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.

Disastrous New Model Policing of Occupy by OPD

I've hesitated to post anything about this as I didn't see the videos until the day before yesterday, and it was hard to imagine reports of "arrests" in Oakland in connection with the May Day marches and rallies and visualize this as what happened:



But this is only part of it. From this video, it looks like just random mayhem by the OPD, snatching and grabbing likely targets at will, with neither cause nor reason, and firing a few rounds of flash-bangs and tear gas pretty much at random as well. This is what the New Model OPD crowd control response, ostentatiously announced by Interim Chief Howard Jordan in the days before the May Day events, looks like. What a mess.
But there is more:



These are the same events, but in greater detail. The randomness and the terror tactics employed by the Oakland police in so-called "crowd control" operations like this are obviously not controlling disturbances -- there were none before the police commenced their attack -- they are causing disturbances. And there are provocateurs -- assumed to be police agents -- in the crowd. Many of them according to witnesses.

At 4:06 you can see one casually pick up a dropped police club and hand it to an officer.

The random firing into the crowd -- a crowd which includes police officers -- looks like a panic move. Given the chaos precipitated by the police, panic among them would be almost expected.

It's Oakland, of course, so the crowd is chanting: "We are not afraid."

Some actually are afraid, though. And inspiring fear and dread in the crowd is part of the botched Plan we see being implemented.

Yet another -- and still longer -- view of the same events. Notice, there is no disturbance in the street until the police create one. These events are taking place as part of the march is about to arrive at Oscar Grant/Frank Ogawa Plaza in front of the Oakland City Hall (where the encampment was, and close to where Scott Olsen and others were injured by police firing into the crowd on October 25).



We don't know what precipitates the cops running forward, but from my perspective, they look like they are trying to get ahead of the crowd, perhaps to form a skirmish line of some sort to prevent something. This is how they operate.

But starting at 0:39 we see a bicyclist cross in front of them. She is jostled and then assaulted by police, pulled from her bike and thrown to the ground, screaming in shock and pain.

(Of course it's possible the bicyclist was deliberately trying to interfere with the police charge. Oh, these things sometimes happen. But I don't know. From appearances, she was simply riding her bike from one side of the street to the other and quite possibly didn't even see the police charge in progress until she was assaulted.)

If the police were intending to form a skirmish line at the Plaza for some reason, they wind up forming a messed up "force protection line" instead as they arrest and drag off the bicyclist. The crowd is highly agitated by these events but they do not respond to police violence with violence of their own (well, apart from their ever-present verbal contempt of the officers, which is not only routine, it is often quite rude. Oh my.)

A tall unhelmeted officer is seen at 2:22 and frequently throughout the rest of the video; he seems to be directing the action. He looks familiar from previous videos of encounters with the Oakland police, I'm thinking especially of one really stupid event when the police confiscated the sound equipment being used by demonstrators in front of the City Hall. IIRC, he was actually the officer who dealt with those who were protesting this police action with a certain unusual level of diplomacy and aplomb. But maybe it wasn't him.

At any rate, it's obvious from this video that the OPD is completely at sea; not only do they have no training or leadership in conducting this sort of operation (which they shouldn't be doing anyway), they are scaring themselves with their own incompetence. It's hard to maintain an aggressive posture when you don't know what you're doing.

They are holding on to each other for dear life, even though the crowd is not physically threatening or assaulting them at all (compare and contrast with Greek anti-police actions.) Really. Americans, no matter how pissed they are, wouldn't even think of doing something like that to American police.

So-called "nonviolence" advocates, of course, used to get their panties all in a wad over the merest suggestion of rudeness toward the police, accusing "OO" of engaging in "violence" because protesters confront the police assertively and loudly (oh yes, and some of them wear bandanas, also a mark of "violence.") I say "used to get" their panties bunched up because they have mostly shut the fuck up. Well, "mostly." There have been a few diaries over at dKos lately excoriating the "black block" for breaking windows, but even those have been taken with a grain of salt. We still don't know who actually committed the vandalism in San Francisco on April 30th for example, and there is a case to be made that it was the work of either the police themselves or hired thugs in order to further diminish participation in Occupy and other protest events.

At about 3:10 in the video you can make out the crowd chanting "Pigs go home!" as the police retreat. This has become a routine chant in Oakland because statistics show that about 90% of the OPD don't live in Oakland and couldn't care less about what happens to the city or its people. They function as a mercenary squad ("Mossos d'Esquadra") on behalf of the city authorities and their owners. They have no commitment to the People because they have no connection with them; thus they have a tradition, an institutional culture if you will, of acting with murderous impunity. Of all the many anti-police chants used in Oakland, "Pigs go home!" seems to hit them the hardest. Truth hurts.

