Some visions for going forward

These are from various sources I respect, not by me.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/category/hedges/

http://socialistworker.org/2011/11/22/occupys-next-struggle

http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/mike-friends-blog/where-does-occupy-wall-street-go-here

I've had a love-hate relationship with Chris Hedges ever since he visited my school. He seems to point out all the right problems and no solutions, breeding cynicism. But even Hopeless Hedges has turned around his grumpy assessments in response to Occupy.

His column piece "Finding Freedom in Handcuffs" has good advice about how the movement should focus more on its cause(s), and less on the massive burden of maintaining an encampment. (This does not, however, imply we should abandon public spaces entirely -- mass meetings in public parks are still a great idea IMO. Just maybe not the expense of living there, which is difficult and non-inclusive for the working majority.)

Eviction Notice #2

On the news there has been talk of a 48-hour timeline being imposed, during which Occupy will have to dismantle its tent city and move across the street or probably face forceful police eviction. FYI.

Why Socialists are Failing at Occupy

(For the tl;dr crowd, just scroll to the bottom and read my proposed solutions.)

Usually socialists are fairly accustomed to leading almost every protest movement in the USA, or at least have led them a lot.

When a movement comes along that is so big and spontaneous that we have difficulty keeping up with it, that’s a good sign. It means we’re not the ones scraping the movement together by ourselves, that the movement has real energy and real mass participation.

However, in my experience, movements have usually benefited from socialist leadership. Socialist organizations give movements a revolutionary, system-changing vision which is inspiring and gives the right view about the way the authorities will deal with us, and how we should deal with them.

At the same time, socialist leadership gives movements a nuts-and-bolts pragmatism of knowing how to get things done, and efficient ways of making the movement as inclusive as possible for everyone who cannot afford a large time-investment. And all of this, without sacrificing revolutionary sincerity!

Why are we having trouble leading this time?

Our first instinct was to NOT take on the fundamental assumptions and organizational flaws of the movement. There were good reasons for this approach. Sometimes, indeed, it is better to go with the flow and build relationships than to take on every argument for the sake of principle. This is probably how arguments against informal leadership and consensus, and for declaring a formal list of demands, may have seemed in the beginning.

Informal leadership and consensus are also two huge reasons that we have been unable to lead in the style which we have enjoyed in the past.

The fact is, most people in the socialist movement are not interested in sacrificing all their time in order to shift the movement. The fact that someone would have to sacrifice all their time in order to shift the movement is a clear sign that there is a big problem. It means that the movement has obstacles to genuine democratic participation.

Likewise, when “no one is in charge” then the situation is biased toward the people who are there the most time being effectively in charge. And who is there the most? Who can afford it? An odd mix of college students, unemployed people, homeless folk, and crust punk anarchists who get a kick out of giving up all their material possessions and eating out of dumpsters (not something that resonates with middle America, even when class warfare does). In short, while Occupy may express the rage of the 9-to-5er population, it only allows them to participate very marginally.

You might argue that in a movement about occupations and encampments, the people who are there the most are the most deserving of having major influence. However, this is no way to include the working majority of the 99% who cannot afford the sacrifice in time which having a real voice in Occupy would require. In fact, if we are making a god out of camping instead of trying to make the movement as inclusive as possible to people who can only attend one or two hour-long meetings per week, we are truly lost. As a movement of the 99%, it should be a primary principle that we make it easy for the 99% to participate.

We have been trying to lead through working groups. Unfortunately, these are often as chaotic, consensus-ridden, and informally led as the entire movement. There are the same problems of the hardcore camping population having an extra moral authority even when their organizing style has massive limitations. This is why we need to lead the movement as a whole. Obviously socialists must unite with each other and our allies to do so because no single one of our micro-groups can do this alone.

Fighting against informal leadership and consensus is no longer a matter of principle, but a matter of tactics. These organizing styles are choking the movement. As socialists, let alone as bolsheviks, it is our duty to overcome anything that is choking the movement.

Such leadership is also what convinces people to join us. If I was an outsider looking in at Occupy, I would see absolutely no reason to join a socialist group. I would instead merely be an Occupy participant. Until socialists groups put themselves forward and take on the debates of the movement like we have in the past, there is nothing making us stand out as something to respect or join.

Furthermore, it is not only consensus that is choking the movement, but the expensive burden of maintaining the encampment tactic. Even more important than fighting consensus or informal leadership is pushing for a transition within Occupy, from being an encampment to being an organization.

