"From Relief to Resistance..." From The Rockaways and Beyond

 

Something's happening here...

The situation for the victims of The Storm continues to be dismal as winter makes its way into the the vast stretches of despair and destruction along the Eastern Seaboard, particularly in the hard hit coastal areas of New York and New Jersey, where simple official neglect has left the People without electricity, heat, running water, food, clothing, livelihoods or the means and materials to repair their dwellings and businesses... hm, sounds somewhat like the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina.

What is happening here?

Interestingly "Bloomberg" is blamed for the continuing catastrophe on Staten Island and the Long Island shore, as well as the mess still afflicting parts of Lower Manhattan. It's his fault, not anyone else's, that there is still no coordinated relief effort from his office, his lofty perch, his corner of Paradise. He drops in for occasional inspection tours and then drops out again in order to go in front of the cameras and once again to counsel "patience" and "resilience" and all the rest of it that he has been counseling from day one.

There is still no coordinated relief effort... Electricity is still not on, water is still not flowing, temporary housing is still not being provided, food and clothing are still hard to find or impossible to get through reliance on official resources... People are suffering.

What's happened?

It really wasn't that long ago that public disasters like this were met with coordinated disaster efforts that focused on the public necessities (rescue, food, clothing, shelter, etc.) first, then coordinated infrastructure rebuilding, then restoration of what could be restored, reconstruction of what couldn't. Some semblance of "normal life" was intentionally put back in place almost immediately; the point being to enable survivors of whatever disaster it was to get into a re-building frame of mind as quickly as possible, and to see to it that the rebuilding took place.

Now it seems like none of that even enters the pretty little heads of the Ruling Class, as their first objective seems to be to make it as difficult or impossible for the People to even stay in the affected area, and to provide nothing in terms of "relief" -- so that they will go away on their own. Just leave. Get gone. And don't come back.

Occupy Sandy stepped into the void left by official neglect, and has been providing food and clothing, as well as the means and materials for clearing and rebuilding from almost the moment The Storm moved on.  They've provided generators for power, volunteers for clean up, meeting hubs, coordinated supply efforts, and on and on, while "Bloomberg" and his ever vigilant staff have harassed and threatened them at every turn.

"You can't do this." "It's not your place." "Go away!" "It's not safe!"

Yes, well.

Their answer is "Mutual Aid, Not Charity."

The difference is enormous, and the difference they are making in people's lives is striking.

It's not so much that they are providing for the material well-being of the multitudes of suffering humanity -- though they are -- as it is that they are providing uplift for the spirits of the People, hope, and they are showing how to meet both the challenge of The Storm and the official neglect that left the People so bereft.

They are transforming their efforts from relief to resistance.

Something that happened after Katrina as well, though resistance had something of a different character in those days. The Bush Regime is all but forgotten (except for its precipitation of numerous disasters and its inability to fathom them let alone handle them) and it was Katrina and its aftermath that led to the de-legitimazation of the Bushevik Era. Once de-legitimized by events and bitter experience, they could not recover in the eyes of the People. And now, it's as if they never were...

Such is apparently going to be the fate of "Bloomberg." Of course he can purchase any future he wants out of petty cash, but apart from that, his neglectful response to The Storm is going to be remembered as the precipitating cause of his de-legitimazation. The response of the Occupy Sandy volunteers, on the other hand, will live on as examples of how the People themselves can aid one another.

And so it goes...

The following essay at Waging Nonviolence pretty much sums it up:

The Best Response to Disaster: Go On The Offensive

Illegitimi non carborundum -- as it were.

On the Transfer of Moral Authority

Police take aim in Anaheim

Maybe I'm coming to this realization late, but it seems to me that after the incidents in Aurora and Anaheim, the institutions that once held moral authority in this country -- be they governmental or private sector -- have finally lost any moral authority they may once have been able to claim.

The Aurora Incident showed how essentially inert the police forces are in the face of mass slaughter by our very own and very exceptional "crazed gunmen." According to reports, police responded "within seconds" to 911 calls from the scene of the carnage at the movie theater as their police station was only two blocks away. But by the time they got there, the gunfire had stopped and the shooter was calmly sitting in his car awaiting arrest. More than 70 people were dead or wounded, however, so some sort of triage set up was necessary. What the police had to do with that though, no one has quite said.

