[MayDay2012] Proposal re. Building Mutual Respect and No Property Destruction

Proposal

WE ARE activists from different groups with different ideas and organizing backgrounds. But we stand by some common basic principles:

Solidarity starts with Respect. We begin with the assumption that we all respect fellow activists and their life circumstances. Through acting with respect for each other, we begin to build trust. 

Social justice movements must be democratic and accountable. Movements cannot function unless they are able to democratically decide what to do and hold themselves accountable to those decisions. Unaccountable action using other people's lives is the very definition of what it means to be authoritarian. We stand for our right to democratically control our own movement.

Building a social justice movement begins with organizing. Marches and rallies are only tactics; they cannot become the goal or vision themselves. The pillar of organizing is building and maintaining social relationships. If we cannot cherish and honor each other, we have already abandoned the cause for social equality and justice.

We must create a safe space for working class people, immigrants, undocumented, people of color, women, and the LGBTIQQ-identified.We make room for members of marginalized communities to take leadership roles. We take a stand to fight oppression against all.

For all these reasons, we pledge that:

The March for Dignity and Resistance on May Day, 2012 will be a mass, nonviolent action. Those involved in its organization will not engage in acts of property damage while part of the March from Fruitvale to Downtown Oakland and while taking part in the three scheduled  rallies. We request that all autonomous actions take place at a distance (in time and/or space) from the March and Rallies at Fruitvale BART, San Antonio Park, and Oscar Grant Plaza to keep our participants safe.

Our goal is to become comrades in each other’s struggles. The first step is to build trust.

[PS. I did not write this from scratch but borrowed a lot from Occupy Education listserv and recent occupation of the State Capitol] 

No one and nothing works until everyone and everything works: Toward an Unlimited Wild General Strike

Yesterday I received some flack from a friend and comrade about my position on Occupy Wall Street's demands working group, specifically a demand for full employment called “Jobs for ALL – A Massive Public Works and Public Service Program" that they intend to bring to the general assembly where hopefully it will get shot down.  More of a state-run socialist program than a demand (i.e. a program that strengthens both domination of the state and capital over our lives), the program calls for" massive public works and public service programs with direct government employment at prevailing (union) wages, paid for by taxing the rich and corporations, by immediately ending all of America’s wars, and by ending all aid to authoritarian regimes to create 25 million new jobs to":
-Expand education: cut class sizes and provide free university for all;


-Expand healthcare and provide free healthcare for all (single payer system);


-Build housing, guarantee decent housing for all;


-Expand mass transit, provided for free;


-Rebuild the infrastructure—bridges, flood control, roads;


-Research and implement clean energy alternatives; and


-Clean up the environment.




These jobs are to be open to all, regardless of documentation/immigration status or criminal record.”


My initial response to this program was this:
"no full employment. employment=exploitation. since the systems that exploit us don't work for us, we shouldn't have to work for them either. Fuck capital/ Fuck labor. #strikeoccupytakeover. "


In response, a friend and former union organizer with the TWU local 100 in NYC chided me and questioned my supposed distance from reality: 


"I (think) understand the sentiment behind your statement, but I feel likes it's far removed from reality for a majority of people. Are you saying that people who are unemployed shouldn't demand jobs because they're opening themselves up to exploitation? What happens when unemployment checks run out? Do you really think that people will look at their families and advocate that they not eat or have housing or have the ability to get to school for this idea that ALL work is exploitation and as such we must boycott it?"


My response follows in two parts. First, I address the assumptions and underlying logics of my friend's critique. Second, I respond to the terms of his critique and elaborate on my position by way of a tactical outline.


