The Portland Occupier

Quit Drinking, Found a Revolution

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 17:00:19 -0500

by: Angela Horton

[caption id=”attachment_3851” align=”alignright” width=”427” caption=”photo by Kendall”][/caption]What happens when you play by the rules, but still can’t get ahead? Confronting this problem in my own life lead me to an internal revolution.

I went to college when I graduated from high school. By the time I was twenty-one, I had an associates degree and $20,000 of debt. Unable to find work in my chosen field, I tried to start my own business. I didn’t have enough money or assets to qualify for a loan.

So I got a job - several jobs - and for ten years, I worked in the service industry. I had jobs at restaurants, coffee shops, and retail stores. None of these jobs paid enough money for me to afford my student loan payments, so I deferred them, each time adding more interest to the balance due.

In many instances, I proved to be an asset to the companies I worked for. I worked at a privately-owned retail store where I was given all the responsibilities of a manager, but paid the same rate of pay since starting the position as a salesperson, for over a year. Upon asking the owner for a one-year review, I was told, ‘we can’t really afford that right now.’ And they couldn’t. Because they were an independently-owned art and gift store that was on the verge of failure because the economy had just tanked.

Imprisonment in the daily grind lead me to feelings of worthlessness, hopelessness, failure. I developed a drinking problem. I smoked cigarettes to deal with stress.

I’m thirty now. I always thought I would have children, but I likely won’t because I know I would be unable to financially support them. I gave up drinking. I quit smoking.

Fed up with dead-end jobs, I’ve gone back to college. I study business. I go to school full-time and work part-time. I make the same hourly wage now as when I entered the work force, even though I have ten years of work experience and a college education.

Tired of always feeling like the member of a target market, I quit watching TV. I began watching only media I could find online, for free. I started educating myself about what was going on in the world.

Now comes the revolution part. Ready for it…?

I can’t get ahead because the system is designed that way.

The capitalist system thrives on the enslavement of the working class. As long as we, the people, work long hours for low wages to manufacture and sell products, and then spend our hard-earned money to buy these products, the shareholders in the companies that own rights to these products make money. And not just a little money.

The top 1% of the US population owns more wealth than the bottom 90%.- ‘Lifting the Veil: Obama and the Failure of Capitalist Democracy’, (www.documentarystream.com) “The few who understand the system, will either be so interested from its profits or so dependant on its favors, that there will be no opposition from that class.”- member of the Rothschild banking family of London, 1863. The system also serves to misinform the public via the corporate-funded mass media, and to hold us hostage via loans (student, car, mortgages, etc.) paid back at interest. The politicians in the White House do not serve the interest of we, the people. Rather, they serve only the corporate interest. We, the people, are consumers. Commodities. This has to change.

People in our society have been driven to accusing those with my similar mindset as being, ‘lazy’ or ‘socialists’, or ‘just looking for a hand-out’. But let me assure you, I don’t want a hand-out. I just want a fucking chance.

The New Poverty

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 15:00:23 -0500

[caption id=”attachment_3845” align=”aligncenter” width=”576” caption=”cartoon and text by Kip Lyall”][/caption]

Cartoon from the Occupied News Wire, originally published in the Boston Occupier.

By David Glenn Cox

I met a man the other day, pretty regular guy all in all except he was homeless. Just one more, one more of the millions of Americans to whom healthcare is a dream, food is a hope and even shelter is questionable. It is an American story; it is a microcosm of modern American society. And a most amazing facet of this problem is not the new poverty of millions but the invisibility of the problem.

How many of the fourteen-million now unemployed will replace unemployment checks with part-time work? The new poverty is subsidized with food stamps to the multitude which end up in the pockets of merchants. It creates a baseline economy, a brutal Dickensian society with a whiff of paternalism which says, “Feed them but don’t actually attempt to improve their lot,” merely subsidizing their poverty.

“Benefits should always be conferred gradually; and in that way they will taste better.” – Niccolo Machiavelli

Our government goes out of its way to declare an economic all clear when it is obviously not so, conjoined at the hip with a media filled with happy-talk, a media overburdened with sensationalism and infotainment, the Super Bowl, the Grammy awards, and poor Whitney, a media of distraction, by distraction and for distraction. A new Hollywood war picture has been released with real Navy Seals to further blur the line between reality and warfotainment. “Is that you John Wayne?”

Yet the plight of the average American is only barely discussed and even then only in the abstract. This is the nucleus of the movement, a lost generation of college-educated and formally middle-class “new poor.” I knew a biological engineer with a doctorate who unemployed for almost two years. When he landed a job I asked, “better money?” He answered with a shoulder shrug meaning “no,” but there was a look of relief in his face as if he had escaped. An easily recognized reflex of relief, escape from his brush with poverty. A scientist, unemployed. This indeed isn’t your run-of-the-mill recession.

This is a depression, where anemic job and wage growth limit purchasing power which in turn fuels layoffs and low tax revenues for tax coffers. The state of California reported tax revenues a half a billion dollars short of estimates for the month of January. The shortage was primarily caused by income tax revenue falling 13 percent in the fourth quarter. Those with low paying, part time jobs pay little income tax and the unemployed pay no income tax.

“Old truths have been relearned; untruths have been unlearned. We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics. Out of the collapse of a prosperity whose builders boasted their practicality has come the conviction that in the long run economic morality pays.”
- Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Despite the knowledge gained from past depressions and even the early lessons of the current depression Federal, state and local governments continue to shed employees at record levels. In 2010, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger began furloughing state employees in response to a budget crisis. The cuts amounted to a 15 percent cut in pay and within just a few months the city of Sacramento went from one of the bright spots of economic activity to one of the worst. Restaurants, furniture stores, car lots and office equipment stores began to close their doors.

The Obama administration and State and Local governments have followed the Schwarzenegger path:

Federal employee job cuts - January 2011 to January 2012 – 17,100
Post Office employee job cuts - January 2011 to January 2012 – 37,000
State government job cuts - January 2011 to January 2012 – 71,000
State government education job cuts - January 2011 to January 2012 – 6,100
Local government job cuts - January 2011 to January 2012 – 161,000
Local government education job cuts - January 2011 to January 2012 – 105,400

Nearly 400,000 less pay checks each week to bolster the economy and on the other end are the same small businesses which the politicians love to praise as job creators. They are left to deal with lower levels of government services. Local businesses have fewer customers and the nation’s children have a poorer education. This year’s cuts come in the wake of over half a million government job cuts in 2010.

Our government is cannibalizing itself to save on groceries:

“Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail. What you gain at one end you lose at the other. It’s like feeding a dog on his own tail. It won’t fatten the dog.”
– Mark Twain

The jobs once held by teenagers saving for a car or school are now held by adults trying to make the rent or buy the kids school shoes. Teenagers once had the most discretionary income of any age demographic in the country. They tended to buy CD’s and go to the movies and buy mag wheels for their cars, but today?

Job loss leaders - December 2011 to January 2012

Heavy and Civil engineering construction, -1,400
Computer and electronic products, -1,900
Communications equipment, -1,200
Textile product mills, -300
Paper and paper products, -800
Plastics and Rubber products, -1,000
Electronic and Appliance stores, -2,300
Food and beverage stores, -5,300
Gasoline stations, -1,300
Clothing and clothing accessory stores, -13,600
Air Transportation, -1,000
Couriers and messengers, -1,500
Publishing industries, except Internet, - 1,800
Motion picture and sound recording, -7,900
Data processing, hosting and other related services, -1,300
Other information services, -600
Finance and Insurance, -7,500
Credit intermediation and related activities, -5,200
Depositary credit intermediation, -2,700
Commercial banking, -2,000
Securities, commodity contracts, investments, -2,900
Rental and leasing services, -1,600

The job losses run the full spectrum from construction, technical, manufacturing and are led by retail and finance.

Civilian non institutional population - January 2011 to January 2012, up by 3,565,000
Civilian labor force - January 2011 to January 2012, up by 1,145,000
Employed - January 2011 to January 2012, up by 2,307,000
Not in labor force - January 2011 to January 2012 up by 2,420,000
Participation rate January 2011: 64.2 %
Participation rate January 2012: 63.7%
Employment –population ratio January 2011: 58.4%
Employment –population ratio January 2012: 58.5%

“Whoever conquers a free town and does not demolish it commits a great error and may expect to be ruined himself.” - Niccolo Machiavelli

“We want to reduce the size of government in half as a percentage of GNP over the next 25 years. We want to reduce the number of people depending on government so there is more autonomy and more free citizens.”
– Grover Norquist

The pretender Obama mimics Machiavelli and Norquist while he squeaks out left-leaning platitudes in election year shenanigans. The answer is in assisting our people.

The Obama administration has proposed a 9.1 percent cut in funds for homelessness assistance and low income housing assistance beginning in 2013, long after the election is over. The number of families doubling up in a single family homes or apartments has increased by 13 percent during Obama’s tenure. The real income of America’s working poor has increased by less than one percent during Obama’s Presidency and more than half of America’s working families pay more than 50 percent of their income for housing.

“For out of this modern civilization economic royalists carved new dynasties. New kingdoms were built upon concentration of control over material things. Through new uses of corporations, banks and securities, new machinery of industry and agriculture, of labor and capital-all undreamed of by the fathers—the whole structure of modern life was impressed into this royal service.

There was no place among this royalty for our many thousands of small business men and merchants who sought to make a worthy use of the American system of initiative and profit. They were no more free than the worker or the farmer. Even honest and progressive-minded men of wealth, aware of their obligation to their generation, could never know just where they fitted into this dynastic scheme of things.

It was natural and perhaps human that the privileged princes of these new economic dynasties, thirsting for power, reached out for control over Government itself. They created a new despotism and wrapped it in the robes of legal sanction. In its service new mercenaries sought to regiment the people, their labor, and their property. And as a result the average man once more confronts the problem that faced the Minute Man.
The hours men and women worked, the wages they received, the conditions of their labor—these had passed beyond the control of the people, and were imposed by this new industrial dictatorship. The savings of the average family, the capital of the small business man, the investments set aside for old age—other people’s money—these were tools which the new economic royalty used to dig itself in.”

- President Franklin Delano Roosevelt

The answers are that simple, they begin with jobs for our people. Public spending, infrastructure or even harmonica bands if that is what it takes to put our people back to work. We cannot therefore ignore the men and women in the park with any expectation of improvement for ourselves.

“In our personal ambitions we are individualists. But in our seeking for economic and political progress as a nation, we all go up or else all go down as one people.”
-Franklin Delano Roosevelt

The number of tax cuts proposed by Barack Obama in three years 22.
The number of tax cuts proposed by Franklin Roosevelt in 12 years 0.
Number of homes and farms rescued from foreclosure by Obama’s HAMP mortgage program in three years, 700,000.
Number of homes and farms saved by FDR’s Homeowner’s loan corporation in one year,1,200,000 with a net cost to the treasury of nothing!

The primary difference in the programs is FDR cut the bankers out of the process and Obama’s plan cuts them in.

“You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows”
– Bob Dylan

“Remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists.”
- Franklin Delano Roosevelt

A Contract is a Contract: Clarifying the ILWU/EGT Outcome in Longview

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 15:00:05 -0500

[caption id=”attachment_3094” align=”aligncenter” width=”640” caption=”photo by Paul”][/caption]

by Chris Lowe

A contract is a contract…

In a previous item in The Occupier, Lester Macgurdy argued that we should not exaggerate the victory achieved by ILWU Local 21 in Longview in their struggle against union-busting and scab labor employed by EGT/Bunge. Nor should we overblow Occupy’s achievement in affecting the outcome, lest we deceive ourselves with happy talk and our own spin.

Macgurdy’s broad point has merit. Unfortunately he got one key issue wrong, that affects the overall meaning of everything else. This piece is an effort to clarify matters.

The key fact: the current status is a settled, 5-year union contract, in which EGT recognizes ILWU Local 21 as the workers’ union and bargaining agent.

Contrary to what Macgurdy says, the contract is not a unilateral and unilaterally revocable EGT “business decision.” He based that perception on out-of-date information.

EGT recognized ILWU as the collective bargaining agent for the facility workers on Feb 2, after a card-check process in which the workers hired under the January 27 “framework agreement” designated the ILWU as their union . On Feb 10, EGT and the ILWU signed a five-year legally enforceable union contract, following ratification by Local 21 members.

The union contract replaces an interim agreement announced ratified by workers January 27. It was the interim agreement that contained the unilateral “business decision” language quoted by Macgurdy.

EGT had insisted on the “business decision” language as a workaround for one of their main legal arguments, that the ILWU’s “working agreement” with the Port of Longview giving Local 21 jurisdiction over most work in the Port violates federal labor labor law that prohibits employers from designating with what union they will bargain.

The legal provision EGT cited generally is aimed at preventing company unions. EGT’s position on it is disingenuous if not mendacious, of course, since by contracting with the scab employer General Construction, they were choosing more tractable union to represent their labor force, as well as seeking to avoid bargaining certain points and to avoid a direct contractual relationship with their workers.

There may still be some concern arising from the workaround. I don’t think, as a legal matter, that the ILWU conceded the correctness of the EGT position regarding the working agreement with the Port. It just avoided immediate conflict over the issue. But possibly at some point in the future, EGT might try to use the agreement to claim an ILWU concession.

But is a contract a contract?

So, what then is the meaning of the union contract? Is it a victory?

To evaluate that, we have to understand the context of the struggle and negotiations. ILWU contracts are complicated. They have a working agreement with the Port of Longview that gives the ILWU jurisdiction over most kinds of work at the Port. They also have separate contracts with shippers who operate out of the Port, both land-side, i.e. trucking and rail companies and storage facilities, and ship-side, i.e. sea transport, the latter negotiated collectively by the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA).

Meanwhile, the Port has its own contracts with the shipping and storage companies, including facility leases, and presumably the shippers have contracts with one another. The ILWU is not party to any of those contracts.

However, the ILWU’s working agreement with the Port limits the Port’s contracting with other parties. Specifically, it says that the Port shall not lease property for the purposes of evading ILWU jurisdiction. (See agreement here, click on A3, C and F links.)

Thus when EGT approached the Port about a lease to create a new storage and transfer facility at the Port, the lease included the ILWU working agreement. The negotiations began in 2006, and the facility has only just finished construction and opened. Its impending launch is why the conflict came to a head this past year.

Initially, EGT acknowledged the lease provision involving the ILWU, and began negotiating with that union. Conflict between the ILWU and EGT emerged in 2010, apparently over two key EGT demands: 12 hour straight time shifts (i.e. no overtime after 8 hours, only after 40 hours total per week), and making a key skilled labor jobs affecting workflow a managerial, rather than labor position. The two sides reached no resolution.

In 2011, EGT upped the ante by hiring General Construction to perform the work at the new facility. GC’s labor force is represented by the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 701, based in Gladstone, Oregon. Essentially, this was a move to break the ILWU jurisdiction using scab labor, though EGT tried to muddy the waters by hiring a contractor with a union workforce. At the same time, EGT sued the Port, saying that the ILWU jurisdiction part of its lease violated federal labor law.

