arthur
12. Cash Machine, Girls Against Boys
13. Rebellion Politik, Junkyard Empire
14. Nothing Recedes Like Progress, Anti-Flag
15. Rebel, Fear Nuttin Band
16. Under The Bridge, Jill Sobule with John Doe
17. Take A Stand, Stephan Said
18. The Answer, UNKLE
19. World Wide Rebel Songs, Tom Morello: The Nightwatchman
20. If There Ever Was A Time, Third Eye Blind
Disc: 3
1. Move On Fast, Yoko Ono
2. If We Live, Build The Sun
3. Fight The Good Fight, Our Lady Peace
4. I Don't Need Money, Julie B Bonnie
5. The World Is Turning, Toots & The Maytals
6. A New York Minute, Nickodemus feat. The Real Live Show, Sadat X, ILLspokinN and Rabbi Darkside
7. The Cash All Flows To Me , Gentleman Brawlers
8. Industrial Park, The Mammals (feat. Pete Seeger)
9. Big Fish, Yo La Tengo & the Lost City Rumblers
10. Occu-Pie, Harry Hayward
11. Free, Mystic Bowie
12. Oye Mi Voz, Los Cintron
13. Walk On, Carolyn Wonderland
14. Coney Island Winter, Garland Jefferys
15. China Basin Digs, Joel Rafael
16. Walkin', The Pimps of Joytime (feat. Roy Ayers)
17. River's Gonna Rise (Live), Warren Haynes Band
18. Rich Man's World, Immortal Technique
19. Staying Out And Calling In, Danger Field
Disc: 4
1. We Can't Make It Here, James McMurtry with Joan Baez & Steve Earle
2. We Are, New Party Systems (feat. Kyp Malone)
3. Revolution, Nova Echo
4. Number One, Born I Music
5. Play The Greed, Dar Williams
6. Broke Heart Blues, Ronny Elliot
7. What Are Their Names, David Crosby & Graham Nash
8. Make A Stand, Dylan Chambers with Lester Chambers
9. Better Luck Next Time, Jennie Arnau
10. All Over The World, Arlo Guthrie & Family
11. We're The 99, Lauren Diamond (feat. Liz O'Donnell)
12. We Are Human, Mike + Ruthy
13. Blessed, Lucinda Williams
14. Freedom Of Speech, Kanaska Carter
15. Reclaim, Rejectionist Front
16. Occupy (We the 99), Jasiri X
17. Earth Division, Mogwai
18. Occupy Wall Street Drummers "Pulse" Spoken Word By Paul Spitz, Occupy Wall Street Drummers "Pulse" With Spoken Word By Paul Spitz

i'm just saying i know a lot of people who hate banks and wall st who aren't going to be very impressed w fighting cops or staging street theatre

― the late great, Thursday, May 10, 2012 1:15 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

send them to this thing my friends made

http://whatthefuckhasoccupydone.com/

like frankly i'm kinda done with "occupy" as a banner to rally under--in dc, and i hear the same is true in ny and oakland and boston and chicago, we're no longer one group because we've become many satellite groups that only connect irregularly to keep each other updated and reinforce each other when it's helpful. in a lot of ways we're more effective that way, i think.

like, two weeks ago i helped save a lady's house from illegal foreclosure. the "occupy our homes" name helped get her story in the paper, but none of the people with me at that action are the type to get off on street scraps with riot cops. a week after that i spent two days at a conference organized by our corporate personhood working group connecting activists with academics and experts and resources to move a little further forward on reforming campaign finance. some of the people there were revolutionary anarchists building homeless shelters, and one of them said, "building a new world in the shell of the old doesn't mean i want to see people getting killed as the shell is collapsing." there's diversity of views, tactics, strategies. we're attacking these issues from a lot of directions, and as a consequence you'll never find a unified program under an occupy banner. instead you'll find lots of programs, and you can roll with the one that suits you, and that program might play one part in the big struggle.

hoos i wish you great luck w your movement, which i'm sympathetic to

fair enough. sorry if i came off as hostile, i've just gotten touchy about "the *real*/rest of the/whole 99%" bit of rhetoric as i've come to see it as a bit of a canard. and i think that the less we rally under this OccupyTM banner, the less likely we are to have people fighting with cops turning people off from investigating the other work we're doing that they might take an interest in.

