Occupy Wall Street 3: Now What?

i can give or take intellectual one-upmanship— i actually dislike most of what that man has written, but conceptually, i think he's spot-on. just sayin'.

explain

i mean he's right that OWS isn't the bolshevist revolution and that most of its publicly articulated goals amount to reform of capitalism. but y'know, i could've told you that, and i wouldn't have insulted you in the bargain.

also you know 99% was always kind of an awkward term designed to (a) make noticeable the increase concentration of wealth and power and (b) seem as inclusive as possible in a way that might play well in the media. like i said, it's an awkward term with no poetic grace but he wants to "read" it as if it holds the key to contemporary protest -- chiefly its limitations.

it's sort of like looking at the sanitation workers strike in memphis and critiquing the "i am a man" placards and then dismissing the whole phenomenon with an arrogant hand-wave.

i can see LGS responding to that suchlike: "they want to be men, but what is a man, under our capitalist system? nothing more than a vehicle for instrumental regimentation and exploitation. by signaling their fundamental desire to be 'men' the sanitation workers have revealed the conformism and reformism that dooms their 'movement' to failure."

ok that's unfair insofar as the "99%" tag does have lots of problems and limitations (as we've discussed in many a thread here), but the impulse to rejection and marginalization that his article demonstrates seems like it could be "convincingly" applied to just about any situation. the only 'movement' i recall LGS applauding was the rioting in the parisian suburbs a few years ago. the urge to destruction seems like the only 'pure' revolutionary ambition he can endorse. and as we all know that like nearly all such riot actions resulted in a country that was utterly transformed, with the system of capital upended and the means of production returned to the w--- oh, wait, it didn't?

citizenship-drug

sorry for typos. i'll abandon this thread until more folks are posting, sorry for constant posting.

so here's a long post no one will care about regarding questions raised sunday that i'm not gonna go digging under the cut for--

so we need to have a variety of tactics and locally-focused strategies that help small constituencies manifest their local aims without the efforts of a few necessarily trumping the message of the larger movement. along with the sign holders singing union songs and waving signs in the free speech zones, we need people willing to do creative things that spur the growth of the movement while sometimes militantly pushing and even violating the bounds of the law. crucially, this militant bleeding edge needs to be the front end of a mass behind them--but if the militants become the most visible element of a broad movement, the message can disappear. that's a given, or so you'd think, but of course part of the difficulty on this point is that our media's thirst for dollars and eyeballs leads them to focus on the most confrontational at the expense of the--let's say--peaceably assembled, obviously. for the sake of eyeballs, it becomes about the cloud of gas.

in oakland, where a community center is apparently a notoriously difficult to create but sorely needed resource, people decided to take direct action in violation of private property laws to stake a claim on a community center. then police attacked those people, to defend an empty building & enforce private property laws. that's why direct action gets the goods: the action is the message.

then, of course, the militant edge defended themselves--why did they want in that building again? oh shit, tear gas.

obvious real talk: a contest of escalating violence against police in an industrialized country is a contest activists will always lose. the state has a monopoly on violence, and charging directly into the lions' mouth is not a winning strategy. but does that mean an activist shouldn't throw a tear gas canister back as an act of self defense? should we stop someone from building a barricade in the street to hold the line against kettling riot cops cause it's a bad PR move? (ps: are flaming trash cans to burn off tear gas ~always~ destined to be misinterpreted as a sign that says "wooo let's riot"? pps: are police statements ~always~ destined to be taken as an actual account of the way shit went down by people who never get busted in the head?)

all that said--the activists i know from communities of color (maybe some selection bias here tbf) often make a point of saying in the rote 'nonviolence vs diversity of tactics' discussion: "we get busted in the head by cops all the time--you expect ________ to be impressed by your moral fortitude in taking what we get every day? you want us on your side, you show us you'll fight with us against cop oppression." that's always struck me as an interesting perspective on the question of outreach.

so yeah--you don't build a serious constituency by alienating the people who're among those you're trying to organize, and maybe a barricade in oakland makes the union guy in tallahasee uncomfortable. and a flaming trash can will always make the news over the need for a community center. and one cop with a head wound from a thrown-back tear gas canister will always get more attention than the dozens of manhandled, bruised, and variously violently buttslammed arrestees, cause guess whose world we're living in?

