Occupy Wall Street 3: Now What?

oh nvrmnd i have that wrong

putin--

He also mentioned Occupy Wall Street, comparing it to the Russian political opposition and apparently drawing parallels between the New York city police who cleared “Occupy” protesters from Zucotti Park and Russia’s own crackdown on the opposition. “At a certain point we saw the police cracking down on the Occupy Wall Street activists. I won’t call the actions of police appropriate or inappropriate,” he said. “If there are people who act outside the law, then the state must use legal means to impose law in the interests of majority. That’s the way it’s done in the U.S., and that’s the way it’s done in Russia.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/06/13/vladimir-putin-defends-the-u-s-on-spying-programs-drones-and-occupy-wall-street/

about to interview essex antifa. been looking forward to this one.

it's on right now: http://server3.whiterosesociety.org:8000/ProgressiveDC

so i'm half considering starting a general radical thread that likely only i would read cause i can't make the case that this is 'occupy'-related at all at this point, but i thought this was strange and interesting. I was Googling for some Anti-Racist Action imagery to make a joke on FB (lol) when i stumbled across this article which:

1) is on planet.infowars.com, a whole terrifying daily kos-style community of far right blogs built on infowars.com
2) discusses Jeremy Hammond & his brother ~from the far right~, when i'm most accustomed to hearing jeremy's name after the word "free"
3) is sort of funny to read until you get to the sole comment

http://planet.infowars.com/offbeat/meet-the-shaggy-smelly-mindless-horror-the-ara-anti-racist-action-attacks-david-irving

don't know where to throw this idea down. kinda combines generation limbo + nytimes quiddities + economy->shitbin + etc threads. i'm browsing The Muqaddimah by Ibn Khaldun and came across this. From 1337!

Reason and tradition make it clear that (the age of) forty years means the end of the increase of an individual's powers and growth. When a man has reached the age of forty, nature stops growing for a while, then starts to decline. It should be known that the same is the case with sedentary culture in civilization, because there is a limit that cannot be overstepped. When luxury and prosperity come to civilized people, it naturally causes them to follow the ways of sedentary culture and adopt its customs. As one knows, sedentary culture is the adoption of diversified luxuries, the cultivation of the things that go with them, and addiction to the crafts that give elegance to all the various kinds of (luxury), such as the crafts of cooking, dressmaking, building, and (making) carpets, vessels, and all other parts of (domestic) economy. For the elegant execution of all these things, there exist many crafts not needed in desert life with its lack of elegance. When elegance in (domestic) economy has reached the limit, it is followed by subservience to desires. From all these customs, the human soul receives a multiple coloring that undermines its religion and worldly (well-being). (It cannot preserve) its religion, because it has now been firmly colored by customs (of luxury), and it is difficult to discard such coloring. (It cannot preserve) its worldly (well-being), because the customs (of luxury) demand a great many things and (entail) many requirements for which (a man's) income is not sufficient.

So this lays out an idea i've mulled over for a bit. Something like: the upper-middle class is a powerful force because of its breadth and wealth. bc lower classes, though much broader, have a meager portion of wealth they are thus not as powerful (hold that thought). it seems like the economic benefits of civilization are helmed by the upper-middle class and the lower classes are being ripped from that particular notion of civilization and left to fend for themselves.

that said, i remember getting into an argument way upthread about the idea for a sort-of pop-up community center in an abandoned building and how that would require a lot of work on the part of those without access to the powerful. also, i went swimming recently at the local watering hole and there were bags of empty beer cans everywhere. this is a preserved natural area so my friends and i were upset over how careless people are. i mentioned that it'd be nice for civic resources to be put to use here or even a corp of volunteers for cleanup. my friends groaned and said simply that people should just be good. fair enough.

these two ideas-that those without wealth are removed from the benefits of civilization and that people should really just be good-are disconnected. it takes work to bridge that gap. occupy was great bc it used the current economic structure as kindling to start a new one. i'm thinking of people in dead-end jobs sending in pizza orders for people who are working on reorganizing an economic dynamic. also, iphones. it defined a process for change that could actually work. Ibn Khaldun had a similar idea for the upending of civilizations: the seeds of collapse are sown within the civilization itself (as per the above quote), allowing peripheral 'barbarians' to take over and sow their own cultural ideas for elitism that then end up destroying them.

so what can be done to get people to discuss how to change things instead of constantly hammering on the why and what? and what mode of economic organization is self-sustaining and not dependent on class structure and continuous growth of resource extraction so that being poor can be a fulfilling way of life?

