tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-60780097233929506892024-03-18T21:03:21.546-06:00Laughing FishMusic, Travel Blog, River Blog, Western Slope, Western History, Photography, Political Activism, Geology, the EnvironmentAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06418793670220718137noreply@blogger.comBlogger292125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6078009723392950689.post-47827953981870347762013-10-02T04:18:00.001-06:002013-10-02T05:06:28.840-06:00Government Is Good.<IMG SRC="https://scontent-b-sjc.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn2/1380114_10102155838374464_744101599_n.jpg" HEIGHT="50%" WIDTH="50%">
<p>What is tragic is that the promise of "American Democracy" has been reduced to the current situation. I will not comment on the reasons for the shut down. Republican obstructionism is well enough documented elsewhere. What I will do is argue against hopping wholeheartedly upon the "anti-government" bandwagon. Within the context of the political crisis a lot of people's usually inactive political brains start working and thinking. That is good. But a legitimate dissatisfaction with the the childlike fanatics in Congress gets, like everything else, filtered and interpreted first and loudest by a lot of people with money and terrible priorities, much like anything else you've ever read about in the news.
<p>In the context of the shut down, an "anarchist" coloring to outspoken critique has been adopted by many with far from libertarian values. The good part of this is it shows how problematical "anarchism" can be, when the corporate agenda tired of anyone rich being taxed or having to respect environmental protections or support programs that help working people is able to appropriate the language of "anarchism" with so such effectiveness in its critique of "government." I can't help but fear that behind each smart and well meaning person's assertion that "the shutdown proves government doesn't work" is a Newt Gingrich smugly rubbing his hands together and licking his chops, imaging how even more citizen cynicism will allow him get away with laying off even more teachers, OSHA inspectors, park rangers, and EPA employees.
<p>Millions of ordinary people work for the government. And in the middle of a terrible economy a lot of them don't know when they're going to get their next paycheck. That is nothing to celebrate.
<p>Thus, let us take a moment to appreciate the many things the government does GOOD.
<p>First, let's thank our teachers. Government runs free public education. That is a revolutionary concept. Education used to be something only people with lots of money could afford and everyone else's kids were destined for the coal mine the saw mill or the textile factory from the day they were born and had very little alternatives otherwise. It was also a lot harder for them to tell when they were being cheated at pay time because they couldn't read and had trouble with math. Government changed that and shaped American into a literate society.
<p>Today, teachers are often underpaid and have to do a lot of work much of it outside the class room and very underrecognized. They often use their own time and resources to provide things that underfunding of schools doesn't get for students. A teacher will scan the readings from a book and put them online in case you cannot afford a book. A teacher will buy paper if the school doesn't provide it. A teacher will put in countless hours at home to grade your paper and add some comments that might help you write better. And you don't even have to pay for it!
<p>Breakfasts and lunches served in schools also provide millions of children the only nutritious meal they might get in a day. That makes a world of difference to survival, not to mention cognitive development. Today, state and federal governments run food banks and pantries and distribute food stamps to people with no jobs or people whose jobs don't pay them enough to buy food. Food stamps has one of the lowest rates of abuse of any government program. It's literally kept several million of us alive in the past few years who never thought we'd have to use them, and provided a much needed psychological boost when things have seen the most hopeless.
<p>Governments also run public libraries, archives, and historical societies. In addition to paying for their operation because they private sector won't, government librarians and archivists have developed professional standards, sophisticated universal data retrieval systems, and plans for long term storage of sensitive objects and special collections. Government archives provide records that we own what we own, and that we lived where we lived. Serial numbers and records of paid property taxes makes it harder for people to steal things from us, whether it's a camera stolen out of your car or if you are a Native American trying to prove a historic claim to land someone is trying to take away, develop, or trash. If you're eligible for compensation because you've got health problems from mining uranium or being exposed to asbestos at work, government archives can prove you lived and worked where you say you did and get you that compensation.
<p>Public libraries are the practical expression of the idea of democracy at its best as. At the most basic level, when it is cold outside (or too hot!) and you don't have shelter, you can go into a library where it is warm (or air conditioned) and just survive for a while. You can use a restroom and get some water to drink. When you are down on your luck the public library may be more likely to help you than many people who call themselves your friend, and is certainly more likely to help you than your old boss in the private sector which probably has something to do with the reason you are down on your luck in the first place.
<p>Beyond these immediate needs the library embodies the very best of enlightenment ideals of education and advancement. You can learn about your society. You can meet with others to do events. You can figure out what things used to be like, why they are like they are, and how they might be different. You can type up and print a resume. You can do a job search online if you don't own a computer or you aren't able to pay for the internet or if your private sector built laptop stopped working after three years like it was planned to. You can also retrain yourself at a library. You can take your Food Handlers' and Alcohol Serving classes online at a library. You can also learn how to work in a new industry. A lot of people work in the restaurant industry. That server whose able to make money selling wine and food to people by talking about it, how is he know all that stuff? It's probably because he sat down and read about it somewhere. Even if he doesn't know every detail about the manufacture of wine and food itself, the psychological tricks he uses to get people to drive up their tickets may have come from a psychology. Maybe he learned them in a library.
<p>Another example of government at its best is the National Park System, "American's best idea."
<p>Park Rangers at National Parks and monuments pick up the trash. That forest grove or sandy beach you think is so pretty? It didn't look like that yesterday. A government employee walked out there and cleaned it up after private citizen defecated behind a bush and left food packaging around. Places that look like wilderness today do so because they are "managed" as wilderness. Native plants are reintroduced to keep destructive invasives out. Tamarisk removal or the eradication of cheat grass and its replacement by tall healthy native grasses are not things most citizens seem willing to volunteer their time towards. Old mining sites are reclaimed, their toxins and hazards mitigated. Fragile soil crusts are protected, studied, and advocated for. Ecological and historical lessons are shared with the public.
<p>On BLM lands government employees provide what little protection there is for one eighth of the landmass of the country. The precursor to the BLM was the grazing service, formed in 1934 when public lands were treated rather differently. Ranchers couldn't make a living or feed hungry people because the range was overgrazed. Mining companies abandoned toxic waste when ever they wanted and contaminated watersheds. Those adorable wild burrows and majestic wild horses weren't placed in adoption programs to prevent their destructive environmental impacts. They were shot and left to die. If a forest fire threatened your home, you were on your own. If the places you went on vacation were covered in feces, toilet paper, cigarette buts, and trash, no one was going to help you clean it up.
<p>The BLM is a controversial agency today in large part through its support of the oil and gas industries. These criticisms are fair, as oil and gas extraction is environmentally destructive as well as irresponsible in their contribution to carbon emissions. In defense of the BLM, every single person who criticizes oil and gas extraction benefits from those industries several times a day. While society decides to use a resource, the agencies in charge of the places those resources exist is going to allow them to be used. New directions need to come from political leaders and citizen's adoption of alternatives before current infrastructure can be abandoned. To the agency's credit, a lot of work goes into the mitigation of development's impacts, particularly by BLM archeologists. To the extent that the agency may make poor decisions regarding resource management (and plenty of poor decisions have been made), I remind the reader that it does not exist in vacuum. The Department of the Interior under which it operates is subjected to the same corruptible influences as any other executive agency.
<p>On my own personal journey through life, government has been there in a lot of ways that no one else has, and I have never been a government employee. When I was homeless I was able to use the bathroom, wash my face, and stay warm at the public library. When I decided to go back to school, I checked out a GRE book for free from a public library and used it to do well on a test. The historical research I did in public libraries, which I started doing when I didn't have job because it seemed like an interesting way to pass the time, led me to produce enough work of sufficient quality which has convinced a major university to fund my studies there and allow me to be a teaching assistant. Now I have a shot at better pay and more career options besides working for restaurants forever. Thank you, Grand County Public Library.
<p>During the past five years I enjoyed a rewarding career as a concessionaire in National Parks and on BLM managed lands because the government cared enough about those places to preserve them. The rivers I worked on were there because Park Service Rangers in Dinosaur National Monument, along with their allies in the boating community, took their jobs as stewards seriously enough to keep an unnecessary dam from burying the Green and Yampa River Canyons. People paid me money to take them down wilderness river sections because those places were beautiful and special. In Desolation Canyon BLM rangers in the 70s were able to convince their agency to manage that section as wilderness. As a result the trash gets picked up, the historic and archeological sites are preserved, and the oil and gas rigs are kept from penetrating it. Today Desolation Canyon is a designated National Historic Landmark, one of the ecologically healthiest parts of the Colorado River system, and one of the most popular boating destinations on the Colorado Plateau.
<p>Like a ranger being able to graze on land protected from overuse, myself and whole lot of other people have found jobs in a multi billion dollar tourist industry because the government has managed to save enough of our most special places from being trashed by self interested, private individuals. Beyond the monetary value of this industry, the life lessons people learn in wilderness settings about working together, self reliance, ecology, preparedness, situation assessment, planning, and accomplishment are worth every bit as much as what people are learning from books in school.
<p>As a Park Service concessionaire and an occasional volunteer BLM Ranger, I am NOT happy about the government "shutting down." That doesn't mean I'm not happy to see the clowns in congress out of their chairs for a while. In fact, I think that's something we need more of. That doesn't mean abandoning the idea of government, but it means recognizing there is a need to take it back. The <A HREF="http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2013/10/veterans-occupy-world-war-ii-memorial-closed-because-shutdown/70068/">World War II Veterans</A> guarding the WWII Veteran's Memorial are showing the way forward. No, we do not personally need to guard every single building or place shut down by the government. We've got busy lives. There's park rangers for that. But what we do need to do is to assert that the people running the government are doing it wrong, and that we have a responsibility as citizens to step up and reclaim ownership over our "representative" government.
<p>The problem with government isn't that it exists but that its specific structure as presently configured is very elitist. The two party system is far worse than a "clumsy" democracy. It is a corporate political dictatorship that allows those with very much money to have a disproportionate say. The <i>Citizens United</i> decision that allows no limits to the price and openness with which one might purchase a politician does not so much change anything as much as it makes more efficient what has been going on for a long time. The state and political parties intertwine their structures and exclude alternatives to their rule in a very similar way to the old Soviet Union. The media colludes with them to black out fresh ideas and third party bids. The primary system and the role of money in elections insures only those who can convince a large number of wealthy people that they will represent their interests will even get their names heard. Instead of rule by intelligent, respected, and accountable fellow citizens, the spectacle is one of jesters before a king.
<p>In spite of this, government does do great things and can continue to do great things. Much of it is in fact a largely helpful system of cooperative planning, sharing, and mutual assistance. The problem isn't with the idea of working together with your fellow citizens to fund projects you need or being able to vote on things. The problem is that if you have a good idea about how what needs to be done, what needs to be funded, and what your community's priorities should be, you'll never be able to influence <i>this</i> government unless you have lots of money yourself, or you convince enough people who do that you are ready to "play ball."
<p>This should be an opportunity for citizens to take back lost control and reject the hegemony of the two party system. We should begin thinking about alternatives. We should not be passive, as we have been for so long, while self interested capitalists use "anarchist" coloring to further advance an agenda of privatization and corporate control. Like the veterans, we need to defend what is ours.
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06418793670220718137noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6078009723392950689.post-21093885553552595042013-08-04T11:55:00.000-06:002013-08-04T12:25:10.002-06:00German Intelligence Breaks With the US Over Spy Program<p><IMG SRC="http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/About/General/2010/3/24/1269454291197/Charles-Moore-001.jpg">
<p>It was <A HREF="http://rt.com/news/germany-cancels-surveillance-pact-962/">reported</A> today that
<p><i>"Germany has dissolved a fifty-years-old surveillance pact with the United States and Britain in response to a “debate about protecting personal privacy” in the country, which was sparked by revelations of the former NSA contractor Edward Snowden."
<p>"Following Snowden’s leaks, which disclosed the span of the NSA surveillance program and revealed that Germany is the most spied on EU country by the US, there has been a heated nationwide debate on whether the alleged massive privacy breach of German citizens should have been allowed."
<p>"The documents leaked Snowden say that the US spy agency combs through half a billion of German phone calls, emails and text messages on a monthly basis."
<p>"German government officials have insisted that American and British intelligence agencies were never given permission to break Germany’s strict privacy laws."</i>
<p>Here in America, I am most surprised not by how outrageous the spy program itself is, but by the reactions of my fellow Americans to it. A surprising number of them see nothing wrong with it, and many are actually *glad* it exists and feel it is keeping them safer. I do not deny that the construction of an authoritarian national security state that destroys its citizens civil liberties and eradicates their privacy has resulted in the discovery, and prevention, of several crimes. Were we to install a police man into every American's home, classroom, gymnasium, and workplace to watch their doings 24 hours a day, we would probably prevent many more crimes. However, one might say there is a point at which the line has to be drawn, and the costs associated with such a program begin to out way its benefits.
<p>To clarify the points under which a rational person might find fault with the employment of government agents manning computers monitoring that who millions of their citizens call and email every day, the following three assertions will now be made.
<p><b>1</b>
<p>The first reason is that our foreign policy is the cause of terrorism, as well as the deaths of hundreds of thousands of middle eastern people and the suffering of millions more who chafe under the corrupt governments we have supported in around the world. Well <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War">over a hundred thousand of them</A> were killed by our military in Iraq, which is a country that posted no threat to us at all in 2003 and which was invaded on the basis of deliberately misleading information cherry picked and dishonestly presented by the Bush Administration.
<p>Trying to stop "terror" while maintaining unjust and unethical relationships with our neighbors on this planet won't work. Furthermore it is extremely immoral to attempt it.
<p><b>2</b>
<p>Secondly, even if the spying was used "for good", an election could easily change that. What would Sarah Palin do with a tool like this? What would Michele Bachmann, Eguene "Bull" Connor, or any of the other violent racist who ran the country 60 years ago? People in the 1950s lost their jobs for having showed up once at a march for relief for unemployed people, or for having their names on petitions opposing arms embargoes to Republican Spain. What damage to the lives and well being of ordinary, non-criminal citizens could be organized by a malicious and politically motivated controller of these spying tools? An unscrupulous person could do tremendous damage with it.
<p><b>3</b>
<p>Thirdly, this is not how free people live. It's reminiscent of the Stalinist regimes of Eastern Europe, or even the one party states of much of the rest of the world. This is the kind of program a government that doesn't trust its citizens and is afraid of them would invent. A tool like this should have been invented by Saddam Hussien or North Korea. It is a shame the nation that so proudly and loudly brags about its "Freedom" has invented it.
<p>I propose the war on terror is not designed to make us safer, or to make the world a better place. Rather than perusing peaceful and sustainable relationships with our fellow inhabitants of this planet, our leaders have demonstrated reckless militarism abroad that it is difficult to criticize without the word "empire" coming to mind. The idea of a perpetual international "war on terror" is an excuse for the Military- Industrial Complex to keep its jobs. Hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayer funding is at stake, and those who build bombers and bullets and staff the pentagon and the over one thousand military bases around the world want a global war to keep their jobs. I believe it is this unscrupulous and powerful interest, which President Dwight Eisenhower once warned us of, which is really behind the drive to create a militaristic, fearful, and spied upon citizenry.
<p>
<p><iframe width="420" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/8y06NSBBRtY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<p>As Ike puts it,
<i><p>"The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together."</i>
<p>
<p>This is not the way a free country should operate, but it is the path we have all made inevitable by acquiescing to the "war on terror." The blame lies not just on George W. Bush's head, or Barack Obama's heads, or their advisers or hangers on. The blame should cover the whole nation who voted for either of these people and who have been asleep while our political culture has grown more and more putrid.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06418793670220718137noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6078009723392950689.post-86564283817275387362012-11-16T23:47:00.000-07:002012-11-17T01:54:05.322-07:00Media Literacy for Political Actors<p>Today several hundred of my friends, family, and coworkers, past and present saw the following two images:
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<p><IMG SRC="http://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash4/s480x480/395161_328959810544363_879696661_n.jpg">
<p>They were seen because I posted them to my Facebook News Feed. When I did that, the decades long media blackout of Palestinian reality was in an instant shattered. The pressures of advertisers, lobbies, and newspaper owners was transcended by these two very simple and poingant images that I, in a few seconds, and for free, posted online. Many of the ignorant and the unaware felt the tremour of my knowledge bombs. Many more of the all too familiar felt empowered and were given a highly effective leaflet they didn't have to print or tape up any where. And... a very few people were rather annoyed with me, which of course is precisely what political agitation is supposed to do. Conversations ensued. Words were exchanged. Logical fallicies and underlying priorities and prejudices were exposed. Dents were made.
<p>Yes I am one small person. The New York Times and Post, the Wall Street Journal, CNN and FOX News and MSNBC are much bigger and stonger than me. But today my tiny spear penetrated their armours of indifference and webs of lies completely. The juggernaut remains, but a tiny light peers out from a hole I have created. Now more spears are thrown. Some miss, but many find their mark. The juggernaut is weakened.
<p>Perhaps most shockingly of all was that despite rather polarized opinions the discussion was entirely civil. It was conducted without raised voices by people sitting in chairs and lending their undivided attention to the subject at hand. I had more attention from people who completely disagree with me or who don't care about the issue at all than I could get from a sit down meeting in a bar with someone who <i>agrees</i> with me.
<p>That is the power of the internet, and it is more politically powerful than any journalistic tool invented since paper.
<p><b>The Triumph of Horizontal Media</b>
<p>The Facebook News Feed is the new news paper. And the News Feed is the new homepage of the internet. While many online news sources endevour to be the new "The Paper", Facebook has actually suceeded in attracting and holding that attention and it has done it by putting us in the drivers' seat. Our editors are our aggregate assemblage of friends and aquaitances. Indeed, the quality of its reporting varies with the intellectual and political levels of one's friends. But even a minority of very intelligent friends, if they post something rather touching and true, can get it transmitted faster through a very large network of not self consciously political people.
<p>Decentralized as it is, the work an editor used to do is spread out among one's entire friends network. And putting together the new "paper" (such as it is) now takes way less time as well as money. The relatively small amount of revenue actually needed to sustain the technical aspects of the project are paid for by very discreet ads.
<p>The people have voted with their feet and made Facebook <b>the</b> home page not because it has the flashiest design or the best paid contributors or because it was implanted with a virus that changed it to your browser's homepage automatically. People like it because they are personally invested in the story that it tells. Though imperfect, it is more democratic than any other written news form in history. The speed at which ideas are assimilated, shared, and dialectically responded to and learned from is much faster than the time it took historically to read a paper, digest it, and then maybe somewhere later that day have a conversation about something you read in it.
<p>And of course like a newspaper if someone has free time or a job with minimal supervision and a computer and the internet, they can waste a lot of time on it. Partly they are learning, and the joy of learning and of sharing things with others (and feeling somewhat connected to one's friends in the process) triggers the brain to release "happy" chemicals. I am not a chemist, but I believe reading Facebook prompts the brain to release similar if not larger quantities of dopamine and seratonin that it does for a committed reader devouring his favorite newspaper over a leisurely morning breakfast. As such of course it is dangerous and needs to be used in moderation, though not becomming addicted to the internet is beyond the scope of this article.
<p>Today one person in my News Feed posted a bit about the absurdity of having the news of Hostess (the maker of Twinkies and Ho- Hos) going out of businesss occupying as much of his feed as posts about the bombing of Gaza or the strike of some Wal Mart workers has. Are not the latter two topics much more important? Indeed they might be. But all popular newspapers have been liked for more than just what is "important."
<p>Even to the most political person Facebook is a newspaper and not a political journal. Most newspapers have humor, culture, relationship advice columns, horror scopes, and much else more besides current events and business trends. Many newspapers even have whole sections devoted to art or cooking. Twinkie feed got popular because it is relevant and an enjoyed, shared, cultural experience. The totality is popular. Though not perfect by any means, it has been voted "with feet" over newspapers as a more relevant, interesting, and enjoyable news tool than anything else.
<p>Certainly in this regard I feel it is often an improvement upon the Newspapers many of our left wing groups have been able to produce. Far too often, in fact almost universally, what gave <i>Pravada</i> or the <i>Daily Worker</i> life and made them attractive are today missing. Our papers are too "serious" for poetry, political cartoons, personal stories, local histories, or sports analysis. Ah, but we have plenty of terrible news of death, oppression, ecological disaster, and human suffering! Also perhaps some reprints of meaningful theory in confusing language written by people most workers have never heard of in a far off land a long time ago! And on page 10 there's a report of a tiny strike in another time zone that will probably end in defeat!
<p>All that and still we are baffled why the time we have spent to distribute such gems of liberation has not sparked more widespread revolt!
<p>The emergence of the internet generally and the News Feed more specifically is good news for everyone but professional journalists and newspapermen. The dream of the liberal intellegensia that more men and women would one day be able to read and discuss and WRITE and thus share their opinions on important issues has been realized. Another dream, that a living can be made as a "journalist", has been crushed. For an unfamous and seemingly un rich person to announce to a room that they are "a journalist" is liable to elicit the same mixture of sympathy and laughter of someone introducing themselves as "a musician" and then asking you to purchase their homemade CD-R or pointing you to their unsigned band's free download page.
<p><b>News Blogs and News Sites</b>
<p>News blogs and news sites are still very important. Today the name recognition and quality control they offer is as ever appreciated and much sought after. For example, seeing an absurd but politically relevant headline posted and then noticing the URL is from "theonion.com", will make it more likely to get clicked on and read than the same headline from a news site that elicits no name recognition. It's the same thing as having a friend suggest you dine at a restaurant that you both had a great experience at last time. "Oh yeah, that place was great! Let's go there again!"
<p>For political organizations, the proto groups of what might one day be a serious polilitical force, establishing name recognition among a broad population beyond one's active membership is an essential task.
<p>Furthermore the ability of a single articulate and timely article or video to "go viral" far beyond the established readership of a news source is a very empowering development. Name recogition is also a contributing factor to virality. Do you click more often on You Tube videos' links that have a nice formatted picture, title in bold letters, and short discription, or do you more often click on links that are just a text of an address? Most likely, you click on more links to You Tube. You probably had a good time there the last time.
<p>But while worth investing in, our news sites need to be constructed intelligently. And this goes far beyond questions of layout, colors, or HTML, to which I happily defer to more qualified experts.
<p><b>Perhaps the most important democratizing feature of the internet to arise in my lifetime besides the News Feed is the emergence of comments sections beneath articles.</b>
<p>All "newspapers of record" from the <i>New York Times</i> to the <i>Wall Street Journal</i> to the <i>Denver Post</i> have created comments sections. So have many of their often hipper and edgier internet competitors such as <i>Mother Jones</i>, <i>The Nation</i>, and <i>The Huffington Post</i>. Not only have comments sections spread widely but they have come to be as expected to a reader as a restroom or napkins are to a diner in a restaurant. Not having a comments section is almost interpreted as being offensive. Surely, isn't any participant entitled to fill out a comment card on their experience as they leave the plane / hotel / restaurant / employee meeting / GRE prep course?
<p>Readers like comments sections, like the News Feed, for their horizontalism. Now anyone can fact and logic check and if need be raise questions about the articles themselves. And many times a highly rated comment may express a point more articulately than anything in the article. Even when discussions get contentions, reading an exchanged debate of ideas about a controversial subject can be highly educational, perhaps even more education than the origional article.
<p>The theoeretical propoents of the idea that through democratic discussion the right idea can be found- from Socrates to Marx to Myles Horton and beyond- would probably be as baffled by today's technoloy as they would be impressed by it. Most likely the editors of the <i>Neue Richesting Zeitung</i> would take to Facebook, blogs, and comments sections as fast as Mozart or Beethoven would to a modern electronic music studio.
<p>In this context I remain baffled by the reluctance of many left wing news outlets to embrace these changes, particularly as left wing organizations are more outspoken in the potential of ordinary people to come together to solve their own problems. <A HREF="http://www.zcommunications.org/zmag">Z Magazine</A>, <A HREF="http://www.counterpunch.org/">Counterpunch</A>, and <A HREF="http://socialistworker.org/">Socialist Worker</A> are a few examples of explicitly radical websites that deny their readers the ability to comment on read material.
<p>The idea that that the ability to host commenting is beyond the technical know how of these outfits is not credible. In touch with many young people with basic to advanced programming skills, there is no technical reason why any of these sites could not host comments. Several much smaller left news sites, such as <A HREF="http://www.thenorthstar.info/">the North Star</A> or <A HREF="http://www.newleftproject.org/">New Left Project</A> have figured out how to do this.
<p>Other excuses fall apart almost as quickly. Many mainstream news sites where readers (with often highly polarized views) are able to comment have found ways to keep discussion orderly. One of the best methods yet devised has been to allow users to rank comments. Highly rated comments move to the top, while lower rated comments move lower. The ability of any reader to flag also allows comments to be hid if they are offensive, and perhaps even removed entirely by an editor if they are extremely malicuous. Flagged and thus hidden comments can be clicked on and read anyway by the curious, helping to avey fears of censorship. The desire to have one's comment actually seen and read, rather than flagged and hidden, motivates even a highly opinionated writer to choose their words carefully.
<p>I have heard it said that that it would take too much time to devote to keeping a comments site orderly. I believe this is another "red herring." Indeed, an editor of a news site does need to periodically review discussion, dowse incipient flame wars, and review flags. But the amount of work from the amount of people this takes is miniscule compared to how much work many dedicated left wing activists currently spend trying to sell hard copies of newspapers. A revolutionary organization with approximately one thousand members may ask each of their members to spend 3 hours getting to, and spending time at, and returning home from a paper sale on a public street corner. Each member may feel like it was worth it if they sold 3 or 4 papers. That's 3,000 man hours a week to sustain a circulation of under 10,000. But more realistically if you include the time it takes to read the whole paper to be able to sell it well, that is more like 5,000 hours. At federal minumum wage that time is worth $36,250 WEEKLY, or $1,812,500 anually.
<p>Or alternately, ONE member of the organization can spend 30 minutes, twice a day, keeping a discussion orderly. We can probably find someone to do that for free, or at least for something far less than the almost $2 million dollars a year in time- money we are collectively foregoing for the sake of an inherited ritual! Either way, by prioritizing a website's attractiveness AND democratic usefulness, it is likely to become a wider, more carefully, and more influentially read thing that it would be if we doubled the amount of time we spent on street corners.
<p>Again, the purpose of this article is not to suggest that political organizations should not have a public presence in their community, and nor does it think that printing educational or otherwise political materials should never be done. But it does maintain that technological change requires adaptation to stay relevant. By doing this, we can be much truer to democratic ideals, as well as better in touch with the habits of the world we are a part of.
<p>In 1936, a worker might read a small run newspaper handed to him by a coworker. He might write a response to an article and send it in the next day, arriving at the press' office two days since he first was handed the paper. Then in perhaps another 3-5 days, if he didn't miss the print deadline, he might see his response printed with some comments by the editiors.
<p>In 2012, very few workers have such habits. Given the ubiquitousness of technology today, is perhaps the most disengenuous straw argument to suggest that by devoting more resources (actually, saving a net amount of resources) to progressive online journalism, we would be "cutting ourselves off" from "the workers". To do so belies a great misunderstanding of how technological the American working class has become. Most of it is computer literate and checks email several times a week (though more often several times a day). Pretending that is not the reality among the class generally (much less its "class conscious vanguard" in particular!) is to hold back our efforts in a vain attempt to flatter the most backwards and unpolitical sections of population. That is not an option for political actors.
<p>If a socialist democracy is to be genuine at all, it is be the product of extremely broad masses of people. It will be learned and spoken by them in their own language and in their own ways of communicating, which in fact quite often might be unfamiliar to the "correct" political "experts". The right idea will be known when an overwhelming number of people have adopted it, much like the best performing car, deodorant, lawn mower or building material is found. Only then can anyone call it the right idea. Though experience matters and leadership is essential, to hold in this day that the right to contibute to a written political discussion must come second to the ability of "leaders" to first screen and proofread all such contributions is to make a mockery of the word radical.
<p>In closing, I would like to remind the comradely reader that I make these suggestions not because I am endevouring to be a heritical deviant from <A HREF="http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/may/04.htm">Lenin's theory of the paper</a>. In fact I am quite a fan of his theory and I completely agree with it. Lenin's analysis was fresh because he was looking at the world around him and summerizing the challenges he saw based on how people lived and communicated 111 years ago. We need to do the same thing and continue to look at the world with fresh eyes.
<p>To do that can be quite a challenge! Far too often amid contemporary darkness do radicals bury themselves in the formulations of the past, attempting to find a purity to revive today. In doing so we can wind up glorifying the ossified, passed down product, forgetting the process that lead to its creation. We place hardened basalt under microscopes, yet know nothing of the life and temper of a volcano. We pick apart the contents of a petrified excresion, unable to behold the grace of the animal that walked by so long ago!
