Category: Occuping Political Space

WTFIRGO

February 8, 2012: J. Rosencrantz

I’ve been active in other domains, and so its been a while since I’ve posted here.  Weekly posts are migrating to the Freshjive Website, as part of the newly formed WTFIRGO Foundation which is raising money for social and economic justice organizations through the sale of limited edition agitprop tees. 50% of the proceeds from each months shirts will go to a different organization each month, starting with the Los Angeles Community Action Network, which focuses on the struggles of Skid Row locals. 

Cross posted here is the inaugural WTFIRGO post, with  Rick Klotz’ sketch of the first graphic:

FUCK POLITICS: Apathy and its Opposite

Our political and economic order is in crisis. Powerful corporate institutions have superseded democratic institutions in wealth and power, to the extent, for example, that nobody can reach high political office without corporate sponsorship. This puts private wealth and power in a position to dictate legislation to the legislators they sponsor, against the interests of the people they are supposed to represent.

The rich get richer, but the rest of us get buried in debt. Banks are bailed out, but families are threatened with foreclosure. Non-violent drug offenders are locked up for years, but financial and political elites are immune from prosecution for their crimes.

Merely recognizing these problems, however, does nothing to address them.

And since, despite cynical campaign rhetoric to the contrary, politicians in “both parties” are beholden to the same cluster of interests, voting for this or that corporate shill will never present any significant challenge to the system.

Establishment media’s portrayal of political campaigns as a years long horse race between fully housebroken elephants and jackasses is a distraction from the true arenas of struggle for social and economic justice.

Challenges to the status quo from within the system are safely defanged — third parties, for example, are blocked from power by way of ballot access rules, media blackouts and a winner take all system which promotes a timid “lesser of two evils” mentality.

Even the difference between these two relative evils are largely illusory — “conservative” administrations throw vast amounts of money into imperial wars while “liberal” administrations promote indefinite detention and the assassination of citizens without a hint of due process.

So fuck politics.

But to come to this conclusion is not necessarily to succumb to apathy. Recognizing the insanity of delegating one’s own political power to distant, compromised liars is at the same time to recognize one’s own responsibility.

That is why the World’s Got Problems blog is joining with Freshjive to create the WTFIRGO foundation, which will seek to bring attention to and raise money for organizations working to unfuck the world.

So starting February 8th, Freshjive will be releasing one new t-shirt graphic twice a month under the WTFIRGO label to correspond with a World’s Got Problems post. The tees will come in limited quantities and be available for purchase through the ReserveLA.net web store. 50% of the proceeds from these shirts will be donated to a different social or economic justice organization each month.

We decided to begin close to home, by raising money for an organization struggling for justice in some of the harshest conditions in the country.

Just blocks away from the Freshjive offices in downtown L.A. is the Central City East Community, better known “Skid Row”, home to one of the most heavily policed and dispossessed populations of the country.

For years the Los Angeles Community Action Network (LA CAN) has been organizing Skid Row locals in the struggle for social and economic justice. If anybody can teach us a thing about taking responsibility in the struggle, it is them — and maybe we can raise a few bucks for the cause.

T-shirt available exclusively at Reserve Online.

Brookfield’s Patch of Grass

November 22, 2011: J. Rosencrantz

Here is a picture I took looking up at the Downtown L.A. Bank of America building from a patch of grass owned by Brookfield Properties, the same owners of Zuccotti Park in NYC.  This picture was taken just before my arrest defending an encampment in a solidarity action on November 17.

I wrote about the action an my arrest experience here.

National Crackdown

November 18, 2011: J. Rosencrantz

In the last weeks, the world has witnessed a massive and coordinated national crackdown on the Occupy Movement, culminating in an early morning raid on the original encampment in Zuccotti Park by the NYPD and NYDS under the direction of billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Here are some highlights from around the country:

NEW YORK CITY

The eviction of Zuccotti (Liberty) Park took place under a media blackout, so there is not a lot of imagery or video available, for example, of the trashing of the OWS People’s Library, but there are plenty of eyewitness reports of police brutality and destruction of property. The best immediate coverage of the raid I saw was here, but this video from OccupyTVNY shows the progression of the eviction from the inside:

And, by the way, here is an image of an LRAD weapon on the scene — an increasingly prevalent weapon against peaceable assemblies.

OAKLAND

Oakland Mayor Jean Quan accidentally let it slip that cities coordinated the crackdown on Occupy Movment. (On this coordination, see also here and here and here.)

Here is a video documenting eviction night.

See here, for what what might happen to you if you film Oakland PD “protecting” the community.

And see here, for a quick tour of post-raid Occupy Oakland. Actually for informative updates on Occupy Oakland in general see zunguzungu.

PORTLAND


See here for more on “The Battles of Occupy Portland”, and here for a short video documenting Occupy Portland preparing for the eviction.

