Not Quite Ready

Saw some of the Shut It Down actions in New York via JamesFromTheInternet's livestream last night, and I was impressed by the size of the crowds -- estimated at 15,000 or more --  by the time I had to head to bed. This is good.

However.

The decision to hold off on Shutting Shit Down until after the workday ended for many/most New Yorkers is somewhat puzzling. The police themselves shut down the Brooklyn Bridge and other sites to prevent the protesters from doing so. And the police have adopted tactics that split the crowds of marchers and protesters into numerous rather easily controlled elements which they then lead either in circles or into dead ends, causing a kind of "natural dispersal."

NYPD is skilled at these tactics. They used them against Occupy as well. They work to dissipate the energy of crowds of protesters and limit the effectiveness of actions. So far, it appears that demonstrators in New York have not found successful countermeasures, though it's obvious that they are aware of the tactics used against them.

Meanwhile I was catching up on some of the actions in St. Louis and watched an archived video shot by Rebelutionary_Z at Webster University in Webster Groves. A contingent of students gathered and marched on campus (one I'm somewhat familiar with, though obviously it's changed in the last 30 years), police and campus security in the lead. This happened at St. Louis University one time too. All of a sudden the march stopped and confusion reigned. Something had happened. There were outbreaks of anger, police lines were formed to prevent resumption and progress of the march, and there was considerable tussling in the crowd as they attempted to find out/figure out what was going on.

Eventually, the cause of the disruption became known. Someone had been arrested at the back of the march. It was one of the banner-carriers, a banner that reads "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere" -- a quote from Martin Luther King, Jr. This banner has been used in a number of actions and demonstrations in the St. Louis area.

According to reports from witnesses, the arrest had been a "snatch and grab" -- another anti-protester tactic widely used by police these days, and often seen during G-20s and other Big Gatherings of the Mighty, as well as during Occupy's hey-day in the public eye. "Snatch and grabs" are a form of kidnapping in which putative leaders are targeted by police and removed suddenly, often dramatically dragged away by a phalanx of police. Other times, random protesters are similarly targeted and dragged away. Almost always, the only pretext for the arrest of these individuals is that they are strategically placed where the effect of their kidnapping/detention will have the greatest impact on the crowds. This is a link to a video of a similar kind of police action in San Francisco during the #Ferguson protests in which a man who vocally challenged an officer is suddenly grabbed and thrown down, arrested basically for mouthing off. It is a nasty and ought to be an illegal tactic, as charges against snatch and grab victims are rarely pursued. The point is to disrupt and discourage the protesters, and it often works.

It worked in Webster Groves in that the march on campus immediately stopped and the participants then spent twenty or thirty minutes wondering what was going on and/or arguing with police. Eventually, the police said that the man who had been arrested would be released on no bond, provided that the crowd abandoned the march and dispersed. They did so.

Whether the man was ever released, I don't know, but I read this morning about another incident that demonstrates the level of contempt police have for those who are engaged in protest against police violence, and the lengths they are prepared to go to stifle dissent.

Yesterday, a member of the Ferguson Commission who attended a meeting with the President at the White House on Tuesday was arrested by St. Louis Metropolitan Police and charged with assault for his participation in an action at St. Louis City Hall. This was clearly a targeted arrest aimed at intimidating the young man, Rasheen Aldridge, Jr. He's been very vocal about the issue of police abuse in St. Louis, and has participated in numerous demonstrations since the killing of Mike Brown in August. He's also received a lot of press and media coverage, especially after he was appointed to the Ferguson Commission.

His arrest comes on the heels of the failure of the St. Louis County Grand Jury to indict Darren Wilson for killing Mike Brown and the failure of the Staten Island Grand Jury to indict Daniel Pantaleo for killing Eric Garner in July. It's worth noting (again) that the man who recorded the video of Eric Garner's take-down and arrest, Ramsey Orta, the man who provided the video proof that Pantaleo used an unauthorized chokehold in the take-down, leading directly to Garner's death, was indicted by another Staten Island Grand Jury on unrelated weapons charges, and his wife was arrested shortly thereafter. 

The issue here is the tactic of "making life miserable" for troublemakers. It's a tactic widely by police and Authority in general to silence dissent.

These are not random incidents or coincidences, these are dissent suppressing tactics on full display.

Even the appointment of commissions and meetings at the White House are strategic elements in a cynical campaign by Power to curb and disrupt dissent, protest, and uprisings of all kinds.

They work.

These tactics can be countered, and the disruption of protests and other actions can be thwarted, but it doesn't appear that the organizers of some of the current protests and actions are attempting to do so. I don't know whether it's a strategic choice to let events unfold as they will, or it is a lack of preparedness to counter the kinds of disruptions the police are engaging in.

My sense is that we are still in the "precursor" stage of a potential rebellion and revolution. Activists and Americans in general are not quite ready...

It could be decades before they are "ready." We won't know the day, the how, or the why until it comes.

InterOccupy Conference Call on Nonviolence vs Diversity of Tactics

I've tended to stay away from the Occupy Conference Calls since last November. I'm not keen on the highly structured format among other things, but since I've been pretty well embroiled in the intensifying online discussions regarding the merits of Occupy Oakland's more militant and confrontational "Way" compared to the constant litany of "Nonviolent Peaceful Protest" we hear out of New York and elsewhere, I thought the discussion (however tightly it was controlled) might be interesting this morning.

It was.

When I joined, about 20 minutes into the discussion, I thought I heard the tail end of OO's Boots Riley's observations, but I can't be sure, because there's nothing in the minutes about his participation, and as far as I know, he never participated again.

