#OCCUPYWALLSTREET campaign - September 17

[illogik]

jeff, exactly, liberal american exceptionalism. that's my biggest complaint with the narrative, it lacks international perspective, and smacks of white middle class privilege. if you don't agree with the tactics in this context it's cool, like i said i don't think they work in all situations, but the tactics themselves are valid and used round the world to fight tyranny.

[barracuda]

[Bruce Dazzling]

Regarding the use of property damage and violence...

Even though there is no official leadership, and no official demands, I believe that it's safe to say that the majority of the OWS protesters wish to significantly alter the existing system in ways that will severely impact the existing power structure and their ability to profit while raping the planet with impunity.

In my opinion, the most important thing to remember is that OWS is an American movement, taking place, for the most part, in American cities. Remember also, that in America, EVERYTHING is a reality TV show, and the producers of the show are many of the same people who are profiting from raping the planet with impunity. With that in mind, it's been deemed to be extremely important to NOT give the producers of the reality show any excuse whatsoever to justify the use of violence against the protesters.

Causing property damage and being violent in any way is EXACTLY what the producers of the reality show want, because it gives them the excuse to do what they're dying to do, which is to crush the movement that threatens their ability to profit from raping the planet with impunity.

This is why it's so important for the OWS movement to distance itself from these black blocs.

I don't think that anybody is disputing that there is a time and a place for violent revolution, illogik. We're just saying that this is NOT the time or the place.

If you (not you, specifically) want to break windows and protest in ways that give the power structure the excuse they're looking for to crush the movement, then DO IT ON YOUR OWN TIME and don't taint our movement.

[illogik]

i agree with this bruce, just trying to bring in some balance to the conversation. i think its an important one to have.

[Jeff]

In my opinion, the most important thing to remember is that OWS is an American movement, taking place, for the most part, in American cities. Remember also, that in America, EVERYTHING is a reality TV show, and the producers of the show are many of the same people who are profiting from raping the planet with impunity. With that in mind, it's been deemed to be extremely important to NOT give the producers of the reality show any excuse whatsoever to justify the use of violence against the protesters.

OWS has been brilliant at subverting expectations by its unexpectedness and novelty. It caught the principalities and powers off-guard, and that it has flourished, and found mass appeal, must have them more alarmed by a popular movement than many of them have been in their lifetime.

Now, though, they've had some time to adjust their game. Tainting is the easiest tactic, and practically impossible to prevent in a culture with a media eager to run with that narrative. (One undercover cop at a General Assembly yells "Dirty Jews!" and that's a good day's work.) Nevertheless it shouldn't be impossible to inoculate against, since it's already popular knowledge that the media itself is tainted. Staying on message and going around the media's insistence upon collective guilt and apology is the way forward. That, IMO, includes not being distracted by or divided over the actions of a handful in a hundred thousand, whoever they are and whatever their motive.

[justdrew]

Yeah. While there are agent provocateurs here and there, the dozens or so of almost entirely young white males who comprise the "Black Bloc" or whatever current incarnation are immature individualist types who have been isolated from society and overtly don't believe in building a mass movement. Tons of them live in Eugene, Oregon. They may come off as a stereotype, but I've spent time in Eugene, and it's the reality.

They do read history, Smiths, but it's a uniquely revisionist history. I happen to think that the Weather Underground was a CIA operation, but that's another story. That's the history that these kids idealize, obviously. I've even seen anarchist material glorifying the Black Liberation Army, a 70's group that murdered cops. While I don't think that the kids themselves are getting paid by anyone, they're picking up on an ideology that's been tacitly supported by capitalist intelligence in order to self-destruct our movements and keep them from building mass appeal.

You're not going to stop them physically. I think all you can do is keep them in the conversation and continue to condemn the actions with unmistakeable clarity.

the bastard love-children of John Zerzan and Bob Black

"DON'T TAINT ME BRO"

[seemslikeadream]

New York Post declares war on Occupy Wall Street
Rupert Murdoch's tabloid runs three covers in a row attacking the movement
By Justin Elliott

Friday's New York Post

Friday's New York Post (Credit: nypost.com)
Topics:homelessness, New York City

From the beginning, Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post was never exactly friendly to the cause of Occupy Wall Street.

