It's Very Simple: Stop Violent Policing, Stop the Killing, and the Disturbances Will Stop

I'm trying to get caught up with all the disturbances yesterday and last night, mirroring and supporting the uprising in Baltimore that has taken place as a consequence of the killing of Freddie Gray by police.

These uprisings and disturbances were widespread before the killing of Freddie Gray, but they have become a near permanent feature of American urban landscapes because, simply, the power structure that directs the police will not yield to the demands of the people.

"Stop killing us!" It's very simple. Stop violent policing. And still the killing goes on and on and on, violent policing and brutality continues unabated, and all the fancy military gear that has been supplied to police departments all over the country is trotted out again and again to suppress nonviolent crowds of protesters demanding that the police stop killing us.

And when vandalism and looting occur in conjunction with these protests, the authorities and their media handmaidens become all incensed because the Negroes are running wild instead of being docile little lambs like MLK would want them to be. Except he wouldn't.

Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote an important piece for The Atlantic the other day titled "Non-violence As Compliance." As those who have followed some of my writing since the days of Occupy and before probably know, I don't take kindly to those who try to assert "non-violence" as a means of shutting down effective resistance -- which is what is done over and over and over again by most of those citing "Ghandi [sic] and King" as models of the way Those Negroes (or whomever is resisting) ought to be.

I have my issues with Ta-Nehisi, but in this piece, he brought the truth right out in the open: those who insist Those Negroes must follow the non-violent paths blazed by Gandhi and King are basically telling Those Negroes they must comply with authority. It's a way to shut down effective resistance. Which is as thorogoing a mischaracterization of Gandhi's and King's activism and resistance as there could be.

Of course it is deliberate.

The structure of power has so far refused to yield to the demands of the people that violent policing and killing stop. So there is resistance and there are disturbances. It will continue until the killing and violent policing stops.

It's that simple.

Sometimes, however, it appears that Our Betters are simply too stupid to grasp simple concepts like that.

Stop the killing. Stop violent policing.

Just stop.

On Violence and Resistance

Theodor de Bry, Ilustración de la Brevísima de De las Casas, c. 1552

The various Spanish entradas into New Mexico were accompanied by so much grotesque violence that it ought to shock the conscience of even the most hardened would-be conquistador. Today, of course, Americans are pretty much inured to the cruelties of Our Valiant Troops as they march in conquest around the globe, slaughtering and dispossessing the gibbering Natives along the way, while teaching them -- of course -- the benefits of Democracy. Not unlike the Franciscans who accompanied the Spanish Conquistadors, teaching the Natives to welcome the benefits of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church and of course to submit to the rule of their distant but always merciful overlord, the King and Emperor Whoever-it-Might-Be in Spain.

The scene above is not specifically from New Mexico, but it might as well have been. The report is that in the winter of 1541, Francisco Vasquez de Coronado and his multitudinous seekers after Cibola and the remaining Gold of the Indies decided to camp in the Rio Grande Valley, in the province of Tiguex, near modern-day Albuquerque. They demanded supplies of the Natives, which were mostly given though with some grumbling. When the weather turned cold -- and it does get cold in the Albuquerque area to this day -- the Spanish demanded that the Natives closest by vacate their pueblo and turn it over to the Spanish for their comfort and convenience; the Natives could go live with their friends in other pueblos in the region. The Natives vacated as demanded and the Spanish moved in.

The Spanish let their stock and horses graze over the Indians' harvested fields of corn -- thus consuming the fuel (dried corn stalks) that the Natives used for heat and cooking during the wintertime. The Indians captured some 40 of the free-roaming animals, mostly horses and mules, and according to reports, they killed them all. In addition to supplies and shelter and the consumption of winter fuel, the Spanish demanded women, and if they weren't sufficiently forthcoming, the Spanish took what they wanted. This was the proverbial last straw.

Naturally the Spanish proclaimed that the Natives had "declared war." Spanish conquistadors being peaceful and all.

The Spanish assaulted one pueblo after another, driving the residents to assemble in and fortify the one remaining pueblo where the Indians held out for two months against Spanish aggression. Finally, they negotiated a surrender of sorts, with promises from the Spanish of no reprisals, and in fact of "pardons" to the rebels.

What that meant was that two hundred of those who surrendered would be burned at the stake as a "lesson" to other Pueblo peoples. What would happen to the survivors was undetermined until they tried to flee, at which time they were slaughtered in their multitudes.

All of the Tiguex pueblos in the Albuquerque area were abandoned and some were destroyed altogether during the winter of 1541, but Coronado and his murderous band of thieves, er "Conquistadors", withdrew from New Mexico in 1542 after failing to find the fabled remaining Cities of Gold (but he did see the Grand Canyon and buffalo herds). He was a broken man, so they say, and never fully recovered from his failure. So we are supposed to feel sympathy for him. He did his best in a Glorious Cause, and only killed those Natives because he was provoked. You see. He took their supplies, their houses and their women because he needed them. Simple.

What actually happened during the winter of 1541 is still subject to considerable dispute in New Mexico, in part because the Tiguex pueblos were all reported to be occupied and prospering when the Spanish came back to reconnoiter in the 1580's and they were still apparently doing fine when Juan de Oñate came a-Conquering again in 1598, and they were still going strong until the 1620's when Spanish diseases started decimating the Natives, ultimately reducing their populations to only a handful compared to previously. The Tiguex pueblos would finally be abandoned during the Pueblo Revolt of the 1680's, though two -- Sandia and Isleta -- would be restored after the de Vargas Reconquista of 1692, and Indian refugees would be invited to return from their scattered locations around the territory.

After all, the Spanish needed laborers.

To this day, Coronado, Oñate, and de Vargas, so celebrated among the Spanish in New Mexico, are regarded with contempt bordering on fury by the Pueblo peoples for their cruelty and duplicity. While it is not completely clear what really happened during the Coronado sojourn in the Rio Grande Valley -- thanks to the fact that the Spanish had a tendency to wildly exaggerate their exploits (including their murderous rampages) and the Indians were reluctant to talk about it afterwards -- it's obvious from some of the remains that still litter the ground around the former pueblos that something terrible happened that winter and that likely many people suffered. The only problem the story as it was told in Mexico after Coronado's return is that burning two hundred people at the stake is no easy task, the Spanish were notoriously lazy when it came to performing "work", and the Indians were decidedly resistant to taking orders from their New (but at the time temporary) Overlords.

The point is that this first Spanish entrada, and all the subsequent ones were accomplished with almost inconceivable levels of violence by the invaders and any sign of even peaceful resistance by the Natives was brutally and murderously crushed. In other words, no matter what the Indians did -- including submission, or the appearance of submission -- the Spanish would treat them violence. The question for the Pueblo peoples then and now is how do you survive under the circumstances? Apparently they found some kind of answer, because they have not only survived but in some respects they have flourished; today the Pueblo peoples form the base and the backbone of New Mexico's unique culture and society.

This is no small accomplishment.

The Pueblo Revolt turned the tables on the Spanish in 1680, leading to the deaths of many Spanish and the expulsion of the remainder (actions that were patterned on the behavior of the Spanish toward the Indians). And it seems that "doing unto the Spanish" what the Spanish had done to the Indians, even if ultimately the Spanish were allowed to return, was sufficient to change the relationship between the Indians and the Spanish enough to develop a kind of mutual if grudging respect for one another and one another's presence and culture that endures (tentatively) to this day.

Anglos tend to be outside this whole cultural and social dynamic, and I make no pretense of understanding it more than superficially -- if that.

Humility about things we don't really understand is not generally something Anglos display with confidence, yet those of us who have so much to learn would do well to listen more than speak about such matters as the relationships between the Spanish and the Indians in New Mexico. It's certainly not what we may think it is, and it probably isn't anything like what it looks like to us.

So it's with something of dismay that I present the following video of Chris Hedges and Kevin Zeese pontificating at a gathering in Washington, DC, on the question of nonviolence particularly as it relates to the behavior of "Black Bloc Anarchists," which clearly they know nothing of.



Or if they do know something of that which they speak, they are deliberately obfuscating for the purpose of propaganda, demonization, and scapegoating. In other words, they appear to be on a mission to civilize and control the "natives" -- as it were -- and to expel (or otherwise deal with) those who refuse to submit to their authority.

Not unlike the Spanish priests and conquistadors back in the day.

And note, please, that the largely older and very Anglo (ie: white) crowd -- this event, remember, is taking place in Washington, DC -- cheers and applauds the assertions of Authority and the pontificiations of the Missionaries from the pulpit (in a manner of speaking).

They are certainly hearing what they want about the nature of "revolution" and the priority of "nonviolence."

Which, by the way, the speakers are only interested in to the extent they can control and direct the actions of others -- or eliminate them.

The obsession with Black Bloc that seems to animate these speakers and this crowd is in many ways the same sort of obsessive need to control The Other that was so prominent in the Spanish conquest of the Americas and the subsequent British and American fascination with doing likewise. Taking territory and treasure is certainly part of the process of conquest, but often as important, if not more important, is the control of the behavior of others, of the Natives as it were, and failing that (or sometimes as a consequence of the ability to control them) their extermination.