 First, the coded language here is not difficult to deconstruct, but it is important to deconstruct it, not for the purpose of defending myself, but for foregrounding its problematic and paternalistic logics. The charge of "being far removed from reality for a majority of people" is commonly thrown at anarchists, anti-authoritarians, autonomists, and insurrectionists. It serves two functions. One, to marginalize anarchists and other ultra-leftists as being out of touch with some objective and uniform social reality that union organizers, socialists, liberals, non-profits/ NGO hacks and others seem to grasp. Second, it rests on an unspoken claim that anarchists generally posses forms of privilege (gender, race, class, ability, citizenship status, sex etc.) that blind them to this supposed objective social reality; a reality that everyone else seems to get. Finally, such a claim rests on a more insidious and paternalistic assumption, one that speaks for rather than listens to marginalized and precarious populations. In speaking for "a majority of people" (an interestingly homogenous and universal phrase to use considering that the author seems to be chiding me for my white racial framing and lack of attention to difference), my friend erases both the political desires and histories of struggle of marginalized and precarious populations who choose to act against and outside a state that has historically abandoned, incarcerated, killed, enslaved, occupied, exploited, and raped them. So I have a question of my own, how do you know what the majority of these low-income working people want? Interestingly, I never claimed to speak for this silenced majority when I stated my desire for the collective withdrawal of labor from a system of exploitation beyond domination. 
II.
 If we take a look at the language of "jobs for ALL- a Massive Public Works and Public Service Program", it sounds like nothing more than a new New Deal. And just as a reminder, the New Deal excluded both farmworkers (who were predominately immigrant and migrant workers of color) and domestic workers (who were predominately women of color). In this respect, the language of "jobs for ALL'" sounds intentionally vague and universal. From my perspective, like most socialist programs, this particular demand sounds toothless and passive. Additionally, it is profound ahistorical, it rests on some lethal liberal combination of fantasy and nostalgia- that a return to Keynesian is the return to the good life (a vision of the good life that "a majority of people", i.e. everyone who wasn't white, male, straight and middle class, did not have access too).

III.


My critique of a program like "jobs for ALL"is  primarily tactical not ideological. If anyone is out of touch with reality it is this unfortunate assemblage of liberals, Trots, and other socialists who assume that the State will some how concede this socialist paradise of "full employment" freely and easily. I agree with the concept of "full employment" (how could I not?) but I think that we should actually work to make it happen rather than merely demand it from the State. We need to actually think through the premises and foundations of such a demand. The problem with a demand like "Jobs for ALL" is that it rests on the same universal claims as the 99%. Additionally, it neutralizes the promise of open conflict and antagonism between Capital and Labor. What exactly would full employment look like and for whom? How can we achieve it without attacking capital and its agents, the police- without actively withdrawing our current or potential labor power?  


In short, full employment without strong labor is a complete sham and it allows capital to dictate its terms and conditions. Labor, in the form of Big labor, is too weak and ineffectual at this time to actually achieve anything like full employment or a new New Deal. The decline of unions, the weakening of labor laws and the NLRB, as well as the recent assault on unions in Ohio, Michigan, and Indiana, demonstrate the general impossibility of full employment, especially in the public sector, without real occupations, sitdown strikes, wildcats, and sick-outs. In an age of austerity our labor power is one of the few weapons that we have left in the war against capital. Why should we continue to use our labor power to produce and maintain our own exploitation? Why not provide for each other? Why not, occupy our jobs?


Thus a negation of this demand, is an offensive tactic rather than merely a reformist desire that keeps capital in its current position. The refusal to work goes beyond an understanding that all wage labor is exploitation. That is, it is not merely a negation of work which then leaves marginalized, precarious, and vulnerable populations even more vulnerable and precarious to an austerity state that doesn't for them or about them. The strategy of refusal keeps in the spirit of the demand for full employment but goes one step further to actualizing it. It operates under the logic that no one and nothing works until everyone and everything works: an unlimited wild general strike . No partial concessions and limited demands.


 It calls for both a large-scale resurgence of old-school militant labor tactics such as strikes, sabotage, and attacks, but also what the Italian autonomists called "autoreduction": "the act by which consumers, in the area of consumption, and workers, in the area of production take it upon themselves to reduce at a collectively determined level, the price of public services, housing, electricity; or in the factory, the rate of productivity." Imagine paying 50 cents for a subway ride because the MTA conductor agreed that it was too expensive? 