Some members of the crowd use metal shielding against police aggression (actually, in the video, it is being used rather cleverly to contain the police). At about 3:48 you can hear the crowd chanting "We are not afraid!" as the police continue to retreat.

At 6:23 the police, under the apparent command of the tall unhelmeted officer, start to become aggressive. Two police vehicles have just left the scene -- we assume one of them contains the arrested bicyclist, but that's not entirely clear. Their aggression is incomprehensible, but many of the police actions in Oakland have made no sense for years, and thus the city has paid out many millions of dollars in compensation to victims of police incompetence and brutality, and the OPD is under Federal Court reform orders (which are being ignored or violated daily) and threat of Federal receivership for failure to comply. This has been going on for years. And years. And years.

What we're seeing in these videos are OPD's futile attempts to meet some of the requirements mandated by some of the repeated demands of the court orders.

At 7:08 you will notice a Black Clad One pass between two officers on the street. He his patted on the back by one of the officers, and it is only natural to ask whether he is one of the many (many) police plants and provocateurs in the crowd. I have no idea whether he is or not, but given the swift and brutal action of the police toward other Black Clad Ones -- and their apparent indifference to this one -- it makes you wonder.

Shortly after 7:14 we hear the sound of some kind of munitions being fired, startling everyone, including the police. The camera pans and we see smoke or tear gas rising from the street. Almost immediately, the police among whom the round went off, throw someone to the ground (not Black Clad) and begin the process of arresting him. One of the officers who throws him to the ground is carrying what looks like a bean-bag weapon, but it's not clear exactly what sort of munitions he's armed with. (Side note: during a local protest action, I witnessed a caravan of police arrive at the courthouse and assemble on its steps. Several of them carried automatic weapons, machine guns. There were no protesters anywhere near the courthouse.)

In the video, others are promptly grabbed and thrown to the ground; a melee ensues. But it is all a melee of police aggression. At 7:53, one officer is seen manfully pushing against the protester's metal shield (behind which there are several women). It appears that people are being thrown to the ground and trussed up all around, but there actually weren't very many arrests. This is another reason to suspect that at least some of those being manhandled and "arrested" were actually police in training...

Shortly after 8:08 in the video another round of something goes off while some hapless individual is being manhandled on the street. What it is and why it is being fired is unknown, but members of the crowd react as if there was shrapnel in the munition, whatever it was. The police drag their quarry away, and as he passes the camera, a splash of yellow paint is seen on his jeans. In an earlier video from another angle, police officers are seen splashed with yellow paint. Whether this fellow is one who was throwing the paint, who knows, but his trussing up and dragging away is quite different than that of some of the other arrestees. He is, for example, placed in metal handcuffs which were applied while his hands were in front of rather than behind him. He is dragged away by his cuffs, but then is aided to stand up on his own (seen in another video) after which... what? I haven't seen any video that shows what happens to him, but it does make you wonder.

Meanwhile, in this video, another round of something goes off behind the metal "Gender Strike" shield at about 8:27. The camera pans and we see only one person holding up the shield in a cloud of smoke. Others come to help, and an officer pushes the shield over. The tall unhelmeted officer passes by another Snatch and Grab installation on the ground (by now, it is looking somewhat... shall we say... "artistic") talking on his radio or cell phone (hard to say). The crowd has thinned somewhat, and he turns to the circle of officers surrounding their latest quarry. There are two people on the ground, lots of photographers, and plenty of people standing around wondering WTF. The unhelmeted officer paces while he chats on the phone or radio. A member of the crowd approaches the officers screaming. As I say, by now, this scene has become something of a performance art installation.

At 10:00 in the video, the man on the ground is seen clearly, and he's actually one who was being arrested earlier, well before the munitions were fired. In the following video, he is asked his name by one of the livestreamers, and he says he doesn't want to be on camera, and he won't give his name, and I think I hear him saying "Put the camera down!". Of course, it is too late. But his size and appearance raise some questions in my mind, in addition to the fact that his desire not to be on camera or to give his name -- while not unheard of among arrestees -- is somewhat peculiar, as is the fact that he was kept on the ground for so long while munitions were being fired at the crowd (which included police.)

A police officer is seen holding one of the iconic Oakland garbage can shields, which is curious, but there you are. Meanwhile, the video ends with a close up of one of the officer's "less lethal" guns, officers splashed with yellow paint and an announcement: "We need you to clear the intersection".

Yes, well...

By this time, practically the only ones on the street are the police and the photographers...