There seemed to be about twenty or twenty-five participants, the plurality in New York, but there were others in Chicago, Los Angeles, and elsewhere, so it was something of a geographical cross section, but did not seem to be inclusive of a variety of positions regarding Nonviolence or Diversity of Tactics. There was instead a heavy concentration of pretty rigid adherents to the narrowest definition of Nonviolent Resistance (you must follow Gandhi and King exclusively or you are a violence advocate, it seems), and there was pretty much no one else at all, at least none (well, few) who spoke up.

I made a couple of points about the fact that overall and in the context of specific occupations like Occupy Oakland, the Movement (pdf) is by definition a Nonviolent Resistance Campaign that includes no Violent Resistance at all. Black Bloc tactics and "the anarchists," are Nonviolent by definition, and they are part of a Nonviolent Resistance Campaign. No one in the Movement advocates or practices Violent Resistance. No one. And no one is engaged in a Violent Resistance Campaign -- which is defined as armed insurrection and the use or threat of deadly force.

Well, the room exploded in furious denunciation and disagreement with my own sweet self. I never heard so many Nonviolence advocates on such a rampage!

I wasn't surprised at their disagreement with me, but their vehemence about it took me aback. These are believers in Nonviolence? Ok then...

As should be clear by now, I'm not a Nonviolence "purist;" while I certainly have respect for Gandhi and King, my view of Nonviolence is colored by a somewhat different experience set than that of many people who are highly socialized and accustomed to a very rigid and narrow definition of Nonviolence. I tend to take a broader, Big Picture view of the topic, and I am a good deal more inclusive by nature than many of the purists. Pretty much anyone who advocates and fights for civil, social and economic justice while eschewing resort to arms and physical coercion and harm toward others -- fits the Nonviolent Resister definition in my book. A purist will go full Gandhi and assert that even protecting oneself in a violent situation with authority is impermissible. I don't agree with that. Nor do I agree that one must follow Gandhi's and King's models in order to be "effective."

In fact, I would argue that rigid adherence to those models in the contemporary context is actually counter effective, because as I say in another post, our Overclass has learned the lessons of King and Gandhi very well, and their chief interest lies in ensuring that their form of Nonviolent Resistance never succeeds again.

I would further argue that Nonviolent Resistance Campaigns that are principally focused on marches, rallies and charismatic leaders and their speeches, homilies, and demands essentially can't succeed in this country any more for the simple reason that the Overclass has learned how to confront them and neutralize them nonviolently. Without the official violence and brutality aspects of the confrontation, the power of the Nonviolent march and the rally and the charismatic leader is significantly reduced or (as in the case of the anti-Iraq War protests) eliminated altogether.

There is much, much more involved in a serious Nonviolent Resistance Campaign than those few aspects, of course, but they are the ones that receive the most attention. And I argue that they don't work the way they used to, nor are they likely to be more than marginally effective for real change in this country again. Their effectiveness is declining in foreign lands, too, as the authorities learn ways and means to counter them.

Something else is needed, specifically something more militant, though not more violent. The days of passive resistance will soon be past.

(I've written before about how disturbing it has been for me to watch the passive behavior of the hundreds and hundreds of people on the Brooklyn Bridge submitting to their arrest after being trapped by police; much the same feeling of extreme unease came over me as I watched the first part of the arrest of the hundreds and hundreds of surprisingly passive people in front of the YMCA in Oakland last weekend. I couldn't watch the rest of it. The scene was too disturbing.)

When the People "stand up and fight back" -- militantly but nonviolently -- the tables are turned and Authority is de-legitimized. This happened at UC Davis in rather spectacular fashion in response to the egregious pepper spray incident. And it has worked extraordinarily well in Oakland as well.

During the call (back on topic!), Starhawk was invited to provide her insight as a long time progressive activist whose experience with Black Bloc and Diversity of Tactics could be instructive. What I got from her talk was that her ideas of Nonviolent Resistance are more inclusive and expansive than those of most Nonviolence advocates, but she can't recommend giving Black Bloc advocates free rein. The backlash against some Black Bloc tactics damaged the movements she's been involved with.

I don't doubt it, but she didn't have time to go into detail, and I would very much like to know more about her experiences, which movements she feels were effective and why. But that's for another day.

Someone talked about how the "violence meme" was constantly being applied to Occupy -- which I thought was odd, but people's perceptions are shaped so much by what they see and hear and read, and I don't have cable, rarely watch television news, have a relatively short list of online bookmarks I visit regularly, and I've decoupled from Facebook and Twitter. So my perceptions are based largely on what I have seen via the online streams, what I have read in the postings on Occupy websites, and how some in the blogosphere and online news community have reported or reacted to Occupy events. So my perceptions are clearly not the same as those who are immersed in the mainstream propaganda.

Nathan Schneider was one of the participants, but I really don't remember what he had to say, and that's too bad. He wrote a really good article for Waging Nonviolence on the topic of OWS, and their employment of Nonviolent version of Diversity of Tactics. It was so long ago in Occupy Time, it seems like centuries, but still the points he makes are valid.

There were some people who pointed out, correctly, that Diversity of Tactics and Black Bloc does not necessarily mean vandalism or other forms of destructive mischief at all. One of the things that happened during The Battle of Oak St on J28 was a classic Diversity of Tactics/Black Bloc action -- whether intentional or spontaneous, I don't know. A demonstrator appeared to be injured and was on the ground well in front of the crowd. One member of the crowd -- unprotected -- went to the injured person to see what had happened and one of them motioned to the police to stop firing. Then the shield bearers in the crowd moved forward to surround and protect the injured person with their bodies and their shields. They weren't dressed in black, but protecting the injured in a demonstration is a Black Bloc tactic. Completely nonviolent, too. Of course they were fired on by police -- which should have shocked the conscience of any onlooker, but you never know about that.