Other institutional failures included that of the University of Colorado, which apparently had just turned the shooter loose for not doing well on his midterms. Clearly, despite the fact that the young man in question was trying to communicate with them through letters (that went 'unprocessed'), the University in its Majesty had neither time nor interest in this poor fellow whose academic decline, perhaps emotional and psychological decline as well, simply hadn't been noticed in the Press of Events all Great Universities prioritize.

It's similar in its own way to the administrative disinterest in the emotional/psychological decline of the boys who shot up Columbine High back in the day. That Incident was said to have been precipitated by intense and prolonged bullying that the school administrators tolerated or even encouraged as a means to keep the students in line. It was revealed after the Columbine Incident that many schools actively recruited student bullies to act as capos over the rest of the student body and rewarded them with a)impunity for their actions; b)various perks and privileges that other students did not have. Their role was to terrorize the rest of the student body into compliance with administrative demands.

Hm.

Sounds like Anaheim police on the rampage.

Now I should point out that when I write about police misconduct and police brutality I am not condemning all police (however, there is a caveat, and I'll get to that.)  In fact, I've known plenty of officers, I've had to call on police in various instances of burglary and so forth, and I recently had a brief encounter in Kingman, AZ, when a police cruiser raced up to me while I was pumping gas, an officer jumped out with his hand on his gun (or was it his Taser, not sure right now) and started demanding this and that, including knowing whether I had anyone else in the van... (he later explained they'd just received a report of someone being held at gunpoint by someone in an "orange-ish van," and mine was close enough to the description they had that he felt it best to check it out, guns at the ready...)

Almost every police officer I've encountered (except one, who was clearly out of his league, but that's another story) has behaved in a professional and dignified manner. But I'm white, and now that I'm also old enough to sport a Santa beard, I'm hardly perceived as a "threat" by the Law Enforcement Community. Even when I was younger and more radical appearing, police encounters were not particularly difficult for me. And, too, they were rare.

For people of color, particularly brown and black men and adolescent boys, it's long been a different story. Not only do they encounter the police far more frequently than white folk, they are "suspect" simply because of their age, race and appearance. In other words, the entire category of black and brown men is considered by police to be a priori suspect of something.

That seems to have been the police modus operandi in Anaheim that led to the shooting death of Manny Diaz, and the next day to the shooting death of Joel Matthew Acevedo. And the same attitude seem to have led to the repeated indiscriminate firing of "less lethal" munitions into crowds protesting the police homicides of young men in their neighborhoods.

If you are black or brown, particularly if you are male, you are suspected of a crime. Period. And as a suspect you have no rights the police are obliged to respect, not even a right to life, let alone liberty or the pursuit of happiness.

According to witnesses, Manny Diaz was shot twice by police, both times in the back, once in the butt, and once in the back of the head. It was almost a classic "double tap." In other words, he was executed on the spot. The reason? He ran. The police say he was with a "suspicious" group standing by a car on the street when a police patrol car approached and officers demanded... well, we don't know, as the young men being approached all ran in various directions. According to police, Manny Diaz was seen "throwing objects" onto roofs of nearby apartment buildings as he ran. (That's quite a physical feat, but we'll leave it at that for the moment.) The police officer pursuing him finally trapped him in a fenced side yard of an apartment complex; the iron bar fence was high and essentially unscalable. What then transpired is unknown. The police union claims that The Suspect turned toward the officer and "reached for something in his waistband," and I will lay good money, that is the exact language that will appear in the report that will be issued in due time on the Incident. Of course anyone who has followed these Incidents for any length of time knows that in the routines surrounding these police shootings of Suspects, the justification is frequently "reaching for something in his waistband."

Further "justification" is garnered by the claim that the Suspect was a "gang member." In Anaheim, this has been elaborated with the claim that Manny Diaz was a "documented gang member." As was  -- it is claimed -- Joel Matthew Acevedo. So far, they haven't pointed to the prison record of either man or their drug use, but they will. It almost always goes this way in the case of police shootings. No matter what actually happened, the reports will always focus on reaching for something in waistbands, gangs, drugs and previous prison time. As if this justifies what amounts to summary execution in the streets.