i still respect the people who choose to strategically defend themselves against the police, because we need a militant edge at large, and because i respect that not everyone's experience with the police is quite as pleasant as my racial & class privilege have allowed mine to be--to say nothing of what it's like to live under the boot of the same cops that fought in the war against the panthers.

you don't win by racking up riots, but let's (again) get some fucking perspective here: does a weekend scuffle undo our victories and seal the coffin of the movement? no, it really fucking doesn't.

could mean that they're brain-dead idiots that watch too much tv and lack the cultivation needed for real-shit revolutionary poetics. or it could be that they were trying to come up with a poster idea, or something to shout, and got stumped

― i love pinfold cricket (gbx), Wednesday, February 1, 2012 6:35 AM (58 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

what i was getting at was that "let's take our country back" sort of implies that there was a period where there was an inclusive "us" to which it belonged, when in reality in one form or another constituencies have always been excluded

explain? i'm tired but i'll just do some quick points.

- He derides Adbusters and its minions as reformist, which is exactly what they are. That is all well and good if you're into capitalism in the first place, but as there are many within the movement who are thoroughly against capitalism, it would make sense that the factions within the Occupy movement would start to show pretty quickly. Here in Oakland, the history of police violence towards and governmental disdain for the community-at-large is pretty well-documented, and for lack of a better word, epic. (When I say "community-at-large," I do not mean the business community. Even the locally-owned business community). Essentially, this has lead to an impasse wherein mostly white, middle-class reformists are alienated by a more diverse, poorer, and more radical faction. When these critics of the black bloc and anarchists speak of spoiled white rich kids, they are most certainly talking about a totally different group of people than the people I saw in court today.

- His critique of the 99% is based in a reality: there are people at demonstrations and protests who choose to live outside of the boss-worker/master-slave relation that is central to capitalist society, as well as those who are a part of it but hate the fact that they have few skills that allow them to live outside of such a relation. In other words, there are those who seek an end to capitalism and try to live outside of it as much as possible, and those who want to reform a system— and thus believe in a system— that has systematically fucked them over again and again, whether or not they know it or not. The 99%'s loyalty to the system of democratic capitalism does assume "that something different will come from within the 100% and the economic relations that determine it." That is utter bullshit, in my humble opinion, thus my agreement with his derision.

- The refusal alluded to above, to play by rules and regulations of the economic relations associated with capital, is what is dividing the movement at the present point. Building what Bey termed Temporary Autonomous Zones bereft of capital and its underpinnings is a goal, but a full-blown autonomous space was what Occupy Oakland was looking for, and this is what scared the authorities so thoroughly that they beat, tear-gassed, shot at, and kettled & arrested nearly 400 people.

okay, i'm going to bed.

-

- The

oh btw i made TIME

http://timenewsfeed.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/occupy-dc.jpg?w=600&h=400&crop=1

also big up tabes refing Hakim Bey <3

all that said--the activists i know from communities of color (maybe some selection bias here tbf) often make a point of saying in the rote 'nonviolence vs diversity of tactics' discussion: "we get busted in the head by cops all the time--you expect ________ to be impressed by your moral fortitude in taking what we get every day? you want us on your side, you show us you'll fight with us against cop oppression." that's always struck me as an interesting perspective on the question of outreach.

can see as how this might be a compelling argument. can also see as how adopting it as organizational policy might lead to self-defeating strategies. depends on yr aims, i suppose...

hoos, you and mr thom donov4n of NYC are my heroes in the east coast occupations.

and NOW i go to read my book and pass out. gnite.

Incapable of seriously considering armed struggle or the seizure of indoor, unambiguously private property, they want to rebuild the Amerikan dream and voice their belief that it will “live again” and that “the Ameri[k]an way is to help one another succeed.” Sadly, Mayor Bloomberg was correct to assert that both the 99% and the 1% dream of a return to boom times — boom times based on the extraction of surplus value from someone, somewhere.

nothing better than simpleminded, self-aggrandizing assholes who incite violence in order to lend an air of importance to their views

ya "instead of seriously considering armed struggle" made me rmde tbh

despite my grumbling, serious congrats for actually getting out there and doing some real shit, HOOS <3

ps my favorite part of our showdown monday was when the cops showed up and our DJ played

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VRZq3J0uz4

a bunch of my friends among the chosen people are joking that they're gonna show up to the 'occupy aipac' events in black bloc with a banner that says THE NO STATE SOLUTION which is p lol

"we're first among the nations, which means we should be the first to smash the state"

explain? i'm tired but i'll just do some quick points.

