Tonight was different. When I fell behind the group, I knew they were going to arrest a very large number of peaceful protesters without declaring an unlawful assembly at the location. And then they did. I thought this sh*t was reserved for G20's and WTO meetings. I felt shame for being intimidated away from my rights. 'Unlawful assemblies' feel like a boot stomp on the first amendment, but this was like them wiping their ass with the constitution and force feeding it to me.Related: OPD Used Violent Cops Against Occupy.
I'm more than a bit perturbed at the number of people who value space and property over human rights such as freedom of speech, freedom to protest one's governmentIf one has property but nothing in particular to say, isn't that natural?
Clearly, the 1% doesn't live there, and I was actually kind of pissed off when they blocked the docks. I mean, they were stopping real workingpeople from working. That's not cool. It's not like they were scabs or anything. -- Afroblanco*rolls eyes* How many people did the Montgomery bus boycotts stop from working?
They could also, you know, vote. But that's not as fun. -- empathI'm pretty sure they did in 2008. Has inequality gone down since then? Voting does nothing to advance your agenda if the people you have to vote for aren't even offering to do so, let alone actually trying to. The healthcare bill is a good thing, but it's less important for younger people who are much less likely to have health problems.
Oh, the "When you're a blogger participating in a mob" notion? Well, if those bloggers were tossing things through plate glass windows, or throwing Molotov cocktails, or overturning cop cars, I'd expect them to be arrested. When they're standing there peacefully, I expect them to be treated like a citizen standing there peacefully.And just how would you actually know what they were doing before they got arrested? Do you have any evidence that the people who were arrested were throwing Molotov cocktails? Are you just making that assumption based on the idea of everyone involved being a dirty hippy anarchist or something?
Film the police, run a tape for the underclassposted by Pirate-Bartender-Zombie-Monkey at 8:48 PM on January 30 [46 favorites]
Get the face, name, number on the badge
They flash, we flash back
When they act disorderly, react accordingly & capture all we see
Nightstick, zipties, and tasers, think you're licensed fore type-vicious behavior
Make the tight fist with the video trained towards the pigs like this
They trip, and we make 'em famous
We The People are the only real media we gotThis is 2012. Get WAY over the idea that you can go out in public and not end up on camera. Your only choice is to pick up a camera and film back, or not. I picked up a camera
Let's protect one another from the fucking goon squad!
I love when people trot out the no coherent message argument. Shows who has their fucking fingers in their ears.So far the two responses to this argument have been ad hominem attacks, one with a rage comic. We're doing political manifestos in MS Paint now?
The protests are against social and economic inequality, high unemployment, greed, as well as corruption and the undue influence of corporations on government—particularly from the financial services sector. The protesters' slogan We are the 99% refers to the growing income and wealth inequality in the U.S. between the wealthiest 1% and the rest of the population.Seems pretty clear to me. OWS identifies a collection of problems, including increasing economic inequality and the capture of government by the wealthiest -- so that government does not represent the vast majority of people. Concrete proposals for fixing the problems vary, but there is widespread agreement among OWS protesters about some of them, like reinstating Glass-Stegall and amending the Constitution to end corporate personhood.
The Civil Rights movement's paradigmatic form of activism was nonviolent passive resistance.There were plenty of massive race riots in the U.S. during that time period. There were leaders who advocated more violent responses to injustice, i.e. Malcolm X, the black panthers, etc. There were riots after King was assassinated.
Despite the urging of many leaders, the assassination led to a nationwide wave of riots in more than 100 cities.[23] After the assassination, the city of Memphis quickly settled the strike on favorable terms to the sanitation workers.[24][25]Riots in more then100 cities! yet, if it was up to some people in this thread that should have discredited the entire civil rights movement, or something.
The shocking disconnect between the protesters' behavior and the violence used against them is why the movement succeeded.The same is true of OWS. How often has OWS kettled or tear gassed the police? The idea that the violence on both here is insane, if that's what you're arguing. If that's not what you're arguing, then it's not even clear what you think the difference is between OWS and the Civil Rights movement are. Both are examples of generally non-violent protest being brutally suppressed by police violence.