The Anarchists, Black Bloc or not, have been demonized by Hedges and Zeese and their ilk as The Other, to be feared, denounced, expelled and eliminated from the Occupy Movement, and I would suggest the reason is simple: they've been successful.

The success of genuine Revolution is not at all what Hedges and Zeese and their followers want, at least not the success of a genuinely populist and largely anarchist Revolution. There is almost nothing more fearsome to them. What they want, if I can carry the analogy to the Spanish Conquistadors and their religious advocates a little farther, is to be able to order and control the lives of others even more thoroughly than present governments do, and to become those governments.

This is a form of Revolution, to be sure, but it is Revolution by imposition from the top down.

The notion that Anarchism and/or the Occupy Movement as a whole is somehow or can somehow become a violent insurrection because somebody somewhere sometime ago threw a bottle or broke a window is absurd on its face. Yet Hedges and Zeese and their followers at this event (as well as a whole cohort of "nonviolence" advocates) continue to insist that a broken window or a thrown bottle is the most serious offense possible if it occurs in connection with Occupy. The violence of the state or the implicit violence of their demonizing and eliminationist rhetoric is nothing compared to the overt "violence" of a thrown bottle or a broken window. After a while, this sort of ridiculousness becomes tiresome. But they are preaching to a choir of believers, and that's the most important -- and potentially dangerous -- thing.

One of the points often made by the Anarchists who are and have always been at the core of the Occupy Movement (unlike Hedges and Zeese) is that prefiguration, anticipation, and modeling what kind of future we want to see is an important, indeed fundamental, aspect of the Occupy Movement. It's the central element of the Revolutionary nature of Occupy, and it is the most threatening to the Powers That Be. That's why there had to be such a coordinated and brutal suppression of the Occupy encampments, for they are the "models" -- or at least the beginnings of the models -- of what can be and ought to be in the future.

We find with Hedges and Zeese and their followers, however, that the kind of future they are modeling is more like that of a Medieval Inquisition. Hedges, especially, is becoming more and more like a Savonarola. As you see in the video, He and Zeese sit in judgement of their nemesis, the Black Bloc, and declare from their pulpits anathema upon them, just as the Spanish priests railed against Native observances, always leading to more or less brutal suppression -- until the Natives fought back using Spanish terror, demonization, and expulsion tactics against them.

That changed the dynamic.

In the modern situation, there is no necessity to fight back against Hedges and Zeese and their followers because they have little or no power over the Movement -- regardless of their desires and demands. It is their powerlessness over the Movement that seems to be driving them to ever greater levels of rhetorical excess.

The question is whether the Movement in its collective wisdom will find ways to change the dynamic between the ruling corporatocracy and the People such that the corporatocracy must "respect" the People rather than continuing on the course of mindless destruction and exploitation.

The Pueblo People found a way to change the dynamic between themselves and their Spanish overlords by assaulting them with their own tactics: they learned and used the bloody and violent means of the Spaniards against them and drove them out of the region. The consequence was that they found themselves becoming too much like the Spaniards, however, and in the end, they decided it was better to preserve what they could of their traditional way of life and to go forward on a new path with the Spanish rather than in constant conflict and opposition to them -- or in intentional or unintentional emulation of them.

The Pueblo Peoples of New Mexico are the descendants of the legendary Anasazi who built the proud ruins in the Four Corners region of Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and Colorado. Despite extreme natural and human pressures over many centuries, they are extraordinary survivors, and we'd all do well to consider their example.

The Fall-Out From the Occupy "Nonviolence Debate"

Nathan Schneider has posted a heart-breaking interview with two of the people Chris Hedges smeared in his outrageous polemic against the "cancer" in Occupy (he has since revised his characterization of those who favor diversity of tactics from "cancer" to "parasites." He keeps digging this hole and I don't know why.)

I took the picture above at the first "public" event for the local Occupy. At the time, I was only vaguely conscious of the anarchist roots of the Occupy Movement, and it was all still very much an abstraction to me.

But when I met this woman and talked to her briefly and took her picture, it occurred to me that I was conditioned to believe certain things about anarchists and anarchism that simply weren't true. I had pretty much the same images of Black Bloc violence in my mind when I heard the word "anarchist" that many people do. I knew some anarchists from my work in the theater, and never saw them as particularly violent people, but who knew what they might do in another context??? Not I. Some, I decided, were simply unpleasant people, regardless of any affiliation or ideology they might espouse.

I was brought up short when I met the young lady above (sorry, I don't remember her name!) and several other anarchists associated with the local Occupy. They were some of the kindest, most open and dedicated people I think I have ever met or worked with. Even when things got very tense, as they did from time to time, I was struck by how sincere and deeply committed practically all of the self-identified anarchists were, and by how much they really cared about the well-being of others.

I've been writing rather enthusiastically about anarchists and anarchism, and I've been fiercely defending them, ever since.

Now, possibly too late to repair the damage done by Chris Hedges and others in their zeal to purge the Movement of the anarchist taint, Nathan Schneider posts an interview he conducted with two of the diversity of tactics advocates at Occupy Wall Street, women who have been with OWS since virtually the beginning, but who are now being harassed and told to get out of "someone else's" movement -- which they are said to be ruining.

The real pain and the anger they feel comes through loud and clear in the interview. As does their frustration at the continuing focus on incidental acts that barely register on the "violence" scale.

From the interview:

Suzahn: You know what I’d like to see that would be constructive? Some actual internal anti-oppression work, rather than this false conversation about violence within the movement. Because, when you think about it, we have never had an action that was more militant than taking the streets.

Sparrow: No.

Suzahn: Anything that people perceive as violent has been an individual’s actions, and we don’t all have to take responsibility for anything individuals do, ever. It has been so rare. On the other hand, I spent the first three months of the occupation talking to other female-assigned people who have been so hurt and have left the movement because of patriarchy and—and racism, I might add, and national privilege. All of those three things, especially in combination. People have left the movement because of that, and their voices are not being heard, and that is violence. For me, it would be constructive if we actually talked about the violence that does exist, and is happening and has happened and has actually hurt people and disenfranchised people, and hurt the movement because we lose those voices. That might be a constructive thing to start doing. I’d be willing to have that debate.

A cri de coeur to say the least. There are so many layers and levels of real systemic violence in our society that the continuing focus on the incidental acts of individuals who have thrown things or broken windows strikes me as absurd, and I've said so more than once -- not that it's changed any minds.

The good thing is that not everyone is so rigid in their thinking. Minds have been changed through the kinds of personal experiences I've had, and new forms of solidarity are being cobbled together.

Because of that, I remain an eternal optimist.

The fall out remains, however, and it is troubling...

LOS PROVOCADORES

One of the first lessons you learn in Movement and Resistance Theory is that the person who initiates violence or advocates it within the context of a generally nonviolent resistance movement is a provocateur and is probably a police plant or informant.

The tactic is ancient; it's a wonder that anybody falls for it any more. But they do.

Meanwhile, resistance movements evolve -- and so do counter-resistance activities by the State. The provocateurs may not be who or what you think they are any more, and they may not be the ones advocating the violent path of resistance.

After considering some of the things Mark Rudd had to say about his time as a radical (and violent) revolutionary in the late sixties and early seventies, I'm struck by something he's repeated many times: "I was doing the FBI's work for them." By which he means that by advocating bombings and sabotage (and carrying some of it out) and by engineering the destruction of the Students for Democratic Society (SDS) he believes he "killed" the anti-Vietnam War Movement in this country. I think he is wrong about that, but this is what he believes, I assume sincerely.

The key is that he believes that he was "doing the FBI's work for them." And what, exactly, would that be?

The provocateur traditionally seeks to instigate some kind of generally illegal and often violent action on the part of an individual activist or on the part of the activist group so as to discredit and delegitimize them or to provide probable cause for arrest or indictment.

In the process, the infiltrator or provocateur sows the seeds of discord, dissension, division, fear, uncertainty, and doubt which can have the effect (pleasing to the authorities) of disabling or destroying the resistance.

That's what Mark Rudd believes he did as an advocate and practitioner of violent resistance 40 years ago. It is approximately what an FBI infiltrator and provocateur would have done to the SDS and the Weathermen/Weather Underground if he didn't do it.

Note has been made from time to time that he got away with it, too. Not only were charges against him dropped when he emerged from hiding, but he has managed to live a fairly normal life as a college professor of mathematics (now retired) in New Mexico.

In other words, not only did he behave like an FBI infiltrator/provocateur as a leader of SDS and then the Weathermen, he ultimately got to live an almost charmed life as a college professor as if nothing had happened -- much as an FBI informant/infiltrator/provocateur might.

Interesting.