/coffee rant

so what can be done to get people to discuss /how/ to change things instead of constantly hammering on the /why/ and /what/? and what mode of economic organization is self-sustaining and not dependent on class structure and continuous growth of resource extraction so that being poor can be a fulfilling way of life?
--shaane

There's a lot of work being done in these questions at small local levels, which is really the only level where it makes sense to begin. The problem is that the work that is being done--building cooperative work institutions, building community power through neighborhood/tenant organizing--can sometimes be insular and subcultural to an alienating degree. Our real challenge, I think, is creating an organizing culture that lays bare the radicalism and feminism and anti-oppressive class analysis while maintaining space for people to come in who might not have MDC patches on their jackets or Huey Newton posters on their walls.

Conversely, radicalizing local groups with local grievances to consider the wider context of political economy is also a challenge that needs tackling. So there are lots of different directions from which we can come at these problems. The biggest mistake we've made, and that we're always at risk of making again, is believing that we have to start from scratch and reinvent the heel again. There are older, smarter people who've been doing this slow hard work for a long time, and our task is to find our place with them, bring our energy and new ideas, and hopefully move us all forward.

also fuck everyone who say 'lol u protest with iphones'

i mean look here's the deal and i would deeply dig it if people approached me on this later

capitalism as we have built it sucks

it benefits a minimal handful, and provides subsistence for a swath, while the rest of use in the equation, whether we make it national or international, suffer to varying degrees.

is this worth it? matt yglegisas is cool with 1k+ people dying in a factory in order to make sure he gets cheap sweaters. are you ok with that? is the math harder than that? don't ask me if """""""""""""stalin""""""""""" did it better. i'm asking you if the sons of keynes did any better than what we as humans believe ought to be possible given the world we inhabit together. and if he did, terrific--what might we do better? how might we do it? if he didn't--why oughtn't we do yet more?

like why the fuck don't we believe in something more than a system that insists on the slitting of throats

who the fuck are we

don't tell me "competition breeds good," answer me if we believe in something better than that or not

and if you want to call me an idealist fuck off, if you want to tell me no one can build a world with room for all of us, i know you're wrong, and i demand you insist to me why i'm wrong and you're right, because i'm fucking sick of you assuming your understanding is right and mine is radical
\

hoos otm obv

lol @ stalin

also #NoDads

(drunk obv)

<3

Fuck em up hoos

(the breaking story is why I posted the antifa gym, I was sort of too upset for words but thinking of Malcolm Harris's line "I'm less worried about Unifying The Left than I am about how few of us can throw a punch."

Less about throwing a punch than basic physical ability, I've kind of been trending down the line of 'I need to eliminate as much unhealthiness in my life as possible,' because I'm not likely to have a decent health plan any time in the future, I'm never going to get to retire and in any case I'd rather have the highest level of self-sufficiency possible to weather the future as a member of the working class. If I'm going to be working at 75 or 80 to survive, I better pray I haven't had a hip replacement or permanently bad back/etc.

like why the fuck don't we believe in something more than a system that insists on the slitting of throats