<p>To build today's "scaffolding," we'll need all the latest materials and techniques. The ones that people are actually using might be a good place to start.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06418793670220718137noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6078009723392950689.post-2655619458860360512012-11-06T10:40:00.001-07:002012-11-06T10:41:56.326-07:00You've Got to Stop Voting<p><i>I found this <A HREF="http://fubarandgrill.org/node/1172">article</A> today and I am reposting it here. It is the best piece on the elections I have read. </i>
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<p>The most common activist strategies, such as street demonstrations, protests, etc., rarely seem to bring about any change in government. There is only one nonviolent tactic that has been proven to work. Recently I asked the new president of a local activist group that had banned me from speaking, if I would be allowed to speak under the new leadership. I explained that I'm an election boycott advocate. The reply I got was:
<p>"So my question is - how does NOT voting change anything? I can see actually writing in someone you believe in - but not voting simply is giving up."
<p>I decided to answer the question as thoroughly as I could. Here's what I wrote, which I'm posting here with the person's name removed:
South Africa endured many years of violence under the Apartheid regime. Many people and countries worldwide boycotted Apartheid, but the US government insisted on supporting the Apartheid regime, saying that while the US abhorred Apartheid, the regime was the legitimate government of South Africa. Then the Apartheid regime held another election. No more than 7% of South Africans voted. Suddenly everything changed. No longer could the US or anyone else say that the Apartheid regime had the consent of the governed. That was when the regime began to make concessions. Suddenly the ANC, formerly considered to be a terrorist group trying to overthrow a legitimate government, became freedom fighters against an illegitimate government. It made all the difference in the world, something that decades more of violence could never have done.
<p>In Cuba, when Fidel Castro's small, ragged, tired band were in the mountains, the dictator Batista held an election (at the suggestion of the US, by the way). Only 10% of the population voted. Realizing that he had lost the support of 90% of the country, Batista fled. Castro then, knowing that he had the support of 90% of the country, proceeded to bring about a true revolution.
<p>In Haiti, when the US and US-sponsored regimes removed the most popular party from the ballot, in many places only 3% voted. The US had to intervene militarily, kidnap Aristide, and withhold aid after the earthquake to continue to control Haiti, but nobody familiar with the situation thought that the US-backed Haitian government had the consent of the governed or was legitimate.
<p>Boycotting elections alone will not oust the oligarchy, but it is the only proven non-violent way to delegitimize a government.
<p>A lot of people here are complaining about the Citizens United decision. Some want to amend the Constitution because there is no appeal from a Supreme Court decision (their edicts have the same weight as the Divine Right of Kings), but getting enough states to ratify is a long drawn out and not always successful process, as I'm sure you recall from the ERA. But suppose that the corporations spent ten to fifteen billion dollars on an election (they spent at least five billion on the last midterms, so that's not unreasonable) and almost nobody voted. Do you think their boards of directors would let them do it again?
<p>Here are some of the most common canards that political party operatives use to argue against not voting:
<p>1. Not voting is doing nothing.
<p>If you're doing something wrong, or something that is self-destructive or hurting others, stopping might be a good idea. If delegating your power to people you can't hold accountable has resulted in the devastation of your economy, do you really want to keep doing it? If granting your authority to people you can't hold accountable has resulted in wars based on lies that have killed over a million innocent people, do you really want to keep doing it? If granting your consent of the governed to people you can't hold accountable has resulted in government operating on behalf of big corporations and the wealthy instead of on behalf of the people, do you really want to keep doing it?
<p>2. If we don't vote the bad guys will win.
<p>We've been voting. When did the good guys win? Besides, it is often hard to tell the good guys from the bad guys. Suppose Gore had won, and then died of a heart attack. Do you think the Democrats who voted for him would have been happy with Joe Lieberman as President? Besides, Gore actually did win the popular vote. The Supreme Court stopped the vote count and put Bush in office. So just because the good guys win doesn't mean that they get to take office. Kerry also won the popular vote, but before anyone could finish counting the votes, he had to break both his promises, that he wouldn't concede early and that he would ensure that every vote was counted, in order to get the bad guy back in office again. Our Constitution was written to ensure that those who owned the country would always rule it, so the popular vote can be overruled by the Electoral College, Congress, the Supreme Court, or by the winning candidate conceding, and is not the final say. Even if we had accurate, verifiable vote counts, and everyone who voted, voted for a good guy, it doesn't mean that good guy could take office unless the Electoral College, Congress, and the Supreme Court allowed it. Even then, the good guy might fear that the Security State might assassinate him they way they killed JFK, and either concede or stop being a good guy in order to survive. The Supreme Court, of course, has the Constitutional power to intervene on any pretext, and its decisions, no matter how unconstitutional, irrational, unprecedented, or even downright insane, can not be appealed, so they do have the final say.
<p>3. If you don't vote, you can't complain.
<p>What good does complaining do? When successive administrations of both parties tell you that they will not allow public opinion to influence policy decisions, you can complain all you want and it won't do you any good. But you don't need to vote to have the right to complain. The Declaration of Independence is a long list of complaints against a king by colonists who were not allowed to vote. The right to gripe is one of those unalienable rights that is not granted by governments or kings. If you're treated unjustly, you have the right to complain. A lot of people who voted for Obama are now angry with his policies and are complaining loudly. He couldn't care less.
<p>4. It is a citizen's responsibility and civic duty to vote.
<p>Only if the government holding the election has secured your civil and human rights. If it has not, if it has instead become destructive of your civil and human rights, "...it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness." —Declaration of Independence
<p>5. Your vote is your voice in government.
<p> In a democratic form of government it would be. In a democratic form of government, such as a direct or participatory democracy, people can vote on things like budgets, wars, and other important issues, and have a voice in government. In our "representative" government, people can only vote for representatives who may or may not listen to them or act in their interests, and who cannot be held accountable during their terms of office, which is the only time they hold power and are needed to represent the interests of their constituents. Waiting until somebody has killed a million people in a war based on lies, destroyed the economy, and taken away your civil rights, and then trying to elect somebody else, is much too late because by then much of the damage cannot be undone and your grandchildren will still be paying for it.
<p>6. Just because things didn't work out the way we wanted last time, and the time before that, and the time before that, doesn't mean that they won't this time.
<p>Some say that Einstein defined insanity as repeating the same experiment over and over and expecting different results.
<p>7. If we don't vote, the Tea Party, the Breivik-types, and all the lunatics will, and they'll run the country.
<p>They're a minority, no more than 10% at the very most. Of the approximately 50% of our electorate that votes, fewer than 10% vote for 3rd parties. The Apartheid regime in South Africa tried to seat the winning candidates after a successful election boycott where there was only a 7% turnout, but nobody thought they were legitimate or took them seriously.
<p>8. You don't have the numbers to pull off an election boycott.
<p>There are already more people who don't vote, who either don't think our government is relevant to them, don't think their vote matters, or don't think that anyone on the ballot would represent them or could, since anyone who represented the people would be a small minority with no seniority in government, than there are registered Democrats or Republicans. We have greater numbers than either major party, but they haven't given up so why should we?
<p>9. People who don't vote are apathetic.
<p>When you vote, you are granting your consent of the governed. That's what voting is all about. If you knowingly vote for people you can't hold accountable, it means that you don't really care what they do once they're in office. All you care about is your right to vote, not whether or not you will actually be represented or if the government will secure your rights. Prior to the '08 election, when Obama had already joined McCain in supporting the bailouts that most people opposed, and had expressed his intention to expand the war in Afghanistan, I begged every progressive peace activist I knew not to vote for bailouts and war. They didn't care and they voted for Obama anyway. That's apathy. But it's worse than that. Once I had learned how rigged our elections are, I started asking election integrity activists if they would still vote if the only federally approved voting mechanism was a flush toilet. About half just laughed and said that of course they wouldn't. But the other half got indignant and accused me of trying to take away their precious right to vote. When I finished asking everyone I could, I ran an online poll and got the same results. Half of all voters really are so apathetic that they don't care if their vote is flushed down a toilet, as long as they can vote. They really don't know the difference between a voice in government, and an uncounted or miscounted, unverifiable vote for somebody they can't hold accountable. They never bothered to find out what voting is supposed to be about and yet they think that they're not apathetic because they belong to a political party and vote.
<p>10. If you don't vote, you're helping the other party.
<p>No, *you* are. By voting for an opposition party, a third party, an independent, or even writing in None of the Above, Nobody, Mickey Mouse, your own name, or yo mama, you are granting your consent of the governed to be governed by whoever wins, not by the candidate you voted for. If there is a 50% turnout, the winning candidate can claim that 50% of the electorate had enough faith in the system to consent to their governance.
<p>11. If we don't vote, our votes will never be counted and we'll have no leverage.
<p>True, if we don't vote, our votes will never be counted. But how does hoping that our votes *might* *sometimes* be counted, provide leverage? The election just held in the UK had only a 32% turnout. Where people did vote at all, since UK votes actually have to be counted, they threw out major party candidates and voted for third parties (George Galloway's Respect Party for one, the Pirate Party for another) and in Edinburgh, a guy who ran dressed as a penguin, calling himself Professor Pongoo, got more votes than leading major party candidates. <A HREF="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/may/04/penguin-more-votes-lib-dems?newsfeed=true">http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/may/04/penguin-more-votes-lib-dems?newsfeed=true</A> That's leverage, but it is only possible when the votes have to be counted and are verifiable. Those conditions do not apply in the US.
<p>12. The choice is bullets or ballots, so it's a no-brainer.
<p>The Department of Homeland Security has just used the authority that you delegated to the government when you voted, to purchase 450 million rounds of hollow-point ammunition that cannot be used in combat by law and therefore can only be used against US citizens. Your ballots authorized those bullets. There is a third option: not voting, not fighting, but simply withholding our consent. That has the result of delegitimizing a government that doesn't represent us and demonstrating that it does not have the consent of the governed. It is a legal, nonviolent, effective option called noncompliance. Noncompliance can take other forms, such as not paying taxes or creating alternative systems, but these cannot delegitimize a government. Since governments derive "their just powers from the consent of the governed," withholding our consent is the only way to nonviolently delegitimize a government that fails to represent us.
<p>13. Evil people are spending millions of dollars on voter suppression to deny minorities the vote, and people have fought and died for the right to vote, so the vote must be valuable.
<p>Nobody fought and died for an uncounted vote. While corporations do spend millions of dollars pushing through Voter ID laws and other voter suppression legislation, they spend billions of dollars funding election campaigns to get out the vote for the major parties so that they can claim the consent of the governed for their wholly-owned political puppets. If they didn't want people to vote, those proportions would be reversed and they'd be spending more suppressing the vote than getting out the vote. Voter suppression efforts are aimed at trying to fool the ignorant into thinking that just because somebody is trying to take their vote away from them, their uncounted, unverifiable votes for oligarchs who won't represent them, must be valuable.
<p>--Mark Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06418793670220718137noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6078009723392950689.post-28585514848571483962012-08-30T11:58:00.000-06:002012-08-30T15:29:46.935-06:00Occupy, Radicals, and Elections<br />
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<img src="http://www.marxists.org/history/usa/eam/spa/%7E01-SPA-CONVENTION.gif" /><br />
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I recently read a <a href="http://www.thenorthstar.info/?p=2143">post</a> about the idea of running "Occupy" candidates in elections.. I like this idea. That is not because I think the Occupy movement is cohesive, or particularly vibrant at the moment. On the contrary I think it's a bit stalled. But what is great about occupy is it is so inclusive of everyone's politics. The fact that anyone is talking about that sort of model and applying it to elections is a breath of fresh air.<br />
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I think maybe we, as the American far left, have today an
opportunity to change the way we relate to elections. Let us consider
our recent historical experience with the things...<br />
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<b>Propagandistic Campaigns</b></h3>
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The Nader 2000 campaign was highly effective at turning a lot of people on to politics. If Nader had been elected, what would he have been able to do? Some things, yes, he could have done, but the president is not a dictator. There are three branches of government and the other two would have worked as hard as they could to prevent his substantive changes from taking effect. If you think the backlash against Obama is bad now, what do you think the Republicans would be doing if the president actually had had open socialists working on his campaign, or perhaps, as his vice president? An isolated, one term radical president would likely find that a lot of what he was able to do in four years could be undone by a subsequent Republocrat administration.<br />
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But I don't think the Nader campaign ever thought it could actually win. That wasn't the point. The point was to talk about serious issues that there was a media black out on, and a political conspiracy of silence about. The real aim of that campaign was, you might say, "propagandistic". To that end, I think it was very effective. Here's a few examples of the way bold ideas, advanced in a confident political way, can get taken up and spread around society:<br />
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Today you and I can't go out to eat at a restaurant without the menu and the servers telling you what is local and organic, what doesn't have pesticides in it, and how that restaurant is trying to be sustainable. Of course, if you're a smart person, you may recognize some of that is tragic, because the power your restaurant has to change things is really pretty small compared to what agribusiness is doing, or what the centrally planned, fossil fuel dependent transportation networks are like. But the point here is that the basic stuff we were saying about sustainability back in 2000 is now common parlance. In 2000 no one cared at all about that. Everyone was driving SUV's and dreaming of a 30 mile commute from some home in the ever expanding suburbs.<br />
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Do you remember how B.P. co-opted the Green Party's sunflower <a href="http://www.kolibriexpeditions.com/birdingperu/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/BP_Logo_color.jpg">logo</a>? Of course we know B.P.'s renewable program is marginal to their oil exploration, and the adoption of the logo was a flagrantly offensive example of "greenwashing." However, the fact that they felt it was good business for them to adopt that logo was because people are starting to care about things like peak oil and global warming. Today there are several hundred thousand American students every year taking Environmental Studies classes. There are a lot more engineering students learning about wind and solar power than there were 10 years ago. The Nader campaign doesn't take full credit for this, but the word "Green" is certainly well integrated into our vocabulary and the explosive growth of the Green Party's campaign that year certainly provided a major boost for emerging eco-consciousness. <br />
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Fair Trade coffee is a third example. If you were part of some revolutionary left wing of the Nader campaign, you might have scoffed at Fair Trade coffee. Doesn't it seem a bit naive, and utopian, and a drop in the pail to address issues of poverty and exploitation? Well, sure it is. But look at how widespread fair trade coffee is today. More important that the direct effect- real or imagined- that fair trade coffee has on coffee growers is the fact that now whenever we get our cups of coffee, we're thinking, and maybe talking to each other, and saying "Hey, it seems a lot of people who make the things we consume tend to get a hard deal with it. It's a good idea to try and get them a better deal." Maybe the more thinking among us might even go so far as to think about the hard deals we get at our own jobs, and even consider for a moment that one day we might be able to change that. Even Wal Mart is selling fair trade coffee now.<br />
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So that is what a successful propgandistic campaign can do. You can get innovative, cutting edge ideas out there and for years after that election ends, those ideas work their way among people's heads and get incorporated into their lives. The Green Party and the 2000 elections were partially successful in making an ideological shift, in winning a political debate. Considering how reactionary this country got after Sept 11th 2001, and how many political people started to abandon politics after protests failed to stop the Iraq War, it is remarkable how many things we talked about as Greens in 2000 and 2004 are things we take for granted today.<br />
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To finish off this discussion of propagandistic campaigns, let's just consider how much time and money it took for Nader to run his 50 state campaign in 2000. That's a huge infrastructure. Nader had a lot of good things to say. Were workers' councils, socialist revolution, or the closure of all foreign military bases part of his campaign positions? I don't think so. But the fact the he built his campaign as a broad left / far left venture meant he could get a lot more support and built a lot more infrastructure. As a radical socialist in country where creationists win elections and sit on school boards, I think being part of a campaign where 75% of the things I really care about are being talked about among millions of people is a lot more important than being part of a campaign where 100% of the things I really care about are being talked about by 1,000 or 2,000 people. Let's not forget that lesson.<br />
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<b>Fighting for Power Both Political and Economic</b></h3>
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Now, what is a whole lot better than being propagandistic?<br />
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Fighting for power.<br />
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There is a lot of places where power is. There is power in the workplace. There is power in a school board. Sherrifs have power. The federal budget is really really powerful. Court clerks who load the docket with cases likely to overturn aggressive
and illegal police convictions for marijuana posession have power. If you've enjoyed a joint without being harassed in Northern California in the past decade you can thank a clerk.<br />
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A lot of American leftists are busy trying to build the power of the people "in the streets." Student power is another form of power that is easier to build because students are in a more intellectual environment than most people and they seem more willing attend meetings. And of course anyone who says they are for the working class is going to be all about economic power. You can build some form of working people's economic power by hiring yourself out as an organizer for a large, corrupt, but real union federation. Or you can try and build a small, struggling upstart one like the IWW. Or you can be a card carrying socialist in a workplace trying to figure out how to relate politics to your workers, and how to win small victories around the injustices where you work whether there is a union or not.<br />
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We seem to "get" the idea of fighting for economic power. Yet political power still seems like a many- headed hydra we're afraid of and perfer to keep at arm's length. <br />
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What I will first say about that is that fighting for political power is essential to the fight for economic power. Anyone who saw the numerous Democratic Party mayors send in the police to arrest and brutalize activists protesting the domination of Wall Street can probably tell you something about the way the political system is used as a tool of class rule. It's absurd to consider that you can build your class' power in one area while ignoring it in the other.<br />
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But, doesn't power corrupt? And aren't those capitalist courts and legislatures and congresses? Sure. Isn't everything?<br />
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Let's say you go on strike, you form your union, and then you defend your gains and your union while the powers of capital try to whittle you down. What is a contract negotiation? It's something usually done on hostile territory. Just like elections. <br />
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For starters, contracts are usually negotiated and signed in some office, which if you are the working class is a place you might not feel comfortable. Offices are where you go when you are in trouble. It's where you stand with your hat in your hand asking for a job or a raise. It's where people who get paid more than you sit and read facebook all day while you take out their trash. Even worse, most of the time when contract negotiations happen you are wearing a suit. That's right. The guy representing the steelworkers and the janitors is wearing a suit. Now it may be prudent, as that is just the rules, that when you are in offices and you want to be taken seriously you wear a suit. But it's still hostile territory that you are on. If you're actually a working class person representing yourself there you will probably feel uncomfortable. A contract itself is not a rational thing that you might understand. Legal contracts are about fine print, loopholes, and ways to get screwed. They require experts to review and scrutinize. They are something that bosses and people with money will always be better at than you, as long as the bosses are the ones with all the money.<br />
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I contend that is really no different than the problems ready to envelope an isolated leftist upon his obtainment of political power. Elections are also something that money and bosses are better at than you. State legislature and our Congress are not known to be welcoming of upstart outsiders. On the contrary they are places you should feel uncomfortable if you are at all a rational or warm hearted creature. There, as an elected leftist you will be at some disadvantages, and what you can accomplish will always be limited by arhaic rules and procedures put in place by the candidates of money. Yes. But despite all of that, there are still things you can accomplish. Trillions in spending hang in the balance. Health care plans are decided. Wars are funded. Civil rights are awarded, or taken away. Hearings and investigations are held.<br />
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Why should it be so strange to image a few, or even a majority, of socialistic or anarchistic congressmen? I think the idea that the people who work the hardest shouldn't be the poorest is a pretty rational one. I also think that if you are sick, you should go to the doctor, and get fixed, and you shouldn't be financially punished for that. I also like the idea of taking food, and bringing it to hungry people, and feeding them. I have no problem imagining that despite our prejudices and fears, we in America could one day elevate these perfectly respectable philosophies to all the chambers of power- as they exist now or perhaps as they get transformed. So why shouldn't participation in these elections be a normal part of an radical's political perspectives?<br />
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Our refusal to fight for political power because of the fact that elected positions are places were people without money or with sensible ideas are disrespected and generally unwelcome is an intolerable legacy we have inherited from decades of defeat. This is <i>capitalism</i>. Every institution is dominated by money. All security guards guard the rich and all guns are pointed at the poor. There is no institution or business freed from the corrupting effects of money. Likewise it is precisely political instutions just as it is businesses where all decisions that effect our lives are made. We have only two choices. We can either try and eek out an existence in some precarious off grid apolitical lifestyle. Or, we can set ourselves to seriously contest<i> all forms of power where ever they exist</i>. We can take over what institutions make sense to keep around and use them for good (I for one am rather fond of sanitation departments and post offices), and where we are obstructed, we can at least prevent them from being used for as much bad. In the long term, we can even dream about abolishing the ones that do nothing productive but only cause harm (such as the School of the Americans in Ft. Benning, GA, for example).<br />
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<h3>
<b>Two Party System as Accepted Fact: A Historical Legacy of Defeat</b></h3>
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One problem with the American left is that it seems very few have figured out how to fight for power in a way that aligns daily activity with a long term goal. Now we might say we've got a long term goal, as well as daily activity, but I don't think anyone really has a plan. It seems there is is always this great disconnect, as mentioned in the article I linked to at the beginning of this one, between "A" and "X", "Y", or "Z". Selling socialist newspapers on a street corner once a week, as step one, with a lot of hazy steps between you and "victory", is kind of the radical equivalent of volunteering every week at a soup kitchen or donating cans to the food drive or biking to work or voting for a Democratic presidential candidate. You hope that if you just faithfully show up and do your one small concrete step, that some how, eventually, things will get solved somehow by someone.<br />
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Now is that a value judgement I have made? Of course not. It makes total sense if you look at things historically. If you are the American left over the past 10 years or 20 or 30 years you have probably come to realize that you are small and weak and isolated. The enemy is large, well funded, and entrenched. People are apparently passive, when they are not completely unreachable. <br />
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Weakness gets expressed politically in different ways. On the one hand you've got liberal support for democrats, which comes in the form of door knocking, financial donations, lawn signs, democratic speakers at protest rallies, etc... We all know what that is and where it goes. It's Hillary Clinton and Madeline Albright speaking at the Emergency March for Women's lives in 2004. It's NARAL giving John Kerry a "100%" pro-woman voting score on their website in that year when in 2003 he only showed up to vote on 3 of 11 abortion related bills. It's the 2006 immigrant's rights protests being channeled into support for Democrats in elections, who have proceeded to leave the undocumented in political limbo for another 6 years. It's the politics of sending in donations from your hard earned money to keep some unelected president of some "non profit" well paid, well housed, and in a nice Washington, DC office somewhere where they can talk to Democrats on your behalf.<br />
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It's Barack Obama holding his tongue and keeping the military aid flowing while Israel bombs the Gaza Strip.<br />
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The flip side of this is more "radical" approaches, which I believe all generally boil down to non-participation in elections or various other forms of ultimate submission to the two party system. This comes in the form of people who proudly don't vote, people who with great demoralization don't vote, people who vote for Mickey Mouse, people who protest against Obama's escalation of the Afghan war but then secretly vote for them anyway because they can't stand John McCain and Sarah Palin, and finally people who deliberately run far left candidates in propagandistic campaigns that are only supported by, say, the Socialist or the Socialist Workers Party. <br />
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These latter campaigns fall but little farther in their effectiveness than any of the other methods I've already mentioned. The problem with small, far left campaigns is that those candidates with all their good things to say never are able to reach a mass audience. This is because they don't try to, because they don't try to build a campaign larger than their own small party. Now I've got nothing but love for anyone brave or serious enough to walk around in America and invite strangers on the street to come see the socialist candidate speak tonight. But I also realize that these campaigns are tiny and ineffective. It's like if you wrote a great book and you're ready to be a famous author, and you send it to twenty publishers and you get twenty rejection letters. Maybe someone then suggests you self publish. Then you go out and pay a thousand dollars of your own money to fill your garage up with a bunch of books. It's like the socialist candidate on the ballot. It looks like a real book. It reads like a real book. And it feels like a real book. But the difference between you and guy who is in this 5th printing is that people know and care what that other guy wrote, and you're a guy with a garage full of books that no one is going to read because you have no way to promote or distribute it.<br />
<br />
Both the liberal and the radical forms of not struggling for power against the two party system are really two sides of the same coin. They both happen because both the liberals and the radicals feel they can never escape from the two party system. People are too dumb. Money is too powerful. This is all we have. So accept it, and learn to transfer your long term hopes to "After The Revolution", Dennis Kucinich, or the second coming of Jesus. Now I would love to invite the aherants of each of these mythologies to a nice campsite a long a river somewhere with plenty of Colordao microbrews and increasingly legal pot to go around and allow everyone to debate the relative merits of each. As a political scientist, it is my hypothesis that if this experiment were to be repeated three different times, we would come up with three different most likely paths to our salvation. <br />
<br />
River beers aside, all of these intangible pipe dreams are what you develop when you are hopeless. There's nothing wrong with hoping for something that will never happen if the hope you get from it is going to allow you to deal with another day. But lying to yourself to be able to deal with another day is not exactly the road to power.<br />
<br />
<h3>
<b>Occupy Changed Everything</b></h3>
<br />
Occupy did change everything. But the Zuccotti Park organizers can hardly claim all the credit. What is behind Occupy is many years of neo-liberal assaults on living standards. That was sustained by an elaborate apparatus of deception and denial, cheap credit, and racism. What the recession did was to finally convince everyone that things were wrong. It didn't matter if you were endowed with certain skin color, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, work ethic, or disposition to fair dealing. You were still thrown out on the curb because some rich banker or stock broker you have never even met decided to screw you so he could make more money. As you looked around you began to notice these same people had near total control of the government, and you began to think that that fact might be behind a lot of our problems. <br />
<br />
The logic of capitalism is to never end the search for more money and more power. If you don't get it someone else will. The search for money and power has extended so far that it not only controls the government (it has done this, pretty much, for ever), but it has begun to dismantle a consensus between the classes, long known as "the American Dream." Domestic imperial over reach occured. The recession laid bare for millions of people in brutally personal terms what the balance of power in this country had in fact become. The second thing that happened was the Arab Spring. Suddenly, the people we've been bombing and funding the torture and oppression of for decades have started to rise up and <i>teach us</i> some very basic lessons on civics and participation in a democratic society. <br />
<br />
Occupy was the political expression of these changes. If the planners of the Zuccotti occupation had flaked out and backed off, someone else would have planned something similar, and it would have caught on as wide spread as Occupy did. A certain level of understanding had been reached and a certain level of confidence, inspiration, and anger existed to break through the walls of our alienating society and act in a collective, political way.<br />
<br />
Occupy is organizationally confused right now. But the people are still there, their problems are not going away, and we are waiting and learning and talking to each other and thinking. For the far left, the Anarchism of Occupy taught everyone else a very powerful lesson: that when we stop worrying about the purity of our politics, when we actually come together and join our voices, we can get a lot accomplished and we can connect radical, progressive ideas with mass activity among the disenfranchised classes. That is a very, very powerful lesson.<br />
<br />
<br />
<h3>
<b>New Formations</b></h3>
<br />
<br />
The idea of running "Occupy" candidates is right. But the idea of isolated activists, in different cities, not talking to each other, each with their own fundraising and publicity campaigns, each with their own uphill battle against the corporate media blackout, that is not a winning idea.<br />
<br />
What is different now that didn't exist before is that the far left has learned when it works together, it can connect its message and its politics to millions of "ordinary" Americans who have a basic understanding that the problem is, indeed "the 1%". That didn't exist before. What used to be of little more value than theoretical gymnastics about the roles of radicals in elections we now have an opportunity to actually implement.<br />
<br />
There have been some attempts to cobble together some national formations out of the different Occupys. So far I hear they have not met with universal success. That is good. If something coherent and productive came out of it immediately there would have had to have been some shadowy group running the show, and we wouldn't have been able to trust it. Our intellectual inheritance as American leftists involves high degrees of mutual distrust, and little practice in working together across tendencies. We grew up, politically, in our own, isolated "holes" of localism. It didn't matter before if we couldn't work together, because we rarely had a mass audience to connect our politics to anyway. The fact that it has been difficult so far to congeal anything tangible or official out of Occupy is proof that we are dealing with real leftists- bless their hearts- inexperienced and fractious as they are.<br />
<br />
This is the human material our historical legacy has bequeathed to us. Our primordial and challenged characteristics need not be fatal if we can realize two things. The first is that we have a real opportunity right now to connect radical left politics to millions of American people. The second is that we can only do this when we work together across sectarian barriers. For people who casually throw around such an impossibly inclusive slogan like "the 99%", I cannot believe it is impossible for my fellow leftists to come to these same conclusions. Perhaps to unite we need not demand that all abandon what all have learned from their own adventures in political theory. Rather, it may be more useful to start from an understanding that theoretical correctness is very much less important than is practical effectiveness. If we were to judge the validity of <i>each others'</i> theories on the basis of what they have been able to concretely accomplish (rather than how they clash with our own preconceptions) we might all be a bit better off.<br />
<br />
Elections would be a convenient thing around which to congeal a unifed, left, anti-wall street and anti-two party political formation. Should such a formation one day come into existence, it will have to deal with elections anyway as <i>our class</i> rises from its slumber to take increasingly confident steps to victory. We might as well learn to relate them any way, and I think national elections offer a great opportunity to reach people politically. With great excitement I look forward to the emergence of other "Occupy" candidates, if not even some sort of "Occupy" ticket. <br />
<br />
Whether it would be under that or another name I have no idea and in fact I do not particularly care. But I am pretty sure complete ecological collapse will set in before any one of our "three letter" organizations wins a national election on the basis of its own, unique political purity.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06418793670220718137noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6078009723392950689.post-57649808828973919962012-07-17T09:23:00.000-06:002012-07-17T09:23:00.102-06:00My Book of Poems is Out<p>Long awaited, and finally out...