can i just

Disc: 1
1. Something's Got to Give, Matt Pless
2. Come On, Come On, Come On, Jackson Browne
3. Occupation Freedom, George Martinez & The Global Block Collective
4. People Have The Power (Live In Marseille), Patti Smith
5. Love Anthem (Only Love), My Pet Dragon
6. The Panic is On, Loudon Wainwright III
7. Occulture, Cosmonaut
8. Save Us, Papercranes (feat. Rain Phoenix)
9. Smile (Get Up and Sing), Jay Samel
10. This Is What America Looks Like, Tenderflex (DJ Logic & David Maurice) feat. Dynasty Electric, Ayler Young and Jay Rodriguez
11. Big Little Wolfs, Aeroplane Pageant
12. Agent 99, Alex Emanuel
13. Safety In Numbers, Deborah Harry
14. Hey, can I Sleep On Your Futon?, Richard Barone
15. Occupy Wall Street "Here Here Here", Black Dragon
16. White Gold, Ladytron
17. Greed, Gabriel Aldort
18. Against The Machine, Taj Weekes & Adowa
19. The Young Idealists, Lloyd Cole20.A Peaceful Solution, Willie Nelson
Disc: 2
1. The Time They Are a-Changin', Michael Moore
2. The World Is On Fire, Ace Reporter
3. Latter Days, The Middle Eight
4. Turn The Lights On, Chroma
5. Which Side Are You On? Ani DiFranco
6. Well May The World Go, Tao Rodriguez-Seeger
7. Unified Tribes, Thievery Corporation
8. Robber Barons, Thee Oh Sees
9. Saving Up To Go Bankrupt, Mike Rimbaud
10. Hell No (I'm Not Alright), Nanci Griffith
11. We Stand As One, Joseph Arthur
12. Cash Machine, Girls Against Boys
13. Rebellion Politik, Junkyard Empire
14. Nothing Recedes Like Progress, Anti-Flag
15. Rebel, Fear Nuttin Band
16. Under The Bridge, Jill Sobule with John Doe
17. Take A Stand, Stephan Said
18. The Answer, UNKLE
19. World Wide Rebel Songs, Tom Morello: The Nightwatchman
20. If There Ever Was A Time, Third Eye Blind
Disc: 3
1. Move On Fast, Yoko Ono
2. If We Live, Build The Sun
3. Fight The Good Fight, Our Lady Peace
4. I Don't Need Money, Julie B Bonnie
5. The World Is Turning, Toots & The Maytals
6. A New York Minute, Nickodemus feat. The Real Live Show, Sadat X, ILLspokinN and Rabbi Darkside
7. The Cash All Flows To Me , Gentleman Brawlers
8. Industrial Park, The Mammals (feat. Pete Seeger)
9. Big Fish, Yo La Tengo & the Lost City Rumblers
10. Occu-Pie, Harry Hayward
11. Free, Mystic Bowie
12. Oye Mi Voz, Los Cintron
13. Walk On, Carolyn Wonderland
14. Coney Island Winter, Garland Jefferys
15. China Basin Digs, Joel Rafael
16. Walkin', The Pimps of Joytime (feat. Roy Ayers)
17. River's Gonna Rise (Live), Warren Haynes Band
18. Rich Man's World, Immortal Technique
19. Staying Out And Calling In, Danger Field
Disc: 4
1. We Can't Make It Here, James McMurtry with Joan Baez & Steve Earle
2. We Are, New Party Systems (feat. Kyp Malone)
3. Revolution, Nova Echo
4. Number One, Born I Music
5. Play The Greed, Dar Williams
6. Broke Heart Blues, Ronny Elliot
7. What Are Their Names, David Crosby & Graham Nash
8. Make A Stand, Dylan Chambers with Lester Chambers
9. Better Luck Next Time, Jennie Arnau
10. All Over The World, Arlo Guthrie & Family
11. We're The 99, Lauren Diamond (feat. Liz O'Donnell)
12. We Are Human, Mike + Ruthy
13. Blessed, Lucinda Williams
14. Freedom Of Speech, Kanaska Carter
15. Reclaim, Rejectionist Front
16. Occupy (We the 99), Jasiri X
17. Earth Division, Mogwai
18. Occupy Wall Street Drummers "Pulse" Spoken Word By Paul Spitz, Occupy Wall Street Drummers "Pulse" With Spoken Word By Paul Spitz

― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Thursday, 10 May 2012 02:18 (7 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol i should have done the ILX Protest Record thread, it wld have been so much better than anything with Michael Moore and Ani DiFranco on it. Damn sandbox months.

ani difranco is an acoustic thumpasaurus. what are you on about?

hoos let me tell you why i posted what i did

i woke up yesterday and read the front page of the NYT as i often do and then i took a shower and was looking in the mirror and thinking about politics as i often do in the morning and for whatever reason i started thinking about what a gigantic disappointment the fizzling of OWS has been to me. when i was an undergrad at berkeley i embraced far-left and socialist causes and tried to do some small-scale activism, nothing ever really panned out of it, possibly because most politically active students were engaging w/ much more pressing issues such as the liberation of palestine, taking back the night (women unite!) and the rolling ongoing UC graduate student strikes. also i don't know if you know anything about berkeley but the socialists there are mostly holdovers from the very radical late 70s and so instead of being dominated by things like parecon it's dominated by fringe stuff hard-line maoism (i'm trying to remember the exact titles of the free newspapers you could get, it was all stuff that had a quasi-religious hare krishna / jehovah's witness vibe to it, if that makes sense)

anyway, what i was thinking was that i was upset that in the end, instead of being about income inequality and economic reform, it essentially became a battle over whether people had the right to build tent cities in public spaces. in san diego in particular, it was basically hijacked by the medical marijuana movement, which i am also deeply sympathetic to (and have a personal stake in).

however, i felt like this stuff really took away from the core issues, and instead contributed to perception (here in san diego at least) that the occupy movement was basically a non-serious bunch of college students and deadhead hippies fucking around and having fun instead of looking for jobs or whatever. i agree w/ you that it's a canard and not accurate, but unfortunately that's sort of what people remember. i am thinking of my dad, for example, who philosophically identifies as a socialist (even though he's an executive at a "top 50" multinational corporation) was pretty unimpressed by OWS even though he is a big supporter of the iranian green movement and other arab spring movements.

how many people remember what the substantive issues of the WTO protests in seattle were? how many people remember a bunch of dudes w/ masks breaking gap and starbucks windows? on the other hand, i think *sometimes* some good can come out of this, for example in oakland where it has given more impetus to the systemic police reform that was *supposed* to have happened after the whole riders scandal went down. but i think in the majority of cases - and outside of hardcore blue regions like the bay and NY - what you might call "tactical actions" have been a tactical failure.

that said, reading this post

like, two weeks ago i helped save a lady's house from illegal foreclosure. the "occupy our homes" name helped get her story in the paper, but none of the people with me at that action are the type to get off on street scraps with riot cops ... there's diversity of views, tactics, strategies. we're attacking these issues from a lot of directions, and as a consequence you'll never find a unified program under an occupy banner. instead you'll find lots of programs, and you can roll with the one that suits you, and that program might play one part in the big struggle

gives me a lot more hope for the movement and this is the sort of thing that i think would actually help win the support of joe average

if i can get at one more thing - one of the weaknesses of the "occupy" mindset (and by which i mean literally occupying spaces) is that it kind of doesn't make sense. sit-ins and whatnot in the civil rights movement make sense in my mind because they were basically protesting a lack of equal to certain facilities (for example, the whites-only lunch counter). and the some of the enduring images of both movements are similar in that they depended on a lack of provocation by the protestors (marchers getting sprayed by water cannons in the south or kids getting pepper-sprayed at uc davis). and perhaps the most enduring civil rights action was dependent not on occupying the denied space but rejecting it (the selma bus boycott).