Any attempt to draw moral equivalence between the tactics of the Civil Rights movement and the tactics of Occupy Oakland is farcical.The only thing farcical here is your historical illiteracy. There seem to be a lot of people who think 1) The civil rights protests never inconvienced or annoyed anyone or prevented them from working and 2) There was never, ever, any bad or violent behavior with people who generally agreed in racial equality.
This crap needs to stop. The problem, still, is occupy's lack of cohesive message. Invoking the civil rights movement of yonder is a dick move intended to deflect criticism.A) don't tell me what not to say. If you disagree, you can say so. The only "Dick move" is acting like you can decide what arguments people can and can't use
No, the general OWS message is not getting through. "A few months back" is ancient history.Gosh, learning what actually happened in the civil rights era must be like paleontology or something!!!!
It was desperation from Newt Gingrich, and it didn't work.-- empath
This is fascinating: Thanks to Metafilter, I can see exactly what Dr. King was talking about when he complained that some of the biggest impediments to the Civil Rights movement were moderates and people who claimed to be sympathetic to the plight of blacks but didn't like all that annoying disruption.Which is the biggest historical oversight by the "How dare you mention the Civil Rights Movement!" crowed. The idea that there weren't people saying the exact same thing they say about OWS today that people said about the CRM at the time. Not only could the arguments be made against the CRM, they were made. By the people King called "white moderates"
Remember that this may not be the protestors at all -- the police departments are known to place agents provocateur among protestors.... these agents then break windows and burn things, for which the protestors are blamed.Which also happened during the civil rights movement. Blaming an entire group for something they not only have no control over but in fact that their opponents can control is nonsensical.
What I point to is the fact that non-violent political revolutions have about twice the success rate as violent ones. Gotta dig for the reference, but it's something like ~53% success for NV, over ~25% success for V. NV protesters gain more sympathy against repression, and violent response allows the govt an excuse to reply violently "In the name of public order".Nothing OWS is doing would disqualify it from being a "non-violent" protest. If OWS were to somehow "win" then in the sense of "winners writing history books" they would record themselves as having been non-violent and claim that any violence was people who weren't "true" OWS protestors, that it was all agents provocateur, or opportunistic anarchist.
No matter what, it is always going to be OWS's responsibility to make sure that the message is heard. It cannot place that responsibility. -- IronmouthIn another thread you said OWS was all about "fighting for white privilege" In order to make that statement, logically you must have been able to see that that was their goal.
Understanding this is about understanding what got Nixon in the White House. Your methods should not destroy your purpose. This is the tension that OWS must solve. It cannot demand that the world just love whatever it is it is doing. For it to be worthwhile, it has to be effective.This makes it sound like you want OWS to achieve their goal, which you claimed earlier was to protect white privilege. Is that what you want? To protect white privilege? If not, why are you pretending to agree with the goal you previously claimed they had?
This is a good example of the "No True Scotsman" fallacy. I can point to several examples of people advocating violence and property destruction in OWS threads in Metafilter. Unless you think they're all cops, your argument doesn't hold water.Feel free to actually do so.
Understanding this is about understanding what got Nixon in the White House.So obviously using that logic the civil rights movement was a bad thing since, despite all the gains in the 1960s, a republican got elected to the whitehouse, which Ironmouth seems to think is the greatest moral evil in the world. Nevermind the fact that Nixon started the EPA, ended the war in Vietnam, and tried to pass universal healthcare.