So to answer some of my friend's questions: No, I'm not out touch with reality; whatever that means. These very rhetorical questions themselves speak to a profound poverty of the radical (and tactical) imagination in an area of endless austerity-- where everything and everyone has been cut, furloughed, incarcerated, and laid off. The recent global struggles against austerity, from the California student-worker movements of 2009 to the London riots have already demonstrated that another world is possible without demanding it.  No, I'm not advocating that families starve their children so we can all be hella radical. What I am saying is that the unemployed shouldn't just demand jobs because we should be and already are working to build a society free of the necessity of wage exploitation. Most of the current wage jobs that youth, vulnerable, and precaious populations have access to don't even provide the basic conditions of survival anyway, but the forms of mutual aid practiced in the communized spaces of the occupations do. What happens when unemployment checks run out? Go to the commune and the neighborhood assembly. What happens when there is no money for rent? Occupy vacant homes, condos, office buildings, and  churches?  What happens when there is no money for food? Go to the commune. ALL work is exploitation and we shouldn't return to it  unless we have some control over our lives and working conditions. We want more than jobs, my friend. We want freedom! We want dignity! We want to build a world together that we can actually live in! And demanding "full employment" without building and defending informal structures of aid, support and care- without sabotaging and attacking capital, without taking over and running community spaces such as medical clinics and daycare centers, is an insult to the work we have already started doing in the communes we have built from Oakland to Santiago. 


In solidarity


Fuck capital/ fuck labor! We should no longer work to maintain a system that has never for worked us! No one and and nothing works until everyone and everything works! 

And then Jameson puts my foot in my mouth....

From "Lost Generation" to Occupation Generation: youth, anti-capitalism, and the revolt of the future

"Capitalism? No thanks. We'll burn your fucking banks." - anti-globalization chant from the early 2000's


“Fuck the police, we don’t need ‘em. All we want is total freedom”- anti-capitalist chant during a recent march in Oakland


"We're new subjects of class struggle, uttering unexpected words with ever more confidence." - "a few unexpected subjects of class struggle – notes on recent university strikes"

I.
Whatever the merits and failures of OWS are, one thing is perfectly clear: we are no longer a "lost generation". In the streets and in the plazas we have finally found something that they can never take away from us, or control: each other. This is the reason that cops beat us and arrest us even when we march on the sidewalk or sit down in the street- they want us to go home, to get back to work or school, to be alone. They are starting to understand that our individual precarity is a collective weapon- that the flexibility and mobility we were forced to learn as low-wage workers is our strength. They are not afraid of what we do or where we go, they are afraid of the fact that some of us take their baton blows and jabs with rage and joy. Zip-ties and holding cells only make us laugh. Now that we have been through this once we have no hesitation do to it again. 

Anti-capitalist bloc leading the first march out of Oscar Grant Plaza on day five of Occupy Oakland

The cops and the banks that own them are afraid of the fact that we are no longer afraid and that we are growing every day. Every time we see those fucking orange nets come out or an NYPD truck full of barricades barreling through the night the message is clear: ok kids, its time to get back inside. The NYPD and the banks that manage it really don't get it. They are under the impression that these protests are like some giant global recess- that if they give us time to play we will go back to class obedient, even thankful for being allowed a little fresh air. They want us to pretend like we can go back to a world that we are now beginning to abandon, or a world that has systematically excluded, brutalized, murdered, and abandoned many of us from the beginning. The reality is that we can never go back and nor we do want to. Our lives before this moment seem boring, haunting, and painful compared to the world we are building together today.  Why would we shut the fuck up and go home when we are only just getting started? Today we are caring for each other, tomorrow we could be taking care of all that stands in our way: banks, cops, governments and universities. The possibilities seem too limitless to stop now. 

