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The Cancer in Occupy?
February 6, 2012 - 5:02pm
The Cancer in Occupy - by Chris Hedges
http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/441-occupy/9831-focus-the-cancer...
"The Blac Bloc anarchists, who have been active on the streets of Oakland and other cities, are the cancer of the Occupy movement. The presence of Black Bloc anarchists - so named because they dress in black, obscure their faces, move as a unified mass, seek physical confrontation with police and destroy property - is a gift from heaven to the security and surveillance state..."
I agree with this general idea, but don't think that "Black Bloc" is really the best label here.
Based on what I saw in Vancouver, we had very few people wearing "Black Bloc" attire and when any did appear it was very infrequent.
The problem is that the label is based on the clothes. How do you tell if someone is Black Bloc when they are dressed normally? It is not about the clothes that people are wearing--it is about the approach and strategy they want to take.
I have problems with it as well. As do some others who responded to it in truthdig.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_cancer_of_occupy_20120206/#457332
"Occupy Wall Street itself was actually started by a bunch of anarchists, and its horizontal, directly democratic organizational structure is anarchic to the bone. Anarchists are not the 'cancer' inside the movement, they are its heart and soul."
I like much of Hedges work but here he's writing like he's back at the New York Times.
The New Anarchy - by David Graeber
http://newleftreview.org/A2368
Well I don't disagree with Hedges here...in fact I do agree with the general idea. I just disagree with his labels.
I disagree with his use of the label "black bloc" because it is not wide enough.
I disagree with his use of the label because it is TOO wide, and gives anarchists an undeserved bad name.
In my opinion of the Occupy movement, there is a cancer, it is largely the people Hedges is trying to identify, but they are not anarchists, they are idiots.
Let's summarize shall we? Peaceful sit-in's and demonstrations are good enough for us; war, death, maimed bodies and torture belong elsewhere, which needn't stir anyone beyond 'civilized' oppositional gesture here, which could very well involve the occasional arrest for peaceful civil disobedience, but with any serious outburst beyond that described as uncouth and troublesome. For everyone it seems.
I don't understand the summary.
I just have to question anything that says certain forms of intensity are ruining things for everyone..ruining the manner by which others have chosen to appeal to power...others who are arrested, beaten, and carried away at any rate for pitching a tent.
What's ruining things for everyone is the global corporatist agenda.
In terms of building a movement to respond to that, some tactics are better than others. Some tactics amount to shooting the movement in the foot, IMO.
If stasis is being billed as movement, perhaps in those instances it might be better if they shoot themselves in the foot.
..here is a description of what took place on the ground.
Occupy Oakland: Are We Being Childish?http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/02/03/occupy-oakland-are-we-being-childish/
eta: Jean Quan’s insinuates that we act like children. I say “we”, because the black bloc is part of us; we cannot disown them. Infuriating as her charge may be, I think it contains something worth looking at. Her version of being grown-up is compromised. If to be a grownup means to live forever within the confines of the system, let us all be Peter Pans. But in our righteous rejection of her version of adulthood there lies a danger. The danger is that without being aware of it, we are unable truly to imagine winning; that we remain heroic “kids,” endlessly reenacting a drama in which we are abused by the authorities.....
If an action challenges the state, the state responds with violence.
Look at Occupy Oakland, one of the more radical Occupy movements. They shut down the Port of Oakland for fuck's sake! These folks got it going on!
There were also over 300 people arrested at Occupy Oakland, one of the largest mass arrests in the North American Occupy Autumn. The police there were also extremely violent, and needless to say, unnecessary, as most police violence is.
If an action doesn't challenge the state, like sitting around in a park, there can of course still be violent police repression. It just plays less well in the media. And as we saw in Toronto, various bullshit stories were made up to manufacture conflict between middle-class users of the park and the occupiers. The poor users of the park still didn't matter. Of course.
How do folks imagine how change in this part of the world will happen? Because we ask nicely? Ask the folks who were at the Oka standoff about that. Or Caledonia.
That said, I love Chris Hedges, and he's wrong this time.
Apparently Hedges is a pretty smart guy, so I can only assume he's being disingenuous here.
I wonder if he recognizes that the following paragraph is just as appliacble - arguably more so - if you swap the words 'Black Bloc' with 'Nonviolence'.
Some ways of challenging the state are more effective than others. On this we all seem to agree.
