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7/30/2019 Tidal2 Spring is Coming
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tidlOccupy Theory, Occupy Strategy • Issue 2 • March 2012 • Spring is coming.
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Communiqué #2
Pulling the Emergency Break by marna srn
So, What Are the Demands? by jd br
STRIKE!
Student Debt, Women, Housing, Art, 5 Theses, The General Strike
We Are Here Because You Are There by jan cars rz
Pillowghting or Our Lives
On Losing Complacency & Fear by sandra mar nrs
Media As Direct Action by Ka davsn
Consider the Lillies: Money & Movements by naan scndr
Editorial Statement
2
tidal Indx
Photo: Guilleo egi
occupytheory.org
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1. When you’re sitting in jail, the topic o justice can’t help
but come up. You work backward rom sitting in your cell, to your ride
in the police car with handcus, to when the police threw you ace-rston the ground and applied said handcus. You ask how and why this all
happened. And in your pain in your cage, someone tells you, incredibly,
that it’s because you asked or it. It’s all in your social contract.
As with any proound concept, this may take a while to digest. Con-
noisseurs o the brazen should at least admire the answer’s audacity. It’s de-
livered by someone certain or shameless enough to look you in the eye and
say that, despite your insistence that you have no desire to go to jail; that
you think the social arrangements you are protesting represent an abomina-
tion and stain on the human soul; that you believe people should be com-
mended or speaking out or the public good against the rapacious ew; that
despite all o these things, you have really agreed to exactly the opposite.
Naturally, you want to see what you signed that said all o this.Tere must be a copy. Binding contracts must be in writing or all but
trivial matters. (Maybe locking you up is trivial?) A contract needs to
be signed by the parties to be bound. In some states, important clauses
must be highlighted. Te part where the police get to club you, or
example, should be in bold. Tere should be a orum to discuss misun-
derstandings: “Your honor, I’m pretty sure I declined the tear gas and
pepper spray options.”
Te most threadbare contracts contain these basic elements. Tey
ensure that contract parties have actually understood their agreement
and consented.
2. Perhaps this knowledge makes you smug, in your cell,temporarily. But when your mind starts to wander over the acres o
words-on-paper you’ve seen in your lietime, you get uneasy. Maybe all
this stu was in the ne print on an insurance or loan orm. You signed
some o those. It could have been in your rent agreement or credit card
application. How many Agreed to erms and Conditions boxes have
you checked? What were all the warnings on the reverse side o your
tickets and receipts?
It’s possible that i you stitched together every release o liability,
consent orm, waiver, permission slip and application in your lie, there
may be so little let o you as a legal person that a trained law ocer
would slap you in disgust. You could have signed away your right to
breathe and to have an opinion years ago.
But it’s probably worse than even that. Te modern social contract,
given its importance, operates beyond traditional contract principles.
Atavistic notions like print and consent insult its stature. Te modern world changes too quickly. oday’s social contract shrinks already mi-
nuscule print to a quantum text, subject to probabilistic fuctuations
based on the elite’s needs at any given time. Consent may be inerred;
to collect everyone’s actual signature would require some kind o absurd
robo-signing process.
We learn as part o the contract that we have granted a virtual, seem-
ingly irrevocable, power o attorney to a small group in government
and industry to act in our name. We appear to have granted this when
we chose to be born, and ratiy it daily by our continued existence.
In this context, questioning the social construct makes about as
much sense as an ant putting down its burden and demanding to speak
to the queen.
3. Some might point to laws and legal process as guarantors
o our rights. When you are arrested or protesting, you will spend on
average at least 24 hours in jail. No one thinks you pose a particular
threat; they keep you because the system takes that long to process your
existence. Te mere size and impersonal nature o the system dictates
this treatment. We have learned to accept this rom infexible institu-
tions, to be cheated o our time and money, to be passive in the ace o
unresponsiveness. But rankly, it can be embarrassing to be locked up
in a metaphor or what you’re protesting.
We know that laws can be enorced against you in a heartbeat, but
that ghting or your legal rights can take years. Properly understood,laws explain to the weak what they may not do. Tis is seen as preer-
able to more autocratic arrangements, where rules are made up ater the
act. We don’t seem to mind being told what to do, as long as we’re pro-
vided the simple courtesy o advance warning. Even that tender mercy
comes under routine attack by the authorities.
4. Let us consider to whom or to what we have given our proxy.
Even here, conusion reigns. It’s not entirely clear how the bank that
owns your home relates to the police smacking you around, or what
they have to do with the credit card company charging too much, or
those credit rating people, and how that ties into whatever layer o
government happens to hassle you on a given day, and how all that
The questions are simple.
Why does a small group o humanity reap the eorts o billions?
Why can this elite group poison the planet to urther enrich themselves?
Why do we accept a soulless social order built around the concept o people staying in line?
Why do we allow armed police to beat and cage us i we step o that line?
Communiqué #2
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means we should have a war or two going on, or planned, while the
environment is converted to a trash-strewn sauna. Whatever that thing
is has grown so huge and weird that we struggle even to nd a name or
it—the System, the Military-Industrial Complex, the Institution, the
State, the Matrix, the Man. No one really understands what the Ting
means or intends, but pundits occasionally oer a metaphor.
Te Ting resembles a ship that we’re all on together. Not a cruise
ship exactly, but more o a steam ship/trawler. We have a captain who
steers while we shovel coal and swab decks. He seems to have us headed
toward a typhoon. Te captain stares at the impending doom on thehorizon and grins ecstatically. He’s clearly thrilled to be the captain.
He aces down a storm that we can only wincingly glance at with one
squinting eye, and he jabbers incessantly about hope and destiny. We
realize that he does not see as a normal person, by passively receiving
light through his pupils. Rather he uses his eyes oensively to project
what he wants to see on the world. He has become so practiced at his
antasia that he can no longer recognize what we, cringing on deck, see
as certain catastrophe.
Or maybe the Ting should be understood as the body politic. We
each have our own role as cell or organ within the body. Te brain tells
everyone what to do, because bodies just work that way. I you were
part o the brain, you would know. Beyond that, things get oggy. From what we can tell, our collective body is some kind o morbidly obese
ranting child that eats what it sees and screams when someone threatens
its toys. It may have severe emotional decits and boundary issues. Are
we part o the spleen? Free-foating radicals? Maybe we are some vague
notion o decency trying to make our way to the brain to make our plea
or the rest o humanity.
5. What succor can we draw rom our social arrangements?
Te elite have hijacked our institutions and bent them to their will.
Tey have been sustained by the cultural myth that humanity advances
only through unchecked greed.
Our present institutions exploit our weaker aspects, our laziness andpassivity, our love o ease, our sel-centeredness. Tey encourage our
addictions to the vain and supercial. In return or our dignity, they
oer us the salve o television, magazines, movies, games, rom which
we invent antasies and identities in which to hide. Escapism has grown
rom occasional distraction to central social tenet. No one wants to deal
with lie, really. We want to believe the beautiul lie that humanity has
overcome the ancient need to work and suer, despite all evidence to
the contrary.
6. The basic themes have been with us now or centuries. Te
machine grows too great to control or comprehend; the sweat o the
many sustains the dreams o the ew; obsessions built on hatred and
alse mythologies occupy our minds. We have shown ourselves capable
o great compassion and depravity.
For a small percentage o the population, the world seems a won-
derland played out in the spotlight o a magical theatrical show. Tose
standing o-stage with brooms and hammers understand the true costs
o the production, the alsity o its script and imagery, but still can’t
look away. Some even cheer or the tacky actors who gobble up the
world, as i their open disdain or humanity were somehow heroic.
Te true nature o our circus has by now revealed itsel. We notice
that the big top has burst into fame, that when we turn to the ring-master we see his sweat streaking away his greasepaint, revealing the
clown beneath.
7. Most o what we have, we received as a gi rom our
orbearers and creation itsel. We should not surrender the hard-earned
concessions wrung rom lie by past generations or the comort o the
ew. We must also recognize that each generation inherits a dierent
world and requires dierent solutions, and that the sources o yester-
day’s hope and liberation can become tools o today’s oppression.
Our past solutions no longer serve as guarantors, exemplars, protec-
tors, and do not deserve the power we have ceded to them. We must
wean ourselves rom them and reclaim that power.Our present solutions must build on the generous aspects o our
beings and the potential o our time. We must no longer abdicate re-
sponsibility or developing our lives and spirit to others.
8. Each age brings changes in human capacities and creates
new space or possibilities. Past generations have ought oppression to
claim as much o that space or the good as possible, sometimes suc-
ceeding, oten not.
In our age, the capacity or connection, sel-education and sel-co-
operation has exploded. Tis oers a window o opportunity, with its
unspoken, unresolved question: Who will take and shape the bulk o
the resulting potential? Te space can be used or the benet o all, oremployed to enrich the ew at the cost o the many. Te window will
not remain open long beore being overwhelmed by claims rom those
in power.
9. It occurs to you in jail how much you’ve been had. Locked
away, apart rom the mesmerizing screens, the deal seems plain: Tere
is no deal. Te social contract exists only as rationalization. In its place,
there is what you can be suckered or bullied in to accepting, and wheth-
er you are brave and strong enough to resist.
What’s galling in this light is the creepy, sanctimonious importance
that the elite attach to honoring contractual obligations when some-
thing comes due rom you. You gave your binding promise! Never
We must also recognize that each generation inherits a
dierent world and requires dierent solutions, and that the
sources o yesterday’s hope and liberation can become tools
o today’s oppression.
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mind that every manner o manipulation, alse promise, lie, obusca-
tion, pressure or cajolery was employed to extract it; you’re too insig-
nicant to back out o your word.