Anti-capitalist banner from the 2009 California student uprisings

II.
In an age of austerity there is nothing left for the state and political parties to give us anyway- everything has been cut. The new global consensus is one of calculated abandonment, bare life stripped of its rags. We should be happy that our supposed "representatives" have decided to leave us alone. It was this dissensus that enabled us to find each other, to find consensus-- to care for and defend each other and to occupy together.  But this coming-together is only building the groundwork for the reality now facing us: either capitalism burns or we burn with it.  In this sense, burning a bank or storming a government building is not act of violence or despair, it is act of hope. What could be more hopeful than a world without banks? 


Its time to acknowledge that prefigurative politics is about more than just mutual aid . The fires that burned in Rome yesterday, the black smoke swirling around the Coliseum, to borrow from a CA anti-capitalist slogan, illuminate our future- a world without cops, cars, and banks. As these global struggles advance we must have the courage to realize that now is not the time to bargain for concessions or chew the few scraps they decide to throw at us. Jobs bills and calls for the "restoration of the American Dream" are violent liberal fantasies. A "good middle class job" is predicted upon the exploitation of undocumented immigrants, prisoners, unemployed workers, and everyone else rendered vulnerable and precarious in the age of austerity. A "good college education" is not only predicated on debt and unemployment but the exploitation of low-wage workers and low-income students of color. 


We cannot retreat into liberalism and take refuge in school anymore: the University is waging class war just as much wall street; and sometimes they wage war together. We must realize that the diploma factory seduces us with a future that is absent. We have to find the courage to abandon our old dreams and desires in order to find new ones. We have to be brave. It's not that we have nothing left to lose but that together we have everything to win. And we are strongest when we come together outside of the instituions that exploit and divide us: in our neighborhoods, parks, and streets. 

III.
 When I was released from my holding cell at around 3:00 a.m. with my fellow comrades I was shocked when I realized that we were all taking the train to the same place: Zuccotti Park. As our subway car grinded to halt at the Wall Street station I saw small groups of friends with backpacks rubbing their hands (a sign that they had been in zip-ties earlier) and smiling as they slowly climbed up the stairs. They were smiling because, like us, they were going home. 

Tear Down Wall Street, Evict the Cops! : On Trash and Tactics

The Battle of Zuccotti Park


Unfortunately, I am unable to make it out to Liberty Plaza tonight, but since I have no intention of sleeping tonight I will be staying up all night following/ tracking the latest developments from Liberty Plaza as the occupiers organize their defense and prepare for eviction. Alternet columnist Sarah Jaffe, who is tweeting from Liberty Plaza, recently posted, "Feel like we're going to war in the morning. Tense. Fierce." Indeed, others have framed the impending eviction in this rhetoric, calling tomorrow morning's showdown "The Siege of Zuccotti". And let's not forget Willie Osterwell's excellent account of the Brooklyn Bridge Takeover, "The Battle of the Brooklyn Bridge". If we understand OWS's most radical and promising moments as a sequence of roving, unpredictable confrontations with the cops then it is clear that in most of these battles between anti-capitalists and cops, cops were on the defensive. As blogger Malcolm Harris tweeted, "the police didn't lead us on to the bridge. They were backing the fuck up." Harris's observation is indicative: In the war between OWS and the NYPD, the NYPD has largely been confined to a defensive strategy of containment. And more importantly, we have been in control. Despite the tactical limitations of the Brooklyn Bridge Takeover, protesters were still in a position in which the only choice left to Commanders was one of containment. Even in moments when cops have brutally attacked protesters or attempted to stop an action, they were eventually forced to withdraw and retreat knowing full well that more protesters could be mobilized quickly and in greater numbers.


 So what does all of this say about the impending eviction? What shape can resistance take outside of the usual non-violent arrest tactics (going limp)-- tactics that already foreclose the possibility of real resistance in the first place? In other words, how can the defense of the encampment at Liberty Plaza transcend or disrupt its overtly passive dimensions? How can we transform "the siege of Zuccotti" into the Battle of Zuccotti? What and where are the possibilities for attack? How can we fight back? 