And of course, can’t fail to include this image:

SEATTLE

In Seattle, SPD pepper sprayed people indiscriminately, including an 84-year old woman and a pregnant woman.  See also here.

U.C. BERKELEY

As Stephen Colbert put it, “Look at these vicious students attacking these billy clubs with their soft jabbable bellies!“

For more, see here.

U.C. DAVIS

The pepper spraying incident was followed by this “Powerfully Silent Protest” against the University Chancellor who defended the campus police’s vile behavior.

CHAPEL HILL, NC

Source.

There were other evictions of Occupations in St. Louis, Denver, and other cities.

For even more videos and images of police pepper spray and violence, see the Atlantic’s collection.

The People’s Microphone

November 13, 2011: J. Rosencrantz

One of the reasons the Peoples’ Mic is an effective tool for overcoming institutional censorship is that it relies on no technology whatsoever — nothing that requires electricity and nothing that can set off a metal detector.  All it requires is a group of people committed to communicating a message.

Also, its horizontalidad confuses repressive authorities, who — because they think hierarchically — look for a leader to arrest. But arresting or evicting any given wielder of the microphone proves futile, since the people’s voice then merely shifts to another body and the message continues.

See peoples’ mic at work elsewhere:

Wall St. Bull: ¡Un escándalo!

November 11, 2011: J. Rosencrantz

From Yes Lab:

I wondered whether I, neophyte matador, could bring down this behemoth, world-famous for charging towards profit while trampling underfoot the average worker,” said the OWS activist/torero whose first fight this was. “Come what may, I knew I must try.

Demands

November 5, 2011: J. Rosencrantz

(A visual representation of the "Declaration of the Occupation of NYC" by OWS-NYC's Arts and Culture and Call to Action Working Groups.)

The horizontalidad of the Occupation Movement has confused hierarchical systems of propaganda, which is only capable of registering PR-crafted soundbites.

Confusing the complicated harmonies of mass popular protest for an incoherent cacophony, the corporate media multiplex has ridiculed the Occupy Movement for lacking clear “demands”.

But as Dahlia Lithwick writes at Slate, “It takes a walloping amount of willful cluelessness to look at a mass of people holding up signs and claim that they have no message…. [just as] it takes a tremendous mental effort to refuse to see that the rich are getting richer in America while the rest of us are struggling.”

I generally agree with Lithwick’s conclusion that, “[b]y refusing to take a ragtag, complicated, and leaderless movement seriously, the mainstream media has succeeded only in ensuring its own irrelevance.”

Still, while it is true that the OWS General Assembly consensed on a list of grievances (subsequently endorsed by the GA in L.A. and other cites),  one can’t deny that the Occupy Movement as a whole has yet to issue a tight list of demands or statements of purpose or plans of action.

But this lack of clear direction is precisely what should be expected from a spontaneous uprising that seeks to unite “the 99%” by means of non-heirarchical consensus-based deliberative mechanisms. Firstly, such mechanisms can take a great deal of time, as anyone who as participated in a General Assembly can attest. Secondly, the problems with the current political order are deep and complicated and pervasive, so jumping to conclusions on how to address them would be irresponsible.

Writing for VersoBooks, Mc Kenzie Wark argues that the lack of quickly formulated demands is actually a strength of the Occupy Wall St. movement, in part because it shows that the movement is actually focusing on process.

Still, the demand for demands is not limited to the Corporatist media.  It is also pervasive in the Occupation camps themselves, if I can extrapolate from my experiences at Occupy Los Angeles.

OLA’s “Obejectives and Demands Committee”, in which I am a regular participant, was originally called the “Demands Committee” and over the course of the last 5 weeks has spent many hours debating question of demands:

Doesn’t the concept of “demands” reinforce the power of those from whom we demand things? Aren’t we rather seeking to “alter or abolish” those institutions of state power? Wouldn’t it be better, rather, to formulate “objectives” for the movement? And given the diversity of the Occupiers in terms of class, ethnicity, gender, ideology, etc., what is the proper way to organize and prioritize and reach consensus on language that seeks to express the highest aspirations of the collective movement?

These questions are difficult and deep, and I am glad that the L.A. Occupation has been taking these questions and responsibilities seriously by allowing the horizontal processes to play out, as imperfect as these processes can be sometimes.

But as philosopher Slavoj Zizek has warned in the Guradian, we should not forget the endgame:

While it is thrilling to enjoy the pleasures of the “horizontal organisation” of protesting crowds with egalitarian solidarity and open-ended free debates, we should also bear in mind what GK Chesterton wrote: “Merely having an open mind is nothing; the object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.” This holds also for politics in times of uncertainty: the open-ended debates will have to coalesce not only in some new master-signifiers, but also in concrete answers to the old Leninist question, “What is to be done?“

With this warning in mind, however, Zizek argues that the greatest threat to the movement is not its lack of a clear program but rather those “false friends” who in effect seek to “dilute the protest” by funneling movement energy into prepackaged and establishment-friendly soundbites.  He cites Bill Clinton as an example, who chides the movement for not being “for something specific” and who suggests that it “get behind President Obama’s jobs plan”.