10. The questions are simple. Why does a small group o
humanity reap the eorts o billions? Why can this elite group poison
the planet to urther enrich themselves? Why do we accept a soulless
social order built around the concept o people staying in line? Why
do we allow armed police to beat and cage us i we step o that line?One might answer, “because we allow it, and because we are con-
tent with the beggar’s portion,” but this is uncharitable. Forging unity
among ourselves to resist, to act, is hard. It must be built person-by-
person by engaging with each other, believing that each o us has value,
that i we learn the trick o working together we will change the world.
We must unplug ourselves rom the bloviating network o the banal
and talk with someone.
We must nurture the habit o thinking or ourselves. We have sur-
rendered most o the space we should occupy to others, and we have
accepted a sliver in return. Tis pattern has become so established that,
when we attempt to assert otherwise, we will be attacked and jailed.
When we live and think independently, we lessen our dependence on
institutions we can’t control. Teir strength depends entirely upon
our relative ignorance and powerlessness, our willingness to acquiesce.
We can develop the skills needed to live together as a human race that
might actually be able to share the planet without destroying it.
11. It is customary to give some type o notice when
ending a contractual relationship. We should respect the ormalities,
even in the ace o a sham.
Since we’re not sure who’s supposed to get the notice, we are orcedto deliver it generally to the world by word and deed in every available
orum. We proclaim rom our jail cells, in city squares, on Wall Street,
rom every space we occupy: We want no part o any contract that
produces a world like this; we do not consent to be governed; we take
responsibility or our own lives.
Any powers o attorney are hereby terminated. I we want you to do
something in our name, we will tell you.
When you come to collect on the ruits o your arrangements, we
will not comply. We will go out o our way to thwart the eorts o the
1% to take what does not belong to it, to wipe away the old orders o
oppression, to change the world or the good.
Blocking the triborough bridge uig 1964 it-i potetig uequl liig hool oitio of afi-aei.
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“Marx said that revolutions are the locomotive o world history.
But perhaps things are very dierent. It may be that revolu-tions are the act by which the human race traveling in the train applies
the emergency brake.” Walter Benjamin’s words perectly t what oc-
curred around the globe in 2011 and in many places beore this, and
much urther south, rom Chiapas and Oaxaca Mexico to Argentina.
Our movements are the shouting o “No!” Te “Ya Basta!” Te “Que
Se Vayan odos!” Tey are our collective reusal to remain passive in an
untenable situation. And so we pull the emergency brake, reeze time,
and begin to open up and create something new. We are not even sure
what that something is. We know we want to create open space. What
that looks like we are discovering together, as we create, which is also
how we create: together, horizontally and with aect. What we are do-
ing and how we are doing it are inextricably linked, and both are parto this pregurative movement.
A Few Dangers in Openness
In these moments o crisis people come together, look to one an-
other, and create new supportive relationships. Tese ties can be some
o the most beautiul and solidarious that we ever experience. Tey can
also be some o the most feeting. ime and time again, institutional
powers repress and co-opt these relationships, or distrust causes our
networks to implode rom within. How can we prevent this dissolu-
tion? How can we bring about lasting moments where history breaks
open, our imaginations are reed and we are able to envision and create
new landscapes towards new horizons? Below, I address a ew o the
many potential challenges we ace as a movement by looking at the
example o Argentina, where autonomous movements now have tenyears o experience. I use the examples o let political parties and the
State, but the challenges are many and the point is to begin an open
conversation about these challenges so as to overcome them, or even
better, to avoid them.
Political Party Disruption
Te relationships we are creating in our movements attempt to open
space or all people who agree with a set o emancipatory principles.
Occupy does not create structures o membership or behavior modes—
anyone is welcome. Tis inclusion is both our strength and a potential
weakness i we do not think careully about what can happen in these
open spaces and organize accordingly.In Argentina ater the 2001 popular rebellion, the people ormed
hundreds o neighborhood assemblies, all using horizontalidad, re-
sembling what Occupy is attempting to create with general assemblies
in neighborhoods, towns and cities—orging new relationships while
striving to meet basic needs. While the neighborhood assemblies aced
numerous challenges, one o the most destabilizing was let political
party disruption. Tis intererence took many orms: trying to control
the assemblies’ agenda; loading the speakers list with party members so
as to dominate the conversation; and even organizing disruption cam-
paigns, especially in the interbarrial (the assembly o assemblies where
many hundreds o assemblies came together to make decisions). Tere,
party members mobilized to disrupt an assembly, shouting out o turn,
Pulling the EmErgEncy
Brakeby Min Sitin
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making demands, such as the end to imperialism now, or the
need or a ten-point plan or women’s liberation—all to be de-
cided that night. Most deviously, these party members oten
did not identiy as members o a group so they appeared to be
just regular passionate participants. Tis trick, o course, then
brings out the most wonderul o our democratic impulses,
which is to make sure these people are ully heard. But i their
agenda is not sincere, is it democratic to allow them the space
to make demands on the group?
Our open and horizontal assemblies are our strength, but
they leave us vulnerable to those who disrupt or divert the agen-
da. Having principles o unity, base political agreements andbehavioral norms, bolstered by ways to eectuate these agree-
ments, will create open spaces with limited disruption. Te
argument here is not against any particular group or institu-
tion (though not in support o them either), but to address the
behavior. It is not about them being bad, but us being better.
Elections & the State
Te national elections in Argentina also created a great deal o dis-
orientation and demobilization or the movements. Te 2001 rebel-
lion orced out ve consecutive governments with popular power. Te
legitimacy o the State was in question. People organized assemblies in
neighborhoods, unemployed workers’ movements grew exponentially,and workers, using horizontalidad, recuperated workplaces, with-
out bosses or hierarchy. Te State responded with direct repression,
cooptation and attempts at legitimate re-institutionalization: popular
elections. Te people planned to boycott the elections and orm as-
semblies o assemblies, creating a potential dual power situation. Ten,
a ar right candidate appeared on the ballot, a man responsible or the
last decade o privatization who ran on a ticket o “law and order.”
Fear pervaded the movements, and the conversations shited to what
to do—vote? not vote? organize against the candidates?—sidetracking
the movements’ agendas to that o the State and the State’s agenda. Te
center candidate won, but at the expense o a loss o momentum in the
movement and a shit in the point o reerence. People had positionedthemselves in relation to the possible and real oerings o the State
rather than in relation to the alternative powers being developed by the
movements.
Years later, many refect on the question o elections and the State
in a dierent way. Te perspective is not a total boycott. Te most im-
portant thing, however, is to maintain the movements’ agendas and—
rom the point o reerence o the movement—decide strategically the
relationship to institutional power. Some have reerred to this strategy
as “With, Against and Beyond the State.” Along these lines, at the time
o the latest elections, one movement participant explained that her
perspective was to “vote and run.” She explained that there were inten-
tionally ew conversations in the assemblies about the current elections.
Similarly, the perspective on material support is to take what movementparticipants can get only as long as they maintain their own agenda. As
soon as the State puts demands or qualiers on the oer, the people
walk away.
Te politics o our movements necessarily means that the State can-
not x the problems o society. Te State, whether capitalist or socialist,
cannot be the emancipatory agent o change. Yet, when we as move-
ments try to work outside the State and without conscious engagement,
the State will always engage us, through direct repression and countless
covert tactics. Our point o reerence should continue to be one an-
other and the creation o directly democratic spaces, but we must also
nd ways to negotiate issues o institutional power while maintaining
our agenda.
Graftti rom Argentina
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S, Wat A tAnd Where Do They Go From Here?
Ever since the Occupy Movement emerged
onto the political landscape, critics and
skeptics have both asked, “so, what are the de-
mands?” And in more recent months, skeptics
have asked whether the movement has lost
momentum since many o public sites occu-
pied have been cleared by state-ordered police
power. Let us consider rst the question o de-
mands, and then turn to the question o wherethe occupy movement moves now.
I we think about this rst question, we
can see how rmly entrenched the notion is
that political movements, i they are to qualiy
as “political”, must (a) be organized around a
concrete and discrete list o demands, and (b)
endeavor to have those demands satised. For
the moment, let us consider what kind o poli-
tics is characterized by such assumptions, and
what kind is not. In other words, although we
take or granted that politics must urnish a
list o demands that can be satised, it doesnot ollow that we are right to take that version
o politics or granted as some o us clearly do.
Let us think, then, about the component parts
o this skeptical claim, and see which version
o politics is assumed and promoted by this
question. Further, let us consider whether the
kind o politics that Occupy pursues not only
ails – or reuses – to comply with this idea o
politics, but is actively trying to establish an-
other one. So let us start with two o the basic
building blocks o the skeptical position: (1)
demands that appear in the orm o a list, (2)
demands that can be satised,
1. Demands should take the form of a list. Let
us imagine that the Occupy Movement were
to say that we have three demands: (a) the end
o home oreclosures, (b) orgiving student
debt, and (c) a decrease in unemployment. In
some ways, each o these demands surely reso-nates with what Occupy is about, and people
who are concerned with all these issues have
clearly joined occupy, joined demonstrations
with signs that oppose home oreclosures, un-
manageable student debt, and unemployment
rates. So the list o demands is clearly related
to the Occupy Movement, and yet, it would
be a mistake to say that the political mean-
ing or eect o the Occupy Movement can be
understood perectly well by understanding
these demands or, indeed, a much longer list
o demands. Te rst reason is that a “list” is a series o demands. But a list does not explain
how these demands are related to one another.