<p><IMG SRC="http://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-snc6/251852_10101650563968424_432778476_n.jpg" HEIGHT="50%" WIDTH="50%">
<p><i>For you the reader here is my book of poems. Poems of rivers and life, the world, justice, difficulty, love, betrayal, death, hope and struggle. Prose of the desert and the ghost towns and the wild places. Voices of myself, snap shots of moments in time, travel, and observation.
<p>As you may understand, a lot of poetry is narcissistic fluff most people have little patience for. Honey sweet words with no substance of life to them. My poems are not like that. My poems are true works of life. They are for people and the world. The are not soothing lullabies to put you to sleep, or to tell you that everything is beautiful and perfect. They are here to wake you up and prod you and reach out a hand to you. Take from them what you will. And pass them on if they are found to be useful.</i>
<p><i>Walking Away From Dixie</i> has been self published and printed at the Canyonlands Copy Center in Moab, Utah. Awaiting national distribution, it can currently be purchased by using pay pal to send payment + $3.50 S&H to cawright2007@yahoo.com . Current asking price is $10, which can be raised or lowered depending on the purchasers' needs and generosity. All proceeds benefit my food and gas budget as I spend the fall writing a book on Utah's Ghost Towns, a book on the solo duckie run of the Grand Canyon, and a book about living, working and traveling around the Colorado Plateau during the recession. It is 45 pages long of concentrated experience and observation, and is my first book.
<p>Index:
<p>The Ripping of the Rivers' Tears<BR>
There was a river<BR>
Activate the Emergency Response System<BR>
Red Velvet Cafe<BR>
Head for the Hills<BR>
The One Who Travels Alone<BR>
The Winter<BR>
Me Too, Love<BR>
Outer Suburbia<BR>
<p>11.11<BR>
That's About Enough of That<BR>
Ghetto Blues, DC<BR>
Late Night Re-Runs<BR>
Of What Standards Fall Short?<BR>
Walking Away From Dixie<BR>
Sleepwalking Through the Days of Cotton<BR>
The Deception Years<BR>
State Highway<BR>
Could it be?<BR>
I run<BR>
<p>America Dawns Malicious<BR>
Gunslinger Punk<BR>
The Revolutionary that waits<BR>
Foreign Fighters<BR>
Unbeatable Wall Street<BR>
Smacked in the Face<BR>
National Forecast<BR>
Life Pushes Down<BR>
Plenty of Ways<BR>
<p>Take Life<BR>
Tour<BR>
When You're Homeless<BR>
Servants<BR>
Banks Pay the Tab<BR>
Insight<BR>
River Character<BR>
The Ghost Towns<BR>
Occupy SLC<BR>
The InterviewsAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06418793670220718137noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6078009723392950689.post-78484920203719557702012-07-02T21:21:00.000-06:002012-07-02T21:24:46.711-06:00Anti Imperialism in Libya and Syria<p>Taking a moment from the Canyons and the Rivers, I was invited by a friend to consider a recent post about politics, intervention, and revolution is Libya and Syria. I don't know everything about those countries and I am not an expert in them. But I did feel I had something useful to contribute.
<p><A HREF="http://www.thenorthstar.info/?p=1097">Here</A> is that rather interesting article.
<p>Below is a contribution I submitted to the comments section.
<p>-----------
<p>I like this article, and I am glad it is written.
<p>The American left barely exists. The self consciously “Anti-Imperialist” American left, in a country of 300 million people, can probably be housed in its entirety in one of our smaller to middle- sized sports areas. It’s influence is marginal, but unfortunately this rarely translates into approaches of humility. Gazing into the darkness of our political life, often from the vantage of a dingy apartment in some gray, overcrowded, stressful, expensive city of hostile, preoccupied strangers, many of our Anti-Imperialist leftists comfort themselves with dogmas and rigidity. This is understandable. Why do you think Mormon missionaries forego reading non-Mormon literature during their missions? Why do they pray so hard at night and spend so much attention on the neatness of their uniforms? It is difficult to be a missionary, a barer of truth in an apathetic, sinful, and oft unfriendly world. Insulating oneself within the mother-bosom of dogma, icons, and sacred writ is a useful way to strengthen oneself, regardless of how well it retards one’s own development as a critically thinking individual.
<p>I think the “hard left” in the US picked its sides and stuck with them before, and independently of, any facts or developments in Lybia. If you believe certain dictators are better than others, and ought to be supported, despite their authoritarianism, because they have nationalized such and such a resource, or initiated such and such a social program to try and win popular support, you are going to have a hard time finding the right side to be on when one day the people tire of their dictator’s rule. The US “Hard Left” is a collection of aged and unsuccessful revolutionaries who developed politically in the 1960s and 70s. They grew up with a view that authoritarian one party states, and charismatic third world dictators, ought to be supported as liberators because they were fighting against capitalistic exploiters. Long after the capitalistic exploiters had been chased away, and the new emperors began developing their own ways of exploiting people, the fawning and dictator-worship remained. So what if Ghadaffi’s kids were entertained on Caribbean islands by American pop stars while they guzzled cases of Champagne? Their dad has said the word “socialist” before! Therefore he deserves our support. Of course!
<p>I don’t care what the “correct” anti-imperialist line is and I don’t care to try and rank the nation’s countries on a “socialistic” hierarchy where individual freedoms and political rights can be exchanged for social services or a cut of the pie. I also don’t care whether or not a third world dictator is able to buy the support of some of his people by putting gas and oil profits back into infrastructure, because guess what? Global warming is real and Ghadaffi and Chavez’s development of their national resources is, globally, a step in the wrong direction that will contribute to catastrophic changes in weather patterns and sea levels.
<p>If you want to be a usefully political citizen you have to learn to be a critical thinker first. This is a world that is being destroyed ecologically by powerful people who make comfortable living for themselves by keeping the majority of people politically and economically powerless- and more importantly- confused. You can’t trust anyone or any group to do your thinking for you, you have to do it for yourself. That is a practice the hard left organizations in the United States generally (not always) do not train their members in.
<p>Our left does not know what it means to fight to win. They have won little, over my life time. They have been very adept at fighting loosing battles and spouting slogans into the air. If you’re not expecting to win anything anyway, it’s pretty easy to say whatever you want. Being “right” and letting other people know it becomes more important than being effective. Like college sophomores trying to impress one another in a dorm with their knowledge of obscure subjects, our domestically unsuccessful revolutionaries are quite vocal in their instructions to people actually fighting revolutions abroad. These instructions are not usually helpful, but of course, why would they be? There is fundamental disagreement about who “the enemy” is. It is my opinion that most of the allegedly Marxist American organizations thought Ghadaffi was closer to socialism than a post-Ghadaffi Lybia would be. After that point the case was closed. They would have preferred to see Benghazi leveled than to see the different classes, individuals, and parties within that country decide for themselves what political policies their nation should adopt.
<p>People who fight to win, and actually win, often prioritize effectiveness over the integrity of principles. When the people you are fighting have tanks and bombers and snipers and are shelling and bombing you and you can expect to be murdered within a few hours, days, or weeks, at that point military efficiency and effectiveness, not intellectually correct political positions, will be of great value.
<p>Those whose conception of a revolution anywhere today involves a self consciously Marxist, feminist, grass roots network of democratically functioning workers’ councils, with its own movement controlled independent media and accountable leaders, and, heck, commitment to non-violence and secularism to boot, can expect to be disappointed by what actual revolutions actually look like. This even more so in the Middle East. Revolutions are not academic exercises in political correctness. They start with the humans we have today, whose political development has been determined by the real world and the legacy of past victories, failures, promises, and betrayals, and whose resources, allies, and agendas are confused, vacillating, and often contradictory.
<p>Al-Jazeera has been criticized on this page for being controlled by the Qatari monarchy. Hence, I suppose, it must be incapable of ever telling the truth or functioning independently. It must have been illusion then, when I noticed in 2010 and 2011 that Al-Jazeera supported the Egyptian Revolution wholeheartedly from Day One to the great distress and embarrassment of that governments’ principle military sponsor, the United States of America.
<p>I also noticed someone in this discussion posted a link to a Huffington Post article, but no one here then criticized the Huffington Post. Did you know the Huffington Post is run by member of the bourgeois class? Did you know they like to not pay their writers, and that many left writers recently <A HREF="http://dailycaller.com/2011/03/17/newspaper-guild-huffington-post-strike/">stopped writing for them in protest of its policies?</A> Did you know that the Huffington post website is getting paid by Sears to advertise a new grill they are selling, and while the capitalistic owner of the Huffington Post is being paid by sears for the use of their site, Huffington Post writers are themselves often not paid? Isn’t that a terrible example of capitalistic exploitation? They are even supporting Barack Obama for God sake! So why is a link to their website posted here, and no one points this out, and no one says that everything on the Huffinton Post cannot be believed because it is obviously controlled by a member of the ruling class?
<p><IMG SRC="http://i.huffpost.com/gen/670701/thumbs/s-BUYING-GUIDE-FOR-GRILLS-large300.jpg">
<p>That is because we know the Huffington Post continues to post many useful and relevant articles, despite its short comings. The Huffington Post likes gay people having rights too, and has news about that. The Huffington Post directs scrutiny against the misdeeds of Wall Street. The Huffington Post likes people being able to have health care and thinks Wal Mart workers get a raw deal and that they deserve a better one.
<p>The Huffington Post is an ally of justice, and of oppressed people. At the same time, it functions as an imperfect entity, containing within itself relations of injustice and oppression. Often it sides with oppressors, and is content to celebrate the charity of exploitative billionaires at the same it laments the condition of poverty in America. It is contradictory and imperfect.
<p>As is everything. Everywhere.
<p>Navigating our political world, we must pledge our allegiance to genuine principles, not to organizations, presidents, or parties. All of these can, have, and will fail us. All of them can be corrupted. You can make use of some of them by doing so critically, and you must constantly evaluate what you get from something, verses what potential bad thing might happen later if you get involved with it. By reading the above Huffington Post article, I contributed to advertising revenue and market share of an exploitative and capitalistic news agency. I did so because I felt it was worth it to understand this discussion.
<p>It disappoints, but does not surprise me, that an individual here found a problem with the idea that, “the international left base its positions regarding imperialist intervention on what the 0.2% of the world’s population who lived in Libya might have wanted.” Is this not, then, revealing?
<p>I believe whole heartedly that Libyans and no one else had the right to determine how a revolution in Libya should proceed.
<p>A revolution is made by a people. When you have a movement, and the power structure represses it, you have to decide whether to retreat, re-organize, and try again later, or whether to respond and escalate and accept the consequences of that escalation. Revolutions are highly escalated political dialogues between rulers and ruled people. The right to determine when to risk that escalation, and when to open the pandora’s box of armed conflict, is the right of free people everywhere. When a people decides to have a revolution, it is done not through a ballot box or through an online internet survey. There are those ahead of the game, and those who lag behind it. There are those who lead and those who follow. There are hotheads who invite premature and catastrophic oppression. There are conservatives who mask the protection of their own vested interests and positions behind concerns for “peace” and “orderliness.” Politically “Combined and Uneven Development” is the rule. It cannot be otherwise.
<p>I might also take this opportunity to remind our laptop revolutionaries that an actual revolution is a bloody awful and horrible thing. If you embark on a revolution you know that you are going to risk everything and everyone that you love and that is important to you. You may even loose yourself, and you may find yourself doing terrible things in order to prevent them being done to you.
<p>If and when a revolution is necessary, that is to be determined by an internal dialogue among the people waging it. When it does occur and you find yourself in a military engagement, you are no longer fighting on moral terms. You may have to make compromises and temporary allegiances with untrustworthy, and even politically suspect allies. May I remind you that we in the United States are no longer ruled over by a monarch because of our alliance with the reactionary, slave holding, French aristocracy in the 1770s and 80s? Should black Americans in the 1860s have opposed the intervention of the North in the civil war that freed them because the North was ruled by capitalists?
<p>Were the Viet-Minh wrong to accept the help of the Americans in their fight against the Japanese during World War Two?
<p>Certainly, the Americans later betrayed them. Cold war politics led them to side with the French, and assist their re-conquest of their former colony in exchange for French anti-communist political support. In doing so they turned their backs on their old allies. The Americans ultimately behaved dishonorably and against the goals of the Viet-Minh in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. Still, if it was 1943 and you were in Vietnam fighting the Japanese, even if you could see in the future that the Americans might betray you, would you still refuse their gifts of arms and the military training OSS officers were willing to provide for you?
<p>A revolution has the right to choose its own allies, make its own mistakes, and succeed or fail as it will. I support the right of Libyans, Syrians, and everyone else who can expect to be murdered by a dictator’s henchman to secure whatever military support they can from where ever they can get it to support their cause. I’ll leave the long term consequences of such alliances for them to determine the potential benefit, or liability of. No one is going to shoot me tomorrow or shell my house if I fail to win. As such I am not about to substitute my own uninformed and distant opinion for the decisions made by actual revolutionaries actually fighting a revolution.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06418793670220718137noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6078009723392950689.post-56668155707602544072012-04-11T10:39:00.000-06:002012-04-11T10:39:24.563-06:00Against the Tea Party and the Scapegoating of Welfare Cheats<i>In response to some rather ignorant and hateful remarks posted on a page of mine...</i><br />
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I understand there is a great lack of intelligent political organizations and ideas where you live. But if you really think that welfare cheats are this biggets problem this country has, I think you are really letting some whackos do your problem defining for you.<br />
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The economic collapse did not happen because of welfare cheats.<br />
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Banking deregulation that resulted in several million Americans loosing their jobs and homes did not happen because of welfare cheats.<br />
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The $4 a gallon gasoline you are buying is not that expensive because of welfare cheats.<br />
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We did not spent over a trillion dollars invading and occupying a country that never threatened us because of welfare cheats.<br />
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There are not tens of thousands of American veterans missing their arms and legs today who are going to live the rest of their lives with spinal damage, TBIs, or PTSD because of welfare cheats.<br />
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Welfare programs are a small part of the total federal and state budgets. I find it disturbing you would lash out against the most desperate and degreded people while ignoring, say, the military industrial complex, or perhaps the prison-industrial complex, which at great tax payer expense houses hundreds of thousands of non-violent drug offenders.<br />
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Wealth inequality is the worst it has been in this country since the 1920s. When that happens you get poor people doing desperate things and leading miserable lives. However, if you were paying attention at all, you would know that welfare rolls nationally have not gone up significantly during the recession. Food stamp benefits, however, have gone up several times, mostly to people like myself who work hard, get laid of, and spend a short amount of time on food stamps while they are looking for another job.<br />
<br />
The greatest donors to charity, in my opinion, are the working class, who work long hours, multiple jobs, for low pay and no benefits, and donate the great wealth they create to the companies they work for.<br />
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The tea party is controlled by rich republicans who started the wars and who crashed the economy and who live in Mcmansions while their employees live in hovels with no health insurance. These people are trying to scapegoat the poor and minorities for things the rich have done. They are not a solution to our problems, and they are not on the side of working people. The represent upper middle class haters, attempting to mobolize the middle class behind the rich. No one who works hard for a living need spend any time near them.<br />
<br />
My $0.02. And by the way, I am not a Democrat either.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06418793670220718137noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6078009723392950689.post-71613690249066960332012-04-09T22:48:00.001-06:002012-04-09T22:54:03.946-06:00The Problem With Atlanta...<IMG SRC="http://www.maxadv.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/atlanta_traffic-8795.jpg.png"><br />
<br />
... is that it doesn't really want to be a city. It hasn't in decades and it has no sign of changing this attitude. For purely logistical and geographical reasons not of its own choosing, the status of a city was thrust upon it. Today, as I return, I see it continues, ever futher, to unravel.<br />
<br />
The great disintegration perhaps began just after the civil rights movement as whites fled the city limits for tax havens and whites-only school districts in the suburbs. The newly independent status of Sandy Springs as its own city consumates the success of this process, which began long ago. Yes, the whites still drive to town because they also like making money and having jobs. Yet to a disturbingly large extent, they don't seem to care about most of the people who live elsewhere in the city, particularly if their skin is a darker color. They vote with their dollars and their feet and these things consistantly choose to keep train tracks and highways and distance in between their neighborhoods and black neighborhoods. Cheap gas prices in the 1980s and 1990s allowed a completely unsustainable, and absurd infastructre of roads, highways, interstates, perimeter interstates, strip malls and big box stores to develop and serve this idea, of seperate and thuroughly unequal Atlantas. <br />
<br />
Now the gas prices are crashing it all down. Flight of any kind is difficult at $4 a gallon. MARTA planners struggle with decentralized and spread out population centers just as much as they do with budget shortfalls and operating costs. But no technocrat elected or otherwise will be able to wave a wand and solve the transportation- or any other problems- of this place. Not while people have their present mind set.<br />
<br />
Because the present mindset is not that of citizens in a city thinking about how they ought to live and structure their affairs. The mindset is a blend of selfishness and apathy. Absurd monuments to unproductive wealth are constructed to house the well to do while the less well to do struggle along with dead end, low paying, and unfullfilling jobs, as well as completely inadequate education. The city does not look itself over in a mirror for blemishes in need of a remedy. It deliberately conceals its sepsis. It spends millions hosting the olympics. It builds the largest regional aquarium in the midst of a water famine. It plants grass, then burns fossil fuels to mow this grass. And then fertilizes the grass so it will grow faster. And it allows 65 year old men who have worked all their lives building the city to spend their golden years begging fellow riders on a late and broken down train for spare cash to help pay for their heart medicine.<br />
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Religious hyprocrisy of the most disgusting and abominable sort blares from the radio, news, and print. Emotional appeals to hate and condemn, wage war, punish, and imprision has completely taken the place of journalism, much less humanity. Lungs choke on idled engines. Teeth rot from Sweet Tea and Coca Cola. Humidity bears down oppressively soaking the skin, driving all away from public centers of gathering, citizens stumbling back for their own private air conditioning.<br />
<br />
<br />
Until this changes, until enough people around here are able to stick their heads far enough above ground, over the oaks and poplars and pines and past the smokey haze of ozone and carbon monoxide, beyond the reach of the hate preachers and the flag wavers the billboards, liqour stores, cigarettes, and overpasses, until people voluntarily drag themselves from their private suburban asylums and reach this lofty height and see, yes, we are all one city... until they are convinced that it is a good idea to actually go to one another's neighborhoods and learn for themselves what problems, needs, talents, and resources, actually exist there... Atlanta will in all its glory, continue to burn.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06418793670220718137noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6078009723392950689.post-83468648177750537992012-03-12T08:19:00.001-06:002012-03-12T08:21:52.038-06:00Summer<img SRC="http://www.noisenobodys.com/pics/sun2.jpg"><br />
<br />
Sometimes a certain picture says a whole lot of things at once a lot more efficiently than words.<br />
<br />
You might notice some kind of snow covered expensive houses. People spend a lot of money to look at that view of snowy houses. I do not! I am parking for free in a free parking spot, occupying one, you might say. There is still some skiing, a decent base, a snow storm or two on the way. The last two weeks of March will be busy. But, <br />
<br />
I am not focused on that! I am in summer mode. The sun is higher every day and it shines warm! Lately between shifts or during an afternoon off this parking lot is my favorite place to hang out. Yes I should be in the library writing but I have earned a bit of time for me. In the sun, taking my socks and shoes off, letting them feet air out and dry off and come to life in the warm, loving embrace of the SUN! That fantastic thing. That tells me all this snow will soon melt. Just river trips waiting to happen, that's all it is around here.<br />
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A guitar! I bought a guitar. You might think that's odd for a homeless river guide with a storage unit full of a music studio he never has a place to use. Ahh... but this guitar is different. It is half the size of a regular guitar, so you can take it on trips. It even came with a case! This will be the summer I finally do the guitar on the river thing. I'm learning a set with a few songs, like "the big rock candy mountain", whose depression era tails of the tribulations and dreams of those camping in hobo jungles cooking over fires and dreaming of sleeping under the stars are very very similar to my own transient homeless aspirations.<br />
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Those snowy houses in the shade don't do much for me. Right here in the Marsac lot there is sun! And cups of tea and pots of coffee. And books to read, curled up in the warm air. Gotta love that roof, it's black! Passive solar, and warms up fast as soon as the sun hits it. You might think a black roof is odd for the desert, but even in the desert the sun goes down at night and it gets chilly, so it makes a lot of sense. Besides that's when you usually sleep, at night, and the day time you get up early because there is a lot to do. If you must sleep in you can always crank the windows and open the door to get the breeze circulating.<br />
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Lately been planning spring trips of epic proportions, as well as family visits. The dry top and pants have arrived from NRS and I should be all set to get on the river.<br />
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See you there!Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06418793670220718137noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6078009723392950689.post-92223681875923938762012-02-07T03:08:00.000-07:002012-02-07T03:08:01.066-07:00My Refutation of a "Refutation" of the Hedges articleThe <A HREF="http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_cancer_of_occupy_20120206/">Hedges Article</A> denouncing the black block.<br />
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The <A HREF="http://cuntrastamu.com/2012/02/07/to-be-fair-he-is-a-journalist-a-short-response-to-chris-hedges-on-black-bloq/">Gato Article</A> denouncing Hedges.<br />
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I'm with Hedges. See the <A HREF="http://laughingfish.blogspot.com/2012/02/chris-hedges-on-cancer-in-occupy.html">points</A> I have previously made. And now, for the speedy demolition of Gato's emotionally changed and factually baseless rhetorical attack on Hedges.<br />
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Gato's article isn't quite a great "refutation" of Hedges. <br />
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Where to start? Hmm... well first, Gato attacks Hedges for thinking that black block ish ness is a movement, and not a tactic. Well it is both. And so is Occupy. Occupy is a tactic, that then became a movement when a whole lot of people started to do it. Sitting in a Sit in was a tactics some folks at a lunch counter in Greensboro, NC tried back in the early 1960s. It got a lot of press, caught on, and then soon became a mass movement. It happens. Today, there is (something of) a movement among several people to use black block tactics. Amazing, isn't it? I must be some awful journalist as well to repeat such obfuscating generalizations. Next.<br />
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According to Gato, "rabble rousers" wear black to "not get pinched by the pigs." Well that is pretty cool. But why then do they so often join protests where many people have not been informed or convinced that they should wear black clothes and conceal their faces and tattoos to prevent themselves from being arrested or identified? Why is it so often the black clad ones with bandannas, "prepared for arrest" (but dressed in hopes of evading it) who feel the need to do things that get so many more other non-black wearing people arrested? Is it possibly because their ideas and their theory is not very effective or welcoming, and they must attach themselves like parasites to larger movements with better (initial) messaging in order to find a crowd of people large enough to attract glamorous police attention? Yuppers.<br />
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Gato praises the heroic black block in Oakland which on the day of a recent attempt at occupation that turned repressive "looked mostly defensive." No where does the Gato's article admit that the black block people threw things at police, which they did, and which is a great provocation. Or what about the reputation that black clothes possibly have? Is that a defensive way to dress around a bunch of nervous, amped up cops in riot gear? No. It is an aggressive and tension raising way to dress. If I wear red into a bull pen and start throwing things at a bull, and then the bull kicks my ass, I am not going to write myself an article about how "mostly defensive" I was because I carried a shield into the bull pen. Dressing all black block puts cops on edge and takes the safety's off cans of mace faster than you can say "police state". It's dumb. Period. And I have no sympathy for anyone who tries it and then gets arrested. Non.<br />
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Next, the article attacks Hedges for discussing in his article the influence of John Zerzan. In Hedges' article he mentions Zerzan because he is talking about where the black block ideas started to get known about to many people in the United States back in the early 2000s and Zerzan happened to be a fellow who was actively promoting them at the time. He doesn't claim anywhere that Zerzan is controlling the black block "movement" today, like it is some kind of organization with a shadowy mastermind. Nowhere. Nope. Sorry. Not there. Amazing what a hyper defensive person will infer, and invent, and take personally, but which was never origionally said at all. Next again...<br />
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Are black block tactics of provoking fights with police and throwing things at them "hypermasculine"? I think they are. How are they not? Isn't it pretty "macho" to dress tough like someone who starts fights, and then go do stuff that makes fights happen? If a woman joins the marines and gets her kicks being arrogant and rude and killing a lot of people she's never met, we might criticize her for indulging in the worse parts of hitherto known as masculine behavior. Her participation in the behavior might however mark a moment in time of transformation for our understanding of the behavoir the word has hitherto be used to describe, based on the kind of people who hitherto were usually the ones involved in that behavoir. Perhaps at such a moment we should indeed change the adjective used from "masculine" to "boneheaded", "neanderthalian", "rude", "mean", "hyper violent", "meat headed", or something else. But whatever word we pick. That's not the point. The point is that the behavior sucks. I don't care if it's men or women or gay people who provoke the police to attack a movement. I still think it sucks they are doing it. And so does Hedges. And if he uses the word "masculine" in pointing this out, I think arguing over semantics isn't really the point. At the end of the day, no one cares if you are a woman or gay behind that bandanna. We just care that you are helping the cops destroy a movement and beat up a lot of people who you have never met and who you never asked how they'd feel about being beat up that day.<br />
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Now there's the point about a Double standard in Hedges' thinking, where he has said the "riot" tactics are okay in Greece when used to fight austerity, but that they are not okay in the US. Okay, well that is a good point of contradiction in thinking. I reckon it exists. That means that Hedges may have some contradictory and inconsistent ideas. That is fine. But it doesn't make him a liar or make his piece false. His piece stands as strong as ever.<br />
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Gato is very concerned with his black clad friends being arrested and mistreated by the cops. Well that is fine and he has a right to feel that way and it is always unfortunate when the cops arrest and mistreat people. But a political movement that is ostensibly claiming to speak for "99%" of society, particularly the most downtrodden and ripped off, but which allows its messaging and its potential to be determined by a few non-elected actor's "forms of recuperating needed and justified rage", is going to be a short lived political movement that rapidly looses support. And I don't care if your rage is morally justified or politically justified. They way you choose to act it out is politically damaging and you're probably just going to be more unhappy at the end of the day after you helped destroy the one movement that might have actually helped to make the world a better place. So I guess it is good you have all that black to wear because you are going to be a negative and unhappy person for a long time to come I reckon.<br />
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Am I wrong in my thinking? I think that it would be awesome if I was wrong. Please please let me be so out of touch that I have failed to see how the American working masses and broader popular classes have suddenly decided that throwing small rocks and "funny objects" at the police is a good idea or laudable behavior. That would be quite amazing for the prospects of trans formative change here. Sadly I do not think it is the case, and I do think that Occupy Oakland is going to see a decline in support in public opinion polls, as well as public responses to its subsequent calls for action, as a result of ill-advised actions taken by black clad individuals there recently.<br />
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Refute that.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06418793670220718137noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6078009723392950689.post-31823243498278775012012-02-06T10:52:00.004-07:002012-02-06T13:42:53.549-07:00Chris Hedges on The Cancer in OccupyCause:<br />
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<img SRC="http://www.noisenobodys.com/protest/liberalsriot.jpg"><br />
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Effect:<br />
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<img SRC="http://www.noisenobodys.com/protest/liberalsriot2.jpg"><br />
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(Not a really surprising ending...)<br />
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<i>“If their real target actually was the cops and not the Occupy movement, the Black Bloc would make their actions completely separate from Occupy, instead of effectively using these others as a human shield. Their attacks on cops are simply a means to an end, which is to destroy a movement that doesn’t fit their ideological standard.”</i><br />
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Events in Oakland, and elsewhere, involving "black block" style provocations have brought the question of such a presence at Occupy events to the fore. Chris Hedges <a HREF="http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_cancer_of_occupy_20120206/">recently wrote</A> a terrific piece on the subject.<br />
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In my own political experience over the last decade or so, I've become more and more convinced of the destructiveness of these kind of tactics. Not that I needed much convincing in the first place. But I have seen this in action time and again, usually breaking stuff and graffiti type behavior increases as the political frustration of a movement increases during a period of stagnation or retreat. The search for a way out is <i>abandoned</i>, and those without the patience to build a movement that relates to non-participants put their intelligence on hold for the sake of frustration-venting.<br />
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In my opinion, the "black block" is something like a political black hole from whence no protest generally emerges. It is possible that they weren't origionally invented by the media or the police, but in action that possibility is meaningless. Their function, consciously understood or not, is to drive a wedge between any protest they are part of and working class, minority, and mass participation. <br />
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"Diversity of Tactics" is the slogan under which movements time and again, with the motivation of being inclusive and open to militancy, have allowed ultra lefts and provocateurs to invite repression and marginalization on movements. 1960s non-violent protests worked, and got popular sympathy, because they were disciplined. That meant they had marshals at the demos who told people, "no, you can't do this at our protest." Maybe that is "authoritarian". And I don't care if it is. Because it worked. Unlike the "anarchism" of the black block, which has left a legacy in the US only of failure, despair, and disintegration.<br />
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<b>Let's not confuse "radical" with "violence", or "extreme".</b> Radical means you are interested in getting to the <i>root</i> of the problem, which for us means looking at a systemic analysis and thinking about systemic change.<br />
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Radicals with a social perspective, who are not technocrats or part of the bureaucracy, see the main problem isn't just that the capitalists have all the power and the workers don't, but that right now the workers (and many more) are completely disempowered and deliberately under developed politically. There's not a culture of political decision making, thinking about the issues that affect us and our communities, where we live, or our environment. People aren't used to making decisions, speaking their mind, or exercising control over their lives.<br />