My final comment during this morning's call was that if practicing Nonviolent Resistance was so important to Occupy, there needed to be far more comprehensive and accessible training in what it is and how to do it. Most people have no idea.

The notes from the call are very incomplete, but they may be informative.

There's supposed to be a follow up call in a week to explore the Nonviolence issue further, but I think I'll be on the road that day and will probably miss it.

Darn.

The Problem of Success -- What if the Short Term Goal of Delegitimizing Authority is Achieved?

In an earlier essay I argue that the whole of the Occupy (Wall Street) Movement is a Nonviolent Resistance Campaign -- including its more militant and confrontational outposts like those in the West Coast port cities of Seattle and Oakland -- and that there is no divergence within the Movement from Nonviolent Resistance. Black Bloc is not a Violent Resistance Campaign, (no matter its reputation) nor are "the anarchists" (or anyone else) within the Movement advocating that Occupy engage in Violent Resistance.

I further argue that the militant and confrontational Nonviolent Resistance that has characterized Occupy Oakland has been a stunning success in achieving the short term goal of delegitimizing civic authority.

To highlight just what's happened since the advent of Occupy Oakland, it may be well to look at the following facts:

• Mayor Quan is under threat of recall, two recall petitions having actually been certified, and a recall election is very likely this year -- her authority in the interim has been delegitimized (the pathetic picture of her viewing the overturned model of City Hall in the lobby of said building after the events of J28 was the key metaphor for her complete loss of authority)
  
• Oakland's City Council members have been shown to be bullies and liars in their own right, beholden to their sponsors and owners and not the People; their behavior has been at times appalling, and has delegitimized their authority
  
• The Interim Police Chief has been repeatedly revealed as a liar whose contempt for the city of Oakland and its people is palpable -- his authority is effectively delegitimized
  
• The administration of the City of Oakland has been shown to be both corrupt and incompetent in response to Occupy Oakland -- thus delegitimizing it
  
• Judge Thelton Henderson has threatened to place the Oakland Police Department into Federal receivership because they have not fulfilled their reform obligations under the consent decree issued nine years ago, a threat based in part on events surrounding OPD's violent efforts to suppress Occupy Oakland. This threat, along with the global disrepute brought on the OPD by their violence and brutality toward Occupy Oakland has served to delegitimize their authority.

Delegitimizing authority as thoroughly as it has been delegitimized in Oakland since the advent of Occupy Oakland is almost unprecedented in recent American political history and is a stunning victory in Occupy Oakland's Nonviolent Struggle against the oppression and exploitation of Oakland's people by its elected and appointed leadership.

Certainly nothing so effective has come from the so-called "progressive movement" in the last 40 years.

Victory of this sort is a problem, however.

The question naturally arises: "What do we do now?"

Nonviolent Resistance by Occupy Oakland has gained a spectacular short term victory, but delegitimizing authority opens the door to the unknown and potentially to chaos, as many Revolutionaries throughout time have come to realize, sometimes too late. My sense -- from the outside looking in -- is that Occupy Oakland activists are aware of the problems of victory, but I'm not sure more than a few recognize what they have achieved.

The ongoing internal debate over "nonviolence" vs "violence" in Oakland seems odd to me because there is no Violent Resistance Campaign in Oakland or anywhere else in the Occupy Movement. Violent Resistance has not even been considered, at least not anywhere in the Movement I'm aware of. Just like most Occupy activists, I would immediately suspect anyone who did advocate or try to instigate a Violent Resistance Campaign through Occupy to be a provocateur or worse.

To recapitulate: Black Bloc -- and/or "the anarchists" -- in Oakland (or anywhere in the Occupy Movement) do not constitute a Violent Resistance Campaign, as they do not engage in nor do they advocate armed insurrection or the use of deadly force.

Militant Nonviolent Resistance by Occupy Oakland has achieved first-level victory by delegitimizing civic authority. What is the alternative to the present corrupt and disintegrating authority structure? Do OO activists have an alternative ready to go once the discredited present system is swept away? Or will Oakland's Powers That Be "re-legitimize" their authority before the collapse?

These questions are being worked in Oakland and elsewhere in the Movement right now.

The answers will come, but finding them is a more difficult task. What kind of future and future world do we really want?

On the Use and Misuse of the Nonviolence Meme

March on the Pentagon, October 1967. How much more nonviolent could a protest be?

From the opening bell of Occupy Wall Street on September 17, 2011, to the shockingly brutal repression and mass arrests of Occupy Oakland activists on January 28, 2012, the Occupy Movement has wrestled with the question of "Nonviolence."

For all intents and purposes, the Movement has been overtly nonviolent from the beginning, but it has been met with increasingly intense official violence in many locations around the country, starting with the infamous pepper spraying of non-resisting activists in New York on September 24, 2011, by DI Anthony Bologna, the supervising NYPD officer for Lower Manhattan. His unprovoked act shocked the conscience of the nation. It was to be the first of many WTF moments in the history of the Occupy Movement.

Officer Bologna's act appeared to be one of official but mindless cruelty. There would be many more such incidents associated with Occupy. Mindless cruelty and brutality toward certain police targets are institutionalized in the United States, as just about anyone from minority communities can testify.