I one o the main political points
o the movement is to draw attention
to, and resist, growing inequalities o
wealth, then that is a social and eco-
nomic reality that crosses all the spe-
cic demands that such a list might
include. But it would not really count
as one demand among many. In other
words, through what language and action does
one call attention to a growing inequality o
wealth in which the rich monopolize increas-
ingly greater amounts o wealth and the poor
now includes increasing numbers o the popu-
lation? Tis point is made evident by each o
the particular issues on the list, a list that could
include the decimation o social services, in-
cluding public healthcare, o pensions, the in-crease in “fexible” labour that makes workers
into a disposable population, the destruction
o public and aordable higher education, the
overcrowding o primary and secondary public
lluttio fo The Beginning of the American Fall stephie mmill
by jd br
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Dmands?schools, tax breaks or the rich, depression o
wages, and increasing government support or
the prison industry. We can make such a list,
add to such a list, even become more specic
about such a list, but no one item on the list
can help us explain what gathers all those items
together on the list. I we argue, though, that
increasing wealth dierentials and inequality
that emerge directly rom contemporary ormso capitalism are exemplied by each o these
issues, and that together they provide evidence
or the claim that capitalism relies upon, and
reproduces, social and economic inequalities o
this kind, then we are making a claim about
how a system works and, more particularly,
how the capitalist system works now: inequali-
ties are becoming greater, assuming new and
devastating orms, and this accelerated process
o inequality remains unchecked by existing
state and global authorities who have a vested
interest in making capitalism work.Te skeptic might still respond with the
ollowing: “but don’t we have to work on each
o these issues separately in order to make any
real dierence in people’s lives? I we would
all take on some one issue, we could make
our way down the list, nding practical solu-
tions or each item there.” o take this point
o view, however, is to insist that the items can
be separated rom one another. But i we need
to know what links the items together in or-
der to provide a solution to this problem, then
our politics depends upon our asking about
the systemic and historical character o theeconomic system itsel.
Indeed, i we understand how the increas-
ing dierentials in wealth (and the accumu-
lation o more wealth by ewer and ewer
people, and the extension o poverty and dis-
posability to increasingly larger numbers o
people) ollows rom a particular economic
organization o society, one that is geared to
produce ever more acute versions o this in-
equality, then in order to address any o the
items on the list, we have to understand the
broader structure o inequality to which eachitem points, and we have to think about ways
o objecting to that economic regime, rather
than seek to make smaller adjustments to its
operation. Indeed, i we “x” any problem on
the list without addressing the reproduction
o inequality, and i that inequality is being
reproduced in ever more acute ways, then the
list just gets larger, even as we seek to remove a
particular item rom it.
We cannot x the one orm o inequal-
ity without understanding the broader trends
o inequality we are seeking to overcome. By
thinking that all the items must be disaggre-gated, we miss our mark and narrow our vision
at the expensive o both social and economic
justice. O course, one can work on any o these
items at the same time that one struggles or the
end to the structural reproduction o inequal-
ity. But that means that some group, some po-
litical articulation, has to keep attention on the
problem o structural inequality. I we think
that there are adequate resources within the
current economic regime to x these problems,
then, we make an odd assumption. We assume
that the very system that has produced the in-equality that characterizes all the items on the
list can serve as the recipient o our demands.
Tis brings me then to the second presumption
made by the skeptic’s question.
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2.Demands should be
capable of being satised. Tis surely seems like a
reasonable point. But
anyone who argues
that demands must
be capable o being
satised assumes that
there is someone or
some existing institu-
tional power to whom
one could appeal to
have one’s demands
satised. Union ne-gotiations backed by
the threat o strikes
usually do have a list
o demands which, i
satised, will avert the
strike, and i not, will
commence or prolong
a strike. But when a
company, corporation, or state is not consid-
ered a legitimate partner or negotiation, then
it makes no sense to appeal to that authority
or a negotiated settlement. In act, to appealto that authority to satisy the demand would
be one way o attributing legitimacy to that
authority. So articulating demands that can
be satised depends undamentally on the
attribution o legitimacy to those who have
the power to satisy the demands. And when
one ceases to direct demands to those authori-
ties, as happens in the general strike, then it
is the illegitimacy o those authorities that is
exposed. Tis is one important implication o
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s contribution to
Occupy Teory.But i those existing institutions are com-
plicit with the economic regime that depends
upon, and urthers, the reproduction o in-
equality, then one cannot appeal to those in-
stitutions to bring about an end to the con-
ditions o inequality. Such an appeal would
deeat itsel in the course o its articulation.
Simply put, the appeal or demand that sought
to be satised by the existing state, global
monetary institutions, or corporations, na-
tional or transnational, would be giving more
power to the very sources o inequality, and in
that way aiding and abetting the reproduction
o inequality itsel. As a result, another set o
strategies are required, and what we are now
seeing in the Occupy Movement is precisely the development o a set o strategies that call
attention to, and oppose, the reproduction o
inequality.
Perhaps to the skeptic the idea o making
“impossible demands” is equivalent to vacat-
ing the eld o the political itsel. But that
response should call our attention to the way
that the eld o the political has been consti-
tuted such that satisable demands become
the hallmark o its intelligibility. In other
words, why is it that we have come to accept
that the only politics that makes sense is onein which a set o demands are made to exist-
ing authorities, and that the demands isolate
instances o inequality and injustice rom one
another without seeing or drawing any links
among them? One can see that the restriction
o politics to a list o demands that can be sat-
ised thus keeps the eld o politics restricted
to contemporary electoral systems that oper-
ate on the assumption that any radical change
in the economic regime is non-negotiable. So,
whatever is negotiated, whatever demand is
satised, will not touch upon what is non-ne-
gotiable, namely, the reproduction o an eco-
nomic regime that is spawning inequalities at
an alarming rate. We might say the particular
politics that denes practical and intelligiblepolitics as the production and satisaction o
a list o discrete demands is committed in ad-
vance to the legitimacy o existing economic
and political structures, and to a reusal o the
systematic character o inequality.
As we can see, one o the key ways that ex-
isting regimes o power maintain their legitima-
cy is by debunking and dismissing all orms o
popular political resistance that call their own
legitimacy into question. Tey have strong sel-
interested reasons to dismiss the Occupy move-
ment as “apolitical.” At that moment, they aretrying to maintain a monopoly on the discourse
o the political, trying, in other words, to dene
and control the power o discourse that will
establish who makes senses, whose actions are
truly political, and who is “beyond the pale,”
“misguided,” and “impractical.”
Te uprising that calls into question those
strategies o sel-legitimation reminds us that
a orm o government or power that is demo-
cratic depends upon the popular will o the
demos, the people. What recourse do people
have when the institutions that are supposed
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to equally represent them politically, provide
conditions or sustainable work, secure basic
health care and education, and honor basic
rights to equality, end up distributing all o those basic resources and rights dierentially
and illegitimately? At such a moment, there
are other ways o enacting equality, showing
up together on the street or on the internet,
producing alliances that demonstrate the
resonance, the overlap, and the broader links
among all those items on the list o contem-
porary injustice.
No political or economic regime can claim
to be legitimately democratic when it ails to
represent the people equally. And when that in-
equality becomes pervasive, and is treated as anirreversible act o economic lie, then the people
who suer that inequality act in alliance, enact-
ing and calling or the kind o equality. Some
might object that radical equality is impossible.
Even i that were the case – and there is no good
reason to accept that claim at ace-value – it
would not be possible to think democracy with-
out an ideal o radical equality. So radical equal-
ity is a demand, but it is not directed to those
institutions that reproduce inequality. It is di-
rected to the people themselves whose historical
task is the making o new institutions. Te ap-peal is to ourselves, and it is this new “we” that is
ormed, episodically and globally, in every action
and demonstration. Such actions are in no sense
“apolitical.” Tey take aim at a politics that oers
practical solutions at the expense o addressing
structural inequality. And they remind us that
every orm o politics gains or loses its legitimacy
depending on whether it accords equality to the
people it is said to represent. Otherwise, it ails
to represent, and so destroys its own legitimacy
in the eyes o the people. In demonstrating, in
acting, the people come to represent themselves,embodying and reanimating the principles o
equality that have been decimated. Abandoned
by existing institutions, they assemble themselves
in the name o a social and political equality, giv-
ing voice, body, movement, and visibility to an
idea o “the people” regularly divided and eaced
by existing power.
So where does the Occupy movement go
now? o answer this question, we have to ask
rst, who poses this question? And we have to
ask, in what orm does this question appear?
One point is clear rom the start: it is not the
tasks o intellectuals to pose and answer the
question. One reason is that intellectuals do
not have prescient powers and theory cannot
have the job o prescribing to those who areengaged primarily as activists. Indeed, let us
take this whole distinction apart, since activists
are very oten theorists, and theorists are some-
times also engaged in orms o activism that
are not primarily concerned with theory. Te
best any o us can do is to track what is actually
happening, how it moves people, and what e-
ects it has. And what we see right now, I be-
lieve, is that the Occupy movement has several
centers, that its public actions are episodic,
and that new orms o eectiveness are in-
creasingly evident. By “eectiveness” I do notmean that demands are being ormulated and
satised, but that mobilizations are increas-
ing in size and appearing in new geopolitical
locations. As the US elections dominate the
news media, it remains clear that a large part
o the population understand that their con-
cerns are not addressed by electoral politics.
So Occupy continues to delineate the way
the popular will wants a political movement
that exceeds that o electoral politics. In this
way, the “representative” claim o electoral
politics is itsel brought into greater crisis. Few achievements could be more important than
showing that electoral politics as it is currently
organized does not represent the popular will
– and that its very legitimacy is put into cri-
sis by this divergence o democratic will rom
electoral institutions.