Obviously a lot of these questions are contingent upon the forces that show up between now and 6 A.M. During the Battle of Seattle, rank and file steelworkers defended anti-capitalist youth in the streets when they came under attack from riot squads and tear gas. And there have been reports on twitter that Big labor, including the AFl-CIO, is putting out the call to mobilize its rank and file. Yet, we have no idea what that call says or how likely it is that rank and file will show up to defend protesters against the cops on Friday morning (between the hours of 4 and 6 a.m. no less!). It is after all a work day. Additionally, we have to remember that rank and file TWU local 100 workers are still pissed off about being kidnapped by the NYPD during the mass arrest on the Brooklyn Bridge. And after a failed injunction attempt against the NYPD we can only assume that anger remains. As another mass arrest appears imminent we will have to wait see if that anger among the rank and file translates into action. One thing, however, is perfectly clear: there is no way the NYPD has enough vehicles to transport the entire population of Liberty Plaza. We can only hope that this time the TWU will refuse to transport protesters to jail. Or as Willie Osterwell suggested, we can only hope that the bus drivers take all the protesters home. Right now we have no idea how many people will show up and in what capacity, but we do know that the official plan coming from the GA involves circles of occupiers linking arms. Here are few tactical suggestions for ways to expand the level of resistance and confrontation in this strategy:
1. If the GA has already resigned itself to the notion that eviction is inevitable and are now preparing for "evacuation:, why not set up barricades and other obstacles to prevent easy entrance to the park? If the cops are going to trash the park anyway why are we spending so much fucking time trying to clean it up? A clean, orderly park is an open-air police pen not an obstacle to arrest. If there ever was a time to trash Liberty Plaza now is the time. Anything that will get in the cops way will work. 
2. Why not take these passive circles of protesters and have them circle paddy wagons instead of merely wait to be arrested? If and when people get arrested the goal should be to truly make those arrests as difficult as possible. If we've learned anything about the NYPD over the last month it's that there's nothing more a fat white police commander enjoys than beating the shit out of a bunch of passive protesters. 
3. There are two actions planned for tomorrow morning-- "#operationwallstcleanup" and a "Emergency defense" action. While #Operationwallstcleanup sounds like more of the usual boring marches around Wall Street (with the addition of brooms) it is, at the very least, an open-ended action. This leaves the potential for snake marches and street-lockdowns. Right now this open-endedness is our only hope. That is, unless we intend to go quietly... 




** Labor Update: 
Greg Mitchell of The Nation reported earlier on "Total solidarity....Training for arrests being taken seriously.... "Looks like SEIU, CWA, and UAW all promising to show up at Zuccotti Park in the morning, according SEIU announcement." In addition, Josh Harkin over at Mother Jones tweeted, "unions are bringing in big show of support @ 4 a.m., including @ 100 who will get arrested." Finally, there is an unconfirmed rumor circulating on twitter that the AFl-CIO released an email entitled, "Go To Wall St. Now". Apparently the email asks, "members to show up at #OWS at midnight in anticipation of this move by the police very early tom. morning.'"

"Escape From No Future" : An update on the blog and the latest on OWS

"Escape From No Future" : An update on the blog and the latest on OWS


"I'm as much an asshole as I've ever been"- Titus Andronicus, "The Battle of Hampton Roads"


"Wall Street, demolish it! Student debt, abolish it! "- student chant during Occupy Boston march this afternoon


Ok, so I've been spending a lot of time traveling between Western Mass and NYC over the last few weeks which means that I've been slacking on the blog and life in general. I've been unemployed (i.e. liberated from wages but still working without pay/ hustling) for over a month and I'm slipping into what Michael Foucault once called "busy inertia"- a state of intellectual restlessness. The informal economy is a fun, relatively autonomous way to get by and virtually everyone is doing it, but it doesn't offer much of a future or a stable income. On a recent car ride back to Western Mass from NYC, I described my situation to my housemate in terms of a dead corpse: there's only so many times that you can poke it and stare at it before you get bored and hopeless. My life in Northampton is starting to feel a lot like that dead corpse- the initial sense of fascination and fun is starting to fade from these long days and nights. 