I will wrap this up with OakTownPirate's video from within the melee. At one point, he is shoved to the ground by aggressive police but he yells that he's a journalist and they seem to leave him alone after that.



And of course none of this would have happened at all if the police hadn't decided to become aggressive against peaceful demonstrators. Police aggression was the sole reason for the melee.

It may be Oakland, and people may be used to it by now, but it is still wrong.

Talking Strategy For A Little Bit -- And What Occupy Is Not

As a rule, I prefer to use what's on hand in order to develop strategic thinking and planning rather than try to impose a strategic template from another source.

Occupy has been up and running for more than six months now, and it has its own templates for taking action. Not all of it is strategic, to be sure, but it is surprisingly effective on its own terms.

It was really tough for me, coming from a relatively organized and hierarchical background, to deal with the way Occupy was and is operating. If it was tough for me I can only imagine how tough it was for many others who were far more rigidly programmed than I was.

I know Socialists who were freaked out about Occupy from the beginning and are still nay-sayers despite the overall success and durability of the movement to date. I'm aware of plenty of political interests and operatives of all kinds who insist that "you have to have" certain kinds of structures and strategies in place in order to have any effect at all on The Powers That Be. Parts of the nonviolence community have been having a field day denouncing the movement for its lack of strict discipline and Gandhi-esque purity.

I think that those who insist that Revolution has to be done in a certain way following a certain template of strategy and action may be missing the point. Much of that argument has been made and heard long since, and some of it has been adopted. But much of has been rejected.

Occupy is not a Sharp-style color revolution. It doesn't come from the same space, and it doesn't appear to be going in the direction of a Sharp-style revolution. From my perspective, Occupy is not ultimately about overthrow or seizing power or any of the standard revolutionary motifs that are central to Revolutionary Theory and Practice As Done By Past Revolutionary Masters.

I linked to David Graeber's "Revolution in Reverse" in an earlier post because I think it is much closer to the ideological and strategic framework that OWS and Occupy in general have "adopted" -- without any formal consensing on it -- as a working model for accomplishing the deeper revolutionary objectives of the Movement.

For the record:

http://news.infoshop.org/article.php?story=2007graeber-revolution-reverse

It's not the be-all/end-all guidebook of this revolution by any means; I see it more as a theoretical starting point for the imagination process that's been going on throughout the Occupy movement since before there was a movement.

The key word is "imagination."

After all, another world really is possible. Making it so is not so much a matter of forcing it as allowing it, making the space for it, nurturing it, and letting it grow. That's up to us to do, not something we ask of government or corporate power. We don't need their permission, and we don't need their power to create another world. We just do it.

Starting with imagining it, which is what hundreds of groups (both formally organized and highly informal) have been doing, some of them for decades. In other words, Occupy is not starting from square one, and we're by no means operating in a vacuum. Much of the ground work for "another world" has long been in place, and many of the physical aspects of the Occupy movement have been ways of highlighting what to do and how to get there.

You take the square.

You clothe the naked, feed the hungry, shelter the homeless. You speak out against injustice, treat one another with dignity, you form communities, you foster and enable peace.

You face down oppression.

And you allow the alternatives to happen.

Pie in the sky? Sure. Magical thinking? Absolutely. Impossible? Maybe not. I don't know.

Right now I'm working on an analysis that compares and contrasts the Sharp-style revolution with what Occupy is doing. There are many parallels and many divergences. What is very clear, however, is that the premise of Occupy is essentially 180° opposite the Sharp premise of power and purpose.

"Revolution in Reverse."

Video of NYPD Vandalizing Glass Door Using Detainee's Head

Starting about 3:38 in the video above, NYPD ScooterCops use the head of a man [said to be one of the OWS street medics] they are detaining as a battering ram to break a window in the door of what appears to be an apartment house [Teh google says the address: 55 E 10th St, is the Brittany Residence Hall of NYU] along the route of an OWS [splinter] march from Zuccotti/Liberty Park to Washington Square [my bad] Union Square on March 17, 2012.

There was a report that another man was grabbed from among the marchers and his head was smashed into a window along the route, breaking it, but I have not found confirmation (it may have been this incident, though the report I saw referred to it as a separate incident.) There were other reports of people being slammed into walls.

Throughout the day, NYPD had been employing their "snatch and grab" tactic of arbitrarily targeting members of the crowd for arrest. They've been doing this for months, but on Sunday, it was employed more extensively than it has been for some time.

More and more video and testimony of what went on is being posted and is showing up on searches. What happened Sunday in New York City in connection with OWS was, in all respects, a police riot.

Will even one self-proclaimed "nonviolence advocate" rend even part of their garment over it?

Somehow, I kind of doubt it...