The litany of the incidents to date is long and disheartening.

And these incidents of mindless official cruelty and brutality continued over the weekend in Oakland, California.

Yet the Movement has remained nonviolent. Nonviolent, yes, but not to the point of passivity.

Many of the critics of the Occupy Movement and Occupy Oakland specifically have made much of the fact that Occupy Oakland has not "officially" denounced diversity of tactics and "officially" expelled anyone who has advocated diversity of tactics or who has committed acts of vandalism -- acts which have been declared to be "violence" by the authorities. Just as linking arms and refusing to budge when ordered to do so has been declared "not nonviolence" at UC Berkeley and UC Davis (and I'm sure at other places as well.)

See this post for further discussion of "diversity of tactics" and how those who employ diversity of tactics define "violence."

I read an op-ed in my local newswipe this morning written by a retired journalist I have long respected who referred to Occupy Oakland activists as "thugs" and to their actions over the weekend as "rioting." It was deeply disappointing to me, because I can only assume that he, like so many others, has no real knowledge of what happened in Oakland over the weekend at all. The only things he knows about it is what was on the teevee and the lies -- yes, they were lies -- put out by the City of Oakland Emergency Operations Center (pdf). The facts may take a little digging, but they are easily available. The lies, however, are everywhere.

The way Peter Schrag characterized the participants in the weekend activities of Occupy Oakland was very evocative to me, as I assume it would be to anyone who has studied nonviolence, been an activist who believes in its value, and who lived through the Civil Rights Era, the anti-Vietnam War Era, or who may have any knowledge of the Independence Movement in India or the anti-Apartheid efforts in South Africa, or as may be, has any familiarity with the Palestinian cause.

In every case mentioned, the activists/rebels, no matter what they did or didn't do, were characterized by authority as "violent" and "thugs" and their actions were called "rioting." ALWAYS.

Whether or not the activists are practicing nonviolence is irrelevant when authority wishes to crush a rebellion, as anyone who has been involved in nonviolent resistance for any length of time knows full well.

When authorities feel threatened by activist rebellions, as they clearly feel threatened by the Occupy Movement, they will go to any length to suppress and destroy the rebellion and to discredit those associated with it. They will insist that participants are committing acts of "violence" no matter what the activists do -- as UC administrators did in Berkeley and Davis and as some civic authorities have done all over the country, but most especially in Oakland, where at least one of the city council members has asserted that Occupy Oakland activists are engaged in acts of "domestic terrorism."

It should be noted that many of those arrested at the political conventions in 2008 were charged with "domestic terrorism" though they had committed no terroristic acts whatsoever. It doesn't matter. The act of public protest -- or even planning such a thing -- is, in certain cases in this country, considered chargeable as "domestic terrorism" though eventually (at least in most cases) the charges don't stand up in court.

Professing or practicing nonviolence does not protect you; in fact, it can have just the opposite effect. So many people have chanted "Peaceful Protest!" during Occupy events while they're being beaten senseless, gassed and dragged away to some detention site.

Anyone who has been in a nonviolent resistance situation in which Authority demanded obedience knows full well that nonviolent tactics will not protect you from police brutality, detention, injury or death.

"Peaceful Protest!" is not a protective mantra.

And anyone who's been in that situation knows that nonviolent tactics will not prevent Authority from lying about what happened -- as has long been the case in Oakland. They lie all the time; it is their official culture.

That said, is it wise to adopt diversity of tactics or overtly violent tactics? Under the conditions Americans live in -- a virtual police state -- the answer is almost always no. Not only is it not wise, it's not necessary.

A police state is a brittle state, very weak in many respects. Violence on the part of police state victims almost always has the ironic effect of strengthening the oppressor and weakening the victim. Nonviolent tactics, on the other hand, can have an increasingly weakening effect on the police state while strengthening the victims.

Nonviolence, however, should not be confused with passivity. And passivity is not the same as Passive Resistance. One of the problems Americans have in talking about -- let alone sorting through -- these issues is that most Americans have no idea what the terms really mean and how to practice nonviolent tactics effectively.

They have had no experience, there is very little training available, and they don't know what to do. All they know are the names of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King. "Do thou likewise!"

But what did Gandhi and King do? And just as important, where, when and why?

Next: Nonviolent tactics are weapons.

Black Bloc in Oakland

I still haven't had a chance to catch up on all the news regarding what happened in Oakland on Wednesday and into Thursday, but much of what I have been able to look at concentrates on the Black Bloc tactics employed during the day and into the night culminating with the police crackdown, more tear gas, arrests, and the usual injuries from "non-lethal" projectiles. Oh, and the Mercedes that ran two people down when they wouldn't get out of the way. Driver not even cited, released to go about his business.

The vandalism and squatting have become the major issues -- not just in Oakland but apparently throughout the Movement, at least from what I can tell. What the Black Bloc did is Topic A; what to do about it is Topic B.

If the reports are accurate, the vandalism was quite minor -- some 18 windows broken, some spraypainted slogans and symbols, some dumpsters set alight, etc. A vacant building was briefly taken over and barricades were erected and burned. I'm sure there has been much more damage during demonstrations over the death of Oscar Grant, among other incidents.

There was no riot.

A lot of people were arrested and held on trumped up charges. Some of the reports tried to assert that the arrestees were all Black Bloc, but accounts on that issue are confused. Some probably were; others were journalists, or people who were trying to get away from the disturbances.