SOLUTIONS?

Read the bottom of this site’s About page for a list of ideas, the most relevant being an informal coordination between socialist groups and any eager working groups or caucuses of Occupy, where we co-sign each other’s proposals, help distribute leaflets arguing for them, and support each other in numbers at the GAs.

Read this site’s proposal to transition Occupy from an encampment to an organization, starting a "99% Coalition."

Read this info on anarcho-purist organizing styles like consensus and informal leadership.

Continue the Movement or Die Trying

It seems that Occupy Philly could soon be reaching its demise. Tentative plan: meet at Rittenhouse Square at 4PM tomorrow (Friday 11/18). If you hear something more recent, go with the flow.

EDIT: IT SEEMS THAT SOMEHOW THE CITY HALL GA HAS RE-CONVENED. HOWEVER WE ARE NOT OUT OF THE WOODS YET, AND WINTER IS COMING ANYWAY, SO MUCH OF THIS POST REMAINS RELEVANT.

The police are raiding the City Hall/Dilworth encampment and clearing it all. The GA had an emergency vote to move to Thomas Paine plaza, but rumor has it the police are even blocking that.

Fucking pigs. Anyone who is still clinging to pacifism, read about how Jesus drove moneychangers out of the temple with a bullwhip in John 2:15. He'd be doing the same thing to those cops right now.

Hindsight is 20/20; I'm sure many are now realizing, if we had moved earlier maybe, there's a chance this could have been avoided. Then again, with the clear national campaign to destroy Occupy -- maybe not. However, that's not what's important right now.

The fight is going down and I'm pissed that I'm missing it. I'm permanently moving to Philly this weekend. Throw a punch for me, comrades.

WHAT'S IMPORTANT: WE MUST CONTINUE THE MOVEMENT OR DIE TRYING.

Check this site's proposal transitioning from an encampment to an organization, and forming a 99% Coalition.

The Occupy Wall Street movement has unleashed something unimaginable. To let it be jammed back in the bottle now would be as hideous as shoving a newborn back into the womb.

We are the 99%. Our movement will morph, mutate, and evolve. We will develop organization and discipline to match the world-overturning ambition we have already demonstrated.

I swear on my honor and my soul, that though I may take my plodding time, I will personally rebuild this movement from the ashes and debris. I will stand on the street corners, preach to the passersby, regroup the scattered, convince the unconvinced, and recruit the newcomer. I will gather whatever alliance of coalitions, radical organizations, and Occupy working groups & caucuses is necessary to make this a reality.

Not only will I regather the forces lost, but I will overcome all obstacles to rebuilding the movement on a new, firmer foundation of clear purpose, and efficient decision-making and structure. We will consecrate as our primary principle the inclusion of the 99% who cannot afford to get themselves arrested for no purpose, or waste countless hours on camping or consensus. I will remind everyone that while movements require heroes and martyrs, the real ones are not people who ineffectually assault the system head-on by themselves, but the people who patiently convince thousands of others to converge and stand together.

I will do this with or without your help. I will do it with or without your organization's help. I will bypass anyone who does not commit to this goal, and I will ally myself with newfound strangers and former foes.

This is bigger than worrying about a campsite. This is bigger than competing for recruits for your marxist micro-tendency against another marxist micro-tendency. This is bigger than any rules or habits you may have gotten comfortable with, or any smug complacency you may struggle to maintain as the world-change rages around you.

This is class warfare. This is democratic revolution. This is a struggle against the self-destruction of the human species by war, pollution, and viral epidemic. This uprising against disgrace and misery shall redeem our entire wretched history.

We have landed on the enemy territory and established a beachhead, a first foothold. We will fight to keep it, with our backs against the wall, taking not one step backward, hold our ground, drive them into retreat, and press forward onto their turf.

With the willingness that we fight physically, we must learn to fight organizationally.

I have done this kind of thing before. I know what I am doing. Let me show you how we can not only continue, but expand, and conquer.

Irreconcilables, unite here.

Join me.

Labor Working Group Draft Letter to Occupy Philly

We, the members of the labor working group, stand with Occupy Philly, and respect the decision-making process of the General Assembly.

The labor working group aims to represent the broadest unity in the Philadelphia labor movement, and is comprised of a diverse representation of union organizers and labor activists who have been regularly involved with Occupy Philadelphia.