--------------------
THE SOLIDARITY MARCH 3/18/12

Last Night in New York

I've seen a number of video versions of what happened to Cecily McMillen when she had an epileptic seizure after being arrested and placed on a transit bus. But this one is easily the most disgusting and horrifying of any I've seen so far.



It's not so much the gross indifference of the police to the plight of their prisoner nor is it the outrage of the witnesses, it is that they do these things deliberately with a great deal of malice aforethought, for the strategic purpose of intimidating witnesses and suppressing dissent.

They want to be seen behaving in just as thuggish a manner as you see here.

They want you to see it in order to scare the crap out of you.

Is it working?

---------------------------
TESTIMONY:


FOR THE RECORD:

Strategery

As for Occupy affairs...

I've been involved in something called "Occupy Strategy National Dialogue" through InterOccupy for over a month now -- practically a whole era in Occupy Time -- that started as a national Occupy dialogue on the issue of "nonviolence vs diversity of tactics" that was triggered by Chris Hedges infamous polemic: "Black Bloc: The Cancer on Occupy."

I'm not going to rehash all that, partly because it is deeply hurtful to many people who have dedicated much more than I have to the Movement/Revolution, but also because it's an irresolvable and basically false issue. Nonviolence IS part of the diversity of tactics that are used throughout Occupy, so the notion that there is any "versus" at all is stupid. The question, to the extent there is one, is whether a nonviolent strategy a la Gandhi and King (or my man, Cesar Chavez) is the right one for Occupy. That question is still open. Many Occupy activists are certain that it is not just the right one, it is the only one that has a chance of success. I -- and many others -- are not so sure. In fact, the more I think about it, the more convinced I am that the Gandhi/King nonviolent strategy is bound to fail, and those who advocate it as the "only way" forward are wittingly or unwittingly trying to ensure that failure is the only option.

I categorize most of them as the same people or the same sorts of people who from the outset have been trying to corral Occupy into a standard format of some kind, preferably a 501(c)(3) nonprofit with a 501(c)(4) political wing. This is what people are used to and comfortable with; I'm used to it and comfortable with it, having worked in that environment on one side of it or the other all my adult life. It is the means by which and through which "the people" in groups -- that is to say the organizational boards and staffs -- interact with government agencies and officials.

It's an OK model if the system is working, but the system isn't working in our country at this time, nor has the system functioned on behalf of the People more than haltingly and occasionally for many years. I argue that we are well past the point where we can replicate the efforts of the past and expect reasonably similar results. It's not going to work. Our Rulers are way, way ahead of us on that plane.

If they can easily thwart and subvert the NPO/advocacy group model -- and they can and do -- they can easily do the same to the nonviolent resistance strategies of Gandhi and King (and Chavez), which they have been doing for many a long year, though it doesn't dawn on many people that the reason why their NPOs and advocacy groups don't seem to be getting any where but have bogged down in permanent wheel spinning mode is because the Overclass has been strategizing the thwartage and subversion of these efforts for decades. They know how to do it.

Gandhian/King-like nonviolent efforts don't work any more. I realize that I've been flogging the UC Berkeley/Davis issue for quite a while, and if it's become boring, oh well! But the thing is that UC and other students have been using the Gandhi/King nonviolent resistance tactics for decades, and here we are. Those tactics have not "worked" for positive change at the University since about 1969, and the People's Park imbroglio. Nevertheless, they keep getting done, as was the case at Cal on November 9, and at Davis on November 18 last year.

And in both cases, the students and their faculty allies wound up on the losing end of the stick -- at Berkeley, the literal end of the nightstick, at Davis, the figurative "stick" of pepper spray, though they won the moral high ground.

But there's more to it than that. The students and their faculty allies at both Cal and Davis (and elsewhere in the system, these are the two closest UC campuses to me, but there have been tiny revolutions throughout the entire higher education system in California for years and years) gave up their moral advantage almost as soon as they had won the high ground. I witnessed this happening at Davis especially and my jaw dropped to the ground.

Almost immediately after the Chancellor's Walk of Shame at Davis, she called a "town hall" with students and administrators to discuss the matter. There was a subsequent one between her administration and the Davis faculty. At both of them, the moral victors in the struggle gave up their advantage almost too willingly, and wound up expressing their gratitude toward and trust in the administrators who had been fucking them over and fucking them up for years. Initially, I couldn't believe what I was seeing. It was a brilliant move on the part of the oppressors. I'm not sure the oppressed understand what happened to this day -- as we await release of the sanitized and long-delayed report on the pepper spray incident.

