occupy - what now?

The Campaign to 'Decolonize' Oakland

http://www.truth-out.org/campaign-decolonize-native-americans-say-occupy...

"...there's an effort by Native American activists in Oakland to get rid of 'Occupy' and replace it with 'Decolonize' as in 'Decolonize Oakland'. They say the term 'occupy' is offensive in light of the brutal history of occupation by early colonizers and the US government..."

Thanks for the news.

The 'ignorant hijackers' have a completely legitimate basis for opposing occupation. They are also well used to being told by settler movements that their long outstanding issues of  colonization, ecocide and genocide are strategically inconvenient. Decolonizing the occupation is an ongoing campaign of more than 500 years. Once it is apprehended and implemented we will truly be on our way to freedom. Not until.

I think if "Occupy" is viewed as a problematic term, then there are better alternatives than "Decolonize".  I agree that "Decolonize" does take the focus off economic injustice and the 99%.

and in terms of an answer to the question as to whether 'decolonize' means 'pack up and leave', this was best answered by Haida elder Lavina White, who said: "you haven't left us enough timber to build boats to send you all back."

Slumberjack wrote:

I find it peculiar as well that concern is being expressed over the brand name of something representing itself as an anti-corporate movement.

By dismissing the importance of names you undermine your own support for those who want to make an issue out of it - who in fact want to make it a dealbreaker of an issue.

Occupation has been a tactic of revolutionary struggle against oppression at least since the French revolutionaries occupied Louis XVI's palace in 1792. It has been adopted around the world by peasant and labour movements as a fightback against factory closures and land evictions. It has caused governments to fall.

There were countless sit-down strikes in North America in the 1930's over wages and working hours. The famous work-in campaign of the Clydebank shipbuilders in 1971, in the face of threatened closure of their workplace, proved to Britain and the world that workers could keep industries operating under their own management and save them from bankruptcy. Neoliberal restructuring in Argentina led to the rise of the "occupied factories" movement in Argentina, so brilliantly depicted in the 2004 film [i]The Take[/i], by Avi Lewis and Naomi Klein. Brazilian factory workers followed suit.  There was the occupation of the Republic Windows and Doors Factory in Chicago three years ago by UE union members to keep the place from shutting down. And a few months after, there was the brief CAW occupation of the Aradco auto parts plant in Windsor, threatened with plant closure, loss of jobs, and loss of back pay.

Haymarket Square was occupied; Tiananmen Square was occupied; Tahrir Square was occupied. Polish workers of Solidarnosc occupied the Gdansk shipyard in 1980 and soon all the town and city squares in Poland were occupied; people in Oaxaca, led by schoolteachers, occupied the town square in 2006, defying Mexican death squads; student occupations of university administration buildings have built anti-war mobilizations and have led to the fall of dictators like Suharto in Indonesia.

The Occupy movement is squarely in this tradition of popular struggle, and its name proudly echoes that heritage. Those who demand, as a precondition to supporting the Occupy movement, that it change its name, on account of their own semantic misunderstanding, demonstrate their own isolation from popular struggles, their ignorance of traditions and tactics of those struggles, and their inability to appreciate the importance of building alliances to advance their own struggles. In short, they exhibit all the symptoms of classic left sectarianism.

I find that protests against U.S. military occupations tend to go badly whenever we gain momentum. The right has reverted to the old strategy of tension and fear-mongering at home while they aid and abet right wing anarchists in the Middle East, Central Asia, Africa etc. The right to protest has been slowly eroded here in the west since the end of cold war. They were arresting Americans and Brits for wearing anti-Dubya t-shirts in the U.K and U.S. this past decade. That's oppressive.

They can jail the resisters, but they can't jail the resistance! These American dissidents have been at it since before 9/11 truth was formed and know what it's like to speak out in dangerous times.

I have some reservations.  For instance, the North American versions of representative democracy haven't been knocked anywhere.

..in the imagination of many it has been.

Even an Austrian or two is musing: [url]http://www.benzinga.com/media/jim-cramer/11/12/2229669/vanguard-rising-o...

