Be Like Water

Been following some of the hundreds and thousands of daily/nightly/constant protests around the world with a focus on Portland, Oregon. I want to see whether any of this is going to amount to anything good. So far, I can't say.

What I can say from what I've been seeing on the various livestreams is that there are far too many police, and most of them are doing nothing useful at all. Their primary task in Portland and many other places is protection of their fortresses. That's it. Nothing else. Night after night, day after day, the police assemble in multitudes while the public assembles their on their own account, and then they do battle in the streets. Or not. All to protect and defend the police and (in)justice offices, courts, jails, headquarters, fortresses.

They march. They run. They pant. They brutalize. They run. They halt and catch their breaths. They run and brutalize. They tumble and fall over people running away from them. They halt. They pant. They yell. They thwack people who don't run fast enough. They confiscate bicycles, umbrellas, back packs, water. They pop the tires of the Snack Van, over and over and over again. They run. They pant. They yell.

This is Portland, but it's also hundreds of cities and countries around the world. Minsk. Paris. Beirut. Bolivia. Thailand. Hong Kong. Chicago. Baltimore. Washington, DC. Seattle. Los Angeles. On and on.

The protest movement is like water. Everywhere. Nowhere. All at once. Intermittent.

The issues: Dignity. Justice. Community. Peace. The issues: corruption, injustice, racism, no-future. Increasing suffering. Hunger. Homelessness. Debt. Illness and death.

And most police do nothing useful at all. They are emblems, symbols of a useless, death-dealing ruling class, united against the people they fear and despise.

And Another Thing -- Imagining a World Without Police

Tens of millions of Americans have been forced into poverty since the implosion of the economy in 2008. Millions continue to be forced into poverty by economic design and government policy. As many have come to realize, this is happening because the government of the US -- and most of the rest of the world as well -- is captive to a tiny and shrinking cohort of super-wealthy, the nearly god-like 1% (it's actually a much smaller cohort than that), against whom the 99% have been struggling for years.

The impoverishment of so many in part to maintain the power and wealth of the very few has meant that the police function has been modified to ensure the Rabble never rise in rebellion enough to jeopardize the wealth or power of those very few who rule.

Ever.

The police don't just suppress crime, or what they call "crime," they actively enforce rules that maintain those in power against any serious opposition.

Since the economic collapse and the subsequent impoverishment of so many millions, the role of the police in suppressing the Rabble's many rebellions has been highlighted at home and around the world. Part of the process of suppression involves killing designated Others on a fairly regular, almost routine, schedule.

The killing is a form of psychological warfare which can be effective, at least in the short term.

It's primary purpose is to put the fear of lethal consequences in the masses by periodically demonstrating what the police are capable of. It has the appearance of arbitrary killing -- which is the point. Fear is a means of control.

The idea is for the People to become docile and obedient sheep.

But what happens when the sheep say, "Stop it! No more!"

We've seen over the past nearly a year now -- since the demonstrations against the killing of James Boyd in Albuquerque -- that those in power and the police who serve them are flummoxed. They don't know what to do -- except to do more of what they've been doing, which makes things worse, not better.

So they try the opposite accommodationist tack which backfires because nobody believes them.

Now we're in a situation where there is a national movement to curb police violence, over policing and mass incarceration (all are related) and on the margins, at least from appearances, individuals are taking matters into their own hands to impose some of the arbitrary violence on police that they have been imposing on communities for ages.

This situation has the makings of an open civil war.

Some people, of course, would get off on such an eventuality, but at any given time, most people would be deeply opposed. It is unlikely that the People would win a direct confrontation in any case.

Instead, I believe something subtler is necessary.

Start with imagining a world without police, without the brutality and burden of over-policing, and without the systemic abuses of mass-incarceration.

Admittedly, this is not a mainstream vision at all, though there have been many working on envisioning such a future for many years.

Angela Davis has written (65pg pdf) and spoken extensively on the topic of prison abolition.

Her sister, Fania Davis, is a strong advocate of Restorative/Reparative Justice as an alternative to the punitive justice system that is so grossly out of whack and destructive today.

Peter Gelderloos is an anarchist theorist and writer who sees the that time is right to end the regime of cruelty and destruction that the police have become and abolish them altogether.

"Another World Is Possible." 

Isn't it?

There are plenty of non-police community-based models for handling disputes and certain crimes which are being employed more or less widely in parallel with, often in collaboration with, the mainstream justice system -- which more and more is being seen as a system of gross injustice.

Alternatives to prison are widely employed as well. It is not as if we don't have any means to break the stranglehold of violent policing, over policing and mass incarceration, it is more that there is a deeply entrenched power-and-money interest in maintaining things just the way they are -- or increasing the destruction caused by the current system.

It's a terrible cycle to be on. The only way off it that I know of is to break free. Refuse to be part of it.

To be successful, refusal has to come from many directions at once, and that is a part of what we're seeing in the #BlackLivesMatter movement which came to national attention after the killing of Mike Brown in Ferguson, MO last August.

Many threads of rebellion and resistance are being woven together.

Alternative paths are being found.

Many of those involved are still dependent on police and the system they are part of and support, but many others are exploring alternative means and methods of defining and finding

DIGNITY, JUSTICE, COMMUNITY, and PEACE

Authority is scrambling for relevance without resorting to -- too much -- violence and brutality, but their tool-kit has been deliberately restricted to sadistic repetitions of scenes of brutality and bloodshed. 

When they see use of force as the only option, they have basically lost the contest, much as American troops have done in their various wars and occupations overseas. 

They may win battle after battle, but they cannot with the contest with the violent means they have chosen and they seem unable to imagine (that word again) anything else. Doctrine forbids it.

The People, however, are under no such restriction to violence alone, and in fact, for the most part, the People won't resort to violence at all.

Instead, they will do something else -- they will refuse, reject, and rebel against the continuation of the destruction brought on by the current models of policing. They will adopt and utilize alternatives. They will demand the reform or the abolition of the police as we know them. They will march and protest and demonstrate and demand. 

And some will imagine a world in which the current system of injustice is gone.

"A Better World Is Possible."

War and Destruction and Depopulation -- Never Let a Good Crisis Go To Waste

So if I'm reading the beads right, there is war crisis brewing on several fronts simultaneously, driven by a whole passel of "enemies" -- both real and manufactured -- of the GreatandGlorious Western Peoples and Way of Life, ie: The Empire of Chaos and Gloom.

Mkay.

Here we go again.

I said I dreaded what was to come Post-Labor Day and this is why, and this is largely what. Allowing and then tamping down the rage and outrage in Ferguson now seems to be part of the Plan all along. No wonder Darren Wilson was whisked into seclusion where he remains to this day. Protected, he is. By... whom? Ferguson PD or City Admin? No, not likely. More likely, some Greater Entity.

I'm even wondering if Brave Officer Wilson actually was a hit man. On a mission to find and kill him a Black Man, to trigger a "riot" that wasn't, and to keep the focus of media and public attention on the events in Ferguson, and on the topic of militarized domestic policing -- with much, much display of hardware and manpower to cow the rabble, much display of authority (in the sense of 'authoritay'), much chaos, but actually very little to show for any of it.

Was Ferguson an end-of-summer distraction? A Shark-nado for the masses? I commenced to wonder when Tim Pool was sent out to the hustings by VICE and almost immediately got himself into hot water with the Authoritays, almost (but not quite) getting arrested, then pinned down (oh yes!) by flying bullets ("shots fired! Shots fired!" he was chanting this almost like a mantra during much of his time on the mean-streets of Ferguson), then hit by a rubber bullet ("I'm hit! I'm HIT!!! I'm OK!") as he makes his way through the flying gas and smoke and Negroes of Ferguson. Oh, it was so dramatic. Breathtaking. And in the morning it seemed so false.