These moves raised the stakes dramatically, turning a contract negotiation for Local 21 into an existential struggle for the entire ILWU. Since the 1930s, the union’s capacity to shape working conditions for its members’ strenuous and dangerous labor, to limit manipulation and exploitation in what had been a “casual” hiring process, and gain good wages and benefits, has depended on its exclusive jurisdiction. EGT’s breach of its contract with the Port threatened to create a crack in the wall in practice at Longview, while its lawsuit seeking to nullify the ILWU’s contract with the Port threatened to render the ILWU jurisdiction illegal in principle from Alaska to southern California and Hawai’i.

The result was a huge, confrontational struggle mobilizing wide union and community solidarity beginning in the spring of 2011. The details are beyond the scope of this piece, but are well worth learning about. Occupy Portland and Occupy Longview, and other Occupies up and down the coast, began joining in the solidarity efforts soon after the movement emerged here.

So is the new contract a victory?

In the foregoing context, the achievement by Local 21 of a contract with EGT, forcing them to give up hiring General Construction and maintaining ILWU jurisdiction in practice at the Port of Longview, must be considered a substantial victory in my view. EGT tried and failed to replace ILWU workers. EGT gave up its lawsuit against the Port in federal court which had the potential to establish a reactionary interpretation of labor law as principle and precedent for other ports.

However, this victory came at some cost, and clearly the struggles over port unionization are not over.

Regarding the specific local contract, the outcome is not clear. News reports show that workers will be working 12 hour shifts, which is what EGT wanted. It is not clear if they are straight time shifts as EGT wanted, or if the ILWU preserved overtime after 8 hours each shift. The news reports are silent as to whether the skilled job EGT wanted reclassified as a management position remained a union job.

More importantly, the “framework agreement” out of which the union contract emerged has shifted the balance of forces for future negotiations, certainly with EGT and perhaps more broadly.

That “framework agreement” of January 27 involved not only the ILWU, but EGT’s relationship to the Port of Longview. EGT and the Port agreed to end EGT’s lawsuit against the Port on the basis of a renegotiated lease clause stipulating that the Port has nothing to say about union jurisdiction under the lease. The ILWU was not party to that change.

Lester Macgurdy was right to focus on the change in the lease as a serious setback for the union, although it does not exactly end the ILWU’s jurisdiction as he suggests. Rather it changes the legal relationship between the ILWU and the Port going forward.

Before the agreement between the Port and EGT, the Port was trying to enforce its agreement with the ILWU. EGT in turn was suing the Port, and the ILWU was intervening in that suit.

The revised lease agreement settles EGT’s suit on terms EGT likes locally. It appears to mean that the Port of Longview no longer is even ambiguously on the ILWU’s side, legally speaking.

The Port of Longview’s revision of its lease with EGT does not directly involve the ILWU, which is not party to the lease. Instead, it puts two of the Port’s contracts in direct conflict with one another. The Port’s revised lease with EGT is now clearly in conflict with its prior working agreement with the ILWU.

What the changed lease terms do, in the short term, is shift the legal burden. Before, the Port had to defend its agreement with the union against EGT, since that agreement was part of the lease. Now it would be up to the ILWU to sue the Port, if somehow a conflict arose, to try to get the revised lease overturned as a violation of the working agreement. I am not sure if the union has standing to sue just on the basis of the conflict of contracts, or would only gain standing if it could show some kind of substantive harm. I am not sure if the claim can outlast the end date of the working agreement.

The changed lease also shifts the bargaining position of the Port vis a vis the ILWU when the working agreement comes up for negotiation, since the Port now has an interest in removing the conflict of the contracts It retains an interest in overall labor peace at its facilities and those it leases, of course, but a new consideration has entered the picture.

This does look like it makes for a harder struggle to retain jurisdiction, as Lester Macgurdy says. But exclusive jurisdiction hasn’t ended yet. Before all of this, the ILWU already was negotiating both with the Port and with specific Port lessees. That hasn’t changed. The union has regained complete current jurisdiction, and still has an agreement for that with the Port. The local question is whether it can maintain that agreement in the face of the conflict of the Port’s contracts, and other pressures.

The broader question is how these results with play into the ILWU’s overall negotiations on the coast and Hawai’i, with grain transport and storage companies, which come up in about a year, and with the PMA, which come up in two years. Those negotiations and the five-year span of the EGT contract set the broad contours of likely future solidarity struggles.

Meanwhile, there may need to be support for ILWU members still facing charges in connection with union resistance to scab labor and maintaining picket lines last summer.

A Couple of Other Perspectives

Here are a couple of interesting perspectives on recent events that might be a bit out of the way for Occupier readers:

On the agreement and the process leading to it, including the community and Occupy role, from Labor Notes, a publication that has ties to the Association for Union Democracy (a pro-labor union reform group) and to some extent with Solidarity.

And here is an odd one, giving something of the Operating Engineers’ take on the initial “framework agreement,” published by the editor of the NW Labor Press on a website associated with the CPUSA. NW Labor Press is a publication of the Northwest Central Labor Council, which came out harshly against the IUOE’s scab role — which the national AFL-CIO notably did not do, which may be why the CP is willing to publish this viewpoint.

A Contract is a Contract: Clarifying the ILWU/EGT Outcome in Longview

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 15:00:05 -0500

[caption id=”attachment_3094” align=”aligncenter” width=”640” caption=”photo by Paul”][/caption]

by Chris Lowe

A contract is a contract…

Macgurdy’s broad point has merit. Unfortunately he got one key issue wrong, that affects the overall meaning of everything else. This piece is an effort to clarify matters.

The key fact: the current status is a settled, 5-year union contract, in which EGT recognizes ILWU Local 21 as the workers’ union and bargaining agent.

Contrary to what Macgurdy says, the contract is not a unilateral and unilaterally revocable EGT “business decision.” He based that perception on out-of-date information.

There may still be some concern arising from the workaround I don’t think, as a legal matter, that the ILWU conceded the correctness of the EGT position regarding the working agreement with the Port. It just avoided immediate conflict over the issue. But possibly at some point in the future, EGT might try to use the agreement to claim an ILWU concession.

But is a contract a contract??>

So, what then is the meaning of the union contract? Is it a victory?

So is the New Contract a Victory?

However, this victory came at some cost, and clearly the struggles over port unionization are not over.

More importantly, the “framework agreement” out of which the union contract emerged has shifted the balance of forces for future negotiations, certainly with EGT and perhaps more broadly.

Before the agreement between the Port and EGT, the Port was trying to enforce its agreement with the ILWU. EGT in turn was suing the Port, and the ILWU was intervening in that suit.

The revised lease agreement settles EGT’s suit on terms EGT likes locally. It appears to mean that the Port of Longview no longer is even ambiguously on the ILWU’s side, legally speaking.

Meanwhile, there may need to be support for ILWU members still facing charges in connection with union resistance to scab labor and maintaining picket lines last summer.

A Couple of Other Perspectives

Here are a couple of interesting perspectives on recent events that might be a bit out of the way for Occupier readers:

A Contract is a Contract: Clarifying the ILWU/EGT Outcome in Longview

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 15:00:05 -0500

[caption id=”attachment_3094” align=”aligncenter” width=”640” caption=”photo by Paul”][/caption]

by Chris Lowe

A contract is a contract…

Macgurdy’s broad point has merit. Unfortunately he got one key issue wrong, that affects the overall meaning of everything else. This piece is an effort to clarify matters.

The key fact: the current status is a settled, 5-year union contract, in which EGT recognizes ILWU Local 21 as the workers’ union and bargaining agent.

Contrary to what Macgurdy says, the contract is not a unilateral and unilaterally revocable EGT “business decision.” He based that perception on out-of-date information.

But is a contract a contract??>

So, what then is the meaning of the union contract? Is it a victory?

So is the New Contract a Victory?

However, this victory came at some cost, and clearly the struggles over port unionization are not over.

More importantly, the “framework agreement” out of which the union contract emerged has shifted the balance of forces for future negotiations, certainly with EGT and perhaps more broadly.

Before the agreement between the Port and EGT, the Port was trying to enforce its agreement with the ILWU. EGT in turn was suing the Port, and the ILWU was intervening in that suit.

The revised lease agreement settles EGT’s suit on terms EGT likes locally. It appears to mean that the Port of Longview no longer is even ambiguously on the ILWU’s side, legally speaking.

Meanwhile, there may need to be support for ILWU members still facing charges in connection with union resistance to scab labor and maintaining picket lines last summer.

A Couple of Other Perspectives

Here are a couple of interesting perspectives on recent events that might be a bit out of the way for Occupier readers:

It's Not About the Money! (Part 3)

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 12:00:28 -0500

by Rich Cohen

[caption id=”attachment_3837” align=”alignright” width=”426” caption=”photo by Kendall”][/caption]In recent opinion editorials I spoke to the necessity of restoring citizen control over our country with a congressional district electoral strategy that gets us the majority numbers needed to actually govern. I outlined how we ought to do it and our capacity to get it done. Yet the most meaningful and precious moments that are central to our happiness are not found in the political system outside our door, but in a deeper longing for a life of meaning and purpose.

Beyond the harsh reality that We The People do not control the country we own, ours is a nation riddled with fear, loneliness, depression, a growing sense of personal insignificance, and a persistent feeling that few can be counted on or trusted. This growing estrangement from ourselves and one another cannot be recovered by today’s empty political promise that all we need do is acquire more power and possessions.

Each day we wake up to our individual pursuit of happiness. We pursue our need to love and be loved, to know I belong, to feel individually significant, to believe that I matter, and to be able to step out into a welcoming world with people we trust and care about. Beyond our material basics, these meaning needs for love, significance and community are just as important as our narrower material needs. Any Movement that claims to care about people beyond simply putting power and money in their lives, must recognize this deeper dimension of human need and give it equal billing with economic entitlements and political rights. Our lives are not just about the paycheck. Happiness depends on a balance between meaning and money. A real people’s movement that aims for true solidarity, felt individually and collectively, can and should make room for both.

Whether face to face at the door, in our Town Hall meetings or in our community projects, the Occupy Movement should devote our efforts toward elevating our regard for self and others by illuminating what Ralph Waldo Emerson referred to as the “imprisoned splendor” in each of us. There is something more and better that we’ve yet to recognize in ourselves and in one another. Although imperfect, we deserve a second opinion about who we believe we are. Our Movement must affirm in tangible ways, our conviction that ll of us are sacred and irreplaceable and that we need each other.

In the end, a real “We” society is more than just passing “We” legislation. It’s about getting to know who the “We” is. I would encourage the Occupy Movement to create an opportunity for authentic face to face conversation where people can make sense of and appreciate their personal and collective experience. This would be a space to tell our stories, how we grew up and learned about love, success, right and wrong, a safe place to share the pivotal moments in our lives both achievements and setbacks, and where we can safely reveal what we fear and dream about. [Editor’s Note: The Feather Circle, a project of Rumorz Cafe held each Saturday at St. Francis Church, is meant to serve this purpose.] This is real conversation allowing us to feel known and cared for. In this way we can recognize the common thread that runs through all of our lives making room for trust by diminishing our fear of one another. Later we can create extended families where members share joys, concerns, meals and much less isolation. If done well this can become a model for our communities

As we take the necessary political steps to recover and remake our country, let us in the same breath speak to our capacities for love, compassion, generosity, kindness and other durable human goods. We need a politics of meaning that speaks simultaneously to both mind and heart and that regenerates our faith in country and in each other.

Rich Cohen is with the Building Community Forum of Occupy Portland and can be reached at arpdirector1@comcast.net

A Bevy of Dirty Birds, No Stones

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 15:10:44 -0500

[caption id=”attachment_3833” align=”aligncenter” width=”640” caption=”photo by joyofresistance”][/caption]

by Robin Ryan

“Obslication.”

It’s the quirky bird that braids the words and that particular weave consists of the following trio. My observations oblige me to the Occupation. The history of the meshing is the tale I think I’m to tell and for that, we must return to the drama zone of the ACORN scandal, during my own dawning days as a blogger. As a newbie on a big political internet message board, I became something more than a spectator in the debate between the New York Times and prominent Los Angeles progressive journalist, Brad Friedman of the BradBlog. Brad called the longstanding media giant out for its failure to verify what was and wasn’t factual in a video’s content. The NYT would concede such a year later, but the damage was done and the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now got defunded and ultimately closed its doors. I’ve recalled this a lot lately because it brings us to the second strand of my braid.

The Occupier asked recently for an article about the 10th anniversary issue of the Press Freedom Index. The annual issued by Reporters Without Borders assesses, compares and rates countries against one another for media accuracy and availability of alternate sources. The United States started in the top 20 at #17 that first year, but declines both sharp and steady during those long dark years of the Bush regime, dropping to #53 by 2006. We’ve since climbed back up the ranks near to our original position—until now. The freedom of the US press fell 27 places, sitting now at #47 and if that doesn’t sting enough, know that pain impacted for asking what I did—what about those cradles of democracy our government has us nurturing? Iraq is #152, Afghanistan #150…of 179 countries, double worse ouchy, eh?

I take in all that information and lay it against the back drop of that earlier experience, as the writer in me knows the two tales are entwined, but I want a local block of locks, as a tethering lace. Jobs with Justice took its second bus tour of the city’s most despicable bosses as part of its Portland Rising campaign advocating for workers of all kinds. The campaign launched last April in the Pioneer Courthouse Square declared an economic state of emergency for the massive message that was N17 by marching across the Steel bridge. Last week, a repeat performance of the bus tour from the summer outing of June 30th, and you can bet what’s left of your bippy, I had a ticket to ride on both occasions. This isn’t garden variety touring, but specific in its objective: to call collectively on management of businesses deemed to dodge process in negotiating terms and conditions with their employees. We dropped in on City Hall for parks maintenance workers, delivered a message for carriers at the post office and finished the day at the one place that required a second call, at Dosha Salon. More than half a dozen stops in a busy day extended by Puddletown’s finest who detained two busloads of people for more than half an hour in downtown peak traffic. While heading home I felt certain there’d be news coverage of some kind of the day’s activities.

A week out and waiting still. As someone with ancient and limited training in the journalist’s realm, it’s pain to reconcile the awareness of principles that are said to apply to the profession with the posers who push propaganda for profit, rather than abide by the charter of public service that’s supposed to be the centerpiece of the calling.

Occupy Bohemian Grove

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 12:00:36 -0500

by Ryan Bartek

Hello Occupy Portland. Many of you may know me, as I’ve been involved since Day One. During the October encampment, I relentlessly distributed flyers for an event dubbed OCCUPY BOHEMIAN GROVE which is set take place this July in Monte Rio, California.

Why July? Because that’s when The Bohemian Club has their encampment. At the moment, Monte Rio is a tiny community of 3,000 people in the redwoods of Northern California – it’s a ghost town right now. But in July, a huge portion of the most powerful men in the world – or shall I say the 1% — will all converge for a two week encampment.