Perhaps most importantly, though, is that
Occupy questions structural inequality, capi-
talism, and the specic sites and practices that
exempliy the relation between capitalism and
structural inequality. I Occupy has drawn at-
tention to orms o structural inequality thataect any number o corporations and state
institutions, that adversely aect the general
population as they try to meet the basic needs
o lie (shelter, ood, health care, employment),
then it has surely brought attention to the
general economic system that relies upon, and
produces, inequality with increasing intensity.
We can argue whether capitalism is a system,
an historical ormation, whether its neo-liberal
versions are substantially dierent than the cap-
italism criticized by Marx in the 19th century.
Tese are important debates, and academics
should consider to ocus their attention there,
to be sure. But there remains the question o
the historical present o capitalism, and Marx
himsel tells us that we must take as our pointo departure the historical present. What are
the specic public institutions and services that
plunge ever more people into conditions o pre-
carity, the corporations whose exploitative prac-
tices have decimated working lives, the health
care conglomerates that prot on illness and re-
use to oer adequate health services, the public
institutions that are either being decimated or
subordinated to corporate logics and the prot
calculus? Paradoxically but urgently, Occupy
must act episodically to target and expose these
sites o inequality, nding their public ace andinstance, and seizing or interrupting those pro-
cesses by which inequality and increased precar-
ity are being reproduced.
So, I do not think we have only to mourn
the loss o Zucotti Park or other public spaces
where Occupy was dwelling. Perhaps the task
is to undertake squatting as a orm o public
protest, even i it is only episodic and targeted.
Paradoxically, one can only draw attention to
radical inequality by exposing the sites where
inequality is reproduced. Tis must happen
in relation to centers o corporate and statepower, but also precisely at the site o “service
delivery” – health care corporations that ail to
provide service, banks that exploit those who
keep their money there, universities that be-
come the tools o corporate prot. Tese are
just a ew. But i Occupy is episodic, then
its target is not known in advance. And i it
targets unemployment in one place, unaord-
able housing in another, and the loss o public
services in yet a third, then it strings together
over time a sense o how capitalism is located
in concrete institutions and sites. As muchas we nd against structural inequality and a
“system” that prots by its reproduction, we
have to ocus on the concrete instances where
that inequality takes place. So i we do not stay
in the same place, it is not to be lamented. I
we are on the move, then we are, in collective
orms, tracking the sites o injustice and in-
equality, and our trail becomes the new map
o radical change.
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When the entire workorce o a city lays down itstools and reuses to resume work until certaindemands are met, it is called a General Strike.
Te idea rst came rom the nineteenth-century anarchists,
who did not constitute a workorce but were people o anti-statist convictions. Rosa Luxemburg, the Polish revolution-ary thinker (1871–1919) murdered by German reaction-ary troops, rewrote the concept o the General Strike andclaimed it or the workorce (proletariat) ater witnessing thegreat General Strikes in the Russian Empire that began in1896 and ended in the tremendous General Strike o 1905.Georges Sorel (1847-1922), a French thinker who movedrom the political Let tothe political Right, alsoconceived o the GeneralStrike as a way to ener-
gize the workorce.Te Arican American
historian and sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois (1868-1963) described the exo-dus o the slaves immedi-ately ater Emancipationas a General Strike, be-cause slavery had not allowed the “Black Proletariat” (plan-tation workorce or the cotton industry) to orm itsel as a regular workorce.
Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948), the Indian national lib-
erationist, rewrote the General Strike once again and claimedit or the colonized as such, regardless o class. Tus it wasshited rom a working-class movement to something like a mixture o civil disobedience and boycott politics. He calledit “Non-Cooperation.” W.E.B. Du Bois ollowed this care-ully.
oday the global workorce is deeply divided. And global-ization also operates by way o nance — trading in unevencurrencies — which has little to do with the workorce. A great deal o the economy is digital. It is time again to reclaimthe General Strike. It is being reclaimed by those who havebeen disenranchised rom the benets fowing toward the
citizen in a socially just state. Corporate greed leading to in-denite oreclosures, bailout o banks, 1% against 99%, deci-mated healthcare, corporatization o education at all levels —leading to exacerbation o student loans, and the destruction
o the teaching proession; and a general corporatization o every aspect o lie — agriculture, sport — the list goes on.Labor joins hands in this redenition o the General Strike asa collectivity o disenranchised citizens rather than the chie moving orce.
Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937) had dened those whohad no access to the welare structure o the state, those
who had no part in the state, as the subaltern. Tese werethe poorest o the poor.oday this too is being re-written. What we are
witnessing is the subal-
ternization o the middleclass — the largest sectoro the 99%. Te GeneralStrike, as with Du Boisand Gandhi, is now a powerul symbol; not
just a neatly matched worker/master ght. Te
power o a symbol is innitely greater than that o a mereact. A act can seemingly be quickly corrected, with all theservice o the corporate sector.
At this point, the things to remember are:
a. the General Strike has always been special be-
cause it is undertaken by those who suer, not
by morally outraged ideologues.
b. It is by denition non-violent (this is why Gan-
dhi could segue into it), though the repressive
apparatus o the state has used great violence
against the strikers.
c. Although the results are transormative, the
demands are generally ocused on laws:
the length o the working day or the Rus-
sian workers; the ourteenth and eenth
General Strikeby Gayar caKravry sPvaK
“IF ONE SEES THE CONNECTION BETWEEN THE
GENERAL STRIKE AND THE LAW, ONE REALIZES
THAT THIS IS NOT LEGAL REFORMISM, BUT A WILL
TO SOCIAL JUSTICE. THIS INTENSE COMMITMENT
TO LEGAL CHANGE AND ITS IMPLEMENTATION IS
A BID FOR JUSTICE. THE RIGHT TO A CEASELESS
CIVIL REVOLUTION WON BY A GENERAL STRIKE.
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General Strikes are always against “Wall Street” or capi-talism. But, because revolutions have also been against badregimes represented by single dictators or kings, our idea o “revolution” is conused with armed struggle, violence,and regime change. In Russia the Czars, in China decadenteudalism and Euro-colonialism, various regimes and thelatiundia system in Latin America, in France the Bourbon
monarchy, in America the Hanover monarchy and later theslaveholding system; today, Zine el-Abidin ben Al or the
Arab Spring in unisia, Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, MuammarGadda in Libya.
By contrast, in the “Occupy Wall Street” movement thespirit o the General Strike has come into its own and joinedorces with the American tradition o civil disobedience: citi-zens against an unregulated capitalist state, not against anindividual and his regime. Tereore, short-term: change thelaws that make the state accountable to business and banks,not to people. Long-term: establish and nurture an educa-tion that keeps this will to justice alive.
Amendments (in substance i not in discourse)
by the ormer slaves; a decolonized legal
structure by Gandhi. So, laws banning bailout,
legal oversight o scal policy — tax the rich
— de-corporatization o education, liing ag-
ricultural subsidies — changing electoral laws
so it is not only the rich who run — where will
you stop? I one sees the connection betweenthe General Strike and the Law, one realizes
that this is not legal reormism, but a will to
social justice. This intense commitment to le-
gal change and its implementation is a bid or
justice. The right to a ceaseless civil revolution
won by a General Strike.
d. Unlike a party, a general strike reuses to co-
operate until things change. Pressure is work-
ing: witness the 5% victory over debit card
charges!
hee e two photo fo 1937 tht eflet two
iffeet tike. at ight, 60,000 people ttee
“get gtheig of lo i cill sque,” pt of
wht i oiee to e the ot ipott tike
i .s. hito. at left, 110 woe i detoit’ i
Woolwoth toe pet ix i the toe, leepig o
the oute. he ee thei tike whe the wee
gte 5¢ pe hou iee.
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I. As students, we strike at the heart oan economy that depends on an edu-cation system that exploits us, disci-plines us, and proits rom us.
o strike as students is to recognize ourselves as workers in the present and uture economy. Ourlabor is necessary to produce and reproduce an
educational system which is a source o prot andplunder or the 1% and a source o disciplined andexploitable labor power. A student strike is a reusalo this role at every level—rom high schools tocolleges and universities. So long as the employing class prots rom our knowledge, we should notpay tuition and be plunged into debt in order tobe employable. Instead, we should be guaranteed a
wage to learn.
II. We strike to reject a system th at
divides us.
We strike because our desire to learn must not beused to maintain violent social divisions. We rejecta system that exploits our dierences and dividesus along race, sexual, gender, and class lines. Weare taught that education is our best means to‘get ahead’ in lie, yet, many are also let behind,devalued, discarded, or simply excluded. We rejecta system that orces us into vicious competition andpits us against each other.
III. We strike against a ailing system thatrobs us o our uture .
We strike against the devaluation o our educationthrough austerity measures, rising tuition and bud-get cuts. We strike against being doomed to lielong debt, constant training and re-skilling, and againsta system that saddles us with the cost o produc-
ing exploitable workers or the market. We reusean educational system governed by the dictates o competition, individualism, and prot.
IV. We strike to airm and createeducation as we want it.
We strike or an educational system that serves ourcollective needs and desires. We want to be decision-makers in our collective uture, or knowledge to bea genuine commons and not a source o prot.
V. We strike to build our collective powerand create something new.
o strike is to realize our power to determine oureveryday lives. We reuse to let our bodies and ourminds be held hostage to the current educationaland work regimes, to collaborate quietly as the vio-lent logic o capital bankrupts us o our present anduture. We strike together to build a better worldand reclaim our uture.
by anms sdns a
cny Grada cnr
Five Theses on the
Student Strike
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What are your demands? What are your demands?