Was it a show or was it real?

Soon enough, the New Black Panthers, the Nation of Islam and the local clergy become recruits by and for the police to tamp down and control and channel the protests, and Captain ("Magic") Johnson, the Black Face of August Authoritay, praises their efforts to bring calm and control to the Negroes of Ferguson, to mollify them, to keep them within carefully set boundaries and to find and eject the agitators and revolutionary communists in their midst. Wait. The Fuck? Communists??? But yes, they were there, almost from the beginning, Bob Avakian's RCP, right out front carrying their banners and shouting their slogans for Revolution! Now! and what a wonder it was to see. I saw them on the Livestream, I think it was the Fox2 Livestream, and their lead agitator, IIRC, was even given a live interview early on in the protests, though he wasn't identified as RCP at that time. Not that I recall. The banner they carried and led parades with was noted but not particularly worried over. It was just part of the scene.

The only problem with the RCP is that it is largely white, and very -- VERY -- small in numbers. Their "agitation" amounted to talking smack about the police and the authoritays. Who wasn't doing that, fergawssake? But once the Men (and Women) of the Cloth were recruited to curb and channel the crowd's enthusiasm for making mischief and defying commands of constituted Authoritay, the communinists and agitators were summarily ejected from the festivities in the streets, never to be seen again.

If they were real agitators, this couldn't and wouldn't have happened. Making them out to be communists was a stroke of brilliance I haven't seen for a good long time, and it worked like a charm. To be blunt, the actual agitators within the crowds were suspected to be police plants from the outset. They were the ones "throwing things" at the police, thus triggering the gassing and grenading of the people time after time after time. Even the few looters were alleged to be plants, recruits in other words, set to their task by the police themselves, police who looked on as the looters did their business, police who looked on and refused to intervene. This was noted by the crowd and it was recognized for what it was: additional provocation enabled and quite likely directed by the police themselves. There were so many signs of this kind of thing throughout the period of protest in Ferguson.

The people seemed to understand at least some of what was going on. And their frustration was palpable. But when the high profile celebrities showed up, most of the fire went out of the protests.

The Reverends Al and Jesse led the parade of high-status Negroes who descended on Ferguson, culminating with the Highest of the Mighty, the AG Himself, Eric Holder who spoke with delegated representatives of the People, in quiet rooms off the main protest routes and listened to their concerns with gravity and skill. He listened and listened and promised swift action on the matter of the dead boy, what was his name, oh yes Michael, Michael Brown. That was it. He flew back to DC, a job well done.

And then just yesterday he announced that the whole matter of the Ferguson PD will be investigated. Thoroughly. This led to intense cheering in the usual places. Finally! Something would be done! Well, except that DoJ investigations of such things tend to take forever, and a report is delayed and delayed and delayed unless there is some kind of agitation and uproar among the People (often enough driven by another police killing) at which time the Report will be released, but then many (many!) more months pass while an "agreement" is hammered out with the affected Authoritay, only to see, years and years down the road that little or nothing has actually changed, except that the repression of particular segments of the population has been professionalized. Oh, I've seen it happen. Again and again. And if the local Authoritays wish to, they will monkeywrench the whole thing. Even professionalizing the repression can get their goats. See Oakland and Seattle among a number of examples.

So. All this was going on at the end of summer and it was quite a show, but it's over now, and we've moved on to the war drums that were beating all along, with many, many fronts opening up, a battle space that is, for all practical purposes, all of Africa, all of Asia, and all of Europe. The Entire Old World. How interesting. India was just added yesterday, as the more or less eclipsed 'al Qaeda' announced it was opening a branch operation in Mumbai or someplace to stir the pot as it were.

The Middle Kingdom, China, has been on the periphery of the Battle Space, and wisely chooses not to get involved in the squabbles of the Outer Barbarians, but does one really think that China isn't the ultimate prize coveted by the Western Powers That Be, just as it was in the 19th Century? Jebus, it's so obvious.

Our Rulers have reverted in the West to the expansionist/imperialist era of times gone by, and they can't seem to help themselves.

The Freaks and Crazies running things in Europe are absolutely bonkers as they passionately foment War Against Stalin, er Hitler, er Putin the Devil, laying waste to Ukraine in the process. The death and destruction and dislocation brought on the east and south of Ukraine has left many towns and villages totally destroyed and the main cities suffering from want and disease and scattered destruction from (highly illegal) indiscriminate shelling by untrained and antagonistic Ukrainian "troops," some of which are apparently nothing more than rampaging death squads, and most of which seem eager to desert before they are wiped out by a motivated by ill-equipped resistance.

What fresh hell is this?

The sabers are constantly rattled at Putin the Devil, but then when he rattled his own sabers the other day, the Freaks and Crazies running the goon show in Europe ratcheted back their belligerence just a hair and started talking cease-fire, blah blah blah. What cowards they are. The Kiev junta have few troops and apparently fewer supplies with which to continue their course of death and destruction in the Donbass, and a million or more refugees have already fled, and much destruction has been accomplished, along with some thousands of dead "on both sides" -- although there have been statements that up to ten thousand "Ukie" soldiers have perished in their futile attempt to dislodge and destroy the Donbass resistance, and there's general mutiny now among the remnants. Well, could be, I don't know. The news from there is heavily shaped by propaganda. What's really going on is a mystery -- except for the fact that it is obviously ugly.

Of course this could all be Phony War and Phony Pause before the all-out Nuclear Holocaust we've been waiting for... If the freaks and crazies want it so, so it will be, and there is next to nothing we can do about it apart from finding some remote corner of creation to hunker down in. Get out of the way of the inevitable. What will be will be and we don't have a say.

That's something they -- the big bad They -- always want us to believe, but it may be true more than ever this time around.

The destruction of Libya, Gaza, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and many remote corners of Africa and the bombardment of parts of the periphery of Asia continue apace. Nothing seems to interfere with the destruction and death and dislocation.

Observers question the underlying causes though. They question the legitimacy of the various metastasizing rebel outfits -- suggesting that many if not most of them are creations of the very powers which are so bravely fighting them, much as Hamas came out of the Israeli need for a Palestinian counter to Fatah. They create their own enemies, in other words, for the purpose of having a boogie man to fight.

In other words, if the natives won't rebel properly, the colonial powers will create a rebel force to fight against.

Colonialism and imperialism are the driving principles, plainly enough, but the upshot where all this induced chaos is supposed to lead, is not clear at all.

This is not the march of totalitarianism, after all, no matter how much we're supposed to believe it is. Nor is it the clash of civilizations. The level of agreement among the ostensible combatants is striking. It's not even a system against system conflict. It appears to be nothing more than a contest for dominance between related interests, like a business competition for dominance of a market with similar (worthless) products and (lack of) services by all contenders.

Colonialism and imperialism are the type-models for this global conflict, but that's not the reality of what is currently going on. There will be no colonies or overt empires as of yore, no matter who or what emerges triumphant. Instead, there will be... nothing?

The crippling drought in California seems to have shaken at least some of the Ruling Class enough for them to realize that the Climate Crisis may now be beyond their ability to take advantage of. I don't know. Droughts will come and go after all, and there is no certainty that the water crisis in California will continue indefinitely. But there is near-certainty that there can be no reversing of the Climate Crisis by main force and will alone. All the warned of calamities are inevitable therefore, and there is nothing to be done about it. It is what it is.