the josh clover case makes me sad - partly because i was familiar w/ and always enjoyed his work before this happened, particularly his book on the matrix and his pop music writing, "my mp3 playlist is album of the year" nonsense aside - but it also kind of doesn't make sense to me. i mean, you can shut down the bank, but in doing so you fuck over a lot of small business people too. realistically speaking, nobody is forcing anyone to participate in banking or denying anyone equal access to banks. so while i think protesting income inequality in general makes sense, trying to shut down this particular branch bank or that particular office building strikes me as fairly counterproductive.

kind of o/t but i learned from a wtf podcast that marc maron and josh clover were roommates years ago? crazy world

has anyone from Occupy latched onto Jane's Addiction's "1%" yet

I have been holding onto that for when my MegaMillions ticket comes in.

possibly because most politically active students were engaging w/ much more pressing issues such as the liberation of palestine

lol you picked banging your head against a brick wall for yr #1 choice huh?

?

i'm just relating what people were busy engaging with, not what i personally thought was important at the time

right i mean imo there's a really interesting story to be told about how the anti-globalization movement became subsumed into the anti-war movement and how in some ways "occupy" as a sensibility came about as a tactical reaction to ten years of antiwar organizing, a resurgence of the focus on economic issues that's in some quarters beginning to rebroaden into targeting "neoliberalism" as such.

to this btw

if i can get at one more thing - one of the weaknesses of the "occupy" mindset (and by which i mean literally occupying spaces) is that it kind of doesn't make sense. sit-ins and whatnot in the civil rights movement make sense in my mind because they were basically protesting a lack of equal to certain facilities.

well occupation as a tactic is really at its most useful when whats being occupied is vital--it has a long history as a direct action tactic in labor particularly (aka "sit-down strikes") and i'm sure i don't need to tell you about the wave of occupations in california universities over the last 2-3 years. (reading an article about the race dynamic of california occupations a few months back was really interesting & enlightening, then i looked at the publication date--september 2009. jaw dropped.) i definitely feel like camping out wore out its usefulness months upon months ago, and whether it was useful at all beyond being a publicity stunt is definitely up for debate. i'd say it wasn't, and given the locations were public parks i'd even say that these occupations weren't really direct actions. there are no bodies on the gears mucking up the works when you're strumming your guitar in a tent that happens to be in the middle of downtown. when, on eviction day, we scrambled to save tents & their contents by moving them in front of the grandiose doors of the BoA & Wells Fargo branches across the street from the White House, that was verging a little closer to direct action, though again it's more symbolism than action (blocking the doors of one bank branch does nothing but get a camera or two, unless you're blocking specific people from doing something objectionable. that day we weren't.) occupying the wisconsin state house & working to actively disrupt the union-busting vote was direct action. we tried to blockade rightist members of the house from getting to the vote on the ryan budget (oh hi austerity i didn't see you there) and were, of course, summarily dragged away before causing too much diversion.

i'm just saying there are contexts in which occupation can be a worthy tactic, though regardless for the sake of effectiveness it ought to be short-lived and you sort of necessarily need demands. avoiding all of those things gave the insurrectionists & poetic theoreticians & insurrectionary poetic theoreticians a hard-on ("OUR DEMANDS ARE ALL THE DEMANDS") and let people of all stripes project their values onto a broad populist call, but in the long view it was kind of dumb. no exit strategy. i scrapped with riot shields to defend the square from eviction, and by the end of that long day--when some of my closest friends had been made homeless and earned crack skulls, broken ribs & jail cells at the hands of cops--i suddenly knew where one found the desire to break windows and throw back tear gas canisters. but even that night, tearful & nursing our bruises singing 'solidarity forever' at the bar, lots of us were saying that the eviction was in a sense 'overdue.' a friend said "fuck the cops. but at least now the real work can start again." that summed it up for me.

oh and just

and the some of the enduring images of both movements are similar in that they depended on a lack of provocation by the protestors

while this is certainly true (and i want to be exacting in the way i say this) it's important to remember that our histories are constructed, and that images that 'endure' can sometimes erase realities that don't fit the 'enduring' image as neatly.

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ltbwazf9Ke1qi1as6o1_500.jpg

it always takes lots of strategic prongs to get to victory, some more effective and some more historically enduring than others.

(i don't know the provenance of that image or even if it's real, i'm just using it to stand in for confrontational tactics used in social movements that have often later been remembered as mere extended kumbaya rallies)