I don't understand the false dichotomy being expressed here--thinking that Black Bloc tactics are not effective does not make someone an obediant sheep.
Here we go again. And thanks, wage zombie, for introducing some common sense that comes from real life struggle - not adolescent frustration and despair.
This is pure bullshit. The gains made by the Occupy movement completely came through non-violent tactics. The movement has been defined as non-violent from the start.
If someone feels that violence is the way forward then they should start their own movement to employ those tactics rather than hijacking a non-violent movement.
There was neglibie black block presense in Vancouver. But there was much disagreement about tactics, numerous factions, and a lack of solidarity.
I'm a better anarchist than you
Yeah, it's the same Chris Hedges.
Who does Hedges think they are protesting against, the statue of liberty? The US Justice Dept is corrupted, and so is Washington corrupt to the bone.
Citibanksters aer criminals. They've used TARP bailout money to bribe US Government members to hand even more taxpayer money to Citibank criminals.
Bank of America is basically a crime gang, and so is Goldman Sachs a crime gang and so on. They are protesting the biggest bank heists in history.
quote:
To be sure, many of us are frustrated about the tactical mistakes made throughout the day, and we have to learn from these as we advance. There are many questions and criticisms coming from our broader community, and we welcome your help in transforming these into better strategies for future actions. We have to learn how to takeover buildings in an effective and intelligent manner. We have to learn how to move cohesively through the streets, to take offensive and defensive initiatives, to improve communication in highly charged situations. Critiques are important but we want everyone to understand the difficulty in undertaking such an initiative in the face of such forceful police response. The state fears that one successful building takeover will lead to another. It has nightmares of whole blocks of vacant buildings put to use as social centers and nodes of resistance, inspiring those in other cities to do the same. Despite the knee-deep shit that the OPD is in right now, when it comes to challenging property relations all bets are off and the leashes are cut....
http://occupyoakland.org/2012/02/a-statement-from-occupy-oaklands-move-i...
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Okay that's pretty convincing, too. Imperialists couldn't do anything about MLK, Malcolm Little, RFK, or Gandhi except cave-in to the demands of peaceful protesters. African Americans and Hindus are free today as a result. And they say that all of the Occupiers as well as their own NGO-instigated protesters in Middle East and Asia are "leaderless." This leadership thing seems to be an issue for them. I think if Occupy were to have an official leader, he or she probably would not thrive very long above ground.
Quite an obvious and glaring contradiction it would seem. Hedges seems to have suffered a bout of NIMBYism. Also, Mr Hedges comes dangerously close to sounding as if he speaks FOR the Occupy movement. He doesn't. And someone should perhaps remind him.
Thanks. It's almost effortless these days you know, considering the subject material on hand.
Well yes, gains made by demonstrating examples of self-organization and how a community can make better decisions for itself with care of those involved, everyone that is, being a paramount concern. These are gains that just about anyone might identify with. We see it being practiced at every level of society where they demonstrate an ability to take care of their own. Of course, certain levels set limits as to who they consider their own, to the exclusion of all others, but I think the point remains valid in saying awareness has been raised that similar, more dynamic, and more inclusive experiments can occur when people put their minds to it. As for gains or inroads against the Market, I'm afraid we'll need evidence to support such assertions.
Calling All Rebels
It's difficult to know what to make of what he goes on about in this piece as well.
The Black Bloc anarchists I know, who were at Quebec City in 2001, yeah I know, a long time ago, did things like provide food, first aid, rescue remedy in cloths for those hit by pepper spray, blankets, water and baked goods. They proudly and boldly stated they were anarchists. Some threw teddy bears.
Nobody welcomes police brutality, especially not the folks who experience, or expect to experience, police brutality every day. No matter what colour clothing they are wearing. Guess who led the movement in Oakland? People of colour. And guess who led the movement in Toronto? Not so much.
I agree that there are some people (varying ages and genders but working under a particular notion of masculinity) who aren't political, who join to destroy property and cause a ruckus in a "media attention-seeking" way, and who are not aligned with any progressive movement. My response to them is...so? By giving them attention you're giving them what they want, and in the meantime, misunderstanding the tactical and strategic application of physical resistance to oppression which, in my opinion, needs to be a part of any progressive movement.
Non-violent protest absolutely has a role to play in changing the world. But when push comes to shove, literally, who has the legal right to hit whom? The oppression is built right in.