Bohemian Grove is a 2700 acre campground that plays host to what I can only describe as a Burning Man Festival for the Global Elite. The centerpiece is an extremely creepy ritual called the Cremation of Care Ceremony. It’s been infiltrated & filmed on three occasions — twice by the BBC, and once by Alex Jones of InfoWars.com.

The Occupation Movement began as a war cry against the criminal nature of big business. While many directed their anger at the banksters, Wall Street & a thoroughly corrupt Congress, there were many involved such as myself who saw a much different picture.

These “1% Targets” are obviously worthy of the disgust they’ve accumulated – but the reality is they are the worst symptoms of the problem. They are not the problem in and of itself. From “Point A” the general protesting masses saw the obvious you’d expect them to see – at “Point D” (where we now exist) the depths of the conspiratorial abhorrence we’re entrapped by as USA citizens is being revealed at manic pace.

As the masses congregated & the education spiraled, the focus went from Wall Street & the bankers to the inherent fascism of our own society. The focus soon shifted to the Federal Government – and now all eyes are beginning to set themselves on the hidden hands really running the show. People are starting to catch on to “The Real 1%.”

Unlike most of my comrades in Radical Caucuses abroad, I haven’t been detoured by what I feel is the misguided targeting of “anarcho newbies.” I think fresh blood is essential, even if The Occupy Movement was originally a zeitgeist conflagration of folks who probably semi believed in the Democratic Party/Obama or that their votes or lives meant anything to the brokers of power.

To those grumbling anarcho-elitists I say “get over it.” Radicalism was “their thing” & now it’s “trendy.” Well you can sit in your Red & Black cafes & squat houses & forever preach to the same choir. Doesn’t affect anything.

Give me the 19 year old college girl that’s never been tear gassed or slept on the street, that hand-billed block by block for Barack not knowing any better, who never even heard the name Bradley Manning until she walked into an encampment by chance.

Why? Because the general masses are the game-changer. And the way that we win this struggle is not battling over a paltry stretch of park with riot cops but making sure everyone in America knows what BOEHMIAN GROVE is.

If everyone in the USA knew what I’m about to tell you, then it would be game over for the 1% overnight. It’s the dirtiest, most freakish skeleton in their closet. And whether or not it’s some bizarre, sophomoric party or our leaders actually are some satanic cult performing mock human sacrifices, it’s extremely f**king creepy.

So what is Bohemian Grove & who are the Bohemian Club members? Well I’ll roll off a some names for starters – every Republican President since 1888. Reagan, Nixon, both the Bushes. Monsters like McCain, Rumsfeld & Cheney — even Democrats like Bill Clinton & Jimmy Carter. Beyond them, fellow Grovers include Newt Gingrich, Warren Buffet, Colin Powell, Fox News CEO Rupert Murdoch, Henry Kissinger, John Boehner, Alan Greenspan, Karl Rove, Norman Schwarzkopf, Arnold Schwarzenegger & the entire Rockefeller clan. That’s just the tip of the iceburg.

So what do they do? Well, trying to explain this to any sane person is a real feat because it sounds completely ludicrous. As a former political journalist, street crazies & conspiracy types would rant about this to me, and I would always brush it off. But then I looked deeper in, and my life has never been the same. Quite frankly, now I feel like Roddy Piper in They Live….

So here’s the deal. Every year our leaders have a secret meeting at an 1800 acre campground in Northern California called Bohemian Grove. It’s a complex with 118 encampments that vaguely resembles an Ewok Village. On the first Saturday of their 2 week, drug-laced, black magic, male prostitute orgy — our leadership meets at a man-made lake in the middle of Bohemian Grove where a giant statue of a 40 foot stone owl rests at the lake’s shoreline.

The ritual dubbed “Cremation of Care” begins & our leaders wear red druid robes with hoods (just like KKK outfits) carry torches, chant a creepy sermon, and then burn what many eye-witnesses claim is an effigy – or dummy – of a human child inside a coffin (beneath this gigantic 40 foot stone owl). After the human child is set on fire, pyrotechnics explode everywhere in a huge spectacle as the NWO/Illuminati people watch & approve of with thundering applause.

This owl, some claim, represents Moloch — the ancient Babylonian God of war & human sacrifice (although the Grovers claim this is just their mascot & symbolizes knowledge). The ceremony is reportedly served as a catharsis for pent-up high spirits, and “to present symbolically the salvation of the trees by the club…” and “an exorcising of the Demon to ensure the success of the ensuing two weeks.”

Again, I know what this sounds like. And to top it all off, this is the one place where the supposedly Christian, conservative power brokers get to have homosexual orgies. Eyewitnesses claim that most the men are running around naked for two weeks, with male prostitutes shipped in from all over the world & paid off to remain silent. In the Watergate tapes, Richard Nixon was caught describing Bohemain Grove as “the most faggy goddamn thing you could ever imagine,”

The 118 camps where our leaders are sectioned off into quadrants… Owls Nest (U.S. Presidents/Military/Defense Contractors); Cave Man (Think Tanks/Oil Companies/Banking/Defense Contractors/Universities/Media); Lost Angels (Banking/Defense Contractors/Media); Hill Billies (Big Business/Banking/Politics); Mandalay (Big Business/Defense Contractors/U.S. Presidents); Stowaway (Rockefeller Family Members/Oil Companies/); Uplifters (Corporate Executives/Big Business);
Hideaway (Military/Defense Contractors); Isle of Aves (Military/Defense Contractors);
Silverado squatters (Big Business/Defense Contractors); Sempervirens (California-based Corporations); Hillside (Military—Joint Chiefs of Staff); Idlewild (California Corps).

CREMATION OF CARE ritual: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHeP4OGZO0g

CCUPY BOHEMIAN GROVE JULY 2012 MONTE RIO (CA) http://www.facebook.com/pages/Occupy-Bohemian-Grove/296474810366195

OCCUPY BG TWITTER —http://twitter.com/#!/OccupyBHgrove

BOHEMIAN GROVE Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohemian_grove

BG FAQ: http://www.scribd.com/doc/58711902/Bohemian-Grove-Fact-Sheet

Infiltration Article: http://www.sonomacountyfreepress.com/bohos/inside-spymag.html

CONFIRMED list of BOHEMIAN GROVE MEMBERS
http://www.lookingglassnews.org/viewcommentary.php?storyid=126

— YOUTUBE VIDEOS —

ANONYMOUS vs. BG 2011: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3_nQdjKVYU

Occupy BG Video (Not Our Promo): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXvtDktlZes

Historical Photos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXswwZY8AIg

Mark Rice, preeminent journalist on the subject
Part I: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCLQMqsu-qk
Part II: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8-AdsAg7tE&feature=related

ABC News Report (1981): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCDs9Vs2iYM
“Invisible Empire” Report: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sejg2d4RpZE

Harvard Community Protests Library Cut

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 12:00:29 -0500

This article is from the Occupied Media news wire. It was originally published over at the Boston Occupier.

by Julie Walsh

On the evening of Thursday, February 16, a circle of about forty picketers marched outside Harvard University’s Lamont Library, chanting and waving signs in an intermittent drizzle. The group had gathered to protest the university’s secretive, top-down handling of the restructuring of Harvard’s libraries, including plans to cut a substantial number of its 930 full-time employees.

Rank-and-file members of the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers were joined in the picket line by students, faculty, alumni, and participants in Occupy Boston. Occupy Harvard, in the midst of a five-day occupation of the Lamont Library, had helped to organize the event and distributed informational flyers to those passing by. Two union members took turns on a loud speaker, rallying the crowd.

Non-unionized employees, including librarians, were largely absent. With their jobs already on the line, they were forced to rely on less vulnerable individuals to make their case.

The picket was catalyzed by the events of the preceding week. On February 10, Harvard Library unveiled its plans for a new organizational structure aimed at eliminating redundancy across the university’s 73 libraries. Many staff members had looked forward to the changes. Anna Aizman, a graduate student in Comparative Literature who works part-time as an assistant librarian, explained that her full-time colleagues were initially “excited that uncatalogued collections would finally be organized and recorded. These are people passionate about knowledge.”

However, on February 13, the university foisted a surprise on its work force. A letter from the Vice President of Human Resources proffered voluntary early retirement to 275 members of the library staff. The buy-out package followed two previous rounds of layoffs, in 2004 and 2008-9. It was also out of synch with librarians’ shared impression that their facilities are currently understaffed.

“You say layoffs, we say back off! You say cut backs, we say fight back!” picketers chanted as they circled. “Harvard HAS the money,” read one protester’s hand-lettered sign. Cambridge City Councilor Leland Cheung, who is also a student at the Kennedy School of Government, spoke to the crowd. He urged protecting Harvard’s libraries and told protesters that“the city of Cambridge stands with you.”

“Historically, Harvard has needed a push to give fair conditions to its workers,” observed Giuliana, a lecturer in the History and Literature program, who asked to be identified just by her first name. She cited the Harvard Living Wage Campaign as an example. The campaign ran from 1998 to 2001 and culminated in a three-week sit-in at the president’s office, which at last succeeded in catalyzing the renegotiation of contracts for dining hall workers.

Giuliana read aloud to the picketers from a letter written anonymously by a Harvard librarian to the administration. “We feel terrified and threatened with losing our jobs,” the letter read. “This is a devastating time for library staff. Please don’t send us any more upbeat, jargon-filled emails.”

Rossen Djagalov, a lecturer and member of the Student Labor Action Movement, explained the urgency of the day’s protest. “We need to make an intervention now, when nothing has been decided yet” and before layoffs are finalized, he said. “We are trying to act preemptively.” Genevieve, a union member and Harvard employee, explained that the picket was one of many actions organized without encouragement from union leadership. “But the Occupy movement has raised consciousness and brought some support,” she said.

As the picket began to break up around 6:30 p.m. protesters tucked their signs under their arms and stood conversing in small groups. The tone was subdued but determined: everyone seemed to recognize that the day’s rally was one step in what would likely be a long struggle on behalf of Harvard’s library workers.

Capitalism, Censorship, Textbooks and The Conservative Right

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 17:00:44 -0500

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by Lana Buchanan

The idea that our textbooks are censored by omitting some facts and outright changing others to suit the beliefs and ideals of state board of education members is something most people don’t think about when they send their students to class. Like me they naively believe that our textbooks accurately reflect the subjects they set out to teach. This is not true in many cases, however for the purpose of this essay we will focus on the State of Texas and the recent changes it has made to our History and Sociology books, why I believe it was done, and how it will influence textbooks across the country.

In sociology, the State of Texas Board of Education voted this year to strike a reference to sex and gender as social constructs, as discussion of sex and gender would be very inappropriate in a high school setting, removed the terms capitalism and free market because the right wing members of the Board felt they are negative terms, choosing the term free enterprise instead (Texas Feedom Network). They also struck the word democratic from the description of the US Government, terming it a “Constitutional Republic.” They also no longer require that students examine the reasons the Founding Fathers protected religious freedom in America or that the US Constitution prevents the government from promoting one religion over another (Texas Feedom Network). It should be noted that nowhere in the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence is Jesus Christ or Christianity mentioned.

In 1983, any mention of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal was deleted from History textbooks in Texas because school board members and community members viewed Roosevelt’s administration as socialistic and disagreed with his economic decisions (Lehigh University 2009). In March of 2011, the State of Texas Board of Education removed Thomas Jefferson from the section in history books reserved for the Enlightenment Era, the 18th century period of philosophic thought whose tenants included reason, skepticism, revolution and who inspired political change, replacing him instead with the likes of Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin, and Sir William Blackstone, respectively, a Roman Catholic Priest, a Protestant theologian, and an English Jurist, who wrote that the doctrines of common law are based on God’s Word (Texas Freedom Works)? If you see a prevailing theme here you are not alone. Several of our Founding Fathers were Deists, not Christians, and this I believe is what is driving the wave of censorship that is flooding our textbooks.

According to Wikipedia, “Deism is religious and philosophical belief that a supreme being created the universe and that this (and religious truth in general) can be determined using reason and observation of the natural world alone, without the need for either faith or organized religion.” Thomas Jefferson strongly believed this and it is well documented that he spoke openly on this to anyone who would listen. Many French and American Revolutionists followed Deism, John Quincy Adams, Ethan Allen, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, Thomas Payne, and George Washington all were Deists. John Quincy Adams took the “Oath of Office” on a “book of laws” instead of the “traditional bible”, in order to preserve the separation of church and state. This goes against the religious right of this country, who believe God and Christianity are written into our government and try to rule with a religious hand, censoring anything that goes against their beliefs and ideals. It should be noted that nowhere in the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence is Jesus Christ or Christianity mentioned. As the State School Boards gain political power and change history and what we are taught in schools we are in danger of losing the truth about who we are and what our rights are as a nation. For if the school system that buys the most books can decide who is and isn’t, what is and isn’t, and what we should or shouldn’t know about each, what are we really learning?

What we are learning is the true meaning of “Capitialism.” Book publishers will bend over backwards to accommodate the requests of the State Education Boards in both California and Texas. While California is the largest buyer of textbooks, due to its economic situation, they have chosen not to purchase new textbooks until 2014, leaving the door open for Texas, the 2nd largest buyer, to make changes in text and demands on publishers, without the liberal balance that California brings to the table in normal conditions, in textbooks across the country for years to come. Publishers will do whatever it takes to get on Texas’ list to make a profit at the detriment to students and free press (Mariah Blake).

Parents and students need to take responsibility for what we are taught. No longer should we take for granted what we read and are taught in school as absolute, we never should have. We should utilize all the material available to us to do our own research whenever we question what we have read or been taught. If we do not stop the censorship in our textbooks eventually history will be re-written and the true values and ideas that made us the America that wrote the Constitution and The Declaration of Independence will be lost for future generations.

Works Cited

Lehigh University, Web Page, 2009
Texas Freedom Works, Live Blog, March, 11, 2011
Wikipedia>/em> Article, “Deism”
Mariah Blake, Washington Monthly, Jan/Feb 2010

ILWU and EGT -- The Victory That Wasn't

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 15:00:19 -0500

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by Lester Macgurdy

“Immediately upon execution of this Agreement, the ILWU Entities shall immediately cease all action directed against EGT (including, but not limited to picketing and any other form of disruptive activity), its partners, members, and their affiliates and employees, and anyone doing business with them, and shall actively discourage any other person or group from engaging in such activity. The ILWU Entities shall issue a written notice to The Daily News and the general public, including the Occupy movement, informing them of this settlement and urging them to cease and desist from any actions…”

— 1/27/2012 Settlement agreement from Port of Longview, EGT, and ILWU

The Portland Occupier recently ran an article entitled, “Occupy and ILWU Declare Victory as Contract Finalized with EGT”, and in keeping with the overly optimistic and misleading press releases generated by Occupy and some ILWU locals in regards to the standoff between the ILWU, Port of Longview and EGT, the article failed to accurately report the condition of the ILWU workforce and the agreement reached between ILWU, Port of Longview, and EGT. A free press being the cornerstone of any free people or movement intended to make people free, the facts should not be kept hidden because one party or another believes that the spin put out by public relations — i.e. convincing the people that a failure was a success — is more important than the truth.

