#OCCUPYWALLSTREET campaign - September 17

[82_28]

Oh gotta love those mobile command centers with that birds eye view. They have those in Seattle too. Much like cops on horseback I figure they're more useful in just getting the public to know they're being watched than any other useful purpose. That shit could be hollow up there or just a dude picking his ass than any other thing for all we know.

[82_28]

BTW, me and Twyla are headin' down to supposedly the self same thing going on in Seattle today to see what's what. If anything is worthwhile, we shall post it.

[Project Willow]

DIDiva extraordinaire Roseanne speaks to protestors...

"I'm so thrilled that so many of us have been able to crack our program, our mind control program that we've been living under for all these years, and I salute you, I salute you for thinking freely."

"We have to merge small ego into large ego, that's what we have to do. That's what factioned the left the first time around in the 60's and everybody's supposed small ego kept them from coalescing and uniting."

[Simulist]

Wow. That's truly great.

[82_28]

Wow. That was awesome. Made tears well up in my eyes a bit. I fucking love Roseanne.

[Bruce Dazzling]

Democracy Now!'s coverage, including some David Graeber goodness.

[Bruce Dazzling]

FYI: This thread has been merged with the RI Meetup at Occupy Wall Street thread.

Carry on my wayward ones.

[Wombaticus Rex]

via: http://www.shoutingloudly.com/2011/09/1 ... -it-wrong/

Ontologies of Organizing – why #occupywallst was doing it wrong

This weekend was the #occupywallst protest in New York. Micah White has another post up at The Guardian’s blog, labeling it a grand success. Others (including myself) are not so sure. The stated public expectation was that 20,000 protesters would arrive, form a tent city, and hold Wall St for several weeks. Instead, a few thousand showed up, and most of those left within a day. The police put up barricades in preparation for the coming anarchy. Instead, they aren’t even bothering to arrest the remaining protesters (who didn’t bother to get a permit).

I spent the weekend monitoring the #occupywallst twitter stream. There wasn’t much traffic, particularly for an action drawing support from Anonymous. It mostly fell into two groups: (1) participants complaining about the “media blackout,” and (2) conservatives making fun of leftist caricatures. I have a bit to say about each of these.

Regarding the “media blackout,” I’ll come right out and say it: the media didn’t cover this because it wasn’t newsworthy. The planning and execution for this event were lackluster. The Theory of Change was nonexistent.

Sometimes, the media actively ignores large-scale collective action. The protesters in Wisconsin last winter had good reason to be upset — that was the largest sustained labor protest in a generation, and editorial staff decided to focus on Charlie Sheen instead. But #occupywallst was no #wiunion. And there’s a lesson in that.

Anarchists and radical organizers have a bit of collective amnesia with regards to the “Battle of Seattle.” The kids in black bandanas were only a very small part of the coalition that shut down the city in October, 1999. Their acts of childish violence against a Starbucks may have become the lasting public image of the event, but they were hardly representative. The bulk of that anti-globalization protest was composed of labor unions, environmentalists, and other organized progressives. All of those groups have deep traditions based in the community organizing traditions of Saul Alinsky and Cesar Chavez. The real work of organizing bears little resemblance to the attention-grabbing “culture jammers.” The real work involves “talking to one person, then talking to another person, then talking to another.” Organizing is slow, difficult, often thankless, but deeply meaningful work. There are “rules,” you see, even for radicals.





#Occupywallst got no coverage on MSNBC. It got basically no coverage on DailyKos. MoveOn, the PCCC, Rebuild the Dream, and Democracy for America all had better things to do with their time. Adbusters’s “Our Tahrir Square” analogies quickly moved from offensive to pathetic. The netroots and the rest of the progressive movement completely ignored this non-event.

At the end of the day, the failure of this protest animates a deep, longstanding ontological divide within the activist community. There are (at least) two ontologies of organizing. Folks from the Micah White/culture jammer tradition believe that activism is about offering a radical critique of modern society and shining a light on corporate power. Folks from the Marshall Ganz/community organizing tradition believe that activism is about winning tangible victories that improve people’s lives, change the balance of power, and give people a sense of their own power.*

The culture jammers are practicing activism-as-public-art. The community organizers are practicing activism-as-public-process. Both have their place, but we rarely spell out the differences. And they’ll lead you in very different directions. When culture jammers pretend to be organizers, it turns out poorly. That’s what happened this weekend, in a nutshell.

