Snitching is not a tactic.
Snitching is an acquiescence. That is, snitching is one of many strategies that illustrates a reluctant acceptance of a state of affairs without protest.
OWS needs to learn acquiescence, in any form, is not acceptable.
If it works, break it.
I would become farts of flowers, farts of weeds, farts of trees,
bubbling farts of stagnant ponds.
Seoul. Chicago. Denver.
reader(s)
Snitching is an acquiescence. That is, snitching is one of many strategies that illustrates a reluctant acceptance of a state of affairs without protest.
OWS needs to learn acquiescence, in any form, is not acceptable.
You’re not going to impress anyone, Occupy Wall Street media team, when you say, in interviews, that you know that most OWS participants would turn-in to the police any participants who were “making molotov cocktails.” It’s not that we support people making molotov cocktails. Hell, who’s been making molotov cocktails anyway? It’s fucking ludicrous. It’s that you’d consider snitching something worth bragging about that’s the problem.
I don’t know who you’re attempting to distinguish yourselves from, but the problem isn’t violent protesters, is it. The problem is that OWS has been infiltrated, time and again, by agent provocateurs from the government attempting to make occupiers appear violent to the easily persuaded masses.
Moreover, you’ve implicitly aligned yourselves with the corrupt government and its militarized police force to illustrate your intent to be nonviolent. That’s right. The OWS media team has illustrated how its desire to practice nonviolent civil disobedience is also the desire to practice civil disobedience within the limits of the law the government is actively revising to marginalize the Occupy movement’s organized protests.
I have listened to Jeff Smith report on OWS from the beginnings of the movement. I respect him and his dedication, but this sentiment is completely unacceptable. Movement discipline must come from within.
I’d like to note that I enjoy Sam Seder’s Majority Report and support the show. Independent political programs are hard to come by in the US. Sam gets much respect from me.
Highly recommended reading. Thanks to the anon who sent me the link. I read Racialicious, but hadn’t seen this yet.
The story illustrates problems OWS has yet to do anything about, even though it claims it’s working on it, (which is a shitty excuse.) First, it has leaders. White people who believe their calls for social justice make everyone equal and allow them to speak for everybody. Second, it’s becoming a brand. A bad brand. “The 99%” is troubling because it assumes an equality between all US citizens that never has existed. Of course, “Occupy” is a terribly ironic and shitty brand name for what should be obvious reasons.
I am not going to use the 99% brand. I never liked it anyway and only used it to talk about the protesters. And I really hope that any of you involved with OWS can figure out ways to work on this. It should be being addressed everyday. This story infuriates me and illustrates the concept of possessive whiteness I addressed yesterday.
From the article:
As marginalized people in this country rise, new forms of oppression are at work – those who have not experienced systemic oppression are claiming it anyway, turning social justice on its head and diluting the messages and movements that have been our hearts and souls. I think this quote from the New Jim Crow sheds a lot of light on why OWS emerged the way that it did: “Following the collapse of each system of control, there has been a period of confusion—transition—in which those who are most committed to racial hierarchy search for new means to achieve their goals within the rules of the game as currently defined. It is during this period of uncertainty that the backlash intensifies and a new form of racialized social control begins to take hold.”
Demonstrators will stage protests at 2 p.m. off of Ingersoll Avenue outside of the Wells Fargo bank building and Mitt Romney’s campaign headquarters.
Protesters at a planning meeting this morning said they want to draw attention to campaign donations Wells Fargo has made to Romney. Some said they will risk arrest.
One demonstrator called the locations “beautifully symbolic,” because Romney is the epitome of the one percent of wealthiest Americans.
A group of about 50 people, including a handful from Michigan and New York City, met at a downtown loft office in the East Village neighborhood. Aware of the national spotlight shining on them, they settled on focusing their efforts on one location and a simple message to make a big splash that would resonate with the average person watching the coverage around the country.
Remember that Wells Fargo is the bank that gave “ghetto loans” to “mud people.”
Occupy Fist Dark T-Shirt
Wear this Occupy Fist apparel to show your support for the Occupy Movements message.
(via Occupy Wall Street Shop)
scum.
what the fuck is an occupy fist?
forty-minute interview. very good stuff.