Thus Ultimate Chaos?

Seems to be the way they see the future. Rather than delay it, they go with the flow, inducing Chaos where it isn't yet the natural state of things, spreading it by degrees hither and thither before Nature can do it for them prefiguring the inevitable wrack and ruin.

I don't know that that's what they're thinking, but it sure looks like what they are doing.

We aren't even pawns in that game.

We are being ruled by threat and force now, not persuasion. We are being told we do not control anything, nor shall we be allowed to. We have no say in what will be.

That was the late summer lesson of Ferguson.

So it is and will be in distant lands as well. Have the Freaks and Crazies who rule us decided our fate, like herders of yore?

We. Shall. See.

(Pssst: another world is possible...)

Infiltration and Surveillance of Peace-Groups

During the weekend march and rally to end police violence in Albuquerque, even from my distance out in the country, I could feel a palpable sense of paranoia that the march and the movement were being infiltrated by police and perhaps others who wished it ill, and there was little or nothing that could be done about it.

David Correia shot and posted several photos of "undercover" police (who were, as is so often the case, very obvious) and KRQE ran a curious story about infiltration and surveillance of the rally and march by a police intelligence "sergeant" who shot a drug-suspect in 2012. No one, so far, has been able to find this person in any of the hundreds and thousands of pictures and video taken of the march and rally, however, so the question is whether he was actually at the march and rally or was the announcement he was there meant as a provocation?

That question is much like the question of the untagged car that plowed into the march just as it was starting off from the park. No one was hurt, so there's that, and David Correia stood in front of it, preventing its passage, until most of the marchers left the park, but the presence of this car with no license plate at the very beginning of the march was curious given the police promise to "control traffic."

Who was the driver? Why was he there at that time? How did he get through the supposed cordon?

I imagine he was a resident from nearby, but there is no way to know for sure.

That lack of certainty of knowing who is who in movements has always been a difficulty, one that can sometimes be debilitating. We know from many years of experience and from the testimonies of our elders going back long before our own experience that movements "on the left" are always and persistently thought of as threats to the established order, and they are always surveilled and they often disrupted by the police and various nefarious other interests. Always. There has perhaps never been a peace-group or movement for social-political change on the left that hasn't had its activities closely scrutinized by the authorities, and that hasn't been subject to infiltration, disruption, and disturbance by agents of The Powers That Be.

Paranoia strikes deep. 
Into your life it will creep.
It starts when you're always afraid.
Step out of line, the man come and take you away.

Truer words were never spoken, though those who have never felt the cold breath of surveillance  and infiltration at their backs may not be able to comprehend or empathize much with those whose actions and activism are always being scrutinized -- and they know it.

That anthem of the restive 1960s has never really stopped being relevant, even though its reference was never all that clear -- it's not about anti-Vietnam-War demonstrations, for example. Just the same, when you know you're being watched and followed and reported on -- or you suspect you are -- because of your activism, are you really paranoid?

And why, pray tell, are the authorities still so interested in infiltration and surveillance of peace-activists and leftist non-violent groups?

They like to claim it's "for the safety of the demonstrators and that of the public" but of course that's horseshit.

The only "safety," comfort and convenience they wish to ensure is that of themselves and their sponsors.

Not that of the People.

Far from it.

It's a tough situation when you can't be sure that everyone in a movement is on the same page, you can't always know who all the infiltrators and subversives are, and you can't -- ever -- be free of surveillance and infiltration and the potential for disruption.

It's little wonder that so many movements fail or are destroyed.

Todd Gitlin had a column in the Guardian the other day (h/t wd) in which he tried to explain "what happened to Occupy."

It was a somewhat baroque exercise in futility, it seemed to me. Gitlin is a Movement Elder -- though not always an honored one -- for his New Left activism and his leadership of the SDS, Students for Democratic Society, in the 1960s, and for his extensive anti-war and divestment activism and voluminous writing since then. So far as I know, he was not an active participant in Occupy Wall Street or any of its hundreds of offshoots, but he was an observer and commentator on Occupy events and was active in the controversy over "violence" in Occupy. To my mind, he saw his role as that of adviser and scold to these upstart revolutionaries camping out hither and thither and making much hoo-hah over the "99%!" ("We are!")

In his Guardian article about "what happened to Occupy" Gitlin makes much of the fact that thanks to the pervasiveness of social media, it's easier now than it has ever been to organize social and political movements, and it is also quite easy for them to dissipate or be dispersed.

He relates Occupy to the uprisings in the squares of Europe and the Middle East, rebellions and occupations that either achieved their objectives of overthrowing corrupt and violent regimes, or as in Europe, set in motion the social and political mechanisms that will in due time replace the corrupt and decadent "democracies" that have failed the People.

But I would argue that Occupy never had the objective of "overthrow." And its approach to political matters was wildly aggravating to those who saw the movement as a means to reform the system.  Occupy Wall Street and its many offshoots was something else again. And it was because it was something else again, far more subtle in its intentions and activities, that it was seen as such a threat by The Powers That Be.

Occupy is still, in some sense, a threat. The potential is always there for it to re-emerge into the public eye. Whether it will remains to be seen, but the point Gitlin seems to miss completely is that Occupy never went away. The encampments have largely been replaced with much deeper-rooted community organizing and activism. The encampments can return at any time but the encampments are not the keys or the necessities for activism.

Strange that Gitlin doesn't seem to understand that, but I think in fact he does. Strange that he doesn't seem to know what those using the Occupy brand are doing in his own fair city of New York as well as elsewhere around the country and the world.

He's never heard of "Occupy Sandy?" He doesn't know about "Occupy the SEC?" What about "Strike Debt?" Have these endeavors penetrated his shields? Of course they have, they're just not mentioned by name in his article. There are many more than the ones listed. The fact that there are extensive Occupy newsletters and strategic planning endeavors, that there is an annual Occupy National Gathering (this year in Sacramento, July 31-August 3), and that Occupy-inspired community activism is widespread throughout the country, including involvement in the movement to end police violence in Albuquerque, seems to have escaped his radar. His old pal-or-nemisis, Mark Rudd -- who lives in Albuquerque -- might have let him know, but Ol' Mark, former radical and revolutionary, seems much more content these days with his involvement in traditional politics rather than whatever Occupy might be up to.

"Not knowing" -- or not mentioning or acknowledging by name -- what's going on is itself a factor in the surveillance and infiltration of leftist groups. I don't know whether that's Gitlin's role these days (I don't think it is) but by not clarifying that "Occupy" as such is not gone, not by a long shot, Gitlin serves the interests of the State. By implying that the State was successful in dispersing and destroying Occupy, and even by being oblivious to Cecily McMillan's much deeper involvement with prisoner-rights while she's in jail for "assaulting" a police officer in Zuccotti Park on St. Patrick's Day, 2012, he reinforces, even if inadvertantly (though I don't think it's that), the standard narrative of the "failure" and "end" of Occupy.

There are, of course, hundreds if not thousands of community organizations and activist endeavors that have come about as a direct result of Occupy and its dispersal into communities, something that was well under way even before the encampments were violently destroyed by the authorities. Much of the energy of Occupy came out of extant community organizations, and many of the Occupy participants and volunteers have remained activists since the encampment phase of the movement was suppressed. The belief that "another world is possible" is, in my view, stronger now than it was at the outset of Occupy Wall Street.