While such a move would suddenly make the movement intelligible to the corporate media complex — by forcing it back into a democrat / republican, liberal / conservative, etc., mold — it would at the same time drain it of its revolutionary potential. Zizek concludes:

What one should resist at this stage is precisely such a quick translation of the energy of the protest into a set of concrete pragmatic demands. Yes, the protests did create a vacuum – a vacuum in the field of hegemonic ideology, and time is needed to fill this vacuum in a proper way, as it is a pregnant vacuum, an opening for the truly new.

The movement’s lack of clear program can be seen as an important strength, in other words.  Not only does it thereby cast a wide net over the frustrations of “the 99%”, the very under-articulacy of the growing movement can be ominous and properly threatening.

This sentiment is nicely captured in a tweet from Malcom Harris, after Bank of America dropped its proposed monthly $5 debit card fee:

It’s great how we won that demand about debit card fees. Wait, we didn’t demand anything? But then how did they know what to give us?

It is beginning to be possible to detect other “victories” of the Occupy Movement as political institutions respond to its challenge, even in the absence of a particular plan of action: Unions are embracing bolder tactics, according to the NYT,  and FDL is crediting the movement with changing the “dominant conversation” from “deficits and debt” to “inequality and economic justice.”

Its mere continued existence, in other words, can be seen itself a clear articulation.

By focusing on processes for reaching consensus on fundamental questions, objectives and strategies, the Occupy Movement frustrates familiar narratives and trajectories as it gathers strength.

Consensus

October 14, 2011: J. Rosencrantz

Occupying Political Space

October 9, 2011: J. Rosencrantz

There are no excuses left. Either you join the revolt taking place on Wall Street and in the financial districts of other cities across the country or you stand on the wrong side of history. Either you obstruct, in the only form left to us, which is civil disobedience, the plundering by the criminal class on Wall Street and accelerated destruction of the ecosystem that sustains the human species, or become the passive enabler of a monstrous evil. Either you taste, feel and smell the intoxication of freedom and revolt or sink into the miasma of despair and apathy. Either you are a rebel or a slave.

-Chris Hedges

Over the past decade and more, as a radio journalist and videographer, I have covered and documented scores of protests and marches. But the current wave of occupations of political spaces is the first that has felt like a movement.

Full disclosure: When it comes to Occupy Los Angeles, I am no longer just an observer but a participant in what feels like a genuine exercise of democracy — leaderless, but deliberative, movement building around shared principles.

In New York, where the occupation of Zuccotti Park is in its fourth week, the movement continues to meet with police repression, exemplified most notoriously so far by the absurd pepper spraying of nonviolent young women and the entrapment and arrest of 700 marchers on the Brooklyn Bridge.

(Here is a video showing the step-by-step development of the mass arrest that took place on October 1, 2011. Here is longer, more detailed edit. These videos, from OccupyTVNY show police leading the march onto the bridge and then trapping the marchers from behind.)

Occupation Los Angeles has fortunately been largely free so far from police harassment — due in part to political and / or principled decisions on the part of certain members of the Los Angeles City Council.

Council Member Richard Alarcon, for example, sent an important memo to the LA Chief of Police and City Attorney the night before the LA Occupation began which urged that they “provide a reasonable accommodation” to the movment “in order to both protect the City’s interests and to allow this group to peacefully exercise its’ First Amendment rights”.  Furthermore, Alarcon advised,

it would be unwise for our City to be overly aggressive and change the story from what it is — a protest against financial institutions — into a story about the City being inhospitable to peaceful demonstrations of civil rights.

So OccupyLA has been left largely at liberty to do its thing. But many who have yet to participate in this movement remain confused about the point of it all.  They search in vain for “demands” formulated as sound bites, and bemoan the apparent haphazardness of it all.

But this movement, which aspires to unite the “99%” against the runaway wealth and power of the 1% at the top — “the Wall St. oligarchs and corporate plutocrats”, in the words of Cornell West — has set for itself a very difficult task.

The 99% is itself divided by class, race, culture, ideology and much else besides — so while everybody agrees that there is something wrong, reaching consensus on the the best way to identify and fix the problems we all face is is a monumental challenge that takes time.

Jumping to conclusions without passing through the crucible of committee discussions and consensus at General Assemblies would shatter the movement and defeat its purpose.

Nevertheless, slowly but surely, consensus building is taking place.

On Sept 30 The General Assembly of Occupy Wall St., the epicenter of the Occupy Movement, reached consensus on a general declaration of grievances. This declaration was then formally endorsed by the General Assembly in Los Angeles on October 8.