The Commerce clause strikes at the heart of States and their rights, does it not?The original point of the commerce clause was to have the U.S government do what the EU government does now, regulate trade between states. Set standards for random stuff so that it can be traded easily, that kind of thing (which the EU does). It's been expanded to include random stuff that the government wants to pander on, for example the commerce clause allows the federal government to ban marijuana production because people might smoke marijuana in lieu of taking other drugs. That might sound odd but remember the raich case was decided based on the Wickard v. Fillburn case which was about someone growing wheat for personal consumption. The idea is, even if you are not going to sell the wheat, your use of it impacts the economy because you no longer need to buy it. From the decision:
It does not. The Commerce Clause gives Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce. The Tenth Amendment reserves powers not delegated by the Constitution to the states or people, but nothing under the Commerce Clause is included, because it's already reserved to the federal government in the Constitution.
More concretely, one concern prompting inclusion of wheat grown for home consumption in the 1938 Act was that rising market prices could draw such wheat into the interstate market, resulting in lower market prices. Wickard, 317 U.S., at 128. The parallel concern making it appropriate to include marijuana grown for home consumption in the CSA is the likelihood that the high demand in the interstate market will draw such marijuana into that market. While the diversion of homegrown wheat tended to frustrate the federal interest in stabilizing prices by regulating the volume of commercial transactions in the interstate market, the diversion of homegrown marijuana tends to frustrate the federal interest in eliminating commercial transactions in the interstate market in their entirety.A lot of people think that the U.S government has gone way beyond what the original founders expected that clause to mean, by applying it to anything that 'affects' commerce, which is almost everything people do.
It's not pragmatic at all if your objective is to be seen as the Good Guys.I'm pretty sure OWS's objective is to reduce income inequality and government corruption, not to be "seen" as something or other.
Sigh. There's so much nonsense in this comment it's hard to know where to begin. I guess with the first sentence.Riots in more then100 cities! yet, if it was up to some people in this thread that should have discredited the entire civil rights movement, or something. – meI'm sorry, but I find the comparison ridiculous. OWS is a joke. They have some legitimate complaints, but they have the ability to address them by voting. Instead they're tilting at windmills and pretending to be revolutionaries. The civil rights movement was a movement of people for whom the democratic process was not a legitimate option, and they were attempting to correct an ongoing and obvious injustice.
I'm sorry, but I find the comparison ridiculous.Do you mean the comparison with the civil rights movement in general or the comparison you specifically quoted about riots in 100 cities after MLK was assassinated? I was comparing the riots with the supposed violence at these OWS things, I wasn't comparing OWS to the civil rights movement at all, other then to point out the same arguments were used against both.
OWS is a jokeAre their goals a joke, or their ability to cause destruction? The anti pedo protestors I mentioned earlier were a joke too, yet, child molestation is still illegal and abhorred by everyone.
but they have the ability to address them by voting.Why do you say that? It doesn't make any sense, as I pointed out earlier.
1) there hasn't been any elections since OWS started andAlso annoying is how don't even bother to explain why you think that's true, you simply state it as if it were a fact, even though the problems with it have already been pointed out in the thread.
2) With the electoral system the U.S has you can only 'address' your 'issues' if one of the two party candidates supports your position, and
3) You can only address your issues by voting if the candidates you support actually follow through. Obama campaigned on many of the issues that OWS complains about, in particular government corruption. Yet, he's done nothing about it. The democrats have traditionally been the party that's for the 'working man' yet other then fail to pass card-check obama has done nothing to address income inequality so far, and
4) getting elected in the US requires votes and money, in that you can't campaign without funding and therefore
5) Even though I said that I think majorities already agree with OWS, the point I was making with the civil rights movement is that it's not always possible to get a majority of voters to agree with you and care enough about your issue if they're not affected by it (or if they benefit from it) -- especially when you're opposed to something with bipartisan support, like massive lobbying from wallstreet.
Instead they're tilting at windmills and pretending to be revolutionaries.Maybe they are, maybe they aren't. I have no opinion about the efficacy of OWS, nor do I care really. Like I said, nothing they do is going to make people decide they like government corruption or income inequality. Nothing they do negatively impacts me personally, while government corruption does (i.e. SOPA, offshore drilling, lack of action on climate change, lack of a public option for healthcare, and on and on and on). And since they are not personally bothering me, why should I have a problem with them?