Yet the movement and all its many offshoots has never been free of surveillance and infiltration, and there will probably never be a time when it or any subsequent "leftist" endeavor is entirely free of the scrutiny and disruptive tactics of the State toward those it sees as threats.

Occupy is integrated into communities all over the country, and in a sense, that means communities are themselves regarded as "threats" by authority. The People in general, in other words, have come to represent a threat to Power. Dignity, Justice, Community and Peace are now seen as dangers to the order imposed from on high. 

Infiltration and surveillance are facts of life. Paranoia is a consequence, but it is not the only consequence. History shows that in time, deeply integrated movements can co-opt and overcome the machinations of the infiltrators and surveillance apparat. Those who would destroy the movement join it.



Well... almost...

The Oligarch-Fascist-Nazi Axis -- Normalization Phase or "TINA"

 TINA: "There is no alternative."

There is No Alternative from Churning the Earth

It's become explicit once again. So explicit is the resurgence of the Oligarch-Fascist-Nazi Axis that even private sector propaganda organs are no longer trying to hide it. Only state propaganda obscures or denies what is more and more obvious every day. With the recent election in India, practically the whole earth has now fallen under one or another Oligarchic, Fascist, and/or explicitly/implicitly Nazi rule, and governments by and large are fine with it. They encourage it. They instigate regime change in order to install preferred fascist regimes. They insist that there is no alternative. From a political and big ticket economic sense, they're right. There is only one way forward, and it is monstrous and cruel, and there is no succor or relief for those who can't or won't submit.

Watching events unfold, particularly in Ukraine lately, but in more and more places around the world for a decade and longer, is literally sick making.

How did we come to this point? And what do we do about it?

I'm seeing plenty of indications that Oligarchic/Fascist/Nazi rule is orchestrated at the highest levels of government throughout the West, and that essentially all Western governments have been synchronized and coordinated (in the very German sense of the word "Gleichschaltung") to follow a single path from which none deviate or even think of deviating. 

All of these coordinated governments are aligned with one another, but they are by and large governing contrary to the interests of their people. This has been a factor of American governance for many years, and I've made note of the habit of the American governing class to govern contrary to the public interest many times. "Governing contrary" to the public interest is now a feature of governments everywhere in the West. The idea has spread beyond its initial loci. It's like a disease that is unstoppable once the governing classes are infected.

The bulwark against the rule of the Neo- (con, lib, fascist, Nazi)s was thought to be Russia, for reasons I can't understand. Post-Soviet Russia is something of the type-model for what is being instigated and imposed pretty much world-wide.

Public wealth is appropriated by a handful of Oligarchs (or, in many cases, is "voluntarily" handed over after sale by pliant and sometimes eager governments). These Oligarchs then assert their authority and control over governments near and far, governments which must then serve the interests of the Oligarchs while keeping the Rabble in line -- by any means necessary. 

The Rabble lose their political rights as well as what was formerly available to them as "public good." Everything of value is seized by those whose greed is as unbounded as their power. There is nothing the Rabble can do about it. None of the formerly effective tools of "democracy" work for them any more. They keep pushing the "democracy" button nonetheless, in the hopes that perhaps someday in the future it will function once again.

It won't.

Keeping the Rabble in line requires clever psychological ploys which are mostly accomplished through propaganda in the media and indoctrination in the civic sphere -- including schools and workplaces and all the other institutions which are coordinated with the ruling parties. Should there be a breakdown in the psy-ops used against the people, and especially should the people rise against the rule imposed upon them, they are routinely given an ultimatum, and if they don't obey, they are crushed with whatever violence The Powers That Be choose to impose. Often enough, the ultimatum step is skipped, and TPTB go right to violence.

It is particularly true in the way policing operates these days: torture, assassination and summary execution are routine. Mass incarceration is standard. Injustice reigns in the courts. Government turns a blind eye to all the suffering and destruction among those who resist or who have the potential to resist. 

Everyone else is "coordinated" through patriotism, nationalism, race pride and other such means. 

Introducing the notion of perpetual war against shadowy but myriad enemies at home and abroad makes the process of coordinating the non-resistant Rabble to follow the requirements of their rulers that much easier. War reinforces the sense of duty and obedience that many people have quite naturally. There is no alternative to following the orders of those who know better when there is an existential threat to be thwarted, after all.

Those who resist are isolated and ultimately eliminated.

This is all being normalized as we speak. There is no alternative, and even if there were, would the alternative be much different?

Given the current level of propaganda, I'm not at all sure that most Americans are in a position to even begin to sort these things out. We're seeing how difficult or impossible it is for Europeans to do it these days, as the horrors of European austerity regimes cause more and more suffering. The Europeans no longer rise up against it as they once did. Now they are practically mute.

Russians have no greater level of freedom. 

Now that India is being "synchronized" with the rest of the neo-con/lib/fascist/Nazi New World Order, we have only some outposts here and there where something else again might be realized, and those places, one by one, are being integrated into the new global normal. Soon enough, will there any alternative anywhere?

The Oligarchs and the Fascists and the Nazis intend that there won't be.

Ever.

For Those Who Thought Occupy Was Dead

Occupy Network

We're coming up on the second anniversary of Occupy Wall Street -- really? Only that long ago? Wow. -- and for some time now, I've been hearing the chatter that "Occupy is dead." or "it was a tragic failure" or what have you.

The fact is Occupy doesn't get a lot of mainstream media attention these days, and it doesn't get very much alternative media attention either. So it may seem to have disappeared, but that is hardly the case.

My email inbox now has many thousands of messages from and about various and ongoing Occupy endeavors all over the country. Recently, there was the Second Occupy National Gathering in Michigan. There is an almost unlimited number of Occupy related activities in dozens of cities nearly every day.

I'm amazed, really, that after the brutality of the Occupy suppression during the fall and winter of 2011-2012 and the absurd level of public animosity toward anarchists and the Black Bloc led by Chris Hedges following the J28 actions in Oakland, anything of the movement survived.

But it did.

On Vulnerability and Power

Screen Grab from Nate's stream, 9/17/2012, on Broadway, just north of Wall Street.

Hmm.

Was watching a bit of the morning's festivities at the Wall Street protests, and as the march reached the hallowed thoroughfare the sight of ranks and ranks of police, behind ranks and ranks of barricades -- I counted four rows of police and four rows of barricades -- blocking off access to the metaphorical financial center of global misery. Rows and rows and rows of police, the final row mounted on horses, blocking off an empty and dreary street in lower Manhattan.

Not only is access to the street blocked off, but the police, herding the crowd on the sidewalk, becomes obstreperous, demanding that the people keep moving all the while forcing the crowd into smaller and smaller areas, sectioning them off, forcing them along in pods with their batons and shouts and demands, just like herding cattle at the stockyard -- or slaughterhouse, for that matter.

The sidewalk is almost magically cleared for almost half a block and marches -- indeed pedestrian traffic of all kinds -- is halted in all directions.

Police have been grabbing people from the crowd at random, pulling them out of the crowd and arresting them much as was happening the other day but not quite so brutally.

The chant goes up: "Ah! Anti! Anti-capitalista!"

Another chant: "We are unstoppable, another world is possible!"

Marches merge and converge all over the financial district. As police control one area, protesters take another route and overwhelm the police and take to the streets.

"Whose street? Our streets!"

It sounds like there are tens of thousands marching through the canyons of Lower Manhattan, but it is impossible to tell from the narrow view of the livestreamers embedded in the swirling, shouting mass. Nate says there are marches "everywhere" in Lower Manhattan, and he's only showing part of what is going on this first anniversary of Occupy Wall Street.