Occupy and ILWU have some reason to celebrate for winning the battle against EGT, because they did win that battle, and its extent is of larger historical significance than most of us even realize. President Obama, following a hard-right anti-labor agenda, commanded the Navy, Homeland Security, and the Coast Guard to violate picket lines, and contractual agreements between the Port of Longview and EGT to escort a scab grain ship into the EGT terminal. The last time Federal troops have been ordered to intervene in a labor struggle was in the Postal strike of 1970 by President Richard Nixon. The potential for tragedy resulting from this order by President Obama could, if history is any guide, have resulted in the slaughter of working men and protesters at the hands of Federal Troops. This showdown was narrowly averted by the combined efforts of ILWU and Occupy to bring the crisis to resolution.

However, once the details of this “victory” are brought into sharp contrast, they don’t paint a very victorious picture. In order to understand the dispute, it’s important to take a look at how it began. The Port of Longview has a requirement in its lease (which EGT signed in 2009) that demands any businesses leasing facilities use ILWU labor. EGT signed one of these leases and then refused to abide by that term of the lease, instead choosing to contract labor out, hiring a rival union that agreed to less strict wage demands. For 70 years, organized labor in the Port of Longview has survived because of this requirement in Port of Longview leases. This requirement is what gave the ILWU the legal grounds to file unfair labor practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board and to join in the lawsuit with Port of Longview as a defendant in a suit filed by EGT.

Here’s is the new lease accepted by EGT in accordance with the terms of the current agreement:

“Warranty of Labor. Lessor [Port of Longview] warrants that, as of 4:00 p.m. Pacific Standard Time on January 27, 2012, there are no agreements or restrictions affecting the Port ,whether Lessor is a party to the same or otherwise, requiring (a) union labor or prevailing wage compliance.”

The above is a section from the lease agreement between EGT and the Port of Longview. As a result of the agreement between the ILWU and EGT, the varying court cases filed by all partied have been dropped. The dispute between EGT and the Port of Longview has been settled by the Port of Longview dropping the requirement that EGT use Union labor at their facility. EGT now has what they sought from the very beginning, release from contractual requirement to use organized labor.

Without any such provisions requiring Union labor in the current lease, ILWU no longer has any legal reason to challenge the hiring of scab labor by EGT once this short term agreement reached by both parties has run its course (a maximum of five years). The use of ILWU by EGT is currently a “business decision” of EGT, which they can change at their sole discretion in the future.

The ILWU EGT Settlement agreement confirms:

EGT has made a business decision to directly employ employees performing Landside and Shipside work at the Facility, to integrate the Landside and Shipside operations at the Facility; to hire and employ individuals who have proven expertise and skill … The parties specifically state that EGT has not, by this Agreement or otherwise,…recognized any ILWU Entity as the collective bargaining representative of the workforce at the Facility, and that no ILWU Entity has accepted such representation. No such representation shall be extended by EGT, nor accepted by any ILWU Entity, unless and until lawfully proper.

What Occupy and the Longshoremen won was a “business decision” by the EGT to temporarily use ILWU employees. What was lost was 70 years of contractual protection of organized labor at the Port of Longview.

Protest and Movement: What This Means for Occupy

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 12:00:20 -0500

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by David “Däv” O’Bryant

Protest and Movement: Distinctions

Political protest, whether with an aim toward raising social consciousness within the broad public or with that of challenging authority in the hopes of pressuring power to concede to demand, sometimes (though by no means always) occurs within the framework of a wider protest movement. Unlike specific protest actions, the tactics employed in their manifestation, and the strategies which underpin the wider framework of these tactics, protest movements, as any other social movement, are considerably less centralized and arguably less able to be contained or controlled. It is primarily through the autonomy of the constituent parts of any social movement that it takes hold in the hearts and minds of those who identify with the movement in question.

There exists in any social movement something of a cultural semantic dissonance on the part of the multivariate constituents at a given time. While this dissonance is crucial to the mass appeal of a movement, it may only facilitate the social movement toward and up until the point where break downs occur in the perceived efficacy, commitment and momentum of the movement in question.

Political protest is by its very definition, extra-systemic political activity which aims to address a social grievance through presenting a challenge to culturally accepted forms of authority. This challenge may aim at raising social awareness to a particular social issue to the end of putting that issue on the political agenda of the day or it may aim toward directly challenging political authority in a disruptive manner to the end of pressuring political power to concede to demand. In either case, political protest seeks to challenge culturally accepted norms as a matter of course.

This is not so simple a task as it seems. The hegemonic strains of social pressure which bind the fabric of social norms in place in any society are very strong. Certainly, the institutionalization of cultural habit handed down through a culture’s history manifests itself in such broad and pervasive social forums as politics, economics, the military, religion, education and familial kinship ties. What’s more, those institutional forces which acquire hegemonic force over and above all other social forces actively seek to retain their hegemony through the activity of those individuals and groups within society who actively benefit from it. Given such a social condition, the effectiveness of political protest can only be marginal without being engaged in continuously and in a multitude of ways through mass participation on the part of a wide and diverse segment of the public.

This is the central feature of a protest movement. A protest movement extends across a broad spectrum of societal elements, each motivated for somewhat different reasons. The content or cohesion of these reasons is not immediately pertinent to the efficacy of the movement but the perception of efficacy certainly plays a key role in the maintenance of the movement. The movement to abolish slavery in the United States, for instance, took on ethical dimensions shaped by religion, and general ethical politics and saw its aims ultimately accomplished due to matters of military sensibility. The civil rights movement of the 20th century took on many forms and many tactical and strategic manifestations, from those put forth by Martin Luther King Jr. and southern black Christians to those of Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam, from those of black and white northerners who mounted a campaign to travel to the south and directly confront Southern racism through the freedom rides to the many people who participated in the race riots of the 1960s which lead directly to the drafting of the 1964 Civil Rights Bill. The Second wave of the Women’s Liberation movement in the United states had a similarly mass appeal to women pushing for changes in political, economic, educational and familial institutions through a myriad of tactical and strategic approaches. In each of these cases, the appeals of the movement were at no point controlled or constrained by the ideals or ideologies of any segment of the movement. Additionally, the efficacy of the general cause was felt across all ideations and ideologies of the individuals and groups of which these movements were comprised.

What This Means for the Occupy Movement

Movements of the past have a great capacity to inform our present course of strategy, and should we not fail to ignore them. If we are to grow the now toddling Occupy movement into a powerful and strong engine of social change, we can only do so through nurturing it on the milk of past social movement successes. This most prominently means a few key things. First, we must continue to vocally rally around the central theme of the movement, as it was expressed in the conception of the initiating Occupy Wall Street protests and has continued to be articulated by many actions across the United States and around the world since: “The domination of all facets of society by the interests of corporate hegemony is unacceptable and must come to an end.”

Second, we must adopt a strategy which empowers us to approach political, economic and social change extra-systemically, as it is within the shadow of the recognition and capitalization upon the illegitimacies of the dominant institutions of political, economic and society that our greatest opportunities for success lie. Any strategy thus developed, must recognize the equal importance of focusing on consciousness raising and power challenging methods of approaching social change.

Third, it is important for us to recognize the association of our movement and its struggle with the many movements which have come before it and their successes and failures.

“The domination of all facets of society by the interests of corporate hegemony is unacceptable and must come to an end.” In the months since the Occupation of Wall Street, we’ve seen many different approaches to strategy. The vast majority of these have not lost sight of the overarching theme stated above. If we are to successfully fight the power that is (I intentionally utilize the singular as it is my contention here that there is no plurality of social power in its broadest context), we must recognize that in the American complexion of power, corporate hegemony is king. All educational, religious, familial, political and martial clusters of society are subservient to the interests and motivations of corporate power. This can be clearly seen in the social manifestations of the death of education as an instrument of the exploration of our understanding of the world for the sake of knowledge in the face of the bottom line of the business of educating; of the rise of big moneyed interests within the military-industrial-complex; of the manufacture of familial kinship norms, industries and institutions which have been established to commodify every variety of human relationship from birth, to child rearing, to pair bonding and even to death itself; and of the rise of the mega-church which serves to undersell their church competitors by presenting a more emotionally stimulating religious experience to a wider audience at a lower cost and for a higher rate of donation much as large chain warehouse stores have accomplished in the retail industry. It may also be clearly seen in what is presently its most directly challenged manifestation: the pecuniary axis of institutional power’s domination of our institutions of political governance. It should by now be clear not only that the occupation of Wall Street and indeed of “All Streets” across the United States and around the world is in direct confrontation with the occupation of “all facets of society by the interests of corporate hegemony.”

Strategies which we can thus take to broach fighting the behemoth of corporate hegemony must utilize a logical diversity of aims, methods and tactics. Most crucially, consciousness raising and power challenging are equally important approaches to social change as they provide the means to build political leverage to bring our intentions into the realm of our capabilities as a movement. Action oriented toward consciousness-raising activity seeks to reach out into the minds of the public at large and to question why we obey the leaders of our dominant institutions and how people we are motivated in terms of our ideals, ends and means. Action oriented toward challenging the dominant institutions of authority seeks to highlight their failures and to capitalize upon them in order to directly correct these failures. In each case, the central theme of individual and collective self-empowerment is key to promoting our movement as a vehicle whereby the public may take agency in establishing real positive change and not just feel good hope and squandered optimism. Social awareness may be raised through myriad tactics designed to bring the message of the immorality and social disempowerment wrought through corporate hegemony upon the lives of people everywhere to those arenas of public life with which all facets of the public can personally identify. This can, for example, be done more generally through formal statements through all forms of media, marches, rallies and other attention drawing tactics. It must, however, be done everywhere: In every home, school, church, political and martial outfit. Challenging the dominant institutions of authority may only be logically accomplished through establishing dual power direct action methods of confronting the failures of these institutions. This can be done through occupying space and providing food, housing and medical treatment to dispossessed segments of the community, through mutual aid projects seeking to fix problems which the authorities are incapable or unwilling to approach and through mass action seeking to prevent the authorities from acting against the interest of the public. The
strategic actions required of any successful social movement which seeks to become a mass movement must simultaneously walk down both of these roads.

Finally, it is important to remember those who have come before us. The Occupy movement is neither the first nor the only movement to address many of the issues subsequent to the corporate hegemony which we are fighting to shed light on and to correct. It is necessary, looking forward to remember the contributions of liberation struggles of the past form the American experience as well as other experiences, worldwide. We must honestly assess their successes and failures, their strengths and weaknesses and how these experiences can contribute to the task which we presently have at hand. Ultimately, the struggle for democratic social change is a complex and often difficult one. Through effort over time, the relative powerless within society often attempt to push forward inch by inch, mile by mile. Our overarching aims, strategies and tactical methods must reflect the time and place in our struggle in which they find practicality. These tactics and strategies are most effective when they are engaged in and developed autonomously by many different groups of individuals from broadly diverse segments of society, bearing broadly diverse ideas and beliefs, uniting under an identity held together by a broad and general goal. If we do not, however, seek to relearn the lessons of those who have come before us, the Occupy Movement will join them in the ash heap of history, without a bang or a whimper.

Why Prison is Profitable

Sun, 19 Feb 2012 15:00:50 -0500

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by Ahjamu Umi

I wrote my Master’s Thesis on the politics of imprisonment and comparative economics. The imprisonment portion of the 70 page research centered on the state of California, where I lived at the time, and the 160,000 people who are imprisoned there. My research confirmed the obvious facts. Eight out of ten people in prison in California are there for non-violent drug related crimes. And out of that 80% incarcerated for drug related crimes, 90% of those who participated in the 2000 elections proposition 36 program that increased funding for drug offenders, successfully participated and completed that program before funding for the program was cut in 2003. Success here is defined as no further drug arrests and no recidivism, i.e. no returning to prison. Some of the more unconventional trends my data revealed are that 44% of those convicted on third strikes in California are Black and 85% of those third strike crimes are non-violent. What was also revealed is the staggering rise of women who are being incarcerated.

Still, nothing I discovered was more shocking than the high level of sophistication that has developed in the prison system as it relates to utilizing inmates for low wage labor. In the 1990s, the state of California initiated a program called the Joint Venture Program. That program offered private companies low rent contracts to build facilities on government prison land in order to employ inmates to work in the production of their products. These companies were offered impressive tax breaks for participating in this program. The roll call of companies that participated is full of familiar names like Chevron, Dell Computer, Wal Mart, Kmart, and Trans World Airlines. In fact, from 1991 until 1994, if you made a phone reservation for TWA, chances are an inmate took your credit card information and made your reservation. If you wore Lee Jeans, an inmate probably stitched them, and if you bought a Dell computer, an inmate may have assembled it. As people became aware of this program, most of the companies pulled out, but not before Dell was forced to settle a class action lawsuit from two employees from Corcoran State Prison who successfully argued in court that Dell forced them to work 20 hours a day in un-sanitary and unsafe conditions.

There is plenty of research out there on this subject, including my thesis paper which is available online. The point is arresting and imprisoning people is profitable for private corporations. As a result, imprisonment is much more about providing that cheap labor source instead of attempting to address any question of crime and punishment or justice. This issue calls into the question the entire process of arrests, who is being arrested, and why. What that means is since there must be a cheap labor source; the question then becomes who will serve that need? Since its unlikely to be rich White kids since they have the resources at their disposal to defend themselves, then it’s likely to be poor people, particularly poor Black and Brown people, who will be arrested and imprisoned since targeting them is the path of least resistance. This is an excellent example of how institutional racism works It also explains why Black people are only 7% of California’s overall population, but 40% of the prison population in that state. The movement towards privatization of prisons simply amplifies these issues.

Justice-seeking people have a responsibility to be 100% opposed to the prison industrial complex. We call on all people in the Portland area to support the Decolonize Portland effort on February 20th to bring attention to this critical issue because for poor people and people of color, prison is the slavery of the 21st century.

Monday, 6:00pm until 8:00pm at Portland Community College campus a film will be shown called Three Thousand Years and Life. It is a documentary about the prison uprising at Walpole State Prison in 1973. Spurred by the terrible conditions at Walpole, the prisoners organized themselves and took it over They ran it themselves for several months, with incredible results. Following the film will be a presentation and discussion on the Prison Industrial Complex.

This event is part of the national Occupy the Prisons day. The film showing is presented by Decolonize PDX, co-sponsored by the PCC Black Student Union. For more info, go to http://pdx.decolonize.org.

The Prisoner’s Dilemma

Sun, 19 Feb 2012 15:00:41 -0500

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Tracy Mattner

Nowhere is the hierarchical structure of our society more apparent than at the airport gate. Once on board, first class passengers recline comfortably while the coach masses shuffle slowly past and into the economy cabin. Zone four passengers are forced to gate check their carry-ons, even though there are remaining spaces in the first class cargo; economy luggage is not permitted to mix with elite luggage. A partial wall protects the more delicate sensibilities from the rabble. Bathrooms are segregated so that economy does not even wipe its ass with the same toilet paper.