Part of my fascination with OO here is because I think the real showdown will be at the G8 in Chicago. OO is showing what is and isn't possible by taking a militant and radical posture. They are also building the infrastructure needed to support larger actionsYou also have a cash-strapped city government, and the fact that OWS is ongoing. They'll only need to protect the G8 for a short period of time, with maximum force. They can just arrest everyone who causes problems and let them go when it's over.
If you don't get what you want, you organize better and you try to convince more people of your argument. That's what the other side does. Losing an election isn't a good excuse to have a revolution.Do you actually think that would work? Because it doesn't seem like an intelligent person could honestly believe that average people could "organize" better then people who have hundreds of billions of dollars to spend on lobbyists and advertising political consultants and own TV networks.
We've gone down this anti-globalism mass protest path before. It didn't work in Seattle, it didn't work in Miami, it didn't work to stop the Iraq WarYeah see even this makes no sense. Do you believe any of the following things?
And more to the point, the Civil Rights movement registered voters and organized people. The OWS people aren't even bothering to try.Ugh, yeah 10 seconds of googling could have told you that's false. What is wrong with you?
We had no alternative except to prepare for direct action, whereby we would present our very bodies as a means of laying our case before the conscience of the local and the national community. Mindful of the difficulties involved, we decided to undertake a process of self purification. We began a series of workshops on nonviolence, and we repeatedly asked ourselves: "Are you able to accept blows without retaliating?" "Are you able to endure the ordeal of jail?"That's the approach I associate with "nonviolent passive resistance" and with the Civil Rights movement in general, it's the approach that led to the only significant moments of public support Occupy has seen in the Bay Area, and it's an approach that--for whatever reason--Occupy Oakland appears to have very little interest in.
The OWS people aren't even bothering to try. They're just using violence and intimidation to get what they want because their agenda isn't popular. -- empath
They are always the opposite of what some people want. That's how democracy works. Some people win, and some people don't. -- empathYeah, so what you're actually saying "OWS cannot succeed doing X, therefore OWS should lose". where X is "voting" and the typical stuff republicans and democrats do in terms of registering voters and turning them out.
Okay, well have fun at your little revolution, I guess, while the tea party actually wins elections, and the rest of us suffer because of it.Okay I see- You don't like OWS because you think, somehow it will result in the democrats not getting elected in 2012? But obviously the everyone can see republicans are going to get destroyed in 2012. So at that at that point, you'll have to credit OWS the same way you credit the tea party for '10?
I'm not afraid of it. I just think it's a waste of time. And I don't care if they organize to support 'mainstream' candidates. They should organize to support candidates to oppose 'mainstream' candidates in primaries,Well, why don't you do that and get back to us about how well it works?
Only that they were still going to try and push something similar through. And they still will.Not this session. The protests were a success. the protests were to kill the specific bills and they succeeded. Had people followed your advice, there wouldn't have been protests and the bills might have passed now. Yes, in the future they might try again, and they'll need to be fought off again. But the tech industry has more money for lobbyists then the entertainment industry does, and a much greater ability to mobilize grass roots letter writers.
That you're being manipulated. Same way the 90% threshold for agreement in the 'General Assembly' is designed to obstruct the democratic process and devolve power to committee structures run by a small 'inner circle'. Who came up with that ... . Same way the 90% threshold for agreement in the 'General Assembly' is designed to obstruct the democratic process and devolve power to committee structures run by a small 'inner circle'. Who came up with that?Yeah Saddam totally did 9/11 man.
“It is appalling that the OPD continues to violate the law and its own policies,” said Carlos Villarreal, NLGSF Executive Director. “The police instigated the confrontation by immediately attacking the march with chemical agents, flashbang bombs, and a volley of rifle or shotgun-fired projectiles.”How much of this made it into the media reports you've read about OO J28?