This is not how you do nonviolent resistance, people! Not if you want to... win. But then it occurred to me, maybe that's not what they want... I'll get to that anon.

The way these things used to be done, once you gain a moral victory, you consolidate it immediately and press your demands/interests even harder; you do not back down. But that's what happened at the UC get-togethers. [Added thought: The victors backed away from their victory.] And I've seen it happen in other Occupy contexts as well.

The more I talked to people about it and paid attention to what was going, the more I realized that many people actually do think that's how a nonviolent resistance campaign is supposed to go. If you "win" in a confrontation such as that at Cal and at Davis, you're supposed to "yield," or at least re-evaluate, and not press your advantage -- because apparently they believe that's what King and Gandhi would have done so as to show good will toward the oppressors. But good will is a separate issue. Ideally, it's something you are showing all the time -- while simultaneously pressing your advantage. But they didn't do that. They gave up.

That was an example (to me at any rate) of how very easy it is for the Overclass to subvert and thwart old-fashioned kinds of nonviolent resistance; they have been strategizing how to do this for decades, and they've go it down. The People are almost powerless against it.

Now in the strategy sessions I've been attending through InterOccupy, the Gene Sharp strategy of nonviolent revolutionary "change" is being heavily promoted as the right one for Occupy to adopt, and I question it.

The Gene Sharp strategy is found in "From Dictatorship to Democracy" which is an exploration of how to do a nonviolent revolution such as we saw in Eastern Europe, the Philippines, China, and parts of Latin America in the 80's and 90's. That model has been adapted and adopted in Arab states and Iran, with varying -- in many cases, tragic -- results.

Having had some time to evaluate the results of the Arab Spring and the ongoing revolts against various entrenched powers in the Arab world and Iran, we'd do well to understand the Gene Sharp model doesn't work any more, either.

The Tunisian and Egyptian Revolutions -- which were patterned on Gene Sharp's revolutionary model -- were so exciting, but the let down after "victory" has been severe; the result is nothing like what the People had in mind, and in Egypt, especially, there is a feeling that they may have to do it all over again.

The results in Bahrain, the Yemen, Libya and Syria are simply appalling. Gawd Awful horrors that just don't stop. In Iran, the Green Revolution was rather quickly subverted and shut down -- with relatively little bloodshed but with much repression. Gene Sharp's model was adopted in those places as well, and the result was monstrous destruction and bloodshed, civil war, and/or worse repression. Wait. That's not how this model is supposed to work. Only that's how it works now because the Arab and Iranian Overclasses have learned how to thwart the masses when they rise. It's messy but they manage somehow to do it.

Meanwhile, in the United States the nonviolent course that Sharp lays out has never been tried, but the idea that it would work here or in Europe or in any more-or-less "civil democracy" society (no matter how managed the "democracy" might be) has no evidence to support it. It doesn't mean that it can't, it means there's no evidence to show that it does -- primarily, I would say, because in a "civil democracy," it is always theoretically possible to achieve significant social and political change through legal channels and elections. It may not be practically possible, but in theory it is.

So using the Sharp template in "civil democracies" doesn't strike me as particularly useful, and the horrifying results in parts of the Arab world and Iran should be a caution. The fact that it isn't being used as a template in Europe or much of anywhere else should be recognized as well.

Occupy provides its own strategic template, as balky and faulty as it is, an from my way of looking at it, this is the one the Movement needs to stick with. It's not going to be easy, in part because there are so many efforts to undermine and subvert it from every direction, internally and externally.

Occupations are themselves (sometimes) strategic. The actions of Occupy have a surprisingly strategic resonance -- they are mostly intended to shake the foundations of a rotting "civil democracy" system. As I've put it in other posts, the overall strategy is to accomplish fundamental systemic change by de-legitimizing the authority of current establishments, and by demonstrating alternatives to current establishments and institutions and showing how they can and do work.

Some of those involved with Occupy are getting into a long-term frame of mind, on the premise that this struggle will have to go on for many years, and once again they are pressing to institutionalize Occupy and standardize and regularize it.

Back in October of last year, Malcolm Harris had some tactical/strategic advice for Occupy Wall Street, some of which might have been heard in the interim, I don't know. But he was looking at the encampment at Liberty/Zuccotti Park from the perspective of effectiveness, and he, I think, got that part wrong. No, the encampment wasn't accomplishing what he thought it should, but then what does? It's hard to say. These were his parting thoughts, though, and we're still hearing echoes...