THE OCCUPY MOVEMENT HAS A PROBLEM AND IT IS FLYING A BLACK FLAG
Even at the first rumblings of the September 17th actions in New York, I was absorbed by and enamored of the Occupy Movement. From the outset, it seemed as if it bore on its shoulders all of the promise of a new rebellious politic that, unlike the anti-war protests of the past decade, carried with it none of the baggage of my parent’s generation. It is the first truly significant American social movement of the social networking age. It is also the first American social movement driven largely by my generation, a fact that gives me no small measure of pride. It has the potential to enact sweeping change, not on the back of some messianic political miracle worker but, in the truest American tradition, at the hands of the people, through their hard work and perseverance.
Yawn. Some Artiste claims that Occupy is first authentic movement of some age that doesn’t exist. We must be getting a long whining argument about how The Artiste wasn’t treated fairly by all involved.
Go figure. Proceed.
So, my partner and I decided to start OccupyTV, a YouTube channel that aggregates Occupy related videos. We saw an opportunity to create a mass index, not unlike OccupyTogether, but of video content from around the world. The beauty of an online video is that it allows the viewer, no matter where they are, to take part in a protest from 50, or 500, or 5000 miles away. You don’t have to be in Oakland to be in Oakland, a fact illustrated by the incredible show of support that videos of last week’s clashes between the OPD and protestors elicited from the worldwide Occupy community.
WE started it! Something for everyone. WE did it. Did you see what WE did. For everyone! That thing WE did! My partner and I!
We saw the channel as a platform that we could use to produce our own video content from different Occupy locations. We’re artists, and we saw the potential to use art to help further the movement. In the interest of that end, we have been visiting Occupy encampments for about a month now, and we’ve started to notice something troubling. There exists within Occupy a dark and unsettling presence, a rabid dog unchained from its post. Call them Anarchists, call them Black Bloc, call them whatever you want. Any way you cut it, they are parasites, and they are going to eat this movement alive from the inside out.
Here comes the rhetoric! Kill the parasites! They’re going to eat the movement alive!
Well, at least they’ll destroying our art project.
We arrived late to the November 2nd Oakland General Strike, just in time for the one o’clock March Against Capitalism. Maybe that moniker should have served as a warning as to what would ensue, but for two doe-eyed, idealistic kids with a jonesin’ for some social justice, it seemed like the ticket to a winning start to the day.
WTF?! Free advice: don’t write like that. It makes you sound like an arrogant and ignorant, self-satisfied douche bag.
As OccupyTV, our sole interest is in capturing the events transpiring around us and creating media for and about the movement. We won’t stop you. Don’t stop us.
The language of free market capitalism. The fucking anarchists aren’t going to kill the movement, it’s the entrepreneurs and opportunists like you that the movement has to worry about.
thing is, when you start tampering with our equipment, when you start dismantling our rights in favor of your own, when you talk about horizontal power structures but place your interests above those of your fellow protestors, when you embody the very hypocrisy that you seek to unveil, it kind of pisses the rest of us off.
The idea that Black Block idiots would vandalize your equipment is really something that you must prove and your story isn’t really helping your case. What you could have written in two sentences, you’ve developed into a boring, over-wraught story, which is the sign of A Liar. You are getting ready to literally compare yourself to Dr King and the civil rights movement and offer Malcolm X as a foil in your story who deserved to die. That bullshit is yet to come in your shitty story. So, you really need to prove it because when we get to that shitty end of your screed, we’re all going to hate you anyway.
You could have written, “The anarchists we met did X, Y, Z to our equipment and we’re really pissed off.” And shown some illustration of the vandalism. Simple and honest.
We know what happened. You were have a pissing match with a few fashion anarchists and all of you acted like assholes, except the anarchists had the courage of their convictions and went as far as they claimed they would go, which you would never do because your primary motivation is a stupid media project for you and your partner.
That you have a problem with a small minority of anarchists who see their streetwork as an important part of the disobedience in the Occupy movement, well that’s the first thing you’ve said that might have any critical worth in this post. Unfortunately, you contrast what you don’t like about the anarchists with some weird argument about your right to conduct business. So, your argument is bunk. You have no warrant that anyone with a brain will care about. The movement is not an opportunity for your Artistry (which is suspect) to be cultivated.