Wld ystik againstwa? F datin?F alt
a? Againstpli btality?
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16
Ocsolid
day wand mor
are:
No Work No Shop
Getting Ready or
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orget our own interests. We have already become someoneelse. We hold the belies o the other and ght or them, nomatter how ludicrous.
We could collectivize ghts against debt and unemploy-ment, ght as a people, democratically, horizontally.
But the way student loan debt is structured has preventedus rom engaging or creating a movement. Our loans don’t
eect us until ater we graduate. Te myth o the Americandream persists throughout our college years, only to comecrashing down when we enter the real world. We can’t get
jobs that aord us the luxury o paying o our debt and liv-ing a comortable lie. We work during the day and study atnight. We work at night and study during the day. We willnot risk quitting a low paying job to work or ourselves; thedanger o deault is too great. We will not open our own busi-nesses. We will not create jobs or others. We will delay mar-riage, having kids, traveling. We will not pursue our dreams.
We are destined to pursue our collective nightmares in
Student Debt Strike
There are no statistics to substantiate the psychologicalbattle that student debtors are ghting. It is impos-sible to account or the suicides and the runaways.
Tis year, student debt will top $1 trillion dollars in the US. An entire generation is acing a uture under water. We are
entering adult lie ripped rom our sense o ourselves. We arein debt. We are humiliated. We struggle alone.
Debt destroys solidarity; it corrodes relationships andsocial movements with the yolk o obligation to work andconsume.
Debt has disciplining eects. We tailor our lives to com-bat it consciously and unconsciously, and we eectively un-dergo a total transormation. We socialize these changes, they spread like a disease. We adapt strategies to conceal our dis-grace by selectively interacting with those who are radically dierent than we are. We can’t bear to look at ourselves inthe mirror. What we study changes. Our strategy must beto target industries that we can prot rom. We ignore ouractual interests. We manuacture alse identities based on sta-tus in order to orget ourselves. We blindly pursue dignity atevery turn aced with our own personal shame. Politically we
Wall Street stands inwith the calls or athe 99%, a general strike,
May Day, wherever you
chool No HouseworkNo Banking
A Book Bloc, London, 2010: b uig ook hiel
igig the ito the teet eotto e wig t-
tetio to the iolee t the het of the eoliel ieolog.
book e ou tool – we teh with the, we le with the,
we pl with the, we ete with the, we ke loe with the
, oetie, we ut fight with the.
tetig citiop’ lk of equlit i the wokple.
ay Day 2012
Take the streets
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a huge h ogie
the ueploe ouil,
chigo 1932.
“
W av bn sd by caPasm, W av bn
sd and radd n Wa sr, W av
bn XPcd cra ay ms and
Fams and ar n vcd Frm ssam ms W a scnd G.”
derstand that history has turned us into property. We have been used by capitalism, we have been sold
and traded on Wall Street, we have been expected to createhealthy homes and amilies and are then evicted rom thosesame homes without a second thought. We have been used
to keep homes afoat while husbands work, and we are now being used to keep a ailing, exploitative economy running as e ciently as possible.
A general strike on May 1 st, 2012 is an opportunity orus to come together and call out the extreme damage andoppression done by capitalism to the human community.
It has divided us based ongender and has ensured theexploitation o those o uslabeled “woman.” Te gen-eral strike is a gendered is-sue and we must illuminate
this through our actionson May Day. Don’t go to
work, don’t go to school,don’t behave and don’t buy.Get in the streets and build
community. We can create the world we want to see once weremove our consent rom the world that destroys us.
Housing Strike
The most intimate corners and spaces in our lives have
been stolen rom us in thets justied by words likeproperty rights and mortgages and rent checks. It’s
time to question these alse contracts. Why does a bank thatsplit ownership o our homes into hundreds o parts, tanked
our economy, stole our in-vestments and is now try-ing to extort mortgage pay-ments rom us say it ownsour home? Why does a management company thatowns hal the city, that ex-ploits amilies’ basic neces-
sities or prot, and that isnow raising our rent whenreal wages haven’t increasedin 50 years deserve to ownour apartments?
Housing has alwaysbeen an unequal nancialarrangement: those withconsolidated wealth prey on amilies’ most unda-mental needs. Foreclosedproperties stand as bitter
isolation. Where is the rage?Reuse your debt! Cast o the chains that bind you to the
state and the nancial system. Join the Occupy Student Debt Campaign and build a
movement. Become a part o an action o mutual aid. Band
together with others across the country. Sign the pledge o debt reusal. I you are not in debt, sign a pledge o supportor debtors repudiating their debt. I you are a aculty mem-ber, sign the pledge endorsing the action and show supportor your students. Your wages are being cut and your knowl-edge undervalued. Don’t be complacent in a system that isswallowing you whole!
Make the decisionto reuse your debt andstart today. Join us.
Women’s StrikeTe issues o eco-
nomic oppression andthe realities o genderare intrinsically linked. o separate them would literally beimpossible—and yet this refexive relationship o oppressionis constantly ignored or relegated to ‘disturbing actoid’ sta-tus. o be sure, there are indeed numbers and percentagesthat will make your eyes widen. Te UN reports those o us
who are emale assigned at birth make on average 17% lessthan those who are male assigned. Women, as a gendered
category o people, perorm 66% o the world’s work, andproduce 50% o its ood. Yet we earn only 10% o its incomeand own 1% o its property.
Te global economic crisis has and will continue to re-inorce patriarchy through an economic stranglehold onthe necks o the emaleassigned and identied.But the solution is no-
where near the economicreorm and recovery promised by politiciansand NGOs. In act, the
solution can never be a proposed program, devel-opment initiative, or mi-cronance game. Tose o us who have been called orcall ourselves women un-
18
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reminders o how ar those with power will go to enorcethis contract: In New York City, 10,000 homeless amiliessleep in shelters each night while 80,000 apartment unitsand homes stand vacant in the borough o Brooklyn alone—
company owned, 1% controlled. It’s no wonder that so many have been evicted across the country: a amily has to earn$16.31 an hour to be able to aord housing at the nationalaverage “air” market rent, while the ederal minimum wagestands at a mere $7.25 an hour.
State and urban governments selectively enorce their lawsto prop up this injustice, while mainstream media constructsa national narrative in which private ownership is a right buta amily’s basic shelter, security and saety is a privilege. Land-lords’ right to property is brutally enorced under the guiseo the Fourteenth Amendment, but citizens’ right to lie—that inalienable right o the Declaration o Independent—is
ignored. Meanwhile, Wall Street’s too-big-to-ail banks arenothing more than black holes that require a constant streamour money to survive, that are already teetering, relying ontax-dollar handouts rom the State to avoid ailure.
Paying rent and mortgage is akin to unding our own so-cial and economic marginalization. It’s time to say enough:No more rent checks. No more mortgage payments. Strikeagainst a system that is already broken; reuse to make pay-ments that are already invalid. Tis apartment, this house,this country: Tis is already our home and we will assumeull ownership.
Arts Strike
The arts will be crucial to our collective economic non-compliance on May Day 2012. Te arts are embed-ded in the broader cultural and media sectors o the
neoliberal urban economy. People who work in these sectors,including musicians and writers, perormers and architects,dancers and designers, photographers and lmmakers, typi-cally work numerous other jobs to make ends meet. We work as students, educators, bartenders, prooreaders, interns,tour-guides, care-takers, art-handlers, administrative assis-
tants, street-vendors, and more. Tough some o us belong to unions, cultural workers are largely precarious and unor-ganized. Many o us do not have jobs at all. And cultural
workers are debtors--we share this “negative commons” withthe rest o the 99%.
Cultural workers are variously striated by class-back-ground, race, gender, age, immigration-status, education,institutional a liation, and cultural prestige, with the mostelite oten serving as the avant-garde o gentrication. Build-ing a strike-alliance involving cultural workers will thus becomplicated. Matters o privilege and hierarchy will need tobe deeply examined. But it will also be quite powerul, given
that the cultural workers o the 99% create the cultural com-monwealth rom which the 1% in the entertainment, tour-ism, and real-estate industries draw their astronomical prots.
As cultural workers, we can contribute our various skill-sets to the build-up or May Day through creative media,research, and direct action. At the same time, we can do or-mal and inormal outreach in our workplaces, institutions,communities, and social networks.
May Day will be beautiully disruptive. As we shut downthe privatized city o capital, we will open new public spacesthat are empowering and inspiring. Te strike will be an ex-
ercise in radical imagination inormed by dreams o belovedcommunity and histories o militant resistance. It will draw upon and reinvent the creative tactics o earlier struggles orreedom, equality, and justice rom across the world. We willcontinuously add and multiply our collective creativity sothat every act o deance also demonstrates the possibility o another world beyond neoliberalism.
When we withdraw rom work, let’s not just stay home orgo shopping. Imagine May Day and its build-up as a Spring celebration o the arts, a people’s jubilee o the cultural com-mons. Everyone will be invited to the party: the kids andthe elders, the singers and the dancers, the clowns and the
monsters. Let’s go out into to the streets, parks, and lots toreclaim our city. Let’s march, converge, and assemble withour riends and amilies, communities and allies. Let’s makesome art, pitch some tents, plant some seeds... and see whatgrows or the Summer and beyond.
mephi ittio woke tike, 1968.
W cnrbns Frm:
szan braman, mas nz, yas
mcK, am da, and cnvrsans Wn
dFFrn WrKnG GrPs and assmbs
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. . . As the applause died down,
Sister Tompkins began to speak:
“Comrades! On this, the seventh day o our general strike,
the Citywide Coordinating Committee o New York’s Work-place and Community Assemblies has asked me to sum up itsmeaning and signicance.