As of 11 a.m., Monday, January 30, the NLGSF can confirm that at least 284 people were arrested on Saturday during Occupy Oakland’s Move In Day. The NLGSF received many reports of assaults on protesters, including an incident in which police knocked one person’s teeth out with a baton strike to the face. Police reportedly threw others through a glass door, and down a flight of steps. A videographer was pushed to the ground and clubbed.
“OPD has shown itself incapable of handling crowd control in a legal, much less professional manner,” said NLGSF Attorney Rachel Lederman. “We would urge the appointed monitor to take action immediately to rein in this abusive conduct, which is leading to ever increasing liability for the City.”
We the people are the only real media we got
Let's protect one another from the fucking goon squad
Fascism's coming to the USA!
Eyo, I got something to say:
FILM THE POLICE!
“Once you are hostile to organization and strategic thinking the only thing that remains is lifestyle purity,” Jensen said. “‘Lifestylism’ has supplanted organization in terms of a lot of mainstream environmental thinking. Instead of opposing the corporate state, [lifestylism maintains] we should use less toilet paper and should compost. This attitude is ineffective. Once you give up on organizing or are hostile to it, all you are left with is this hyperpurity that becomes rigid dogma. You attack people who, for example, use a telephone. This is true with vegans and questions of diet. It is true with anti-car activists toward those who drive cars. It is the same with the anarchists. When I called the police after I received death threats I became to Black Bloc anarchists ‘a pig lover.’ ”While some vegans and some anti-car activists do indeed focus on personal lifestyle over systemic change, most of the ones I've known don't; and most of the philosophical thought underlying these positions that I've read is certainly focused on the need for systemic change, advocating for people to make personal choices that are ethical in that system not only for personal ethical reasons, but also as a tactic to highlight the issues. Many mainstream vegan publications (as well as vegans whom I know personally), or folks who support alternative transportation, are quite cognizant that they serve as ambassadors for this viewpoint to the mainstream culture, and thus need to be particularly welcoming and encouraging to others. Picking examples from only the most fundamentalist proponents of any philosophy does not, in general, make for a very clear understanding of the philosophy as a whole. Given that Hedges' single pro-black bloc source seems quite fundamentalist as well, this, to me, casts doubt on the applicability of his argument to general black bloc participants.
Nonviolent movements, on some level, embrace police brutality. The continuing attempt by the state to crush peaceful protesters who call for simple acts of justice delegitimizes the power elite. It prompts a passive population to respond. It brings some within the structures of power to our side and creates internal divisions that will lead to paralysis within the network of authority. Martin Luther King kept holding marches in Birmingham because he knew Public Safety Commissioner “Bull” Connor was a thug who would overreact.I've written before about the conflation of nonviolence with passive resistance. But setting that aside. When nonviolence is seen merely as a tactic, one can argue about its apparent effectiveness. In "Nonviolence: The History of a Dangerous Idea", Mark Kurlansky claims that nonviolent revolutions have a significantly greater success rate than violent revolutions; particularly when it comes to attaining the original aims and actually changing power structures, not just rearranging the actors in a hierarchical system. Yet it's still not a 100% success rate. So at what point does a nonviolent revolution fail? From the perspective of over a hundred years later, it's easy to say that a revolution has succeeded or failed. It is far less clear in the moment, and, as with the civil rights movement in the U.S. (eg. with the birth of the Black Panthers, while other groups thought that nonviolent tactics were in fact making good progress), there can be significant disagreement about when people will feel that the nonviolent tactics have failed to accomplish their goals if progress is slow. And with as major a change as the occupy movement is calling for, progress will be slow. Success as a tactic is one important argument in favor of nonviolence, but if it's the *only* argument, that can become a very difficult argument to win. And the argument itself can be very fracturing to a movement.