Nowadays of course he's done a 180 and has become a passionate advocate for the purest forms of pacifist nonviolence -- because, as he put it, violence destroys the Movement. He's become such a purist about nonviolence that he says anything that will be interpreted as "violent" by the police or the public is "violence" by definition, including wearing black or bandanas.

And not surprisingly, anyone who makes this kind of absurd claim about "violence" is likely to be challenged -- or even be dismissed as a crank.

But let's think about it some more. Mark Rudd was using the same sort of absolutist language in his advocacy of nonviolence as I frequently encounter: model the Movement after Gandhi and King, repudiate any kind of violence whatsoever, do not engage in anarchism or black bloc tactics, build the Movement by appealing to the middle class, do not confront authorities, do not curse or speak harshly to the police or other authorities, do not carry shields, do not wear black or bandanas... one could go on and on, it is almost a catechism among purist nonviolence advocates.

Resistance movements have evolved since Rudd was a fiery young revolutionary, and so have counter-resistance activities by authorities. What may have worked forty years ago doesn't work now, either for the resistance or the counter-resistance. Repeating the Gandhi and King methods (especially of mass rallies and marches) essentially doesn't work at all any more; the authorities simply do not care if the People are in the streets protesting something or other or if they are rallying to hear inspirational speakers. It doesn't make a bit of difference to the Powers That Be. So everytime I hear or read somebody saying "Do it like Gandhi," I want to gag. It doesn't work; we're beyond that.

But then when it comes to nonviolence, Gandhi and King (with a dollop of Gene Sharp) are the Only Ways permitted by advocates. There is no other acceptable model. When I listen to some of those who promote nonviolence, what they actually seem to be saying is "Don't have a Movement at all, because nothing you can do will be effective against the mighty power of the Empire. I've been there, I know, listen to me."

And the discussion around the topics of Diversity of Tactics (which Rudd and many other nonviolence advocates insist means "violence") has been filled with demonization, divisiveness, fearmongering, doubt-raising, much falsehood, and so on.

I've begun to wonder, just who are the Provocadores now, and what is their task? There are very few people who advocate conducting a violent resistance campaign as part of or in association with Occupy. Not even the demonized "Black Bloc Anarchists" are suggesting anything like the kinds of violent resistance Mark Rudd and the Weathermen were conducting back in the day. The idea is outrageous and bizarre.

But because nobody in their right minds is talking about bombings and sabotage or any other sort of armed insurrection in connection with Occupy, the advocates of nonviolence have been tightening down the definition of "violence" to include such absurdities as wearing black or bandanas or sassing authority. Anything that anyone might interpret as "violence" has to be cleansed from the Movement. Otherwise, the police will have justification for a violent response.

Who are the provocateurs now, and what are their tactics for discrediting and delegitimizing resistance movements?

Are we witness to the evolution of strategies and tactics?

The Health of Occupy

The backdrop for this afternoon's teach in on the sidewalk at UNM in Albuquerque where the police had pushed the (Un)Occupy participants so as not to sully the campus with their taint.

While I've been in New Mexico this trip, I've been writing a lot about Occupy while trying to catch up on the some of the Occupy events in this area (I plan to attend at least some of today's [Un]Occupy activities in Albuquerque) and checking in with some of the Occupys I've been following.

Wednesday's post included some comments on the events at last Saturday's OWS GA in New York during which there were apparently two assaults by participants on other participants. It was disturbing to read, though I have read and witnessed on livestream any number of incidents of high tension and drama associated with the NYCGA, as well as been embroiled in some of them at the local Occupy. It's just the way things go, especially when the effort is as open as Occupy has always been, and Crazy-makers are everywhere. The wonder really is that there have been so few incidents of that kind. The drama and the emotion is frequently encountered, but inner-Occupy assaults are really very rare.

But I watched the Wednesday night live stream of the NYCGA, and it was as if nothing untoward had happened at the previous GA. This is one of the strengths of the Occupy Movement. It is so resilient that pretty much no matter what happens -- whether it is a police assault or an internal assault -- the Movement continues on, typically stronger than before.

I attended an Occupy teach-in at UNM this afternoon, arriving shortly after the campus police had pushed the Occupiers out of the park that they had been using since the morning and onto the sidewalk. There was a phalanx of police guarding the hill from the taint of Occupy. When I arrived, most of the activists had left on a march to the UNM president's house to protest the police action. When they returned, the teach in got under way. Still on the sidewalk though.

The presenters were Dana Millen and Mark Rudd; Eleanor Chavez, state legislator for District 13 of Albuquerque was also in attendance and spoke.

I wasn't familiar with Dana Millen, but she's done some very interesting research on the topic of what impels people to participate in movements, what keeps them involved and how they interact with others in movements; one of her unanswered questions was how important those interactions and relationships were in maintaining participation in movements, and how they affected people's decisions not to continue participation. She touched on issues of social justice and righteous anger as motivations for participation, and such issues as frustration and burnout for limiting or ending participation. I wasn't taking notes, so I don't remember everything she said she'd learned, but after the teach in, she said she would make her research available to me via email -- if it works.

The research she's been doing on movement building is, in my view, important for understanding how and why Occupy -- for example -- grew so quickly and why so many of the early participants no are no longer involved, either to the extent they once were, or involved at all. What her research indicated was that participants' involvement and lack of involvement was a deeply personal matter, not necessarily driven by events connected with the movement. This suggested to me that the whole 'violence vs nonviolence' debate within Occupy is something of a distraction from learning what is really motivating people to be involved or not be involved at any given time.

I took a break, for example, from day-to-day involvement in Occupy in part because I was nearing burnout, and in part because I thought I had done pretty much all I could on behalf of the local Occupy and it was up to those mostly younger than me to carry on. And they did.

But then what of Movement Building if I and people like me stand aside or step back from the day-to-day? It looks like the Movement has shrunk -- and to see the few dozen assembled in Albuquerque today or the hundred or so assembled for the New York City GA on Wednesday is testament to the shrinkage in Occupy participation.

The shrinkage is attributed to "violence" in the Movement by many of those participating in the 'violence vs nonviolence' debate. And yet I tend to doubt that is really the case, given the fact that violence as such is really very rare in the context of the enormity of the Movement in the United States, let alone around the world. More likely reasons for less participation now than previously are the issues mentioned in Millen's research: burnout, frustration at apparent lack of progress, personal reasons -- life and work, for example -- and interpersonal relationship issues, such as developing enmity toward one or more of the other Occupiers.

But in the next segment of the teach in, Mark Rudd spoke about his experiences in radical movements back in the day (SDS, Weather Underground, etc) and how he believed that engaging in violence literally destroyed them. Of course the kind of violence that took place in those days was bombing and sabotage in pursuit of the overthrow of the US Government. And from his matured (or perhaps "reconstructed") perspective, any kind of violence at all, including wearing bandanas and hostile speech toward the police would kill the Occupy Movement. He said he'd heard something on the radio from Oakland that mentioned 'diversity of tactics' which he understood was code for 'violence' and he urged -- came close to demanding -- that Occupy renounce it in no uncertain terms. No property destruction, no sassing the cops, no bandanas or black clothing, nothing the police can point to to justify their crack-downs on Occupy. I half expected him to say "No Occupy!" but he didn't go quite that far.

He has his reasons for his point of view. As he said, because of the way the law was in those days, the charges against him were dropped at trial, and basically he was able to skate on some very serious crimes. And he pointed out correctly that if he were engaged in those things now, he would likely be held in custody indefinitely as a terrorist.

He claimed the violence he engaged in during his radical era essentially "killed" the anti-Vietnam War Movement that until the outbreak of the kind of violence he had engaged in had been very popular and growing. I think a very strong case can be made to the contrary, but in the context of Occupy, that argument is essentially moot because no one (that I know of or have ever heard) has seriously proposed any sort of armed insurrection (which Mark Rudd and others were engaged in back in the day) in connection with Occupy. At all. Under any circumstances. Not as part of "diversity of tactics," and not as part of anything whatsoever to do with Occupy.

As I've said many times, Occupy is by nature and by definition a Nonviolent Resistance Campaign. (pdf) The few incidents of broken windows and thrown objects cannot and do not change that fact. And I assert that once that fact is internalized, most or all of the sturm und drang over broken windows in Oakland last November vanishes.

But we aren't there yet.

Today, Mark Rudd's absolutist pacifism was astutely challenged by a young-ish Arab man and a not quite so young woman dressed all in black -- including gloves and hat -- as well as by a number of the other participants in the teach in, including yours truly. Basically, he was saying that anything -- any action, any statement, and mode of dress or behavior -- that can be interpreted as a challenge to authority is seen by the police and by the public as "violent," and engaging in any sort of "violence" -- as perceived by the police and the public -- has the effect of destroying the Movement; therefore, do not engage in any sort of action or behavior or wear any clothing or speak of anything that the police and the public might consider to be "violent." Ever. Don't do it. No Black Bloc, no talk of Diversity of Tactics, no verbal confrontations with police or other authority, certainly no bricks through windows, no bottles thrown at the cops or anyone else. If your goal is to "change the system", the strategy in this country must be absolutely nonviolent, in every conceivable way, otherwise the police will have justification to crack down and the public will have an excuse to deny their support and participation.