In addition, you are a truly horrible writer. You knew it was coming, folks. Here is the moment the guy pulls off another guy’s mask. Are you ten years old? I’m supposed to take you seriously, and you’re trying to make fun of the anarchists you’re snitching on within your post. You’re still arguing with them. It’s petty. This is all show, isn’t it? A stupid, petty spectacle.
It was at that point that I did something rash. I waited for my chance, watching as the punk in question smeared every camera lens within reach, adding a cheerful “Thank you!” after each hit. A chorus of expletives erupted from the camera line, and he came toward me, reaching forward. I snapped my camera back, and then quickly followed behind him as he turned away, reaching around and pulling down his mask while shoving my camera in his face. Now, for the protestors who wear the all-black uniform with the ever-present facemask, this must have been akin to getting pantsed on the playground in front of all of your friends. I didn’t hit him or push him, but I did, in some small way, violate his person. This was foolish, and fundamentally wrong, and I should not have done it. I am big enough to admit that. But neither did it warrant the hours of verbal and physical harassment I would go on to endure over the course of the rest of the day.
Now here comes the tattle tale portion of the story where the artiste calls out the poseurs. My shit don’t stink either Mr We Film You Don’t Mess With Our Art Project That’s For Everyone After All I Mean We’re Like A Free Documentary Service Afterall You Can Have Your Movement And We Can Have The Product Right?!
What happened next happened too quickly for me to either see or process coherently, but I later gathered that two other men with black face masks tackled and pulled me off of the man whose identity I had sought to reveal. I don’t even particularly think they were in the wrong in doing so. We traded words, which included a threat on their part that I should put my camera away, but soon we went our separate ways, and I thought that to be the end of the whole affair.
[***]
I admit, it sounds paranoiac.
[***]
Side note: A few days prior to the Strike, I was talking to my mother about my plans to attend. My mother is no stranger to protest. Her first year at Berkley came to a grinding halt with Cambodia Spring. She knows how to deal with tear gas, and she made a point of explaining it to me. I did already know all of this, but it was endearing to have it explained by none other than my mother, and more to the point, it had set the thought firmly at the forefront of my mind. So, while I had not been wearing a bandana earlier in the day, it was simply because I had little reason to believe that tear gas would be used prior to the march on the port, if at all. But, once we got underway, I tied a bandana around my neck in anticipation of a potential showdown not with the OPD, but with the CHP, the Border Patrol, and the Coast Guard.
I’m so authentic, my mother is authentic. MORE BULLSHIT.
[A HORRIBLE SUMMARY OF BICKERING BETWEEN CHILDREN HAS BEEN EXICSED] …Malcolm X was assassinated by his own—by members of the Nation of Islam because he had broken with the fundamentalists. Dr. King was a martyr, Malcolm X was a hit; there is a difference.
Wow. How is it that Americans consistently use black people to make their stupid points about violence in political rhetoric. There are other examples. And your oversimplification of both Malcom X and MLK is insulting and infuriating. You are an idiot.
Live by the sword, die by the sword, it’s a story as old as the hills, or at least as old as the Torah. An eye for an eye, the Good Book says. Is that really how we want to conduct ourselves? Getting lost in petty revenge acts against people who have been just as screwed by the system as we have?
Petty? Like this entire, stupid screed?
The tit for tat protest politics of a bygone era hold no promise for a generation that remains as yet un-jaded by the idea not of civil, but of political disobedience. The narrative of the pig and the righteous protestor has got to stop. Don’t focus on the cop, look to the top. And don’t taint something so nascent, so embryonic, with the cynicism of your failed revolution. We’re trying to do something here. Destruction and violence will only get in our way.
Yes. You are trying to do your art. You’ve made that clear. You began your post snitching on anonymous anarchists for fucking with your gift to the movement and now you’re ending with a call to organize behind your unified principles of civil disobedience (which are, by the way, grotesque and misinformed.) You are a hypocrite. A self-righteous ass. A self-serving Artiste.
I do not want “By Any Means Necessary” to become the epitaph of the Occupy movement.
The movement is dead. Like I wrote yesterday. We have opportunists here, using the movement to participate in the expression of energy in a safe manner over the course of a small period of time that they’ll document in a manner that will permit some profit when it’s all over.