The Philadelphia labor community has been overwhelmingly in its support of the Philadelphia occupation. However, we are concerned by developments that may compromise our ability to unanimously defend Occupy Philadelphia at its current location, and wish to articulate a clear position on the question of relocation from a labor perspective.

We support relocation for the following reasons:

1) Jobs. We recognize that the construction industry has been devastated by the current recession, and right now suffers from over 40% unemployment. This unemployment is creating great hardships for many working families.

2) Access. We recognize that many of our differently-abled brothers and sisters have advocated and fought for equal access to the public transportation hub at City Hall for decades, and are finally seeing their efforts come to fruition through the planned renovation of Dilworth Plaza.

3) Framing. We are concerned that the Mayor has recently been able to use the issue of relocation to divide our movement and distract us from our core message of economic justice and democratic principles. The key issues for Occupy Philly must be movement-building, democratic process, and economic justice--not relocation. We have changed the national discourse; we must continue to do so.

4) Defensibility. We stand strongly in solidarity with the Occupiers and strongly support their right to occupy a public space. In order to successfully continue our support and defense of Occupy Philly, however, the labor movement must be able to remain united on this issue. If Occupy Philly remains at its current location, the issues of job creation and accessibility issues will make it impossible for labor to sustain that unity. Further, we fear that should the General Assembly choose to stay at Dilworth Plaza, and should a police raid at that location occur, the Occupy Philly movement may be damaged irreparably.

We again reaffirm our commitment to the Occupy movement, and to the decision-making process of the General Assembly. We propose relocation as a strategic act of movement solidarity.

In solidarity,

The Labor Working Group

Philly Eviction Notice

Alright friends and comrades, the gauntlet has been thrown down. All debates about whether we should have moved can wait for later; for now it's war. For the record, I personally am out of state and in the process of moving to Philadelphia right now, so I cannot take part in the scuffle to come. Feel free to call me chicken. :P

Urgent necessity #1: the entire GAs should dedicate 50% or more of their time to putting the entire movement through police confrontation training.

Urgent necessity #2: what is our next step if/when we lose our space? See my post about transitioning from an encampment to an organization and creating a "99% Coalition."

Don't forget that there is a march to the bridge tomorrow to underscore America's crumbling infrastructure and the opportunities for job creation -- but how exactly this will interact with potential eviction, I don't know, and I believe that if the encampment is under attack, the march should turn around and break the police line.

Reading on Anarcho-Purism for Occupy

Let me be absolutely clear -- I am happy to work with anarchists and I used to be one. I do not even view the consensus model or informal leadership as core parts of anarchist thought, but rather something embraced and pushed by a purist section of anarchists.

That being said, the following reading is extremely helpful for understanding the limitations of anarcho-purist organizing methods which are inhibiting Occupy Philly, and calmly explaining these shortcomings to others.

"The Limits of Consensus" (the most immediately relevant)

http://socialistworker.org/2011/10/10/the-limits-of-consensus

"The Tyranny of Structurelessness" (excerpts)

http://www.isreview.org/issues/19/Jo_Freeman.shtml

On a positive note, I met a member of the group "Bring the Ruckus" in the Radical Caucus, and I think a semi-anarchist group embracing the concept of a cadre organization is a clear sign that anarcho-purism is not the only form of anarchism. If libertarian socialists organize diplomatically, we can have positive collaboration with anarchists in ways which fulfill and do not compromise our own ideas. The About page of Bring the Ruckus: http://bringtheruckus.org/?q=about

Why I Supported Switching Camps

I supported switching camps for a few simple reasons.

Is it true that the reasons being given by the Establishment for Occupy Philly to move are kind of BS? Yes, absolutely true.

Is it true that the large amounts of public dollars going toward the skating rink construction project should probably be going toward, oh, helping the homeless, funding education, literally ANYTHING else? Yes, true.

It is also questionable how much job creation this project will create, and probably true that we could create more jobs for less money.

BUT, I SUPPORTED MOVING BECAUSE we need to appear that we are on the side of the unions beyond any conceivable doubt, beyond any media distortion. We have to remember that we are a broad movement of the 99%, and if we start focusing on our little campsite to the exclusion of the mass movement, we are truly lost.

All of the above points are true, but if we refuse to move from a park where union construction is about to take place, it is far too easy for the media to distort that. We can whine and cry that it's not fair that the media will distort our movement, but it will, and we have to know how to strategically operate at their level. The problem is not just the media, but the fact that the flow of information to rank-and-file union members about Occupy happens through the union leadership, which is more prone to conservatism and alliances with the Establishment than the union rank-and-file.