“During the general strike ve years ago, we stayed out inthe streets or ten days until driven back by murderous orce.
“Nonetheless the strike was a success, or we rose as oneand denied the bosses the prots extracted rom our labor.
And we proved it is our labor alone that keeps society run-ning. (Applause.)
“What’s more, in the years since 2017, new unions havesprung up in thousands o worksites, each breathing the reand love o those days, and giving millions condence in
their ability to ght the bosses.“Tis year when we struck we did not leave work, but
instead occupied our o ces and actories, our schools, hos-pitals and childcare centers. And we invited into them theparents and children, all the residents o the surrounding communities, who are helping us to run this strike and toprotect the occupied worksites.
“ogether we are organizing provision o ood and medi-cal care, as well as cultural and educational eorts to bolsterour spirits and ortiy our steadastness.
“At each workplace we democratically decide how to -
nance those activities, just as our Citywide Coordinating Committee and in turn the Coordinating Committee or allOccupied Zones in this country democratically decide how to allocate the pooled resources o the General Strike sites.
“In all this we are getting practice or the day when we will carry out these tasks as part o building a new society.(Applause.)
“We may not get there this time. Te rulers’ police andmilitary are massing on the opposite sides o every bridgeleading into the city. And our resistance, while careully pre-pared, may not su ce.
“But no matter the outcome o the coming battle, we
have written an indelible chapter in history, one which, evenshould we not complete our work, will be read with prideby our children and grandchildren, who will learn rom oursuccesses as well as our mistakes, and who will usher in thatnew society.”
(Prolonged, stormy applause.)
“Let us turn now to a report on our coordination withother striking cities…”
Excerpt From an Account o theGeneral Strike o 2022
BY ANDY POLLACK
20
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“ tike, rie Ptol, ol 1299”
u stike, nyc
1951 5000 tit woke fille uo st.
i nyc outie of the bo of pottio
uilig to e 40-hou wok week.
Who strikes? Who has the right to strike?
Wld y stik egypt? F
oakland? Fcil?
Would you strike
instead o settle?
Would you strike
or queer rights, theundocumented,
the homeless youth,
the women?
21
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Aew years back, I took my niece and my neph-
ew to the aquarium, and the image that I saw
still uels my imagination. In the tank, a pro-
jected light in the shape o a sh kept moving and, thus,
the penguins kept chasing ater it. Tis poignant imageleads me to refect on the human rights work and the jus-
tice movement that I have been part o or the last two de-
cades. I have come to live this lie as a displaced immigrant
rom Mexico, whose amily was squeezed out by oreign,
neoliberal policies that have aected millions and millions
negatively. Te saying that is common among many o
us who have been ousted is, “we are here because you are
there”—“there” meaning our homelands rom which we
have been orced out under the banner o democracy and
development. I have the privilege o struggling side by side
with people who have been under the eye o the gun, so to
speak, and who live day in and day out risking and acting to change systems that are oppressive and inhuman. My
amily, mentors and close riends have always been part o
the struggle in acilitating a more humane, and commu-
nity-oriented society. Teir analysis always point to that
radical sense o being connected in a genuine, real and
human way to each other and to the earth. It’s a radical,
human understanding that takes in the whole o creation
and sees the intricate seamless web o all lie as sacred.
It is rare to see the making o history. We realize that,
with the Occupy Movement, a spark that has ed the
imagination o thousands and compelled them to action
has taken fight rom the great re o indignation andinjustice that our communities o color have been living
with and resisting or centuries. It is the making o his-
tory that we are witnessing, and it does concern all o us.
A visible shit is underway in the way we resist, organize
and how we come to know, engage and shape our lives
and the society we live in.
It is in this empowering awareness that we are occu-
pying anew the dates that once were signicant on our
journeys or liberation. May 1st is around the corner and
the question is already on the organizing tables as we
prepare or our own spring. How can we use this date
to build a movement that is inclusive and eectively ad-
We Are HereBecAuSe You Are There
dresses the many needs o our communities? It is encouraging that representa-tives o all sectors o our society are at the table. Now it is time or the 99% to
be counted.
Te image o the light comes back to my mind, probing and questioning: Are
we just ollowing a light that deceives us and keeps us captive in the same molds
o thinking and acting, captive to the collapsing institutions and governments
that do not respond to the needs o the many nor urther the common good? Or
are we truly building a movement that is liberating and creating communities
where doing what is good is easier than doing what is dehumanizing?
Dan Berrigan poetically points to that reality whenever he is asked why he
keeps resisting, “Because o the children, they said, and because o the heart,
and because o the bread. Because the cause is the heart’s beat and the children
born and the risen bread.”
“We have kept a silence quite similar to stupidity,” Valparaiso, Chile.
Photo: Alredo Jaar
by jan cars rz
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23
The recent wave o Chilean stu-dent protests exploded in April
2011. Sparked by a conederationo university students, the protest-ers called or a strike to demand ree
public education, equal access to thecountry’s best schools, an end to or-prot schools and student participa-tion in university governments.
Te Chilean educational system isnotoriously underunded, unequaland stratied by class, and the strikeand revolutionary spirit quickly spread
across the universities and secondary schools. Hundreds o thousands o students mobilized or protests, sit-ins, school takeovers, ash mobs andspectacular media demonstrations.By June, the students efectively shutdown the educational system. By July,they ousted the Minister o Education.Te Chilean winter had begun.
Te Chilean student movementcombined mass mobilization, oc-cupation and subversive creativity toachieve an impact that is hard to exag-gerate. Wielding barricades and ban-ners, students occupied hundreds o school buildings. Public spaces became
homes to dozens o massive demon-strations, where thousands o people
used rehearsed choreography to createtheatrical perormances or the mediato report and consume—thereby goingninja on mainstream media.
Students used symbolism and spec-tacle to communicate. Pillow ghts inront o parliament raged or a “besteductation.” Mass kiss-ins spread“passion or eduction.” Die-ins the-
atrically demonstrated “casualties by tuition increase,” and paint-bombings
o police armored vehicles mocked thelegacy o ear that has dened Chileanpolitics since the years o Pinochet.
All o these actions demonstrate thedepth o thought behind the ChileanStudents’ movement, and their abil-ity to break through the police versus
protester binary narrative and suc-cessully reach and engage the 99%.
Pillow Fighting or our lives
Ps: lieo Fee, alioh
mque, cote
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In the United States, the Occupy movement is at war with compla-
cency and ear. From riends and strangers outside the movement I
hear pride and apathy in the same sentences. It goes something like,
“We are so proud o you and all you are doing!” How proud they are that
Americans are taking to the streets in protest o injustice, and yet how ar
removed rom the ght they remain.
Many o us in Occupy spend hours upon hours guring out how to
grow a movement. We are constantly asking ourselves how to get every-
day people involved. We think o how much inormation about global
injustices we have at our ngertips or more importantly, how easily we
can see vast disparities all around us. We are growing insane wondering
why we would even need to consider canvassing. We scream and rant to
each other in bewilderment and disbelie at our acquiescent American
public: Where is the rage? Why aren’t there 100,000 in the streets?
Complacency is a most subtle, most dicult thing to recognize in
onesel. I nd it in the most well-intentioned, good-spirited individu-als. Tey wander into the movement here and there and oer welcomed
brilliant ideas and careul criticisms. Tey are satised, delighted even,
about the Occupy movement but nd themselves hamstrung by their
daily grinds. Tey say they don’t have time, cannot jeopardize their jobs
or simply do not know where to begin.
When I think o how to address this reaction, it seems useul to think
o complacency in terms o satisaction and time. Te degree to which we
are satised or content with lie as it is tends to dictate the time we dedi-
cate to altering it. Beyond this, condence in our thoughts and our moral
intuition drives our personal initiatives that challenge those structures
that do not satisy our needs. When we lack the latter, we look to create
a sense o suciency—that we have participated just enough to eel asthough we actually have a say in the trajectory o our society.
In this moment, in the United States, complacency is only slightly
understandable. We can still enjoy capitalism’s creature comorts: nights
out with our riends at interesting bars, locally grown organic produce
and hot new shoes. Tere is still a very real space between choosing
to mobilize in the ace o oppression and having to or survival. Our
threshold or tolerating corruption and white-collar crimes seems right-
ully proportionate to our privilege.
Te American population, the 1% o the world, is wrapped in a skin
lled with memory we must shed. Memory o alse historical narratives,
o manipulations we knowingly uphold, o dreams about “making it”
and o an existence that seems to have stopped evolving. Tese alsememories require our collective insomnia. We are not at the end o
history, as some would have us believe. Our current society does not
represent the best we can do. Tere is nothing inherent to human be-
ings that allow some to achieve nancial success by their own volition
and others to remain stagnant in reaching an acceptable quality o lie.
We need to connect ourselves and the products we use, the places
we work and the ideologies we uphold to the millions who deal with
their consequences around the world. Whether through collective ig-
norance or denial, our complacency is an utter insult—heaps o salt in
their gaping wounds—to the impoverished millions who mobilize daily
against extremely violent oppression and systematic execution. Tose
On Losing Complacency
& Fearby sandra mar nrs
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25
who cling to the last toxic droplets o trickle-down capitalism,
who have the most important thing to lose—their existence,
their ability to experience living in this most beautiul world—
are let to eat the dust our disinterested eet kick in their aces.It is not enough to pat protestors on the back as they march
by; it’s condescending. It is not enough to do eel-good charity; this
is borderline criminal. It is not enough to read the volumes o litera-
ture on the ills working against a peaceul and just humanity. It is not
enough to be open to hearing the struggles o millions. It is not enough
to talk politics at your dinner table. Tere is something we are missing
in these moments, and it is only ound when we put our bodies on
the line as agents o change. o ght in this moment is to welcome
discomort, is to expect inconvenience and is to move in spaces you
have never dreamed o.
