Occupy Wall Street 3: Now What?

but to applaud them for this is itself kind of patronizing, since i don't see the property damage as being efficacious at all (with again, a few minor exceptions). in fact it's incredibly counter-productive.

sorry i feel like we keep going round and round. i apologize for that.

― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Tuesday, May 22, 2012 5:49 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i definitely wasn't saying "good for them for not breaking shit," my point was that "hey look, they didn't even break anything and yet people are still mad at them for basically existing and protecting people, the latter of which is almost never recognized by detractors or discussed in the media"

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Tuesday, May 22, 2012 12:52 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

that's probably true. i find it hard to acknowledge the positive contributions since i find their presence and tactics to be counterproductive in the final analysis.

sorry, i guess the disagreement comes from me saying "unfortunately". i personally was excited when people told me about the chant (it wasn't used at any marches afaik, it came from the queer contingent's sign-making and chant-writing party), and i would have felt empowered/excited hearing it coming from a large group of people. it probably wouldn't have been good PR, which makes me kind of sad

xps

i respect the sentiment of the radical queers but holy hell is that not the place. nor is it even remotely as clever as they might think it is (if it isn't straight-up serious and they're just *making a point*).

Yeah that's pretty dumb.

― Fas Ro Duh (Gukbe), Tuesday, May 22, 2012 5:46 AM (46 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

idk man i mean radical queers are among the most militant fight-back types i know, and they say it's precisely because they've been repeatedly attacked in life and are sick of being both victims of violence perpetrated by others and merely defined as victims of violence, and they want it known that if someone comes at them they will fight back rather than be a victim

granted that's a sentiment to fit into a 12 syllable chant

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Tuesday, May 22, 2012 12:50 AM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah, this

also i instinctively run away from any notion that the best way to fight a history of violent repression is by saying "we'll beat your ass" so that might be informing my opinion.

hoos u get any pussy at these things?

― dylannn, Tuesday, May 22, 2012 5:44 AM (28 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

http://i.imgur.com/s3bUs.jpg?1?3085

would like to say that as a queer anarchist dedicated to nonviolence projecting a tough exterior has helped me personally, and that "fuck you up" doesn't need to be interpreted in a strictly literal manner

how do you think 99% (!) of people are going to interpret that, though?

i mean if some guy wearing clothes that seem a bit weird to you came running up to a group of you and your friends on the street and sad "we're going to fuck you up" what are the chances you will assume he is being lightly ironic and actually invoking a whole history of representation and identity about which you are only dimly aware?

not a perfect analogy but i hope it makes me point.

i mean i think the question is whether one is seeking to be inviting or not? it seems significant to me that the chant in question was abandoned for the march itself--presumably people there thought it wasn't the right audience for the chant, because they weren't actively trying to alienate people. there are plenty of places where one might want to do that, though! places where one's militancy and right to self defense are being challenged like say, a klan counterprotest.

please refer to my earlier post where i agreed with you that it would not have been a good chant for the protest. sorry for starting this argument.

Yeah, in the right context I can see its usefulness, and I'm glad that it was shut down, but it's a stupid idea to be floated in the first place.

Though I'd argue that the only power you get from "fuck you up" is if it's taken in a strictly literal manner. Tough exteriors are only tough if they're backed up by a credible 'toughness'.

makes me point.

apparently since the previous post i went to the east end of london and back.

i mean just speaking as like ~a guy who is short~, which on the totem pole of oppression is somewhere underground near the core of the earth, ~i'd~ feel empowered and stronger if i were part of a bloc doing more confrontational work. i can't imagine what the jump in sense of empowerment might be like for others, but it feels really, really good to hear 1staethyr say that it's meant something & helped.

plz post more <3

I would quibble about the way in which that empowerment is achieved but, hey, to each their own.

http://i50.tinypic.com/wld3l1.jpg
best thing i saw on sunday

awesome

yeah i can get behind that

cyrptic

lol

this dropped in austin today

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m4eo6h47d81r4pq5go1_500.jpg

fuck yeah

http://growfoodraisehell.tumblr.com/

oh my god this makes me want to go back to austin right now

not that i'm down with everything they're running per se it's just like, yo, people in my hometown having the same convos i'm having, and in public, shit

i was always dimly aware of radical circles in austin and i knew-by-name ppl like the darbyrat who wound up famous eventually but just

ugh makes me miss home

??? their lead image and a bunch of their posts are all about big guns. fuck that.