From my vantage point behind the great divide, I cannot tell if first class passengers are also forced to watch repeating commercials from CBS, HBO, and Coca-Cola on ten-inch screens just two feet in front of their faces—screens that will not turn off until we’ve reached ten thousand feet. Moments later, passengers are pacified by peanuts, pretzels, and the pffft of pop tops popping. The redeye flight is full and cramped and the cabin is hot, but I manage about three hours of head-hung middle-seat airplane sleep.

The next morning I arrive in D.C. and trudge from plane to subway with heavy eyelids. As I chew dried mango, I notice a sign warning that possession of food or drink in the subway system is punishable by a $100 fine or jail time. This seems…excessive. I imagine the absurdity of calling my mom and reporting that I never even made it to the Occupy Congress protest, because I was arrested for eating fruit on public transit in our nation’s capitol. When I reach Capital Hill and emerge from the underground tunnel, my senses are immediately assaulted by the ugly aesthetic of power that marks the monumental architecture. I am beset on all sides by massive monoliths; each base spreads far wider than its height, imparting the appearance of great weight and inertia. All have an eerily faceless quality and stand in glaring contrast to the abundant green space surrounding them.

Dissident patriots from all across America gradually gather on the expansive but muddy Capitol lawn. The Metropolitan Police Department is out in full force, exerting the obligatory authority as tranquil protesters, greeted by scattered rain showers, are instructed by policemen to stay off the low and wide wall that encloses the soggy grass. They are told it’s for their own safety, for the wall is slippery. The idea that the rough concrete wall might be dangerous or more slippery than the rain-slicked grass and mud elicits laughter. I note that, just as turbulence is now merely “rough air,” riot police have been tamely renamed “crowd control.” A mobile command unit also oversees the event; it is a behemoth surveillance system, purportedly equipped with scores of cameras to record and scan the faces of the crowd as people come and go. I pose in front of it as my friend snaps a photo of me: smiling, waving, and flashing a peace sign.

The day is long and filled with spontaneous and seemingly unending speeches: what I call “Occupy therapy sessions.” It occurs to me that these people want, most of all, just to feel important. It is an enduring and universal human need to be listened to. Yet I make no attempt to mask my annoyance at the ever-present and insatiable ego; as Poet Naomi Shihab Nye writes, “I am not interested in who suffered the most. I’m interested in people getting over it.”

By twilight, I’ve run out of steam. All day I’ve been carrying a fifty-pound backpack over my shoulders, but I decide to stick around for a bit longer; the crowd feels electrified, like a storm is brewing in our midst. Maybe there’s something about the dark that brings out the animal in man. Or maybe it’s just the heightened perception of anonymity that comes with darkness that causes individuals to grow emboldened. Whatever the case, cries of “March! March! March!” begin to ring out across the lawn in a mighty moving crescendo. The crowd, which has swelled to roughly four thousand, easily slices through lines of police cars and swarms the city streets—spanning the entire five lanes at a depth of over three blocks. The sidewalks too are crawling with living, marching, chanting bodies.

The hoard ascends upon and greatly overflows the steps of the US Supreme Court, shouting, “Money! Is! Not free speech!” in an outcry against corporate personhood. After several tense minutes at the Court, in which police attempt a few arrests only to have their targets escape into the chaos, the crowd continues down Pennsylvania Avenue in a giant amorphous flow. An uproar of mixed frustration and laughter erupts when the front lines reach the Newseum, a seven-story museum dedicated to news and journalism. Etched in four stories of stone are the 45 words to the First Amendment of the US Constitution. Both green and red laser pointers dance over the stone edict as the crowd reads in unison, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

The spirited mass then moves in on the White House; like a military installation, it stations itself outside the iron fence. Thousands of individuals chant furiously, in unison, “Obama! Come out! We have some things to talk about!” A smoke bomb, presumably thrown by an agitator in the crowd, goes off just inside the fence, and for a moment we think we’re being tear-gassed by the Secret Service.

By now the crowd’s energy has seemingly peaked and begun its gradual downturn. I suddenly feel my weariness again and lean up against a stack of metal barricades that happen to be on the street, positioning my bag so that its weight is held up by the structure and not my back, which by now is beginning to spasm. I am forced to step aside by a self-described “yarn-bomber.” This renegade knitter busies herself with wrapping red yarn around and around and around everything in sight—and has her heart set on weaving some crimson through the barricades’ metal bars. I am approached by a reporter for the Washington Post who asks to interview me, and I deflect the questions to my travel companion. I am not an authority; I am one among thousands. Beyond that, I am confused when approached with the usual questions of, “Why are you here today?” and, “What would like to change?” At this point the answers seem so rudimentary that I have lost patience for them. I would be happy to engage a stranger on the street with this query, but from a reporter these are not genuine questions. Noam Chomsky once shared an observation regarding the futility of speaking truth to power: “Power quite probably knows the truth already and is mainly interested in suppressing or limiting it.”

The next day the Washington Post is the only major newspaper to run a story about the protest, greatly underreporting the number of participants and not including any words from the protestors who were consulted; thus it appears that it wouldn’t have mattered if I had spoken anyway. Quite likely in the minds of those who weren’t there, the entire day’s events never actually happened.

After hopping a bus to New York City, I take the night to relax on the couch with a book as Back to the Future plays on the television. I don’t intend to watch the movie, but I do. I don’t intend to read anything into it, but I do. In the beginning of the movie, when Marty McFly is racing through the mall parking lot and travels back in time, the camera lingers on a Bank of America for what seems like a little too long. At first this seems trivial…until I notice that in Back to the Future Part III, which takes place in the Wild West of 1885, a Wells Fargo figures prominently into the screen shots—the most unintentionally comic case of product placement I have ever considered.

As soon as the movie credits start rolling, a reminder appears at the bottom of the screen: 3 Days until the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills on Bravo! This is my cue to retire, but I am kept awake by nightmarish images of the Real Housewives drama and the constructed culture of envy that is the driving force of American consumption. Our airwaves are inundated with it. Because they are a profoundly influential and yet limited resource to which not everyone has access, the airwaves were originally established as a public trust—meaning the content was largely restricted by the requirement that it benefit the common good. I cannot fathom what good such dramas impart. It is a mostly sleepless night.

The next morning, I gaze out the window of the café in Brooklyn where I’m having breakfast, and my eyes rest on a painted gray wall across the street; it is partially lined with a series of bright yellow and black “Avoid Occupy” stickers. Not everyone is a fan, I think to myself. Only after breakfast do I have a view of the lower half of the wall; it is covered with a series of large white fliers that read, “Buy More Stuff” in bold black letters.

Avoid Occupy. Buy more stuff.

A rally has been planned for that evening at Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan where Occupy Wall Street originally began. The event has been dubbed “Occupy the Courts.” It is a protest of the January 21, 2010 Supreme Court decision in the case known as Citizens United vs. FEC, in which the Court held that corporations are entitled to unlimited independent spending for political purposes, under the First Amendment right to free speech.

Corporations are people. Money is free speech.

When we arrive the temperature is roughly 25 degrees, and I’m thankful I’ve just visited a street vendor for a pair of ten-dollar gloves. My rapidly condensing breath makes me look like a smoker—or even a fire-breathing dragon. Despite the cold, a crowd begins to gather. One man, ragged, worn, and quiet, is wearing a gigantic sign that reads, “Freedom of speech has always had sensible limits: yelling ‘fire’ in a crowded theater, prohibited; disturbing the peace, prohibited; slander, prohibited; controlling too many TV/radio stations or newspapers, prohibited; unlimited campaign funds corrupting democracy, allowed (US Supreme Court, Jan. 21, 2010).”

A handful of women have brought poster boards, markers, and other sign-making accoutrements, so I busy myself in fashioning a sign while my hands tremble with what I assume is a combination of excitement and anxiety. In multi-colored sharpie, it reads, “American corporations use money to silence free speech,” and features a shaky and hurried depiction of a face whose features are almost entirely obscured by a dollar bill.

The march is full of assorted flags, signs, chants, and people, escorted by the NYPD, and spotlighted by blue and red police lights. Throats go raw from raising tired voices into the night air. The protesters end in Manhattan’s Foley Square where a stage and microphone have been set up in advance. I’ve been drinking coffee all day in an attempt to keep warm and now desperately need to unload some liquid baggage. Perhaps naively I had arrived in New York City expecting to find a public restroom in the subway. At this point that notion seems laughable; I’ve quickly realized that toilets are a luxury to which the general public is not entitled. I hesitate then decide to approach a police officer, asking if there are any coffee shops open nearby. His expression tells me that I am an idiot as he points to the Starbucks in the distance. Inside I receive the customary reminder: restrooms are for customers only. A lock-and-key system ensures that the rule is strictly enforced, so I promptly buy a cup of tea and rush to the bathroom cell, relieved.

When I join back up with the crowd I am just in time for the “Smash Bank Polka” (aptly titled, as it is a lively polka song about destroying banks). I don’t mind that I am one of five people dancing; it is so cold that I don’t know how others are standing still.

After the band the speakers begin. Journalist and author Chris Hedges—who many times has spoken publicly to Occupy crowds and been arrested for acts of civil disobedience—announces that he is suing President Obama over the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), as it is in direct violation of the US Constitution.

Harvard Law Professor Lawrence Lessig—who is also director of Harvard’s Center for Ethics—has just arrived by train from Boston, with the sole purpose of speaking for just three minutes at the event. (He flew home immediately afterward.) There is something strangely profound about hearing a Harvard intellectual weave f-bombs into his call for campaign finance reform. Our “republic,” Lessig reminds us, is a form of government in which citizens conduct their affairs for the benefit of the common good and not the good of the ruling class. A corporation, he continues, cannot cast a vote based on the interest of the common good; it is required by law to operate in the service of profit and the private gain of its shareholders. He says further that democracy has been broken since before Citizens United, and it will not be fixed without publicly funded elections.

Ultimately, both men articulate quite clearly what many occupiers perhaps only instinctively know to be true: the American political and legal institutions are so fundamentally corrupted that affecting meaningful change through these systems is no longer possible.

As I listen to speech after speech, I find my face growing hot as the peppermint tea in my hand. Attempting to conceal the logo, I am utterly mortified to be holding a Starbucks cup in a crowd of people protesting corporate personhood. More than that, I am enraged at the absurdity of having been forced to buy something from a multinational corporation in exchange for the ability to urinate—something which I have no choice, as a human, not to do.

The next morning I wake to find the city in the midst of its first snow of the year. I get lost on the subway and arrive an hour late to the “Occupy the Corporations” march, but find I am actually right on time. (It is somewhat comforting that even the Big Apple slows down for snow days.) A preacher, decked out in a most ornate robe, is giving an inspirational speech about the influence of corporate greed on our nation’s moral fiber. Someone adopts the “human mic” to announce that there is a giant thermos of hot instant coffee/cocoa mix available for all. It tastes terrible, but I am grateful for the warmth. Just as the huddled mass begins its march through the frozen snow, I again feel a flush of shame—this time at dropping my empty Styrofoam cup into one of the park’s waste cans. The degradation of the environment is intimately connected to the issues that Occupy is addressing, and we are complicit even in such small acts. One’s true character is defined by a composite of seemingly insignificant moments.

We snake through Manhattan on a tour of American corporations’ “worst offenders” list, stopping at each headquarters to publicly shame each company with uncomely information and statistics. All the while I can’t avoid noticing a little girl who, though holding her grandmother’s hand, is somehow always adjacent to me in the crowd. She glances over and up at me with deep brown eyes while she repeats my chanting. By the last half of the march she is courageously leading the chants. I am struck by her bouncy brown ringlets, wide eyes, and the stunning degree to which she resembles the young Evey in the film V for Vendetta. I think also of Caterina Sforza, Countess of Forlì, who, when her enemies threatened to kill her children whom they held captive, exposed her genitals from the fortress walls and said: “I have the instrument to bear more!” The point of the legend is not that we should sacrifice our children, but that when the state is attacked or oppressed, there will always be another generation to take up the battle for justice.

On my final night in New York City I cannot sleep, and open Letters to a Young Contrarian by Christopher Hitchens. Hitchens has much to say about inaction in the face of corruption, and repeats the same sentiment in many different forms throughout the book: “Remember that saying nothing is also a decision.” In a most poignant passage, Hitchens writes, “Dante was a sectarian and a mystic, but he was right to reserve one of the fieriest corners of his inferno for those who, in a time of moral crisis, try to stay neutral.” Hitchens has no sympathy for those who passively watched the construction of the Third Reich. He scathingly recalls that the “long-standing excuse for their own inaction had been that, under such terror, no gesture of resistance would have been possible. This depressing discovery need not bind us to the true moral, which is that everybody can do something…”

I immediately think of my own mother, whom I have recently spoken with over the telephone, and who has become very concerned about what she calls ‘me taking the entire world on my shoulders.’ I had told her simply that if everyone, rather than doing nothing, resolved to do something, a few burrows would not be forced to bear the lion’s share. She agreed whole-heartedly that everyone should do his or her own part, but when I pointed out that that meant she too would have to contribute, the line went silent.

Hitchens simply repeats a truth that has been passed down in the traditional lore of widely different cultures for centuries. The story that easily exposes this axiom is an intellectual riddle commonly known as the prisoner’s dilemma. Although such dilemmas occur in real life, they are considered the most fantastic of conflict situations. A very simple dilemma tale from Western Africa goes something like this:

A man is crossing a river with his wife and mother when a beast appears on the opposite bank. As the man draws his gun, the beast says, “If you shoot, your mother will die. If you don’t shoot, your wife will die.” What should the man do?

As the prisoner’s dilemma illustrates, the refusal to act does not absolve a person from blame; to not act is still a choice. Hitchens writes, “There is only one argument for doing something. The rest of the arguments are for doing nothing.”

Will Occupy Spring Forward Or Melt Down?

Sun, 19 Feb 2012 12:00:08 -0500

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By Shamus Cooke

A healthy debate has finally gripped the Occupy Movement: there is now a discussion over strategy. Most Occupiers have learned that raw enthusiasm alone cannot bring victory to a social movement; ideas matter too. Action divorced from strategy equals wasted energy, divisiveness, diversions and unnecessary mistakes. Not all tactics push the movement forward.

Why this debate now? Anyone paying attention can tell that the Occupy Movement has lost momentum; the winter months showcased increasing amount of actions combined with fewer and fewer people. After taking the lead in national Occupy enthusiasm, Occupy Oakland is doing some soul searching after an attempted building takeover resulted in massive police violence.

Some Occupiers claim that Occupy was simply in winter hibernation, waiting for its own Arab Spring. But the movement in Europe has grown during the same winter months. The movements in the Middle East, Russia, and elsewhere too have voted with their feet against hibernation.

A social movement, by definition, requires masses of participants, without which momentum grinds to a halt; the movement ceases to move.