A homeless man was apparently shot and severely wounded by a "rubber bullet" -- some kind of projectile -- near the Plaza; another man -- yet another Iraq War vet -- was beaten by police when he didn't move fast enough or in the direction they wanted or something. He was taken to jail with a ruptured spleen, and was only taken to the hospital after many hours in agony.

I haven't linked these stories because they are still in flux.

There is a great deal of outrage and animosity toward the Black Bloc at this point, mainly because they spoiled what had been a triumphant day for Occupy Oakland. Many people seem to support the goals of OO and even support taking over vacant buildings, but they also believe that the Black Bloc tactics are alienating supporters.

Well. Yes. They are.

Many people get very nervous at the thought of taking serious physical action that includes vandalism and squatting. That's going "too far." Peaceful protest, in their minds, may involve the protesters being subjected to violence, but never taking active part in violence itself.

Here's the thing, as I see it: All through the nonviolent resistance/civil disobedience period in India and the United States there were other actions going on, some of which were not necessarily nonviolent at all. In other words, both nonviolence and more assertive actions going on simultaneously can have a very powerful effect.

And what I've noticed in news coverage of the General Strike is that it is mostly very positive about Occupy Oakland and the many activities it coordinated on November 2, including shutting down the Port of Oakland at least for the night shift, and most of the coverage makes a clear distinction between OO's activities and what the Black Bloc did -- indeed, some of the coverage makes clear that the Black Bloc was not even part of the OO demonstrations but was organized and implemented separately.

You would not know that, though, from reading and listening to all the keening and garment rending of some of the demonstrators who feel so mortified and betrayed by the violence.

At some point, they may come to appreciate what the Black Bloc was doing. The contrast between the Black Bloc tactics and Occupy Oakland was heightened, making OO look very good, better, perhaps, than they otherwise might have. Much the same thing happened to the Indian Independence movement and the Civil Rights Movement. By comparison to some of the more militant activists, Gandhi's and King's movements looked better and better.

So, I urge those who feel so despondent about the Black Bloc activists to lighten the fuck up.

Take a deep breath.

Relax.

Disrupting OccupySacramento -- "Diversity of Tactics" as Practiced by the Mayor

When you operate in the public square, disruptions are a fact of life. OccupySacramento has faced all kinds of disruptions on an ongoing basis, including having to break camp every night and prepare for arrests for failure to disperse that are a nightly occurrence at Cesar Chavez Plaza.

Live video of these arrests is streamed on the internet every night. Thousands of people around the world watch these arrests as they happen. They watch the arrival of dozens of police vehicles, the assembly and deployment of scores of police officers in riot gear, the busy to and fro of police commanders and assistant commanders and police videographers within the Plaza. They watch the march of a double column of riot police through the Plaza and they hear the orders to the Occupiers to disperse. They watch the riot police surround that night's volunteers for arrest -- anywhere from one to 20 or so, each night -- as the volunteers sit on the pavement, holding signs saying "People's Need Not Corporate Greed" and the like, and they watch as brothers and sisters in Occupation stand in witness, chanting now familiar slogans ("We. Are. The 99%! You. Are. The 99%!" among others) of solidarity.

They hear the volunteers for arrest speak out at the officers as they prepare for the arrests: "Your rights and pensions are in as much jeopardy as anyone else's. You're being robbed of the future just like everybody else. Why are you doing this to us? You are our brothers and sisters, we are your sons and daughters, we are your cousins, your aunts and uncles, we are you mothers and fathers, we are you, and you are us. Why are you doing this to us? Who are you serving? What are you afraid of? We are peaceful people."

They may hear a chant go up from the crowd of witnesses: "Where's the riot? Where's the riot?"

The volunteers preparing for arrest may continue to speak out to the police who are surrounding them: "Why are you arresting us for exercising our constitutionally guaranteed right of peaceful assembly? Why are you arresting us for exercising our constitutionally guaranteed right of freedom of speech? Why are you arresting us for exercising our constitutionally guaranteed right to petition the government for redress of grievance? Why are you arresting us? Why?"

And then the Livestream viewers around the world will see the demonstrators arrested -- gently to be sure -- one by one, lifted from the ground by two officers, placed in plastic restraints, hands behind their backs, marched away for processing and transport to the jail. Some of the volunteers may shout at this point, "I am a criminal! I am a criminal for exercising my rights as an American citizen! I am a criminal! I am a criminal!"

And sometimes the police -- who are both actors and audience in this nightly drama of disruption -- will be brought to tears by what they are witnessing and what they are doing.

Night after night, it's the same. Night after night.

But there are other disruptions as well. Some are simply part of the chaos of urban living, such as the police officer who got dogbit the other day, or the homeless wanderer whose incoherent ranting even he can't fathom. There is always a police presence in the Plaza, and there are occasional arrests of people passing through the Plaza whose presence is "suspicious" in the eyes of the officers. They will ask for ID and run the person's name for warrants. Often, they will find their target has missed a court date and will take him or her into custody. These events are so common, they're almost not disruptive any more (although perhaps they should be.)

Sometimes the disruptions involve actions by Occupiers themselves. A young man in the Plaza has been on a hunger strike for many days. He is becoming thinner and weaker and more delirious, and sometimes he has agonizing outbursts of despair that affect everyone. This is not the ordinary chaos of urban life; this is purposeful direct action, mindful of the man whose name graces the Plaza and whose image in bronze watches over us. This is Cesar Chavez Plaza, after all, named, as many civic plazas in California and throughout the West are named, for the farmworker organizer who brought hope and strength and determination to the people whose work in the fields of the West is the foundation on which empires of agriculture and commerce have been built.