- The GA/consensus model doesn’t exactly encourage creativity and is particularly susceptible to police co-optation. In one of the most heavily policed places in the world, where the NYPD is bragging about its ability to shoot down planes, we should assume they have a Che t-shirt and a Chrome messenger bag in a prop room somewhere. If anyone can lead the group, that means anyone can lead the group. A switch to a model based on smaller bands of people (5-10) who know and trust each other and have found common ground and operate in (naturally) overlapping ways would have the dual benefits of enabling creative rather than agreeable actions and reducing the risk of police infiltration, without forfeiting the benefits of a large group. The technical term for these crews is “affinity groups,” but I prefer “friends.”

- If the population of the park can grow past its boundaries and start threatening the normal functioning of Wall Street, then it could open up space for smaller groups to operate without too much police attention and change the balance of power in the park. I heard unconfirmed reports that Radiohead is planning a concert at the occupation this week, which if true could make it uncontrollable and attract more folks to a relatively uninhabited part of the city. I’m disinclined to believe the rumors, but you never know, and it’s not like they can’t afford to bail themselves out of jail. Maybe they could be cajoled over Twitter to show up and play a few acoustic songs. Either way, it doesn’t make sense to me to try and protect the occupation from this kind of influx of people, even if that would make it untenable in its current form.

- This is a marathon, not a sprint or a hamster wheel. The next year is going to be explosive: the two Parties will spend a billion each reminding Americans how terrible everything is, and hoping they can get away with blaming each other for a permanent unemployment crisis. The social ills that brought people out aren’t getting better any time soon. Occupy Wall Street is part of a sequence, not the sequence itself, and we should be thinking about its role in a revolutionary campaign of a longer but bound duration.

- If corporations are people, what would it mean to wrap our hands around one’s neck and choke it to death?

These are admittedly preliminary thoughts, and I want to discuss what to do with other folks, but I don’t want to address an assembly, and not just for security reasons. When I’ve found people and groups of people at the occupation who are ready to move beyond its current bounds, it’s on the edges of the large circles. Maybe it’s time the whole thing got edgier. That is, sharper.

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FURTHERMORE: (I see I inadvertently truncated the post because I was futilely trying to multitask.)

The problem with trying to overthink and overstrategize the Occupy Movement, or with trying to apply a pre-existing template to it at this point, is that Occupy is itself its own strategy and provides its own template. Activists instinctively respond to or recoil from it. Those who want it to be something different, more like Gene Sharp's recipe for nonviolent revolution, for example, actually want a different movement than this one. The way I look at it, that's OK, but Occupy isn't the vehicle for that kind of movement. Occupy is doing something else, pioneering in many ways, and if it's not your preferred form of activism, then Occupy is probably not where you should be.

The fact that there is no Gene Sharp style revolutionary movement (not even Occupy) in the United States is telling us something. The fact that Occupy is doing as well as it is, despite more and more violent repression, is also telling us something.

Harris's criticisms came very early, and we're still hearing the same ones as well as many others that were voiced even before there was an Occupy Wall Street. From a serious strategic and tactical standpoint, Occupy shouldn't be working at all. But strangely it does. Its very looseness and ad hoc-ness, its seemingly incomprehensible (or in some cases, nonexistent!) strategic planning, even its stark failures and its odd obsessions with process, as well as the constant carping and complaining about it(!), all seem to have some sort of value to the Movement.

I have no idea how this works -- except that it is organic and evolutionary and it is working.

Let it be.

Values, Vision, Goals, Strategies and Tactics

On the flannel board... a hierarchical representation of Values, Vision, Goals, Strategies and Tactics

Over the years, I've been involved in many organizational start up and strategic planning efforts, and I've found that there are practically as many ways to do it as there are consultants to tell you how to do it. The basic format, though, stays pretty much the same.

Start with a set of Values. Expand Values into a Vision (in an organization, the Vision may be indistinguishable from a Mission or they may be quite separate). The Vision tells you where you are heading. The Mission tells you the purpose of heading there.

Set measurable Goals on the path toward fulfilling your Vision/Mission. (Objectives are interim steps toward organizational Goals and can help clarify what you need to do along the way, but setting Goals and Objectives for particular actions is a separate matter.)

Develop Strategies for reaching Goals: Strategies are the means employed to reach Goals, for example, my Strategy for getting to San Francisco tomorrow may be by riding the Capitol Corridor train.

Utilize Tactics to fulfill the Strategy: Tactics are the methods employed to fulfill Strategies, for example, if my Strategy for getting to San Francisco tomorrow is by riding the Capitol Corridor, then my Tactics might include purchasing a ticket online, checking the schedule, getting to the station at some ungodly hour, and so on.