The crowd takes Water and Wall Street (it sounds like) and starts chanting, "Ah! Anti! Anti-capitalista!" The Rude Mechanical Orchestra play airs.

First Anniversary. I never thought Occupy would get this far or last this long. Given all the news reports of its demise ("Good idea, but it didn't have staying power, yadda yadda.") Occupy seems to be able to turn out crowds when need be, where necessary.

The power of the People seemed to dissipate, the vulnerability of the financial elites and the police who protect them and their treasure sites seemed to fade.

And yet, for a shining morning in September, the ranks of police and the system they're protecting seem more vulnerable than ever, the Power of the People more secure. For a moment. For now.

"Get up, get down, there's Revolution in this town!'

On the Anniversary of Teh Revolution(!)

Haven't had time to get caught up with the News of the Day this morning; don't even have the radio on -- somewhat unusual for me.

I spent a few minutes watching Nate's streams from New York last night before going to sleep, and it was a fairly dismal recapitulation of NYPD's usual thuggishness toward OWS or anything that might resemble OWS or might be construed as OWSish or hint at support for OWS -- or, most horribly, show a pup tent. Nate was clearly distressed at what he was witnessing and documenting. The videos were titled "March against OWS" -- which I thought was odd, but after opening one of them the full title was revealed, "March Against OWS Suppression." Ah, of course. Naturally, suppression had to occur.

From what little I saw, the suppression consisted of the now time honored police tactic of "snatch-and-grab," literally pulling people out of the march at random and arresting them. NYPD did this hundreds if not thousands of times during the later stages of Occupy Wall Street demonstrations, and it was clear then, as it is now, that it is a terror tactic designed and intended to suppress protest and dissent. "Snatch-and-Grab," along with mass arrests, infiltration, non-stop surveillance, intense police violence and brutality, public torture, and other methods were used successfully to shut down the encampments and prevent the emergence of a unified and coordinated revolutionary force.

These efforts to shut down OWS in New York were mirrored by (sometimes led by) similar efforts on the part of police departments throughout the country. It's striking that there is still debate over whether the federal government coordinated the crackdown against Occupy. Of course they did. It was obvious. Tactics of suppression were tried out in various cities (including my own fair city); "what works" and "lessons learned" were shared widely -- and quite openly -- through federal channels, and the the information was archived and no doubt studied intensely -- by DHS and the many other agencies that support the National Security State.

We live in a Police State.

And yet it is still debated -- because it's not as "bad" as the rest of them.

Of course the whole "(non)violence" debate served the purposes of that State nicely. By essentially claiming that the presence of people wearing black or bandanas or shouting at the police (or on very rare occasions breaking windows or committing other acts of vandalism) was "justification" for the police crackdowns or at least lost the Movement the Moral High Ground, the self-proclaimed "nonviolence" advocates actively split the Movement everywhere they could and in as many ways as they could, performing their role to ensure that the Occupy Movement did not become an effective Revolutionary Movement.

Old-line Socialists and a very diverse community of anarchists collided from the very beginning of the OWS efforts in New York and many other places, with the Socialists insisting that the anarchists were "doing it wrong," and the anarchists insisting that if the Socialists were an effective revolutionary force, we wouldn't be in this mess now. Many mutual anathemas ensued.

And yet the Movement inspired a raft of experiments in Future Living, something that we haven't seen in this country for decades. The Future, after all, was cancelled by the Reaganites back in the day, and there have been few public efforts to revive the concept of a Future. Now that Occupy provided a framework for the coalescence of Futurist visions and efforts -- yes, even the Zeitgeist and Venus Project people -- the most valuable and ultimately useful outcome of the initial phase of the Movement-Becoming-Revolution is the idea that there can be a Future, and that it will be better than today -- if we want it.

Another World Is Possible.

People all over the world are making it happen.

There is a march going on in New York right now highlighting the environmental degradation caused by fracking and the many other resource extraction and transport activities, including pipelines (Spectra in New York). Environmental issues have been at the top of the list of Occupy interests, along with civil liberties, democracy, ending wars, preserving and enhancing communities, preventing the systemic abuse of everyone who isn't part of the "1%", and so on.

I encapsulated the values of Occupy -- some growing out of the values expressed during the Arab Spring uprisings -- as:

• Dignity


• Justice


• Community


• Peace

 Seems those are still the guiding values.

Still working on the implementation phase...

We are unstoppable, another world is possible.

[Back to the packing for the big move for me... my friend may have been right. This is harder than I thought and I can't do what I used to be able to... old age is a bother..]

Change of Pace: Ms Katehi Sez

Herself, Linda Katehi, Chancellor of the University of California at Davis, under guard during the Student Assembly at UCD November 21, 2011.

I've been on a tangent lately, dealing with Other Things That Must Be Done. My blogging has been intermittent and I have not touched much on the various reports and issues surrounding the incidents of police brutality and administrative incompetence last fall, especially throughout the University of California system, particularly at UC Berkeley and UC Davis.

Teri49 in comments jogged me into thinking about these matters somewhat more than I have for a while, in part because of an incident in Santa Fe that wound up in Federal Court over the improper touching of Capital High School students by private security guards, and in part due to the fact that I'm surprised that the reports which have so far been released have been so highly critical of the University's administrators, essentially accusing them (accurately, I'd say) of pernicious ignorance of their student bodies and disinterest in their campus communities.

Indeed.

I really did not expect this.

And yesterday, Herself made an appearance at the California State Capitol wherein she averred she had personally erred last November in ways that led directly to the Pepper Spray Incident on the UC Davis quad.

Well. Who. Would. Have. Thunk?

Not I, that's for sure.

Look, the whole point of becoming an educational administrator is to avoid accepting responsibility for anything. Everybody knows that. The purpose of educational administration is to put the blame for everything on someone else, and preferably charge them for the privilege of being blamed.

In today's educational environment, it's about The Money, and that's just about all.

But there was Katehi over at the Capitol yesterday mea-ing and culpa-ing up a storm and a half.

What happened at Berkeley and Davis last fall (and other campuses, too) may have shocked the consciences of some members of civilized society, but it was no surprise to anyone who's been aware of or been around militant student protests for the last 30 years or so. It has been standard operating procedure for years for California university police to tase and beat the shit out of students who don't obey their commands promptly and with sufficient subservience. It has happened often enough -- and internationally notoriously, with numerous viral videos in the last few years -- for some people to recognize that this behavior on the part of campus police toward disobedient students is no anomaly, it is policy.

This is all tied in to the notion that obedience is the primary objective of public education, and has been for many a long year now, what with students at all levels of public (and some private) education being subjected to the arbitrary imposition of authority, often brutally, as a matter of course. As if they had no rights that anyone in a position of authority was bound to respect at all.

Public schools and colleges operate like -- and often resemble -- prisons, a factor that led to a spate of school shootings back in the '90's. Campuses are routinely put on "lockdown" -- just like prisons -- and students are routinely subjected to invasive and typically arbitrary search and seizure by campus police and administrators. This has been going on for decades.

"Disturbances" are routinely broken up with tasers, tear gas, batons and sometimes other weapons. Armed guards patrol not only the campuses but the nearby communities as well. There's a law school a few blocks from my house, for example, and the campus police routinely patrol and make arrests in the surrounding community. There is a school district police force -- actually in the school district that succeeded the one where I attended high school -- that is accused of using its powers of arrest to tail and arrest drivers in the area for various minor infractions as a money-making scheme for the district and the department. The level of administrative corruption in education has reached astronomical proportions. Michelle Rhee, for example?