Numbers matter, and Occupy has been shedding numbers for months. A major reason for this is because Occupiers have swerved drastically left, leaving the broader 99% ashore. If this trend isn’t corrected soon, Occupy will resemble the pre-Occupy left: small isolated groups pursuing their own issues, disconnected from the very broader population that must be involved to actually win any significant demands.

This is the original sin of Occupy: without first sinking its roots deep enough into the broader population, Occupy marched quickly to the left, unconcerned with who was following. Hopefully Occupy can correct this mistake in time, since not doing so would be fatal fast.

Hopefully, Occupiers have passed through the movement’s immature adolescence. For example, Occupy must shed its focus on radical-themed direct actions that inevitably attract only a couple hundred Occupiers but no one else. Again, this was the strategy of pre-Occupy that has already proved its lack of worth. Mass direction action is truly effective, but that raises the critical question: how to bring the masses of working people to Occupy, and vice versa?

Europe has already answered this question, having passed through the adolescence if its own movement, and now focused on bringing down unpopular governments. Greece, for example, went through an immature stage of rioting that showcased much bravery but could provide no real answers. Now, however, a massive workers movement has emerged, the entire 99% is directly involved in producing gigantic demonstrations that soon evolved into one-day General Strikes, and then two-day General Strikes. A common demand in Greece is now for an “indefinite general strike” to bring down the government and stop austerity, i.e., the massive cuts to public programs — education, health care, social services — and jobs.

Demands matter. The entire Greek population would not be going on strike against capitalism — at this time — or against corporate greed, etc.

Typically, an effective general strike — one where the entire 99% participates — happens after a prolonged struggle over demands that affect all working people, where they are agitated enough to take action in the streets. A general strike is the culmination of this movement, itself the byproduct of reaching out to and connecting with broader and broader layers of working people.

Throughout Europe working people are inspired to fight against austerity. Workers in the United States would likely also be inspired to fight against austerity. Unfortunately, there is no venue to do this. The labor and Occupy Movements have failed to take on the key issues that actually have the potential to unite the U.S. population in a European style social movement.

Austerity is happening fast in the United States; on a state-by-state level massive cuts are being pushed through while taxes on the rich stay low. Health care, education, and social services are being killed on a city, state, and federal level. Public sector jobs are being slashed in an epoch of mass joblessness. Medicare and Medicaid are undergoing a very public attack and Social Security is on the chopping block.

Yes, Occupy is too “radical” to unite around these demands; while the labor movement has acted too timidly. Some Occupiers avoid these demands because they fear Democrat co-optation; labor avoids seriously pressing for these demands because they don’t want to upset the Democrats. This is exactly the point: the Democrats — with the Republicans — are the ones pushing these cuts. Fighting austerity in the United States directly challenges the two-party system, while engaging the broader population into struggle.

Without struggle there is no movement. If working people do not identify with the issues that Occupy is fighting for, they will not join, and Occupy’s issues will remain unachievable.

Occupy Oakland has called for a general strike on May Day. Unless conditions change fast, it is unlikely to succeed, and more likely it will put further distance between Occupy and working people, since the 99% will not take Occupy seriously if it calls for actions it cannot organize. Occupy would do better to follow Europe’s example: organize around demands that connect with working people, so that the real power of the majority of working people can be mobilized in the streets.

Black Bloc: Occupy the Black Bloc!

Sat, 18 Feb 2012 17:00:57 -0500

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Editor’s Note: This Tuesday, Feb. 21st, come to the basement at St. Francis at 7PM for a community discussion on the black bloc and the future of Occupy Portland tactics.

Had enough of discussions about Black Bloc? No? Good! Because we’re running a three-day series on Black Bloc tactics. Click the Black Bloc Series tag to read the other articles, delving into the controversy currently sparking throughout the Occupy movement and beyond.

This article was originally published at Deepecomedy.

by Arlo Stone

The black bloc quandary is upon us.

AAARRRGGGGHHHH!

Hedges ignited a shit storm!

In true anarchist fashion (green anarchy/anarcho-primitivism, thanks. Really.) Let me first identify my terms and premises. (That’s how you spot an anarchist by the way. Arguing over terms and words. Not all who wear black are anarchists, but all who spend more than an hour splitting hairs between anarcho-syndicalism & anarcho-communism are. Anarchists can’t even begin to argue about anything unless we have two hours before the argument starts to argue about what all the symbolic words do or don’t mean. Forget bandannas, look for arguments if you want to spot an anarchist.)

1) “BlackBloc”; any autonomous cell of one or more PEOPLE for whom property destruction is on the table as a potentiality, given the right circumstances. I am well aware the term actually refers to a set of articulated “strategies”; for readability “black bloc” is used below as a catch-all for the people using the tactics rather then the tactics themselves.

2) BlackBloc cannot be purged from Occupy. This is a fact. Black bloc members ARE the 99%. And Occupy. Just the most radical edge of it. Everywhere. Tat Tvasm Asi . You could no more prevent black bloc from coming together under the Occupy banner than you could people with red hair. And you’d have a lot more success with the latter. Black bloc cells of anarchists targeting the 1% have been active world-wide for hundreds of years. Occupy is 5 months old.

The reason Occupy is the gathering du jour these days for black bloc cells is because WHEREVER there are people gathered in sufficient numbers to provide a general degree of anonymity not normally possible, black bloc will ferret out that opportunity to come together. Sporting event celebrations, marches, rallies, accidents, natural disasters, power outages, spectacles of all types have always been incubation opportunities for black bloc to form and destroy property; right now Occupy is a black bloc hotbed because it has both the large numbers to provide necessary cover AND a pool of potential participants consistently angry enough with social and/or economic injustice to swell the numbers organically in any black bloc gathering given the right circumstances. Occupy is now big enough and frequent enough to make it a lightning rod for the black bloc both now and in the foreseeable future. Just as occupiers found each other in municipal camps and grew in power and organizational ability, black bloc is using the exact same system to grow their numbers every time there’s an Occupy march or event of consequence.

In equal parts, to the delight of black bloc and the chagrin of Occupy, both groups must learn to co-exist in a reciprocal relationship of mutual benefit if this uneasy “arranged marriage” can be sustained to the benefit of occupy instead of aiding in its destruction.

Thus, my starting points are simple. “Black bloc” or “bb” refers to “people willing to destroy property and fight cops” and I submit that is unremovable from greater occupy in the near future. If you think that marginalizing the black bloc from all occupy marches until they go away is even possible, then you disagree with the second premise above and don’t need to continue reading. Alienation and ostracizing the black bloc from Occupy will simply lessen Occupy’s influence there, which is exactly what Occupy needs more of, not less. If Occupy tries to purge the black bloc from Occupy ranks, the response from black bloc will be no respect whatsoever for Occupy goals, (since they will have displayed no respect or tolerance for black bloc goals) unfocused property destruction will increase and MSM will continue to fracture occupy’s public image via the small but highly damaging unfocused rage of the now “expunged” (but still around) black bloc.

Don’t do it, young Occupy, only five short months old. Resist the urge to purge. You will not only lose your fight to remain relevant and swell your ranks, you will lose the group MOST willing to incidentally work for Occupy’s benefit in the very ways you wouldn’t personally have the stomach for.

Don’t do it. With regards to the black bloc, Occupy’s motto should be: “Don’t exorcise, organize!”

How to Occupy the Black Bloc

Obligatory disclaimer: I am 43 years old. I have kids. My bb days are long finished. Just an occupy citizen-journalist comedian now, an anarchist pundit. With a little “a”. So fuck off, pigs.

In my experience, there are two basic stations of people usually comprising a black bloc event. The “Lord of the Flies” and the “Weathermen.” “Lord of the Flies” black bloc are generally adolescent or post-adolescent youth with insufficiently developed moral ego structures to find fault with indiscriminate vandalism while “Weatherman” black bloc are usually a bit older, intelligent, community and globally oriented and almost always motivated by values and morality; people who have calculated that specific property damage and engaging in confrontations with police directly in specific situations helps stress the current system, urging collapse of inequality ever sooner. Animal liberation, destruction of machinery, sabotage of 1% buildings and symbols done anonymously… weathermen, alf, elf, ef… all black bloc cells. Can you tell me “Anonymous” doesn’t fit the description of a black bloc cell? Anonymous destroys what their victims consider “personal property” (although many anonymous don’t believe it’s “personal” at all) but takes great care to limit exclusively their direct action to perps and 1%ers, all while masking their identity. That sounds like the kind of high integrity and pointed attack that distinguishes a “Weathermen” black bloc from a “LOF” black bloc to me…

LONG LIVE THE WEATHERMEN BLACK BLOC OF ANONYMOUS!

Anarcho-whatevers (including me) will wax theory and bicker for weeks for weeks about what to do post political/social/economic/patriarchal/imperialist unjust system of empire, but it only takes three seconds for us all to agree on what’s next. – TAKE IT DOWN! – NOW!

The phrase “diversity of tactics” can be bandied about freely in proper context when referring to “Weatherman” black bloc of all types and camps. “Tactic” by definition presupposes a further end, a common goal currently missing. Absent an identifiable victory by which the tactic is meant to help bring about, tactics are simply behaviors. Indiscriminately smashing windows is a behavior insofar as Occupy is concerned; one being exhibited by an enemy to Occupy at that! Crimes of selfishness against the 99% are precisely what we’re fighting against, not “strategizing” for. Diversity of tactics in right context is a nod to the needed discretion and autonomy of the “Weatherman” black block type who, while perhaps wild in tactic, remains unswervingly committed to only targeting the 1%.

This “Weatherman” black bloc archetype, MUST be recognized by Occupy, publicly or privately, but authoritatively regardless. This individual is sufficiently developed morally to target only 1% structures and symbols and thus worth the support and solidarity of Occupy, even if unspoken by necessity. (See ILWU Bosses vs. ILWU rank & file for template) Perhaps even more critically for Occupy, the “Weatherman” black bloc quite possibly might be the only conduit to the hearts, minds and behaviors of the “Lord of the Flies” black bloc to which Occupy is, for the moment, not only maligned by but inexorably linked.

You know, the ones running roughshod all over “Occupy Island.”

Grabbing the Conch Shell

Penetrating the adolescent psyche is a guerrilla exercise in that it cannot be attempted head on, as any parent trying to boss their teenager around can confirm in spades. No authority will resonate with sufficient power a message of behavior modification; this is why black bloc “Weathermen” are needed. From Paul Shepard…

“The perverted adolescent has great inner pressure for senseless destruction. His moral absolution is based on felt — “gut” — reactions and the simplistic reduction of complex issues. Repetition, exaggeration, and the slogans are taken as validation of assertions, and reasonable arguments are rejection as diversion. All imperfect institutions are condemned by him to destruction and conservatives are persecuted. Revolutionary political activity is the paranoid’s haven, where one’s delusion are acted out and accepted by others as reality…
What is necessary, then, is drastic ecological revampment of our situation and a revival of the lineaments of tribal society. In defiance of mass culture, tribalism constantly resurfaces. Canadian professor Marshal McLuhan’s new “tribal man” –immersed in the group, linked by instant media instead of dead print, attuned to ecological rather than static forms–cannot be obliterated . He keeps erupting through the literary, linear, segmented culture like a wild plant that heals the inured soil. But the medium is not enough by itself. The gang or commune operating outside society cannot create from this air myths embodying real wisdom. No one can live on empty function. There must also be a content, passionately believed in, that relates man to nature, entering all human experience.”

These kids are falling all over themselves seeking proper narrative and mentor attachments, mostly unbeknown to themselves on a conscious level. Horizontally (peer/mentor level) perceived “Weatherman” black bloc are uniquely positioned to hold onto the conch shell over on Lord Of The Flies Island by supplying a hero’s journey so relentlessly demanded of their ontogeny.

You will never get bb to put the rock down, but you can show them where the bank is.

Occupy needs to bring the following tools to the table if it wish to avoid certain derailment via the Lord of the Flies wing of the black bloc: Strategery, resources and narrative.

Imagine if the mayhem on Oak street in Oakland on January 28th with the black bloc at the frontlines, chunks of cement and debris falling at the riot cops’ feet, was instead an advance group comprised of young girls with flowers, no cement to be found anywhere. (That’s how we stack it up in Portland. We’ve welled up many a pig’s eye with it too.) Black bloc non-existant, no where to be found, until the police advance on the “flower corps.” Black bloc suddenly emerges from behind or to the side, hurling cement chunks in a heroic (albeit largely symbolic) effort to engage the cops and divert them away from the march. Cops then scatter the now heroic black bloc, who’s escape and regrouping can then be aided by Occupy.

Better, Hedges?

Whenever Occupy march, trusted “Weathermen” black bloc should be given 1% locations and symbols along the route in advance, de-arrest responsibilities for internal media, anti-kettling planning, scouting opportunities, diversionary “marches” and “faux occupations” ANYTHING that moves unfocused rage into congruence with Occupy principles. Walkie-talkies, pads, shields… all of these resources and more should be made available to the black bloc. By incorporating heroic narratives and INCLUDING (who doesn’t feel proprietarily about an endeavor once asked for help and advice about how to execute it?) black bloc rather then marginalizing it, Occupy can begin learning how to delicately dance with the radical energy of the black bloc and tether it to a productive end.

It is time to occupy the black bloc as we have occupied everything else in our path to date. With creativity, effective methodology, resolve and persistence.

We don’t avoid or duck our problems, we OCCUPY them until our problems become our strengths!

Black Bloc: Two Wrongs Never Make a Right!

Sat, 18 Feb 2012 15:00:29 -0500

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By Vargus Pike

In the realm of mathematics two negatives when added together become a greater negative. A positive when added to a negative serves to overcome the negative. If the positive is greater then the result will always be positive. The realm of morality and ethics have an additive property similar to mathematics. Add the negative actions of the police with negative actions from the protesters, and you will always result in a greater negative. Oppose a negative with strong enough positive action and you will always result in a positive.

A greater negative serves no one but the established negative which the protesters are attempting to change. Shouting obscenities, throwing bottles at police, vandalizing public or private property, and burning flags all only serve to provide those police with the community sanction they need to become even more brutal than they already are. It has the effect of providing them with carte blanch to violate the civil rights of the protesters and of the general public in the name of safety and security. It feeds the politics of fear that is already so pervasive in America today. Two wrongs will never make a right. Two wrongs will only serve to destroy the rights that we still have.

Conversely, meet the brutal actions of the police with unified passive resistance, meet them with dignity, meet them with respect and the police who purport to be emperors of freedom and public safety will be revealed to have no clothes.

When this happens, then and only then will the general public recognize the cause as true and just.

To effect real change any movement must have the support of the general public or it is doomed to failure. The Boston Massacre in 1770 galvanized the colonists and most certainly served to sanction the act of civil disobedience known as the Boston Tea Party. If the order of events had been reversed the revolution may never have happened. When John Brown raided Harper’s Ferry in 1859 he failed to start an armed revolt against slavery. He succeeded however in galvanizing the South to arm in anticipation of more raids. The North, while admiring his motives, nonetheless considered his actions to be those of a madman. On February 12, 2012, the leader of Peru’s Shining Path, a Maoist organization, was captured by Peruvian authorities. This capture may very well be the death knell of the organization which controlled a significant portion of the Peruvian countryside in it’s heyday. Due to it’s brutality however, it never succeeded in gaining the support of the people and so eventually withered and essentially has died.