And also because switching spaces would have had virtually no cost on the movement.

I'm going to call a spade a spade. Most of the time I support the Radical Caucus, but in this case, it seems they decided to forgo nuance and instead acted as a Purist Caucus. It seems like everyone at Occupy wants to be a rebel, but doesn't necessarily have a sophisticated view of what that means, so when given a choice between a "Radical" option and a "Reasonable Solution," there was naturally a herd reaction to go with the first choice.

I also have issues with the consensus process which forced the decision about the move to go on until midnight, during which the decision was clearly left to the purism-biased hardcore elite, rather than the working population that has to wake up early the next morning.

However, this is for clarification. We have other important tasks ahead of us, rendering a continued focus on this debate less productive than it used to be.

Occupy: From Encampment to Coalition

A brainstorming document/proposal for the future direction of Occupy Philly. The working title is the 99% Coalition though there are certainly other possibilities. Feel free to write or call me with ideas, or especially if you want to help make it happen.

The goal here is not to start a brand new group, but to turn Occupy from an encampment into a new group. Starting a new group from scratch completely misses the point -- the point is to give a practical next step for Occupy, not to start a coalition for the sake of it.

Demands:

• A massive federal job creation program
• Tax the rich, heavily
• Universal healthcare
• Cancel student debt
• Free higher education for all
• This list can get longer, and probably should-and-will during our first meetings

Principles:

• We strive to be a mass movement fighting for the income group called the 99%, carrying on the spirit of Occupy in the form of an organization, with rowdy open-air meetings, democratic participation, mass marches, and occasional direct action.
• We believe in the redistribution of wealth, that we are in a class struggle, and that ordinary people should fight back.
• We believe in making it easy for the 99% to participate because this is our/their movement.
• We believe that some kind of overall systemic change is necessary, but each individual member is free to have different specific opinions about what this means.

Reasons why Occupy should support the 99C:

• We need a way for Occupy to more easily include the 99%
• We need backup plans in case we lose our space
• Endless camping imposes high costs on participants, and during cold months becomes a health hazard
• The clear purposes of the 99C help the public understand our meaning

Reasons why people outside Occupy should take Occupy seriously:

• Occupy brings together many people suffering from the recession but who lack unions or organizations
• Occupy is indisputably the force changing American politics right now
• Therefore, even if the movement has problems, you should work with it, not separately
• The purpose of the 99C is to bridge the gap between Occupy and people like you

HOW WOULD WE MAKE THIS HAPPEN?

• First, by gathering a small cluster of supporters
• handing out leaflets at Occupy or sending emails around its online networks
• talking to various radical organizations, coalitions, and Occupy working groups/caucuses and getting them to sign on to this proposal
• having outdoor meetings/speeches on city sidewalks calling for a regroupment of the movement

WHAT WOULD THE TRANSITION LOOK LIKE?

• Most of the structures of Occupy should live on
• The General Assemblies would be replaced with a weekly General Meeting
• Direct democracy and rowdy outdoor meetings can and should continue
• The caucuses and working groups can continue
• People can continue putting the same amount of time into if they want, by organizing and performing the continual soapbox orating on street corners, and by partaking in working groups and caucuses which must necessarily meet separately from the GA/GM
• If this is successful, we drag the whole Occupy scene into this organization, and do so with the approval of the Occupy GA

Dear Occupy critic: quit moaning and lead like a badass

It is true that Occupy Philly has a giant pile of problems, and many of them are not external problems imposed by circumstances (plenty of those too), but internal problems due to ideological and organizational shortcomings. However, whenever I hear people belly-aching about these issues without a bold ambition to take them on, I feel further from a solution than I do even when I encounter the movement’s weaknesses. It’s just depressing, really. It’s helpless sectarian whining.

Grow the fuck up, formulate a plan to fix the problems, and make it happen. Get out there at Occupy with your ideas. Get a clipboard, look for people who agree, sign them up, stay in touch with them. Start a working group or caucus. Hold a teach-in. Announce your thoughts at the end of a GA. Pass out leaflets explaining your viewpoint. Build support. Be open to alliances with groups or people who already support or half-support what you’re thinking. Bring your crew to a GA and have a fighting chance. JUST DO IT.

And call me if you want help. See my proposal for transitioning the encampment into an organization (the “99% Coalition) and tell me if you like it.