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A movement that sees the solution to this problem as being key to the solution to the problem of the destructive and unequal economic system we live under is going to have to work to bring people into political struggle, to fight for changes and learn how to organize, responsibly and effectively. <br />
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The goal of leadership (and anyone who identifies as an anarchist, reads, produces, and distributes literature and shows up to meetings to organize is a leader in their community whether they want to acknowledge it or not) is to make itself replaceable, to teach others how to do things, because you are not always going to be around. If a movement isn't growing, it is shrinking. If you're not bringing more people into political life, whatever changes you manage to make will stagnate and eventually be threatened by the apolitical masses, over whose heads most evil is secretly (or publicly) conducted.<br />
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With that kind of philosophy, you begin to understand that the point of a protest is to bring people out of their rut and into political action. It's not just for you to show up because you will be enough. You won't. But <i>you all</i> might. <br />
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Things that invite arrest and police repression will scare most people away, like people who have to show up tomorrow for work because they have kids and rent due and car payments, or maybe undocumented immigrants, or maybe black people already subjected to greater than usual police oppression. These people are not going to be part of a movement they see as having its level of "intensity" determined by an unaccountable group of usually white, usually middle class young people who are not going to suffer the same consequences of arrest as they would.<br />
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Being radical, and targeting the system as a whole, the question of violence or non-violence isn't one of principles or morals. It is one of effectiveness. And that is something George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and everyone else who was part of the violent American Revolution understood. You don't just put up flyers building the minutemen militia today. You've got to have the Boston tea party first.<br />
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If we can win without violence, so much the better. If violence is necessary for a people to exercise their democratic right as a majority to alter or abolish their form of government, that argument can't be won among a small group of isolated activists in a room somewhere. It is won in a society. <br />
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But society is never even going to have that conversation as long as entities like the Black Block continue doing their best to isolate "activism" into a cultish "subculture" rather than a popular, mass activity.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06418793670220718137noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6078009723392950689.post-14286745794135066662012-01-07T23:17:00.002-07:002012-01-07T23:17:56.218-07:00Oh, The Places You'll Go!This one is good, from one of my favorite books:<br />
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<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/ahv_1IS7SiE" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06418793670220718137noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6078009723392950689.post-88396902378441673302011-12-29T22:10:00.000-07:002011-12-29T22:10:41.930-07:00Article Comparing the Occupy Movement to Populism<IMG SRC="http://www.nebraskastudies.org/0600/media/0601_030201.gif"><br />
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Worth a read, check it out: <A HREF="http://www.peacefuluprising.org/how-the-people-got-their-groove-back-what-a-bunch-of-farmers-can-teach-a-bunch-of-occupiers-about-how-to-keep-on-going-20111215#comment-70767">http://www.peacefuluprising.org/how-the-people-got-their-groove-back-what-a-bunch-of-farmers-can-teach-a-bunch-of-occupiers-about-how-to-keep-on-going-20111215#comment-70767</A>.<br />
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I like it, it is good, read it. That being said, the Farmers’ Alliance and the populists voted on things. They didn’t practice “true consensus”. Neither did the labor movements in the early to mid 1900s or the civil rights movements. I personally think voting which is easily understood and learned is more empowering and inclusive to people than is lecturing them on confusing hand signals and why “90-10″ consensus (or worse) that allows tiny minorities to balk the will of overwhelming quantities of rational people in a room is a good idea. Consensus was invented, in my opinion, by small groups of internally oriented and often unsuccessful activists who had very limited perspectives on or experience with mass participation. They often came from academic circles and were trying to build movements in a period of generalized working class retreat from political activity. In my humble opinion, trying to impose consensus today on a new and actually vibrant movement is as mechanical and unhelpful as is a dogmatic “marxist” distributing their newspaper outside the factory gates and telling the workers if they don’t organize in such and such a way and join this or that party, they are somehow wrong or "counter revolutionary".<br />
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I agree with Malcolm X that “I’m for what works”. If occupying something works, I’m for that. If consensus can work (I don’t see this happening), I’m for that. If voting works, I’m for that. Sometimes voting doesn’t work, like drawing up a schedule at work. Have you ever made a schedule for a job? It can be confusing and you can’t make one in a room with 70 employees all trying to make it and trying to vote on every shift. You have to get everyone’s availability and skill level and then you need one person to centralize that information and then draw it up. Of course you can always modify it later, and switch shifts with people, and make it a little more efficient, but it is an example of a time of organization where mass democracy is better suited if it elects one person to do it. Same thing with making a flyer. You don’t make a flyer with 70 people all trying to think of how to format it, crowded around one screen. You can delegate.<br />
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What is great about the current moment is that authoritarian, Russian and Chinese style single party police state “communism” is discredited and the parts of the left that always looked to foreign governments (instead of to their own conditions) for their blessings of purity and a correct, general party “line”… that kind of politics doesn’t dominate the left any more. That part of the left is gone and what is left of it doesn’t convince anyone.<br />
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At the same time, the liberal left that tells us to always vote democratic party is also discredited. Nothing better for that than to actually elect a democrat. That’s why Nader was so strong in 2000, and not in 2004 or 2008. People just had 8 years of democrats and they knew they didn’t work.<br />
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Similarly, nothing out of the “anti-globalization” or anti war movements is really that large or real, in terms of impressive sizes of any organizations, or victories in terms of number of battles won that we can learn from. That kind of punk rock anarchism that the black block kids were into, or the people who tried to split from every anti war march and go down another street and break things, that hasn’t won or gotten huge either. So that’s a dead end, and dressing up like a seattle protester from 1999 and trying your best to act like one isn’t going to make you a successful winner of radical gains either.<br />
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These are all, intellectually, very liberating things. We’re not controlled by past ideologies, at least most of us who are thinking people are not. Re-inventing the wheel is bad, but far worse that than is being permanently hitched the the wagon of dogmatic adherence to ineffective political ideologies.<br />
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On a whole, I liked the article, and I think the author’s perspective is great. Let’s look at past movements, see what worked and see what didn’t. Lets repeat things we thought were good and try to avoid mistakes.<br />
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And most importantly, let’s not think just because we’ve read more about past movements that we are somehow going to be more correct, politically, on certain questions. “Theory is gray, green is the tree of life.” Life experience is always the best educator and former of political opinions. People seem to almost always form better opinions when they listen first, and speak second.<br />
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<i><br />
If you're interested in learning more about the populist movement, I highly recommend you read C Vann Woodward's book <A HREF="http://www.amazon.com/Tom-Watson-Agrarian-Rebel-Galaxy/dp/0195007077/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1325221643&sr=1-1"> Tom Watson: Agrarian Rebel</A>. Other good books about the early Socialist Party which grew out of the remains of the Populists are Ira Kipnis' <A HREF="http://www.amazon.com/American-Socialist-Movement-1897-1912/dp/1931859124/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1325221733&sr=1-1">The American Socialist Movement</A> and Ray Ginger's <A HREF="http://www.amazon.com/Bending-Cross-Biography-Eugene-Victor/dp/193185940X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1325221781&sr=1-1">The Bending Cross</A></i>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06418793670220718137noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6078009723392950689.post-69661424571499300712011-12-19T09:54:00.005-07:002011-12-19T10:11:08.274-07:00Permanent War or Peace Through Sustainability<img SRC="http://www.opednews.com/populum/uploaded/ostrich_head_in_ground_full-9056-20100409-14.jpg"><br />
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<i>When the average American finds himself without food for three meals in a row, the ensuing chaos (riots, etc.) will make the United States a rather inhospitable place to be. Martial Law will immediately be declared, and the country will become a police state starvation camp. This can all be avoided, by the way, by shifting America away from an oil-based economy.<br />
</i><br />
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<a HREF="http://www.naturalnews.com/021942_oil_energy_America.html">Here</A> is a good article about Peak Oil written in 2007.<br />
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<a HREF="http://www.naturalnews.com/034440_renewable_energy_Germany_power_grid.html">Here</A> is a story about a town in Germany whose renewable energy systems generates 321% more electricity than the town itself needs.<br />
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<a HREF="http://news.stanford.edu/news/2011/january/jacobson-world-energy-012611.html">Here</A> is a fascinating story about the estimates of a Stanford professor who calculated what it would cost to shift America to a solar and wind energy system.<br />
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If you've never heard about "concentrated solar power" before, <a HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentrated_solar_power">here</A> is a great article about it on a popular, free, collectively edited internet encyclopedia. <br />
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Now, what few facts do we know about ME?<br />
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1) I work in a restaurant at a ski resort.<br />
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2) I slept in the truck last night up here because I was tired and I didn't want to drive home. <br />
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3) I live in a town of 850 people in the summer in almost total political isolation from mainstream America.<br />
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This means that there are restaurant workers sleeping in trucks at ski resorts who spend almost half of their year in total political isolation from any part of organized political life in America and some of them have <i>better ideas</i>, and <i>more vision</i> about how to create a sustainable long term future for our civilization than do <i>any elected politicians from either of the two political parties</i>.<br />
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Is that because people sleeping in trucks and working in restaurants are more intelligent than people with graduate degrees and years of paid political experience? Does it mean I, with google and a facebook news feed in lieu of any "Central Intelligence Agency" or "Federal Bureau of Investigation" have access to any kind of secret information that most people never hear about? <br />
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Hardly. <br />
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It does not take a whole lot of special knowledge or international networks of spies to learn about this stuff. You can go online and read for yourself. <br />
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So why isn't anyone in Washington talking about any of this? <br />
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It is because this is not a free and democratic country, and the people making decisions in Washington are doing as the representatives of short sighted oligarchy and nothing else. This is a country where rich people and rich corporations pay someone from their own ranks to represent their own interests. That is all they care about. Making money. Quite a lot of it has already been invested into oil and gas extraction, and <i>politicians are bribed</i> by legalized bribers called "lobbyists" to allow those invested interests to get the maximum possible profit- through of course destroying our environment and creating an unstable civilization that based on diminishing supplies of fossil fuels and increasing global war.<br />
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There is a GREAT LIE that renewables are bad because running an electric car off a solar / wind grid would cost more than running a car on gasoline. This is not the case! The true and "hidden" costs of oil are to be found in the tax-payer subsidized military industrial complex! Hundreds of billions of dollars a year pour from Congress into the Pentagon and from there into the coffers of the weapons makers. THAT is the source of our great budget deficits- not overpaid teachers, but overpaid war mongerers. <br />
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The cost of oil is something you will only come close to calculating when you factor in the costs of the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi, Afghan, and Palestinian dead. How do we quantify such a thing? Certainly, of course, not in war reparations! How much does it cost to afford medical care to a decade's worth of veterans with hundreds of thousands of PTSD cases and TBIs for the rest of their lives? How much does it cost to maintain over a thousand military bases?<br />
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Like the Wall Mart super profits supported by the nation's largest workforce being eligible for food stamps, the price of pumping gas (as intolerably high as it already is!) is deliberately concealed.<br />
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Now that I have exposed and defeated the economics of oil-war on its own terms, allow a moment to reflect upon the moral bankruptcy of that very proposition! How do you quantify a life? How do you estimate the moral cost to a country of its network of international torture chambers? Is a world of depleted uranium riddled deserts, littered with unexploded cluster bomblets, arbitrarily arrested citizens and monarchies kept in power by their US trained and supported sadists <i>worth it</i>?<br />
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And yet the wars still continue, troops and planes shifted from one country to another, half million dollar missiles are shot into peasant tents, creating terrorists far more effectively than they are destroying them.<br />
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In the 1930s we realized our agricultural and grazing policies were destroying the soils, creating dustbowls, ruining the range, and working rather well to ensure an increasingly limited future of wealth, job, and food production. At that time the mood for change among the citizens was high and this mood found its way into a political expression. Investments were made. New systems were experimented with. We changed how we did things, dropped bad habits, and adopted better ones.<br />
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Today there is no one left in that tradition of intelligent investment and planning in the Democratic Party. The Republican Party, of course, is even more out of touch, and will go to its grave on the eve of peak oil with a greater fear of homosexuals kissing than it will ever have of an energy crisis. The Military Industrial complex <i>will not solve</i> the problem of peak oil, though they are <A HREF="http://www.shtfplan.com/marc-faber/pentagon-military-actively-war-gaming-large-scale-economic-breakdown-and-civil-unrest_11222010">actively preparing</A> to follow it to its conclusion by training our soldiers to oppress hungry citizens should domestic "order" fail.<br />
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An economic system whose planners and leaders predict their own collapse is system that has publicly confessed its own bankruptcy. Why should we listen to its pundits any longer?<br />
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We need a new political leadership in this country. It will come from neither of the established parties, to whom thinking people can only wish the speediest possible death. Let us throw off their oppression, and form a new party with the courage to re-invest in an actually sustainable future.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06418793670220718137noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6078009723392950689.post-35756372456016505752011-12-15T21:31:00.004-07:002011-12-15T21:46:19.650-07:00Global Warming and Positive Feedback Loops, in a nutshell<img SRC="http://l2.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/ATy1E6bx_kXUfqcVMYMDRw--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7cT04NTt3PTMxMA--/http://media.zenfs.com/en/blogs/thesideshow/methane.jpg"><br />
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My comment on a yahoo news <a HREF="http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/giant-plumes-methane-bubbling-surface-arctic-ocean-163804179.html">article</A> announcing <br />
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<i>Russian scientists have discovered hundreds of plumes of methane gas, some 1,000 meters in diameter, bubbling to the surface of the Arctic Ocean. Scientists are concerned that as the Arctic Shelf recedes, the unprecedented levels of gas released could greatly accelerate global climate change. </i><br />
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Read it!<br />
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This is human caused. What it is is the beginning of a positive feedback loop. A few centuries of burning coal, oil, and natural gas have raised temperatures slightly. What happens when you raise the temperatures slightly is that things like glaciers and Arctic tundra melt. Once they get going they take off and don't stop. Like rolling a snow ball off the top of a mountain, or triggering an avalanche with a pair of skis, the initial push does not take a great deal of effort. But gravity and the nature of snow will do the rest of the work for you, to build a large, fast moving and potentially dangerous accumulation in a little period of time.<br />
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A lot of methane is in the Arctic tundra and under the Arctic ocean. Usually it stays trapped there. But if you let enough greenhouse gas into the atmosphere to start melting ice caps and permafrost, a lot more methane goes into the atmosphere, and now your curve towards higher temperatures starts becoming sharper, closer to an exponential curve, and there's no way to turn it "off", even if we went to zero carbon emissions tomorrow.<br />
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The retreat of sea ice offers another example of a positive feed back loop. Solar heat hitting the ocean water gets absorbed. Solar heat hitting ice gets reflected back away from Earth. When you melt the ice caps, now a lot of ocean that used to be ice is water. So the oceans are absorbing heat faster and holding it longer than they used to, which of course results in more ice caps melting.<br />
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Need a third? How about the gulf stream? Do you know what the difference is between Central Russia and Philadelphia? Not a lot in terms of latitude. But the Gulf Stream brings warm water to much of the US Eastern Sea board and Europe and that keeps those places warmer. It is possible that the melting of the ice caps will change temperatures and salinity levels that will end the gulf stream. That would be a third huge positive feed back loop that once kicked off, would not be possible to shut off, and would change temperatures in those areas very dramatically.<br />
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The past billion and a half years of earth's history have seen widely changing global temperatures and sea levels. The only problem with that is that our species evolved to thrive around certain temperatures and certain times, and now has given up much of its mobility in exchange for infrastructure and a devotion to geographically fixed private property. Sure, as a species, we survived the last ice ages. And you know what? The ice ages sucked. It was really cold. A lot of people froze to death. You couldn't grow food and living off of mammoths got really old after a while. Especially after we ran out of mammoths.<br />
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Now start looking at the difference in hunter gatherer societies that were affected by the ice age and our society. We have mortgages. Cultivated farm land. Sea level cities. We have trillions of dollars invested into certain sea levels, rain and weather patterns, and our ability to feed ourselves depends on that. When you start changing global temperatures and wind and rain patterns all that goes out the window, and you can start thinking about refugee crises that make Hurricane Katrina or anti-Mexican racism and scapegoating today look like a symphony of brotherhood. <br />
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Still don't believe in Global warming? Sweet. I have ski resorts in Taos and Flagstaff to sell you.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06418793670220718137noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6078009723392950689.post-82861141336526893792011-12-11T21:40:00.000-07:002011-12-11T21:40:11.973-07:00New Party to Organize?Just heard about this thing, called the Justice Party, <A HREF="http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/cross-partisan-citizens-join-forces-to-launch-a-major-new-political-party-the-justice-party-135400213.html?TC=CrowdFactory_Facebook&cf_from=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.prnewswire.com%2Fnews-releases%2Fcross-partisan-citizens-join-forces-to-launch-a-major-new-political-party-the-justice-party-135400213.html&cf_synd_id=PYrPpAX">here</A>.<br />
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<i>WASHINGTON, Dec. 11, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- On Monday, December 12, 2011 at 2:00 PM, a diverse group of courageous citizens will announce the formation the Justice Party, which is envisioned as a major new political party for decades to come. The Justice Party seeks governing authority at the local, state, Congressional and national levels, beginning in the 2012 election cycle. The Justice Party is being created as a new 21st -century political vehicle to allow all citizens to work together to bring innovative results-oriented, justice-based solutions to the political debate as soon as possible. <br />
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Rocky Anderson, the former Mayor of Salt Lake City, Utah, will deliver an address explaining with the Justice Party is needed at this critical juncture in U.S. history to rapidly achieve economic, social, and environmental justice.</i><br />
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Might fizzle into nothing. Probably will. But there's a chance it might not. I hope it does accomplish something good, and in general we should see citizens' attempts to form independent and genuinely oppositional counter institutions to the bankrupt "Democrat" and "Repbulican" parties as good things. <br />
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In the discussion it was said, <i>"we already have politicial partys socialist communist what more do we need?"</i><br />
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And as I responded,<br />
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--<br />
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The existing "socialist" and "communist" parties in the US are very small and generally irrelevant to most people. What a new mass party would represent would be an entrance of masses of people into the political arena in an attempt to fight for themselves politically. These same masses of people are not quite at the intellectual or ideological level of the previously organized "socialist" and other left groupings, for better and for worse. Sure they'll make mistakes and not have the "correct" politics. But that is how you learn, by trying. The best thing socialists and other radicals can do is to be part of those conversations with our learning, grappling people- and NOT to lecture them from the side lines about how right such and such a party has been all along and how it's time people adopt its unfamiliar dogma and obediently fall in line to recognize their patient saviors.<br />
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Let's see what happensAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06418793670220718137noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6078009723392950689.post-33699322003599192312011-11-23T13:45:00.000-07:002011-11-23T13:45:22.983-07:00The Tyranny of Structurelessness by Jo FreemanI am republishing this wonderful article today from <A HREF="http://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm">this</A> site. Anyone who has been frustrated by recent experiences with consensus should read it!<br />
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<i>The earliest version of this article was given as a talk at a conference called by the Southern Female Rights Union, held in Beulah, Mississippi in May 1970. It was written up for Notes from the Third Year (1971), but the editors did not use it. It was then submitted to several movement publications, but only one asked permission to publish it; others did so without permission. The first official place of publication was in Vol. 2, No. 1 of The Second Wave (1972). This early version in movement publications was authored by Joreen. Different versions were published in the Berkeley Journal of Sociology, Vol. 17, 1972-73, pp. 151-165, and Ms. magazine, July 1973, pp. 76-78, 86-89, authored by Jo Freeman. This piece spread all over the world. Numerous people have edited, reprinted, cut, and translated "Tyranny" for magazines, books and web sites, usually without the permission or knowledge of the author. The version below is a blend of the three cited here.</i><br />
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During the years in which the women's liberation movement has been taking shape, a great emphasis has been placed on what are called leaderless, structureless groups as the main -- if not sole -- organizational form of the movement. The source of this idea was a natural reaction against the over-structured society in which most of us found ourselves, and the inevitable control this gave others over our lives, and the continual elitism of the Left and similar groups among those who were supposedly fighting this overstructuredness.<br />
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The idea of "structurelessness," however, has moved from a healthy counter to those tendencies to becoming a goddess in its own right. The idea is as little examined as the term is much used, but it has become an intrinsic and unquestioned part of women's liberation ideology. For the early development of the movement this did not much matter. It early defined its main goal, and its main method, as consciousness-raising, and the "structureless" rap group was an excellent means to this end. The looseness and informality of it encouraged participation in discussion, and its often supportive atmosphere elicited personal insight. If nothing more concrete than personal insight ever resulted from these groups, that did not much matter, because their purpose did not really extend beyond this.<br />
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The basic problems didn't appear until individual rap groups exhausted the virtues of consciousness-raising and decided they wanted to do something more specific. At this point they usually foundered because most groups were unwilling to change their structure when they changed their tasks. Women had thoroughly accepted the idea of "structurelessness" without realizing the limitations of its uses. People would try to use the "structureless" group and the informal conference for purposes for which they were unsuitable out of a blind belief that no other means could possibly be anything but oppressive.<br />
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If the movement is to grow beyond these elementary stages of development, it will have to disabuse itself of some of its prejudices about organization and structure. There is nothing inherently bad about either of these. They can be and often are misused, but to reject them out of hand because they are misused is to deny ourselves the necessary tools to further development. We need to understand why "structurelessness" does not work.<br />
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FORMAL AND INFORMAL STRUCTURES<br />
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Contrary to what we would like to believe, there is no such thing as a structureless group. Any group of people of whatever nature that comes together for any length of time for any purpose will inevitably structure itself in some fashion. The structure may be flexible; it may vary over time; it may evenly or unevenly distribute tasks, power and resources over the members of the group. But it will be formed regardless of the abilities, personalities, or intentions of the people involved. The very fact that we are individuals, with different talents, predispositions, and backgrounds makes this inevitable. Only if we refused to relate or interact on any basis whatsoever could we approximate structurelessness -- and that is not the nature of a human group.<br />
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This means that to strive for a structureless group is as useful, and as deceptive, as to aim at an "objective" news story, "value-free" social science, or a "free" economy. A "laissez faire" group is about as realistic as a "laissez faire" society; the idea becomes a smokescreen for the strong or the lucky to establish unquestioned hegemony over others. This hegemony can be so easily established because the idea of "structurelessness" does not prevent the formation of informal structures, only formal ones. Similarly "laissez faire" philosophy did not prevent the economically powerful from establishing control over wages, prices, and distribution of goods; it only prevented the government from doing so. Thus structurelessness becomes a way of masking power, and within the women's movement is usually most strongly advocated by those who are the most powerful (whether they are conscious of their power or not). As long as the structure of the group is informal, the rules of how decisions are made are known only to a few and awareness of power is limited to those who know the rules. Those who do not know the rules and are not chosen for initiation must remain in confusion, or suffer from paranoid delusions that something is happening of which they are not quite aware.<br />
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For everyone to have the opportunity to be involved in a given group and to participate in its activities the structure must be explicit, not implicit. The rules of decision-making must be open and available to everyone, and this can happen only if they are formalized. This is not to say that formalization of a structure of a group will destroy the informal structure. It usually doesn't. But it does hinder the informal structure from having predominant control and make available some means of attacking it if the people involved are not at least responsible to the needs of the group at large. "Structurelessness" is organizationally impossible. We cannot decide whether to have a structured or structureless group, only whether or not to have a formally structured one. Therefore the word will not he used any longer except to refer to the idea it represents. Unstructured will refer to those groups which have not been deliberately structured in a particular manner. Structured will refer to those which have. A Structured group always has formal structure, and may also have an informal, or covert, structure. It is this informal structure, particularly in Unstructured groups, which forms the basis for elites.<br />
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THE NATURE OF ELITISM<br />
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"Elitist" is probably the most abused word in the women's liberation movement. It is used as frequently, and for the same reasons, as "pinko" was used in the fifties. It is rarely used correctly. Within the movement it commonly refers to individuals, though the personal characteristics and activities of those to whom it is directed may differ widely: An individual, as an individual can never be an elitist, because the only proper application of the term "elite" is to groups. Any individual, regardless of how well-known that person may be, can never be an elite.<br />
Correctly, an elite refers to a small group of people who have power over a larger group of which they are part, usually without direct responsibility to that larger group, and often without their knowledge or consent. A person becomes an elitist by being part of, or advocating the rule by, such a small group, whether or not that individual is well known or not known at all. Notoriety is not a definition of an elitist. The most insidious elites are usually run by people not known to the larger public at all. Intelligent elitists are usually smart enough not to allow themselves to become well known; when they become known, they are watched, and the mask over their power is no longer firmly lodged.<br />
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Elites are not conspiracies. Very seldom does a small group of people get together and deliberately try to take over a larger group for its own ends. Elites are nothing more, and nothing less, than groups of friends who also happen to participate in the same political activities. They would probably maintain their friendship whether or not they were involved in political activities; they would probably be involved in political activities whether or not they maintained their friendships. It is the coincidence of these two phenomena which creates elites in any group and makes them so difficult to break.<br />
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These friendship groups function as networks of communication outside any regular channels for such communication that may have been set up by a group. If no channels are set up, they function as the only networks of communication. Because people are friends, because they usually share the same values and orientations, because they talk to each other socially and consult with each other when common decisions have to be made, the people involved in these networks have more power in the group than those who don't. And it is a rare group that does not establish some informal networks of communication through the friends that are made in it.<br />
Some groups, depending on their size, may have more than one such informal communications network. Networks may even overlap. When only one such network exists, it is the elite of an otherwise Unstructured group, whether the participants in it want to be elitists or not. If it is the only such network in a Structured group it may or may not be an elite depending on its composition and the nature of the formal Structure. If there are two or more such networks of friends, they may compete for power within the group, thus forming factions, or one may deliberately opt out of the competition, leaving the other as the elite. In a Structured group, two or more such friendship networks usually compete with each other for formal power. This is often the healthiest situation, as the other members are in a position to arbitrate between the two competitors for power and thus to make demands on those to whom they give their temporary allegiance.<br />
The inevitably elitist and exclusive nature of informal communication networks of friends is neither a new phenomenon characteristic of the women's movement nor a phenomenon new to women. Such informal relationships have excluded women for centuries from participating in integrated groups of which they were a part. In any profession or organization these networks have created the "locker room" mentality and the "old school" ties which have effectively prevented women as a group (as well as some men individually) from having equal access to the sources of power or social reward. Much of the energy of past women's movements has been directed to having the structures of decision-making and the selection processes formalized so that the exclusion of women could be confronted directly. As we well know, these efforts have not prevented the informal male-only networks from discriminating against women, but they have made it more difficult.<br />