Rudd was challenged on a philosophical level in that his absolutism doesn't allow for or take into account any alternatives, and is fundamentally immoral, given, for example, the situation in Syria. Rudd's absolute pacifism would essentially require that the rebels in Syria accept their slaughter without fighting back in any way. Or, contrariwise, that they not rebel at all. The excuse when this matter is brought up is always the same: this isn't Syria, and therefore what the rebels are doing in Syria isn't germane to Occupy or any other movement in this country. True enough, but as I and others point out, repeatedly, but seemingly to concrete walls of passive indifference, there is no hint of engaging in armed insurrection anywhere within the Occupy Movement, there is no discussion of it, and there is no such action. No, this is not Syria; there isn't an armed insurrection, nor is the government using fully lethal ammunition against Occupiers.

From a strategic and tactical point of view, Americans involved with Occupy are not adopting nor are they even thinking about adopting a Syrian type of insurrection; what the Government is thinking, who knows? But the point is that absolutist pacifism has no moral standing in the face of a Government that is engaged in the systematic slaughter of the People.

Rudd was challenged on his belief that any form of confrontation with police or authority, or anything they might perceive as a challenge is perforce "violence," based on how police and the public see these things. Thus bandanas are "violent." Self defense is "violent." Wearing black is "violent." Talking about Diversity of Tactics is "violent." And so on. This was a much greater tightening down of the definition of "violence" than I'd encountered in the many arguments I've had about this topic heretofore. Basically, Rudd was saying don't do or say or wear anything that might trigger a violent response by the police or authority -- or you will "kill" the Movement. As was repeatedly pointed out, authority needs no trigger or excuse from the dress or actions or statements from those involved in Movements to react violently. They do it no matter what the Movement does or says or wears. The fact is that the existence of a Movement of any kind that isn't authorized by the State is sufficient to trigger a violent response from Authority. There is no level of Movement Saintliness that can thwart the violent response -- that is to say, if the Movement isn't just going to evaporate and go home to watch teevee. Movements that include more militant components -- that don't have to engage in armed insurrection to be effective -- actually work better than purist nonviolent movements.

The discussion continued at length, and I think very productively as both Rudd and his challengers made their points firmly and clearly. But there was another layer to this whole debate that has to do with where we are. This is Indian country. New Mexico has the second highest percentage of Native American population in the country (Alaska is first). There is no dealing with these topics without also recognizing and dealing with Native American experience with 500 years of colonial oppression and occupation. (Which is why Albuquerque's Occupy is called (Un)Occupy 'Burque and its motto is "Decolonize New Mexico.")

And at the end of the discussion, a Native American woman spoke up, somewhat harshly, too.

She took the discussion from the intellectual and abstract wrangle over whether wearing a bandana over one's face was "violent" into the realm of real violence that her people had known for centuries and she had known personally all her life. Wearing a bandana is not "violent" in any rational sense of the word. The very idea that it would be discussed in this manner reeks of White Privilege. She said, "Don't blame the Movement for the violence." Don't blame the People for fighting back.

Put the focus on violence where it belongs. She wasn't particularly nice about it, either. I videoed some of what she had to say, but the video is not very good and I didn't capture the reaction, but it was basically stunned silence on Mark Rudd's part, followed by an attempt to turn the discussion back to where he wanted it. "Does violence build the Movement?" At that point, she just told him to stop. "Can you?" she asked as she might ask a child. He went on with his point, and she said, "I guess not."

After a pause, she said that if Rudd or anybody else really wanted to do Movement Building, they'd follow the example of the Civil Rights Movement (I thought this was brilliant) and recruit from among the least of us, from among the dispossessed, the marginalized, the poorest, the most oppressed, the disabled, the demonized, and they would become the Movement's guiding lights. Women of color and their children, for example, know much better what the real situation is for those who suffer in this country, and they know something of what to do about it. It's past time for the white men who think they know so much better than anyone else to step back, because there are others who know better than they do. And some of them were right there, right now.

On that note, the teach in concluded. It was remarkable in every way. What happened, and the people who were involved are products of this place, and it could not be duplicated elsewhere. Part of the health and the nearly boundless strength of Occupy is that every Occupy is specific to its place and draws on the breadth and depth of the People(s) of that particular place for its wisdom and flexibility and energy.

What happens here in New Mexico is not going to be what happens everywhere; it can't be.

But the insights gained here, through its People(s) can have profound impact everywhere.

It was a remarkable afternoon.

Remember who you are. Remember where you are.

Movement vs Revolution

Occupy is a Movement. Occupy is a Revolution.

Occupy is both. Occupy is neither.

Thus, Occupy is fascinating. It is a species of revolt that no one has ever seen before; what to make of it is a constant topic of discussion and debate, sometimes very heated. Some of the same debates and discussions that were going on before the first appearance of Occupy Wall Street last September are still going on today, no closer to resolution in the vast eternal conversation than they ever were.

If Occupy is both a Movement and a Revolution, and it is neither, then how can one understand it? Perhaps one is obligated not to grasp or understand it but simply to let it be. Or, if one is so inclined, to try to understand it while humbly acknowledging the futility of the effort.

The same forces -- though not necessarily the same interests -- are trying to overcome the internal resistance of an organic, evolutionary, international Occupy in order to shape it to their personal needs, whether they be for authority or for ego support or enrichment (typically all three at the same time.) They see this thing that has "so much potential" and they want to own it or to make it their own, to shape and control it, to drive it in their preferred direction, and to profit from it; or if they cannot, they might well seek to destroy it.

That may have been what happened to Chris Hedges when he saw "his Revolution" -- ie: OWS in New York -- go off in directions he not only couldn't control, he didn't even know of. He saw on the "news" the fearsome images of what was going on in Oakland on January 28, which for him and many others was not the image of Occupy they wanted seen by the multitudes. When "his Revolution," OWS, then endorsed and expressed solidarity with Our Brothers and Sisters in Oakland, he had a meltdown.

Despite all the hullabaloo over violence, Oakland remains the energy center for the Movement and the locus for Revolutionary activism within the Movement. Despite the keening and rending of garments over violence, vandguardism, and insurrection, Occupy Oakland's efforts and activism remain fully within the umbrella of nonviolent resistance. The resistance is more militant in Oakland than in many other places, and because it is militant, rather than passive, it can be frightening, and not just to the more traditionally minded nonviolence believers. It's frightening to the Powers That Be for the simple reason that militant nonviolence can be highly effective against an entrenched, corrupt and decadent established Power.

Such Power is very brittle. It does not require an armed insurrection to overcome or indeed to overthrow it. It takes concerted, persistent, militant resistance. The act of resistance, if done mindfully, can be enough. Militancy almost always does the trick sooner or later, even against the most entrenched Powers.

The questions that have yet to be answered in any comprehensive fashion are whether the Movement aspects of Occupy are sufficient for most purposes, and how strenuously should its Revolutionary aspects be pursued.

A Movement, after all, is content with reform of existing institutions and structures; a Revolution seeks to replace them with something else again.

In Oakland, the task (Movement and Revolution) has gone farther than anywhere else, and from what I can tell from the outside, the question of what to do now is a daunting one that the participants in Occupy Oakland, the Oakland Commune, and the community at large are seriously grappling with.

What do we do now?

Is it enough to reform existing institutions and rejigger the personnel charts? Or is it necessary to sweep them all away and start over?

Note: when the Overclass considers these matters -- and acts on them -- it is widely considered (and certainly it's propagandized) as "appropriate," viz: Greece, but there are many other examples closer to home. When the Lower Orders do it, however, it is considered by many to be an Existential Threat that must be crushed...

If the answer to the Question of "Movement or Revolution" is truly Revolutionary, that the Operating System needs a thorough clean out and replacement, then the further question is How?

The Instructions for performing this task are badly written and poorly worded, subject to endless interpretation, confusion and error in the process of implementation. Thus, given their druthers, most people, let alone most activists, have little or no inclination to proceed down the path of total replacement of broken systems (ie: Revolution).

Reform is quite good enough for most purposes most of the time, and for most people nearly all the time.

But sometimes Revolution is necessary. The Overclass recognized this fact long ago and have been implementing their revolutionary programs with abandon. A People's Revolution has yet to occur in the United States. Whether it can take place is a big question.

A big part of the internal discussion and discovery going on within the Occupy Movement is over the extent of Necessary Change. The Revolutionary current in these discussions and this discovery process is being resisted ever more strenuously by those who not only didn't sign up for a Revolution, they are not even much inclined toward Reform.

Many seem to be content with a middle path between the current status quo and the ever harsher proto-fascism that we're being pushed into. In other words, it would be sufficient for many people -- including quite a large contingent of activists -- to simply slow down the descent we're on and perhaps mitigate some of its worst effects.