When the NYPD arrested hundreds on the Brooklyn Bridge in one of the watershed events of the young movement on Oct. 1, most of the media seized on the heavy-handed (and possible illegal) police tactics. The Post, on the other hand, led its story with an unnamed “Ground Zero construction worker” bashing protesters:

One irate driver, a Ground Zero construction worker, was livid.

“I work my ass off all day, and these goddamned hippies close down the Brooklyn Bridge so I can’t get home?” he said. “This ain’t right!”

A few days later, columnist Andrea Peyser sneered at the Occupy encampment at Zuccotti Park as “the planetary point where bitchery meets bellyaching.”

But the Post has now kicked its attacks on Occupy into high gear. Today the cover of the tabloid labeled the protesters “animals” (see image above). The story, complete with video, is about a “mentally ill” homeless man picking fights with those sleeping in the park. The homeless man is punched by a protester after his tent is kicked. And he’s not an anti-Wall Street protester; his cryptic signs say, “USA-Turk Army Ended My Diplomatic Career 6 Times” and “AC Tropicana Casino Robbed My $30K Pay For My Driving Job.”

Friday’s piece comes after a front-page editorial Thursday calling on Mayor Michael Bloomberg to forcibly evict the protesters:

And that came after Wednesday’s cover, a debunked story of a Wall Street cafe laying off workers because of disruptions caused by Occupy protesters:

Occupiers should probably interpret all this attention from the Post as a sign of success.

[2012 Countdown]

'
Laugh riot-

Triumph Visits Occupy Wall Street
Triumph the Insult Comic Dog gives it to bankers, protestors and a bull.
http://teamcoco.com/video/19701/triumph ... all-street

[norton ash]

On the first night while laying siege to a city, the leader of the Mongol forces would lead from a white tent: if the city surrendered, all would be spared. On the second day, he would use a red tent: if the city surrendered, the men would all be killed, but the rest would be spared. On the third day, he would use a black tent: no quarter would be given.

GA process could settle on a ruling panel and issue 3 demands. Sieges demanding satisfaction of each demand could then begin in 3 cities.

If it comes to black, don the black, but it isn't time yet. Although the appearance of a few thousand Oakland Raiders might be coming due.

Most of us have a Mongol ancestor and maybe that ol' black DNA has me in its spell.

NY Post... You look scared, pigs.

[barracuda]

Letters from the Reflections forum of the Occupy Oakland website.

http://www.occupyoakland.org/openforums/relfections/

WHO ARE THE KIDS IN BLACK?

I am a supporter of Occupy Oakland and an Oakland native, and I attended the marches at the general strike. We all know that some property destruction to corporations was almost inevitable given the energy, mass and enthusiasm of the general strike, but I have a question, and forgive my ignorance. Who are these kids in black? Clearly they are not real anarchists, because they seemed to lack an informed and intelligent argument during the strike. Are they plants or were some of them plants by police or the authorities in an attempt to ruin a peaceful and historical movement (not that they did)? I stood next to them in solidarity of being open-minded to different views and tactics of protest even though I did not partake in property damage. And I understand and feel the overwhelming anger towards banks and corporations enough that I would even like to smash up the banks. But the fact of the matter is, this group was unsympathetic to other protesters’ views, yelling things like, “Get that hippie shit outta here, go back to the 60′s if you don’t want real change, we will continue to be oppressed without doing this.” I respectfully said that they sounded like the 1%. The kids in black chanted, “property damage is not violence.” True, property damage doesn’t harm humans physically, and I understand the significance of property damage. However, it gives the corporate media leverage against the movement, leverage that we don’t want them to have. And of course, most photos online were of property damage, not of the constructive and beautiful parts of the protest, but of the damage, making it seem as if this was what the general strike was about. I know, what else is new, right? But to the kids in black I ask, who are you really? Whose side are you on really? Do you believe in different points of view and tactics or only your own? Were you paid off by right wing nut jobs to try and sabotage our movement? Take off your mask and answer me. If you really want to shut down the banks, we have to work on pamphlets encouraging an educational boycott of big banks (I know about Bank Transfer Day, I have already switched to a credit union), because many Americans are still ignorant to the evil doings of big banks, although we know the truth.