As I've traveled around to various Occupys -- virtually by means of
the internet and through various discussion groups, and on the ground in
person -- and as I've tried to pay attention to what's going on in the
global context and witnessed and participated in numerous goal
setting, strategy and tactics discussions, four Values keep
percolating to the surface:

• Dignity
• Justice
• Community
• Peace

From these Values an overarching Goal emerges:

• To change the economic, political and social Systems -- to make them fairer, more equitable and just, and to ensure sustainability for life on Earth -- including our species
  

A range of Strategies are employed to accomplish this Goal, but
they typically resolve to two:

• by delegitimizing present authority and
• by demonstrating how a better world is not only possible but can,
does and will work

Tactics vary widely depending on the circumstances, locations,
objectives, and the people involved. Taken as a whole, however:

the Occupy Movement is by definition an organic, evolutionary,
international Nonviolent Resistance Campaign -- one that
occasional incidents of vandalism and/or throwing things does not and
cannot change.

As a corollary, I've found a wide-spread recognition that the
Movement creates its own Narrative and does not depend on major mass
media for definition or accuracy in reporting (See: "delegitimizing
present authority" above).

There is no sign anywhere that the Occupy Movement is becoming or
likely to become a Violent Resistance Campaign involving armed
insurrection or the threat or use of deadly force; it's just not part
of the organic and evolutionary nature of Occupy.

During a Occupy Strategy forum I attended last weekend, however, a
question was raised regarding what might happen if governments in the
United States choose to employ lethal force against the Occupy
Movement. Would that change its nature?

From my perspective, the answer is "No." Hundreds and hundreds have
already been injured, some nearly fatally. Thousands upon thousands
have been arrested, many of whom have been held under torturous
conditions. If anything, the essential nature of the Occupy Movement
has been strengthened by these events. Ratcheting up the level of
force used against the Movement has been occurring from the beginning,
and there is no sign that continuing to ratchet up the force levels
will change the nature of the Movement.

By recognizing and maintaining values of Dignity, Justice, Community,
and Peace, keeping our focus on the goal of changing the economic,
social and political systems to make them fairer, more equitable and
just, and to ensure sustainability for life on Earth and our species,
by a simultaneous strategy of delegitimizing present authority and
building up and demonstrating alternatives, utilizing creative and
nonviolent resistance tactics, the Occupy Movement is truly revolutionary and unstoppable.

Just some thoughts to throw into the ever-bubbling cauldron.

Question: What Is the Strategic Purpose of a Mass March and Rally?

I've just come back from a mass march and rally of (primarily) students from all over California who came to the Capitol to protest continuing educational budget cuts. The rally was called "Occupy the Capitol," though the organizers were almost desperate to ensure that there was no "Occupy" presence visible at all. By my estimate, there were 10,000 to 15,000 marching and in the crowd at the Capitol -- a good sized turn out, but about what was expected. Ordinarily, I can estimate crowd sizes fairly accurately at the Capitol, but this time it was more difficult than usual because the ralliers were dispersed in relatively large clots over the lawns rather than concentrated in front of the West Steps (seen above) where a good count in fairly easy. I kept finding more clots of students! There was also a huge line for the porta-potties.

Whatever the actual crowd size, it was a very good turn out, and the speechifying was stem winding, though none of them was even remotely memorable.

After all the speeches were done, the students foregathered at the North Security Entrance where they were told that they would be allowed into the building, one by one, after passing through Security. They could not take signs with sticks or unsliced apples or oranges into the building. They were to be courteous. They were to be patient. They were to be polite. Once inside the building they were to lobby their legislators. Politely. Courteously. Patiently. They would be directed to the correct offices. If they left the building, they would not be allowed to return. Yes, they could take a later bus if, as it happened, their assigned bus back to their destination was scheduled to leave before they had a chance to meet with their legislators and/or their staff. The last bus would leave at 7:00pm. The building closed at 6:00pm.

It was all very sweet, and it was not how we did it in my day.

For one thing, there was no "Security Entrance." Under most circumstances, the building and its inhabitants were freely accessible through any of the massive mahogany doors. If there was a rowdy crowd gathered at the Capitol, as happened from time to time, the doors might be locked and CHP officers might be assigned to tell people that the Capitol was closed. This was generally not a big deal, in part because in those days, gaining access to the inside of the building and to legislators was not the point of rallying at the Capitol. There was a very different purpose in those days.

But today's march and rally was specifically called to lobby legislators and the Governor so they would not further cut public higher educations funding and so they would not further increase student tuition and fees. Realistically, however, they will cut higher education funding and they will raise costs to students.

They really do not care what the marchers and ralliers have to say about it, though some of them will listen more or less politely and then say there is nothing they can do, costs are what they are and revenues have been in steep decline the last few years due to the Recession. Sorry. That's the way it is -- good to meet you, thanks for coming, don't forget to vote for me in November!