Sometimes, like yesterday afternoon and evening, the disruption is due to the visitation of "dignitaries." The Mayor came to call, along with a troop of staff, and several council members in train. We knew he was coming. He said on Tuesday he would cross the street to the Plaza sometime later this week to visit and watch and listen and learn. And he said on Tuesday that he would work with our representatives to craft a Resolution that he would take to Washington with him when next he traveled to the seat of national power.

So he arrived. An Occupant greeted him. "Hello. Stop the arrests, drop the charges, open the Plaza 24/7." His smile couldn't have been bigger, "How are you? Good to see you. Yes, I'm here to hear your concerns. Thank you." He moved on to the next knot of Occupiers. And the next and the next and the next, shadowed by staff and joined by a television crew. Some of the Occupiers turned their backs or continued with their business as if there was nothing out of the ordinary going on. Others were expressing more and more dismay at the Mayor's clearly disruptive intrusion into the life and work of the Occupation. He went all around the Plaza with his staff and the television crew, while many Occupiers followed along. He spoke to everyone who came up to him, he was always smiling, always pleasant, always gracious, "reaching out."

The people he spoke with were disarmed. The Mayor knew what he was doing.

General Assembly was called, somewhat late, but it was called, and though the Mayor continued to hold court off to the side, with perhaps 25 or more people surrounding him, a sufficient number of Occupiers were assembled to begin the GA. All went well for the first few minutes, and then the Mayor and his staff and the council member for the Downtown district joined the Assembly. Announcements were being made, and as a courtesy, the Mayor's presence in the Assembly was announced as well.

He was offered an opportunity to speak. An opportunity he took full advantage of. He spoke at length about why he was at the Plaza: to "dialogue" with OccupySacramento. To listen to concerns. To take them back to the council and to have his staff follow up. Were there any questions? He started calling on people. The GA facilitator said, "Wait. Please. We have a procedure. We will open stack. [To the Assembly:] Please, if you would like to ask the Mayor a question, join the stack over there." And so a score of people "joined stack" and the Mayor took their questions one by one. Periodically he would say, "I would like to learn. I don't want to interfere with your process. I am so impressed with what you are doing." Then his disruption would continue. He was asked many questions having to do with how he and the council and the Occupation could work together to improve services and conditions for the least among us. He was always ready with an answer. He was asked a few questions about how to end the nightly arrests, questions which he did not answer, he launched into a campaign speech instead -- about how proud he was of this endeavor and so on and so forth, blah-ba-blah. He was challenged several times, "You haven't answered the question." Ba-blah-ba-blah-blah." Someone spoke very firmly to him, "You say you're here to listen, but you haven't heard us tonight any more than you heard us on Tuesday. Stop the arrests. Open the Plaza for our continuing use."

He smiled his biggest smile. "I hear you. I understand that you want the camping ordinance overturned, and I have pledged to you that I will work with staff and the council to see what can be done."

The crowd murmured. "We are not camping! We are occupying!"

"Stop the arrests!"

"The city has already made accommodations for you by extending the park hours, and we are working with staff to see what else can be done. We hear you."

"Stop the arrests!"

"We understand that you want to be able to camp here overnight..."

"We are not camping!"

"Occupy, occupy, that's right. We understand you want to stay here overnight. I understand that. We are working to see what can be done. There is a process. The process is under way. It's just begun. Please give us a chance to dialogue with you and see if we can come up with a solution."

"Stop the arrests!"

Someone got up and said, "What makes you think the city has any authority to interfere with citizens' rights to assemble, to speak freely and to petition. Is the city really prepared for the lawsuits that are inevitable? Do you realize the city attorney gave you very bad advice on Tuesday and demonstrated she has no idea of the case law involved? Do you realize the legal jeopardy she and you are putting this city in?"

The Mayor, for once, lost his aplomb. He claimed that he has to rely on the city attorney's opinion, and as far as he knows, she was offering her best assessment of relevant law. But clearly was made aware there... may... be a legal problem.

Another questioner asked: "When was the last time you or any other council member read the Constitution?"

"We are not camping!"

"I hear you."

"We want this park opened around the clock. We've been told many different stories about how to do that. We should go through Parks, we should go through the Council, we should go through the City Manager, we should ask the Police Chief. What should we do?"

He called up another council-member to answer.

"There's never been an official request to use the park around the clock, so the procedure is somewhat difficult to determine. Ordinarily a request would go through the Parks department, and they can issue a permit. But in this case... since there's never been a request, Parks can't act to grant it."

"Who has the direct final authority to make the determination of whether or not the arrests will continue? "

For once a direct answer from the Mayor: "The city manager."

"The mayor and council have no authority to make that determination?"

"That's right."

Murmuring in the crowd. Apparently, it was the first time many of the Occupiers had heard or realized that.

He was asked if he thought he was a member of the 99% or the 1%. "I like to think of myself as part of the 99%.... I pulled myself up by my bootstraps..." Kevin Johnson, multi-millionaire from professional sports, real estate investments, and privatizing public schools (among other endeavors). He was challenged on his privatization of Sacramento High School, with his private company, St. Hope, now running it as a charter school. "It's a public charter school!" he said defensively. "I'm very proud of the accomplishments of the school and its students."

"Yes, you are. That's because the teachers have no defined benefit pensions, they are paid less than public school employees, and they have no protection from arbitrar..." and he was cut off.

He was asked to take his money out of banks like Chase, Citi, or BofA, and put it in local banks or credit unions. Disingenuously, he asked: "Which ones are they?" He was asked again to take his money out of predatory banks, and he said that people have a choice in this country and he doesn't choose to do that.