On a tangent and a different note. I am the 99%. I was there because I believe in shutting down capitalism, making education free and affordable, making health care universal, abolishing an electorate system that allows for ignorant, unqualified politicians to buy their way into office, I believe in shutting down big banks and corporations, and stopping the attacks on public education and the mass of the American people. I was also at the general strike for personal reasons. My mother has faced declining mental and physical health over the last ten years or so, due to the corrupt health care system and prescription pill industry. She has back problems, she lost her job, she can’t work, and on top of that she has a two year old son and a seven year old son, my little brothers who I love and care for as sons. They have been homeless for over a year now, and currently are living on her ex-husband’s living room floor. I am 25 years old, a UC Berkeley graduate, with few job options except for the one I have which cannot support a family. But now I am faced with housing and caring for a sick mother and my little brothers when my rental lease is up in February. But we are still blessed and grateful that my family is not living in the ghetto parks of east and west Oakland as many families are and have been for a long time. My brother has served in the bullshit wars our government has waged on innocent nations, and even he (now an army recruiter) is now questioning the government and military about their corrupt and illogical tactics, especially since the brutalization of Scott Olsen by Oakland police. This is not my pity party Occupy Oakland post. It is truth. The lack of social infrastructure, the stripping of social welfare programs, the abundance of money-mongering pill corporations and doctors who hand out morphine, Xanax and Prozac like candy to silence and dumb down the oppressed, all this and many other forces worked to make my mom sick, ignorant, and unable to care for her family. I and everyone else have felt first hand the recession and this corrupt system that was made to trample on the lives of the masses.

I and many others know the blinding anger and frustration of being the oppressed. But smashing property just makes us look stupid in the media. I would love to smash up corporate property, because I am angry. But I am also aware and sympathetic of the fact that many rely on shit-pay jobs with big banks and corporations to feed their families and survive, and fucking up their workplaces isn’t going to give them or the mass of Americans a clear and intelligent message about the movement. I think it is heinous that people even have to depend on work from evil banks and corporations, that many feel they have no choice but to take what they’re given. But I think we should work on educating the employees of big banks and corporations as to why people are against the banks, and why the employees of banks and corporations should be aware of corruption in their workplaces, and why they should strike and join Occupy Oakland. Believe it or not, many of them do not know, and the ones that do know just need more education and constructive discussion on big bank corruption.

The purpose of this post is to generate discussion about those who caused the property damage during the general strike, sorry if I rambled. I just wanted to be clear about the fact that I am angry, furious and for fighting the banks, but I am against anyone who attempts to sabotage a peaceful and historical movement.

Love,

Jenny

An open letter from an Anarchist with Occupy Oakland.

After the successful national day of action and general strike in Oakland, naturally, we see the topic of violence and non-violence growing within our movement and within the voices of corporate media networks. Obviously this is a result of certain actions that individuals and groups within the movement decided to partake in. Unfortunately we are hearing a great deal of slander, and nonsense at the forefront of this discussion. As someone who has been with the occupation as much as possible, I feel it’s necessary to confront this.

Isolating people based on their willingness to engage in self-defense by actively protecting the spaces we’ve all worked so hard to build together, and the symbolic defiance of exploitative property by making absurd claims of them being “Outside agitators” as if it they are some how separate from the many people who have been actively involved in building these spaces of ‘direct-democracy’ and communal living should not only be considered an attack on solidarity, but an attack on movements of the people. What divides movements of the people, weakens movements of the people.

Many of us out there today and tonight were Anarchists, but many were also not. We are the ones who were in the streets, ready to provide support & solidarity with all of our brothers and sisters. We were ready to brave against the violence of the state arm and arm with you, to protect one another, and provide medic support to anyone who fell victim to the police assaults. We are the ones whom also involved themselves with serving food to the commune, providing sanitation, organizing actions and broadening the movement. We are not separate from the movement. We are not outside agitators. We are a part of the movement, we are involved with the struggle. We stood with the occupation before day one, we stood with the occupation tonight and will continue to do the same in the future. Don’t let age old divide and conquer tactics convince you otherwise, please.