—

As for the conservative hecklers… well, that was to be expected. Conservative activists spend a lot of time obsessing over radical leftism. They think that everyone from Paul Krugman to Barack Obama to the Sierra Club is a socialist/communist. In truth, there are hardly any socialists left within the Left. When actual socialists and actual communists start screaming for attention, its a bit like spotting a leprechaun.

But I’ve got one thing to say to Michelle Malkin, who referred to the protesters as “Alinskyites:”

You know nothing of [Alinsky's] work.



#occupywallst was not in the tradition of Alinsky. It lacked a clear target. It did not leverage power towards a realizable goal. It did not fit together into a broader strategic campaign aimed at forcing powerful actors to behave in keeping with the goals and interests of a community.

You want to see Alinskyites? Go to Rebuild the Dream’s Take Back the American Dream Conference, October 3-5 in DC. That’s where the community organizers will be. And you’ll find both their goals, their tactics, and their rhetoric a lot harder to caricature.







*Those are the “three principles of organizing” as outlined by The Midwest Academy in Organizing for Social Change

They can fucking keep the "American Dream" but I thought this was a well-rounded and valuable enough critique to share.

It's not as good as Alice's piece, though.

[Bruce Dazzling]

via: http://www.shoutingloudly.com/2011/09/1 ... -it-wrong/

Ontologies of Organizing – why #occupywallst was doing it wrong

This weekend was the #occupywallst protest in New York. Micah White has another post up at The Guardian’s blog, labeling it a grand success. Others (including myself) are not so sure. The stated public expectation was that 20,000 protesters would arrive, form a tent city, and hold Wall St for several weeks. Instead, a few thousand showed up, and most of those left within a day. The police put up barricades in preparation for the coming anarchy. Instead, they aren’t even bothering to arrest the remaining protesters (who didn’t bother to get a permit).

I spent the weekend monitoring the #occupywallst twitter stream. There wasn’t much traffic, particularly for an action drawing support from Anonymous. It mostly fell into two groups: (1) participants complaining about the “media blackout,” and (2) conservatives making fun of leftist caricatures. I have a bit to say about each of these.

Regarding the “media blackout,” I’ll come right out and say it: the media didn’t cover this because it wasn’t newsworthy. The planning and execution for this event were lackluster. The Theory of Change was nonexistent.

Sometimes, the media actively ignores large-scale collective action. The protesters in Wisconsin last winter had good reason to be upset — that was the largest sustained labor protest in a generation, and editorial staff decided to focus on Charlie Sheen instead. But #occupywallst was no #wiunion. And there’s a lesson in that.

Anarchists and radical organizers have a bit of collective amnesia with regards to the “Battle of Seattle.” The kids in black bandanas were only a very small part of the coalition that shut down the city in October, 1999. Their acts of childish violence against a Starbucks may have become the lasting public image of the event, but they were hardly representative. The bulk of that anti-globalization protest was composed of labor unions, environmentalists, and other organized progressives. All of those groups have deep traditions based in the community organizing traditions of Saul Alinsky and Cesar Chavez. The real work of organizing bears little resemblance to the attention-grabbing “culture jammers.” The real work involves “talking to one person, then talking to another person, then talking to another.” Organizing is slow, difficult, often thankless, but deeply meaningful work. There are “rules,” you see, even for radicals.





#Occupywallst got no coverage on MSNBC. It got basically no coverage on DailyKos. MoveOn, the PCCC, Rebuild the Dream, and Democracy for America all had better things to do with their time. Adbusters’s “Our Tahrir Square” analogies quickly moved from offensive to pathetic. The netroots and the rest of the progressive movement completely ignored this non-event.