The basic premise of this viewpoint is that our Systems work, not perfectly, but well enough for most purposes. Radical change of any kind is dangerous and unnecessary. Marginal reforms are achieved incrementally through standard forms of political organization and action including the development of leaders and a unified message; Revolution is out of the question. Marginal reforms can be accomplished by adherence to proper and customary forms and procedures, and most of all by maintaining strict adherence to the Principles of Nonviolence as adopted by Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King.

There. Is. No. Other. Way.

Submit.

More and more, that premise is being challenged and rejected by a broader and broader cross-section of Americans; what should be adopted in its place is not at all clear, but there is a growing recognition that these formulas of the past don't work any more and can actually be counterproductive in the current circumstance.

By all means, honor Gandhi and King (or not, depending on your preferences), but don't imagine that strict emulation or adherence to their models today will gain the kinds of results they were able to achieve generations ago. The world moves on, and the Overclass tends to learn their lessons as well as, sometimes better than, the rest of us.

And a primary lesson the Overclass learned was how to thwart the Gandhian/King form of resistance. They're very good at it, too. In fact, these days, for them it's a cinch.

Resistance must evolve beyond Gandhi and King, and it has. As resistance has evolved, however, so has the ability of the Overclass to thwart the popular will. We are living in a period in which the Overclass seems to be intent on -- even relishing -- governing contrary to the will of the People in all matters but those least important to the principles of economic extraction and the arbitrary imposition of authority the Rulership deems essential. We did not enter this period yesterday; we've been living it so long now, we've become conditioned to it as "the way things are." Perhaps the way things are supposed to be.

Something like Occupy, with its Jell-o-like patterns of resistance and defiance that can never quite be categorized and confined, despite the best efforts of the Power Structure -- including many segments that see themselves as the "correct" or appropriate avenues for resistance (I'm thinking of the militant Socialists here, but there are many others) -- to tame it, restrict it, and control it is ultimately a serious threat to the Powers That Be. And they know it.

Because Occupy is both a Movement and a Revolution, and yet in some ways it is neither, and it seems to spread the more it is cracked down upon, no one in a position of authority -- at this point anyway -- quite knows what to do about it. There are those who come up with "solutions" all the time, who insist that their way is the right way to deal with Occupy and the problems it presents, but in the end, none of it seems to matter.

Because it is organic and evolutionary and international, but not rigid or defined, with no Central Office or Headquarters, and no actual leadership nor a single generally adopted statement of demands, Occupy is in that Space Between that can't quite be got at by those who would control or abolish it.

Because Occupy is by definition a nonviolent resistance campaign, no amount of obsessing over its alleged "violence," of Occupy (especially that of the Bad Children of Occupy Oakland) will make the claims true.

Occupy simply isn't a violent resistance campaign, nor is it likely to become one, regardless of isolated incidents of vandalism and throwing things. Tightening the definition of "violence" -- the practice currently engaged in by Power -- reaches the point of absurdity very quickly ("Linking arms is not non-violent!" Remember? Berkeley? Davis?) Black Blocs in association with Occupy are so vanishingly rare as to be nonexistent, but I wouldn't be surprised if one day an entire peaceful protest was composed of people wearing black and covering their faces and styling like Ninjas -- but harming no one and nothing -- as yet another tweak to Arbitrary Authority and Decadent Power.

There are so many ways that haven't been tried or explored yet.

As I've said many times before, The Demonstration is really the key to the ultimate success of the Occupy Movement cum Revolution (or whatever it evolves into.) The Demonstration of Alternatives to the corrupt and decadent Powers That Be is fundamental. Preliminary Demonstrations were being developed in the encampments, most of which have been destroyed (violently let it be said) by Authority. Now the Demonstrations are spreading further and further as they must once their central foci are destroyed. As they spread, more and more people will get some idea of what's possible and necessary in the face of What Is.

Is it possible to have a People's Revolution that never takes Power? We see how the Overclass manipulates so-called "democratic" governments from behind the scenes, and we know that it is done through threats and bribery. Thus governments all over the world follow the commands of the Overclass (indeed, only a tiny segment of the Overclass at that) no matter what the People do or have to say about it. The People are irrelevant in the equations of Governments and their Owners and Sponsors. But the Overclass itself does not rule or take direct Power into its own hands. It merely directs the actions of its bought and paid for politicians in defiance of the People's Will.

So what would happen, I wonder, if the People reversed this dynamic? And how could they do it? Without actually becoming the governing Power?

It's too soon to get into that consideration very deeply, but Occupy Time moves very fast.

We Are All Greeks; We Are All Black Bloc; We Are All Vulnerable

Prometheus the Fire Bringer
"Prometheus, teacher in every art, brought the fire that hath proved to mortals a means to mighty ends."

The details of the Greek "bailout" remain vague, but there is no sign at all that the Eurozone has backed off any of its sadism and cruelty toward Greece and its people. For all intents and purposes, Greece is being treated the way European imperial powers treated their colonial outposts, seizing revenues and exploiting the people to feed their financial interests. The United States has a long history of doing the same.

In effect, Greece has lost its sovereignty; the country and its people are now the "property" of the Eurozone, principally Germany.

The same fate awaits Italy, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, and the struggling nations of Eastern Europe. The same fate awaits all the Peoples of Europe; the march of the Gods of Finance will not be impeded by mere mortals.

The People are reduced to suppliants. Powerless -- or meant to believe they are powerless -- in the face of their ravenous Financial Gods. They are being divided and set one against the other as their Financial Gods loot and plunder everything that is not nailed down, and then they pull out the nails and steal that as well.

Nothing can satisfy them.

Black Bloc is a tactic of solidarity among the Powerless that has been demonized as much as the People of Greece (and now Spain; I just heard a new piece of propaganda on NPR claiming that Spaniards are dastards because some of them are "earning money" while receiving unemployment benefits -- "on the dole" as it was put in the story.) The Powerless are always demonized as a prelude to the "solution" to the "problem" of the Powerless.

The demonization of the Black Bloc tactic is one of the strangest outgrowths of the innumerable attempts to hijack or co-opt the Occupy Movement. Black Blocs are almost entirely absent from the Occupy framework of direct action. Yet from the near-hysteria of the anti-Black Bloc'ers, you'd think they were everywhere, every day, and that there is hardly a window unbroken, a bottle un-thrown anywhere that Occupy occupies. The hysteria is nonsense on one level, but on another, it is pure -- and relatively effective -- propaganda. No different than many other demonization campaigns that have been launched throughout history by the stronger against the weaker (preferably the weakest) elements in society. Whipping up hysteria against the demonized Other is an essential part of the propaganda program.

Anyone can be scapegoated and demonized in this manner. It is one of the least appealing attributes of most human societies. The weaker the target appears to be, the easier it is to scapegoat and demonize them. The result is typically "unpleasant" for the target(s), up to and including genocide.

We are all vulnerable.

Either as scapegoats or as scapegoaters. For those who engage in demonization and scapegoating pay a heavy psychic, and often a heavy physical, price.

While the scapegoating and demonization propaganda campaign against the targets is being ratcheted up, there is a simultaneous propaganda campaign to convince the targets to submit, to not fight back. "Nonviolence!"

The current propaganda campaign from the outside and within Occupy to enforce "nonviolence" -- violently (but only if necessary) -- is part of that effort to ensure the targets don't fight back against their demonization.

So far, it has had a kind of mesmerizing effect, something like the repeated LRAD announcements in Oakland on January 28 as the multitudes were corralled in front of the YMCA. "Submit to your arrest!" Over and over and over. "Submit!"

My proposition has always been that Occupy is by nature a nonviolent resistance campaign. It's obvious. Nothing has happened to change that. None of the rare incidents of vandalism or bottle throwing that have occurred has changed the nature of the Occupy Movement from nonviolent to violent resistance. To assert otherwise is silly. But it is crucially important to propagandists and demonizers to magnify the least incident into a monumental problem, and if there are no incidents, to manufacture them.

I was listening to a very strange panel discussion yesterday on the topic of Occupy nonviolence and Black Bloc -- and "getting beyond" the dispute -- and the point was made by one of the panelists that there has never been a Black Bloc associated with Occupy Wall Street in New York City. Not once. And yet here we were, still, listening to constant denunciations of Black Bloc as if they had a presence everywhere all the time when clearly they don't. It's a major disconnect.

I would say, no, it's propaganda. It's the standard propaganda of demonization and scapegoating.

This is how the Overclass maintains its power.

Awareness needs to be matched with action. Whether our friends in Greece can show the way remains to be seen. Prometheus may still be bound to the rock by Zeus in the single play of the trilogy that's come down to us; but there is more to the story: "Prometheus Unbound," and "Prometheus the Fire-Bringer."

------------------------

In Addition to Which:

This is just great. It's an Open Letter from an 87 year old Greek Resistance Fighter, Mikis Theodorakis, (composer and Parliamentarian) to the World: The Truth About Greece

An excerpt:

There is an international conspiracy whose target is the complete destruction of my country. They began in 1975 aiming at Modern Greek civilization, continued with the distortion of our modern history and our national identity and they are now trying to eliminate us biologically as well through unemployment, hunger and impoverishment. If Greek people don't rise as one in order to prevent them, the danger of Greece becoming extinct is evident. I place it within the next ten years. There will be nothing left of us but the memory of our civilization and our battles for freedom.