What do I mean when I say “by actively protecting the spaces we’ve worked so hard to build together”? Well I’d like to invoke a quote taken from a statement of solidarity with the occupy movement written by Egyptian activists and rebels, “It is not our desire to participate in violence, but it is even less our desire to lose. If we do not resist, actively, when they come to take what we have won back, then we will surely lose. Do not confuse the tactics that we used when we shouted “peaceful” with fetishizing nonviolence; if the state had given up immediately we would have been overjoyed, but as they sought to abuse us, beat us, kill us, we knew that there was no other option than to fight back. Had we laid down and allowed ourselves to be arrested, tortured, and martyred to “make a point”, we would be no less bloodied, beaten and dead. Be prepared to defend these things you have occupied, that you are building, because, after everything else has been taken from us, these reclaimed spaces are so very precious.” Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, those of us who belong to the community and movement of many Occupations around the globe can relate to this quote all too well. They continue to attack us & our reclaimed communal living spaces with a clear display of intimidating tactics, force, and brutal violence. To only add to this, their militarized presence alone is a form of violent authority.

Is it correct to call defense of our direct-democracy,our autonomy, our communities, and bodies senseless, and violent? Is it OK to attack the legitimacy of the countless struggles that have chosen to do this? Were individuals on the Nile bridge (Egypt) whom, literally, fought off police attacks senseless? Were the Argentinians resisting the ruling classes in 2001 by combating police attempts to violently remove them from the city center by charging down riot squads, senseless? Are the Greek anti-austerity mass gatherings and ‘occupy Athens’ senseless for doing the same? These are questions we must ask ourselves. I’d quickly respond saying,No,Not at all. Actually the strength of these movements grew and expanded in these moments of resistance. To quell spontaneous and energetic moments many people within the movement take part in, would be to to essentially contribute to extinguishing the collective power we’ve created. It’s important to remember our ability to adapt to situations and repression in necessary but diverse ways is what helps us become unpredictable, and a force to reckon with. This is what we need in order to remain strong under serious repression. It’s why we were able reclaim the Plaza, and it’s why we had the streets without much trouble from police for most of the day during the strike.

Now onto what I mean when I say “exploitative property”. We all see the sinister nature of most of these large financial institutions & multinational corporations, that’s why we’re all coming together to denounce them. Property owned by the 1% is used to exploit the labor of the people for the creation of wealth; The rights of their private property are continuously trumping the rights of the people. We can see this on physical display when veterans are getting shot at in Oakland, or when 3rd world Coca-cola union organizers are being killed by private militias and police enforcing ’property rights’. Hence, the use of the words exploitative property. You may say breaking a window is not largely effective, and I would agree with you 100%. That is not the point I’m implying. We call this violent, yet that very property some people wish to target is property used for the exploitation of the globe. Being starved is violence. Getting your arm cut off in a factory is violence. Development on indigenous lands is violence. Having your home foreclosed by Bank of America is violence. More than thousands of people being incarcerated is violence. The ‘rights’ of their property is upheld by violence, clearly. If certain people want to take part in acts against “property rights” of corporations as a symbol of defiance towards institutions of private tyranny, then so be it. I’ll send more solidarity their way than the way of the property of a bank. After all, who is more likely to help me set my tent up in the plaza, or to provide me with water as tear gas is launched. Who is anyone to shun, and demonize them blindly and rampantly? Lets not play into the role of the corporate media here, by becoming a mouth-piece of the interests of the “1%”.

Everything I’ve experienced with you all here in Oakland this Wednesday was for the most part exhilarating, amazing, and even inspiring. It’s great to see so many people uniting, and coming together to fight against the economic conditions the people of the world are subjected to. My intention with this letter was to express the need for the solidarity within the movement to remain strong; Diversity needs to be accepted. We are not blind, the situation is escalating and the movement must not devote itself to one approach with senses of dogma. As said before, strength comes from the ability to adapt when under attack. Don’t be fooled, we are under attack. Every single day, directly and indirectly. Do not denounce the courage of those willing to defend themselves and our collective spaces of direct democracy. Just as we shouldn’t denounce the courage of comrades who use their bodies in non-violent resistance. Know your friends, and don’t confuse them as your enemies. Support them. We’re all out here together, don’t let anyone change that. We have a beautiful thing happening in Oakland. LETS KEEP IT UP!

Signed,
your friendly occupying Anarchist.