This is the historic and backstory context of the Incidents at Berkeley and Davis last fall, something that so far as I am aware, none of the reports issued so far touch on, nor does the media seem able to pick up on the long-term pattern of brutal enforcement of Obedience in the American educational system.

But I have read the reports, and I am struck by how uniform they are in placing responsibility for what happened last fall on the administrations of the campuses involved, and the overall system administration, and for pointing out that these things have happened over and over again, reports have been issued over and over again, and for some reason, nothing changes...

Administrators are divorced from the student bodies and often from the faculty and staff as well; campus police forces are often left to do their own thing without guidance, or in the case of Davis, have been known to defy instructions (and did so on November 18); students and often the faculties and staffs of the university campuses have little or no trust in either the campus police or administrators.

This has been going on for decades.

This article from The Nation in March puts another angle on what is going on, the "Homeland Security Campus" angle, and I have to agree that the author has a point. There's a whole campus security back channel where the latest developments in repression are being discussed and means and methods tested. When Katehi and others of her ilk speak of the "health and safety" of the students, for example, and then in the next breath order the violent dispersal of a protest -- which has happened over and over again -- which often leads to broken bones and other serious health and safety consequences for the students, she's not speaking about the students' "health and safety" at all. She's concerned about her own health and safety -- ie: preserving her job and her $400,000 salary -- and about the financial health and the paramilitary "safety" squads who do the dirty work of stamping out unpermitted campus protest and enforcing Obedience.

I can recognize all this and more is going on, but I confess I don't know what to do about it apart from continuing and stepping up protests including occupations of campuses, and contrary-wise, refusing to utilize a University system that routinely brutalizes students and faculty.

One thing that's clear from the reports is that the administration of the University is very concerned with the reputation the system has gained for brutal and unnecessary police actions. The University has been heavily recruiting out of state and international students -- who pay even higher tuition and fees than in-state students do. They won't come if the campuses have a reputation for internal violence precipitated by the campus police.

So the adminstrators vow to clean it up by next year some time (ie: when the next cohort of high-value students is due to arrive.)

Meanwhile, the mess that public education has become in this country continues...

The following video is from last December in Sacramento:

And if you haven't already, read this article by Mark Ames to get a better picture of just who Ms Katehi is... layers and layers, wheels within wheels...

This Isn't A Joke. Srsly.

This sign has been showing up at the Nightly Union Square Eviction Theatre in New York, though the pic above dates from last October. I believe it was Dallas on the OWSHDTV livestream who dubbed the nightly show at Union Square "Eviction Theatre" -- and it's a good point. The whole effort, on both "sides" is now a Show. It's not entirely meaningless, but we know how each episode will end.

The closure of public access to any part of Union Square promptly at midnight each night for the past week is definitely fucked up and bullshit; last night, even the sidewalks around Union Square were forbidden, as police marched hither and thither inside the park while other units ostentatiously emplaced barricades and kept moving them to herd the crowd from place to place. It was a rainy night, so it wasn't a very large crowd, but it was boisterous as crowds tend to be in New York, and the police (at least some of them) appeared to be enjoying the Barricade Game while shoving the crowd this way and that and ultimately completely off the sidewalk and into the street. Haw. Haw. Suckers!

In New York, it has been almost unheard of for members of the OWS crowds to thwart the barricades. They are almost ritual lines -- like rope lines at a presidential appearance -- that you do not cross or mess with in any way. But last night, somewhat surprisingly, one section of barricade was overturned by members of the crowd, only to be re-emplaced by dutiful police. Members of the crowd also made and brought their own papier-mâché barricade to pose with and carry around. It was quite authentic looking.

There has been more and more clown policing at OWS events and at the nightly rituals of the Eviction Theatre. The crowds, mostly, love it, and it's clear that some of the police enjoy the spectacle of being mocked as well. They know (some of them) that what they're doing is fucked up and bullshit as well, so why not mock? Laugh while you can, monkey boy!
----------------------------------------------------------------------
I was at an Occupy strategy conference yesterday, and it bothered me more than I realized at the time. It almost didn't occur at all. Even though it had been planned and scheduled since January, the host site organization decided to schedule something else at the same time, and the site was not available. They made an alternate site available, but then they didn't provide access to it for quite a while, so the effort got under way an hour and a half late. Then, we were informed just before the lunch break, that neither site would be available after lunch, and we would have to arrange for another time and place to continue. There was no time at all to discuss strategy or anything like it.

Fucked up and bullshit. But as someone said, only half-jokingly, "Why don't we just occupy this space?"

Indeed.

There are said to be 55,000 vacant buildings in the county. Any of them would probably do... Were it not raining, we might have continued our business outside. Maybe even in the street.

I think part of what bothered me about the collapsed conference yesterday is that I saw it as something "outside" the Occupy framework, put together by people who have long been involved with Occupy but who really want a different kind of activist organization. It's not so much hijacking as it is trying to push the movement (at least locally) onto another path -- something that's been going on from the beginning. I don't know that it can be, or even should be, avoided. Part of the Let It Be philosophy. If the Occupy framework is weak, it will yield. If it is strong, it won't.

If I had a little more information, I could probably point to what went wrong pretty easily and offer suggestions of how to correct it. But then, maybe the whole thing was ill-advised to begin with.

Occupy is its own template, something that is still resisted by many who have long been involved in Occupy affairs. One of the curiosities of the National Strategy Discussion I'm involved in is that there are so many others involved in it who are really trying to create another movement altogether, and some are making believe that this, the Occupy Movement, hasn't actually "started" yet.

One of the quirks that I've mentioned about the blogosphere is the notion that everything is just "starting," that there is no history of pretty much anything, it's all brand new, or it's still only a potential, not even real yet -- even if whatever it is (like Occupy) has been ongoing for months or years. And it is sort of how some people see Occupy as well; it's "just starting."

It's true in a sense -- in that Occupy is barely 6 months old -- but let's get real here. Tunisia and Egypt went through their Revolts/Revolutions in a matter of weeks. How long is this Occupy Revolution supposed to take, and when will it no longer be "just starting?" When it becomes like Mexico's PRI?

"Strategy" is proving to be a real bear for Occupy in some respects. There really isn't consensus on definition of terms on the one hand, nor is there really a consensus that there is a need for a more comprehensive and coherent strategy than is already in place. Nor is there even necessarily a broad based recognition that there IS a strategy (or strategies) in place.

One of the notions I'm wrestling with is the idea that the Occupy Movement doesn't have any sort of Grand Strategy and it needs to start over and adopt the Gene Sharp recipe for Revolution. Furthermore, the only way to become a successful Revolutionary undertaking is to study and adopt the Revolutionary philosophy and methods of past masters of the Art of Revolution, according to those who "know" these things.

I strongly disagree. While Occupy is "Teh Revolution" -- the one many of us have been waiting for -- it isn't like, and it definitely doesn't look like Revolutions of the past, and to me, it's important that it not be like them, that it not look like them, and that it never "institutionalize." As an organic, evolutionary non-violent resistance campaign, it can go on living and growing and developing as long as necessary, but as an institution, it becomes a fossil, an artefact.

If Occupy adopts the Gene Sharp recipe -- which there is no sign the organic whole will ever do -- I think the effort will be over, but I wonder what would happen if some of the local Occupys set out on a Sharp-path.

