[OccupyComms] [Occupy London] Two Short Articles

[Mark Barrett]

+1 Chris / Mark !

On 18 February 2012 20:58, mark weaver <shurim at live.co.uk> wrote:

>  **          Chris Hedges -
>
>
>
>  "There is a recipe for breaking popular movements. I watched it play out
> over five years in the war in El Salvador. I now see these familiar
> patterns in the assault against the Occupy movement. It goes like this.
> Physically eradicate the insurgents’ logistical base of operations to
> disrupt communication and organization. Dry up financial and material
> support. Create rival organizations—the group Stand for Oakland seems to be
> one of these attempts—to discredit and purge the rebel leadership.
> Infiltrate the movement to foster internal divisions and rivalries, a
> tactic carried out consciously, or perhaps unconsciously, by an anonymous
> West Coast group known as OLAASM—Occupy Los Angeles Anti Social Media.
> Provoke the movement—or front groups acting in the name of the movement—to
> carry out actions such as vandalism and physical confrontations with the
> police that alienate the wider populace from the insurgency. Invent
> atrocities and repugnant acts supposedly carried out by the movement and
> plant these stories in the media. Finally, offer up a political
> alternative. In the war in El Salvador it was Jose Napoleon Duarte. For the
> Occupy movement it is someone like Van Jones. And use this “reformist” to
> co-opt the language of the movement and promise to promote the movement’s
> core aims through the electoral process."
>
>
> Nicole Demby -
>
>
> While #OWS still encompasses within it a multiplicity of tactics,
> opinions, and degrees of political radicalism, the evidence is all too
> clear that the soul of Occupy is anticapitalist, and the desire for a
> different system is a desire for a protest movement whose grasp on our
> lives is more holistic. There has already been inspiring work done to
> organize in different communities, and one can envision the emergence of a
> dispersed network not only of general assemblies but of communes and
> cooperatives as well.
> The old pessimism of theory beats at our backs, telling us that any
> developed and sustained form of communal organization can only exist as an
> autonomous pocket whose threat to capitalism is nil. Yet sustaining
> autonomous, communal forms of care is not a shift away from direct, active
> forms of resistance. The positive and the negative aspects of the fight
> against capitalism must work in conjunction with one another to mutually
> reinforce each other. Communes, cooperatives and other structures of social
> support provide a material safety net that facilitates more radical action,
> enabling people to strike from work and from debt obligations with the
> assurance that their material needs will be met when they do. Moreover,
> such forms of organization can begin the incredibly difficult process of
> building trust between those with radically different backgrounds and
> experiences, providing support for whoever needs it, especially those who
> have borne the brunt of the economic collapse.
> These forms of organization will enervate the status quo by drawing
> participants’ time and energy away from their roles as wage laborers,
> salaried workers, and consumers. Of course, #OWS has already begun to do
> this; many of us without the luxury of highly flexible (read precarious)
> employment, or who haven’t already committed ourselves as full-time
> occupiers (and are now sleeping in churches, synagogues and generously
> offered private homes – and organizing during the day) already spend our
> office hours surreptitiously reading working group emails or occupy-related
> articles. Yet we aim to achieve a less schizophrenic mode of existence in
> which the totalizing effect of Occupy on our thoughts is reflected in the
> degree to which it predominates our actions, one in which our politics
> accords with the way in which we support ourselves. For those against
> capitalism this will mean testing our own boldness and examining our own
> perceived futures. As Daniel Marcus observed: *“There can be no movement
> of communes if protest is merely an extracurricular activity of
> wage-earners: workers will have to choose whether they stand with the
> communes or with the bosses and administrators.”*
> The need for new structures of care is emotional as well as material. Many
> of us are beginning to realize the extent of our own dissatisfaction. We
> spend time with friends and lovers, but these encounters are transitory
> counterpoints to the anomie induced by a culture of individualism. We work
> towards success, but what constitutes success seems increasingly empty.
> Perhaps it’s unfashionable to speak of “alienation,” naïve to make claims
> about what forms of work or activities might begin to overcome it, utopian
> to believe that we could create a society in which a better life is
> possible. And yet we already see the possibility of these things in the
> near future of this movement and are already beginning to build the
> necessary infrastructure.
> Affect isn’t just an effect, but a decisive tool of revolution. Just as
> the catharsis of resistance we experienced in the fall bolstered community
> and emboldened us to go further, more communal, self-sustaining and
> holistic instantiations of Occupy will further entrench and strengthen the
> movement. We are strongest when our resistance draws on our outrage but
> also harnesses our vital forces, extending to the very material and
> psychological basis of our lives.
> In the spring we must rediscover together that there are militant kinds of
> community and insurrectionary forms of care.
>
>    --
>
> Friendly reminder: please keep these mailing list discussions to a minimum
> as they reach a lot of people. Instead you can email working groups and
> individuals directly, or use the Occupy London forum at occupylondon .
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>
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>



-- 
Apathy is Dead !
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