He was challenged on the cost of the preliminary studies for the new arena the NBA is demanding be built for the Kings, especially given the fact that the city is always crying poor about social services. He said the new arena will bring 4,000 jobs. He was called a liar for that. (Net, there would be essentially no new jobs, and conceivably, given the proposed location in the Railyards, there could be fewer jobs than the current arena in the northern suburbs. And yet the project is slated to cost $350,000,000 just to construct an arena.) "No public money is going into this project," he insisted -- after conceding spending half a million dollars of public money for a consultant's report.

By this time, it was getting late, people were getting crankier and crankier, and so Question Time with the Mayor concluded, but as he went off into the night, practically everyone followed him, pestering him with more questions, personal statements, unresolved issues, and he continued to hold forth at the side of the Plaza while the GA facilitators tried to restart the aborted meeting. There were only a handful of people remaining for the GA, though, and many of them were very angry at what had just transpired.

Some were clear about what had happened. The Mayor got what he wanted: he successfully disrupted the Occupation and shifted attention from the purposes of the Occupation to his own wonderful self. And he kept the attention on himself no matter how much the GA facilitator tried to get things back on track.

There were many tears and much fury in the next few minutes. Accusations were flung willy-nilly, loud and very angry voices were raised. All this while the Mayor and his staff held court, surrounded by supplicants. Pleading their case. Kissing his hem.

At one point during Question Time, one Occupier asked, "Why are we on our knees before this man, asking, pleading with him? He works for us. We don't work for him."

When the Mayor wearied of treating with the rabble, he finally left the Plaza, and the tattered shreds of what was left of the GA were braided together into the semblance of order. The remaining items of business were covered as quickly as they could be. The anger and tears only partially defused.

He got what he wanted, the Mayor.

He's a master at it.

He will represent our voices. Make sure they are heard... Thank you. Thankyouverymuch.

As Greece Descends into Chaos -- or Ascends from Slavery, depending

Photo from Guardian slide show about the continuing tumult in Greece over the loss of sovereignty to rapacious banking interests and other things.

Some discussion of "Diversity of Tactics" might be in order. In fact, there is such a discussion over at Waging Nonviolence, a site that features writers and articles I sometimes take issue with, but which keeps an ongoing and comprehensive record of nonviolent change -- not always through resistance and revolution -- all over the world.


Ché's Intro to the Waging Non-Violence Article below:

"Diversity of Tactics" refers to the utilization of a variety of means and methods of direct action to accomplish social and political change. Cut and dried, right? Well, no. Among the tactics that fall under this modest and unassuming rubric, are such things as marches and rallies and public demonstrations of all kinds, general and strategic labor strikes, various forms of computer network disruption (such as is used by Anonymous and the like), leaks of sensitive or secret information (such as is done by WikiLeaks and others), and most characteristically, so called Black Bloc actions -- mostly hit and run vandalism, overturning dumpsters, spray or other forms of painting buildings (or in Greece, some of the police), breaking windows or setting cars or other stationary objects alight. Black Bloc tactics specifically target buildings and inanimate objects, often symbolic of the oppressive power structure that is being resisted or opposed by the particular direct action under way (such as, for example, direct action opposition to Globalization or the Olympics).

It is the Black Bloc tactics, primarily, that most people get very nervous about. But keep in mind many people don't like any form of direct action for social justice and change at all, preferring the familiar and relatively safe indirect action of routinized and standardized civil society; ie: politics as usual.

Politics is hard; democracy is harder. Social democracy that actually works to the benefit of the masses is hardest of all.

The form of social and political democracy that has been adopted by OccupyWallStreet is one of its many strengths; the nonviolent philosophy that underlies it has provided an extraordinary level of safe ground for direct action.

And so, to the article, which I will excerpt parts of and yammer and natter about.

What ‘diversity of tactics’ really means for Occupy Wall Street

by Nathan Schneider | October 19, 2011, 12:02 pm

Even as Occupy Wall Street shapes the public conversation about high finance, political corruption, and the distribution of wealth, it has also raised anew questions about how resistance movements in general should operate. I want to consider one of the matters that I’ve returned to over the past month, as I’ve watched the occupation up close and its means of making its presence felt on the streets of New York and in the media.

“Diversity of tactics,” in the context of political protests, is often treated as essentially a byword for condoning acts of violence. The phrase comes by this honestly; it emerged about a decade ago at the height of the global justice movement, especially between the 1999 demonstrations that shut down a WTO meeting in Seattle and those two years later in Quebec. While all nonviolent movements worth their salt will inevitably rely on a variety of tactics—for instance, Gene Sharp’s list of 198 of them—using the word “diversity” was a kind of attempted détente between those committed to staying nonviolent and those who weren’t. Consider this characterization by George Lakey:

“Diversity of tactics” implies that some protesters may choose to do actions that will be interpreted by the majority of people as “violent,” like property destruction, attacks on police vehicles, fighting back if provoked by the police, and so on, while other protesters are operating with clear nonviolent guidelines.

Until I became involved in the Occupy movement, I had never paid attention to the term "Diversity of Tactics," and I may never have heard it before. For most of my life, I've been very engaged in social justice causes and in direct and standard political action. Yet I'd never heard that term before, at least not to the point where it had any meaning and I committed it to memory. Now, however, the term and the idea is percolating through the Occupy movement, and while I don't hear it often, I do hear it and read about it.