There is room, in other words, for almost anything... even, from time to time, shit that's fucked up and bullshit like yesterday's aborted strategy session... srsly.

"Carmen" and The Vanguard and the Insurrection of Mutual Aid...

"Carmen" is, of course, what it is, and for generations it's been one of the most popular operas ever created, if not truly the most popular ever. It was jeered initially in Paris in part because it didn't fit the pattern opera patrons had come to expect.

"Carmen" violated the rigid class divisions so apparent in the arts of the day; it wasn't about elevated people meeting or failing their honor and duty to one another and the gods, it was about ordinary people, and gypsies, tramps and thieves, the lowest of the low in Europe at the time, framed in terms of passion, love, longing and betrayal, utilizing the full range of operatic tools to tell its tale.

At its root, it is a tale of rebellion against the arbitrary imposition of authority -- and what to do about it.

Such tales were subversive at the time, as they still are. This is not a tale that opera patrons, then or now, would want told to the masses, that's for sure. It is one they can barely comprehend themselves.

The story came out of a post-Napoleonic Europe which was riven with rebellion and revolution right through to the extermination of the Paris Commune in 1871. Even that official horror didn't end the revolutionary fervor of Europe's peoples, let alone the rebellions in the colonial outposts of European empires. Try as they might, the Overclasses of the day could not keep the People down. Rebellion was assured; Revolution was likely. Massacre was not infrequent. But even massacre didn't work for long.

The panning of premiere of "Carmen" in Paris 1875, so soon after the liquidation of the Commune, has become the source opera-legend, in fact might make good opera in its own right, or at least a decent musical comedy. If one puts oneself in the shoes of the staid and very class conscious patrons of the Opéra-Comique at the time, however, it is not at all hard to imagine their contempt, and especially the contempt of the critics, at what they saw and heard. It must have felt almost like a slap in their collective bourgeois face.

"Carmen" was in some ways the story of what they feared most: wild and free people, in the person of Carmen, disrupting the calm and civilized society they were working so hard to restore after so much rebellion and revolution had so recently wracked Paris under the red banner of the Commune.

This was unacceptable.

The Commune was too recent a memory; what happened to it, though unmentionable, was too searing.

Conformity, conventionality, rules and order were the social requirements of the day, and not solely in Paris. Early versions of Marxist Communism were being worked out and tried. The Paris Commune was the first large-scale example that really seemed to work, if only briefly and haltingly. The potential of Marxist Communism was demonstrated, however temporarily, during the Commune, and that demonstration lived on in memory and legend long after the Commune was crushed and the Communards -- and a hell of a lot of random Parisians -- exterminated.

In today's world, the expiration of the Soviet Union and the transformation of the People's Republic of China into a capitalist dynamo was supposed to serve as the capstone to the triumph of the West and the end of History and all the rest of the reveries of the exploiters, plunderers and predators.

With the end of the Soviet "threat," and the transformation of China, the People's Struggle was supposed to be over: The People lost. For. Ever.

Yet The New World Order turns out to be far less substantive than even the rudest forms of Feudalism. It is, bluntly, a disaster of epic proportions. Not simply for the ordinary people -- let alone the Indignados and the Rebels and the Ignored Ones in every land -- it is a disaster for its makers. Those who have created this monstrosity of global domination are tied in knots by their own mindlessness and lack of even rudimentary judgement. That they have failed is cripplingly obvious. That they know not what to do now, except to lash out in fury at the phantoms of their misery, is plain.

Not only is another world possible, another world is critically necessary, because this one isn't working for anyone, and not for the Upper Orders, either. They have fucked up majorly.

The current social, economic, and political model is unsustainable by any measure.

The alternatives being developed are frightening to some observers who simply can't imagine there could be good faith attempts to rectify the situation in the midst of so much misery and carnage created by Our Betters.

They denounce the Vanguard, and they fear the Insurrectionists, both of which are essentially phantoms, because, like the bourgeoisie of Paris, they fear the liberation of what we might call the Gypsy spirit in human nature, to find and build a better future for all of us.

They are frightened to death that it just might work, and worse, there may be nothing salvageable from the wreckage of the past.

They are frightened, too, of the potential for violence in the transitional period.

A number of people have already been severely wounded by police fire and hundreds and hundreds have been injured while thousands upon thousands have been arrested and scenes of appalling destruction of encampments by the authorities have filled the airwaves during the initial phases of the Crackdowns on Occupy in this country alone. The numbers of dead and injured in the other uprisings and revolutions and civil wars around the world haven't even been counted, but it is on the order of many tens of thousands.

No matter how much we try, the transition to another world and a better future is not going to be a peaceful one. Whether it can stay mostly nonviolent is a question.

Where the global rebellions have turned into violent armed insurrection and civil war (Syria, Libya, eg.) it is painfully obvious that "international interests" are controlling both the conflict and the likely outcome, that without this sort of "helpful" interference, the People's Dictatorships being rebelled against would likely persevere against their domestic opposition. They are too frail now, and in many ways, too anachronistic, to survive in the face of the kinds of opposition arrayed against them.

But as we've seen in the cases of Tunisia and Egypt, even nonviolent People's Uprisings don't necessarily result in that Better Future the People set out to achieve. There is no miraculous transformation in other words. Removing the Dictatorship only to have it replaced with even greater levels of quasi-pseudo-"democratic" exploitation, blunder, plunder and control by our Neo-Liberal Overlords (viz: Greece as well) is shocking to be sure, but not all that surprising.

The rebellion and occupation in Wisconsin delayed for a time some of the impositions of the Walker Regime, but it didn't stop them. And the resort to the electoral process to recall members of the State Senate failed to shift the majority. While the recall of Walker will be spirited (if he doesn't resign first in disgrace and under criminal indictment) the signs are it will not succeed, not even if the ever-saintly and ever-reluctant Russ Feingold girds his loinal parts and takes up the cudgel.

The System is broken and the prognosis is the patient's condition is terminal.

Something altogether different is called for, and that's why, as frightening to many as it is to contemplate, the red-and-black flag of the anarcho-communists/anarcho-syndicalists has all but become the Flag of Occupy.

In many ways it's ironic, given the inner turmoil and hostility, the many mutual anathemas and purges between the Socialists (as in Communist) and Anarchists in times of yore. But let's be blunt: even the Social Democrats of Europe, the moderated Communists, have grossly failed the People in their mad quest -- so it seems -- to please the Gods of Global Finance. Europe is such a basket case now largely because of the abject failure of the Social Democrats to adhere to the principles of social and economic justice that are their foundations.

Communist FAIL. Socialist FAIL. The vacuum must be filled -- or as we see, the Neo-Liberals/Neo-Cons take over -- and with such cheery malice and destructive intent. "Creative destruction" they call it. North Africa, the Arab Middle East, Greece, Spain, Italy, Ireland, much of the wreckage of Eastern Europe, all laboratories for even more destruction and exploitation than has already been accomplished by their economic and military shock troops.

Who's next?

Of course the "Creative Destroyers" will fail in the end, just like every other similar effort in the past.

The opposition turns to Anarchist options in part because they stand outside the common theoretical, political, and philosophical mindset that has brought us to this point -- and already thrown millions over the precipice.

That red-and-black flag and what it stands for is looking more and more appealing...

Somehow I suspect it is no accident that Carmen wears a diagonally divided red-and-black gown in the final scene of the Met's stunning "Carmen" from 2010 (or was it 2009?)

That damn Gypsy Woman is as subversive now as she ever was. And just as then, the People must take care of one another.