- He derides Adbusters and its minions as reformist, which is exactly what they are. That is all well and good if you're into capitalism in the first place, but as there are many within the movement who are thoroughly against capitalism, it would make sense that the factions within the Occupy movement would start to show pretty quickly. Here in Oakland, the history of police violence towards and governmental disdain for the community-at-large is pretty well-documented, and for lack of a better word, epic. (When I say "community-at-large," I do not mean the business community. Even the locally-owned business community). Essentially, this has lead to an impasse wherein mostly white, middle-class reformists are alienated by a more diverse, poorer, and more radical faction. When these critics of the black bloc and anarchists speak of spoiled white rich kids, they are most certainly talking about a totally different group of people than the people I saw in court today.

- His critique of the 99% is based in a reality: there are people at demonstrations and protests who choose to live outside of the boss-worker/master-slave relation that is central to capitalist society, as well as those who are a part of it but hate the fact that they have few skills that allow them to live outside of such a relation. In other words, there are those who seek an end to capitalism and try to live outside of it as much as possible, and those who want to reform a system— and thus believe in a system— that has systematically fucked them over again and again, whether or not they know it or not. The 99%'s loyalty to the system of democratic capitalism does assume "that something different will come from within the 100% and the economic relations that determine it." That is utter bullshit, in my humble opinion, thus my agreement with his derision.

- The refusal alluded to above, to play by rules and regulations of the economic relations associated with capital, is what is dividing the movement at the present point. Building what Bey termed Temporary Autonomous Zones bereft of capital and its underpinnings is a goal, but a full-blown autonomous space was what Occupy Oakland was looking for, and this is what scared the authorities so thoroughly that they beat, tear-gassed, shot at, and kettled & arrested nearly 400 people.

see, this is all the dude had to say.

as in: a decent portion of my distaste for that essay was that he used 100 words where 10 would do

i think your gloss of LGS's essay is much more coherent and sensible than the original essay, much of which i couldn't make heads or tails of (the reflection of death etc.). on of LGS's preferred techniques of dazzlement is to write something that presumes an awesome command of theoretical literature just to parse, and is often nonsensical even if you have that background -- and then to mock you for not understanding the "simple" ideas and language in it. it's a no-win situation--you can't question the prose without being made to feel intellectually inferior, and you can't challenge the argument (at least unless you are already well within the paradigm that schwartz is writing in) without being accused of being an enslaver, a fascist, a "boss," etc (just see the comments below the article itself).

the essay is negatory in the extreme insofar as it dismisses as insupportable anything that would bear a hint of compromise, capitulation, or even contradiction in the face of capitalism. indeed at least for a stretch of the essay (before it spins off into much less coherent, but at least more charitable, form of idealism and celebration of some of the recent actions' perceived victories) it's positing that only the totally disenfranchised (the imprisoned, the jobless, those who reject the law and work, in other words not LGS) can provide a true assault on capitalism. this romantic, vaguely dostoevskyian idea is--i feel weird and guilty even having to say this--completely absurd.

of course articles like this push the exclusionary purist rhetoric to such extremes that even in critiquing it i find myself taking a position farther to the "left" than i am comfortable with, insofar as i know that any critique from an expressly moderate or reformist position would be laughed out of hand by the author and his associates. i guess i should suffice to say that while i grant that even the "99%' rhetoric exists in the context of a rich world that extracts value by exploiting the workers of much of the rest of the world, and i'm hardly sanguine about the effects capitalism, i also cannot imagine a better wholesale alternative emerging in the near term, and a violent revolt of the totally marginalized does not seem to me a very likely or useful solution to this problem to say the least.

that was in response to table is on table or whoever.

however, can i just:

- He derides Adbusters and its minions as reformist, which is exactly what they are. That is all well and good if you're into capitalism in the first place, but as there are many within the movement who are thoroughly against capitalism, it would make sense that the factions within the Occupy movement would start to show pretty quickly. ... Essentially, this has lead to an impasse wherein mostly white, middle-class reformists are alienated by a more diverse, poorer, and more radical faction. When these critics of the black bloc and anarchists speak of spoiled white rich kids, they are most certainly talking about a totally different group of people than the people I saw in court today.