While I don't condemn all police for the actions of these killer cops, the entire force loses moral authority through consistent actions to rationalize or cover up the killings and beatings and harassment of people primarily of color who become the victims of the police, and to dismiss the concerns of the communities that are so profoundly affected by these actions.

In Anaheim, the police, like their dog, were simply out of control. They went on a rampage -- a police riot if you will -- killing two and injuring many (one count I saw was over a hundred), many of whom were women and children. This went on for days as community members continued to protest and denounce police actions in the streets of Anaheim.

And then it stopped.

Manny Diaz's mother appeared at the courthouse after filing a civil rights and wrongful death lawsuit, and she appealed for an end to the violence -- by police and by the crowd of protesters. The police chief and the mayor had been threatening the community with continued police violence, much as a warden might, if they continued protesting. But the protests continued, indeed had increased over the days since the first killing.

Manny Diaz's mother appealed to the better angels of the community -- including those of the police if they had any -- and the protests stopped. From appearances, the police did not stop harassing the community, but they stopped killing for now and they stopped firing their "less lethal" rounds, stopped roaming the streets with dogs as well.

Manny Diaz's mother had far more moral authority in this situation than any Anaheim institution.

Indeed, that's what's been happening all over as the pervasive institutional failure has been revealed, from the failure of the Catholic Church -- my how they flail these days! -- to the extraordinary moral collapse of police forces all over the country following their violent destruction of dozens of Occupy encampments, and their continued violence against Occupy and other protests.

Clearly, there's an existential issue involved for "authority" as a concept in the abstract and in the real world. If the only way our civic and private institutions can hold on to authority is through force and suppression/control of protest -- which is what's been happening -- then there is no moral grounding for any respect for authority. Without moral grounding, authority loses power, and the more suppression and violence there is in trying to enforce its authority, the more completely its moral authority evaporates.

In Aurora, the police and other authority were essentially bystanders as the horrible drama unfolded at the movie theater.

In Anaheim, the police and the civic policies they were carrying out were the precipitating cause of the collapse of their own moral authority. That collapse mirrored similar collapses of police and civic/administrative authority at UC Berkeley, UC Davis, and spectacularly in the city of Oakland. To a somewhat lesser degree, it has also happened in the cities of Los Angeles, Chicago and New York. It's happening right now in San Francisco through grotesque spectacles involving the mayor, the board of supervisors, the sheriff, his wife and so forth that we needn't deal with here.

I asked in a previous post, "What are we coming to?" And this is it. As the moral authority of civil society collapses along with its institutions including the police, we are left outraged and bewildered, but also we are left on our own to figure out some sort of path forward.

In previous times, this collapse of moral authority would have been considered the prelude to revolution -- think ancien regime leading up to the storming of the Bastille and the March of the Fishwives. But we have our own examples leading up to 1776 as well, not to mention what the collapse of moral authority in Russia that actually began the day of Nicolas II's coronation when hundreds were killed at the public festivities arranged in his honor.

But now, I suspect we're well past the prelude phase and fully into the Revolutionary phase. In other words, the Revolution is taking place, and we are in the midst of it, but it is not like any Revolution of the past, so what's happening doesn't fully register as a Revolution-in-Progress. We see it instead as "difficulty." Yes, it is that, certainly. But the key to understanding the Revolutionary context is the continuing -- I would say accelerating -- collapse of moral authority that we could say began with Congress when it chose to impeach the President in 1996, continued with the judicial coup of 2000 that installed Bush the Lesser in the presidency in 2001 -- which led to disasters on an unprecedented and monumental scale, from the attack on the World Trade Center to the incredibly ill-advised wars of aggression to the drowning of New Orleans to the economic collapse of 2007/8.

The election of Obama was supposed to be something of a Redemption after all that misery, but it has turned out to be anything but that,or perhaps a "Lesser Redemption" than was called for.

And so we see the collapse all around us of the moral authority of institutions and especially of the moral authority of the police. I'm convinced that Obama was put on the Presidential Throne for the specific purpose of "managing the masses" as the predators and plunderers go after every shred of public  good and public wealth there is, and so far, he has performed up to expectations if not beyond. But he's performing to the expectations of the Ruling Class, not the expectations of the People, and that has consequences that our blind, deaf and dumb rulers seem incapable of knowing.