Kropotkin anyone?

So. What Do We Replace the Collapsed Systems With?

Oakland Commune banner on General Strike Day, November 2, 2011. Image from:Anarchismo.net where there is as intense a discussion of what's going on as you'll find anywhere.

While my perspective on OO's Victory in de-legitimizing the authority of Oakland's civic authorities is still the minority view, the notion that something truly amazing -- and in the United States, almost unprecedented for a very long time -- is happening there is gaining traction. I'm not sure at this point that more than a few of Oakland's activists would agree with me about the "level-one victory" I've been writing about in part because there is so much more to do and it is premature to celebrate. It's still the "beginning of the beginning." (Of course I've commented extensively about the online tendency to be "always at the beginning" of something or other, as if there is no learning curve any more. "I'm beginnning to think..." "We've only started to..." "This is starting to look like...")

That said, the necessity of formulating and having ready something else again to take the place of the collapsed systems is becoming more and more critical.

Thanks to Pathman in comments, I got to thinking about and re-considering Gene Sharp's "From Dictatorship to Democracy," (pdf) and the larger picture he lays out. I haven't looked at it for quite a while, and in light of recent events, his pioneering work seems almost simplistic now. That's probably because so much of what he was writing about has simply been internalized over the course of the many uprisings and revolutions that have shattered the complacency of dictatorships around the worlds since the end of the Soviet period. We're in a new world now, and the past seems almost naive to us pioneers and Revolutionary Sophisticates (haw!)

Some things to keep in mind: we do not live in a Classic Dictatorship, nor are Oakland's civic authorities Classic Tyrants. We don't have a totalitarian system, for example, for there is still a remarkable freedom of thought and potentially a great deal of freedom of action as well. Though the levers and wheels and gears of our rather antiquated political system are currently frozen in place by their owners and sponsors, it is at least conceivable that they could be made to move again. And as I've argued more recently, many of the attributes of Nonviolent Resistance have been adopted by the Overclass in treating with the Lesser People, particularly Nonviolent Communications, which are now used by the Overclass as weapons against the People. (Again, this is a minority viewpoint about what's really going on; many colleagues in the field are horrified that I would even broach such a topic. But that's another essay for another time...)

In other words, lots of the elements of the Color Revolution process that Gene Sharp lays out don't apply directly to our situation, nor would they necessarily work if they did. (I won't get into the debate about the nature of those Revolutions at this point, except to say that what was done in the Soviet Union between 1991 and 1993 was a criminal betrayal of the People that will live in infamy -- and it wasn't the Communists who were doing it.)

The question remains: What do we do now?

Oakland already has something of an alternative system in place. It's called the Oakland Commune. This video doesn't really tell us as much as we might want to know, and it only deals with some of the activism of the Commune up to just before J28 but it gives us an idea of the scope of alternative systems thinking in Oakland that's been there for a long time and has been crystallized by the Occupy Movement:



An informed person observing from the outside would say, "Of course, this is basic Social Democracy."

In part. Communes are much closer to the People, and in theory they can be quite autonomous as well as self-governing. You can see the outlines of the structure of the Commune in the video; if you think back to the Black Panthers and how they operated and what they actually did (I'm old enough to remember... well, sometimes!) particularly their service to the community, you can see how the pattern for alternative social and political systems has long been in place in Oakland, and I would venture to say in many other cities as well.

Not all cities can adopt the Oakland Model, nor should they, as each city has a character and social consciousness of its own which can be developed on the commune or a cooperative basis; the elements are already in place in many cities through the networks of nonprofits that have proliferated over the last few decades of declining government support for people's needs.

The problem with the commune model or the autonomous collective in a civic setting -- at this time anyway -- is that it lives on the surplus of a materialist system, in our case, the leavings of American consumerism. You see that made starkly clear in the encampments. Obviously, that can only go so far before the surplus is used up. Then what?

I'm sure many would say, "Don't try to overthink it right now. It's only the beginning...." And that's right as far as it goes, but I would suggest that the question of "then what" is going to loom large sooner rather than later, and the answer may lie in acknowledging Oakland's strict class and social divides and doing something about them.

Oakland's ruling class perches in the hills, its working class drudges along in the flats, the rejects and those the ruling class deems to be parasites are disposed of in the marshes of West Oakland.

The Oakland Commune has stepped in to serve the people at the margins of this deeply divided class system, and that has caused more than a little heartburn among those who rule the roost. It's caused something of a meltdown among the city's officials, much nervousness among its long suffering working class, and what looks like stark panic among the High and the Mighty; yet the Commune includes participants from all those sectors. Support for OO activism appears to be much broader than the media wants you to believe.

The dissension over "violence" in the Occupy Movement, particularly as it applies to Occupy Oakland, really looks to me more like a class division, not an ideological one at all. The Oakland Commune is militant to be sure -- as it must be -- but that militance should not be conflated with a Violent Resistance Campaign because it is nothing like that at all. Note: OO activists are not openly armed, they do not demonstrate bearing arms, they do not threaten or use arms in their actions, they are not involved in nor do they advocate any sort of armed insurrection, nor does anyone involved Occupy Movement or Occupy Oakland advocate or engage in the use of deadly force to achieve their objectives.

Yet they are constantly beset by internal accusations of using or advocating or supporting "violence" and there are constant threats to withdraw support and participation if "violence" is not renounced forthwith and "violent" participants are not immediately expelled.

Yes, well...

I say this is more an matter of a class division than an ideological one because the constant cat-calling and hot-headed accusations are coming primarily from people who are socialized to be the teachers and monitors of Nonviolence in order, I argue, to control the masses and their use of Nonviolence. In this class based version of Nonviolent Resistance, Nonviolence is fine, Resistance is not. In fact, actual Resistance of any kind is defined as "violence," and occasional acts of vandalism, mischief, and provocative acts like "throwing things" are considered so "violent" that they either must be harshly suppressed and those who commit these acts must be strictly disciplined or expelled or support will be withdrawn.

There are people who insist that self-defense against police assault is "violence." Or that even confrontation with authority is "violence." Some of these people may be sincere in their beliefs based on the faith they have in the merits of Gandhian Satyagraha, and when that is the case, I have a good deal of respect for believers and practitioners. But given what I have experienced and have seen happen to others when that faith is challenged or alternatives to it are proposed, I sincerely doubt that most people insisting on others' adherence to "Gandhi and King" are true believers themselves. The violence of their rhetoric against any challenge gives them away.

These accusations, demands of strict adherence, and threats to withdraw support are consistently being used as weapons to control the activism of the masses and as attempts to ensure the masses do not develop effective tactics against the present ruling class.

There is Class War within the Occupy Movement. Surprise!

In Oakland, it's quite obvious.

Many observers and participants call the whole thing a distraction, and they have a point. It has become something like a typical Twit-War with mutual anathemas and denunciations flying, but with no particular object -- apart from virtual "control" of The Other.

It's nearly to the point of becoming a "meme," and thus a joke.

Meanwhile, I'm hoping to see many more demonstrations of that Better World That's Possible. The Oakland Commune is on the path of creating it -- on behalf of all of us.

Mic Check!

The Verizon Building in Manhattan last night as the marchers were headed onto the Brooklyn Bridge.

"We are unstoppable. Another world is possible."



Read the Interview: http://boingboing.net/2011/11/17/interview-with-the-occupy-wall.html (h/t Cocktailhag in comments)

People are still amazed, elated and in tears of joy over that little stunt last night.

It was... wonderful.