lol minions, rmde. i don't doubt for a second that you're 100% otm w/r/t the fringe element not being spoiled white kids but that doesn't mean that everyone else is 'white, middle-class' reformists. reformists, sure, but it's a little weird to suggest or assume that someone who is not white or middle-class is automatically an anti-capitalist (esp since the article itself strenuously points out that that is not the case). unless yr point was that in OO it really ~does~ boil down to 'white reformists' and 'anarchist fringe,' and that p much everyone else has stayed home. in which case, idk man

His critique of the 99% is based in a reality: there are people at demonstrations and protests who choose to live outside of the boss-worker/master-slave relation that is central to capitalist society, as well as those who are a part of it but hate the fact that they have few skills that allow them to live outside of such a relation. In other words, there are those who seek an end to capitalism and try to live outside of it as much as possible, and those who want to reform a system— and thus believe in a system— that has systematically fucked them over again and again, whether or not they know it or not. The 99%'s loyalty to the system of democratic capitalism does assume "that something different will come from within the 100% and the economic relations that determine it." That is utter bullshit, in my humble opinion, thus my agreement with his derision.

man you had me until 'derision.' like oh you've been fucked over by a system over and over again and still seek to succeed in it because you've never bothered to consider the marxist critique of capitalism that shows that you are doomed to failure? well you get what you deserve, ~slave~. not that you think that, specifically, T, but that is def an attitude i have run across and it's condescending and pretty grotesque.

The refusal alluded to above, to play by rules and regulations of the economic relations associated with capital, is what is dividing the movement at the present point. Building what Bey termed Temporary Autonomous Zones bereft of capital and its underpinnings is a goal, but a full-blown autonomous space was what Occupy Oakland was looking for, and this is what scared the authorities so thoroughly that they beat, tear-gassed, shot at, and kettled & arrested nearly 400 people.

i remember stumbling across Bey on some janky old website in my freshman year in college and being like daaaaaaaamn

many xps and in general agreement with amst

of course articles like this push the exclusionary purist rhetoric to such extremes that even in critiquing it i find myself taking a position farther to the "left" than i am comfortable with, insofar as i know that any critique from an expressly moderate or reformist position would be laughed out of hand by the author and his associates.

someone mentioned upthread that LGS might secretly be trolling and now that you mention this i wonder if that's part of the point. a bit of rhetorical judo to get moderates and 'progressives' and left-but-still-capitalists closer to the absolutist stance

to be really simplistic about this i guess the attitude evidenced in LGS's rather tortured, grotesque article and in some of the posts above is that if something is imperfect or compromised it's not worth working with. which is a badass attitude to strike but pretty useless as a political program. (of course LGS would turn this into a point of pride: we take pride in our "uselessness" in the context of capitalism that extracts blah blah blah.) that doesn't mean that you give yourself entirely over to capitulation and compromise -- the idea that this should be the only alternative is a pretty juvenile kind of manichean thinking. the negotiation between absolute principle and compromise are not just tricky but necessary, since principles are really only founded and made useful in an exchange of ideas and practices.

i don't know why but this guy gets under skin -- maybe because he's such an infuriating combination of brilliant and utterly idiotic.

someone mentioned upthread that LGS might secretly be trolling and now that you mention this i wonder if that's part of the point. a bit of rhetorical judo to get moderates and 'progressives' and left-but-still-capitalists closer to the absolutist stance

i dunno if that was LGS intention (i don't think he thinks tactically like that) but i really hate this sort of thing, which abounds in academia in particular. you have to declare or demonstrate your revolutionary or radical feminist or whatever bona fides before people will even begin to listen to you.

if something is imperfect or compromised it's not worth working with. which is a badass attitude to strike but pretty useless as a political program. (of course LGS would turn this into a point of pride: we take pride in our "uselessness" in the context of capitalism that extracts blah blah blah.) that doesn't mean that you give yourself entirely over to capitulation and compromise -- the idea that this should be the only alternative is a pretty juvenile kind of manichean thinking.