― BIG HOOS aka the denigrated boogeyman (BIG HOOS aka the steendriver), Friday, July 5, 2013 10:08 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

not sure where slitting throats comes into the picture but i think a part of the problem is that there are a lot of "good" reasons for well-meaning people to believe in capitalism-as-we-have-built-it, like it has a very strong internal logic that is pretty much universalized. it's like gramsci cultural hegemony or whatever. it's so strong that even people who are getting a raw deal believe in it. i understand that at some pt you have to consolidate but my problem with a lot of radical left stuff is i find it kind of doesn't try hard enough to really engage with and challenge the prevalent ideology, just kind of assumes you're already against it or points to existing inequality and assumes that's enough. doesn't really take to task a lot of the assumptions that uphold the system, like for example the actual justifications for existing inequality (implications for growth, effect of redistribution on incentives & equality of opportunity, globally "development")

not sure where slitting throats comes into the picture

yesterday i had to take the day off of work so that i could go down to court. i was being sued by VISA's collection service. 7 years ago i used a card to pay for a semester of community college because my full time front desk guy income disqualified me from a need-based loan, and i'd been working to pay the card off in fits and starts and around minor financial disasters ever since. prior to the hearing i called the collection service's lawyers, who told me that essentially the collection agency had decided it was more worthwhile to try to obtain summary judgement against me than try to wait on my negotiated repayments any longer. i was stunned, mostly because it seemed to me that the collection agency's court costs would hardly make dragging me to court worth their while given that i didn't even owe 5 digits. why were they chasing me for so little?

then i got to the hearing room. after a 2 hour wait i heard the name of the collection agency "versus..." and i stood, expecting my name. instead there was someone else called. she was an older korean immigrant, and they didn't have a korean translator to hand, so they sat her down while they went to get one. they called the next name. it was a honduran immigrant who didn't speak english either, but they had a translator in the room--he was being sued for $800. the judge asked if he agreed he owed the money. he answered through the translator that yes, he did. there was a judgement. the korean translator showed up. the woman was being sued for $900. yes, she owed the money. neither the judge, nor the translator, nor the legal aid across the hall, had explained to these folks that if you want to avoid wage garnishment on something like this, you have to 'disagree' that you owe the funds and request a trial date. by putting on the theatre of fighting the case, you show the collection agency you're a real person, and they're more than willing to negotiate with you again. i knew this because i know a handful of lawyers that gave me free advice. a half dozen more people went up with the same story. most of them were being sued for under $1,000, most of them didn't speak english. i was called. i said my magic words, then met the agency's lawyer outside the courtroom, where he told me "just call the number on your summons and they'll work something out."

i looked at the other people milling around outside the courtroom, lots of whom seemed upset that they'd just very quickly had a judgement made against them, some of whom didn't seem to fully understand what had just happened. the lawyer scrammed. i went over to the honduran guy who'd gone up after the korean woman and asked him if that had gone the way he thought it would. he said he thought he would have a chance to make a case for his inability to repay. he said no one told him that it would all happen so quickly. he said he thought his boss would fire him once the wage garnishments started. i told him i didn't think that it was legal for him to be fired for a garnishment, he said "you think he cares about legal?"

the slitting of throats comes into the picture when we have to maneuver through a system of relations that ultimately values stacking dollars over the human cost of accumulation. when collection agencies target immigrants, or bankers like the kind i used to be are told to push loans on people who we can see can't afford them ("fuck it," my boss said more than once, "we need the sales"), or multinationals work to maintain ultimately dangerous working conditions in--say--bangladesh because it lowers their capital & labor costs, and lives are ruined or families are evicted or a thousand workers are killed, the slitting of throats comes into the picture. but matt fuckin yglesias is all good with that, because hey, a little bangladeshi blood is worth it for a tee on sale at GAP.

i'm not good with that. i don't know how we might do better at a global scale. maybe we can't. but i feel like i have a responsibility to hope we can, and to do the work of imagining and experimenting with what that might look like.

a lot of radical left stuff is i find it doesn't really take to task a lot of the assumptions that uphold the system, like for example the actual justifications for existing inequality (implications for growth, effect of redistribution on incentives & equality of opportunity, globally "development")