By Marco Rabinowitz

Sometimes bread tastes better than freedom. One has to wonder how much freedom a starving individual would be willing to give up in order to survive. This is something to keep in mind going into the next year as we make our way through the global financial crisis. And as we approach the beginning of 2012, the political and economic future of the world appears uncertain.

Various factions in the nation are competing for attention, support, and power in the wake of an ominous global economy. Far from being a year of recovery, 2012 may very well be a year for the US and the rest of the world to re-evaluate the global status quo. To say the least, we may want to buckle up our seat belts going into 2012.

[b]I. The Protester[/b]

Time Magazine recently named "the Protester" as 2011's Person of the Year. In light of the Arab Spring and the Occupy movement, global protests will probably change the socio-cultural and political landscapes in 2012. In light of these global protests, it would appear that humanity is at crossroads of sorts.

Many observers may not realize it, but [b]in some ways, the Occupy movement is a textbook Marxist revolutionary concept[/b]. Some may opine that protesters' references to setting up "workers' councils" is quite reminiscent of Russian "soviets". Though the Occupy movement may not be absolutely Marxist ideologically, [b]it may be considered "Marxist" in a philosophical or theoretical sense[/b].

In the political pamphlet "What is to be done?", Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin argued that [b]workers will not spontaneously become political by fighting economic battles over wages and working conditions[/b] with the elite. Thus, the working class would [b]need a revolutionary "vanguard" political party in order to spread the word about Marxist ideology and to bring about change[/b]. Lenin saw Russia at the beginning of the dawn of a new age: "We are passing from the sphere of history to the sphere of the present, and partly, of the future."

In some ways, the Occupy movement is fulfilling the task of being this Marxist societal vanguard. For all intents and purposes, [b]the Occupy movement appears to be outside the mainstream political debate in the US[/b]. Even if the Occupy movement is acting as a Marxist vanguard political faction, this is only [b]in the context of Marxist theory, not what we normally regard as historical hammer-and-sickle communism[/b]. Given that the US is generally moderate politically, the Occupy movement [b]may have to find innovative ways of making an anti-capitalist, leftist message appealing to mainstream, football-watching, steak-eating, church-going America[/b] in order to remain viable and credible. While some Occupy protesters claim to support communism, it is significant to note that if the Occupy movement had organized in the USSR or other various historically communist nations, the movement would have been summarily quelled and disbanded by force, protesters would probably have either been imprisoned or executed.

Far from portending some global communist reformation, whereas many individuals across the world are upset with the status quo, the wide range of global protests reflects the fact that humanity is at a crossroads. [b]This crossroads raises questions like "Is utopia possible?" and "What is the human journey?" At this point in history, it is as if our species is mentally preparing to turn a corner. In my opinion, this crossroads is not only about politics or economics, but also the greater direction of our planet going forward.[/b] It is as if the world is approaching a critical moment with respect to key issues including the environment, overpopulation, water, energy usage, and financial stability. As politics, cooperation, and diplomacy are at the center of these issues and as there are seven billion people now living on planet Earth, it makes sense that we will not be able to always agree on political issues. Even so, global protests are shaking up and adding even more uncertainty to an already precarious situation.

The question remains as to what will become of global protests and the Occupy movement in particular. Since issues like high unemployment and high student loan debt do not appear to be going away anytime soon, Occupy protests (in one form or another) will probably continue into 2012. Where a regime change in a country like Syria may be foreseeable, the Occupy movement is already making plans for an "American Spring" in 2012 -- including the possibility of seeking constitutional reform. According to an Adbusters article entitled "What to expect in 2012", [b]Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri have offered various possible goals for global protests going into 2012 including "establishing a guaranteed income, the right to global citizenship, and a process of the democratic reappropriation of the common."[/b] Are these ideas going to arrive on the world stage for political debate in the near future?

With an evolving political landscape and the possibility of future protests in mind, one has to wonder how the Occupy movement will play into the 2012 election.