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Because elites are informal does not mean they are invisible. At any small group meeting anyone with a sharp eye and an acute ear can tell who is influencing whom. The members of a friendship group will relate more to each other than to other people. They listen more attentively, and interrupt less; they repeat each other's points and give in amiably; they tend to ignore or grapple with the "outs" whose approval is not necessary for making a decision. But it is necessary for the "outs" to stay on good terms with the "ins." Of course the lines are not as sharp as I have drawn them. They are nuances of interaction, not prewritten scripts. But they are discernible, and they do have their effect. Once one knows with whom it is important to check before a decision is made, and whose approval is the stamp of acceptance, one knows who is running things.<br />
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Since movement groups have made no concrete decisions about who shall exercise power within them, many different criteria are used around the country. Most criteria are along the lines of traditional female characteristics. For instance, in the early days of the movement, marriage was usually a prerequisite for participation in the informal elite. As women have been traditionally taught, married women relate primarily to each other, and look upon single women as too threatening to have as close friends. In many cities, this criterion was further refined to include only those women married to New Left men. This standard had more than tradition behind it, however, because New Left men often had access to resources needed by the movement -- such as mailing lists, printing presses, contacts, and information -- and women were used to getting what they needed through men rather than independently. As the movement has charged through time, marriage has become a less universal criterion for effective participation, but all informal elites establish standards by which only women who possess certain material or personal characteristics may join. They frequently include: middle-class background (despite all the rhetoric about relating to the working class); being married; not being married but living with someone; being or pretending to be a lesbian; being between the ages of twenty and thirty; being college educated or at least having some college background; being "hip"; not being too "hip"; holding a certain political line or identification as a "radical"; having children or at least liking them; not having children; having certain "feminine" personality characteristics such as being "nice"; dressing right (whether in the traditional style or the antitraditional style); etc. There are also some characteristics which will almost always tag one as a "deviant" who should not be related to. They include: being too old; working full time, particularly if one is actively committed to a "career"; not being "nice"; and being avowedly single (i.e., neither actively heterosexual nor homosexual).<br />
Other criteria could be included, but they all have common themes. The characteristics prerequisite for participating in the informal elites of the movement, and thus for exercising power, concern one's background, personality, or allocation of time. They do not include one's competence, dedication to feminism, talents, or potential contribution to the movement. The former are the criteria one usually uses in determining one's friends. The latter are what any movement or organization has to use if it is going to be politically effective.<br />
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The criteria of participation may differ from group to group, but the means of becoming a member of the informal elite if one meets those criteria art pretty much the same. The only main difference depends on whether one is in a group from the beginning, or joins it after it has begun. If involved from the beginning it is important to have as many of one's personal friends as possible also join. If no one knows anyone else very well, then one must deliberately form friendships with a select number and establish the informal interaction patterns crucial to the creation of an informal structure. Once the informal patterns are formed they act to maintain themselves, and one of the most successful tactics of maintenance is to continuously recruit new people who "fit in." One joins such an elite much the same way one pledges a sorority. If perceived as a potential addition, one is "rushed" by the members of the informal structure and eventually either dropped or initiated. If the sorority is not politically aware enough to actively engage in this process itself it can be started by the outsider pretty much the same way one joins any private club. Find a sponsor, i.e., pick some member of the elite who appears to be well respected within it, and actively cultivate that person's friendship. Eventually, she will most likely bring you into the inner circle.<br />
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All of these procedures take time. So if one works full time or has a similar major commitment, it is usually impossible to join simply because there are not enough hours left to go to all the meetings and cultivate the personal relationship necessary to have a voice in the decision-making. That is why formal structures of decision making are a boon to the overworked person. Having an established process for decision-making ensures that everyone can participate in it to some extent.<br />
Although this dissection of the process of elite formation within small groups has been critical in perspective, it is not made in the belief that these informal structures are inevitably bad -- merely inevitable. All groups create informal structures as a result of interaction patterns among the members of the group. Such informal structures can do very useful things But only Unstructured groups are totally governed by them. When informal elites are combined with a myth of "structurelessness," there can be no attempt to put limits on the use of power. It becomes capricious.<br />
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This has two potentially negative consequences of which we should be aware. The first is that the informal structure of decision-making will be much like a sorority -- one in which people listen to others because they like them and not because they say significant things. As long as the movement does not do significant things this does not much matter. But if its development is not to be arrested at this preliminary stage, it will have to alter this trend. The second is that informal structures have no obligation to be responsible to the group at large. Their power was not given to them; it cannot be taken away. Their influence is not based on what they do for the group; therefore they cannot be directly influenced by the group. This does not necessarily make informal structures irresponsible. Those who are concerned with maintaining their influence will usually try to be responsible. The group simply cannot compel such responsibility; it is dependent on the interests of the elite.<br />
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THE "STAR" SYSTEM<br />
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The idea of "structurelessness" has created the "star" system. We live in a society which expects political groups to make decisions and to select people to articulate those decisions to the public at large. The press and the public do not know how to listen seriously to individual women as women; they want to know how the group feels. Only three techniques have ever been developed for establishing mass group opinion: the vote or referendum, the public opinion survey questionnaire, and the selection of group spokespeople at an appropriate meeting. The women's liberation movement has used none of these to communicate with the public. Neither the movement as a whole nor most of the multitudinous groups within it have established a means of explaining their position on various issues. But the public is conditioned to look for spokespeople.<br />
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While it has consciously not chosen spokespeople, the movement has thrown up many women who have caught the public eye for varying reasons. These women represent no particular group or established opinion; they know this and usually say so. But because there are no official spokespeople nor any decision-making body that the press can query when it wants to know the movement's position on a subject, these women are perceived as the spokespeople. Thus, whether they want to or not, whether the movement likes it or not, women of public note are put in the role of spokespeople by default.<br />
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This is one main source of the ire that is often felt toward the women who are labeled "stars." Because they were not selected by the women in the movement to represent the movement's views, they are resented when the press presumes that they speak for the movement. But as long as the movement does not select its own spokeswomen, such women will be placed in that role by the press and the public, regardless of their own desires.<br />
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This has several negative consequences for both the movement and the women labeled "stars." First, because the movement didn't put them in the role of spokesperson, the movement cannot remove them. The press put them there and only the press can choose not to listen. The press will continue to look to "stars" as spokeswomen as long as it has no official alternatives to go to for authoritative statements from the movement. The movement has no control in the selection of its representatives to the public as long as it believes that it should have no representatives at all. Second, women put in this position often find themselves viciously attacked by their sisters. This achieves nothing for the movement and is painfully destructive to the individuals involved. Such attacks only result in either the woman leaving the movement entirely-often bitterly alienated -- or in her ceasing to feel responsible to her "sisters." She may maintain some loyalty to the movement, vaguely defined, but she is no longer susceptible to pressures from other women in it. One cannot feel responsible to people who have been the source of such pain without being a masochist, and these women are usually too strong to bow to that kind of personal pressure. Thus the backlash to the "star" system in effect encourages the very kind of individualistic nonresponsibility that the movement condemns. By purging a sister as a "star," the movement loses whatever control it may have had over the person who then becomes free to commit all of the individualistic sins of which she has been accused.<br />
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POLITICAL IMPOTENCE<br />
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Unstructured groups may be very effective in getting women to talk about their lives; they aren't very good for getting things done. It is when people get tired of "just talking" and want to do something more that the groups flounder, unless they change the nature of their operation. Occasionally, the developed informal structure of the group coincides with an available need that the group can fill in such a way as to give the appearance that an Unstructured group "works." That is, the group has fortuitously developed precisely the kind of structure best suited for engaging in a particular project.<br />
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While working in this kind of group is a very heady experience, it is also rare and very hard to replicate. There are almost inevitably four conditions found in such a group;<br />
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1) It is task oriented. Its function is very narrow and very specific, like putting on a conference or putting out a newspaper. It is the task that basically structures the group. The task determines what needs to be done and when it needs to be done. It provides a guide by which people can judge their actions and make plans for future activity.<br />
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2) It is relatively small and homogeneous. Homogeneity is necessary to insure that participants have a "common language" for interaction. People from widely different backgrounds may provide richness to a consciousness-raising group where each can learn from the others' experience, but too great a diversity among members of a task-oriented group means only that they continually misunderstand each other. Such diverse people interpret words and actions differently. They have different expectations about each other's behavior and judge the results according to different criteria. If everyone knows everyone else well enough to understand the nuances, these can be accommodated. Usually, they only lead to confusion and endless hours spent straightening out conflicts no one ever thought would arise.<br />
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3) There is a high degree of communication. Information must be passed on to everyone, opinions checked, work divided up, and participation assured in the relevant decisions. This is only possible if the group is small and people practically live together for the most crucial phases of the task. Needless to say, the number of interactions necessary to involve everybody increases geometrically with the number of participants. This inevitably limits group participants to about five, or excludes some from some of the decisions. Successful groups can be as large as 10 or 15, but only when they are in fact composed of several smaller subgroups which perform specific parts of the task, and whose members overlap with each other so that knowledge of what the different subgroups are doing can be passed around easily.<br />
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4) There is a low degree of skill specialization. Not everyone has to be able to do everything, but everything must be able to be done by more than one person. Thus no one is indispensable. To a certain extent, people become interchangeable parts.<br />
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While these conditions can occur serendipitously in small groups, this is not possible in large ones. Consequently, because the larger movement in most cities is as unstructured as individual rap groups, it is not too much more effective than the separate groups at specific tasks. The informal structure is rarely together enough or in touch enough with the people to be able to operate effectively. So the movement generates much motion and few results. Unfortunately, the consequences of all this motion are not as innocuous as the results' and their victim is the movement itself.<br />
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Some groups have formed themselves into local action projects if they do not involve many people and work on a small scale. But this form restricts movement activity to the local level; it cannot be done on the regional or national. Also, to function well the groups must usually pare themselves down to that informal group of friends who were running things in the first place. This excludes many women from participating. As long as the only way women can participate in the movement is through membership in a small group, the nongregarious are at a distinct disadvantage. As long as friendship groups are the main means of organizational activity, elitism becomes institutionalized.<br />
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For those groups which cannot find a local project to which to devote themselves, the mere act of staying together becomes the reason for their staying together. When a group has no specific task (and consciousness raising is a task), the people in it turn their energies to controlling others in the group. This is not done so much out of a malicious desire to manipulate others (though sometimes it is) as out of a lack of anything better to do with their talents. Able people with time on their hands and a need to justify their coming together put their efforts into personal control, and spend their time criticizing the personalities of the other members in the group. Infighting and personal power games rule the day. When a group is involved in a task, people learn to get along with others as they are and to subsume personal dislikes for the sake of the larger goal. There are limits placed on the compulsion to remold every person in our image of what they should be.<br />
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The end of consciousness-raising leaves people with no place to go, and the lack of structure leaves them with no way of getting there. The women the movement either turn in on themselves and their sisters or seek other alternatives of action. There are few that are available. Some women just "do their own thing." This can lead to a great deal of individual creativity, much of which is useful for the movement, but it is not a viable alternative for most women and certainly does not foster a spirit of cooperative group effort. Other women drift out of the movement entirely because they don't want to develop an individual project and they have found no way of discovering, joining, or starting group projects that interest them.<br />
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Many turn to other political organizations to give them the kind of structured, effective activity that they have not been able to find in the women's movement. Those political organizations which see women's liberation as only one of many issues to which women should devote their time thus find the movement a vast recruiting ground for new members. There is no need for such organizations to "infiltrate" (though this is not precluded). The desire for meaningful political activity generated in women by their becoming part of the women's liberation movement is sufficient to make them eager to join other organizations when the movement itself provides no outlets for their new ideas and energies. Those women who join other political organizations while remaining within the women's liberation movement, or who join women's liberation while remaining in other political organizations, in turn become the framework for new informal structures. These friendship networks are based upon their common nonfeminist politics rather than the characteristics discussed earlier, but operate in much the same way. Because these women share common values, ideas, and political orientations, they too become informal, unplanned, unselected, unresponsible elites -- whether they intend to be so or not.<br />
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These new informal elites are often perceived as threats by the old informal elites previously developed within different movement groups. This is a correct perception. Such politically oriented networks are rarely willing to be merely "sororities" as many of the old ones were, and want to proselytize their political as well as their feminist ideas. This is only natural, but its implications for women's liberation have never been adequately discussed. The old elites are rarely willing to bring such differences of opinion out into the open because it would involve exposing the nature of the informal structure of the group.<br />
<br />
Many of these informal elites have been hiding under the banner of "anti-elitism" and "structurelessness." To effectively counter the competition from another informal structure, they would have to become "public," and this possibility is fraught with many dangerous implications. Thus, to maintain its own power, it is easier to rationalize the exclusion of the members of the other informal structure by such means as "red-baiting," "reformist-baiting," "lesbian-baiting," or "straight-baiting." The only other alternative is to formally structure the group in such a way that the original power structure is institutionalized. This is not always possible. If the informal elites have been well structured and have exercised a fair amount of power in the past, such a task is feasible. These groups have a history of being somewhat politically effective in the past, as the tightness of the informal structure has proven an adequate substitute for a formal structure. Becoming Structured does not alter their operation much, though the institutionalization of the power structure does open it to formal challenge. It is those groups which are in greatest need of structure that are often least capable of creating it. Their informal structures have not been too well formed and adherence to the ideology of "structurelessness" makes them reluctant to change tactics. The more Unstructured a group is, the more lacking it is in informal structures, and the more it adheres to an ideology of "structurelessness,"' the more vulnerable it is to being taken over by a group of political comrades.<br />
Since the movement at large is just as Unstructured as most of its constituent groups, it is similarly susceptible to indirect influence. But the phenomenon manifests itself differently. On a local level most groups can operate autonomously; but the only groups that can organize a national activity are nationally organized groups. Thus, it is often the Structured feminist organizations that provide national direction for feminist activities, and this direction is determined by the priorities of those organizations. Such groups as NOW, WEAL, and some leftist women's caucuses are simply the only organizations capable of mounting a national campaign. The multitude of Unstructured women's liberation groups can choose to support or not support the national campaigns, but are incapable of mounting their own. Thus their members become the troops under the leadership of the Structured organizations. The avowedly Unstructured groups have no way of drawing upon the movement's vast resources to support its priorities. It doesn't even have a way of deciding what they are.<br />
<br />
The more unstructured a movement it, the less control it has over the directions in which it develops and the political actions in which it engages. This does not mean that its ideas do not spread. Given a certain amount of interest by the media and the appropriateness of social conditions, the ideas will still be diffused widely. But diffusion of ideas does not mean they are implemented; it only means they are talked about. Insofar as they can be applied individually they may be acted on; insofar as they require coordinated political power to be implemented, they will not be.<br />
<br />
As long as the women's liberation movement stays dedicated to a form of organization which stresses small, inactive discussion groups among friends, the worst problems of Unstructuredness will not be felt. But this style of organization has its limits; it is politically inefficacious, exclusive, and discriminatory against those women who are not or cannot be tied into the friendship networks. Those who do not fit into what already exists because of class, race, occupation, education, parental or marital status, personality, etc., will inevitably be discouraged from trying to participate. Those who do fit in will develop vested interests in maintaining things as they are.<br />
<br />
The informal groups' vested interests will be sustained by the informal structures which exist, and the movement will have no way of determining who shall exercise power within it. If the movement continues deliberately to not select who shall exercise power, it does not thereby abolish power. All it does is abdicate the right to demand that those who do exercise power and influence be responsible for it. If the movement continues to keep power as diffuse as possible because it knows it cannot demand responsibility from those who have it, it does prevent any group or person from totally dominating. But it simultaneously insures that the movement is as ineffective as possible. Some middle ground between domination and ineffectiveness can and must be found.<br />
<br />
These problems are coming to a head at this time because the nature of the movement is necessarily changing. Consciousness-raising as the main function of the women's liberation movement is becoming obsolete. Due to the intense press publicity of the last two years and the numerous overground books and articles now being circulated, women's liberation has become a household word. Its issues are discussed and informal rap groups are formed by people who have no explicit connection with any movement group. The movement must go on to other tasks. It now needs to establish its priorities, articulate its goals, and pursue its objectives in a coordinated fashion. To do this it must get organized -- locally, regionally, and nationally.<br />
<br />
PRINCIPLES OF DEMOCRATIC STRUCTURING<br />
<br />
Once the movement no longer clings tenaciously to the ideology of "structurelessness," it is free to develop those forms of organization best suited to its healthy functioning. This does not mean that we should go to the other extreme and blindly imitate the traditional forms of organization. But neither should we blindly reject them all. Some of the traditional techniques will prove useful, albeit not perfect; some will give us insights into what we should and should not do to obtain certain ends with minimal costs to the individuals in the movement. Mostly, we will have to experiment with different kinds of structuring and develop a variety of techniques to use for different situations. The Lot System is one such idea which has emerged from the movement. It is not applicable to all situations, but is useful in some. Other ideas for structuring are needed. But before we can proceed to experiment intelligently, we must accept the idea that there is nothing inherently bad about structure itself -- only its excess use.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
While engaging in this trial-and-error process, there are some principles we can keep in mind that are essential to democratic structuring and are also politically effective:<br />
<br />
1) Delegation of specific authority to specific individuals for specific tasks by democratic procedures. Letting people assume jobs or tasks only by default means they are not dependably done. If people are selected to do a task, preferably after expressing an interest or willingness to do it, they have made a commitment which cannot so easily be ignored.<br />
<br />
2) Requiring all those to whom authority has been delegated to be responsible to those who selected them. This is how the group has control over people in positions of authority. Individuals may exercise power, but it is the group that has ultimate say over how the power is exercised.<br />
<br />
3) Distribution of authority among as many people as is reasonably possible. This prevents monopoly of power and requires those in positions of authority to consult with many others in the process of exercising it. It also gives many people the opportunity to have responsibility for specific tasks and thereby to learn different skills.<br />
<br />
4) Rotation of tasks among individuals. Responsibilities which are held too long by one person, formally or informally, come to be seen as that person's "property" and are not easily relinquished or controlled by the group. Conversely, if tasks are rotated too frequently the individual does not have time to learn her job well and acquire the sense of satisfaction of doing a good job.<br />
<br />
5) Allocation of tasks along rational criteria. Selecting someone for a position because they are liked by the group or giving them hard work because they are disliked serves neither the group nor the person in the long run. Ability, interest, and responsibility have got to be the major concerns in such selection. People should be given an opportunity to learn skills they do not have, but this is best done through some sort of "apprenticeship" program rather than the "sink or swim" method. Having a responsibility one can't handle well is demoralizing. Conversely, being blacklisted from doing what one can do well does not encourage one to develop one's skills. Women have been punished for being competent throughout most of human history; the movement does not need to repeat this process.<br />
<br />
6) Diffusion of information to everyone as frequently as possible. Information is power. Access to information enhances one's power. When an informal network spreads new ideas and information among themselves outside the group, they are already engaged in the process of forming an opinion -- without the group participating. The more one knows about how things work and what is happening, the more politically effective one can be.<br />
<br />
7) Equal access to resources needed by the group. This is not always perfectly possible, but should be striven for. A member who maintains a monopoly over a needed resource (like a printing press owned by a husband, or a darkroom) can unduly influence the use of that resource. Skills and information are also resources. Members' skills can be equitably available only when members are willing to teach what they know to others.<br />
<br />
When these principles are applied, they insure that whatever structures are developed by different movement groups will be controlled by and responsible to the group. The group of people in positions of authority will be diffuse, flexible, open, and temporary. They will not be in such an easy position to institutionalize their power because ultimate decisions will be made by the group at large, The group will have the power to determine who shall exercise authority within it.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06418793670220718137noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6078009723392950689.post-31284984965489801772011-11-15T16:09:00.000-07:002011-11-15T16:09:37.107-07:00Eugene Victor Debs on "Sound" Tactics"Sound Socialist Tactics", by Eugene Debs, was written in Feb 1912 and was part of the Socialist Party USA's discussion period before their convention that year. It is well worth reading today. <br />
<br />
<br />
You can read it as a PDF <a HREF="http://www.marxisthistory.org/history/usa/parties/spusa/1913/0200-debs-soundtactics.pdf">here</A>, and I am also republishing it on this blog.<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a> <br />
<br />
<br />
<b>Sound Socialist Tactics</b><br />
By Eugene V Debs<br />
<br />
Published in The International Socialist Review [Chicago], v. 13, no. 8 (February 1913).<br />
<br />
Socialists are practically all agreed as to the fundamental<br />
principles of their movement. But as to tactics<br />
there is wide variance among them. The matter of<br />
sound tactics, equally with the matter of sound principles,<br />
is of supreme importance. The disagreements<br />
and dissensions among Socialists relate almost wholly<br />
to tactics. The party splits which have occurred in the<br />
past have been due to the same cause, and if the party<br />
should ever divide again, which it is to be hoped it<br />
will not, it will be on the rock of tactics.<br />
<br />
Revolutionary tactics must harmonize with revolutionary<br />
principles. We could better hope to succeed<br />
with reactionary principles and revolutionary tactics<br />
than with revolutionary principles and reactionary tactics.<br />
The matter of tactical differences should be approached<br />
with open mind and in the spirit of tolerance.<br />
<br />
The freest discussion should be allowed. We have<br />
every element in every shade of capitalist society in<br />
our party, and we are in for a lively time at the very<br />
best before we work out these differences and settle<br />
down to a policy of united and constructive work for<br />
Socialism instead of spending so much time and energy<br />
lampooning one another.<br />
<br />
In the matter of tactics we cannot be guided by<br />
the precedents of other countries. We have to develop<br />
our own and they must be adapted to the American<br />
people and to American conditions. I am not sure that<br />
I have the right idea about tactics; I am sure only that<br />
I appreciate their importance, that I am open to correction,<br />
and that I am ready to change whenever I find<br />
myself wrong.<br />
<br />
It seems to me there is too much rancor and too<br />
little toleration among us in the discussion of our differences.<br />
Too often the spirit of criticism is acrid and<br />
hypercritical. Personal animosities are engendered, but<br />
opinions remain unchanged. Let us waste as little as<br />
possible of our militant spirit upon one another. We<br />
shall need it all for our capitalist friends.<br />
There has recently been some rather spirited discussion<br />
about a paragraph which appears in the pamphlet<br />
on Industrial Socialism, by William D. Haywood<br />
and Frank Bohn. The paragraph follows:<br />
<br />
"When the worker, either through experience or study<br />
of Socialism, comes to know this truth, he acts accordingly.<br />
<i>He retains absolutely no respect for the property ‘rights’<br />
of the profit-takers.</i> He will use any weapon which will win<br />
his fight. He knows that the present laws of property are<br />
made by and for the capitalists. <i>Therefore he does not<br />
hesitate to break them.</i>"<br />
<br />
The sentences which I have italicized provoked<br />
the controversy.<br />
<br />
We have here a matter of tactics upon which a<br />
number of comrades of ability and prominence have<br />
sharply disagreed. For my own part I believe the paragraph<br />
to be entirely sound.<br />
<br />
Certainly all Socialists, knowing how and to what<br />
end capitalist property “rights” are established, must<br />
hold such “rights” in contempt. In the Manifesto Marx<br />
says: “The Communist (Socialist) revolution is the<br />
most radical rupture with traditional property relations;<br />
no wonder that its development involves the most radical<br />
rupture with traditional ideas.”<br />
<br />
As a revolutionist I can have no respect for capitalist<br />
property laws, nor the least scruple about violating<br />
them. I hold all such laws to have been enacted<br />
through chicanery, fraud, and corruption, with the sole<br />
end in view of dispossessing, robbing, and enslaving<br />
the working class. But this does not imply that I propose<br />
making an individual lawbreaker of myself and<br />
butting my head against the stone wall of existing property<br />
laws. That might be called force, but it would not<br />
be that. It would be mere weakness and folly.<br />
If I had the force to overthrow these despotic<br />
laws I would use it without an instant’s hesitation or<br />
delay, but I haven’t got it, and so I am law-abiding<br />
<i>under protest — not from scruple </i>— and bide my<br />
time.<br />
<br />
<br />
Here let me say that for the same reason I am<br />
opposed to sabotage and to “direct action.” I have not<br />
a bit of use for the “propaganda of the deed.” These<br />
are the tactics of anarchist individualists and not of<br />
Socialist collectivists. They were developed by and<br />
belong exclusively to our anarchist friends and accord<br />
perfectly with their philosophy. These and similar<br />
measures are reactionary, not revolutionary, and they<br />
invariably have a demoralizing effect upon the following<br />
of those who practice them. If I believed in the<br />
doctrine of violence and destruction as party policy; if<br />
I regarded the class struggle as guerrilla warfare, I would<br />
join the anarchists and practice as well as preach such<br />
tactics.<br />
<br />
It is not because these tactics involve the use of<br />
force that I am opposed to them, but because they do<br />
not. The physical forcist is the victim of his own boomerang.<br />
The blow he strikes reacts upon himself and<br />
his followers. The force that implies power is utterly<br />
lacking, and it can never be developed by such tactics.<br />
The foolish and misguided, zealots and fanatics,<br />
are quick to applaud and eager to employ such tactics,<br />
and the result is usually hurtful to themselves and to<br />
the cause they seek to advance.<br />
<br />
There have been times in the past, and there are<br />
countries today where the frenzied deed of a glorious<br />
fanatic like old John Brown seems to have been inspired<br />
by Jehovah himself, but I am now dealing with<br />
the 20th Century and with the United States.<br />
There may be, too, acute situations arising and<br />
grave emergencies occurring, with perhaps life at stake,<br />
when recourse to violence might be justified, but a<br />
great body of organized workers, such as the Socialist<br />
movement, cannot predicate its tactical procedure<br />
upon such exceptional instances.<br />
<br />
But my chief objection to all these measures is<br />
that they do violence to the class psychology of the<br />
workers and cannot be successfully inculcated as mass<br />
doctrine. The very nature of these tactics adapts them<br />
to guerrilla warfare, to the bomb planter, the midnight<br />
assassin; and such warfare, in this country, at least, plays<br />
directly into the hands of the enemy.<br />
<br />
Such tactics appeal to stealth and suspicion, and<br />
cannot make for solidarity. The very teaching of sneaking<br />
and surreptitious practices has a demoralizing effect<br />
and a tendency to place those who engage in them<br />
in the category of “Black Hand” agents, dynamiters,<br />
safe-blowers, holdup men, burglars, thieves, and pickpockets.<br />
If sabotage and direct action, as I interpret them,<br />
were incorporated in the tactics of the Socialist Party,<br />
it would at once be the signal for all the agents provocateurs<br />
and police spies in the country to join the party<br />
and get busy. Every solitary one of them would be a<br />
rabid “direct actionist,” and every one would safely<br />
make his “getaway” and secure his reward, a la<br />
McPartland, when anything was “pulled off ” by their<br />
dupes, leaving them with their necks in the nooses.<br />
<br />
With the sanctioning of sabotage and similar<br />
practices the Socialist Party would stand responsible<br />
for the deed of every spy or madman, the seeds of strife<br />
would be subtly sown in the ranks, mutual suspicion<br />
would be aroused, and the party would soon be torn<br />
into warring factions to the despair of the betrayed<br />
workers and the delight of their triumphant masters.<br />
If sabotage or any other artifice of direct action<br />
could be successfully employed, it would be wholly<br />
unnecessary, as better results could be accomplished<br />
without it. To the extent that the working class has<br />
power based upon class-consciousness, force is unnecessary;<br />
to the extent that power is lacking, force can<br />
only result in harm.<br />
<br />