Now contrast these examples of violent action with the likes of Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and Rosa Parks. All gained the support of the general public through positive action exemplifying dignity and respect. Once they garnered public support, real change resulted. Look to the examples of dignified protest in Tunisia, Egypt, and Syria. Two of the three governments have fallen and Syrian actions have almost certainly doomed it as well for it has lost the support of the majority due to it’s blatant brutality against dignified peaceful protest.

History shows repeatedly that violence only brings more violence. Unless one has the means to physically conquer one’s enemies the only way to bring about meaningful change is through passive resistance until such time that the goodwill of the people has been secured. Then, and only then, if the powers that be refuse to bend to winds of change, can the violence of revolution be justified or sustained.

Editor’s Note: This Tuesday, Feb. 21st, come to the basement at St. Francis at 7PM for a community discussion on the black bloc and the future of Occupy Portland tactics.

Black Bloc: Things Were Smashed, and Rightfully So!

Sat, 18 Feb 2012 12:00:01 -0500

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This article was originally published on Indymedia.

by (A)-Team

What makes something worthy of being vandalized? Why do occupiers insist on inflicting acts of personal violence and assault in order to protect private property much like the police themselves?

Several things went wrong on Monday [February 6th]’s march to protest police brutality in Portland, Oregon. These issues primarily stemmed from the liberal Occupy movement’s attempted co-option of a radical anti-police march, which was neither initiated nor organized by local Occupiers. Unfortunately, since the march was called for in solidarity with the Oakland Occupy movement’s recent arrests and police conflict, local Occupiers showed up en masse and with a particularly strong sense of entitlement. I remain disillusioned by anything conducted locally under the ‘Occupy’ moniker, which has taken on a decidedly soft, liberal stance on goals and tactics.

And why not?

With the bumper-sticker approved formula for a pseudo-class analysis put forth by the Occupy movement, the fallacious 99% vs. 1% based class-division has spread like a plague, finally giving aspiring political activists something which is easily digestible and accessible to spring on - to take action in the streets!!! And what easy theory to put into practice, uniting police officers with those they imprison and murder, bosses and capitalist business owners with the workers they subjugate, and allowing anyone of privilege to neglect true class-consciousness and global solidarity in the name of their own depersonalized, non-focused, and primarily white middle-class struggle. What a strange bunch, having pinned the issue of capitalism’s failure yet unwilling to sacrifice it completely in exchange for something better. It is seemingly believed that once the major corporations fall, and we continue to micro-manage our antiquated Constitution with endless ratifications, bells, and whistles, that capitalism and the state which supports it will prevail and fulfill our dreams for freedom. Why replace state-controlled capitalism with something better when state-controlled capitalism works so well for those who perpetuate it? Even their own skewed class-model of the 99% vs. 1% doesn’t negate this fact entirely, though it would be nice if they maintained such numbers after ridding us of the entire upper-class, only to discover that their bosses, business owners, government officials, police officers and the like were continuing to impede on their freedom. If Occupiers cannot see the inherent failures of capitalism as a whole then their movement has been doomed to produce any tangible or sustainable change from the start.

Police Protect Property, Not People

There is a common misconception, held strong by Occupiers, that police are present to protect our safety as taxpayers and will uphold their duty until provoked by so-called ‘violent’ property destruction - and since their parameters for responding to property destruction have been formally predefined, we are at fault for crossing the line and have only subjected ourselves to police violence.

It shouldn’t take an anarchist to see the lack of merit in such a conclusion, especially at a police brutality march! A major mistake was assuming that because folks were marching against the police, that they were actually against the police as an institution, when many seemed to only be marching against what they viewed as minor transgressions in what is (thought to be) a generally functional and effective system. These primarily white, middle-class folks have been disillusioned by capitalism yet have largely maintained a privileged distance from direct police-oppression or state violence prior to Occupy-based incidents. In Portland, these encounters in the Occupy movement have only been abstracted politically into a narcissistic occupation of space, speaking not towards the direct needs of the people for which the state and capitalism has failed, but rather moving forth into the mode of a self-perpetuating institution. Not to say that occupation is not a sound tactic - if used properly and unimpeded from liberal co-option it can be a powerful tool indeed! The movement’s lack of motives and goals and subsequent institutionalization have developed from a combination of general political unawareness, westernized privilege and aimless entitlement, yet youthful desire to evoke change at any costs as a break from our state of disillusionment. People have tasted the idea of change and are clinging to all they know in order to hold their dream strong, yet unfortunately their dream cannot be realized without radical methods and the ultimate goal of an anarchist society free from state and capitalist oppression!

Sorry Occupiers, we will not reduce ourselves to the vile standards laid forth by those who benefit from our corrupt capitalist system, the state which supports it, and the police who uphold it.

The police have proven time and time again that they hold no value on human life, and we will continue to show them that conversely, we hold no value on the property that they are in place to protect.

The Police are Enforcers, Not Negotiators

Another common misconception amongst Occupiers is the myth that non-violence will always prevail. ‘Pacifism in the face of violence.’ This falsely optimistic view arises from a privileged state of existence, an informal petite-bourgeois comfort zone perpetuated by laws which have evolved over time to marginalize and subject various groups of minorities who lack the means of control and production, while keeping the larger public minimally satisfied, and the elite more than comfortable (an understatement, of course.) These white, middle-class folks have little tangible evidence for their subjection - interactions with police officers often minimal offenses such as traffic violations which can easily be negotiated out of or avoided. Unfortunately, racist, classist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, heterosexist, and other systematic and widespread forms of profiling don’t afford others the same level of comfort in dealing with police. These dynamics require swift and militant tactics in dismantling such an unjust police state, or doing everything within our capacity to facilitate the end of the state and capitalism as a whole.

Another foul and despicable development within the Occupy movement is the close coordination of protests and actions with local police enforcement, including citizen’s arrest tactics, blatant snitching of black-bloc perpetrators of direct action, and mimicking police tactics to the point of assaulting fellow marchers (and particularly those in black-bloc). When certain actions listed below were initiated, Occupiers formed an ad-hoc group of vigilantes acting on behalf of the police, attempting to identify, subdue, and turn the perpetrator of direct action over to the police - and all for the cause of sanitizing the name of the Occupy movement! Not unlike capitalism and the state, the Occupy movement will seemingly stop at nothing to perpetuate itself. Do not attack an inanimate object in the name of humanity, for they will attack you in the name of their abstract movement and deny the contradiction!!

* * *

Unethically Produced, Ethically Destroyed

Here is a description of the things which were vandalized or smashed during the march, listed chronologically. These are detailed as a result of public outcry against the nature of the actions, though may it be known that they were carried out not as a form of public outreach, but in solidarity as retaliatory actions in light of police brutality locally, nationally, and internationally, including the recent murder of Brad Lee Morgan by Portland Police, as well as the ongoing violence and arrests in Oakland, and all comrades imprisoned by our unjust system! Also, it should be mentioned that the final three acts were committed with a black and red flag, and proudly so! Actions included:

—- A Honda Element SUV driving through the march was spray painted with a circle-‘A’, the symbol of anarchism. Anyone privileged enough to afford to drive any car does not hold precedent over the countless thousands of people who die in the name of the oil which propels it, nor is their comfort and convenience worthy of the environmental destruction these vehicles put forth. And how much better that it be in motion while being tagged, a symbol of capitalism in progress, of our hard earned oil in use, exhaust spewing on the perpetrator in action. We will not simply allow you to cruise through our march without thinking twice about the brutality you blindly perpetuate. Fuck your cars, fuck your wars, and fuck the police flying overhead who watched helplessly as anarchists destroyed property that they were being paid to protect. There was an Iron Cross decal on the window which was vandalized, a blatant symbol of oppression heavily used in Nazi Germany, and an image that deserves to be vandalized regardless of the surface it’s attached to. Honda is a major capitalist corporation which has been strengthened as a result of purchasing this vehicle, regardless of the buyer’s social position, and thus capitalist oppression continues to devastate all it touches. Surely, the person’s life was equally devastated after having to rub the graffiti off with a cheap rag and solvent - a mere aesthetic and non-permanent offense (perhaps next time the window should just be smashed!).

—- The front window of a local business, ‘Genoa Restaurant’, one of, if not the only, five-star restaurants in Portland. This is not a business for the working class, this is strictly a business for the wealthy and privileged, literally spending over $100 a person to consume delicacies such as Foie Gras, a notoriously cruel and unethically produced serving of duck. Money flies out of pockets as disgusting rates as an indulgence indoors while others live houseless and without property, exposed to the elements and hiding in fear from police aggressors.

—- A classic Alfa Romeo convertible’s windshield was smashed through in two places and the side scuffed up. This car was not a humble, working-class minivan with a child’s seat, but an extravagant European collectible sports car denoting material privilege. Furthermore, Alfa Romeo has designed cars specifically for the Italian police since the 60’s, and have been used as the automobile of choice by several departments of the Italian police force to this day. May this action be in solidarity with our comrades in Italy, facing similar police brutality and oppression!

—- And lastly, a new BMW sports coupe. Similarly, the sides were scuffed up and the front windshield busted through twice. This is a luxury car, and surely the owner will survive a night or two while their car which costs more than the average person or household makes in an entire year sits in the shop. Beyond the bourgeois status of the car, BMW has a dark history of fascist oppression which has propelled them into their current status as a wealthy capitalist enterprise. In fact, the Quandts, founding family and subsequent errs to the BMW fortune (eight of which are among the hundred wealthiest Germans today) utilized approximately 50,000 slave laborers from concentration camps, many of whom died in extreme work conditions or were executed. Openly important members of the Nazi party, the Quandts played major roles in the Holocaust and the forced ‘aryanization’ of Jewish businesses. Fuck those who have profited from the brutal and systematic slavery and genocide of people, fuck BMW, and fuck your windshield - of which I’m sure you can afford plenty more - so pardon the marginal inconvenience from your privileged life.

FUCK YOUR COMMODITIES, FUCK YOUR PROPERTY, FUCK YOUR FALSE SENSE OF MATURITY BASED ON CAPITALIST LUXURY AND PRIVILEGE.

SOLIDARITY TO COMRADES IN OAKLAND, GREECE, SYRIA, EGYPT, PALESTINE, AND ANYWHERE AND EVERYWHERE PEOPLE FACE POLICE-OPPRESSION.

ONLY ANARCHY IS JUST AND ONLY ANARCHY WILL PREVAIL!

Editor’s Note: This Tuesday, Feb. 21st, come to the basement at St. Francis at 7PM for a community discussion on the black bloc and the future of Occupy Portland tactics.

Share Your Stories with Occupy Voices

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 17:00:46 -0500

By Michel Losier

[caption id=”attachment_3736” align=”alignright” width=”424” caption=”photo by fourteen85photography”][/caption]This coming weekend a project called Occupy Voices will be collecting interviews at the Occupy Solidarity Social Forum (OSSF) this weekend in Olympia, on Saturday from 10am to 4pm, and Sunday starting at 10am. They will also be set up at the Occupy Portland office at St. Francis on Thursday, February 23rd, from 11:30am to 4pm.

Occupy Voices is a project that seeks to elicit the stories of thousands of individuals across the country to illustrate economic crisis as told from human experience. It aims not only to present individual narratives of struggle but to also serve as an outreach tool. In its first week of launching, the project had collected 80 interviews in Portland.

Occupy Voices started at inception as a proposal for forming an oral history project within the Occupy movement. It was brought forward in recognition of the value and strength that the capture and exhibition of in-depth personal histories has in empowering marginalized voices and bringing them to popular attention. Discussion in their initial meetings focused on how the merits of this kind of work could be used to have an impactful application for the movement and from this they decided to design the project to emphasize its potential as a galvanizing outreach tool.

The project operates on a five to ten minute short interview format that primarily utilizes two open ended questions: “How have you been impacted by the current economic climate?” and “What would you like to see changed?”. From this they have received many deep personal stories that have given color to issues of economic inequality, social justice, and political corruption.

Occupy Voices makes these interviews available online as a collection on their website, OccupyVoices.org, with interviewee consent, under a Creative Commons non-commercial use license. They present videos without editorship except to remove the footage used for cataloging, the consent agreement, and the moments in which the interviewer asks the primary interview questions.

The interviews will be transcribed to not only provide a textual experience of the interviews but to make the content of the interviews searchable on the site. Along with this, videos will also be tagged based on this content.

The website is a large part of the experience of this project. The hope is to see people who have felt alienated by their own struggles to find other interviews that they can identify with and understand that they are not alone, and for those in more advantaged positions, identifying and understanding situations alien to their own. A larger goal is to see individuals take initiative to collect interviews in their own communities or uploading interviews of themselves. Those interested in performing focused oral history projects are invited to use them as support.

The stories collected are seen as one of many contributions to a shared folklore of struggle that can be engaged with in creative and positive ways and they invite people to help its forms emerge. With the Creative Commons license, they encourage use of the content for video projects, guerrilla theater, transcript performance, playback theater, bat signaling, pamphleting, collaging and DVD mailings to persons of interest.

To encourage participation, OV has also created an easily reproducible and accessible process model for anyone who wants to volunteer or to collect stories in their own community. For this they have produced training documents with guidelines and advice on approaches, equipment, forming an interview team, transcription, and video editing.

OccupyCoordination.org, which hosts weekly national working group webinars, has also been a strong partner in their efforts. Occupy Coordination had initiated a similar effort of their own and have since combined efforts to make this a national project with the participation of other occupations across the country.

After spending the last few months to lay down a back-end foundation to launch from, Occupy Voices is eager to go back out in Portland to conduct more interviews and are calling out for volunteer support and for individuals to come and share their story with them at OSSF this weekend or at the Occupy Portland office this coming Thursday. Volunteer work is open to any capacity of involvement whether it be helping tag videos, transcribing an interview, video editing and prep, or going out and forming an interview team. To get involved visit OccupyVoices.org.

Black Bloc: Concerning the Violent Peace-Police - A Letter to Chris Hedges

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 17:00:40 -0500

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This article was originally published on The New Inquiry.

by David Graeber

I am writing this on the premise that you are a well-meaning person who wishes Occupy Wall Street to succeed. I am also writing as someone who was deeply involved in the early stages of planning Occupy in New York.

I am also an anarchist who has participated in many Black Blocs. While I have never personally engaged in acts of property destruction, I have on more than one occasion taken part in Blocs where property damage has occurred. (I have taken part in even more Blocs that did not engage in such tactics. It is a common fallacy that this is what Black Blocs are all about. It isnât.)