Yesterday, there was a pretty insightful story of how our government really operates over at dKos. Some of us have long been aware of how much government, particularly in Washington, has become an insular palace culture (I've been writing about it for years, and have some experience at the local, state and federal levels myself), but this is perhaps the clearest description I've seen of it in years. It is a palace culture, and it is cut off from the plaints of the People, and it is deteriorating from a moral perspective.

I've long advocated paying close attention to what is really going on and strategizing from that basis rather than pretending that some formula is going to be satisfactory as we muddle through this increasingly difficult period.

Understanding how the government actually functions at every level is part of it.

Understanding that there has been a fundamental shift of moral authority is an increasingly important part as well.

A Video Manifesto

"Let Your Life Be a Friction to Stop the Machine"



Note: On the road again today and tomorrow.

Normalizing Obscenity

I've been intrigued with the coverage of Romney's tax return releases, sparse as that coverage has been, even in the so-called "left" media and new media.

Nearly all the coverage in the major mass media has been an effort to normalize Mr. Romney's situation, using terms like "unsurprising," "typical for wealthy people like the Romneys," "sophisticated but perfectly legal," and so on.

Note is made of Romney's remarkably low tax rate -- which of course is said to be a consequence of policies set by Congress, so there's nothing wrong with it. Of course not.

The idea that someone can make more than $20 million a year for literally -- quite literally -- doing nothing to earn it is not even mentioned as a bit "unusual," as if anyone could be doing this if only they... worked hard enough, or deserved it, or something of the sort, as if it were perfectly normal and should be celebrated as "an American success story."

The fact that the Romneys literally do nothing at all to "earn" most of this money, they are merely passive investors in mostly blind trusts, is not even considered worth remarking on.

How Mitt initially got the money to embark on this do-nothing wealth machine -- from the disruption and destruction of other people's lives and futures ("that's capitalism, my friend!") -- is only mentioned by rivals. The fact that Bain Capital is and has always been a predatory outfit, looting and destroying the work of others for its own profits is not a topic for discussion amid polite company at all.

It's all perfectly normal, what anyone of his wealth and financial sophistication (not to mention political ambition) would be expected to do.

And he tithes to his church, so he's obviously moral.

Stunning.

("And did you hear? Those nasty Democrats and that arrogant Negro in the White House are engaging in Class War again.")

The Uselessness of Our Aristocrats

While the Obama regime has made incalculable unforced errors that have kept our many overseas wars of aggression going -- indeed, expanded some of them -- restricted our liberties, perpetuated our Endless Recession, and made more and more people's lives as miserable and controlled as possible, even though a handful of predators in banking and finance and vulture capital continue to prosper mightily, the prospect of putting up another Republican Aristo against Obama -- someone who is arguably a Man of the People (if somewhat of a traitor to his class nonetheless) -- is looking more and more like a bizarre spectacle. Yet it may have an upshot no one has adequately anticipated.

Mitt Romney as the Republican nominee presumptive has been under a surprising level of attack from fellow Rs for his "vulture capitalism" period at Bain Capital during which he amassed an enormous fortune, much of it on the backs of... lesser people... whose lives and livelihoods were destroyed. That's how people of his ilk make money. They do leveraged buyouts, then strip the assets of the acquisitions. It's been going on for decades, Mitt got into the game early, made a huge fortune through debt finance and asset stripping, destroying many people's lives along the way, and he -- like all the rest of his ilk -- seems to be utterly oblivious to the wreckage he left behind. It's not his problem, you see. Someone else can clean up the mess.

This is the general attitude of our entire Aristocratic Class, not just Mittens. They seem completely incapable -- as a class -- of recognizing, let alone addressing, the level of human misery they cause in pursuit of endless riches above all else.

It's pathological.

Of course we've seen it all before, not that long ago, either. It was present in both Bush reigns, and of course it was the consistent attitude during the Go-Go 80's; the Lesser People simply don't matter. They are on the whole an undifferentiated, dehumanized mass, resources to be exploited and discarded at will.

This is the general attitude of our Overclass to the rest of humanity. They simply do not have a human connection with anyone, nor do they have a care for anyone, outside their own class, and more and more it is clear (as in the case of Mitt), they have no knowledge of anyone outside their own class. Nor do they want any, nor are they able to empathize with anyone at all, let alone those "beneath" them.