...

I am totally dedicated, body and soul, to this cause (the unification of the People in one Front) and I believe that I will be proved right in the end. I have fought, gun in hand, against Hitler's occupation. I have experienced the Gestapo's dungeons. I have been sentenced to death by Germans and have miraculously survived. In 1967 I founded PAF (The Patriotic Anti-dictatorial Front), the first resistance organization against the military junta. I fought underground, was caught and imprisoned in the junta's "slaughterhouse". Once again I survived.

I am today 87 years old and it is very possible that I will not live to see the salvation of my beloved country. But I will die with a clear conscience, because I will continue doing my Duty towards the ideals of Freedom and Justice until the end.

We haven't seen the end of this story by a long shot. Read the whole letter. It's an eye-opener.

It's About Trust

"Occupy" burst back into the national consciousness with the roiling events culminating in the mass arrest of hundreds of demonstrators in Oakland, CA, on January 28, 2012.

Since then, the Occupy Movement's consciousness and conscience has been pre-occupied with questions of "nonviolence" vs "diversity of tactics" -- and how or whether to enforce a strategy of nonviolence on what appears to be or be becoming a much more militant movement.

What one believes and how one feels about these issues appears to depend -- at least to a substantial degree -- on the source of the information one has about what happened in Oakland on January 28, on what one's involvement and investment in the Movement has been, together with how one defines or conceptualizes Nonviolent Resistance.

As I've explored the issues being debated and the contexts of the debate, it's fairly clear that negative mass media news reports about the J28 events in Oakland have had a profound effect on many people's perceptions of what happened and how those events relate to Occupy as a whole.

Those negative perceptions based on negative (and very limited) mass media reports of what happened are then used to reinforce pre-existing points of view about Occupy and its focus, and particularly points of view about certain kinds of Occupy activism and activists that don't appear to follow -- or in point of fact, don't follow -- the precepts of nonviolence.

Disclosure: Just to be clear, I'm not in Oakland, nor am I directly involved in any Occupy Oakland or Oakland Commune affairs; my knowledge of developments and events in Oakland comes from personal contacts, the online presence maintained by Occupy Oakland, the many alternative media reports through livestream. I follow a number of other Occupys in the same manner, though I am physically closer to Oakland. I began participating in the local Occupy at its first public meeting, October 1, 2011. I have been a life-long student of nonviolence and nonviolent resistance and have been closely involved in a number of nonviolent resistance campaigns. I have encountered and engaged the sometimes explosive nature of the arguments between advocates of nonviolence and diversity of tactics.

The questions and issues being raised now in the national conversation about Nonviolence as it relates to Occupy have been there from the beginning. In some ways, this debate is continuous. In my view, it is in the DNA of the Movement and provides part of the strength of the Movement.

As I've tried to point out here and elsewhere, taken as a whole, the Occupy Movement is an organic, evolutionary, international Nonviolent Resistance Campaign. That doesn't change, in fact it isn't affected at all, because someone throws an object or curses a cop or burns a flag or even breaks a window during some Occupy action somewhere.

Rare and essentially spontaneous incidents of vandalism and mischief, and to an extent the strategic use of confrontation tactics and defiance in the face of Authority, have become the focus of the debate, however.

Some of the more strident nonviolence advocates argue that these incidents and strategies are against the interests of the Movement and should be policed and suppressed -- and often use absolutist and authoritarian language to make their point. Others are somewhat less strident and authoritarian about it, but express dismay at the perception that advocates of violence have taken over the Movement.

Much of the language involved in the debate is that of scapegoating and demonization, almost all of which, in my perception, has been coming from those who purport to advocate nonviolence -- such as we've seen in Chris Hedges' polemic. He didn't invent that way of approaching and discussing the issues involved; it was there long before he adopted Occupy Wall Street as his own.

My deepest understanding of the conflict, however, comes from any number of people who have been very honest and up front about what's really driving their anger and animosity -- no matter which side of the conflict they're on.

It's about trust and the betrayal of trust.

Time and again, the underlying issue is a perception that a handful of activists have taken over or are trying to take over the Movement to push their own interests and agenda, regardless of anyone else, and thus they are destroying a Movement that so many people have put so much faith and trust in to bring about Real Change.

The "handful" meme is consistent and it is used to characterize the Other Side, no matter what their position is. "Taking over" is also a consistently used rhetorical device used to characterize the Other Side. "Destroying" is a constant accusation against the Other Side.

Most important, however, is the concept of "trust" and the betrayal of trust through the actions and attitudes of the Other Side.

In my experience, this has always been at the root of the Movement's Big Controversies and its most explosive conflicts.

Mutual respect and trust are considered fundamental for the success of any community of like minded activists. And yet we see constant conflict within the Occupy Movement based on perceived lack of respect and betrayal of trust, combined with... remarkable successes.

From an empirical standpoint, what's happening is working. But it's not necessarily working the way many people wanted or anticipated, and that is giving rise to feelings of fear and dread that something is going terribly wrong, or that it will go terribly wrong soon enough.

Because some of the individuals on either side of the internal conflicts are perceived to be untrustworthy or lacking in respect for other points of view, they become the focus for animosity and denunciation -- which can sometimes turn into scapegoating and demonization, which in turn can become deadly.

Chris Hedges is rightly criticized by David Graeber for descending to that very ugly place, but I noticed that few others criticized Hedges for that particular failing, focusing instead on his incoherence and inaccuracies, a phenomenon I've noticed in other aspects of the conflict. The ugliest charges and accusations against the Other Side are often simply set aside and ignored. They may be hurled at will, but their effect, if any, is slight.

People who get involved in movements of this kind make themselves highly vulnerable, and they have to believe they can trust the others with whom are aligned in order to feel they are protected. They need to feel respected as individuals and valued as part of the group as well. Unfortunately many activists and would-be activists in the Occupy Movement feel their trust has been betrayed, they are not respected, and they are not valued by key Others in the Movement, and that their vulnerability is not protected. They feel unsafe and unsure -- and afraid.

Some can work their way through these feelings, but many cannot. Betrayal of trust by public and corporate officials is one of the chief reasons for Movement itself. It is at the root of the whole thing. Had the public trust not been betrayed on such a massive and continuous scale, there would likely not be an Occupy Movement. Some of those who made themselves even more vulnerable in order to participate in the Occupy Movement found themselves subjected to what they saw as even worse levels of exploitation, indignity and disrespect than they had previously experienced.

Some people will leave the movement when they feel they are not respected or valued and the see their trust betrayed; others will fight back. And that's how we get to the conflict over nonviolence we're in, a conflict that's been going on, sub rosa, from the beginning, and one that I suspect may be elemental, may in fact be necessary for the Movement's strength.

In other words, if it were ever resolved in favor of one side or the other, it could well signal the end of the Movement.... or that the Revolution has succeeded.

I've pointed out many times that Occupy is by nature and by definition unquestionably a Nonviolent Resistance Campaign. Violent resistance is not part of the Occupy framework.

It's just not there. Nor is it developing into a Violent Resistance Campaign, nor is it likely to.

On the other hand, it is becoming increasingly militant, and becoming increasingly effective as a militant nonviolent resistance campaign. Coordinated militant nonviolent resistance can be be among the most effective tactics in countering even the apparently strongest authoritarian systems.

In that overall context, rare incidents of vandalism or object throwing are simply "incidents." They don't define the campaign, no matter what mass media propaganda says about how "definitional" they are.

Yet there are nonviolence advocates who are still obsessing over black bloc vandalism that took place in Oakland on one day in November of last year even though there has been no black bloc in Oakland since then. As members of that black bloc have pointed out, and the videos amply demonstrate, they were the objects of physical assault and threats of assault (including by one man who waved around a pole of some sort as a weapon) by purported "nonviolence" advocates. In fact, violent rhetoric and threats of physical force and violence against "black bloc anarchists" are routine features of the arguments against "black bloc anarchists" by "nonviolence" advocates. (You should see my email...)

It might help matters if the accusers looked in the mirror sometimes. But that's another issue for another time.

The question under consideration now is one of trust.

When "the anarchists" are routinely threatened with physical harm or are actually being physically assaulted by strident advocates of "nonviolence," it can give rise to an understandable lack of trust in the motives of some of these "nonviolence" advocates as well as some level of disrespect for their arguments and their point of view.

The following video gives an overview of nonviolent resistance from the perspective of some of those who study and promote it. The link came through some of the same channels in my email that contain some of the most virulent hostility and hypocrisy by self-proclaimed nonviolence advocates I've ever seen.

