[OccupyComms] [Squares] [Occupy London] Two Short Articles

[Anna Harris]

Please give contact for Nicole Denby  +1

On Sat, Feb 18, 2012 at 9:03 PM, Mark Barrett
<marknbarrett at googlemail.com>wrote:

> +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
>> . info<http://e.groupspaces.com/click/1w2bb-1w0c9-2cvuw0dfkj?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.occupylondon.info%2F>
>>
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>> Manage your group membership<http://e.groupspaces.com/click/1w2bb-1w0c9-2cvuw0dfkj?u=http%3A%2F%2Fgroupspaces.com%2Fmy%2Faccount%2F%3Futm_medium%3Demail%26utm_source%3Dgroup-listmail%26utm_term%3Dgroup-listmail-64715>or
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>> .
>>
>
>
>
> --
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