Occupy Wall Street 3: Now What?

For protesters hoping to picket outside the grounds — a mass demonstration would be unlikely.
Coincidently, a new bill drafted by Congress, HR 347, will make it a federal offense to trespass on the grounds of any place granted Secret Service. If approved, the NATO Summit in Chicago will fall into this jurisdiction, as will the presidential retreat at Camp David. What does that mean for protesters? Even if you’re in the proximity of the premises, you could be considered a criminal for engaging in any activity that disrupts a governmental event.
http://rt.com/usa/news/chicago-g8-capm-david-921/

I went to this restaurant once:

Located near Camp David, the Cozy Restaurant showcases pictures, autographs and other memorabilia of the Presidents of the United States, news media and political dignitaries that Cozy Restaurant has hosted over the years.

Location(s)
103 Frederick Rd.
Thurmont, MD 21788

Contact Information
Local: (301) 271-4301

yeah we've been trying to agitate about 347

totally caught off guard by the movement of G8

wind from sails, removed

in nyc visiting a friend. sat off to the side and observed an ows spokes council meeting. something special. met all the expectations i had.

really!

haven't been to an ows spokes, but haven't heard great things. fulfilling to a visitor, though?

(oof i didn't mean "fulfilling to a visitor" to sound dickish or whatever its all <3 )

inter-movement divisions and snobbery right there. it's may '68 all over again. big fucking grin with no cat in sight.

j/k

(this is a jumble cuz i was pretty out of the loop at the meeting)

xp it was good (novel even) to see people making a good faith effort to direct the will of the movement while at the same time reworking the democratic process. i don't think the process is at fault for whatever misgivings people have about the spokes council. my impression from the conversation at the meeting is that it's more that the process is sooo slow and that there's sooo much to do and consensus is a bitch anyway. for my part, i don't think the movement should rush at all for any reason. i got the impression that everyone was aware of the 'unknown territory' aspect of building something stable from the ground up and human epistemological fallibility — and those factors kinda forced things to move slowly and to be considerate and nimble enough to take a step back.

interesting tidbit: someone interjected after report-backs and before the main discussion got underway. i don't know the context for it, but he stated that there was no policy for dealing with violence at a meeting, and that until that was resolved he wasn't comfortable facilitating/taking stack/etc. he said that he'd taken it to the GA and some of the working groups but that there was no movement on it. on the one hand that struck me as less of a priority given the rarity of such a thing but on the other i couldn't argue that it wasn't a legitimate concern - one that whatever brave new world is emerging should lock down. there was a report-back from the 'grievance' group (they don't like the name but that's what everyone's calling them). they'd just gotten started and had been researching disciplinary measures for transgressors within the community. it was amazing to see that they were so worried about it but also so in the dark too. they were questioning ideals of criminal justice to come up with something new that would work.

the main discussion was mostly consolidating what resources the movement had, human/financial/otherwise. this was the most constructive aspect i saw. facilitators who had been working on ways to get the most of the discussion presented, then there were break-outs then discussion, rinse, repeat. a lot of really good ideas came out of it.

really looking forward to the summer.

say what you will about jensen, i lol'd @ this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eknuqWQ4-Mw

he stated that there was no policy for dealing with violence at a meeting, and that until that was resolved he wasn't comfortable facilitating/taking stack/etc. he said that he'd taken it to the GA and some of the working groups but that there was no movement on it. on the one hand that struck me as less of a priority given the rarity of such a thing

while its a rare consideration in terms of the number of incidents that would require the invocation of such a protocol, it's also something i've heard cropping up at GAs from LA to Boston, and its definitely a concern here. in terms of the difficulty of getting something actually done about the problem, there's definitely a radical individualist strain that pushes back against any attempts to regulate behavior in a formalized way here. they argue that they want community norms to effectively police undesirable behavior, but when people don't feel safe in the community i'd argue that the norms-police method isn't working.

i don't know what to do about it, though.