These people are dangerous. The unruly and rude anarchists are not the problem.
I do not want to live in a country that restricts the rights of journalists and artists, or worse, actively encourages their harassment and abuse. I do not want to live in a country in which it is permissible to commit random acts of assault, vandalism, and violence against those with whom you disagree. I do not want to live in a country in which I fear my fellow citizens, and I do not want to protest with a movement in which I fear my fellow protesters. If this is the future that Occupy holds, you can count me out. And I am not alone.
Now the Artiste will make his Artiste Statement! I do want this~~ I don’t want this~~ See me this way~~ I am the 99%. Self-branded, self-fulfilling bullshit. THEATER! SPECTACLE! ACTING! FREE~DOM!
Here comes the promise to snitch.
In summary, our equipment was tampered with, we witnessed multiple instances in which our fellow photographers’ and videographers’ equipment was tampered with, we were singled out and harassed both physically and verbally by the Black Bloc contingent, and we witnessed numerous acts of physical violence against persons and property alike. When you no longer feel safe with either the police, or with the protest, it’s time to go home. The Occupy movement has a problem, and it is flying a black flag.
-OccupyTV
"
The crisis of capitalism is the hegemony of finance capital, which is beyond repair. $16 trillion dollars in infusions from the public sector under President Obama – more than the gross domestic product of the United States – have failed to cause Wall Street to function as a social asset of the nation or the global economy. Quite the opposite; finance capital preys on the real economy and is most responsible for devouring and privatizing the public sector, leaving the people naked to the predations of a dying and parasitic system.
People can choose to be ruled by rich men who call themselves “markets” or they can trust themselves to erect public institutions that are responsive to human needs. For four weeks now, the swelling OWS movement has claimed to be contemplating how to harness democracy and end plutocracy. Since it is patently clear that plutocrats and democracy cannot coexist, the project is to rid us of the plutocrats, while there’s still time to save our world. Once that’s understood, the rest is in the details.
"I wrote the other day that arrest is inevitable, that police action is inevitable, when we participate in social movements that focus on justice. We should expect it, embrace it, cope with it, and continue to act out. It’s part of our vow to civil disobedience.
Mayor Bloomberg has been working hard to figure out how to shut down the Occupy movement in New York City. They have learned from the recent eviction in Boston and will attempt to evict the Occupy Wall Street protest from the park they’re occupying. If they attempt to evict, they will succeed. Occupiers should do their best to make it as difficult and visible as possible. If the state has the will to evict, it will successfully evict.
Bitching about it—amplifying the news of the impending eviction—is less important than showing up and getting arrested. Go there, if you can, and prepare to spend some time in jail. If I was in the region, I’d be in a car, bus, train to the city right now. Put your lives on hold for 48 hours and do some good. Get to that park and help make Bloomberg’s attempt to shut down the movement as difficult as possible. Celebrate our right to protest. Make it a party. It’s never comfortable to get taken down by a cop, but it’s totally worth it. I’m serious: celebrate the opportunity.
There are enough Occupy protests in other cities that the movement will not die if the first Occupy site is evicted. And I’m sure, organizers are already preparing to occupy a new site. If they aren’t, they should be. The movement will only grow stronger with each eviction and mass arrest of peaceful protesters.
My last post on the movement and the difference between focusing on economics and economic justice.
9/11 First Responder Occupying Wall Street
(more like this, please.)
Over Twitter, a department spokesperson warned activists the police wanted to “curtail additional damage to newly developed green space” because “the Greenway Conservancy recently invested over $150,000 in new plantings for all to enjoy.” The Greenway Conservancy is a private non-profit organization that raises funds for the public park. Its board is comprised of several of Boston’s wealthiest financiers.
Before the mass arrest and destruction of the second Occupy Boston encampment, police media relations issued a statement that “the Boston Police Department respects your right to protest peacefully.”
“The problem is not corruption or greed - the problem is the system.”
“We are not destroying anything, we are only witnessing the system destroying itself.”
Zizek on the human microphone is very funny. I’m sure he thoroughly enjoyed this moment. Hearing the crowd repeat his old jokes is cute. Highly recommended.
I don’t mean cute in a bad way. His speech is spot on. “Don’t be afraid to really want what you desire.”
(Source: chipclayton)