Your response may be "so?" The response of the MSM and the authorities is to put all the focus on the handful of anonymous thugs who torched cars and smashed shop windows on that Saturday in Toronto - and use that to try to convince millions that this is what the movement is about. The movement isn't strong enough yet to expel these provocateurs (and I call them that irrespective of whether they're working for the other side or not). But articles like Hedges', even thought he gives the impression that nonviolence is the be-all and end-all, play an important role in exposing the destructive role of these petty adventurers who strike blows against the movement, never against authority.
Who decides when "push" comes to "shove"? That's the issue in my view. If it's individuals, committing random acts of violence, then the movement should take action against them before the authorities succeed in using that to crush the movement and discredit it. If the movement decides to use force (which our enemies call "violence"), then force it is. "Diversity of tactics" is a formula for handing power to the adolescent thugs. Workers have long learned the vital importance of decision-making, organization, discipline, and leadership in their struggles. Sometimes the democracy doesn't work all that well. But that's no excuse to hand over power to little groups of saboteurs.
We don't always need to wait for a "war" to use force (as Hedges intimates in part of his article). He himself praises force in more extreme circumstances, and yeah, he sounds very inconsistent. But if we have a picket line, and some picketer torches a cop car, and that results in a court injunction banning picketing and ten workers arrested after the cops riot, I can assure you that individual will not be praised at the union meeting for being so much more radical than the rest of us. I can also assure as to what will happen if we catch that individual before they actually commit the act.
dp
Yeah, just who do these hooligans think they are, and where do they get off disturbing the social peace, along with all of those real life struggles that guide it every step of the way, at $40.00 per hour with vacation packages and pensions thrown in for example, that others have worked so hard to preserve.
Here we see revealed the nearly invisible junction between the organized cop, indeed the organized government employee deployed across all manner of institutions, and the organized factory worker. A beneficiary class in other words. A series of bargains struck between certain elements of the working class, with the expectation that when the chips are down and more people, the ill-favoured working elements that is, along with the out and out poor insist on applying for similar deals, a type of solidarity will mobilize to demand reason and patience...which says trust us, we're diligently working on it for you.
Someone who sweeps the floor at McDonalds and Wal-Mart in between flipping burgers and stocking shelves, and someone who sweeps the floor at the auto plant in between installing dashboards and detailing cars. Huge differences of course, perhaps they use different types of brooms, but not so much when it comes to profitability levels of the corporations in question. It's almost as if the market has a mind of its own, handing out roles that everyone is expected to perform in return for varying favours. In areas where it figures to remunerate people comparatively well for services rendered, from the almost self aware exigency that certain levels of cooperation are required if everyone is to be obliged into cooperation across all sectors, it's ministers in government will provide the necessary tax breaks and loopholes, extracted from everyone's labour and consumption, in order to provide for better wages in the designated industries that have struck the bargain, and certainly the hard face of government security when it comes to it. In this way, a remarkable level of order and solidarity can be achieved, and especially so if it can be made that the lower levels of the workforce will run into all sorts of obstacles when they try and organize. The goal of maintaining and increasing profit is achieved. And lets spread that model out across the entire globe, and call the beneficiaries and overseers of the global society the Western democracies, the UN Security Council, just NATO if need be, or any willing coalition of chums.
And when the children of the $10.00 per hour sectors come into their own appreciation of things, lets call their resulting behaviours adolescent frustration and despair, and lets have the police deal with them please and thanks. I don't quite know if we should be referring to this as the 'common' sense.
What a joke. The impoverished hooligans vs. the fatcat unionized workers. Like those who smash shop windows and torch cop cars, you appear to be forgetting who the enemy is - and what unity means. Hedges was right on. The hooligans are right, and every one else is wrong. That's been the narrative of the defenders of the criminals on this board as well.
Don't worry. When the time comes for organized mass force (and it's not now, o ye of the hormones), the police will flee in disarray. And no one will be masked.
Could you work a little faster then on everyone's behalf....and secondly...I have to say in all honesty and analysis, such that it is, that when this time comes I seriously doubt it will be the result of any cue from social democratic representation and its union supporters. Unless things get really bad and things begin to cut in real deep, I just don't see anyone from these categories out on a limb, and when it finally does get that bad, it'll be much worse for everyone else...at which point who would seriously blame them for being unwilling or unable to listen for that cue, because they'll already be in the streets and likely armed by that point. We'll be asking ourselves how such a thing could have been avoided.