Past complacency, there is real ear. Most talk about ear in terms
o the unknown, but it eels more betting to talk about ear in termso human disappointment. Disappointment that we cannot actualize a
better world. Disappointment that those we trust the most in our ght
will make grave mistakes. Disappointment that we may pass beore we
see our eorts come to ruition. Tese are things to truly ear because
these are human. More importantly, these disappointments will never
be a non-actor in our ght. We must come to terms with this ear and
turn it into a source o inspiration by acknowledging the incredible
courage and grit it takes to put ourselves on the line. We must trust not
just each other, but our inevitable stumbles. We must bend our backs
to ensure the umbling o our ideas land sotly.
Te inexplicable sense o liberation elt while peeling away each lie
rom our skins is met with immediate terror. During the time it takes toreplace it with truth, we may eel the real sense that our intuition may
be misleading us. Tere is a panic that we have given it away so reely
or nothing. Our eorts are equally powerul and terriying in their
naïve honesty: We want a just world. Every blind step where we all, it
seems to be into an endless pit. However, the proound relie you will
eel, the ullled sense your body gains when you hear the pitter-patter
rom the charging eet o others, a collective jangly wander towards
justice that does not tire even though there is no end in sight.
Putting the ear o personal consequences behind us, there is now
an opportunity or us to live up to the promise and spirit o resistance.
Tis spring, as many cities and towns across the nation launch new
occupations, mass days o actions and general strikes, it is crucial we
whole-heartedly embrace spring as a budding revolution. When we oc-
cupy, we hold space with our bodies and put aside our ear o enduring
physical violence rom the state or o spending nights in jail. When we
hit the streets in mass actions, we bring our collective disillusionment
and outrage into the public realm. When we strike, we overcome the
anxiety o not participating and cooperating in systems that undamen-
tally restrict our human potential and that work to separate us rom
each other. When we reuse to engage a corrupt and broken electoral
system, we stop earing society without central leaders and start looking to lead together.
It is a personal challenge or us all to push beyond our alse sense o
security and move without trepidation. I know and I trust we will tear
away these dreadul constraints as we move towards revolution. I know
that at our most alive, we are together crying, screaming and shouting
at injustice; that at our most alive, we are together thinking, talking,
marching and pushing towards liberation. At our most alive, there is no
complacency. Tere is no ear. Tere is only trust in each other as we
hold hands on the rontline o this ght.
Pitig alex Kle
Our eorts are equally powerul and
terriying in their naïve honesty: We want
a just world. Every blind step where we all,
it seems to be into an endless pit. However,
the proound relie you will eel, the ullled
sense your body gains when you hear the
pitter-patter rom the charging eet o others,
a collective jangly wander towards justice
that does not tire even though there is no
end in sight.
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THE PROPOGANDA MODEL: POWER AND HEIRARCHY
From Glenn Beck, Rupert Murdoch and Fox News, to Wol Blitzer, Te New York imes and Te Post, newsgath-
ering and reporting is a comedic theatre in which the only thing wecan know or sure is that we aren’t receiving the whole truth. Fox
News, with its fashy tickers, and beautiul, angry women, ranks
much higher in the U.S. than the tamer, blander backdrops o Al
Jazeera and the BBC. Tis is the culture industry, which objecties
and reies subtly, in packaging, style and content, while we sit eyes
glued to the tube absorbing the drivel that is spoon ed to us, ask-
ing or more. It is a cyclical dilemma, mass culture dening society
to the extent that society is no longer able to critically evaluate the
belies that dene it. Horkheimer and Adorno’s critique o the “cul-
ture industry” resonates today, ostering consumption-based needs,
manuacturing consent, standardizing cultural goods and watering
down critical thought.Te propaganda model is more straightorward, easier to spot.
Who owns Fox News and what’s its agenda? Which advertisers air
most requently, and how does that aect the corresponding chan-
nels content? Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman’s 1988 wa-
tershed analysis o the propaganda model, “Manuacturing Consent:
Te Political Economy o the Mass Media,” remains the best expla-
nation o the various ways media outlets are co-opted by corporate
conglomerates and their government partners. Chomsky and Her-
man ocused on ve lters—ownership; advertising; sourcing (think
subsidized media—privileged access to elites and policy makers); fak
(the prospect o negative responses/criticism rom powerul interest
groups); and anti-communist sentiment (revised to incorporate ear
Media As Direct Action
Since the earliest days o the occupation, great
eorts were made to infuence media spin..
Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Livestream—the goal was
to attract reporters, wrangle, and document. But asmainstream media interest grew, the press twisted and
conated our voices. Why did we expect anything less?
We live in a world defned by a system o mass
manipulation, and the media is its greatest weapon.
Although decentralized and semi-democratic online
platorms oer us unprecedented access to alterna-
tive media, we have yet to harness these resources
in reexive, proactive ways that present accessible
narratives to the outside world. Instead, we have
tried to control the spin o mainstream media, engag-
ing on its terms and playing by its rules.In ocusing on the spin, we have not only missed
opportunities to message proactively, but we have
witnessed the rise o a more disturbing trend: ac-
tions defned and supported internally and externally
based on perceived press response.
The extent to which we allow press to defne our
actions is the extent to which we lose. Radical struc-
tural change requires radical departure rom tradi-
tional ormulas, models and rules o engagement.
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and anti-Islamic sentiment as a means o ideological control)—all o which
act as a corporate kaleidoscope, ltering and warping news coverage to re-
fect the attitudes, belies and agendas o the powers that be.
Over the last twenty-plus years, the Internet promised to change the
rules o the game. Many hoped this technology would usher in a new era o
truly democratic and accessible media. Tis has not been the case.
THE PROPOGANDA MODEL LIVES ON IN THE INTERNET When I entered the eld in 2004, the industry was in the throws o a
mad scramble to protect prot margins. Te ear that the Internet would
usher in the Marxist equivalent o the end o capital raged like a wildre
through the industry as service providers and media outlets struggled to
undermine net-neutrality and create tiered models o engagement.
Over the years, the corporate machine prevailed. Tink o the an-
noying 30-second ad you can’t click away, the pop-up banners littered
across your screen, the built-in marketing links within bodies o content
and the search engines that generate advertising in line with your likes
and dislikes. Tink o companies like Google, Yahoo, and Amazon as the
new corporate conglomerates dominating this “decentralized” platorm.
Tink o site trac as the new subscription, controlled access to the most widely visited sites and more disturbing trends like the rise o identity
thet and tracking. Te propaganda model inserted, the lters in place,
the Internet now allows or the same bottleneck o power, wealth and
inormation as its analog counterparts.
MAINSTREAM MEDIA IS NO DIFFERENT THAN THE BANKS
Te media is one o the most eective tools protecting market interests
and shaping public opinion and, as such, should be thought o no dier-
ently than concentrations o power on Wall Street or Capitol Hill.
So why, in this one area, do we continue to play by their rules? At
what point does an attempt to work within a corrupt system begin to
replicate the system we seek to destroy? At the point where that system begins to dictate our actions, to
water down our resolve and undermine our solidarity. Tere is perhaps
no better example than December 17.
D17 was an incredibly controversial action within the movement,
in part because o the anticipated media response. Many were araid
that this would appear to be an attack on the Church. Tat this particu-
lar church was actually a Real Estate corporation and the third-largest
landowner in Manhattan with a vestry that reads like a who’s who o
Wall Street was beside the point.
Te morning o the action Te New York imes printed an article
pulled straight rom rinity Wall Street’s press kit. Bought and paid or,
it was a scathing attack on OWS in deense o the Church, and it createda wave o panic through our ranks. o enter the space or not to enter
the space, that became the question. Tat the media had any role in that
conversation, proves my point. Te New York imes manuactured dis-
sent among our ranks while perpetuating consent or the position o an
organization run by the 1%. Had we accepted that the Real Estate giant
would pull the media out o their tool kit and used that understanding to
inorm a creative, proactive messaging strategy leading up to the action,
perhaps the battle would have looked dierent.
THE ANSWER IS CREATIVE
2012 is about a plurality o tactics: disrupting business as usual
while presenting viable alternatives to the public at large. We must
think o media engagement as strategic, direct action—a tool or sub-versive empowerment.
From the Situationist’s détournement and tactical media strategies
to hacktivism, pirate radio and street theatre, alternative media has
explored ways in which we can engage audiences and create outside
traditional modes o production and distribution since the 1950s. We
should draw inspiration rom the ‘hit-and-run’ strategies employed by
groups like the Yes Men in creating tactical media around actions and
issues. We should re-envision guerilla communication and the street
theatre o the 1960s. How can technology update and expand these
techniques to reach broader audiences?
Imagine i D17 had looked like a national guerilla “marketing”
campaign—“rinity Wall Street gets behind Occupy Movement!”“rinity endorses new occupation at Duarte Square!” “Te Church in
Support o OWS!”—while we simultaneously created inormative and
thoughtul pieces about space.
Radical strategic media is about more than viral Youube videos; it’s
about avant-garde media that pushes the limits o traditional ormulas,
story structures, and methods o communication. It’s about creating
content that asks questions rather than provides answers.
Faced with an opponent that cultivates alse needs predicated on
consumption, cultivating work that promote real needs—reedom,
happiness, creativity—could be a watershed moment or radical activa-
tion. Culture can and will inspire civic engagement. Tink interactive
media and art projects in public spaces. Tink coordinated nationalguerilla marketing campaigns. Tink hacktivism that takes on main-
stream media outlets.