[b]II. The Election[/b]

What sort of society do Americans want the US to be? Where many commentators may hope (in light of the 2011 US debt debacle) that the ongoing debate of the direction of the US will be resolved during the 2012 elections, the stark political divide may continue into the foreseeable future. US Presidential candidate Mitt Romney recently said that the 2012 election is going to give Americans the choice between having an "entitlement society" or having an "opportunity society". That being the case, there is no guarantee that the 2012 elections are going to give us any more clarity as to the nation's course. Indeed, Occupy Wall Street gives the current debate an even more precarious dimension.

How could the Occupy movement affect the 2012 elections? Aside from the prospect of [b]disruptive protests and seeking constitutional reform[/b], MarketWatch's Paul Farrell has suggested that Occupy will be promoting new taxes on the 1 percent and other [b]various policies related to commerce and corporations[/b]. As in the aforementioned article from Hardt and Negri, [b]the Occupy movement may introduce new policy goals into the debate[/b].

How then would the movement respond were they ignored by the mainstream establishment? The movement may modify its tactics. Breitbart recently reported that Occupy protesters packed into an Iowa diner heckled Republican candidate Rep. Michele Bachmann before she arrived. Police eventually arrived, but no protesters were arrested.

There is, of course, an economic dimension to the Occupy protests. According to a Huffington Post article, in Oakland, Calif. following an incident at a port, Mayor Jean Quan said that "the city would probably not be able to prevent port closures anyway since a handful of protesters could sneak around police lines." Quan had told port officials that "the city would try to prevent future shutdowns at the port if port officials picked up the $1.5 million tab for the hundreds of police officers that would be needed." As cities tighten budgets, it will be interesting to see how communities deal with additional costs from Occupy protests.

The Miami Herald recently had an interesting article written by Mark Neuberger and John Douglas that discussed the impact of Occupy protests on local businesses. The authors discussed legal issues regarding employees' protesting and having protesters show up at one's business. They concluded that "if economic conditions do not significantly improve and employees begin acting out in protest, businesses should be prepared to respond to novel forms of protest like sit-downs, flash mobs, posting on Facebook, Twitter and other social media, handbilling or picketing."

Given the emergence of the Occupy movement as an additional player in American society & politics, make no mistake about it, the 2012 elections will be a dramatic climax to a most likely eventful year.

[b]III. The Specter[/b]

Marx once wrote that the specter of communism was haunting Europe; there now appears to be a post-Marxist specter haunting the world. [b]Some political philosophers and/or economists cannot help but be taken aback by this sudden and unexpected specter of Marxism that has arrived on the global scene.[/b]

Economically speaking, I suppose this is only natural owing to the global financial crisis, but still, one would think that after the fall of the USSR and free-market reforms in communist countries that Marxist theory would become obsolete. Apparently, that is not the case. [b]Given the rhetoric of post-Marxists and the prospect of a complete doomsday collapse of the capitalistic global financial system that reads like something out of a textbook on Marxist economic theory, it is as if Karl Marx's own specter is waiting to get his last laugh. And not only Marx's specter, we have to keep in mind the ongoing protests in Russia -- where protesters were seen waving the old Soviet flag.[/b]

Speaking of Lenin, Jim Cramer made quite an interesting Freudian slip on the Dec. 22 episode of CNBC's Mad Money. While discussing Hansen Natural Corp. (NASDAQ: HANS [FREE Stock Trend Analysis]), Cramer stated that, "The [consumer] staples are in favor when the market is unsust-- is unstable. We know we've got an unstable market." I couldn't help but notice that he almost said "unsustainable". In taking into account Social Security, the national debt, stagnant unemployment, mild growth, an impending higher education bubble, and societal unrest, maybe the market is unsustainable.