This video stands in complete contrast to the virulence and hostility and violent rhetoric so often employed by self-professed "nonviolence" advocates. It is only an overview, it doesn't get into the weeds and the details of campaigns, though it does touch on testimonies and tactics from the campaigns of Dr. King and Mahatma Gandhi and others. The point is that a Nonviolent Resistance Campaign can occur in a variety of ways, through use of a variety of tactics, and that militant nonviolent resistance can be very effective. There are other nonviolent paths than those of Gandhi and King. Really.



Points to ponder:

Betrayal of the public interest by indifferent and corrupt leaders is a fundamental betrayal of trust that has led to the global appearance of the Occupy Movement.

Betrayal of trust between participants within the Movement due to lack of mutual respect and lack of mutual understanding of the principles of nonviolent struggle has led to the current conflict within Occupy over tactics of nonviolence.

Even though there is so much inner turmoil over these issues, the Movement remains fundamentally strong and vital, in part because the first listed betrayal motivates the resistance, and the second listed betrayal, once recognized and addressed, frequently leads to a even greater level of solidarity within the Movement.

Courage.

We are winning.

Another world is possible.

History for Beginners -- Militant Nonviolence vs Polite Protest

Video of first day of Occupy Wall Street, September 17, 2011

One of the constant themes of the current Occupy Crisis Over Nonviolence is the insistent belief that Occupy Wall Street was originally an entirely peaceful, nonviolent, welcoming protest against the Wall Street bankers and predatory capitalism, and that it was full of music and strollers and families out on balmy fall days, and it was wildly popular.

According to myth, OWS was not meant to be some militant, confrontational, violent marauding Black Bloc Anarchist Thing. It was not supposed to be an uprising. Certainly not a Revolution. It was supposed to be a peaceful assembly for the redress of grievances against the banks and Wall Street. NOT what it is becoming. And what it is becoming is terrifying.

I've been sifting through the hundreds of emails that have come to me on the topic, and many of them are filled with real anguish at the violent, confrontational, and altogether non-peaceful tactics that have been adopted by OWS/Black Bloc/Anarchists in their determination to just make trouble for everyone and ruin what was once so beautiful and wonderful.

Dear me. WTF? No, I mean really. WTF?

This is not just revisionism, it's fantasy. A nice fantasy, sure, but were these people ever paying attention? Or were they somehow lulled by a propaganda campaign I wasn't aware of? Because I don't recall OWS ever promoting itself as anything but a nonviolent militant resistance campaign, initially to take and hold public space in defiance of authority, wherein the interests of the People, the 99%, could be and would be discussed, debated, and advocated. From its first moment of existence, OWS engaged in militant nonviolent civil disobedience. The encampment at Liberty Square/Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan was an act of militant defiance, not a nice, polite family-friendly protest that precisely followed the rules of the MLK and Gandhian civil rights and independence movements.

Liberty Square for a time became a family-friendly, festive affair, but only after it was established in defiance of authority and held against eviction by highly motivated and militant activists.

The mythology continues on this pleasant revisionist fantasy that somehow OWS has been taken over by Black Bloc anarchists and that anarchists had little or nothing to do with the origination (as I call it, founding) of OWS, which is simply absurd.

They were there at the beginning and they're there now. The entire structure of OWS and most of the Occupys that spontaneously arose subsequently, utilize concepts and processes and ideals that have been part of anarchist practice for decades; autonomy, respect for people's rights over property rights, General Assemblies, direct democracy, consensus decision making, working groups, affinity groups, even the later spokes council all came directly out of anarchic thought and practice. Black Bloc wasn't utilized as a tactic, but people who had been part of Black Blocs were very much involved in the OWS process. Anarchists were founders of NYCGA and Occupy Wall Street, they provided the intellectual space for there to BE an Occupy Wall Street, they provided much of the original energy of the movement, and they provided most of the horizontal leaderless structure and process used by OWS to this day. Anarchists are not some alien intrusion into OWS; they've always been there, as have the Dreaded Boogie Men, the all-powerful "Black Bloc anarchists."

Revisionists like to conflate OWS (Occupy Wall Street) with "Occupy," as if OWS defines the whole, OWS is one Occupy among several autonomous Occupys in New York City and one of hundreds around the United States and the world. It is not the headquarters; it is not run by the Occupy Central Committee, and it doesn't have any operational control or authority over any other Occupy. Since the raid in November that evicted the camp and destroyed the encampment, OWS has had a relatively low profile in Occupy affairs (though it is still an important element in the whole).

Another revisionist notion is that the concept of Occupying public space began in the United States with OWS last September, and that nothing like it had happened in this country before. It's a particularly beguiling pious fiction in that OWS quite consciously pretended to come from nothing, appearing suddenly fully formed and without precedent to press its case for social and economic justice. Of course, that's not quite the case, either. Something in, I believe, Wisconsin happened earlier in the year. In February and March, the Wisconsin State Capitol was occupied continuously sometimes by thousands of demonstrators protesting various rightist economic and labor policies enacted or about to be enacted by the Wisconsin legislature. Protests continued outside the Capitol, sometimes involving a hundred thousand marchers, into July. The Wisconsin occupation and demonstrations were inspired by the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings in January. Spanish protesters occupied the Plaza del Sol in Madrid from May through June to protest the lack of peoples' representation in the government and a growingly dire economic situation for millions of Spaniards. The occupation of Plaza del Sol was evicted by police in June. The Plaza del Sol occupation was used as a model by OWS. There was a student occupation of campus buildings at UC Berkeley in October, 2009, that was violently attacked by campus and area police forces, setting the pattern for the violent and brutal crack downs on the US Occupys in many locations, including the campus of UC Berkeley, in November of 2011. In other words, OWS was preceded by a plethora of similar occupations that served to set the stage for the occupation of Liberty Square/Zuccotti Park.

Perhaps the most pernicious myth being circulated now is that somehow the OWS and the Occupy Movement have been taken over by Black Bloc and anarchists who are forcing the Movement to become violent. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

There has been very little violence initiated by Occupy activists, none of it involving weapons or firearms. There have been a few autonomous Black Blocs during Occupy demonstrations (Black Blocs are autonomous actions), the most notorious being the Black Bloc that paralleled part of the November 2, 2012 march in Oakland as part of the General Strike during which a dozen or so windows of banks, a few businesses and the City Hall were broken and a number of buildings were sprayed with graffiti.

In fact, Occupy has been subject to relentless police violence and destruction of property, mass arrests, and torturous conditions of custody virtually since the beginning of the Occupations. None of it has been in retaliation for isolated incidents of vandalism or object-throwing. Hundreds of demonstrators have been wounded by police fire and thousands have been arrested. Encampments have been wantonly destroyed and the property of Occupiers has been routinely confiscated and destroyed. In one of the most notorious incidents of that sort, the People's Library of the OWS encampment was trashed and its contents thrown into garbage trucks during the eviction from Zuccotti Park, even as occupiers pleaded with authorities to allow them to remove the books safely.

The idea that Occupy has become violent or that Occupy endorses or approves violence is absurd; there has been minor and incidental violence during a few Occupy events, that's it. Meantime, Occupy has been subjected to ever increasing levels of police violence in city after city. And that police violence is not due to any violent incidents that have occurred during Occupy events. Police violence against demonstrators doesn't need an excuse. Violent suppression of Occupy encampments and demonstrations is a matter of policy and command. No matter how much Occupy attempts to suppress violence at its events (as has been done), the police are still violent toward the demonstrators on command.

Occupy practices a variety of nonviolent tactics including militant and confrontational nonviolent resistance. Occupy does not engage in violent or armed resistance, but some of the militant tactics, such as confrontation with police and public officials, or, as happened at UC Davis and UC Berkeley, linking arms and sitting in acts of non-violent civil disobedience, have been declared "violent" or "not-nonviolent" by some observers and officials. They are in fact classic forms of nonviolent resistance.

There have been many examples of "polite" resistance during Occupy actions, and there have been many examples of "militant" resistance as well; there are very few examples of violence initiated by Occupy demonstrators, but hundreds of demonstrators have been wounded by police fire against unarmed and nonviolent demonstrators.

Being loud is not violence. Defying authority is not violence. Impolite does not mean violent.

Last November, Jaime Omar Yassin, a participant in Occupy Oakland, wrote a blog post titled "What Violence Isn't." It's worth a read to get some perspective on the issues that are still roiling Occupy.

It's as if the discussion hasn't moved an inch since then -- except to become more hysterical.


The militant nonviolent Occupy Oakland OccuBus cruising San Francisco's Financial District, January 20, 2012


Sector of parking lot at Democratic National Convention wherein polite protest was allowed, Denver, 2004


Cage within which polite protest was allowed to those who were admitted during the Republican National Convention, St. Paul, 2008

What About Those Who Don't Want Revolution?

For some time -- quite a few years, in fact -- I have been writing and commenting about the need for Americans to rise up in opposition to the screwage we've been undergoing first as playthings of the neo-cons, then for a change of emphasis, as neo-liberal objects of utility. Or disposal, as the case may be.