At the end of the day, the failure of this protest animates a deep, longstanding ontological divide within the activist community. There are (at least) two ontologies of organizing. Folks from the Micah White/culture jammer tradition believe that activism is about offering a radical critique of modern society and shining a light on corporate power. Folks from the Marshall Ganz/community organizing tradition believe that activism is about winning tangible victories that improve people’s lives, change the balance of power, and give people a sense of their own power.*

The culture jammers are practicing activism-as-public-art. The community organizers are practicing activism-as-public-process. Both have their place, but we rarely spell out the differences. And they’ll lead you in very different directions. When culture jammers pretend to be organizers, it turns out poorly. That’s what happened this weekend, in a nutshell.

—

As for the conservative hecklers… well, that was to be expected. Conservative activists spend a lot of time obsessing over radical leftism. They think that everyone from Paul Krugman to Barack Obama to the Sierra Club is a socialist/communist. In truth, there are hardly any socialists left within the Left. When actual socialists and actual communists start screaming for attention, its a bit like spotting a leprechaun.

But I’ve got one thing to say to Michelle Malkin, who referred to the protesters as “Alinskyites:”

You know nothing of [Alinsky's] work.



#occupywallst was not in the tradition of Alinsky. It lacked a clear target. It did not leverage power towards a realizable goal. It did not fit together into a broader strategic campaign aimed at forcing powerful actors to behave in keeping with the goals and interests of a community.

You want to see Alinskyites? Go to Rebuild the Dream’s Take Back the American Dream Conference, October 3-5 in DC. That’s where the community organizers will be. And you’ll find both their goals, their tactics, and their rhetoric a lot harder to caricature.







*Those are the “three principles of organizing” as outlined by The Midwest Academy in Organizing for Social Change

They can fucking keep the "American Dream" but I thought this was a well-rounded and valuable enough critique to share.

It's not as good as Alice's piece, though.

This...

Regarding the “media blackout,” I’ll come right out and say it: the media didn’t cover this because it wasn’t newsworthy.

...cuts both ways.

Obviously, major media coverage leading up to the protest, as well as during the initial stages, would have gone a long way towards generating interest and swelling the numbers into something that was/is more newsworthy.

Not mentioning that in this critique is a bit lame, although, as you pointed out, WR, the piece does make some valid criticisms.

This is America, though, and if it ain't on the tee vee, it ain't happening.

[Wombaticus Rex]

Reading it, I was musing "I spent the weekend monitoring the twitter feed, too, so how did I wind up knowing more about this even than he did?" Then it dawned on me: intrepid reporters on the ground here at RI. Cheers.

[JackRiddler]

.

It really does cut both ways. We should have just called it a Tea Party for massive coverage.

.

[Nordic]

.

It really does cut both ways. We should have just called it a Tea Party for massive coverage.

.

ha! you're joking, but that really is not a bad idea!

trick the bastards.

[Nordic]

Surprised nobody posted this a few days ago, when it hit:

http://cryptogon.com/?p=24916

http://money.cnn.com/2011/09/16/news/ec ... /index.htm

Mayor Bloomberg: Jobs Crisis Could Spark Riots

September 17th, 2011
Via: CNN:

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is worried that high U.S. unemployment could lead to the same kind of riots here that have swept through Europe and North Africa.

“You have a lot of kids graduating college, [who] can’t find jobs,” said Bloomberg, during his weekly radio show on Friday. “That’s what happened in Cairo. That’s what happened in Madrid. You don’t want those kinds of riots here.”
That was the mayor’s response when asked about the poverty rate, which rose to 15.1% in 2010, its highest level since 1993, according to census data released Tuesday. About 46.2 million people are now living in poverty, 2.6 million more than last year.

“The public is not happy,” he said. “The public knows there is something wrong in this country, and there is. The bottom line is that they’re upset.”

Riots have gripped various countries in European cities, including Athens and London, fueled by young people infuriated by high unemployment and austerity measures, which in some cases has led to looting. High unemployment among youth is also one of the driving forces behind the Arab Spring, as impoverished protestors in North Africa and the Middle East rose up against their heavy-handed governments.
“The damage to a generation that can’t find jobs will go on for many, many years,” said Bloomberg.

Makes me wonder if Bloomie was actually a bit worried about the Occupy Wall Street thing.