I recently discussed the concept of a "great refusal" (per Herbert Marcuse), where individuals would begin to simply ignore or reject the establishment in favor of re-evaluated and modified social and economic institutions and norms. Interestingly enough, in the aforementioned Adbusters article, Hardt and Negri referenced refusal in light of global protests. Hardt and Negri: "The extraordinary force of refusal is very important, of course, but we should be careful not to lose track in the din of the demonstrations and conflicts of a central element that goes beyond protest and resistance [...] the aspiration for a new kind of democracy..." [b]As much as some may welcome this sense of refusal going on in the world, we should also not lose sight of the market mechanics and business activities that got us to this point in the first place.[/b] And we should also not lose sight of the fact that some of the "refusal" is owing to the brutal fact that many simply cannot financially afford to "accept" anymore.

[b]It does appear that capitalism is under attack today more than it ever has been in the recent past. And for whatever reason, the attack is not so much about human actions or behavior, but the nature of the system itself. As in the case of private property rights, owing to technology people are able to pirate copyrighted material globally. Owing to technology, the right to privacy has been compromised.[/b]

Owing to technology, we are now able to see that [b]creative and/or intellectual property rights are mere societal conventions for commerce[/b]. Two or more individuals (in a world of seven billion) could come up with the same plot for a book or melody for a song at the exact same time; (just as we no longer recognize the divine right of political leaders) today we can see in reality that ultimately in the grand scheme of things no one truly owns anything because there is no galactic or cosmic court of governance asserting itself on a daily basis; in this way, private property appears to be merely a social convention with no feudalistic divine or eternal backing. [b]Property rights are only as good as the earthly system that backs them up. And it appears that the global system is cracking.[/b]

That being the case, in my humble opinion, the cracking of the global financial system and ongoing global protests serve as [b]symptoms that humanity is experiencing a shift in consciousness[/b]. What that ultimately means, I cannot say, but I hope that such a shift in the human collective consciousness brings with it a rise in social maturity; maybe that is what 2012 will be about. I reference "social maturity" here as a hopeful departure from the materialistic, militant, whoever-dies-with-the-most-toys-wins mentality of human life. I think humanity deep down is better than that, and frankly, I think it's about time our species grows up. As such, the current global tumult may only be growing pains leading into a new era of human development.

What that new era may bring, I do not know. In the spirit of the so-called Chinese curse, all I know is this: We are living in interesting times.

What is the #Occupy movement?


video
A roundtable discussion with students and activists either directly involved with Occupy Wall St. or who are closely following the #Occupy movement.

Description:
The recent #Occupy protests are driven by discontent with the present state of affairs: glaring economic inequality, dead-end Democratic Party politics, and, for some, the suspicion that capitalism could never produce an equitable society. These concerns are coupled with aspirations for social transformation at an international level. For many, the protests at Wall St. and elsewhere provide an avenue to raise questions the Left has long fallen silent on:

What would it mean to challenge capitalism on a global scale?
How could we begin to overcome social conditions that adversely affect every part of life?
And, how could a new international radical movement address these concerns in practice?

http://vimeo.com/32300631

The Irish squatters taking on empty homes and a bankrupt system

As Ireland reels from yet another austere budget and a year of economic pain, a group of young activists have begun to take over empty properties spawned by the boomand abandoned by banks and property developers across the country.

The squatters, linked to Ireland's Occupy movement, say they plan a mass occupation of houses and flats owned by the Irish government's "bad bank", National Asset Management Agency (Nama), which took over thousands of properties that speculators handed back after the crash

quote:

There are up to 400,000 properties lying empty in the Republic, with the country's National Institute of Regional and Spatial Analysis (NIRSA) warning that the number of vacant properties could keep house prices low for years.

Mac an Bháird concedes that his group are breaking the law but argues that they are making an important political point. "There are thousands homeless in this country with about 2,000 on the streets of Dublin alone tonight. Yet across the city there are thousands of flats, apartments, homes lying empty – some could be fit for human habitation.

"Our occupation is a way of making a point about the system we are living under. These properties could lie vacant for up to 10 years or more – so why not put homeless people into them?".....

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/jan/03/ireland-squatters-occupy-...