[semper occultus]

If it comes to black, don the black, but it isn't time yet.

Most of us have a Mongol ancestor and maybe that ol' black DNA has me in its spell.

We hear men speaking for us of new laws strong and sweet,
Yet is there no man speaketh as we speak in the street.
It may be we shall rise the last as Frenchmen rose the first,
Our wrath come after Russia's wrath and our wrath be the worst.
It may be we are meant to mark with our riot and our rest
God's scorn for all men governing. It may be beer is best.
But we are the people of England; and we have not spoken yet.
Smile at us, pay us, pass us. But do not quite forget.

"The Secret People" ( excerpt )
G K Chesterton

[Project Willow]

These are very close to the discussions we had back during the WTO, with members of the bloc over the effectiveness of their tactics. I remember defending some of the property destruction, it did concretize the message. I remember yelling at a Starbucks executive through the hole in his smashed out window, about the plight of coffee farmers and non-union, low wage cafe workers. Of course I felt a strong identification with the bloc's outrage and its impulses. I decided it would have been more to destructive to insist these be stifled. The media would write whatever story it wished regardless, and the one it wrote was like a blow to the solar-plexus.

I'll also refute the notions that the bloc are all from Eugene or that they're all provocateurs. Something the media intentionally glossed over was the distinction between the bloc's targeted property damage and the random destruction committed by apolitical city youth who invaded downtown long after most protestors had gone home. As the nonviolent core watches the bloc, so should the bloc be concerned about opportunistic thuggery.

As for the movement deteriorating into a series of police confrontations, sometimes it is inevitable. In 1999, after Seattle outlawed gas masks and protesting outside of their predesignated "free speech zones" any kind of public assembly or address became a provocation, and all the other lines began to blur. We may see that yet in some cities. Occupy Seattle ceded its original symbolic ground in order to re-focus away from police confrontation and back onto individual protests and actions. The jury is still out on how well that is working.

....................

Triumph! Aaaaahh hahah! Too funny.

[Jeff]

As for the movement deteriorating into a series of police confrontations, sometimes it is inevitable. In 1999, after Seattle outlawed gas masks and protesting outside of their predesignated "free speech zones" any kind of public assembly or address became a provocation, and all the other lines began to blur. We may see that yet in some cities.

There is no 'clash of civilizations.' There is a clinically dead civilization kept alive by all sorts of life-support machines that spread a peculiar plague into the planet's atmosphere. At this point it can no longer believe in its own 'values,' and any affirmation of them is considered an impudent act.

The Coming Insurrection

[Jeff]

New York Post declares war on Occupy Wall Street

Occupy Wall Street beset by rumors of police crackdown

By Agence France-Presse
Friday, November 4, 2011

By Sebastian Smith

NEW YORK — Fears of a possible police crackdown spread Friday through New York’s Occupy Wall Street camp in the wake of violent clashes between police and protesters in California.

The camp that popped up in Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park seven weeks ago, inspiring similar anti-Wall Street demonstrations across the United States and in London, faces mounting political pressure, along with plummeting temperatures.

The police presence was unchanged around the cramped tent village, but angry comments by Mayor Michael Bloomberg and increasingly hostile coverage in parts of the New York media jangled protesters’ nerves.

The occupywallst.org website reported “rampant” rumors of police action and warned: “NYPD (police) could move in as early as tonight, or it could be next week. We know that our adversaries are trying to build political cover for eviction by demonizing us in the press.”

...

On Thursday, the mayor labeled the protesters “despicable” and “outrageous” for attempting to self-police incidents of reported sex assaults and other crimes, rather than go to the authorities. Protesters deny this is their practice.

Further heating the rhetoric against OWS are lurid media reports of unsavory behavior, including taking drugs and urinating in public. The popular New York Post tabloid has run prominent articles about the protest “insanity.”

...

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/11/04/o ... crackdown/

[Harvey]

the mayor labeled the protesters “despicable” and “outrageous” for attempting to self-police incidents of reported sex assaults and other crimes

You'd think he'd learn a trick and actually hire the protestors to police themselves. It'd save the city a fortune. Then they could infiltrate themselves, incite themselves, bash themselves over the head, and drag themselves away in the process.

Oh well, you try to help these government officials save some public money...