I am opposed to any tactics which involve stealth,<br />
secrecy, intrigue, and necessitate acts of individual violence<br />
for their execution.<br />
<br />
The work of the Socialist movement must all be<br />
done out in the broad open light of day. Nothing can<br />
be done by stealth that can be of any advantage to it in<br />
this country.<br />
<br />
The workers can be emancipated only by their<br />
own collective will, the power inherent in themselves<br />
as a class, and this collective will and conquering power<br />
can only be the result of education, enlightenment and<br />
self-imposed discipline.<br />
<br />
Sound tactics are constructive, not destructive.<br />
The collective reason of the workers repels the idea of<br />
individual violence where they are free to assert themselves<br />
by lawful and peaceable means.<br />
<br />
The American workers are law-abiding and no<br />
amount of sneering or derision will alter that fact.<br />
Direct action will never appeal to any considerable<br />
number of them while they have the ballot and the<br />
right of industrial and political organization.<br />
<br />
<i>Its tactics alone have prevented the growth of<br />
the Industrial Workers of the World.</i> Its principles of<br />
industrial unionism are sound, but its tactics are not.<br />
Sabotage repels the American worker. He is ready for<br />
the industrial union, but he is opposed to the “propaganda<br />
of the deed,” and as long as the IWW adheres<br />
to its present tactics and ignores political action, or<br />
treats it with contempt by advising the workers to<br />
“strike at the ballot box with an ax,” they will regard it<br />
as an anarchist organization, and it will never be more<br />
than a small fraction of the labor movement.<br />
<br />
The sound education of the workers and their<br />
thorough organization, both economic and political,<br />
on the basis of the class struggle, must precede their<br />
emancipation. Without such education and organization<br />
they can make no substantial progress, and they<br />
will be robbed of the fruits of any temporary victory<br />
they may achieve, as they have been through all the<br />
centuries of the past.<br />
<br />
For one, I hope to see the Socialist Party place<br />
itself squarely on record at the corning national convention<br />
against sabotage and every other form of violence<br />
and destructiveness suggested by what is known<br />
as “direct action.”<br />
<br />
It occurs to me that the Socialist Party ought to<br />
have a standing committee on tactics. The art or science<br />
of proletarian party tactics might well enlist the<br />
serious consideration of our clearest thinkers and most<br />
practical propagandists.<br />
<br />
To return for a moment to the paragraph above<br />
quoted from the pamphlet of Haywood and Bohn. I<br />
agree with them that in their fight against capitalism<br />
the workers have a right to use any weapon that will<br />
help them to win. It should not be necessary to say<br />
that this does not mean the blackjack, the dirk, the<br />
lead-pipe or the sawed-off shotgun. The use of these<br />
weapons does not help the workers to win, but to lose,<br />
and it would be ridiculous to assume that they were in<br />
the minds of the authors when they penned that paragraph.<br />
The sentence as it reads is sound. It speaks for<br />
itself and requires no apology. The workers will use<br />
any weapon which will help them win their fight.<br />
The most powerful and the all-sufficient weapons<br />
are the industrial union and the Socialist Party,<br />
and they are not going to commit suicide by discarding<br />
these and resorting to the slingshot, the dagger<br />
and the dynamite bomb.<br />
<br />
Another matter of party concern is the treatment<br />
of so-called “intellectuals” in the Socialist movement.<br />
Why the term “intellectual” should be one of reproach<br />
in the Socialist Party is hard to understand, and yet<br />
there are many Socialists who sneer at a man of intellect<br />
as if he were an interloper and out of place among<br />
Socialists. For myself I am always glad to see a man of<br />
brains, of intellect, join the movement. If he comes to<br />
us in good faith he is a distinct acquisition and is entitled<br />
to all the consideration due to any other comrade.<br />
<br />
To punish a man for having brains is rather an<br />
anomalous attitude for an educational movement. The<br />
Socialist Party, above every other, should offer a premium<br />
on brains, intellectual capacity, and attract to<br />
itself all the mental forces that can be employed to<br />
build up the Socialist movement, that it may fulfill its<br />
emancipating mission.<br />
<br />
Of course the Socialist movement is essentially<br />
a working class movement, and I believe that as a rule<br />
party officials and representatives, and candidates for<br />
public office, should be chosen from the ranks of the<br />
workers. The intellectuals in office should be the exceptions,<br />
as they are in the rank and file.<br />
<br />
There is sufficient ability among the workers for<br />
all official demands, and if there is not, it should be<br />
developed without further delay. It is their party, and<br />
why should it not be officered and represented by<br />
themselves?<br />
<br />
An organization of intellectuals would not be<br />
officered and represented by wage-earners; neither<br />
should an organization of wage-earners be officered<br />
by intellectuals.<br />
<br />
There is plenty of useful work for the intellectuals<br />
to do without holding office, and the more intellectual<br />
they are the greater can their service be to the<br />
movement. Lecturers, debaters, authors, writers, artists,<br />
cartoonists, statisticians, etc., are in demand without<br />
number, and the intellectuals can serve to far better<br />
advantage in those capacities than in official positions.<br />
<br />
I believe, too, in rotation in office. I confess to a<br />
prejudice against officialism and a dread of bureaucracy.<br />
I am a thorough believer in the rank and file,<br />
and in ruling from the bottom up instead of being ruled<br />
from the top down. The natural tendency of officials is<br />
to become bosses. <i>They come to imagine that they are<br />
indispensable and unconsciously shape their acts to<br />
keep themselves in office.</i><br />
<br />
The officials of the Socialist Party should be its<br />
servants, and all temptation to yield to the baleful influence<br />
of officialism should be removed by constitutional<br />
limitation of tenure.<br />
<br />
There is a tendency in some states to keep the<br />
list of locals a solemn secret. The sheep have got to be<br />
protected against the wolves. No one must know what<br />
locals there are, or who its officials, for fear they may<br />
be corrupted by outside influences. This is an effective<br />
method for herding sheep, but not a good way to raise<br />
men. If the locals must be guarded against the wolves<br />
on the outside, then some one is required to guard<br />
them, and that some one is a boss, and it is the nature<br />
of the boss to be jealous of outside influences.<br />
If our locals and the members who compose<br />
them need the protection of secrecy, they are lacking<br />
in the essential revolutionary fiber which can be developed<br />
only in the play of the elements surrounding<br />
them, and with all the avenues of education and information,<br />
and even of miseducation and misinformation,<br />
wide open for their reception. <i>They have got<br />
to learn to distinguish between their friends and their<br />
enemies and between what is wise and what is otherwise<br />
and until the rank and file are so educated and<br />
enlightened their weakness will sooner or later deliver<br />
them as the prey of their enemies.</i><br />
<br />
Still another matter about which there has been<br />
not a little ill-natured discussion is the proposed investigation<br />
of the Kerr publishing house. I cannot help<br />
wondering what business the National Committee has<br />
making such an investigation. It would be quite as<br />
proper, in my opinion, to order an investigation of a<br />
building and loan association in which members have<br />
their savings invested.<br />
<br />
It is true, without a doubt, that The International<br />
Socialist Review has published articles with which many<br />
of us disagreed, but why should it be investigated on<br />
that account? Are we Socialists who are constantly protesting<br />
against the suppression of free speech now going<br />
to set an example of what we propose doing by<br />
putting a gag on the lips of our own publications?<br />
I don’t agree with a good deal that appears in the<br />
Review, and I like it all the better on that account.<br />
That is the reason, in fact, why I subscribe for it and<br />
read it, and I cannot for the life of me understand why<br />
any one would want to suppress it on that account.<br />
<br />
If the Review and the concern which publishes<br />
it belonged to the national party it would be different,<br />
but it does not belong to the party, and the party is in<br />
no wise responsible for it, and if I were a stockholder I<br />
should regard the action of the national committee as<br />
the sheerest impertinence and treat it accordingly.<br />
I do not know if the house of Kerr & Co. needs<br />
investigating or not. I am satisfied that it does not, but<br />
it is none of my business.<br />
<br />
The Kerr Company consists, as I understand it,<br />
of some 1500 stockholders, nearly all of whom are<br />
Socialists and none of whom, as far as I am advised,<br />
are feebleminded and in need of a guardian. They have<br />
paid in all the money, they own all the stock and they<br />
are responsible for the concern; and if they want their<br />
publishing business investigated that is their affair and<br />
not the affair of the national committee of the Socialist<br />
Party.<br />
<br />
If the object aimed at is to punish Kerr & Co.<br />
and cripple the Review for its advocacy of industrial<br />
unionism and for opposing pure and simple craftism,<br />
and for keeping open columns and exercising the right<br />
of free speech, then it will be found in due time that<br />
the uncalled-for investigation of the National Committee<br />
and the uncomradely spirit which prompted it<br />
will have produced the opposite effect.<br />
<br />
I cannot close without appealing for both the<br />
industrial and political solidarity of the workers.<br />
I thoroughly believe in economic as well as political<br />
organization, in the industrial union and in the<br />
Socialist Party.<br />
<br />
I am an industrial unionist because I am a Socialist<br />
and a Socialist because I am an industrial unionist.<br />
I believe in making every effort within our power<br />
to promote industrial unionism among the workers<br />
and to have them all united in one economic organization.<br />
To accomplish this I would encourage industrial<br />
independent organization, especially among the<br />
millions who have not yet been organized at all, and I<br />
would also encourage the “boring from within” for all<br />
that can be accomplished by the industrial unionists<br />
in the craft unions.<br />
<br />
I would have the Socialist Party recognize the<br />
historic necessity and inevitability of industrial unionism<br />
and the industrial union reciprocally recognize the<br />
Socialist Party, and so declare in the respective preambles<br />
to their constitutions.<br />
<br />
The Socialist Party cannot be neutral on the<br />
union question. It is compelled to declare itself by the<br />
logic of evolution, and as a revolutionary party it cannot<br />
commit itself to the principles of reactionary unionism.<br />
Not only must the Socialist Party declare itself in<br />
favor of economic unionism, but the kind of unionism<br />
which alone can complement the revolutionary<br />
action of the workers on the political field.<br />
<br />
I am opposed under all circumstances to any<br />
party alliances or affiliations with reactionary trade<br />
unions and to compromising tactics of every kind and<br />
form, excepting alone in event of some extreme emergency.<br />
While the “game of politics,” as it is understood<br />
and as it is played under capitalist rules, is as repugnant<br />
to me as it can possibly be to any one, I am a<br />
thorough believer in political organization and political<br />
action.<br />
<br />
Political power is essential to the workers in their<br />
struggle, and they can never emancipate themselves<br />
without developing and exercising that power in the<br />
interests of their class.<br />
<br />
It is not merely in a perfunctory way that I ad-<br />
vocate political action, but as one who has faith in<br />
proletarian political power and in the efficacy of political<br />
propaganda as an educational force in the Socialist<br />
movement. I believe in a constructive political<br />
program and in electing all the class-conscious workers<br />
we can, especially as mayors, judges, sheriffs and as<br />
members of the state legislatures and the national<br />
Congress.<br />
<br />
The party is now growing rapidly, and we are<br />
meeting with some of the trials which are in store for<br />
us and which will no doubt subject us to the severest<br />
tests. We need to have these trials, which are simply<br />
the fires in which we have to be tempered for the work<br />
before us.<br />
<br />
There will be all kinds of extremists to deal with,<br />
but we have nothing to fear from them. Let them all<br />
have their day. The great body of the comrades, the<br />
rank and file, will not be misled by false teachings or<br />
deflected from the true course.<br />
<br />
We must put forth all our efforts to control our<br />
swelling ranks by the use of wise tactics and to assimilate<br />
the accessions to our membership by means of<br />
sound education and party discipline.<br />
<br />
The New Year has opened auspiciously for us,<br />
and we have never been in such splendid condition on<br />
the eve of a national campaign.<br />
<br />
Let us all buckle on our armor and go forth determined<br />
to make this year mark an epoch in the social<br />
revolution of the United States.<br />
<br />
<br />
Published by 1000 Flowers Publishing, Corvallis, OR, 2006. • Non-commercial reproduction permitted.<br />
<br />
http://www.marxisthistory.org<br />
Transcribed by Joseph B. DeNeen. Edited by Tim Davenport.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06418793670220718137noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6078009723392950689.post-14507215662837755772011-11-15T15:05:00.005-07:002011-11-23T14:27:52.984-07:00Lessons and Repression<img SRC="http://www.theblaze.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/SLC-evict.jpg"><br />
<br />
<br />
* “If a homeless man dies in Pioneer Park and there aren’t hippies around to blame… does SLCPD made a sound?”<br />
~ Bob Aagard<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
If you haven't seen on the news, last weekend the Police kicked approximately 150 homeless people and political activists out of their tent city encampment in SLC's Pioneer Park. 19 were voluntarily arrested as they refused to leave in protest of the eviction. Several thousand dollars of donated camping gear were destroyed and thrown away by the police, <a HREF="http://youtu.be/bAOb4s52O_0">scooped up by a large loader</A> and <a HREF="http://youtu.be/DBGFzMEejl8">placed inside of dump trucks</A>. Much food, literature, and the kitchen were evacuated, but the camping gear wasn't and the retreat was generally conducted chaotically and in a highly personal manner.<br />
<br />
Similar evictions have occurred at other occupations elsewhere. There's news stories about it you can read on news websites and I'll probably write about my personal experiences that day soon. But today, let's start a discussion about the political lessons of the movement.<br />
-------------------<br />
<br />
First, let's begin a review of movement literature and some political criticisms that I have been raising and contributing since the beginning of my involvement with Occupy SLC. The point is not to go over every argument here, but to provide you with an index of what they were.<br />
<br />
The political document I am most proud of that this movement was able to produce before its repression was a newsletter that was produced as a project of the free school at Pioneer Park. It is online at <a HREF="http://occupyslcnewsletter.blogspot.com">http://occupyslcnewsletter.blogspot.com</A>. The PDF version, which is what was actually printed out in 200 copies is online <a HREF="http://www.noisenobodys.com/protest/occupyslc_1.pdf">here</A>. <br />
<br />
It was edited together from 10pm-midnight the night before the eviction so that we could have something to give out the next day. It is about 50% interviews with people living at the park and the rest involves movement news and accounts by different activists. Jesse F, Michael W, Aharon, Justin, myself, Badger, Mearle, and three other people who are anonymous from the park all have contributions in it.<br />
<br />
This is newsletter, of course, has been a completely separate project from my own blog, here. I got involved with Occupy SLC about a month ago when I came into town while I was looking for a winter job and housing. The park was a convenient thing to have because I was living in my truck and people in cities usually look at you weird for doing that. So I had a place to sleep and eat and cook while getting my act together and, as I also have a political background in social justice movements I was excited about the political movement as well.<br />
<br />
I was, however, rather disturbed by the lack of long term planning or strategy, the lack of a clear articulation of demands or focus among the various fronts of the movement, and in particular a lack of accountability, definition of roles, or democratic structures in the movement. As a result, and as I am a writer, I began a series of blogs about the movement, most of which I also printed out with my own money and shared with people I had met at the park. Here they are in ascending order:<br />
<br />
<br />
<a HREF="http://laughingfish.blogspot.com/2011/10/occupation-of-wall-street.html">The Occupation of Wall Street</A> (reposts of some a perspectives article by someone else and the demands of Occupy Wall Street.)<br />
Sat Oct 15<br />
<br />
<a HREF="http://laughingfish.blogspot.com/2011/10/two-counteroffensives-of-1-middle-class.html">Two Counteroffensives of the 1%: Middle Class, Will You Join Us?</A><br />
(Arguments against the middle class prejudices attempting to be cultivated around the "53%" anti protest slogan) Wed Oct 26th <br />
<br />
<br />
<a HREF="http://laughingfish.blogspot.com/2011/10/political-perspectives-for-broadening.html">Political Perspectives for Broadening the Occupy SLC Movement</A> (discussion and proposals for outreach, producing more educational materials, why it makes more sense to protest in the day rather than at night time)<br />
Thurs Oct 27 <br />
<br />
<br />
<a HREF="http://laughingfish.blogspot.com/2011/10/we-took-park-now-what.html
">We Took the Park, Now What?</A> <br />
(Arguments that bringing down plutocracy takes more than camping. We shouldn't fetishize a tactic. Proposals for homeless advocacy as a focus of pioneer park, generally acting more efficiently so as not to waste time, and a humorous critique of "leaderlessness" and the "consensus" model of decision making).<br />
Sun Oct 30, 2011<br />
<br />
<a HREF="http://laughingfish.blogspot.com/2011/11/occupation-in-danger-undemocratic.html">Occupation in Danger</A><br />
(Critiques of the "town hall" meetings as being undemocratically run, unclear in their purpose or structure, confusing to new activists, and inefficient. Frustrations and difficulties with the fact that the web site manager is out of touch and the site is not being updated. "How to Run a Meeting" Proposals for having the most basic structures of facilitators, time keepers, stack takers, and minutes takers at meetings. A very poignant prediction that "If you are very involved in some kind of political work but you are not trying to come up with a longer term plan and goal for the park, the whole occupation will stagnate around you and eventually crumble.")<br />
Wed Nov 2nd <br />
<br />
<a HREF="http://laughingfish.blogspot.com/2011/11/to-empower-99.html">To Empower the 99%</A> <br />
(What are the resources and the campaigns of the movement and how can we make it work? I critique the proposed campaigns of "buying locally", using credit unions instead of major banks, and calling for a "general strike" with zero organized labor support and none of the infrastructure to run it as solutions that are not likely to produce the kinds of political, regulatory, and economic changes that are needed to actually empower "the 99%" and limit the control of the "1%". Arguements for more organization and for recognizing leadership and keeping it accountable rather than pretending it doesn't exist. Ends with a concrete proposal and political plan to turn pioneer park into a campaign to expand the inadequate shelter system. Sadly, the day this was written was the day the police announced they would be shutting down the park).<br />
Friday Nov 11, 2011<br />
<br />
Another blog that talks about the park and the movement is Deb's <a HREF="http://debhenry.wordpress.com/">blog</A>. I met Deb just as the park was being shut down. <a HREF="http://debhenry.wordpress.com/2011/11/13/the-aftermath-of-polices-raid-on-occupy-salt-lake/">Here</A> is her blog about after Eviction Day. <a HREF="http://debhenry.wordpress.com/2011/11/12/the-eviction-of-occupy-salt-lake/">Here</A> is her blog about the eviction itself.<br />
<br />
<i>"The usual suspects say the campers (of which a large percentage are homeless) should go to the shelters in the community. What they seem to not understand is that the shelters are full. You also cannot get into the shelter if you do not have identification. Instead of identification, you can bring a utility bill or a credit card statement (if you’re so lucky to have had an address at one point or the luxury of a credit card). The media does not tell you that to get into these shelters, the homeless need to have their TB shots. Without healthcare, how is one supposed to keep up with luxuries like a TB shot? Homeless are also not allowed to bring anything with them into the shelter, so if they have a suitcase full of their prized possessions, they are expected to abandon it."<br />
<br />
"We have been told the camp is undermining the services available to the homeless community. They don’t seem to understand that we, as Occupy, are trying to address the fundamental issue of how one becomes homeless in the first place...." <br />
<br />
"...The reason why many resist the negotiations to come back daily yet not camp is that it is an attempt to hide the issue of homelessness. Asking us to come back everyday assumes that the population has somewhere else to go. We stand with the 99% and the homeless in Pioneer Park in addressing the fundamental flaws in our communities..."</i><br />
<br />
<br />
* * *<br />
<br />
<br />
Struggle moves forward. It takes different forms and creates different organizations and adopts new tactics and strategies in light of new experience. Let the struggle continue. And let the popular classes of the "99%" re-group and re-organize themselves for a new assault on the "1%". But let us not do so on the basis of the same disorganization and confusion that has <i>hindered</i>, rather than helped, our Occupying movement hitherto.<br />
<br />
<br />
Ultimately, I believe the movement was repressed and is experiencing serious setbacks today as a result of its own inherent weaknesses. The spontaneity of it and the fact that anyone could get involved and start doing whatever they wanted did bring a lot of people together, but there was never a specific list of demands or focus for the work of the Pioneer Occupation. Neither was it professionally and sanitarily managed well enough (the kitchen passed the code, but there were feces and needles in some tents) to actually be a "winter long" homeless camp as many of the organizers there envisioned, even if we didn't have any deaths and we could have retained political 'goodwill' from the police. The nature of movements is that if they don't have a plan for how to move forward, and they stagnate, the power structure eventually comes up with a plan for how to repress them.<br />
<br />
That is, of course, exactly what happened. It is almost surreal how completely oblivious most of the movement's leading activists were about the need for long term plans, strategy, and efficient, reliable structures up until the very moment they were looking repression in the face. Less than 18 hours before the police announced the park would be closed I interviewed a few leading activists who specifically told me they rejected the idea of listing specific demands, or even articulating a vision of what we could "win" as a victory before ending the occupation. One leading activist who was arrested at the park closure and was on the radio talking about it the next day told me a day and a half before his arrest that he was against us ever leaving the park "until the plutocracy was turned into a democracy". A term prospect indeed. Another activist, J___ who has been very active with the Federal Reserve Occupation, and whose interview was published in the newsletter, spoke glowingly and full of confidence in the police to me less than a day before the same police said they were shutting the park as well as the newly won Fed- Gallivan Occupation down!<br />
<br />
I generally think that activists like myself or perhaps you who may also read politics and history a lot more than most people often run the risk of over estimating how effective literature can be in people's political education. I have always believe that most people don't form their political opinions on the basis of what things they <i>read</i>, but by the <i>life they live</i>. That is why the Occupy Wall Street movement is huge now in a way it wasn't- and couldn't have been- for the past 3 years. It took that long of living in a recession for people's ideologies and illusions in the system to be broken down by their own life experience to the point where they were willing to seriously consider, and be involved with, systemic critiques of the system.<br />
<br />
We too, however, are people. And with regards to political education I agree with the statement that "Theory is gray, but green is the tree of life!". I hope we all will look long and hard at the successes, as well as the challenges, limitations, and recent repression of the Occupy SLC movement and in doing so identify our strengths and weaknesses, successes as well as mistakes. <br />
<br />
Consensus-based decision making, the experiment of "leaderlessness", the fetishizing of one specific political (occupying) tactic, and the overall theories of actions and propaganda designed to spark "spontaneous" movements without strategic plans are all good places to start.<br />
<br />
I will contribute to the assessment of these weaknesses in the coming days on this blog. I hope my discussion about these things digitally are being mirrored by similar discussions among occupiers and ex-occupiers far and wide.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06418793670220718137noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6078009723392950689.post-67905388298410427292011-11-11T15:58:00.004-07:002011-11-12T21:57:22.736-07:00To Empower The 99%<img SRC="http://utahphotojournalism.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/MG_5273-MOD-CROP-BW1-700x451.jpg"><br />
<br />
<br />
A perspectives document on Occupy SLC <br />
by Christian Wright<br />
<br />
<b>PT I: A POLITICAL PERSPECTIVE ON OCCUPY SLC</b><br />
<br />
<br />
Where is Occupy SLC today? What do we have to work with? What could we do with ourselves?<br />
<br />
Occupy SLC is moving along. A major recent victory was the gaining by the Fed Occupiers of a winning a space at Galavin Plaza, near 200 South between State and Main Streets, as an "educational front" in the center of the financial district. There we are able to directly protest the rule of the rich and powerful by bringing an anti-corporate message to large groups of people 24/7! Elsewhere, the "Town Hall" meetings which are held at "Room B" in the lower level of the library on Mondays and Thursdays from 7-9pm, and which involve much broader forces of "the 99%" who wish to challenge corporate power have in the past week gotten much better organized, efficient, and empowering. The focus of those meetings is to allow specific working groups to meet, communicate, plan and organize the actions, outreach, and messaging of the movement.<br />
<br />
<br />
At Pioneer Park, organization and disorganization pose great challenges as well as opportunities. Last week a low point was reached when it snowed, several tents collapsed from the snow, and most crucially the kitchen was unable to cope with the weather. This was overcome by the energetic actions of several occupiers, including Jesse F, who quickly raised money online and drew up plans for the current, weatherproof design of the kitchen which is working well. <br />
<br />
Yet, what we need is not just a better tarp or shelter here and there, what we need is a clarity of purpose and sense of direction. The park survives today, as much from luck as from anything else. Like a ship adrift at sea, no one is at the helm, half the sails aren't even out, and the anchor is dangling somewhere several meters below the surface. We are drifting along aimlessly among the currents, our maps and compasses and political signs have for weeks remained scattered about the floor of an abandoned room where they are periodically chewed up and stolen away for bedding by humble and self interested creatures while most of the crew has gotten into the rum and occupied the galley where they continue to be served by dutiful cooks themselves completely unaware whichever direction they are drifting in today, what time they will run out of provisions, or whether land and treasure or reefs and enemies are in sight, right behind us, dead ahead, or ominously close. <br />
<br />
<br />
As I write this, I have just been informed there was a death today in the park. Other deaths, one a homicide and another an apparent suicide, have occurred at occupations in other cities. Camping in a park forever waiting to be evicted, run out of food, get snowed on or see people freeze to death is not a political program. It is not the answer to capitalism. It is not even a sane activity for anyone other than a completely desperate and actually homeless person to engage in. <br />
<br />
I believe that ordinary people coming together and talking to one another can figure out the solution to just about anything. This method of discussion, thinking, honest collaboration, and the use of pens and paper has allowed us to do everything from inventing antibiotics to the construction of sewage and water systems to the abolition of legalized segregation and inter-planetary travel. I recommend, that instead of waking up, going about our day, and then going back to bed, that we begin a serious discussion that attempts to find a way forward for us all out of the cold and hunger and apathy and powerlessness and homelessness of our present condition.<br />
<br />
<br />
---<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>PT II: WHAT ARE WE ACTUALLY DOING TO EMPOWER THE "99%" AND DIMINISH THE POWER AND CONTROL OVER SOCIETY OF THE "1%?"</b><br />
<br />
Our movement has much potential, but most of our currently planned actions and events are (at the moment) completely Utopian. What are our events? We have education and propaganda, that is good. There are signs and fliers and there is Street Theatre. Perhaps that will "raise some consciousness", but again it avoids the question of direct struggle and material conditions. We have so much support because "consciousness" has already been painfully raised for most people by having their lives fall apart over the past 3 years of recession and greater than 10% real unemployment. <br />
<br />
<i>What we need is to challenge power directly and organize specific things that can win concrete improvements in the living standards of the 99%</i>. In this article I will address the problems with several currently organized and proposed "actions", discuss a different way to view one's organizational potential, and offer a few concrete suggestions of my own.<br />
<br />
Current active campaigns of the movement are as follows: <br />
<br />
<br />
-To take money out of major banks and put it into credit unions. <br />
<br />
-To protest shopping on "Black Friday" after Thanksgiving. <br />
<br />
And, for good measure, <br />
<br />
-to have a General Strike. <br />
<br />
<br />
Let's look at these one at a time.<br />
<br />
<b><u>With regard to banks</u></b>, I bank with Wells Fargo. I have not taken my money out of their bank and I have no plan to. But I know they are an evil institution. I was a fancy waiter in Denver in 2008 during the Democratic National Convention and I worked a party where banking lobbyists, including Wells Fargo, paid lots of money to the Democrats and bought for them king crab and raw oysters and expensive alcohol and chocolates with little pieces of flake silver and gold on top of it to eat. Yes. Gold and silver that is mined out of the earth in deadly mines and that is very precious. And they were eating it, during a recession. The heartless bastards. Later that fall, after business dropped down and I got laid off, I had bought $10 of $3 a gallon gasoline and a $1.50 coffee on a debit card. An old transaction had gone through unbeknownst to me and Wells Fargo inflicted upon me punitive overdraft fees totaling $70. This really bothered me and I think educated me very well about the inherent evilness of banks that bribe our politicians who look out for their interests, but who then punish their customers when they are caught up in the teeth of the recession. <br />
<br />
To the credit of Wells Fargo, however, I spoke with a sympathetic banker and got the fees taken off. So there are humans there working at the branches after all. Yes. No human pushing papers around an office opening and closing accounts is an enemy of mine. The problem is at the top. And I realize the banks are evil. Though I appreciate the convenience of doing business with them. They have many convenient ATM and branch locations. I move around seasonally for work and work in different towns and states at the same time so it is a convenient bank for me to use. Sure they are an evil bank. But so is every bank. <br />
<br />
I don't think taking my money in or out of any bank is going to accomplish any concrete changes. The social movements of the past in the 1930s and the 1960s that won things like unions, 8 hour working days, the weekend, health insurance, social security, unemployment insurance, that fought racism and segregation and expanded the right to vote and legalized abortion.... none of these things were won by people taking money out of one bank and putting it into another.<br />
<br />
<i>Credit Unions are not the solution</i>. There will still be troops in Afghanistan and a $600 billion dollar pentagon budget and a $69 billion dollar military R&D budget compared to a paltry $6 billion dollar federal investment in alternative energy whether I use a credit union or a major convenient bank. There will still be a two party dictatorship masquerading as a democracy where ever I bank. They still won't let Ralph Nader or the libertarian or the green or any other candidate in the presidential debates. Immigrants will still be scapegoated for our problems and deported and abortion will still be unavailable in over 80% of counties in the United States. Where I bank will change none of this.<br />
<br />
The problem here is much deeper than any one bank. Any one United States' president. Any one law or any one corporations' behavior. The problem, fundamentally, is one of POWER. An elite of super rich and corporate executives have too much. The great majority of the working and middle class have very little. Power, not hard work or luck or thrift or honesty, determines the appropriation of wealth in a capitalist society. It is not against Wells Fargo, or the Bank of America, or Chase , or General Motors, or the Democrats or the Republicans or Lockheed Martin or Boeing or the Pentagon that we have now been driven to revolt against. It is <i>an entire system</i> controlled by parasites and plunderers that is too abominably filthy to be cleansed by a single law, a single reform, or the abolition or even nationalization of a single corporation.<br />
<br />
* <br />
<br />
Another action proposed by the movement is that of <b><u>refusing to shop</u></b>, and attempting to discourage shoppers, from shopping at large stores on "Black Friday". Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving when many stores offer great deals. The anticipated crowds of Black Friday, and the ensuing holiday season offers inadequate though much needed and happily agreed to employment to many citizens. Of course these great deals are quite useful to poorer and working class folks. And you know what? I think poor and working class folks should be able to have things like clothes, blenders, washing machines, and TVs. Sure, most TV rots your brain. And FOX news is straight racist propaganda. But the Daily Show and the Colbert Report and South Park (all on "Comedy Central") are the best news programs on TV and people will get smarter and think more if they see them. Animal Planet and the Discovery Channel are super cool. So is National Geographic Explorer. And Cuddling up with a loved one to watch a movie is fucking awesome. Do you like cuddling up with a loved one and watching a movie? Of course you do. It is romantic and sweet to lie together under a warm blanket and drink something nice and eat popcorn and watch a movie. It could be a movie about anything. Just love or comedy, something lighthearted to allow you to escape for a few hours the soul-destroying horror of ordinary life. Or perhaps you might even watch something political and inspiring that motivates you to become a better revolutionary. Have you seen the movies "Malcolm X" or "Defiance" or "V for Vendetta" or "Land and Freedom"? Those are fucking awesome movies that will make someone way more inspired to take action to challenge the system than will, say, attending many of our movements' meetings!<br />
<br />