Unfortunately, this pathology is like an infection. Much as craziness and insanity are communicable with enough exposure, so is the complete lack of empathy that characterizes so much of our Aristocracy. It can spread all too easily through a population at large, and when it does, we see the kind of violent, crabbed and misshapen societies the United States has largely become -- one that celebrates the misfortune of others and one that punishes those who can't abide or keep up with the course of selfishness and greed.

Ordinary people may tolerate this state of affairs for a while, may even become temporary advocates for it, if they believe they are somehow better off under the rule of cruelty (cf: Fascist/Nazi era in Europe as example). But inevitably they awaken to the fact that they have been under assault and have been robbed all this time.

And they rise up. It is inevitable. And as we saw so many times last year -- still going on this year, but not getting quite as much press -- the Rule of Aristocratic Cruelty reacts with more repression and cruelty, and more and more physical and psychological violence, trying to force the masses to accept their sorry fate. In other words, their only response to the outcry against their cruelty is more cruelty more widely applied.

A more responsible Aristocracy (or at least one that wants to survive) listens to the outcry of the masses and adjusts its behavior accordingly to accommodate the pleas for redress they receive.

But ours, somewhat bewilderingly, does not. Pleas aren't even heard, let alone accommodated -- or rejected for that matter. Theft and looting, exploitation and destruction by the Overclass is more and more brazen; control or punishment only applies to those "below" never to those on top, while just being "below" becomes a punishable offense.

Our putative Aristocrats -- the Overclass -- has no regard at all for the interests of those beneath them, and they have only a marginal concern over how far they can push the lesser people and how fast.

The Overclass only serves itself, but its members are also in fierce and unrelenting competition with one another for pre-eminence. They cheerfully steal from one another, in other words, as well as from those beneath them. They seem to be hard-wired for theft and looting and destruction and they can't help themselves. It is an identity thing for them.

And here we have Mittens as the perfect example. He displays no conscience, no empathy, no consideration -- at all -- for any of those he has brought misery to over his long years as a titan of finance. If they have "problems", oh well, they need to bootstrap themselves like he did, suck it up and go on. Or not. It's not his "problem." Someone else can deal with it -- or no one. It doesn't matter. Because those who don't make it under his scheme of cruelty... don't matter.

"It's Capitalist Free Enterprise, my friends."

Yes, it is.

The more he goes down this path, the more people will associate their misery with what he is attempting to get them to celebrate: Capitalist Free Enterprise. And the more they will ultimately reject it.

Under the circumstances, full on Socialism is looking more and more promising. Or something else. But not Plunder Capitalism and the Useless Aristocracy that goes with it -- such as Mittens believes in as his secular religion. No more of that, thankyouverymuch.

Obama does not get off scot free by any means. His role, though, has always been quite different: to serve the interests of the Overclass fully while managing the masses. I've mentioned this many times before: Obama spent years auditioning for his role as Manager of the Masses, and he demonstrated just how well he was able to do it in Berlin, where he attracted a crowd of hundreds of thousands, perhaps a million, who listened to him speechify about... nothing. He held them in thrall, and what he said to them didn't matter at all. Later, at his inauguration, he was able to enthrall millions who attended in bitter cold, while telling them that they would have to sacrifice and suffer in order to get through the rough times ahead.

Little did they realize they were being told they must suffer and sacrifice for the benefit of those who had been robbing them and destroying their lives, but there you are. That's how our system works.

Obama has been on message ever since. His premise is that "things could be worse," and they will be worse, guaranteed, if those Other People are ever put back in charge.

In other words, there is No Better Future for You. You will drudge along till all your goods and chattel are used up or stolen, and you'll feel grateful that things didn't get any worse than they did. That is your lot and your fate. Rejoice!

And yet, more and more obviously, the Aristocrats of Cruelty who rule us are seen as the useless parasites they are, burdens the rest of us can no longer afford.

The test for Obama now is whether he can keep the masses under control. So far, he's done surprisingly well at it. His real test will be whether he can manage the coming rebellions.

Needless to say, people like Mitt are too busy plundering to be bothered...