i think we're on different planets honestly. i can't find anything about that blog that doesn't depress me, if for no other reason than the way its framed with all this lifestylish cod-revolutionary iconography. good fucking riddance. i'm off this thread.

i mean it's confrontational iconography, and it's not for everyone--i'd hope my condemnation of violence on white supremacists a couple posts ago would make clear i'm not down with guns. there's a 'tumblr whites' vibe to much of the thing--imagery and feeling over specificity and substance, say--and that's pretty across the board with radicals who use that necessarily oblique format, but i don't think the fact that we're coming from different places means we're incapable of communicating.

it's just a little

http://www.washingtonpost.com/rf/image_606w/WashingtonPost/Content/Blogs/blogpost/201203/Images/GlennaGordonInvisibleChildrenA.jpg?uuid=xOQb1mknEeGJcBxAW26urA

i mean look, i'm not some kinda insurrectionist and don't imagine i'll ever lean that way. and i recognize that this kind of imagery can be deeply alienating to a lot of people. it's not something i'd pass around at the dinner table, so to speak, and i'd work to make sure radical imagery wasn't at the forefront of projects i involved myself with. i think of myself as a communicator first and foremost, and part of getting people to hear you is understanding where you are, understanding where your ostensible listeners are, and then figuring out a way to traverse the distance between you. the kind of stuff on that tumblr isn't gonna bridge that gap for most people including, clearly, you. and that's fine. we can talk in other ways. i hope we can continue to do that.

all i'm saying is that as a texan, it's heartening to see a black flag in the middle of texas.

but yeah, i hear that. xp

ok thanks for being reasonable and kind when i'm kind of reacting real viscerally. i guess i just feel like once you head up a tumblr with a shot of a guy wearing a bandana over his face toting a machine gun or whatever you've kind of lost me.

not even as much because i actually think these assholes are going to take up arms and raid the texas state legislature or something but more because they are ignorant adolescent (in mind if not necessarily in years) dipshits.

i mean don't thank me, i'm just tryin to keep people talking and acting about the stuff that pisses us all off.

sometimes i forget i'm talking to other people, and i wind up talking to myself & posting stuff that excites me while freaking out other people and maybe maligning people who'd stand with me but condemn tumblrs i like or whatever. which is not what i'm after.

you're maybe a more generous person to not necessarily react in same way that i do to the imagery in that black. i'm 34 years old and have been off and on active in protest politics since my teens and when i think of all the useless posturing "revolutionaries" i've met in that time i have a hard time mustering up anything but contempt. i was kind of raised this way--my mom has been an activist since the early 1960s (she joined the civil rights movement in college and was registering black folks to vote in mississippi from 1963) and she told me stories of maoists disrupting antiwar rallies. she also thought the weathermen were a bad punchline. ironically b/c she's an activist and educator in chicago she's gotten to know bill ay3rs and we both agree he's mostly a self-absorbed glad-handling charlatan.

in that BLOG not black -- i was thinking about "black bloc" and my words got kind of jumbled.

in other other news, occ oakland people who (it's my secondhand understanding) had BS hate crime charges thrown at them have been acquitted

http://sphotos.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash2/s320x320/148930_3379296480889_1223710522_54586717_754226861_n.jpg

i didn't know they were reviving the mod squad again!

she's gotten to know bill ay3rs and we both agree he's mostly a self-absorbed glad-handling charlatan.

― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Tuesday, May 22, 2012 9:10 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

haha i buy this 1000%

when i think of all the useless posturing "revolutionaries" i've met in that time i have a hard time mustering up anything but contempt. i was kind of raised this way--my mom has been an activist since the early 1960s (she joined the civil rights movement in college and was registering black folks to vote in mississippi from 1963) and she told me stories of maoists disrupting antiwar rallies.

i mean i definitely hear this to an extent--what has an american maoist ever done to get the guys at the san antonio toyota plant a better wage?--but at the same time i'm also very much of the view that people pushing at the edges of "respectable politics" are vital and necessary. i'll always stand with and fight alongside people struggling for appreciable gains, but i also think it's important for there to be people willing to expand the parameters of that which can be gained. given the place and age i had the accident of being born in, it seems to me that radical agitation is an important part of all the broader strategies to win a better world(s). moving the overton window to the left, little by little, til maybe we'll find the window has met up with the open door and we can walk outside.

plus, like, we have vegan potlucks and stuff.

occ oakland people who (it's my secondhand understanding) had BS hate crime charges thrown at them have been acquitted

on further reading it seems the charges were dismissed on two of the 3, the third was given a slap on the wrist re: unrelated "vandalism"

whoa lots of xps but weird, i am from austin also and postponed my first trip home in ~2 years so that i could be in chicago for may day and the nato summit

second city cop blog has some ... interesting ... takes on the weekend if you can stomach reading some of the comments etc

i just find it depressing how ows seems to have found its place so quickly as another repetition of people and cops being aggro towards each other. to me the whole initial promise of the protests was rooted in the way they were trying to do things differently, so that for example you had people of all ages, families with small children, etc. attending protests and expressing their grievances with how things have come to be. but all this emphasis on "fuck the cops, they're the real terrorists" is such a red herring and one which ends up playing so perfectly into the hands of whoever is interested in discrediting the protests on every level.

obv the average person is going to look at stuff like that and conclude what they're seeing on the news or what is holding them up in traffic is just violent "extremists" acting out and want no part in it. it completely distracts from the crucial point that needs to be emphasized over and over-- that the so-called one percent are in fact the real extremists. which i think was one of the original very wisely-emphasized strategies of the movement, but increasingly that kind of thing has been lost in throwing around pointless words like "fascists", etc. the thrust of the protests should be about how we are all suffering at the hands of a really fucked system, and not side a antagonizing side b.

in fact even using the name "occupy" at this point lends itself rightly or wrongly i think to such easy associations with violent extremist groups or whatever. i mean, i just am disheartened to see things going the way of "fuck the cops" etc. insofar as it inevitably alienates so many people that are important to reach out to become involved. obv. the enemy at bottom is not "the cops"... it's whatever allows us to be okay with the idea that improved access to medical care and housing and food for children and other vulnerable parts of the population is somehow an unbelievably twisted and radical anti-american idea

just spitballing, but do you think that you know, maybe the cops themselves had something to do with this process?

anyway, this whole thing is so played. 1) minor thing gets no attention. 2) cops go aggro on it and everyone is angry. 3) minor thing becomes big out of response in solidarity vs. the cops. 4) the thing drags on and goes nowhere, so people get bored and drift away. 5) eventually somebody decides to rewrite history and say "when did this become all about the cops? what happened to the message, man"? all this really means is "i was excited to protest against the cops being terrible. now i'm bored because they're still terrible. see-ya!"

need to see more mic checking of pols too

anyway, this whole thing is so played. 1) minor thing gets no attention. 2) cops go aggro on it and everyone is angry. 3) minor thing becomes big out of response in solidarity vs. the cops. 4) the thing drags on and goes nowhere, so people get bored and drift away. 5) eventually somebody decides to rewrite history and say "when did this become all about the cops? what happened to the message, man"? all this really means is "i was excited to protest against the cops being terrible. now i'm bored because they're still terrible. see-ya!"

i don't understand the point you're trying to make

you had people of all ages, families with small children, etc. attending protests and expressing their grievances with how things have come to be.

fyi this happened more than once this past weekend in chicago afaict

basically people get mad at cops being terrible, then eventually they get bored and go home.

this is a thing that happens all the time.

that's it.

I understand where del is coming from, but if the cops won't let you assemble than what you're protesting becomes moot.

basically people get mad at cops being terrible, then eventually they get bored and go home.

this is a thing that happens all the time.

that's it

ok, that was basically the point i was trying to make? it's not a winning strategy or inspiring to me

except your point was "to me the whole initial promise of the protests was rooted in the way they were trying to do things differently, so that for example you had people of all ages, families with small children, etc. attending protests and expressing their grievances with how things have come to be".

but really, initially, people started to protest because of the cops to begin with.

What are you talking about, it's totally a winning strategy...for the cops.