Black Bloc adherents detest those of us on the organized left and seek, quite consciously, to take away our tools of empowerment. They confuse acts of petty vandalism and a repellent cynicism with revolution. The real enemies, they argue, are not the corporate capitalists, but their collaborators among the unions, workers’ movements, radical intellectuals, environmental activists and populist movements such as the Zapatistas. Any group that seeks to rebuild social structures, especially through nonviolent acts of civil disobedience, rather than physically destroy, becomes, in the eyes of Black Bloc anarchists, the enemy. Black Bloc anarchists spend most of their fury not on the architects of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) or globalism, but on those, such as the Zapatistas, who respond to the problem. It is a grotesque inversion of value systems.Yet Hedges uses these same tactics in his argument against black blocs: essentializing the people involved, demonizing them, reserving for them language that is at least as excoriating as his descriptions of these very same groups that *he* identifies as the "real enemies" (based on other articles of Hedges that I have read, at least). Rather than engaging the activist community that he purports to be a member of in a discussion of tactics, strategy and philosophy as equals, Hedges attacks and wants to expel certain people from the occupy movement. Although he argues for peaceful resistance to police violence on the grounds that it maintains a moral high ground which "wins hearts and minds," he has not demonstrated such a commitment to the moral high ground and to avoiding the attitudes that he opposes.
Of course, many within Occupy Oakland do not just want reforms - they want revolution, insurrection, overthrow and smash. But there has been only one event where that group came out in a bloc and utilized the tactics that so trouble Hedges and other Occupy Oakland critics on the left and it happened in the middle of what is arguably still seen as one of the movement's greatest victories: the General Strike. On November 2, an autonomously organized anti-capitalist black bloc marched through Oakland, destroying windows and other property at banks and, allegedly, strike-busting businesses such as Whole Foods.Well, that's an unqualified endorsement! Doubtless everyone who came along in the afternoon had time to evaluate and digest the events of the morning and chose to endorse them with their physical presence. That would explain why every OO action since has also drown tens of thousands of people. Oh, wait.
The tactic, which emerged in the early 1980s in Germany among autonomist protesters defending squatters rights and anti-nuclear activism, hit America hard in the anti-globalization demonstrations of the late '90s, especially in the "Battle of Seattle," which resulted in heavy damage of multinational retail property in downtown. That November 2 march was arguably one of the most focused showings of stateside black bloc in a decade. That march resulted in the Oakland police calling in mutual aid, but it did not result in a discrediting of the national movement; tens of thousands still marched on the Port of Oakland hours later.
"That was at the height of the Occupy movement; that was as it was cresting," says Simons. "There was so much else going on, you couldn't isolate that and point to it as the singular problem. And now the militancy of Oakland is sort of like the only thing out there." The peaceful but militant blockade of the Port of Oakland on December 12, with its lack of union leader support, garnered Occupy Oakland more criticism than the black bloc actions on November 2.As measured by...what?
Black bloc is not a lifestyle choice, but a tactical one. When a protester takes off their mask and unzips their black jacket - as many did after that November 2 march - they are no longer "black bloc." A protester who engages in black bloc tactics on one march may not choose to engage in them again on another.How convenient! Clearly there's no point in trying to deal with such tactics, because it's all pretty ephemeral. At this point I think Ms. Cagle has taken up the role of advocacy on behalf of BB rather than documenting things objectively, but that's OK.
Hedges condemns property destruction in political protest by condemning black bloc tactics, regardless of the facts. The "local coffee shop" vandalism Hedges contends was committed by black bloc was in fact one window of a corporate coffee chain smashed in that post-strike fog of war - and by someone not wearing a mask, not wearing black.Any word on the reasons for the pot dispensary getting smashed up? Oh, fog of war OK. Anyway, that was probably corporate too, since all property is theft or something. The understatement in the account above is almost comical.
The "diversity of tactics" Occupy Oakland embraces are ostensibly meant to promote a range of protest. "There is nothing preventing those who want to from organizing non-violent direct actions autonomously with clear guidelines as such," wrote the January 28 move-in committee. "This is what we mean by diversity of tactics."There's just nothing we can do about it, you see! We're a non-hierarchical movement and it's completely impossible for us to predict such things.