I was hardly the only Black Bloc veteran who took part in planning the initial strategy for Occupy Wall Street. In fact, anarchists like myself were the real core of the group that came up with the idea of occupying Zuccotti Park, the â99%â slogan, the General Assembly process, and, in fact, who collectively decided that we would adopt a strategy of Gandhian non-violence and eschew acts of property damage. Many of us had taken part in Black Blocs. We just didnât feel that was an appropriate tactic for the situation we were in.

This is why I feel compelled to respond to your statement âThe Cancer in Occupy.â This statement is not only factually inaccurate, it is quite literally dangerous. This is the sort of misinformation that really can get people killed. In fact, it is far more likely to do so, in my estimation, than anything done by any black-clad teenager throwing rocks.

Let me just lay out a few initial facts:

Black Bloc is a tactic, not a group. It is a tactic where activists don masks and black clothing (originally leather jackets in Germany, later, hoodies in America), as a gesture of anonymity, solidarity, and to indicate to others that they are prepared, if the situation calls for it, for militant action. The very nature of the tactic belies the accusation that they are trying to hijack a movement and endanger others. One of the ideas of having a Black Bloc is that everyone who comes to a protest should know where the people likely to engage in militant action are, and thus easily be able to avoid it if thatâs what they wish to do.
Black Blocs do not represent any specific ideological, or for that matter anti-ideological position. Black Blocs have tended in the past to be made up primarily of anarchists but most contain participants whose politics vary from Maoism to Social Democracy. They are not united by ideology, or lack of ideology, but merely a common feeling that creating a bloc of people with explicitly revolutionary politics and ready to confront the forces of the order through more militant tactics if required, is, on the particular occasion when they assemble, a useful thing to do. It follows one can no more speak of âBlack Bloc Anarchists,â as a group with an identifiable ideology, than one can speak of âSign-Carrying Anarchistsâ or âMic-Checking Anarchists.â
Even if you must select a tiny, ultra-radical minority within the Black Bloc and pretend their views are representative of anyone who ever put on a hoodie, you could at least be up-to-date about it. It was back in 1999 that people used to pretend âthe Black Blocâ was made up of nihilistic primitivist followers of John Zerzan opposed to all forms of organization. Nowadays, the preferred approach is to pretend âthe Black Blocâ is made up of nihilistic insurrectionary followers of The Invisible Committee, opposed to all forms of organization. Both are absurd slurs. Yours is also 12 years out of date.
Your comment about Black Blocâers hating the Zapatistas is one of the weirdest Iâve ever seen. Sure, if you dig around, you can find someone saying almost anything. But Iâm guessing that, despite the ideological diversity, if you took a poll of participants in the average Black Bloc and asked what political movement in the world inspired them the most, the EZLN would get about 80% of the vote. In fact Iâd be willing to wager that at least a third of participants in the average Black Bloc are wearing or carrying at least one item of Zapatista paraphernalia. (Have you ever actually talked to someone who has taken part in a Black Bloc? Or just to people who dislike them?)
âDiversity of tacticsâ is not a âBlack Blocâ idea. The original GA in Tompkins Square Park that planned the original occupation, if I remember, adopted the principle of diversity of tactics (at least it was discussed in a very approving fashion), at the same time as we all also concurred that a Gandhian approach would be the best way to go. This is not a contradiction: âdiversity of tacticsâ means leaving such matters up to individual conscience, rather than imposing a code on anyone. Partly,this is because imposing such a code invariably backfires. In practice, it means some groups break off in indignation and do even more militant things than they would have otherwise, without coordinating with anyone elseâas happened, for instance, in Seattle. The results are usually disastrous. After the fiasco at Seattle of watching some activists actively turning others over to policeâwe quickly decided we needed to ensure this never happened again. What we found was that if we declared âwe shall all be in solidarity with one another. We will not turn in fellow protestors to the police. We will treat you as brothers and sisters. But we expect you to do the same to usââthen, those who might be disposed to more militant tactics will act in solidarity as well, either by not engaging in militant actions at all for fear they will endanger others (as in many later Global Justice Actions, where Black Blocs merely helped protect the lockdowns, or in Zuccotti Park, where mostly people didnât bloc up at all) or doing so in ways that run the least risk of endangering fellow activists.

All this however is secondary. Mainly I am writing as an appeal to conscience. Your conscience, since clearly you are a sincere and well-meaning person who wishes this movement to succeed. I beg you: Please consider what I am saying. Please bear in mind as I say this that I am not a crazy nihilist, but a reasonable person who is one (if just one) of the original authors of the Gandhian strategy OWS adoptedâas well as a student of social movements, who has spent many years both participating in such movements, and trying to understand their history and dynamics.

I am appealing to you because I really do believe the kind of statement you made is profoundly dangerous.

The reason I say this is because, whatever your intentions, it is very hard to read your statement as anything but an appeal to violence. After all, what are you basically saying about what you call âBlack Bloc anarchistsâ?

they are not part of us
they are consciously malevolent in their intentions
they are violent
they cannot be reasoned with
they are all the same
they wish to destroy us
they are a cancer that must be excised

Surely you must recognize, if laid out in this fashion, that this is precisely the sort of language and argument that, historically, has been invoked by those encouraging one group of people to physically attack, ethnically cleanse, or exterminate anotherâin fact, the sort of language and argument that is almost never invoked in any other circumstance. After all, if a group is made up exclusively of violent fanatics who cannot be reasoned with, intent on our destruction, what else can we really do? This is the language of violence in its purest form. Far more than âfuck the police.â To see this kind of language employed by someone who claims to be speaking in the name of non-violence is genuinely extraordinary. I recognize that youâve managed to find certain peculiar fringe elements in anarchism saying some pretty extreme things, itâs not hard to do, especially since such people are much easier to find on the internet than in real life, but it would be difficult to come up with any âBlack Bloc anarchistâ making a statement as extreme as this.

Even if you did not intend this statement as a call to violence, which I suspect you did not, how can you honestly believe that many will not read it as such?

In my experience, when I point this sort of thing out, the first reaction I normally get from pacifists is along the lines of âwhat are you talking about? Of course Iâm not in favor of attacking anyone! I am non-violent! I am merely calling for non-violently confronting such elements and excluding them from the group!â The problem is that in practice this is almost never what actually happens. Time after time, what it has actually meant in practice is either (a) turning fellow activists over to the police, i.e., turning them over to people with weapons who will physically assault, shackle, and imprison them, or (b) actual physical activist-on-activist assault. Such things have happened. There have been physical assaults by activists on other activists, and, to my knowledge, they have never been perpetrated by anyone in Black Bloc, but invariably by purported pacifists against those who dare to pull a hood over their heads or a bandana over their faces, or, simply, against anarchists who adopt tactics someone else thinks are going too far. (Not I should note even potentially violent tactics. During one 15-minute period in Occupy Austin, I was threatened first with arrest, then with assault, by fellow campers because I was expressing verbal solidarity with, and then standing in passive resistance beside, a small group of anarchists who were raising what was considered to be an unauthorized tent.)

This situation often produces extraordinary ironies. In Seattle, the only incidents of actual physical assault by protestors on other individuals were not attacks on the police, since these did not occur at all, but attacks by âpacifistsâ on Black Blocâers engaged in acts of property damage. Since the Black Blocâers had collectively agreed on a strict policy of non-violence (which they defined as never doing anything to harm another living being), they uniformly refused to strike back. In many recent occupations, self-appointed âPeace Policeâ have manhandled activists who showed up to marches in black clothing and hoodies, ripped their masks off, shoved and kicked them: always, without the victims themselves having engaged in any act of violence, always, with the victims refusing, on moral grounds, to shove or kick back.

The kind of rhetoric you are engaging in, if it disseminates widely, will ensure this kind of violence becomes much, much more severe.

Perhaps you do not believe me, or do not believe these events to be particularly significant. If so, let me put the matter in a larger historical context.

If I understand your argument, it seems to come down to this:

OWS has been successful because it has followed a Gandhian strategy of showing how, even in the face of strictly non-violent opposition, the state will respond with illegal violence
Black Bloc elements who do not act according to principles of Gandhian non-violence are destroying the movement because they provide retroactive justification for state repression, especially in the eyes of the media
Therefore, the Black Bloc elements must be somehow rooted out

As one of the authors of the original Gandhian strategy, I can recall how well aware we were, when we framed this strategy, that we were taking an enormous risk. Gandhian strategies have not historically worked in the US; in fact, they havenât really worked on a mass scale since the civil rights movement. This is because the US media is simply constitutionally incapable of reporting acts of police repression as âviolence.â (One reason the civil rights movement was an exception is so many Americans at the time didnât view the Deep South as part of the same country.) Many of the young men and women who formed the famous Black Bloc in Seattle were in fact eco-activists who had been involved in tree-sits and forest defense lock-downs that operated on purely Gandhian principlesâonly to find that in the US of the 1990s, non-violent protestors could be brutalized, tortured (have pepper spray directly rubbed in their eyes) or even killed, without serious objection from the national media. So they turned to other tactics. We knew all this. We decided it was worth the risk.

However, we are also aware that when the repression begins, some will break ranks and respond with greater militancy. Even if this doesnât happen in a systematic and organized fashion, some violent acts will take place. You write that Black Blocâers smashed up a âlocally owned coffee shopâ; I doubted this when I read it, since most Black Blocs agree on a strict policy of not damaging owner-operated enterprises, and I now find in Susie Cagleâs response to your article that, in fact, it was a chain coffee shop, and the property destruction was carried out by someone not in black. But still, youâre right: A few such incidents will inevitably occur.

The question is how one responds.

If the police decide to attack a group of protestors, they will claim to have been provoked, and the media will repeat whatever the police say, no matter how implausible, as the basic initial facts of what happened. This will happen whether or not anyone at the protest does anything that can be remotely described as violence. Many police claims will be obviously ridiculous â as at the recent Oakland march where police accused participants of throwing âimprovised explosive devicesââbut no matter how many times the police lie about such matters, the national media will still report their claims as true, and it will be up to protestors to provide evidence to the contrary. Sometimes, with the help of social media, we can demonstrate that particular police attacks were absolutely unjustified, as with the famous Tony Bologna pepper-spray incident. But we cannot by definition prove all police attacks were unjustified, even all attacks at one particular march; itâs simply physically impossible to film every thing that happens from every possible angle all the time. Therefore we can expect that whatever we do, the media will dutifully report âprotestors engaged in clashes with policeâ rather than âpolice attacked non-violent protestors.â Whatâs more, when someone does throw back a tear-gas canister, or toss a bottle, or even spray-paint something, we can assume that act will be employed as retroactive justification for whatever police violence occurred before the act took place.

All this will be true whether or not a Black Bloc is present.

If the moral question is âis it defensible to threaten physical harm against those who do no direct harm to others,â one might say the pragmatic, tactical question is, âeven if it were somehow possible to create a Peace Police capable of preventing any act that could even be interpreted as âviolentâ by the corporate media, by anyone at or near a protest, no matter what the provocation, would it have any meaningful effect?â That is, would it create a situation where the police would feel they couldnât use arbitrary force against non-violent protestors? The example of Zuccotti Park, where we achieved pretty consistent non-violence, suggests this is profoundly unlikely. And perhaps most importantly at all, even if it were somehow possible to create some kind of Peace Police that would prevent anyone under gas attack from so much as tossing a bottle, so that we could justly claim that no one had done anything to warrant the sort of attack that police have routinely brought, would the marginally better media coverage we would thus obtain really be worth the cost in freedom and democracy that would inevitably follow from creating such an internal police force to begin with?

These are not hypothetical questions. Every major movement of mass non-violent civil disobedience has had to grapple with them in one form or another. How inclusive should you be with those who have different ideas about what tactics are appropriate? What do you do about those who go beyond what most people consider acceptable limits? What do you do when the government and its media allies hold up their actions as justificationâeven retroactive justificationâfor violent and repressive acts?

Successful movements have understood that itâs absolutely essential not to fall into the trap set out by the authorities and spend oneâs time condemning and attempting to police other activists. One makes oneâs own principles clear. One expresses what solidarity one can with others who share the same struggle, and if one cannot, tries oneâs best to ignore or avoid them, but above all, one keeps the focus on the actual source of violence, without doing or saying anything that might seem to justify that violence because of tactical disagreements you have with fellow activists.

I remember my surprise and amusement, the first time I met activists from the April 6 Youth Movement from Egypt, when the issue of non-violence came up. âOf course we were non-violent,â said one of the original organizers, a young man of liberal politics who actually worked at a bank. âNo one ever used firearms, or anything like that. We never did anything more militant than throwing rocks!â

Here was a man who understood what it takes to win a non-violent revolution! He knew that if the police start aiming teargas canisters directly at peopleâs heads, beating them with truncheons, arresting and torturing people, and you have thousands of protestors, then some of them will fight back. Thereâs no way to absolutely prevent this. The appropriate response is to keep reminding everyone of the violence of the state authorities, and never, ever, start writing long denunciations of fellow activists, claiming they are part of an insane fanatic malevolent cabal. (Even though I am quite sure that if a hypothetical Egyptian activist had wanted to make a case that, say, violent Salafis, or even Trotskyists, were trying to subvert the revolution, and adopted standards of evidence as broad as yours , looking around for inflammatory statements wherever they could find them and pretending they were typical of everyone who threw a rock, they could easily have made a case.) This is why most of us are aware that Mubarakâs regime attacked non-violent protestors, and are not aware that many responded by throwing rocks.

Egyptian activists, in other words, understood what playing into the hands of the police really means.

Actually, why limit ourselves to Egypt? Since we are talking about Gandhian tactics here, why not consider the case of Gandhi himself? He had to deal with what to say about people who went much further than rock-throwing (even though Egyptians throwing rocks at police were already going much further than any US Black Bloc has.) Gandhi was part of a very broad anti-colonial movement that included elements that actually were using firearms, in fact, elements engaged in outright terrorism. He first began to frame his own strategy of mass non-violent civil resistance in response to a debate over the act of an Indian nationalist who walked into the office of a British official and shot him five times in the face, killing him instantly. Gandhi made it clear that while he was opposed to murder under any circumstances, he also refused to denounce the murderer. This was a man who was trying to do the right thing, to act against an historical injustice, but did it in the wrong way because he was âdrunk with a mad idea.â

Over the course of the next 40 years, Gandhi and his movement were regularly denounced in the media, just as non-violent anarchists are also always denounced in the media (and I might remark here that while not an anarchist himself, Gandhi was strongly influenced by anarchists like Kropotkin and Tolstoy), as a mere front for more violent, terroristic elements, with whom he was said to be secretly collaborating. He was regularly challenged to prove his non-violent credentials by assisting the authorities in suppressing such elements. Here Gandhi remained resolute. It is always morally superior, he insisted, to oppose injustice through non-violent means than through violent means. However, to oppose injustice through violent means is still morally superior to not doing anything to oppose injustice at all.

And Gandhi was talking about people who were blowing up trains, or assassinating government officials. Not damaging windows or spray-painting rude things about the police.

Editorâs Note: This Tuesday, Feb. 21st, come to the basement at St. Francis at 7PM for aÂ community discussion on the black bloc and the future of Occupy Portland tactics.Â