we had a death (through a violent fight involving alcohol) at the local site when it was up, the peacekeepers' shouts for help were drowned out by the noise of the floodlights the city had recently installed...

not specifically in regards to GAs but it is def a legit concern

we had a death (through a violent fight involving alcohol) at the local site

! where was this

Eugene OR

it was a major factor in the City Council refusing to honor their temporary camping permission (after they had said they would let them stay until January, they evicted everybody right before Xmas).

damn.

makes me think of this bit from this great interview

as far as creating a new world through mutual aid programs, or that being an echo of a world we would like to see, that idea is a little bit complicated. It’s always a direct response to the world we live in right now, and not a thing onto itself. It therefore contains the world we live in right now and doesn’t make any sense outside of that context.

http://wagingnonviolence.org/2012/03/meet-occupy-wall-streets-outside-agitators/

how do i shot occupy news?

OK, taking May 1 as a vacation day, which is my way of STRIKING.

how do i shot occupy news?

― all things must pass (shaane), Sunday, March 11, 2012 7:14 AM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

soon we're gonna have occupy.com up and running, a syndicator for news from all the locals

http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-761010?hpt=hp_bn1

i will never get used to seeing my friends in the media

even if "iReport" is "media"

soon we're gonna have occupy.com up and running, a syndicator for news from all the locals

how many hours of GA's were devoted to whether the use of a .com domain is problematic

/soon we're gonna have occupy.com up and running, a syndicator for news from all the locals/

how many hours of GA's were devoted to whether the use of a .com domain is problematic
--I DIED

Ha, it got done autonomously enough (basically a buncha media team members from across the country buying in without anyone really seeking approval from their individual GAs) that nobody really bothered running it by a GA. That's as it should be, I think. GA should be a mechanism for dialogue about action, not a statement-issuing/permission-slip-signing body.

http://www.maydaynyc.org/

being unemployed, broke, not in school, and pretty lazy when it comes to housework, I could probably do this. but getting to NYC...

i hear tell there may be some surprises this weekend in zucotti btw?

well, I'll be surprised.

These cities have answered the call for a General Strike:

Atlanta, GA
Boston, MA
Brooklyn, NY
Burlington, VT
Bushwick, NY
Dayton, OH
Detroit, MI
Durango, CO
Fullerton, CA
Huntington, WV
Irvine, CA
Long Beach, CA
Los Angeles, CA
Melbourne, AU
Miami, FL
Minneapolis/Twin Cities, MN
Mira Monte, CA
Naples, FL
Oakland, CA
Oxnard, CA
Pasadena, CA
Phoenix, AZ
Portland, OR
Providence, RI
Riverside, CA
San Diego, CA
San Fernando Valley, CA
San Jose, CA
Santa Cruz, CA
Seattle, WA
St. Louis, MO
Sydney, AU
Tampa, FL
Venice, CA
Ventura, CA
Washington, D.C.
Williamsburg, NY

portland

http://occupyportlandnews.com/wp-content/plugins/rss-poster/cache/57ba3_YvAya.jpg

have i mentioned that "be the crisis you wish to see in the world" is my favorite slogan lately

rly don't get the 'general strike' obsession

i mean you recognize its historical mythos i'm sure

i think it's sorta optimistically tapping into that, though whether that's a good thing or not given the (unrealistic?) degree of buy-in required for real impact i haven't really decided

i mean the wobblies have been calling for a general strike for a hundred plus years, though tbf the idea of a gen strike makes a lot more sense in the context of "one big union" that can then administrate the meeting of demands of the strike

reeks of the French tbh

well just as you need a unionized labor force before you can have a regular strike you need a large percentage of the country to be on board w/ ows before calls for a general strike aren't just kinda....

i mean

am reminded of max's version of "the emperor has no clothes" where the kid is like 'he's naked' and everybody's like "....well, yeah"

"fuck you boss I'm not coming to work today" "I'll fire you" "...nevermind..."