"There was no black bloc. The front lines of the street battle that captured all the images were peace signs. No one even mentions it: that was the image of clashing with the police," says Angell. "If that's what a black bloc is, that's depressing to me. I personally am not going to throw a brick through a window, but I have some investment in the black bloc as a tactic and if that's what it is, if that's it at its most threatening, then that's just really sad."Good grief. This is like saying 'the police are never violent - they're there to serve and protect, and it even says so on their vehicles.' I forget exactly what the motto of the OPD is - something like 'working together for a respectful community' or suchlike. It sounds great, but falls far short of the reality. Like the peace signs sprayed on the homemade riot shields. If I accept for a moment the idea of BB just being a tactic, then what are the black-clad mask-wearing people holding the shields doing, if not participating that very tactic (looking at the photo on Cagle's page). How am I supposed to take these claims of hapless victimization at face value when they are clearly at odds with reality, without putting my basic cognitive faculties on an extended hold?
Nonviolent movements, on some level, embrace police brutality. The continuing attempt by the state to crush peaceful protesters who call for simple acts of justice delegitimizes the power elite. It prompts a passive population to respond. It brings some within the structures of power to our side and creates internal divisions that will lead to paralysis within the network of authority. Martin Luther King kept holding marches in Birmingham because he knew Public Safety Commissioner “Bull” Connor was a thug who would overreact.Do you disagree with Hedges and think that Martin Luther King, Jr. was wrong to keep holding marches in Birmingham then?
Successful movements have understood that it’s absolutely essential not to fall into the trap set out by the authorities and spend one’s time condemning and attempting to police other activists. One makes one’s own principles clear. One expresses what solidarity one can with others who share the same struggle, and if one cannot, tries one’s best to ignore or avoid them, but above all, one keeps the focus on the actual source of violence, without doing or saying anything that might seem to justify that violence because of tactical disagreements you have with fellow activists.posted by eviemath at 10:26 AM on February 11 [3 favorites]
Occupy was the spark for the emergence of a broad wave of anti-corporate, anti-repression sentiment in our society. We are concerned that the inclusivity that began this movement and contributed to its rapid growth is dying in OO as a result of the dominant insurrectionist tendencies and the “vanguardist” maneuvering and manipulations of some of its proponents. Dramatically shrinking numbers reveal that this ideology and organizing style either misreads the real political situation in Oakland, or else underestimates the importance of consolidating and advancing a broad, united and popular front. We all collectively must take responsibility for this “hardening” and shrinking of the OO ranks, and we must recognize that in trying to re-make OO in an ideologically purist vision, we are destroying our ability to garner the wide base of support and goodwill that will be necessary to successfully resist corporate and state domination.posted by Pirate-Bartender-Zombie-Monkey at 8:13 AM on February 14
Successful movements have understood that it’s absolutely essential not to fall into the trap set out by the authorities and spend one’s time condemning and attempting to police other activists. One makes one’s own principles clear. One expresses what solidarity one can with others who share the same struggle, and if one cannot, tries one’s best to ignore or avoid them, but above all, one keeps the focus on the actual source of violence, without doing or saying anything that might seem to justify that violence because of tactical disagreements you have with fellow activists.I don't agree with this way of thinking; it's a gross abdication of responsibility. If you want government to be accountable and restrain the police, then it is both tactically and philosophically sensible to maintain discipline and accountability at protests. Looking the other way when a bunch of masked individuals propose more aggressive direct action and pretending that there's no point to or possibility of stopping them - but rather trying to maintain a limited solidarity with them to the extent that it's possible - is exactly the same thing that politicians do when they dismiss complaints of systemic police brutality as 'isolated incidents' or 'the work of a few bad apples.' It's like trying to have your cake (ethical high ground of nonviolence) and eat it (strategic high ground of greater participation, even if some of it is violent).
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WE'RE #1!
WE'RE #1!
posted by quadog at 4:49 PM on January 30 [4 favorites]