Like much of the rest of the Occupy movement's grounding philosophy, "Diversity of Tactics" comes directly out of Anarchic thought and action.

While I've long been an activist -- even a radical -- in a more or less traditional "lefty" sense, I've never before had much contact with anarchists and anarchist thought. Until a demonstration was made in New York of how an anarchic organizational model can work -- through OccupyWallStreet and the New York City General Assembly -- I essentially dismissed it out of hand, much as I've seen more traditionally minded Socialists do to this day. They have no faith that something like this can work, so they don't believe it does work. Much as I believed until I saw it for myself.

Consequently, "Diversity of Tactics" is not widely known or employed. But New York is using "Diversity of Tactics" in its direct actions, and at the same time, it is modifying the idea to be physically nonviolent.

"This. Is. A Peaceful Protest!" And so it is.

Those who extoll the importance of total nonviolent discipline—as Lakey eloquently goes on to do—might be disappointed to learn that Occupy Wall Street has made “diversity of tactics” its official modus operandi. However, the way that the occupiers have carried out this policy might actually lead us to think of its meaning and implications in a more compelling way.

Emphasis mine. Yes, well.

"Official." Give me a break! "Diversity of Tactics" is being utilized in a characteristically (for OccupyWallStreet) nonviolent way. Despite hundreds and hundreds of arrests in New York and around the country, there have been no reported acts of violence against property -- such as spray painting, breaking windows and overturning dumpsters -- that is so identified with Diversity of Tactics. Clearly we're dealing with something else again.

So far, at least, what “diversity of tactics” has meant to the occupiers is not simply openness to violence but actually a richer interpretation of the phrase—indeed, a whole philosophy of direct action that comes out of anarchist thought. In this, “diversity of tactics” shares the same heritage and logic of the open assemblies that are the heart of the occupation movement. Take this passage from a pamphlet on hand at occupied Liberty Plaza, Anarchist Basics:

Affinity groups ["of 5 to 20 people"] decide on their own what they want to do and how they want to do it, and aren’t obliged to take orders from any person on top. As such, they challenge top-down decision-making and organizing, and empower those involved to take direct action in the world around them. Affinity groups can make decisions in whatever way they see fit, but they generally use some form of consensus or direct democracy to decide on goals and tactics. Affinity groups by nature are decentralized and non-hierarchical, two important principles of anarchist organizing and action.

Small groups acting more or less autonomously toward common goals is a matter of principle as well as of pragmatism. These groups, in turn, can voluntarily coordinate with each other in spokescouncils. Operating this way reflects the kind of values that many in the occupation movement insist on: individual autonomy, consensus decision making, decentralization, and equality.

That is (pretty much) the model of how it is done in New York, but let's look at what's been done, too:

Consider, for instance, the two main events which brought public attention and sympathy to the movement: the arrest of nearly 100 on a march near Union Square on September 24 (which included an infamous pepper-spraying incident), and the approximately 700 arrested a week later on the Brooklyn Bridge. In both cases, the arrests directly followed instances of autonomous action by small groups, which splintered away from the plan established by the Direct Action Committee. (At Union Square, there was a dispute about whether to take the march back to Liberty Plaza or to the United Nations; at the Brooklyn Bridge, hundreds of marchers chose to spill onto the roadway rather than remaining on the narrow pedestrian walkway.) In both cases, too, the police responded to such autonomous action with violent overreaction, which in turn garnered tremendous interest from the media.

Indeed, it was the grossly disproportionate action of the NYPD on September 24 that triggered media interest in what was going on, and the mass arrests on the Brooklyn Bridge were, from a media standpoint, gold.

How these two incidents came into being is of some interest. Since there is no Central Office that is actually in charge and directs these things, their autonomous nature is surprisingly easily replicable by those who might want to try it.

I have previously called for the movement to adopt more orderly kinds of civil disobedience actions, ones targeted specifically at the laws they oppose—on the model of lunch-counter sit-ins in the civil rights movement, for instance. However, I’ve been forced to recognize that the chaotic stuff seems to work.

I would add that the tension between traditional and more free form (and intrinsically anarchic) organizational and action models is part of the internal dynamism throughout the movement.

Thus, while it can be disheartening to see so much traditionalism and even rigidity of thought in OccupySacramento, there are those who continue to press a free-association, anarchic model as well. The problem here, as it is in many other places, is that most of the participants have no familiarity with -- or in some cases even knowledge of -- how other Occupations are organized and how the New York model came to be and is being adapted.

This is the key thought in the piece:

We already know that power structures which rely on violence are helpless against coordinated nonviolent action. During the civil rights movement, a highly structured and disciplined action in a segregated city like a sit-in or Freedom Ride had the capacity to confront the system in a very direct way, presenting the powerful a dilemma between violent overreaction and capitulation. Such actions, however, have since turned ritualized and generally ineffective in American protest movements. But Occupy Wall Street commends to us the anarchist insight that, in much the same way, hierarchical command structures are highly vulnerable to non-hierarchical action.

There you have it. It doesn't mean that you use these tactics solely against the police (in a deeper sense, they're not "against" actions, they're "pro" actions, in favor of the rights of the People). The movement can -- and in many cases does -- use them everywhere. Not so much against "laws" as against "structure."

I encourage people to read the whole piece. It is filled with insight.

And then go forth.

Freely, positively, and forcefully. The time has come.

(See Chris Hedges burst into tears at the realization of what he is witnessing -- and a part of -- in previous post.)
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Also, there is a fuller discussion of Diversity of Tactics and the struggles surrounding their use at the videos linked in this post from October 9.