in conversations i've had with an anarchist friend of mine in chicago (who i believe visited OO, recently?) this is what it always always boiled down to. compromise was impossible, because it is a principle without meaning within a capitalist system, someone will always be the boss in any arrangement. thus, revolution, QED

slow day in clinic so I'm sitting here thinking bout anarchist/Marxist readings of like health and the medical apparatus

anyone have any suggested reading? basically wondering if I'll have anything to do after the revolution

I've been to Cuba, they have clinics, you'll be fine (semi-j/k)

the reason occupy is more important than any american social movement since the 1930s or maybe 1890s is that the "reform" it concerns is deeply desired by huge swaths of the population. granted, the reason the population's so unhappy isn't just because some bankers stole a lot of money but because they're at the edge of a huge and disruptive period of uncertainty brought on by the machine-ideology america used to gather the world's wealth into its arms beginning to gather it out of them -- and the main good point that 389257328957298429-word article (almost) makes is that if all you want is reform, if you are a Good Capitalist, then you shouldn't have any problem with america's inevitable demotion as king of the capitalists: it's even deserved. regardless, while we're trying to figure out what to do about this transition, and trying to work out an evolutionary direction for our species capable of dealing with the really really really nasty era we're about to enter as our explore-expand-exploit-exterminate technique hits a wall, it'd be nice to have a functioning government and an upper class comprised of something besides thieves and grifters. we can harness the tremendous popular desire that's awakening for those things, or we can write bad but uncompromising prose for the delectation of the fifty people who agree with us. or we can do what lenin did, and try to jump the historical queue with guns. that worked well.

the state has a monopoly on violence, and charging directly into the lions' mouth is not a winning strategy. but does that mean an activist shouldn't throw a tear gas canister back as an act of self defense? should we stop someone from building a barricade in the street to hold the line against kettling riot cops cause it's a bad PR move? (ps: are flaming trash cans to burn off tear gas ~always~ destined to be misinterpreted as a sign that says "wooo let's riot"? pps: are police statements ~always~ destined to be taken as an actual account of the way shit went down by people who never get busted in the head?)

barricades and anything else anyone wants to do to hold the line are i think important+necessary and i don't think they are a bad PR move. flaming trash cans i don't mind. throwing a tear gas canister back "in self defense" -- there is no self-defense. the protesters can't defend themselves against the weapons of the state. any escalation will inevitably end with the protesters being beaten and arrested. building a barrier in the street might end the same way, but most of the people watching will be on your side, and the cocoon of moral authority the bullies with the clubs and gas luxuriate in will begin to erode.

i know it sounds totally namby-pamby to be all about PR and i know that there are lots of people who have been in a one-sided war with the cops since they were born and that they are desperate to get some fucking dignity for once by fighting back. but you can't fight back against the cops physically; they will always win. there's only one way to fight the cops and it's on tv. you can win there.

(and no of course it's totally infuriating and awful when everyone -- even sympathizers -- believes the shit the cops feed to the reporters who couldn't bother to be there. we can be thankful at least that we live in a better age than any previous age for fighting that kind of thing.)

Isn't that the lesson of '68: manipulate the media and thereby "win" America?

haha well if that's the lesson of '68 i guess the lesson is It Doesn't Work! i think this is a riper moment, historically, than that one though -- and if not, well, i'm open to suggestions as to what we should do to get results. besides just try to offer an alternative to the christian fascists and wait for the collapse.

well, I mean that's what Nixon and the right did in '68: manipulate the media and five or six years' worth of white resentment. Have we done anything comparable?

Speaking for myself, a resident of a city of laughable conservative instincts, I'm amazed how the language of OWS has entered popular discourse. I meet a number of people a week who now allude to the 1% and their relation to it. It helps that, through one of those happy accidents of fate, OWS, the average American's awareness of his fragile financial state, election year histrionics, and some overlap with Tea Party principles, have formed this nexus.

oh ha you meant the right! yeah they did great. i thought you meant like abbie hoffman.

my radical bubble

^^^ volume two of your memoirs

and yeah it's a huge and amazing victory for occupy that so many people in the country are now vociferously aware that they are getting screwed by something instead of just being thankful for their credit-bought toys and the theoretical promise of future rewards for service. in 2012 we need to keep the pressure on a million different linked points of american culture -- including! the institutional violence of the corporate oligarchy's footsoldiers in blue -- but i think we need to do it always with one eye, maybe two eyes, on the mass, and on the camera. it's really hard but the people on the ground are more than capable of it.