[82_28]

The report from the northwestern front is that "ain't nuthin' goin' on out here". But, me and Twyla wound up doing some awesome tandem historical research and banter and tried to gain access to a building so we could possibly see the window an old progressive congressman supposedly committed suicide out of in 1938. My assessment was that it was assassination to begin with. Now it is totally, 99.99999% for sure. Just the psychic feel I got out of the old building, the floor he supposedly jumped from onto the street, being in the structure etc. I played the likely scene over and over in my head. Her and I just hung out in this old ballroom for a time and were just totally blown away by the ornate symbols, the sheer age of it, the tens of thousands of spirits that haunt it. It was totally Kubrickian.

Just a report from the western posse that two RI peeps wound up making a cool day of it as well. But ain't no protests going on out this way.

[AlicetheKurious]

Makes me wonder if Bloomie was actually a bit worried about the Occupy Wall Street thing.

I have no doubt whatsoever that Bloomie et al were VERY worried indeed, in the run-up to September 17. If there's one thing that has been demonstrated by the so-called "Arab Spring", it's that all the "experts" and those who listen to them, including all the politicians, have shown themselves utterly incapable of predicting when and where the masses will suddenly rise up, and what will set them off. As far as I know, they've been wrong, wrong, wrong, every single time, beginning at least with the massive uprising against Mubarak's "stable" regime, following that of Ben Ali's "model" regime. They were taken utterly by surprise by the subsequent reverberations among their most tame client states in the region and even as far away as Madrid and even London, even perhaps, Wisconsin. So, yeah, they were worried.

One who was infamously left with egg on his face was Israeli PM Netanyahu who, on the eve of massive Israeli protests, boasted that Israel was the only country in the region with "no tremors, no protests" -- because of what a wonderful "ethos" it has. His statement was spoofed here.)

There's only one country in the heart of the Middle East that has no tremors, no protests, and that's Israel. I mean, look at this earth shaking everywhere, from the west of India right up to the Straits of Gibraltar. Everything is shaking and rocking and the only stable place, the only stable country is this democracy Israel. A developed country, a prosperous country, everybody's equal under the law. It has a strong military, because it has a strong society. ...You should invent us if we didn't exist, and you need more of us. And God forbid, what would happen if we weren't here, we'd have the whole Middle East collapse, just collapse in front of the radicals. Link (starting at around 17:00 min.)

So, you can imagine, with a record like that, the pundits all just recently having dismissed the possibility that "tremors" and "protests" would spread to Egypt, Syria, and pretty much every place to which they did spread, nobody could begin to predict what would be sparked on September 17.

Sure, the "event" turned out to be a dud, but so did almost all the events leading up to each one of the massive uprisings that recently collapsed deeply-entrenched regimes (or damaged them, hopefully fatally). In Egypt, for example, there were literally thousands of protests and sit-ins across the country, the subject of much hilarity in some circles, since most consisted of about 50 intrepid protesters surrounded by hundreds of riot-geared police. Even on January 25th, many of the protesters who took to the streets in the morning found themselves alone and some even headed home, believing it was over before it began. By now, the experts and politicians, more than anybody, know that it could happen any time, any place, and they'll never know in advance what will provide the spark.

There does seem to be a dangerous fallacy, however, concerning the cause of the regimes' collapses: they were NOT caused by demonstrations. Demonstrations do not collapse regimes, nor do they cause real change. In every case, the decisive factor was massive, simultaneous labor strikes and waves of civil disobedience that literally paralyzed the economy, with the popular demonstrations serving as evidence of the people's solidarity and unity. Remember in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, tens of millions of people around the world took to the streets to protest in the largest demonstrations in recent history, with no impact whatsoever. That is because they lacked the active ingredient: they were not accompanied by labor strikes and civil disobedience and other direct actions manifesting in a concrete way the people's will and ability to inflict real damage, real and immediate pain, if their voices are not heard by those whose job it is to serve them. BTW, I do NOT mean violence -- I am referring the the people's right to withhold their labor or otherwise refuse to collaborate with a system that has been hijacked and used against them.