What is the strategic purpose of a mass march and rally -- today? In 1963, mass marches and rallies still meant something, as they would continue to mean something through the rest of the 60's and into the 70's. But after about 1983-84, if not earlier, they stopped having more than symbolic meaning, and lately they haven't even had that. Note well the Glenn Beck and joint Stewart-Colbert rallies in DC in 2010. They attracted enormous crowds. They were meaningless. Note well, the vast crowds who marched and rallied against the Iraq War in 2002 and 2003. They were completely ineffective.

What was effective against the Iraq war was the armed rebellion of the Iraqis against their occupiers and the shaming of Bush-Cheney by Cindy Sheehan who went with a few activists to Crawford and sat there by the side of the road witnessing to them.

The mass march and rally is no longer effective in begetting positive change on behalf of the People and the public interest.

So what is the strategic purpose of doing it?

The practical purpose is showing solidarity. Solidarity may not be the ostensible goal, but the fact that so many people gather together to advocate a common cause -- whatever it may be -- is a demonstration to those involved that they are not alone. The rally and march may have no effect at all on the PTB -- in fact, they usually don't any more, though there can be exceptions -- but the effect on the participants can be profound.

As a strategic action, however, the mass march and rally has very little utility these days. Smaller, carefully targeted actions and boycotts have a much more powerful effect -- depending, of course, on what it is one wants to accomplish.

Which gets me to some issues regarding what was effective and what was not at the parts of today's march and rally I witnessed. Overall, the Solidarity aspect was great, even though the students tended to assemble into "caucuses" from the same institutions and did not really mix with students from other institutions. The speeches were well enough delivered and well enough received, but many of those in attendance ignored them. The message: "Don't cut higher education funding further, don't raise tuition and fees, tax the rich" was somewhat muddled. People understood it well enough, but they also understand it is highly unlikely that any of these objectives will be accomplished any time soon or even in their lifetimes.

Only the half-dozen people from Oakland understood why the State education budgets keep getting slashed, and why tuition and fees keep going up, and only they were willing to take the risk of saying so:

California slashes its higher education budgets and keeps raising tuition and fees on students (which has been going on for years, see the graphic below) so that the State can continue to fund the most bloated, gargantuan, torturous, muderous and costly prison and incarceration system in the country. That's it, in a nutshell. Higher education budgets are slashed so that prison budgets can stay stable or increase. It's been going on for years.


And of course for most of these students who don't receive financial aid, higher education costs will turn into life-long debt which many of them will neither be able to repay nor discharge. "Education will set you free!" indeed.

The only ones who were brave enough to point out that the students and the higher education system are being defunded and abused in order to fund the bloated prison-industrial complex in California were the folks from Oakland who loudly, repeatedly and sometimes rudely confronted the ralliers and the police with the facts of the matter.

These confrontations caused their chief spokesperson to be harrassed, kettled, removed from the Capitol grounds, threatened, detained and also proselytized by a man who interrupts practically every demonstration with his shofar.

Some pictures:









And you can bet the police did not appreciate hearing that they -- or rather the state prison system -- is responsible for billions upon billions in reduced funding for higher education in California, nor, interestingly, did the organizers of the march and rally want to hear it, as they repeatedly requested that the police remove these annoying people from Oakland.

In addition, a young man dressed in black and carrying a garbage can shield was pulled from the march by a state trooper and questioned intensively while horse police tried to surround the scene and prevent me and others from documenting what was going on. The horse police officer who was yelling at members of the crowd and trying to prevent documentation was confronted by another young man (not dressed in black) who told him to back off, the public had a right to document what was going on, and he had no right to try to force us to leave the scene.



The young man being detained turned out to be one of the gentlest people at the rally, and I saw him later with a medic's red cross on his bag, but because he was wearing black and a black bandana and was carrying one of those iconic Oakland garbage can shields, he was singled out, harassed, detained, questioned, asked to leave, escorted away, and others who were attempting to document the incident were intimidated and briefly prevented from documenting the incident.



Those who wore red bandanas, though, faced no such problems.



But the question remains, what is the strategic purpose of mass marches and rallies?

[Note: there is a GA going on in the Capitol rotunda right now involving several hundred students. Riot police are said to be assembling outside. I'm on my way back in a little while...]

(formerly) Live inside the California State Capitol:

Live stream videos at Ustream

http://ustre.am/GXbR

There are archives at the SacMedia.tv site. Others who were streaming from the Capitol included PunkBoyinSF and OakFoSho. There were others as well, but I don't have their links. Sorry.

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.