Occupy OKC and OK Trooper (and vid)

http://www.informationliberation.com/?id=37942

Occupiers to Converge on Olympia, WA in February

Occupy Olympia (WA) and the Alliance for Global Justice are hosting an Occupy Solidarity Social Forum Feb. 18-19 in the Washington state capital city. The self-organized, social forum-type gathering is open to all occupiers and allies.

Occupy Olympia agreed by consensus at General Assembly to host a self-organized gathering of the Occupy Wall Street Movement to network, build unity, share tactics, workshop strategies, discuss diversity and discuss how to develop action plans. Olympia is near the Seattle Tacoma airport, a travel hub. Free shuttle service will be available for participants. Olympia has a strong history of organizing and is home of The Evergreen State College offering plenty of meeting space. Occupy Olympia is a natural choice for hosting one of the nationally organized conferences springing forth from this movement because of its temperate weather, strong organizing history, overwhelming local support, proximity to a national airport and it’s local college support....

http://interoccupy.org/occupiers-to-converge-on-olympia-wa-in-february/

Report: Obama admin sends Coast Guard to protect ships from violent union members, occupiers

President Barack Obama’s administration has ordered the United States Coast Guard to protect grain ships at the Port of Longview from violent “Occupy” protesters and dockworker union members, according to a local news report.

The Daily News in Longview, Wash., reported that the Coast Guard will protect a grain shipment from an onslaught of “Occupy” protesters and members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU). The ship will be transporting grain to Asia. A date for the shipment has not yet been set.

The group of leftwing activists had shut down ports all along the West Coast on Dec. 8, including the Port of Longview. The Coast Guard will apparently be helping the ship load its grain at the port, and then depart for Asia, safely.

The local unions and “Occupy” groups are planning to band together to protest the Coast Guard protections of the grain shipment when it happens....

epaulo13 wrote:

Report: Obama admin sends Coast Guard to protect ships from violent union members, occupiers

President Barack Obama’s administration has ordered the United States Coast Guard to protect grain ships at the Port of Longview from violent “Occupy” protesters and dockworker union members, according to a local news report.

The Daily News in Longview, Wash., reported that the Coast Guard will protect a grain shipment from an onslaught of “Occupy” protesters and members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU). The ship will be transporting grain to Asia. A date for the shipment has not yet been set.

The group of leftwing activists had shut down ports all along the West Coast on Dec. 8, including the Port of Longview. The Coast Guard will apparently be helping the ship load its grain at the port, and then depart for Asia, safely.

The local unions and “Occupy” groups are planning to band together to protest the Coast Guard protections of the grain shipment when it happens....

Love how they assume it's an "objective" headline to simply assume the union members are going to be violent...as if that just goes without saying...you stay classy, MSM.

The day after: the movement beyond the protest

As our movement transforms from a protest into a new social climate, promising signs are emerging of a new cooperative form of social organization.

quote:

That the right-wing Partido Popular would take an absolute majority of the government with only a minor increase in votes due to the spectacular disintegration of popular support for the outgoing Partido Socialista was no surprise to anyone, especially the indignados. What may have surprised some, however, is the relatively low intensity of mobilizations since the right wing took office and, slowly but steadily, announced that they would implement the same neoliberal policies and violent austerity imposed by technocratic regimes in Greece and Italy.

As Amador Fernández-Savater recently put it, the questions on a lot of peoples’ minds seem to be: “where are all those people who occupied the plazas and neighbourhood assemblies during the spring? Have they become disenchanted with the movement? Are they incapable of making lasting compromises? Are they resigned to their fates?”

Fernández-Savater doesn’t think so. “With no study in hand and generalizing simply based on the people I know personally and my own observations of myself, I think that, in general, people have gone on with their lives … But saying that they’ve gone on with their lives is a bad expression. For once you’ve gone through the plazas, you don’t leave the same, nor do you go back to the same life. Paradoxically, you come back to a new life: touched, crossed, affected by 15-M.”