It has been suggested that instead of shopping at the large stores we shop at local, smaller stores. Perhaps local and smaller stores do less harm, on average, than the giant capitalists. But it is the nature of capitalism that if we so succeed in patronizing small and local stores that they will only become large capitalists themselves one day, which is precisely the dream of every small businessman. And I do not fall for that marketing trick that "local" businesses are inherently better than "non local" businesses. In 2009 I worked at a small, "local" independent family run restaurant. They did not exploit as many workers as a larger corporate restaurant I worked at in 2007 did. But that is only because they weren't big enough to hire that many people yet. And they did exploit me! The owner illegally stole 20% of waiters' tips every day. He pretended it was going to the kitchen, but the kitchen never saw them and they were only paid an hourly wage. This small businessman was a fucking asshole who stole money from me and from nice, intelligent hard working 18 year old waitresses. He was a fucking parasite. And a "local" one. So a small businessman is not inherently better than a large businessman. <br />
<br />
Giving money to some businesses instead of others in not going to change the systematic injustices of capitalism, the wealth inequalities, the closed nature of our political system, or end the wars or win investment in solar and wind power. As the working and middle classes, we don't have the money that the rich have. Our greatest strength is not with our pocket books. It is with our numbers. On the street, gathering together, defending our jobs and homes from foreclosure and outsourcing, and in the workplace and the school where we can occupy and go on strike and shut down the flow of profits to the top. That is where we are most powerful. <br />
<br />
The "politics of shopping" ignore this, fail to recognize and take advantage of it, and ignore direct actions that could improve people's material conditions. The problem in a recession isn't that people are buying too many things or buying things from certain places instead of others. The problem is that people are broke and don't have a job and they can't buy things they need to survive. Like food. Or housing. Or a fucking TV to watch an awesome movie on and cuddle with a loved one to feel like a human being.<br />
<br />
We need to fight for ourselves. Fight for our material interests. The wealth in society we have produced by our collective toil has been greatly concentrated in the pockets of the greedy and evil few. The people who work the hardest get hung out to dry and blamed for all the problems. The people who work the least and cheat the best get all the money. That needs to change in a big, big way. As a fellow revolutionary I would agree with Martin Luther King, Jr., that it is not just a question of providing a handout for a beggar, but of realizing that a system which produces beggars is an edifice in need of restructuring!<br />
<br />
* * *<br />
<br />
Are there other ideas? Other actions or campaigns? Yes, there is one! <b><u>There is the idea of a General Strike!</u></b> The fucking General Strike! In Salt Lake City, Utah in November 2011! Holy Fucking Shit Indeed! Has there ever been a General Strike in the entire history of the State of Utah? None come to mind, and I am a reasonably well informed person on matters of Utah State History! What is a General Strike? A General Strike is when everyone doesn't go to work, and they picket and march and elect people to a Strike Committee to run the strike and they make leaflets and daily newspapers and they are really really really really really well organized. What was a general strike? There was one in Seattle in 1919 when the working class ran the city for 5 days. There were big ones in Minneapolis and San Francisco in 1934. The was a huge, nation wide one in France in 1968. And who ran these strikes? Who called them? They were run by unions. Not the stagnant, bureaucratic declining shells of corruption like we have today. They were living, breathing unions led and run by an active, involved, radical and democratic membership. The active participation of Socialists and Communists was key to their well managed effectiveness and political leadership. Lessons we have forgotten today.<br />
<br />
Today our movement is calling for a General Strike for a date later this month. And there is no labor support! Ahh, but I am told by a General Strike Organizer that "I talked to some people [in labor] and they were really excited". Wonderful, indeed!<br />
<br />
Calling for a general strike when you have no unions and no organized working class support and no auxiliaries is completely meaningless. There will be no general strike. And yet one is called for. Called like a witch doctor speaking to invisible spirits, expecting to summon them from thin air! What is wrong here?<br />
<br />
It is obvious. A great revolutionary in a revolution once suggested to an assembled crowd three basic principles for them to take into consideration. They were as follows, 1) Distrust the Bourgeoisie. 2) Control Your Leaders, and 3) Rely Only on Your Own Organized Strength. <br />
<br />
And where are we today? We've got #1 pretty good. Though we've re-defined things from a scientific class analysis based on relations of humans to the way things are produced and owned to a vague, neo-populist analysis that focuses on wealth alone in a sweeping an abstract way: the "99%" verses the "1%". But the basic understanding is there. The super wealthy are the problem. <br />
<br />
Then there's #2: Control Your Leaders. That is slightly less than halfway there. <i>Most of our leaders pretend they are not leaders even though they are clearly leading in important areas of work.</i> Behind the pseudo-radical semantics of us being a "leaderless" movements lies the reality of leaders who are unaccountable and uncontrolled. There in lies a tremendous danger. Elections, a great way to tie accountability and responsiveness to any important position (such as a newsletter editor, a website manager, a room facilitator, a minutes writer, an email list organizer, a permit holder, etc...) are usually ignored. At a few times when they are so obviously necessary to the basic functioning of the movement, such as a facilitator at a town hall meeting of 65 people, a facilitator is elected. Though it is not called an election. And instead of a clear and simple raise of hands to validate the authority of the elected facilitator a confusing "consensus" is taken that many people in the room do not participate in one way or another, nor do they understand. So we are still learning the most basic rules of leadership that every professional, political, and union organization in the world has spent the past few hundred years developing. <br />
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And #3? The last one? Ahh! This is the hardest, and the weakest. We do NOT rely on our own organized strength. We rely on phantoms and hopes. The same mistake many of us made with Obama- where we not only trusted a leader we didn't control, or even try to control, but we trusted a leader we couldn't control and we relied on his promises, rather than on what was organized, real, visible, and our own! <br />
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How the General Strike proposal exposes our great failure to appreciate this third point! Instead of being at the place, where perhaps we may be several years from now, where organized and unorganized workers are largely won to the idea of struggle and in communication with one another through official as well as informal horizontal networks; where the idea of a general strike might actually be possible, we are, instead... here. Today. In Salt Lake City in November 2011. Where we have nowhere near the organized strength necessary for a general strike. But does this stop the printing presses? No. It does not. The flyers are made and printed, "General Strike" proclaimed boldly on the front. And they are hung up. And instead of relying on our own organized strength we are relying on the vague HOPES (that no one, deep down actually believes in) that somehow, if we have a nice enough looking flyer, and we manage to put it up in enough places, that it will just *convince* several hundred thousand breadwinners in a recession to risk their jobs and put their families at risk to refuse to go to work and to come out to a demonstration called by people they've never met on behalf of a cause infamous for its chaotic leadership and its inability to coherently define itself!<br />
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So of course, there will be no general strike, and it will fail, and any union representative from a president to the lowliest shop steward or card holder looking at our flyer will laugh at the Utopian ultra-leftism of it. Such is the level of thinking currently leading the work of the Town Halls' events committee!<br />
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<b>I will ask, then, what IS our own organized strength? What DO we have to work with? What CAN we realistically count on?</b><br />
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Look around Pioneer Park and see us for what we are! Talk to us and interview us and ask us questions! Get to know us, each other, ourselves! We are the people with good ideas and morals and intentions who are confounded in every election cycle by a pathetic choice between two heartless war mongering and out of touch elites bought and paid for by defense contractors, polluting energy companies, the pharmaceutical industry and the at-large super-rich. We are the ripped off unappreciated toilers who built the country only to then get thrown out on the scrap heap when the money changers on Wall Street pushed papers around wrong and fucked the economy up. We are the broken down, homeless, hated and scapegoated and made fun of and feared Salt Of The Fucking Earth. We are between jobs and caught up and addicted and degraded and alternately selfish and selfless because we have Traumatic Brain Injuries and personality disorders and a keen interest in personal survival. We are also activists and who are smart and skilled and who are probably spending a lot of our time worrying about and feeding and clothing and sheltering a lot of other people who probably don't give a damn about us or the cause. Yes. We are what society is, and what society needs, whether it knows it or not! We are the 99%, no doubt about that.<br />
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The crisis has arrived. Injustice, and the distribution of Power that makes this injustice possible, is clear to us all. And now we must deal with it, develop solutions and strategies and concrete campaigns. And we can't half ass it, or put our faith into illusionary forces. We can't rely on propaganda alone, and hope that the right call to action, or the right slogan, will bring everyone out to some great big jolly "fun" activity. Let us become more serious than that! Let us agree with the great Revolutionary, Thomas Paine, who famously said:<br />
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<i>"When it becomes necessary to do a thing, the whole heart and soul should go into the measure, or not attempt it. That crisis was then arrived, and there remained no choice but to act with determined vigor, or not to act at all."</i><br />
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What we need is to challenge power directly and to organize specific actions and campaigns that can win concrete improvements in the living standards of the 99%. Victory is the best propaganda. People are busy and their time is important. They will rightfully distrust any persons or movements who seem to enjoy wasting time and working inefficiently. And what we need to inspire people today isn't hollow slogans on leaflets or the collapsing rhetorical masturbation of a directionless, unaccountable, inarticulate and "leaderless" inertia! <u>THE AMOEBA IS BUT THE LOWEST FORM OF LIFE- it is not an organizational structure to be replicated by higher beings!</u> Propulsion by any creature takes a great deal of division of labor among constituent parts, as well as coordination, accountability, and definition of roles. Let us abandon all empty talk and focus instead upon the original, radical idea, that revolution will not happen in a day, and that a protracted struggle on ideological, political, and economic fronts over months and years is necessary to build up the confidence, will, and organization among the popular classes that is absolutely a necessary perquisite for any political or economic restructuring of society from below. <br />
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<b>PT III: MY PROPOSAL FOR PIONEER PARK TO LOOK FROM TENT CITIES AND TOWARDS A PERMANENT SOLUTION TO HOMELESSNESS</b><br />
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Unlike most Occupations currently happening around the country, in our unique case, we have become predominately a park full of actually homeless people, and it is a minority of us who are out here for the purpose of making a political statement. I agree with Seth that this is perhaps a blessing in disguise, and provides us with an opportunity to organize support around a concrete campaign that could directly improve the material conditions of the people hardest hit by the recession, as well as politically attack and win ground against the currently dominant morality of selfishness, greed, and degradation of human life. <br />
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I propose that we should organize ourselves to a political campaign around the slogan "Housing is a right." We have through no intention or fault of our own managed to organize much of the city's homeless into a political movement that asserts housing and feeding oneself as a human right. We have dramatically demonstrated the need for comprehensive housing and the inadequacies of the current private shelter /charity and cash strapped governmental housing assistance programs by our tents that are set up in the park. <br />
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I propose that we consciously organize this into a movement to make housing a right. We have an incredibly wonderful strategic position to do this. The city would rather us disappear from the park. I as a homeless person would rather have shelter with a roof and central heating than I would freeze to death in tent in a park all winter. Most of the homeless people here feel the same way. Many people in the city politically support our message, that people should be placed over profits, and that housing should be provided for those who need it. And we've put a lot of embarrassing pressure on the city power structure as well as the deep pockets of the large financial institutions. We can use that pressure and this opportunity to win a better shelter and housing assistance program. <br />
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Also through no fault of our own, the highly visible presence of drug addiction in this park can be featured front and center in this movement to radically challenge the way drug addiction is treated in our society. Currently it is treated as a criminal problem. In reality it is a medical problem, and it is a moral crisis that we as a society have chosen to keep our drug addicts freezing outside in the street, rather than welcomed into the shelter of a secure and warm and humane treatment system. Asserting the right of housing and treatment for even the most disparaged, "hopeless", drug addicted and mentally ill people is not only a moral necessity, but it is a great political attack against the prison industrial complex. Millions of dollars are made building prisons and employing judges, lawyers, sheriffs, policemen, and prison guards to take non-violent drug users and turn them into felons who must unproductively be housed at great public expense in dehumanizing facilities where useful education is denied and an informal criminal education is abundantly accessible. This is a system that degrades human life. There is no other way to put it. And it is here that we could at best strike a great blow, and at worst at least cause a few cracks in the politics that hold it all together.<br />
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Therefore, my proposal is:<br />
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<i>We, the residents of Pioneer Park, have hereby decided to constitute ourselves into a movement to abolish homelessness in the Salt Lake City area. We are directly abolishing homelessness by taking over a public park and using it to shelter and feed ourselves. This is a temporary solution, and in the interests of finding a permanent solution we hereby have set ourselves to advocate the following demands:<br />
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1) For funds to be made available, via grants and tax payer subsides, to improve the existing and inadequate shelter system as well as to construct new homeless shelters. New Shelters must be made ASAP and they must be well lit, well heated, handicapped accessible and conveniently located. They must be staffed by well paid and highly qualified social workers as well as by security guards who are able to ensure a violence and drug free environment for all seeking to escape street life. Wherever possible, every effort must be made to secure the dignity and the safety of all needing shelter by having private rooms available for families, couples, and individual citizens in need of shelter. <br />
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2) In addition to the construction of new family- friendly, drug and violence free shelters, we must acknowledge the special needs of other populations. For the safety and health of all citizens separate shelters should be constructed for mentally ill people who have special needs. Private institutions with documented and respectable experience in managing group homes for intellectually disabled people need to be invited to Salt Lake and involved in the solution to the housing crisis. Along with this, publicly managed institutions and systems must also be included as part of the solution.<br />
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3) A third category of drug addicted individuals also exists among the homeless population and everywhere in every shelter system has threatened and troubled the life of non-drug users seeking themselves a way out of homelessness. We recognize fact that people who are addicted to hard drugs are more likely to have their morals corroded by the vices of theft, violence, and unreliability. This does not change the fact that all those who are addicted to drugs are still human beings with lives that have value. Housing is a right for them as much as anyone else. Therefore, we propose a joint state- and private partnership to secure funding and management for a system of shelters and group homes for the drug addicted. While we believe the exact details of the management of such a place be left to experts with experience in this field, we propose the following suggestions:<br />
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-No one is arrested or put in jail for non-violent drug use.<br />
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-A needle exchange program is made available at all locations and drug treatment programs are made available. Free transport is also provided from each location to AA or NA type groups' meetings and back.<br />
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-Instead of being hoarded and stolen, theft and security is obtained by having institutional security supervise the keeping of residents' drugs in guarded, private on-site safe deposit boxes.<br />
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-Private, monitored rooms are made available for drug addicted individuals to do their drugs in. This reform is recognized as being safer for the individual as well as the general public than the current policy of forcing drug addicted individuals to seek public places to do drugs in.<br />
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-24/7 on site security is maintained and all violent persons are referred to city authorities for prosecution.<br />
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4) Upon the erection of a shelter system that safely, and with dignity, meets the needs of our city's homeless population, we will happily disband our occupation of Pioneer Park where we are currently with difficulty and discomfort housing ourselves within inferior system of shelter. This does not signify the end of our resolve to fight the abuses of the current power structure and priorities, but it will allow us to return the park to the city for other uses while we focus our energies productively and efficiently on other campaigns to reform other aspects of injustice in the Salt Lake City area.</i><br />
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At the moment, many of our "activists" feel that camping in a park forever without issuing any concrete demands or statement of purpose is going to somehow... be a good idea. I think these people are out of their fucking minds, and what they are most likely to do is to piss away a great opportunity to challenge corporate power, make lives better for people, and ultimately, they're going to get evicted and the kitchen will be torn down and the tents will be confiscated and the people who were relying on the protective cover of their movement to camp in the park are going to be out on their own once again scurrying about in an uncaring world of isolated homelessness.<br />
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The right to housing, and the act of providing love and care for all persons regardless of their position is a notion that has deep roots in many religions. Here in Utah, we can use this fact to gain support from many religious faiths.<br />
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As I political program of activity to win the above demands I propose:<br />
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1) We discuss this proposal with all homeless members of the Pioneer Park Occupation to see how they feel about it, and what level of involvement they would be able to contribute.<br />
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2) All of us educate ourselves as much as we can on the nature of the existing shelter system, and that we produce a document that lists its deficiencies. Also, we should educate ourselves on the struggles of places that have comprehensive and well functioning shelter systems and see what we can learn from them. These lessons can be added to the above document to produce a useful literature.<br />
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3) We hold a press conference at the Park announcing this campaign and these demands<br />
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4) We elect delegates we trust who are articulate and smart to meet with state legislature members to discuss our demands.<br />
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5) We empower the same delegates to meet with members of the most powerful financial institutions that we are currently protesting, especially if they have been bailed out by public funds, and we invite them to made charitable grants towards the construction of an improved SLC shelter system. Our movement has given them a political motive to participate in this. But obtaining their participation we would win a concrete victory for our own material relief, and in the process demonstrate the effectiveness of social movements to organize against the morality and power structures of capitalism.<br />
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6) We attempt to secure the broadest possible involvement in a public campaign of protests, at the park and at strategic targets, from homeless members of the park, homeless people not currently sleeping at the park, and any other political supporters.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06418793670220718137noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6078009723392950689.post-83064162319085423972011-11-07T09:38:00.001-07:002011-11-07T09:40:29.522-07:00New BlogsThis blog has been interesting and good to have for the past several years.<br />
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But it is too convoluted. Theres political things, geological things, river things, ghost town things, personal things... it's too all over the place.<br />
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So I decided to seperate things out to give them their own focus and better organization. From now on, in addition to the already built <a HREF="http://ghosts.noisenobodys.com">promotional site</A> for the ghost town project, I am running <a HREF="http://utahghosttowns.blogspot.com">utahghosttowns.blogspot.com</A>. The blogging format there will be a conveient one, not just to share photos with, but to begin the process of drafting articles that will later become chapters on the histories of some 40 - odd places all around the state.<br />
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As far as specifically river things and personal guiding life things go, I also started <a HREF="http://southeastutah.blogspot.com">southeastutah.blogspot.com</A>.<br />
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Both of those already have a few updates. As the winter approaches I should be having time to update them with many more.<br />
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What then, for laughing fish?<br />
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Maybe it'll become a more political blog. Can't see what else is left!Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06418793670220718137noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6078009723392950689.post-16148095253214903292011-11-02T13:46:00.006-06:002011-11-02T14:04:40.278-06:00Occupation in Danger! Undemocratic meetings! An unaccountable Website! And How to Run A Meeting!<IMG SRC="http://www.occupyslc.org/sites/occupyslc.com/files/Occupy-Logo-Red.png"><br /><br /><br />Thoughts on the Movement by a Participant No 3: Nov 2, 2011<br />( Available as a PDF <A HREF="http://www.noisenobodys.com/protest/3_howtorunameeting.pdf">here</A>).<br /><br /><i>Distrust the rich and powerful, control your own leaders, rely only on your own organized strength!</i><br /><br />(this newsletter is written, edited, printed, and distributed with his own funds and on his own behalf by an anonymous citizen who is part of the occupy movement and who values accountability, transparency, and democracy).<br /><br /><br /><b>Contents:</b><br /><br />1.Undemocratic management of the Town Hall Meetings<br />2. The <A HREF="http://www.occupyslc.org/">occupyslc.org</A> website is not controlled by this movement<br />3. How to Run a meeting <br />4. The Park is really chaotic and as a result the occupation is in danger.<br /><br />----------------------------------<br /><br /><br /><b>1) The last town hall meeting that took place at 7pm November 1st at the Library was run completely undemocratically. The people who showed up never had a chance to be part of deciding what the agenda was, how long it was going to last, or who was going to be the facilitator.</b><br /><br /><br /> I was invited to speak to a church's Sunday School last Sunday and I had a very productive time discussing the movement with the people gathered there. They generally supported the 99% message and several of them expressed an interest in getting involved and they gave me their emails. I told them about the town hall meeting and invited them to it. I don't think any of them made it out, which is fortunate, because I felt it was probably the least accessible, understandable, or democratically run meeting I have ever been to in my life.<br /><br /><br /> <i>If a meeting is started without any structure or organized roles in place, it is not going to be a productive meeting.</i> At the town hall, people who were comfortable talking over others who had raised their hand up before them spoke to one another for one hour and 15 minutes. No time was allotted to discuss any specific topics. After hearing committee reports discussion wandered aimlessly. People who cared more about their own comments being heard than they did about listening to everyone's opinions dominated the evening. Many people who probably had good things to say or good questions to ask raised their hands and looked around confused. They often looked at the person who had been talking the most and who on their own initiative but with no democratic mandate had been “leading” the meeting. People hoping to be called on by this person were never called on. <br /><br /><br /> This one person (that no one elected to anything!) effectively ran the meeting and talked as long as they wanted to during the first one hour and 15 minutes. <u>At that point I was rather fed up with seeing people raise their hands and not get called on.</u> I asked this person, who had herself done most of the talking and who started the meeting and was defacto leading it if she was indeed the facilitator. She said she was not. She said “no one” was running the meeting. Clearly, that was not working very well. In an effort to remedy the situation I then introduced a resolution to the floor for me to take stack for the next 10 minutes to go through people who had been raising their hands and hear their comments. The motion was seconded. And consensus was taken in favor of it.<br /><br /><br /> I called on the first person who had had his hand up for a while and wrote down the next two people who also put their hands up on a speakers' list. At that point the aforementioned one person who had talked more than anyone else in the room for the previous 1 hour and 15 minutes interrupted that speaker and said “we didn't have time” to hear more people. She was asked to respect the stack and she had trouble doing this. As the last person who raised his hand was heard from she walked towards the back of the room and began talking to others who gathered around her about how upset she was with the fact that I tried to take a speakers' list. At this point the meeting broke out into working groups, which met, though there was not time for them to come back together and say what they discussed to the general body.<br /><br /><br /> <i>Was the shortage of time due to the fact that I had intervened to allow a few previously ignored people to be heard before we broke up into working groups, or was the shortage of time due to the fact that THERE HAD BEEN ABSOLUTELY NO STRUCTURE, AGENDA, OR TIME KEEPING FOR THE PREVIOUS ONE HOUR AND 20 MINUTES? </i> <br /><br /><br /> Our movement is plagued by many difficulties. We are plagued by people who show up to meetings and talk as long as they want . We are plagued by people who come to meetings and attack people who try and propose a useful, democratic structure for them. We are plagued by people who want to make decisions on behalf of an “occupying” movement who have themselves never occupied anything. I don't know if these are just people with poor social skills, or if they are actual enemies of the movement who have infiltrated it in order to disrupt it. It is pointless to accuse such a person of being either, because the the effect is the same. These people, unrestrained by democratic structures work to perpetuate the continued disempowerment of everyone present. And they will continue doing this just as long as structurelessness, disguised as “liberatory anarchism” is allowed to continue unchallenged.<br /><br /><br /><b> IF YOU ARE PART OF THIS MOVEMENT AND YOU WANT IT TO SUCCEED YOU ARE GOING TO HAVE TO FIGHT THE “TYRANNY OF STRUCTURELESS” AND STAND UP FOR DEMOCRACY, ACCOUNTABILITY, AND THE STRUCTURED FACILITATION OF MEETINGS.</b><br /><br /><br />--------------------------------------------<br /><br /><br /><b>2) Those Occupying SLC today do not Control the website occupyslc.org </b><br /><br /> The people occupying Pioneer Park do not control it. The people occupying nothing but their apartments and their chairs but who do attend town hall meetings at the library in order to relate to “the movement” in some way also do not control it. Neither do the people occupying the Fed. WHO DOES CONTROL IT?<br /><br /><br /> I don't know.<br /><br /><br /> As it was discussed at the last town hall meeting, someone built the website, and then “got busy” with their personal life. So they have not been updating it. People with events to post on the calender and not been able to do so. I have not been able to post minutes from GA meetings that take place at Pioneer Park on it. We do not control our own public face! A new web team has assembled as a working group at the last town hall. They are planning to build a new site and get access to put it up. I asked how long they thought this would take. They said they don't know. I reminded them that many people who are sleeping out in the cold every night for several weeks very much ought to have prompt control over their own public face. I was criticized for phrasing things so “dramatically”. <i>This is exactly why our “leaderless” movement will fail! We have no accountability! People volunteer for things and then flake out! People in positions of power, such as website mangers, are not elected! Under the name of “Anarchy” the same structures of power we say we oppose have been recreated!</i><br /><br /><br /> Please come to the next town hall at the library this Thursday at 7pm if you are a serious person with web skills who can help us to remedy this situation.<br /><br /><br />--------------------------<br /><br /><br /><br /><b>3) How to Run a Meeting</b><br /><br /><br />This is how you run a meeting. First, leave your ideology at the door. It doesn't matter whether you think “consensus” or “voting” is a better way of making decisions. It doesn't matter if you think “after capitalism” having “no leaders” would be nice. You have to look here at the crowd that is right in front of you right now. Think about how much time you have, what things need to be accomplished, and then start figuring out how the meeting can best be run to be efficient, to allow everyone to participate, to make sure malicious and disruptive people will not be able to hold up the meeting, and to make decisions in an orderly way.<br /><br /><br /> First, get roles assigned. You will need to get people to volunteer and be approved by the group to be a <b>facilitator, a time keeper, a stack taker, and a minutes taker</b>.<br /><br /><br />A <b>Facilitator</b> is important. He or she is not a dictator, but they can at times jump in and say things. They are there to make sure we do not get off topic, that what should be a general discussion does not devolve into just two people talking to each other about specific details that could be worked out after the meeting. They keep an eye on the big picture, and if, say, people start trying to all talk about what someone just said as an announcement, they can remind the crowd, “Hey, this is just announcements right now. Please only raise your hand if you have an announcement. After announcements are all heard we will have general discussion.”<br /><br /><br /> The <b>Time Keeper</b> is also important. Let's say the agenda of a meeting is a) 5 minutes for announcements, b) 15 minutes for committee report backs, b) 20 minutes for general discussion c) 30 minutes for working group break outs, and d) 15 minutes where working groups come back and report what they just discussed and introduce proposals to be voted on by the generally assembled people. A time keeper needs a watch and can give like a “5 minute warning” if we're running close on time. He can remind the facilitator when time is up for a specific topic. <br /><br /><br /> The <b>“Stack Taker”</b> keeps a speakers' list. A speakers' list is sometimes called a “stack”. This person must be very observant and look around the whole circle or room often. If someone raises their hand, they write it down on a piece of paper. During the discussion they call on the people who raised their hand in order that their hands were raised. An exception to this is if one person keeps raising their hand and always seems to want to talk after every person talks. The stack taker should move this person to a lower place in the list and allow people who haven't spoken before yet to speak before them. <i>A stack taker should be a different person from the facilitator.</i> If a facilitator is so focused taking stack he will be distracted and forget to keep his eye on the bigger picture. <br /><br /><br /> Lastly, have a responsible person be the <b>Minutes Taker</b>. This person writes down the essence of what was said, what announcements were made, what issues were discussed, what were the basic arguments of each side of a discussion, what proposals were introduced, and what decisions were made. In a democratic organization these minutes are shared with everyone who is part of the movement as soon as possible after the meeting. In a movement such as an occupation with limited internet access, minutes should be sent out online and also put on the website,<i> but they must also be printed and distributed among everyone at the occupation.</i><br /><br /><br /> <b>Decisions</b> in a meeting can be made in many ways. Sometimes decisions are never up for discussion or debate, they are just spoken of like they are already going to happen. That is an undemocratic way of making decisions. A better way is to allow voting, or if you absolutely must to use “consensus”- which I personally think is really confusing and redundant- but which some people who are part of this movement which is currently extremely disorganized, inefficient, unaccountable, and in danger of collapse seem to think is a better way to make decisions. I don't care how you make decisions. But whether you vote on stuff or use “consensus”, here is how it must work:<br /><br /><br /> Number one, someone formally introduces a <b>Proposal</b>. Number 2, the proposal is not discussed or voted on unless it is seconded. You second a proposal by raising your hand and say “I second this proposal”. Then some time should be set aside for it to be discussed. NO OTHER DISCUSSION NOT RELATED TO THE PROPOSAL SHOULD OCCUR UNTIL THE PROPOSAL IS EITHER VOTED/ CONSENSED ON AND ADOPTED, OR UNTIL THE PROPOSAL IS REJECTED.