― flopson, Sunday, July 7, 2013 4:53 PM (5 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

suggested readings on these subjects include the working papers umass-amherst regularly publishes, kevin carson's windy and crappily edited but valuable studies in mutualist political economy (he's got a few gems in markets, not capitalism too iirc), mike konczal's rortybomb, gavin mueller at jacobin (and the ongoing seminar on the making of global capitalism going on there), and various folks associated with those listed here.

hoos dude we read the same blogs my post was rly just reaffirming what u said upthread:

Our real challenge, I think, is creating an organizing culture that lays bare the radicalism and feminism and anti-oppressive class analysis while maintaining space for people to come in who might not have MDC patches on their jackets or Huey Newton posters on their walls.

my point was just that too much radical left stuff is written for an intended audience of... people already on the radical left. stuff like jacobin engaging & arguably pushing liberals like krugman to the left is cool but how to bring about the kind of popular radicalization you're talking about is a much harder problem. & i think part of the problem is they're not slitting anyone's throats, if they were it would be a lot easier to get everyone riled up

& i think part of the problem is they're /not/ slitting anyone's throats, if they were it would be a lot easier to get everyone riled up

That's NOT part of the problem.

ha. unfortunate phrasing, i imagine.

I went to a concert performance of Marc Blitzstein's lefty '30s popera The Cradle Will Rock at City Center last weekend, and the white backdrop had on it in a cursive font:

In the Rich Man's House
the Only Place to Spit
is in His Face

Septuagenarian woman in front of me, to her husband: "Don't worry, we don't have a house."

lolll

i mean flop bro i know you're down you just made a statement i thought was kinda eliding some facts about how all this stuff works

and then you asked for resources on specific topics, so i tried to be helpful, thassall

it's cool we cool i appreciate it regardless, i am actually currently reading that panitch & gindin book and while it's not quite what i was referring to it's p tight

all i meant re slitting of throats is that u can't *just* point to existing inequalities or injustices and expect everyone to be radicalized. americans love inequality, dgaf about a lot of injustice & the reason is they have a sealed tight ideological set of explanations for not caring, ppl who abide capitalism don't see it as the slitting of throats... maybe what i should have said is that's the problem

I know. :) I just read that last line and pictured some nutcase going "ah-ha!" and coming up with a really bad plan.

Haha

hoos you need to be watching this season of newsroom it will make you so angry i swear.

but angry laughing astonished angry, not necessarily just worthlessly angry.

newsroom left me consistently worthlessly angry, ymmv

yeah ppl on twitter keep talking about 'the newsroom's portrayal of ows' and i sorta can't be arsed as the folks say

but i suppose if you think so

don't know if its actually worthwhile. i was just watching sorta jaw open and wanted to spread the dumbfoundedness

On Bill Maher's last show he had ax-Wall Street and pro-Occupy activist Alexis Goldstein.

*ex-Wall Street

I watched that ep just for her. She was always great on Chris Hayes. Got a good zing about wall street bankers, cocaine, and stop and frisk.

alexis is awesome! also good taste in beer

the gif of her throwing shade at barney over her glasses was instant classicq

I really hated how they put her on the spot by having her defend the success of OWS vs the power of Tea Party. A pro-corporate pro-Republican AstroTurf funded by billionaires and promoted by sensationalist politicians has been more successful than the genuinely grassroots OWS? No way!

imo her line about 'we were never about getting people into office, it's about changing our culture' is the real killer in that whole segment

from email

After an almost year long fight, we're elated to announce that Jacqueline Barber has worked out a deal that will keep her and her family in their home for good! Jacqueline, a retired police detective who has been fighting a rare form of bone marrow cancer, was facing eviction when she first reached out to Occupy Our Homes Atlanta last October. Jacqueline was dual tracked and her mortgage documents were filled with forged signatures, and like millions of Americans she was now faced with losing her home. But after fighting for a year, Wall Street backed down and agreed to let Jaqueline and her family keep their home.

the previously ballyhooed 'cop facing eviction'

lewis wrote abt that hard hat thing from upthread the other day in jacobin, just incidentally

anti-Syria-strike action in Zuccotti Park this Sunday, apparently

happy birthday.