Just A Reminder: The Fascists Won

[Students and a sign at the Occupy Rally at UC Davis, 11.21.11. The sign says: "You can blind our eyes but you can never blind our minds."]

Over at dKos, Meteor Blades has been assembling Occupy Poster Art -- along with other art from various revolutions and rebellions of the past (not, interestingly, including much from his own/my own era of rebellion) -- and finding it good.

It is; it's wonderful. I've been really impressed with many of the graphic images associated with the Occupy Movement. When I was at Davis yesterday, there were any number of large scale, freshly silk screened, and very dramatic posters being passed out by various groups to their members. They mostly dealt with Katehi's blunders, the police overreaction, and the increases in tuition and fees. But what struck me was their graphic power -- a few simple words, in stark black and red or black and yellow, on large sheets, some of them still wet. They show up in some of the pictures I took yesterday, but I wasn't really concentrating my camera on them. Maybe I should have!

The video below (that I scarfed from the comments on the second of MB's poster threads) shows some of the startling graphics of the Spanish Civil War.



I would remind the gentle reader that the Fascist/Falangists won that little contretemps, and it would be decades before the Spanish People were able to liberate themselves.

And now it looks like the Fascists have made stunning a comeback thanks to the inability of the Socialists who have been in power to address, let alone meet, the needs of the Spanish People -- rather than endlessly service the demands of their banker-owners.

Oh, of course, the "center right" PPP, "People's Party," isn't exactly Fascist, but it's close enough for modern day conditions. And this is the problem throughout Europe. The Socialist and Social Democratic parties have failed the People just as surely as the Democrats have in this country. They have no credibility with the People any more, so they are falling in election after election, generally to whatever the Rightist opposition is. It's not because the People have any greater faith in the Rightists. Not by a long shot. It is because the Left in Europe, such as it is, has sold the People out to the Banksters, everywhere.

The horrible irony electorates face is that the rightist parties -- while apparently as beholden to the Banksters as the Socialists are -- seem to have a little more flexibility in dealing with the increasingly strident demands of the People. Strangely -- and not yet compellingly -- they may be able to address them more appropriately than the Socialists could.

On the other hand, the Indignado Movement throughout Spain is reinvigorated. The tension between the Government and the People will only increase.

Meanwhile, the graphic and literary images coming out of the Occupy Movement both here and abroad continue to raise consciousness, the brutality of suppression continues to prick the conscience, and the Revolution continues its evolution.

It's not the same now as it was yesterday, and it won't be the same tomorrow as it is today.

More than one person has pointed out to me that the way the Center of (Revolutionary) Energy keeps shifting is remarkable -- and appropriate. "You can't keep it in one place," someone said to me. "It will get stale and old and the authorities and the people will become accustomed to it. For a Revolution to succeed, the Center must keep moving."

And so it is. Yesterday, the Center was Davis, a little University town in California's Central Valley. Where it will be today, I don't yet know. Where it will be tomorrow, no one knows.

The Incident at UC Davis has had a profound effect on the course of events; perhaps it represents a turning point. But so many events have represented turning points in the organic development of this Movement. Just the week before, it was the Incident at UC Berkeley. And before that it was the Incident in Oakland. Before that, it was Denver, and before that, it was Chicago. Remember Boston? And of course, there will always be New York.

But then, New York came from somewhere, didn't it? It wasn't directly from Spain, it was from Canada, specifically Vancouver.

Round and round and in and out, weaving a Global Revolution that can't be stopped. At least no one who has an interest in doing so has figured out how to do it yet.

More and more people don't want it stopped.

Don't let the Fascists win this time.

Creativity and movement are the keys. I saw an image yesterday when I was watching Tim Pool's wrap up of the events in New York; he was outside the occupied New School building, on Fifth Avenue near Union Square. The building was "liberated" last Thursday and has been held without much official interference ever since. (They say it is because the New School's board is in favor of Occupy Wall Street, but who knows?) Tim was walking around the building describing the banners and posters hung in the windows and on the walls, and then he came to something that was such a startling vision: there high up on one of the pilasters of the building was a bright yellow tent.

The image below is far from perfect -- it's a still from the video stream -- but the message on the tent says:

"You cannot evict an idea whose time has come."

There you have it. The most dangerous object in the world (a tent) carrying the most dangerous message.