<br /><br /><br /> That is it. That is how you run a meeting. If you decided not to have a facilitator, and a stack taker, and a time keeper, people who love to hear themselves talk are going to talk the most, while people who like to hear what is said, think about it, and then maybe say something are not going to be heard at all. Any meeting with more than a small handful of people who already agree with each other on what they are there for and who are very respectful of each other, will require these basic structures. If you have a facilitator, a stack keeper, and a time keeper, you have a chance at having a democratic meeting. If you decide not to have these things, you WILL be condemning yourself to a “dictatorship of the loud and arrogant.” There is no middle ground. That is exactly how it is. And lastly, beware, for<br /><br /><br />PENS AND NOTEBOOKS ARE NEEDED FOR ACCOUNTABILITY. DISTRUST ANY MEETINGS WHERE THEY ARE CONSPICUOUSLY ABSENT. <br /><br /><br />--------------------<br /><br /><br /><b>4) The Park is Really Chaotic and the Occupation There is in Danger</b><br /><br /> The park is super chaotic. Someone named “Tank” who hung around for a while and decided to be park of the medical team stole Heathers' dog. It is a pregnant black and white pit bull. People still fight each other pretty frequently. We are organized enough to feed ourselves, and we finally got port a potties. Jesse is trying to organize donations better. Rob is trying to make the free school work better. Edward and Johnathan have done great work to get finances more organized and flyers finally printed and distributed. But there is still much to be done. Of all the people sleeping here, there is not enough energy or inspiration or self discipline to EVEN HOLD SIGNS UP ON THE STREET CORNER DURING RUSH HOUR. That is the ONE most basic thing we can do to share our message. I was at the park today and at 11:22 AM I took the tarp off the library/ lit table. That table is the one most basic political resource we have. It is where you go when you visit the park and where we have materials to share with visitors. And by 'nigh noon no one of all the people sleeping there had even bothered to take the tarp of it so the stuff there could be seen.<br /><br /><br /> Most people staying at the park are more interested in personal survival and not freezing to death than they are in political protest and fighting the 1%. They are not helping with day to day organizing, but because of this the future of the park existing as a safe place for them to eat and sleep is not guaranteed. Most people “part of this movement” who say they are interested in fighting the 1% do not show up at the park, do not help us get things organized, and do not help create, print, and distribute political materials. The park is loosing its political focus. Our best activists are over extended and burning themselves out. We have no security, no control over our website, we do not write up and share minutes of the General Assemblies, and very few people camping here even bother to come to the General Assemblies. If we want the occupation to continue some behaviors need to change. If you are camping here and you like the fact that you have a place to not freeze to death you need to step up and help keep it clean and peaceful. If you are very involved in some kind of political work but you are not trying to come up with a longer term plan and goal for the park, the whole occupation will stagnate around you and eventually crumble.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06418793670220718137noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6078009723392950689.post-11708552264676966862011-10-30T15:15:00.005-06:002011-10-30T18:56:56.684-06:00We took the park. Now what?<IMG SRC="http://www.sltrib.com/csp/cms/sites/dt.common.streams.StreamServer.cls?STREAMOID=mH3PlGKYO3Uho4JoSAPdLs$daE2N3K4ZzOUsqbU5sYsVbBr__n8RvsND_OE9CH0BWCsjLu883Ygn4B49Lvm9bPe2QeMKQdVeZmXF$9l$4uCZ8QDXhaHEp3rvzXRJFdy0KqPHLoMevcTLo3h8xh70Y6N_U_CryOsw6FTOdKL_jpQ-&CONTENTTYPE=image/jpeg"><br />(photo, salt lake tribune)<br /><br /><A HREF="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/29/opinion/what-the-costumes-reveal.html">Read</A> about the eviction law firm that dresses up as homeless people for Halloween! Go <A HREF="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/oct/28/scott-olsen-example-occupy-movement">here </A> for a good Guardian UK article about the movement, and the police repression and agent provocateurs in Oakland. <A HREF="http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/interactive/2011/oct/18/occupy-protests-map-world">here</A> is the very large occupy map. <A HREF="http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/52799991-78/park-pioneer-homeless-occupy.html.csp">Here</A> is an article the Salt Lake tribune just wrote on the Occupy SLC movement. <br /><br />A PDF of my following comments is available <A HREF="http://www.noisenobodys.com/protest/thoughtsonthemovementbyaparticipant_no2_oct30_2011.pdf">here</A> if you would like to print them out.<br /><br />-----------------------------------------------------<br /><br /><br /><br /><b>Thoughts On The Movement By a Participant, # 2 Oct 20, 2011 6:20 pm</b><br /><br /><i>(Is this the last one of these I write? Maybe. If I get a job I'll keep it up and keep printing them if people say they like it).</i><br /><br /><br />It has been a busy month. We've got our movement up and running, and we are responding to our first instances of repression and political attack. What we have to do is figure out what the park is and what its plan is, as well as how to coordinate a broader movement. I am a seasonal worker currently living out my car trying to find housing and a job in the Salt Lake / Wasatch Front area. I am also very pissed off at the political system that keeps trying to destroy my life by laying me off and making me spend all my savings on gas money. I have a slum lord trying to screw up my credit years after he stole my security deposit in 2007 and I have a truck lease I am trying to pay off. I am very angry at the system and I have spent a lot of the past two weeks trying to fight it here at Occupy SLC. <br /><br />I am glad Pioneer Park got occupied and held. It has provided me with a place to stay and cook and eat in safety without being chased around like a rat every time a light is shined on me. It's fed me sometimes. And it has allowed me to be part of making some political protest of my condition. So I like it. But where is it going? We have to figure out what the next step is. The following is my thoughts on the subject.<br /><br />I believe the two things the movement needs to do are to try and figure out how to:<br /><b><br />1) Remove power from the hands of the one percent and transfer it to "the people" as a whole.<br /><br />2) Demand and fight for specific reforms that will ameliorate the effects of the humanitarian and economic disaster the decisions of the one percent have created among the unemployed, the working poor, and the declining middle classes.<br /></b><br />How does that relate to Occupying a park? Where does that strategy fit in? This issue explores that.<br /><br />---------------------------<br /><br /><b>1.THE GOAL OF THE HOMELESS IS TO STOP BEING HOMELESS</b><br /><br />(It is not to convince the entire working and middle classes of why they should be homeless too! The foreclosure banks, lawfirms, and the evicting sheriff's offices are doing enough of that already!)<br /><br />What we at the park have done so far has been mostly to provide services of food and housing for the transient and unemployed and long term homeless. We've done this by taking direct action to turn a park into a "Grapes of Wrath" style tent colony of actually unemployed and homeless people. <u>The park is</u> that. In itself it is <u>an act of defiance that radically asserts our humanity and the value of our lives and our rights to food and shelter.</u><br /><br />We are that much more than we are just political activists who came to camp to make a statement. Most of the people who started doing this occupation for political reasons alone three weeks ago left because when they showed up they got scared of the drugs and attitudes of the long term homeless who live here. As they should have been. Because it is fucking scary. In America, as many people already knew and as many people more are finding out, when you are homeless, or semi homeless, suddenly the presence of drugs, drug users, and bad attitudes start to become part of your reality. They are there whether you like it or not. As long as there is a system like this one running things that does not value human life many people who are beaten down will choose to turn to drugs and the related petty crime out of despair and survival. That is just how it is. Those of us still here working at the park know this and we aren't afraid of it. We are here putting in a lot of time to keep the park working because we don't have a choice. This is the last refuge open to us and we are taking our stand.<br /><br />Most of the people camping here are here because they need shelter. Not because they are <b>choosing</b> to come camping in the cold to make some kind of political statement.<br /><br />We've come here and we are surviving. But is the goal to stay here forever? I think it isn't. No movement of the unemployed or homeless in the past has ever made the right to camp indefinitely in a public park through the cold winter a political demand. The political demands have always been for adequate housing, and “work or wages” as the unemployed often wrote on their signs in the 1930s. <br /><br />The other day I made a great friend in the city who supports our “movement of the 99%” and who her self is living in a car, staying on friends' couches, and who has a job making $10 an hour but who with it cannot afford a place to live where she and her 6 kids could stay. What am I supposed to say to this person? Do I WANT her to stay in the park with her 6 kids? Hell no! I want her kids somewhere warm and safe! This is not a safe place for kids! Is this where you'd like your kids to be living? If your kids are here it is probably because you have no other choice but to take them here. That is fine and I will be part of doing what I can to work for you but surely, you'd prefer they be staying for the next 6 months of blizzards and sub-freezing temperatures somewhere with heating and running water!!<br /><br />In the world I want to build, people freezing in a park all winter wouldn't happen. People would be housed. And today much housing stands vacant while people are thrown out into the cold! The speculators have built more homes than they can sell! They kicked us out of our houses to foreclose them and many of them sit idle. There is housing, and people need houses. This occupation is a temporary measure for me, because I am going to fight to find somewhere better to spend my winter because staying here and sleeping on my truck sucks! I will do that by trying to find a permanent place with water and electricity to park my small camper, or by finding someone with an extra room I can rent out cheap. If I have trouble with that I will be looking at every type of shelter and social service our overstretched social safety net can help me with. And short of that, I will perhaps be forced to occupy something else, like an abandoned building, as a squat. I won't stay in the park all winter because staying in a park when you are homeless sucks. I like the fact that I can stay here now, but it is a stop gap, emergency measure. I will fight along with all of you to be able to stay here as long as you can, but I believe, like intelligent animals that we are who recognize that indoor plumbing and central heating is preferable to winter camping, that <i>our park should work together to make itself unnecessary.</i> We should work to get ourselves into better places to live. We need to fight the system, take on the banks and politicians, form alternate political organizations, form unions at our jobs and schools and be willing to have sit ins and strikes and occupations of <i>political</i> and <i>economic</i> targets for the purposes of disrupting their operations. I can do that a lot more effectively when I can get a good nights' rest, when I can actually date or marry someone and have a place for us to live happily. When I am thus in a good mood. When I am warm and I can have both a refrigerator and a freezer to cook food that I want to cook, and not just a cooler that is a freezer and a fridge at different times in the same day. Having that stability would make me a lot more, sustainable and effective of an activist than I am in my present operation. Because right now I am more concerned about immediate survival than anything else. <br /><br />So what operational conclusions do we draw from this? I believe our goal should be to quit being homeless as soon as possible. We could start trying to link individuals up with programs to move them into transitional and permanent housing. For those who remain and can not be helped by these programs, we could continue the occupation with THE SPECIFIC FOCUS of DEMANDING from the city adequate housing. We will never live adequately in tents with no security or heating in a park with heavy drug traffic. We could demand that the city locate an unused building that has central heating and running water and allows us to turn it into a permanent “transient” housing location. We could demand that they get a real kitchen that serves three square meals a day with city bought food and paid employees. That would be a really great thing for the city to have. There would be different locations to make it more manageable. That would put us into the property management business, and eventually the whole program could be turned over to professional paid management. We could also have that “office of transience” give loans or grants, which are paid directly to landlords, not to applicants, to get people into apartments<br /><br />How to make something like that run, and how to deal with the questions of drug treatment, and how to made it fraud free, is hard. There could be “family” locations that have stricter tolerance for drugs. Maybe we could have specific places where people who are addicted to drugs could do them without freezing to death, but where they were monitored for their safety and kept away from families and non-users they might otherwise threaten. Bureaucrats and charities here and in other countries have been thinking about these issues for a long time. Their budgets are low and the “war on drugs” has perpetuated homelessness by treating addicts as worthless criminals, rather than as people's sons and daughters and fathers and mothers who have FOR WHATEVER REASON gotten involved with something nasty that they need HELP surviving through, and eventually leaving. There is a history of ideas and attempts to do this kind of stuff that we could look at. I see a movement for this as one potential direction for us to take. It would take a lot of work and research to focus on developing specific and workable proposals for. But it is something we should do. What do you think? Do you have better ideas? Tell me them!<br /><br /><i>Occupying is a tactic. But just occupying a park won't cure the ills of society. The revolution takes a lot more than good camping skills. Let's not “Fetishize a tactic”.</i><br /><br />Coming together to help feed ourselves and secure for us housing via our direct action of taking the park was an important victory for us, and one that we are benefiting from. Figuring out our own next steps is difficult because we are half providing these direct food and shelter services, and half being part of making political statements, holding signs, etc. Though very few of us seeking shelter at the park are actually holding the signs! That itsself is because many of us at the park just there to survive, and we have a lot of personal issues and health problems we are dealing with that make “activism” difficult. <b>I don't know what the next step or the right plan is either, but I look forward to working with all of you to figure it out.</b><br /><br />"Occupying something" is a tactic, not a solution itself. And a lot of people are dreaming that the occupation itself will become the nucleus of a new society. Yet that conflicts with the most basic working class / unemployed needs and demands for housing, food, shelter, etc. The struggle isn't to get the single working mother of 6 to live in a sketchy park with her kids all winter. The struggle is to get her into a warm house with running water and a refrigerator. The park occupation is a stop gap temporary optional measure, albeit one with a political character. But the new society I want to live in is not one of people living in parks. It's people living in houses. And parks being nice places to hang out and enjoy during the day time, or maybe at night around Christmas with happy kids eating roasted chestnuts.<br /><br />What we need <u>To Solve The Bigger Problems</u> is a broad, political movement that puts demands on the political system and wins the appropriation of resources for people who need them, rather than using our resources for bank bailouts, military contractors, etc. Where the self help direct action of taking over a park to have a place to live and cook ends, and the movement to fight for political demands begins, is a gray and fuzzy line. Different occupations have different character, different balances between unemployed and transient people needing a place to stay and activists camping as a political statement. So exact steps forward need to be figured out locally.<br /><br />However, the danger is to limit ourselves to the occupying strategy, to *fetishizing* it as THE tactic to be done to "win". The power structure doesn't need to repress us like they did in Oakland. Eventually people will get tired and leave if they can, because it is getting colder out. And then the homeless and people living in their cars not as a political statement but because they have to will be left alone and on their own like they were before. So we can't pretend that just staying in a park is the one thing we are trying to get everyone in society to do. People camping in the winter in a snowy park with overworked toilets and little no personal space and burritos with no meat in them is not the society I want to live in. It's a product of the society I am trying to overthrow.<br /><br />What we need is to take a hard look at reality. See exactly what we are, what we have, what we can do, and where we should be going. We can't just allow ourselves to be trapped into one tactic that many people have excitedly adopted, but which itself does not offer the ultimate solution of transforming our system into something more responsive and accountable.<br /><br />-------------------------------<br /><br /><br /><b>2. Things are disorganized and our best activists are suffering. It impossible to be an effective long term activist if you are always devoting your energy trying to keep a camp like this up and running. Working Groups are not optional. They are necessary. All of our leading activists are right now on the very edge of burning themselves out and disappearing because of overcommitment. </b><br /><br />Right now I am tired. I don't get enough sleep or food because I go to a lot of meetings. And you know what ? A lot of those meetings are a waste of my time. People stay for 30 minutes, say some things, and then leave. People constantly interrupt each other. People come late to a meeting and start talking about whatever they want to talk about. It is rare in a meeting just to win an agenda. Every meeting that every business leadership and every political body in the world has starts with an agenda. And you know what? They get stuff DONE. The Pentagon gets stuff done with great efficiency. So does the G20 and the IMF. They get evil stuff done, but they get it done. Because they know how to run a meeting.<br /><br />Several people at the last GA said they would do some things and then they did not do it. People voted to have a working meeting yesterday at 5pm and NONE of them showed up but me. A person from the last town hall said they'd email me a list of people who signed up to be part of a “street team” that they said they need and that I volunteered to help to organize. He never did. Then I emailed him about it and he never got back to me. N___ from the last town hall got all the emails of people interested in working on “outreach” together and said he would get us all in touch and have us become a committee. I've heard nothing from N___, and after I wrote him he never wrote me back either, though on Thursday he seemed very enthusiastic about taking on lots of responsibility! Someone else from the outreach working group of the town hall said they'd make a “general flyer”. A two sided one with very limited text, and which is twice as expensive to print than a one sided flyer, was brought to the march yesterday. But there is no link to it on the website. <br /><br />I have better things to do with my time than to hang out with people who want to complain about the system, but who are themselves <b>not interested</b> in organizing themselves efficiently. This is very frustrating, especially when right now is such a key time for our movement. <br /><br />We urgently need to develop better organization and sustainable routines that can make use of our many volunteers. I listed about just a FEW examples of dysfunction. Instead of coming together to FIX it, at the present time just a few people have put themselves forward to do the great majority of the work to pull the movement together and to organize the logistics of the occupied camps. They are substituting their own super-human efforts for the movement's collective inability to develop working structures. If they keep doing this they will burn themselves out, and they will disappear from the movement, leaving it to wither and collapse.<br /><br /><b>We must balance our involvement over the next week or two to a sustainable level.<br />For work to happen we must make our working groups serious things that are real and actually meet and don't waste time.</b><br /><br />------------------------------<br /><br /><br /><b>3. A Light Hearted Story With Humorous Analogies About Leadership and the Limits of “Consensus”</b><br /><br />Guess what? I don't believe in consensus! I believe in voting! I think it is FINE to have differences on what we believe because we all have differences on what we believe. I like when there are two ideas that each side argues its point, and then we all vote on what to do, and then we all do it, and then we assess it to see whether or not it was worth doing. 2/3s majority or simple majority. I don't care. But I think voting is a great way to made decisions. It's fine to argue your point and be outvoted. But it is childish to “block” a group's activity, or to say if they don't all agree with what you want, that you are going to pack up your toys and go home. That's manipulative and lame. I'd much rather be outvoted and obligated to try out something that the majority wants and I wasn't sure about, than I would prefer to “block” something. <br /><br />I also think leadership is a real thing and it needs to be recognized! I am a leader because I have been showing up and writing flyers and printing them with my own money and I talked to passers by at the march on the 29th and I and gave out 100 flyers and I stood on the corner of 400 S and 300 W with signs at rush hour and I've been to the Fed and I wash my own and other people's dishes. Seth is a leader because he's been the “fire extinguisher” and chief organizer of camp doing things there is not enough space on this page to list. Alonso and Lionel are wonderful leaders who got a kitchen running and up to code from scratch. Jesse is leading our Internet and donations. That guy at the Fed is leading our presence at the Fed. The other Jesse is leading up having street theater actions. Leaders exist. You become a leader. You can just start being one. Leaders can be elected or recalled, which is great. If you rely on a “self selected leader” because you are afraid of organizational structure you may very quickly find yourself with a “self unselected leader” who feels he can step back as easily as he stepped up, leaving your movement hanging.<br /><br />There is a very simple cure for the belief that consensus based decision making is “superior” to voting and electing people to do things, and that we can ignore the importance of people with experience, courage, initiative, and leadership skills acting in an official capacity where we all depend on them to lead. Here it is. I can get a raft and some paddles and a permit and I will drive any of you to the put it for Westwater Canyon of the Colorado River. I'll let you all try to take “consensus” on what direction to point your momentum when you're going over Funnel Falls, or when to start paddling when you're being pushed into a giant hole, a sheer wall of rock, or a whirlpool at Skull Rapid. One of you in the front can decide to stop paddling and “block” at the key moment in Sock-It-To-Me where you're being sucked and flipped on the Magnetic Wall. When all of you finally drown in the ensuing mayhem because you didn't want to elect an official captain to head up the “steering” working group of the raft, there will at long last be no one left to advocate the superiority of consensus.<br /><br /><IMG SRC="http://www.westernriver.com/trips/westwater1day/images/2007/wre-westwater-swirlwave.jpg"> <br />(photo credit: Western River Expeditions)<br /><br /><u>Though I do not believe in consensus, I have been using it without complaint!</u>. I facilitated the last GA at Pioneer Park and we made decisions via consensus. I am fine with that. I didn't try and ruffle feathers by putting in my own ideas of “voting” rather than “taking consensus”. Why is that? It is because I DON'T CARE how we make decisions. Getting work done is more important to me than fighting over how to do work. But do you know what bothers me? It is when people say they care about consensus, and they know all about this allegedly great new way to make decisions that is somehow better than the way decisions get made by every democratic country in the world, and then, after all that decision making gets made, THEY STILL DON'T DO WHAT THEY SAY THEY ARE GOING TO DO, AND THE NEXT DAY THEY DON'T SHOW UP WHERE THEY SAY THEY WERE GOING TO SHOW UP, AND THEY IGNORE MY EMAIL ASKING THEM WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED!<br /><br />Serious, cooperative people can take any awkward decision making structure and make it work to accomplish what they need! Make decisions however you want! But I'll say this: what we are up against is the richest and most well armed ruling class in the history of the world. They spent the last three years showing us that they'd rather have us thrown out into the street when their speculation crashes the economy than they would have their tax dollars (money they didn't earn, but money that was stolen from the labor of heavily exploited people who work for them) go to pay for relief. If you want the “99%” of the population to take you seriously and join you, and if you want your occupations and movements to be sustainable, you are going to have to stop talking about what great things you are going to accomplish “being the change you want to see” and you are going to have to start showing up on time and doing the things you say you are going to do. ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////Sincerely, - MEAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06418793670220718137noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6078009723392950689.post-90036811739469064242011-10-27T10:20:00.004-06:002011-10-27T10:49:53.112-06:00Political Perspectives for Broadening the Occupy SLC Movement<IMG SRC="http://duvet-dayz.com/assets/post_img/y2011/20111003/imgWe-are-the-99pct_05.jpg"><br /><br />(sharing this here, perhaps some of the ideas might be helpful for people elsewhere?)<br /><br /><i>(Some political and organizational observations and suggestions for Occupy SLC by a participant.)</i><br /><br />What has been accomplished at Pioneer Park has taken a lot of work and time and effort. It is a great testament to the skills and patience and dedication that have been pulled together in the face of strong political and logistical challenges. The character of Pioneer Park, and the balance between people who have come here to specifically be part of a political movement, and people who were already living here, has presented numerous challenges. Political activists in SLC have responded to this either by leading work at the park, or moving to the Federal Reserve building, or by withdrawing from active participation. A recent <A HREF=”http://www.facebook.com/notes/seth-walker/a-letter-of-frustration-from-one-occupier-to-the-internet-talk-ivists-if-this-of/10150432386482664”>document</A> written and shared online by a person who has been sleeping out at the Fed for along time revealed a great deal of frustration, and attacked the convictions of people who say they support this, or this kind of movement, but who have not joined that individual at the Fed in person, where he has been for many days, and where he got sick in the cold.<br /><br /> It was good for this person to write and express themselves but the tone of their article was not helpful. The people of the city did not come together and have a meeting and vote to elect that individual to take their stand. He is there entirely on his own behalf. It is not politically helpful to morally attack our closest allies because they have not chosen to make the major commitments to spend lots of time out in the cold that a few of us, without ever being asked to do it by our communities, have decided to do on our own.<br /><br /> The movement has recently been counter attacked by the forces of the 1%. Police broke up and evicted Occupations in <A HREF=”http://www.examiner.com/human-rights-in-national/breaking-news-occupy-oakland-human-rights-peacemaker-may-die-from-police-attack”>Oakland</A> and <A HREF=”http://news.yahoo.com/atlanta-police-arrest-wall-street-protesters-054240601.html”>Atlanta</A>. At the same time there have been <A HREF=”http://money.cnn.com/2011/10/26/news/economy/occupy_wall_street_backlash/”>articles</A> written in the hostile press by journalists calling themselves “the 53%” who “work and pay taxes to support lazy bums”, to paraphrase. This is an attempt to draw away middle class support for the movement by appealing to their basest jealousies and prejudices. We need now at this time to come together, as I suggested in <A HREF=”http://laughingfish.blogspot.com/2011/10/two-counteroffensives-of-1-middle-class.html”>this</A> article. We must look around, where we are, see what we have, and decide how we can turn it into a political fight back. The logistical challenges of establishing the park camp have diverted many activists' attention into running a soup kitchen operation, that while helpful and demonstrating good will and solidarity, is not in itself going to end corporate domination of our political system. A soup kitchen does not threaten the status quo. But ordinary people coming out of their confusion and apathy and talking to each other about what should be done, and how to do it, and where to start, just might.<br /><br /><b>MY PROPOSALS</b><br /><br />1) J_ said we have middle class people with money who want to support us. I propose we use then and every cent we can get and put it into making this place look more political. If the Park is a political base, it needs to look more like one. The whole side of the road facing South 400, where most of the tents are, should be lined with signs. People driving by look at us. Let's give them something to look at. Let's not be off talking amounts ourselves unseen under a tree somewhere but let's always have people along the street here holding signs, smiling and waving. Let's put our own friendly, welcoming face on this movement. Also getting posters on the other sides of the park, and along cross walk entrances, would be helpful too. The street corners are most effective because then you can get seen by traffic going in both directions. Tents being erected do not by themselves politically challenge the people driving by. I propose we send a committee out to buy / obtain poster making materials, like poster board and markers, and we designate a time to make many posters. Let's keep those materials centralized in one place in the park, such as by the library area, so people can always come and make signs whenever they want.<br /> <br />2) I propose we strategically fortify the ongoing protest at the Fed Reserve. It may or may not make sense to sleep alone in the cold outside a government building at night when very few people are driving by. But whether individuals decide to sleep there at night or not, people who can make it there should prioritize being there at key times during the day. 7-10 AM ish, and 4:30 to 6 pm ish, are good because that gets commuter traffic. Targeting the volume of commuter traffic is the most efficient way to have the most people see our signs. Also there are more people on the street then, as well as around lunch hour (11:30 am to 2:30 pm). Lunch hour would be a great time to be there. <br /><br />3) The Fed Reserve alone is not the problem. It is just one part of a very nasty set of financial and government entities run by nasty people. What other targets can we identify in the SLC area? Certain banks who played a major role in the crash? Anything else large and financial down town? Other federal buildings? If we had 3 people with signs during peak hours at 3 or 4 different locations, it would be way more visible to the city in general than just having one group of 9-12 people all standing at only one target.<br /><br />4) We produce more educational materials to give to people who are passing by and want to learn more but who may not have the time to argue with us. We can reach many more people with leaflets in 15 minutes than we can just talking to one person for the same time! I wrote a generic “come join us” type leaflet that we can use. But if we are at a specific place we should have something prepared that is specific for that location. Why is the Fed Reserve so important? Let's put an articulate explanation on a quarter sheet flyer that is easy and quick and small and efficient to hand out. In addition to the specific info the occupy SLC website link could be on there as well as links to any news sites that might be helpful. When linking to news sites it would be best to list several sites, and not just only one or two that are heavily weighted towards a specific organization or ideology, which would incorrectly reflect the broad diversity of ideas and motivations our protest embraces. We can using our funding to print more leaflets at Kinkoes, or where ever else is cheap to photocopy.<br /><br />5) Reach out to activists and draw them into the above practical work. Encourage them to make their own signs and stand on their own street corners if they cannot join us. We are not New York City. We do not have tens of thousands of people. But we do have many supporters who can't camp out, but who want to help stand up to the 1%. <i>And there are many ways to stand up to the 1% besides just camping in a park!</i> Having specific times to request their presence where their presence can be made the most of, even if someone can only show up once a week, <i>turns the movement into something that can efficiently draw on the free time that our supporters do have.</i> <br /><br />This means call your friend who isn't here camping, and list the several times and places this week where there will be something they could really help out with for a hour, 2 hours, or so. If a few of us want to get together and get on the internet and go through everyone who likes / is part of the Occpy SLC facebook we could send them all an email / write on their walls telling them specific events they could come to. Another idea is to have a group of volunteers print out a lot of something like the <A HREF=”http://www.noisenobodys.com/protest/the99percent.doc”>come join us</A> leaflet I wrote (or any other come join us leaflet anyone else wants to write!), and then make a list of all the places with bulliten boards in town. Then we divide that list and go hit up all those places. Colleges, Libraries, Gyms, Grocery Stores, and Coffee Shops are places to start. Where else can you think of? Would any of our small business friends like to display something like this in their store windows? <br /><br />6) Let's plan and build specific political events that we can invite people to. How about we get two people who are each feeling strongly about either position debate whether the system must be overthrown, or can be reformed peacefully? Can someone write a very well researched factual talk on how exactly the crash happened (in of course easily understandable language), and what happened (or didn't happen) to the people who caused it? Or how about we turn all the chairs in a circle facing each other and we have one great big meeting, with a speakers' stack and moderator if enough people are there to need it, where we just debate politics and what we think should or could be done? These are just a few topic ideas, you of course have many more in your head! What can you think of? <br /><br />We aren't at the point where we have the numbers and energy to have something like this every day, but we could maybe have it once or twice a week. This would be a great sort of event to invite more people to, and get them thinking politically. And also on this point, <b>we must recognize that most people work in the day, and by the time most people are off work and free the park is dark and cold.</b> So let's have a public meeting on something like this, say, 7pmish on a weeknight, and have it in a rented (free?) room. If we could get a room at a college we could build it big among the college students. Lights and heat would certainly improve the atmosphere!<br /><br /><br /><b>There are many ways to resist the system.</b>We must not take any one method or location and <i>fetishize</i> it into “the” tactic that is “the” solution. <i>It will take more than people camped out in parks or on sidewalks to bring down the world's most powerful, well armed, and entrenched oligarchy.</i> Every action we take right now, and probably always, should be guided by the question of, “What is the best way to put us into contact with the greatest numbers of people?”<br /><br />How and where we can have the most effective political presence? How can we most effectively get people talking and thinking about these issues? And once people's minds are tuned into the idea of resistance, <i>how can we plan our actions in a way that everyone, whatever their level of availability, can in some way participate in?</i> Someone who can stand on the corner with us for two hours, and then go home and go all through their next week telling everyone they knew what it was like to take a stand and be having the conversations we are having, is worth a whole heck of a lot more than someone by themselves spending 8 hours at night sleeping on a deserted street anywhere!<br /><br />Always ask, “what is the next step?”, “How can we turn more people into activists?”. Because the minute we stop trying to grow and reach out is the minute our movement starts to stagnate. As the 99%, our greatest weapon is our numbers.<br /><br />The next Occupy SLC general assembly will be tomorrow, Friday at 6pm. Then again there will be one Sunday at 4pm. I warmly invite ALL FORCES to attend the meeting Friday.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06418793670220718137noreply@blogger.com1