like a call for a general strike at this point in history is kind of an optimistic appeal to a certain mindset, both an admission that groundwork must be laid and an expression of desire to lay it, though whether that desire extends beyond the day of your proposed strike is always in contention

whether that desire extends beyond the day of your proposed strike is always in contention

that is to say "whether the desire to lay groundwork extends beyond 'groundwork for a one day action'"

like, i'm pretty tired of "days of action"

i'm ready to build real community power that can be linked and exercised in concert, and that shit takes hard real often boring work that isn't quite as exciting as trying to get everyone in the streets to "shut down the corporations" on a random day in february or what have you, but i think in the end that that kind of power is infinitely more valuable and in fact what's needed to build parallel institutions.

so what i'm saying iatee is yes, i am mad super duper interested in building the kind of community awareness and power that leads to buy-in on an idea like a general strike, and that maybe calling for a general strike before building that power is backwards, but i also recognize the historical-sorta-mythical resonance of calling for a general strike and hardly begrudge it.

i'm ready to build real community power that can be linked and exercised in concert

do you have ideas on this?

there's a lot of work being done in dc right now on neighborhood assemblies, and we have kind of a yearlong vision that could bring the city to a kind of spokescouncil model where assemblies from neighborhoods are represented, not so unlike we do with working groups (and the spanish did during the revolution). in my mind from that point city assemblies could begin to link up in the same way occupations around the country have linked up to plan and synchronize actions. the interoccupy model has worked well for us in terms of communication and cooperation, and i think it could map over to intercity comm&coop pretty well.

but that's something like a step 4 or 5, and frankly right now we're on step 1. i honestly think we could get there though, with dedication and person power--and for the moment at least, we've got that.

though honestly the localism of this model is a big part of the power in my mind--that to a certain extent it's about dealing with issues where they hit people the most.

I like Bryant Park being a base for the NY MayDay as it's essentially closed for a fucking fashion week 4x a year.

aside: a big facefart to the AFL-CIO for making their presidential endorsement in "99%" terms.

I want to go to Charlotte because the unions sure as fuck aren't going.

big facefart to the AFL-CIO for making their presidential endorsement in "99%" terms.

seiu did this too! facefart to them!!

i figure if o is gonna steal my chicago showdown from me i can at least do him the courtesy of going to charlotte

it's like you're standing in a concert hall and this dude starts playing the opening riff of barracuda on an acoustic guitar

the people in the first couple of rows can hear him

and they know what he's going for

and they know what that shit is supposed to sound like

and if they've got any goddamn gumption they're gonna do what they've gotta do to get an amplifier and an electric guitar and turn the damn sound up so the rest of the hall can hear "barracuda" the way those first couple rows know its supposed to sound like

that is why the general strike is just like "barracuda" by heart

(i am kind of drunk btw!)

there's a lot of work being done in dc right now on neighborhood assemblies, and we have kind of a yearlong vision that could bring the city to a kind of spokescouncil model where assemblies from neighborhoods are represented, not so unlike we do with working groups (and the spanish did during the revolution). in my mind from that point city assemblies could begin to link up in the same way occupations around the country have linked up to plan and synchronize actions. the interoccupy model has worked well for us in terms of communication and cooperation, and i think it could map over to intercity comm&coop pretty well.

yeah this is the really important stuff. it'll take years but whatever; for all the THINGS ARE CHANGING! THIS IS NOW! thrill of the camps/november/january the real goal here is probably to just get the assemblies -- the soviets, in whatever form -- in place, get them integrated into their communities and into the national/(global) meta-community, get people accustomed to thinking of them as real institutions and mechanisms to express their will/organize local projects, and ensure that they and their radical openness are present+embedded+prepared by the time The Crisis really gets bad, if only so there's someone offering solutions besides the christian right.

"general strike" right now is kinda dress-up, sure, but i think the response will be big enough to avoid Looking Dumb, if nothing else, and there'll be plenty of time for generaller strikes later.

CHANGE ALL THE THINGS

a HOOS should go international: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-news-blog/2012/mar/16/occupy-america-looking-back