sorry one more: when i'm like BARRIERS YES, TRASH CANS YES, THROWING BACK CANISTERS NO, i don't mean to sound like i know what the right thing to do is in every police-confrontation situation; of course i don't. all i'm saying is, you know that stupid picture of mayor quan looking mournfully at the toppled plastic city hall and heaving a sigh for her city? everything the cops did that day was to get that picture. we have to be aware of this because we can't let them have pictures like that.

and yeah it's a huge and amazing victory for occupy that so many people in the country are now vociferously aware that they are getting screwed by something instead of just being thankful for their credit-bought toys and the theoretical promise of future rewards for service.

suspect that this has more to do with the natural effects of a prolonged recession than with occupy in particular (occupy being one of those effects), but yes, the "99%" language is extremely useful

I've been really surprised by how little Bey has been invoked w/r/t Zucotti to date. He seems like the clearest antecedent/"theorist" of how stuff was going down for a period.

LGS reads like a weatherman wandered into a critical theory conference while on an acid trip.

Bey's writing is great but on the other hand there's the whole pedo/NAMBLA thing

Yeah, there is that whole thing. But you know, anyone who has ever defended or lauded Allen Ginsberg would be lauding a NAMBLA-promoting pedo, too, so I kind of push that aspect of Bey out of my head.

Here's an interesting essay. That ISN'T hard to read or condescending. It's about the TAZ in our contemporary times.
http://anarchistnews.org/node/21363

but does that mean an activist shouldn't throw a tear gas canister back as an act of self defense?

I'm not that well-versed in the theory of mass movements. I can't recall ever reading a book on it. But I'd say that the answer entirely depends on the state of the society within which the mass movement is forming.

I'd say that if the mass of society feels its oppression and frustration to the point where armed insurrection starts looking like the only way to get justice (see: Libya, Syria), then images and messages of violent self-defense will be emboldening and encouraging to that mass, and an implicit "woo-hoo let's riot" is read as "let's throw off our oppressors". iow, it is positive. Not coincidentally, this is what the community of color is saying to you when they say, show us you will fight with us.

otoh, if the mass of society feels anxious and threatened, but has no clear concept of who their oppressors are or how they work, then they will rally to a message of justice, but only if it implies greater safety from the felt threat. iow, they desire a path ahead, but a safe path to a place of refuge. (This may be a huge confusion on their part, but a very human one.)

Because of who they are and how they think, the mass of Americans need the starkest possible contradiction to the propaganda of the power structure. The pictures of protestors calmly being maced by a strolling cop as they sit passively on the ground is just such a stark contradiction. It generates enormous power to trouoble the mass and make them think. The civil rights movement, at enormous human cost, learned how to wield this power.

The image of a masked young man in the middle of the street hurling a smoking tear gas canister at the police will only increase their anxiety and identify OWS as another threat, not an ally. - or at least not a safe ally, but more like their crazy friend in high school who keyed cars, turned over trash cans and wanted to streak at the graduation ceremony. They feel extremely queasy about such allies.

(ps: are flaming trash cans to burn off tear gas ~always~ destined to be misinterpreted as a sign that says "wooo let's riot"? pps: are police statements ~always~ destined to be taken as an actual account of the way shit went down by people who never get busted in the head?)

to briefly overgeneralize: yes. yes.

sterling do you mean a weatherman or a Weatherman? :)

aimless the point about different modes of communication and action being appropriate to different social and political contexts is one of those obvious but perceptive ones i'm surprised almost nobody has mentioned above. in other words: otm.

otoh, if the mass of society feels anxious and threatened, but has no clear concept of who their oppressors are or how they work, then they will rally to a message of justice, but only if it implies greater safety from the felt threat. iow, they desire a path ahead, but a safe path to a place of refuge. (This may be a huge confusion on their part, but a very human one.)

or: if the mass of society does not feel oppressed but is concerned about and wants to address certain specific issues in a constructive fashion, then they will rally to a message of justice, but only if it seems sensible and likely to achieve desirable ends.

take your capitalist running dogs and go back to your job at bain capital, bossman!