And as he so eloquently puts it, 15-M is no mere social organization, but “a new social climate.” But how does a social climate organize itself? What new possibilities have revealed themselves after months of self-management, cooperative civil disobedience and massive mobilization, and what remains to be done?...

http://roarmag.org/2012/01/delclos-viejo-indignados-2012-15-m-spain/

eta:

Over time, the wave of mobilizations that first hit the shores of the Mediterranean and extended outwards over the course of 2011 has overcome its initial, expressive phase. This phase managed to substitute the dominant narrative with our own. We now know that the problem is not some mysterious technical failure we call a crisis, but the intentional crimes of a cleptocracy.

This distinction is crucial: while the first suggests a management dilemma that opposes left- and right-wing approaches to the crisis, the second draws a line between the 1 percent who abuse power in order to steal from the people and those who refuse to consent and choose to resist in the name of the other 99 percent....

M. Spector wrote:

epaulo13 wrote:

Slavoj Žižek is regarded as one of the ideological pioneers of the Occupy movement...

By himself and who else, exactly?

That's the first time I've ever heard anything even remotely suggesting that to be the case.

..i wondered about giving him this title as well. i am aware that he has a following of young people within the global movement and he was very well received in OWS. i see him more as an adopted elder. what i like about him is that his analysis is alive and flexible. he tries to bring the lessons from the old to this new, young movement in a very supportive way. to listen to his interaction with ows street you can clearly see the attraction to him and why.

  Today Liberty Plaza had a visit from Slavoj Zizek

Occupy Wall Street's Next Phase: Avoid Cooptation in Election Season  -  by Glen Ford

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/01/18-9

"The real 'phase two' of Occupy Wall Street's young career is a perilous period of greatly increased interaction of OWS with local Democratic politicians. It has been forty years since a presidential campaign took place in the presence of a grassroots movement  - or, the remnants of a movement, back in 1972.

Except for some older heads, OWS has little experience in avoiding - or even detecting - the Democratic Party's cooptive machinery, as is becoming obvious..."

the same toxic and cooptive entanglements must be avoided here, as well...

..here's something that occurred here in nov. i don't have any further info.

Skirmish with fire department, police leads ex-Occupy organizers to reach out to city

Following a skirmish last night between firefighters, police and protesters at Occupy Vancouver, some of the protest's organizers met late Tuesday night with the B.C. Federation of Labour to discuss ways forward – without authorization from the encampment....

http://www.vancouverobserver.com/politics/2011/11/08/skirmish-fire-depar...

Uncle John wrote:

How about "32 hour workweek with no reduction in pay"

which should lower unemployment and reduce wealth disparity between the bosses and the workers.

The problem with Occupy is that it does not seem to have any concrete goals.

..movements that came before this one had goals and yet here we sit on the brink of many disasters. it is not that simple to bring people together. first they need to have a vision then they need to be impowered then want to come together in the face of all their divisions and in the face of police brutality to try and make a better world. if the mind set is goals it has missed the movement's essence. that essence played out using direct democracy as the vehicle.

Onwards and Upwards Occupy!

Trials of One Per Cent to Begin At Occupy Justice (UK)

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2012/01/491278.html

UK Government to Go on Trial

http://london.indymedia.org/videos/11483

great idea

M. Spector wrote:

Uncle John wrote:

The problem with Occupy is that it does not seem to have any concrete goals.

And the reasons for that are mainly two: lack of leadership and being tied to an antiquated notion that all decisions must be arrived at by "consensus" (the great killer of concrete goals).

You may be right about "consensus" - if it's interpreted as "unanimity" (is that your usage?) - but I'm curious as to why you call it "antiquated".

Gotcha - thanks.

Not necessarily exhaustive, no. I did say "mainly", and I stand by that.

Having no idea "where to go from here" is, as you note, a huge problem. It's the same problem, however, that I call "lack of leadership". Because the job of leaders is to lead, to persuade the larger polity of what is to be done, and what is to be done next. In the absence of leaders with a clear analysis and political vision, it's left to the "larger, non-activist polity" to fend for themselves.

There is a crisis of leadership on the left, and it's far worse than it was in the 1960s.