We must liberate creativity while ocusing our resources on proactive
messaging. We must research and experiment with models that have been
tried and those that have only been imagined. We must create alternative
media outlets that incorporate decision-making processes that refect the
balanced, air and non-exploitative world we wish to create.
A radical departure rom old power structures means empowering
autonomous actions, voices, ideas and works that activate a broad base
who then do the same. We will never be able to control the mainstream,
but why would we want to? We can create outside the language, ideas,
parameters, and mediums that aim to dene and constrict, to packageand standardize. We can use media to educate, communicate, critique
and liberate, but we must reassert our creativity rom creation to pro-
duction and delivery. We must marry concepts o autonomous, direct
action with our approach to culture and then use media as a tool to ree
the mind rather than enslave it.
2012 is about a plurality o tactics: disrupting business as usual while
presenting viable alternatives to the public at large.. We must think o
media engagement as strategic, direct action — a tool or subversive em-
powerment.
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Tings have calmed down somewhat or the winter, and now there’s
time to think more careully. Tere has been tremendous time and en-
ergy sapped up in the General Assembly and Spokes Council about
oten-minute hows and whys o distributing money within the move-
ment. Te philanthropy starting to come in rom outside risks empow-
ering only those privileged with existing connections to the pursestrings
o the wealthy. O course, ull-time activists don’t grow on trees, and
they need to be supported, as do their works. Yet a paycheck can be-come a sense o entitlement—good or building a stable institution, but
threatening to the militancy o a resistance movement.
Dealing with money is hard, and all the more so or a community
committed to making its every procedure refective o its aspirations.
Compared to most other kinds o undertakings, however, true popular
movements are actually pretty cheap, and they can come by what they
need quite naturally i they’re doing their job right.
In the heyday o the civil rights movement, radical groups had to
buckle down or years o intensive on-the-ground organizing. Te Stu-
dent Nonviolent Coordinating Committee entrusted budgetary details
to Executive Secretary James Foreman, which enabled SNCC to react
quickly to the various emergencies that came up all the time. Still, its
members would hold days-long meetings to decide on overall priorities
collectively—meetings which make a ew hours at the General Assem-
bly seem merciully short.
“Fundraising went on all the time,” explains SNCC veteran Mary King. “But it was segmented.” While SNCC organizers lived and
worked in black communities in the South, Te Freedom Singers
toured the country, raising money and awareness by singing songs and
telling stories about the movement. Tese weren’t entertainers. “Tey
were real people with real stories,” says King, “authentic heroes and
heroines working in the movement, until Jim Forman asked them to
go on the road.” “Friends o SNCC” chapters ormed in Northern cities
to organize these perormances and support the movement rom aar.
Not that the intake was very big, in the end; a SNCC eld secretary, the
person in charge o local operations, earned the equivalent o less than
$70 a week in today’s dollars.
Te Southern Christian Leadership Conerence had a more inte-grated approach to undraising. Staers were expected to contribute
at least 10 percent o whatever they spent. “Tere was plenty o ancy
undraising involving celebrities like Harry Belaonte,” explains Mary
King. “Yet the wonderul thing about sta members being expected to
help carry their own weight is that it made them remember to be ru-
gal.” Tey raised money rom bake sales, car washes, and amily mem-
bers, oten close to the communities in which the staers were work-
ing. King hersel advocated or more o this decentralized approach in
SNCC. “Grassroots undraising is extremely important,” she says. “You
can draw psychological nourishment rom it, and share knowledge. It
is not just money.”
Improvisation was also a big part o the civil rights movement’s daily bread. During the Montgomery bus boycott, Bayard Rustin turned to
nearby Birmingham, where black steel workers made good salaries and
oten had two cars per amily. He persuaded many o them to send
their second cars to Montgomery or carpooling boycotters. Tis made
donors part o the eort in a more direct, substantive way than just
giving money.
Such in-kind giving has been the basis o the ongoing May 15 move-
ment in Spain, which helped to inspire Occupy Wall Street. According to
Spanish activist and journalist er Garcia, “Little money, but many hours o
voluntary work, made possible the country’s most important social move-
ment in recent memory.” Tose at the month-long Madrid encampment,
or instance, decided not to accept monetary donations at all. As the camp
Money & MoveMents
cnsid t Lilis
T day opy Wall Stt atd t
Finan wking gp — nw appily -namd Anting — was anti. It ad t
b; tis was t st wk t patin, wit
dnatins ping in m all t nty.
Nbdy knw w wld gt t spnd it, w,
and t mmnity’s nds w mnting -
y mint. A ppsal was bbld tgt
tat afnn’s Gnal Assmbly (GA), and an
ally w appnd t b at t plaza tat day
pitd in t st p a sal spnssip. Nbdy
ad m a an t tink abt w t bt ang ty want t s in t wld, at last
in tis spt.
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29
grew, more and more o its needs—ood, printing, and sound equipment,
or instance—were provided by people joining the movement. Even now,
ater having transitioned rom encampment to neighborhood assemblies,
Madrid’s Indignados don’t take or manage money.
Where money is necessary, such as or web server space, the Span-
iards raise it through small-scale benet parties or selling swag like but-tons and -shirts. Teir widespread anti-oreclosure eorts have detly
avoided legal ees by using trained volunteer activists as advisors to
government-provided public deenders. Organizers see keeping money
to a minimum as a way o maintaining independence while ostering
interdependence.
Down in Washington, DC, those occupying Freedom Plaza intend
to create a “co-operative sub-economy” that can support participants and
the movement. With the help o political economist Gal Alperovitz, au-
thor o America Beyond Capitalism, they’re now drawing up business
plans. One is or an “Occupy ood truck,” an oshoot o Freedom Plaza’s
extraordinary kitchen. Another idea is to produce and sell propaganda
swag through a worker-owned shop, oering their services to other Oc-cupy groups. Tis kind o project, i successul, would meet shorter-term
goals as well as longer-term ones; besides raising some money, it models
a more sustainable alternative to the usual corporate structures. But these
occupiers certainly aren’t expecting to get rich in the process.
For those in the Serbian resistance movement Otpor!—which
helped bring down Slobodan Miloševic—nobody got too comort-
able, even when hundreds o thousands o dollars were pouring in rom
Western interests eager to do away with the regime. Tis money paid
or printing supplies, -shirts, banners, and rallies. “We were volun-
teers, so our parents were nancing us or almost two years,” recallsIvan Marović, one o Otpor’s ounding organizers, who visited Liberty
Plaza in the rst week o the occupation. “Old ladies were bringing
ood and tea to protests, taxis gave us ree rides, local caes would give
us ree coee.”
I a radical movement is doing what it should be doing, it will run
mostly on things other than money. What money it does need will be
used better when coming rom those whom the movement serves. I
you’re holding ancy thousand-dollar-a-plate dinners, you’ve probably
become a status-quo NGO, and you’d better start giving up hope o
revolution.
“Consider the lilies, how they grow,” Jesus is recorded as having
told his riends. “Don’t keep striving or what you’ll eat and what you’lldrink, and don’t keep worrying. It’s the nations o the world that strive
ater these kinds o things.” Instead, he said, work toward the blessed
community, as the lilies grow toward the sun—“and these things will
be given to you as well.”
I a radical movement is doing what it should be doing, it will run mostly on
things other than money. What money it does need will be used better when
coming rom those whom the movement serves.
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I am t p wit, fooled and pused
apart, I a t Ng baing slavy’s sas.I a t red n divn f t land, I am the immigrant
luting te ope I seek — And fnding nly
t sa ol stupi pln of og t og , f igty
us t wak.
O’ let aeric b aericagain— Te land that has never been yEt
— And yt ust BE — Te land w
vry n is fr . Te land tat’s ine — The poor n’s, Indin’s, Negro’s, mE —
Who made AmerIcA, ws sweat and blood,
ws fh d p, Wose and at tefoundr, whose plw in t ain, must bing
bak u mIghTy dre again.
O’ yes, I say it plain, Aia was nvr Aia to ,
And yt I swer tis at —
ewll BE!
— Langston Hughes
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We have spent the winter learning, work-ing and growing. And now we are being
propelled to bolder, more intelligent orms o resistance.
Our vision and alternatives will come in time, with patience, working together, when we re-
fect the strength and diversity o the 99%.Until then, let’s grow our power with eachother against a government that’s no longerresponsive to the will o the people it claimsto represent.
We hope this idal ignites new conversa-tions and deepens older ones amongst eachother, in our assemblies, working groups,caucuses, universities, town halls, unionhalls, bars, bus stops, subway cars, shelters,
dinner tables, and workplaces, in every spaces we occupy. Te stakes are high enough
that the conversations should happen ev-erywhere. And perhaps the coming
year will be the moment when weare unleashed beyond a ‘move-
ment’ and towards a new way o being.
Photo: Ja son B . N i cho la s
eDITorSNatasha Rosa Luxemburg
Amin HusainBabak Karimi
Laura Gottesdiener
ProDucTIoN Jed Brandt, Zak Greene,
Web: Eric Ribellarsi
APPrecIATIoNS
+Yates Mckee, Tomas Hintze,Katie Falkenberg, Katie
Davison, Ron Clark, Alredo Jaar, Nelini Stamp, IshamChristie, Nona Hildebrand.
cover PhoToMichael Bocchieri
tidlTheory. Strategy. Action.Reading. Thinking. Discussing.
See you in thestreets.
occupytheory.orgoccupiedmedia.us
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