"Rising up" is typically characterized as Revolution, and I've written extensively on that topic, too, a good deal of which was written during the Bush Regime.

As far as I know, most of what I wrote about Revolution wound up in Salon's archive dumptster and I have no access to it now, but the point I argued most often at the time -- going back to 2001 -- was that the Busheviks were themselves a Revolutionary force or cadre; they achieved power through a judicial coup and they were using their power to implement a Rightist Revolutionary program, a program that included the institutionalization of an Imperial State, the extinction of the Constitutional Republic once and for all, and the implementation of a corporate-kleptocratic economy.

The Busheviks and their neo-con hangers-on were Revolutionary in part because they could be, in part because they wanted to be, and in part because they were embarked on a transformational crusade from which they could not be dissuaded.

Their opposition, such as it was, in that context was counter-Revolutionary, primarily interested in accommodating the Revolutionaries' demands and preserving what they could salvage of the status quo.

At the time, many people did not see and refused to believe how truly radical and Revolutionary the Busheviks were. Soon enough, especially after the attacks on 9/11 and the subsequent clearly domestic Anthrax attacks, the government of the United States was completely overhauled and transformed into that of an Imperial War-State, run out of the White House bunkers, served by an impotent and compliant Congress and an ambivalent court.

The People, to the extent they were considered at all, were at best considered accessories and props to the Pageant of Empire, to be manipulated and controlled by an enthusiastically complicit media into believing anything the Imperial Headquarters wanted them to. And they did, in their multitudes. They didn't rise up against what was being done to them, they embraced it.

Millions of people in the streets, "singing songs and carrying signs," in protest against the Iraq War -- a full-on, up front, balls out, Imperial war of aggression -- were ostentatiously ignored, protest of any kind was corralled, mocked and dismissed. Remember "Free Speech Zone" and directives from the Busheviks and their spokespeople about what sort of protest and protest message was "acceptable?"

The public treasury was promptly and efficiently looted -- these people do know how to plunder -- and taxation on the favored corporate and wealth sectors was virtually eliminated.

The People did not rise up even after they became uneasy about the course of events when some of the horrors being perpetrated in their names in Iraq and elsewhere became known, when their rights as citizens were dispensed with, even when the economy imploded.

The People were passive, nearly mute. There was no rising up, no People's Revolt, nothing.

When you think about American history and especially the history of resistance to tyranny and exploitative authority, this situation was distinctly odd. The whole country, and its entire tradition and systems of governance was being turned on its head, and the People did nothing. They continued to drudge along quietly, performing the rituals of voting as if they still mattered, becoming obsessed with candidates for office while their pockets were being picked by the corporate raiders who were the real powers behind the Throne.

It was so eerie that people abroad were amazed. "What is wrong with Americans that they resist not, neither do they rise up, nor even do they complain except in the most servile fashion?"

During the Bushevik reign, the Revolutionary changes in the Nation's state of being became normalized.

Most people either didn't notice or they didn't care.

But when the economy collapsed like the house of cards it was, the meme of Change took hold, the need for redemption was recognized, and Barack Obama was sent to sit on the Throne.

It was clear to me during his campaign that his principal role, once in office, was to manage the masses, to keep them in line during the forthcoming unpleasantness. He demonstrated many times that he was a master at it. The People who had grown weary of the Busheviks, their casual cruelties, their plundering ways, and their lies, saw salvation was nigh, and so Obama won the election.

It's impossible to imagine that Crabby Old Man and Herself, the candidates who stood against him in the election, performing the role he was assigned and doing it even a fraction as well.

That said, an ersatz "populist revolt" against him was engineered immediately after the 2008 election and was put in operation through numerous radio and some television ads. It was called "Grassfire, We Resist" (I've mentioned it before, no point in going into details here) and that revolt was transformed into the Tea Party shortly after the inauguration, and we know what that led to: an intensification of the neo-liberal economic follies, and even greater institutionalization of the Imperial Security State. That done, the rebels rested.

Except that another, unexpected, populist revolt got under way last September, Occupy Wall Street that almost immediately spread across the entire nation and overseas. This was the first real mass uprising the nation had seen since the Sixties, and it was clear the authorities had no idea what to do about it.

From very early on, Revolution was in the air; nonviolent Revolution to be sure, but Revolution just the same.

Not a counter-Revolution that would try to reverse the Bushevik-Obama Imperial Revolution, and return to some idealized status quo ante. No. This would be a real Revolution, forward thinking, not going back to anything in the past but forging a brand new path into the Future.

"We are unstoppable; another world is possible."

Six months into it, some people are recognizing the beginnings of success, especially in the more militant outposts of the Movement -- like the O-Place, Oakland.

And it is understandably terrifying.

Many people who signed up for Occupy This or That didn't sign on to Revolution; many who thought that Revolution was called for didn't think this would be it. But there's a Revolution going on anyway, no matter what they thought they were signing up for, and in Oakland, it's getting really scary.

"Victory" is nigh. Is Oakland what a successful Revolution will look like? They aren't there yet, so it's hard to say. They've achieved the first-level victory of de-legitimizing civic authority, but where does it go from there? Either nobody knows or nobody's saying.

A first-level victory standing alone, without a sufficiently coordinated and militant follow up is not ultimately a Revolutionary victory at all.

For example, the militant students at UC Davis achieved a spectacular first-level victory by delegitimizing the authority of the campus police and the administration during and immediately after the Pepper Spray Incident.

They thereupon called for the disbanding of the UC Police, the immediate resignation of the chancellor and a cessation of tuition increases. They held a huge campus rally which I attended, at which they heard contrition from the chancellor and her pledge to do better, they vowed to reestablish their encampment and press their demands relentlessly until they were met.

They might have done so except for the winter break that came swiftly, emptying the campus, but not before the students literally ceded power right back to the administration that had abused them. They did it at a town hall that combined both contrition and control by the administrators in one of the slickest events of the kind I've seen.

By appearing to listen and repeatedly expressing contrition for past misdeeds, and by vowing "full investigation of what happened," and promising that nothing like the Pepper Spray Incident would happen again, the students' emotional demands were satisfied, and the power of their anger was defused.

Not to say this was a totally fraudulent show -- I'll let Nathan Brown say that -- but apart from mitigating the overt brutality of the UC Police, and allowing (even enabling) the re-establishment of the encampment, very little change has actually taken place, and few or none of the students' other demands have been met; there are no reports, for example, and conclusions from the 'investigations' are long past due. Tuition increases have not been mitigated or cancelled. The campus is quiet; the rebellion has been tamed. Linda Katehi is hailed far and wide for successful management of the situation. Voila! No Revolution in Davis.

See how this works?

That's how a Revolution is defused, but in city after city, with Oakland as a sort of Revolutionary pivot, authorities have responded to the militancy of the Occupiers, with ever increasing levels of violence, destruction of property, brutality and mass arrest of demonstrators. That is how authority adds fuel to the fire of Revolution.

What happens to the people who didn't sign up for Revolution who are caught in the middle?

We're seeing the tragic results of what can happen play out in places like Libya and Syria, where the People rose up, believed they could achieve real change through non-violent means, were ruthlessly cut down time and again by what I metaphorically refer to as "The Tsar's Cossaks", which led soon enough to an armed insurrection which in Libya turned into a civil war, the conduct of which was very bloody, the outcome of which was determined by the intervention of outside interests through NATO.

In Syria the nonviolent resistance campaign was met with extravagant levels of state violence and bloodshed, which in turn triggered an armed insurrection which is being countered with even more state bloodlust, inspiring more armed resistance as well as outside intervention on behalf of the rebels -- or so the intervention (sanctions for now) is being propagandized.

In both of these tragic examples of what can happen when nonviolent resistance is met with gross state violence and bloodshed, rather than any attempt at listening to and "taking steps" demanded by the rebels, thousands of noncombatants caught in the middle are paying for someone else's Revolution with their homes and their lives.

There is no sign at all that Occupy will in any way turn into an armed insurrection, but nonviolent demonstrations are being met with increasing levels of police violence, in which many hundreds have been wounded and some nearly killed. Many people who did not sign up for this sort of resistance and the violent response of the police have been caught up in it, and many are conflicted about it and are speaking out.

For the most part, they want "the violence" to end; and most don't want a Revolution at all. The question becomes one of how to stop it, or whether those engaged even want to stop it.

Defusing a Revolution is simple enough if it is done early on; the longer the struggle continues, the harder it is to defuse. What if the authorities don't want to defuse the situation, they want to crush the rebels? And what if they are prepared to do it through any means necessary, including jeopardizing the safety of the non-Revolutionary minded?

And what is the responsibility of the Revolutionaries for the safety of those who are caught in the middle of the conflict, a conflict that potentially can't be defused (because it's too late or because the authorities don't want to defuse it)?

While the issues surrounding Violent/Nonviolent action and reaction are being worked on by various elements in the Occupy Movement, there are somewhat bigger issues looming. The question of responsibility for the safety of non-Revolutionaries in a conflict situation is one of them.