So I've been plotting my "escape from no future" as Titus Andronicus (themselves former members of the loser club) call it and I'm not finding any answers in Western Mass. Not that I haven't been enjoying hanging out with all the good people here, but I have no intention of waiting for the "opportunity" of spending four years as a dishwasher at The Roost so I can spend another four as barista. FYI valley-dwelling jobseekers: the partial owner of The Roost is a total trust-fund douche in a American Apparel hoodie. His pretentiousness levels are off the charts. I went to an experimental private liberal arts school so I should know a thing or two about pretentious douche bags and idiots.  To say the least, you know you are living in a sad faux-liberal college town when the top position on the hierarchy of low-wage jobs still only pays minimum wage (but mad subcultural status, bro); or nothing at all. But hey on the bright side the shitty post-apocalyptic  hipster haircut you need for the job doesn't cost much. So comrades please help me help myself, if you know of any collective/co-op/ cheap rent housing situations opening up let me know. If you know of a job as well, I'm willing to degrade myself in the wage system in order to pretend to be happy. Location is not really an issue at this point. In the meantime it looks like I'll be joining the other 85 percent as I struggle with chronic/intermittent joblessness, debt, and boredom at home. I guess for the time being I'll be joining up with the global contingent of fellow (radical) losers, precariats, freelancers and slackers. For what its worth, it's not so bad. And we all know work sucks anyway. Although, there is really no way to avoid self-management and self-exploitation when you spend as much time online as I do. But enough about me, I want to briefly address the latest OWS developments now that I'm back. 


First, a disclaimer for radical folks who have yet to make it to, or are en route to, OWS.  Today notorious defender of the right to protest, King (mayor) Bloomberg issued a royal decree informing his peasants and peons that he has permitted OWS to stay indefinitely. Before we all get down on one knee and kiss his ring, I think this is far from a victory. In fact, I think the King's advisers, including Goldman Sachs and Raymond Kelley, are having a ball ordering white shirts to club, beat, pepper-spray, surveil, and arrest OWS protestors so why stop now? And for their part, white shirts and blue shirts alike seem to be enjoying the workout, as well as the overtime pay. As I posted on facebook and twitter earlier this afternoon: "OWS is now a corporate-sponsored open air cop holding pen complete with real live folks practicing mutual aid and "freedom of speech" for gawkers, bourgeois tourists and other corn-fed idiots." Additionally, OWS offers King bloomberg and the rest of his blood thirsty capitalist thugs a perfect excuse to clamp down on direct action throughout the city since he was nice enough to give us a space to protest and all... As Research and Destroy noted today, "This is what building the new world in the shell of the old means today – an assembly ringed by cops." My advice: Don't get caught being a jester in King Bloomberg's court or a DNC cheerleader, break out of your cages and pens before the NYPD throws away the key! In authorizing the encampment (yes, encampment not occupation) at Liberty Plaza, king Bloomberg has officially declared OWS business as usual. Let's show him he's wrong before it's too late.  As crimethinc recently reminded us: ""We’re not just here to “speak truth to power”—when we only speak, the powerful turn a deaf ear to us. Let’s make space for autonomous initiatives and organize direct action that confronts the source of social inequalities and injustices." Stay tuned for a special slacker edition of the weekly roundup. 

Tomorrow: Let's have some fun!

Big things are happening with #Occupy Wall Street today as both the I.W.W. and the TWU local 100 (38,000 workers alone) not only endorsed #occupy Wall Street, but declared their desire to participate in upcoming rallies and marches. The snide apolitical fools at The Village Voice are reporting that TWU leadership decided to follow the lead of its rank-and-file and join Occupy Wall Street,


"TWU Local 100 President John Samuelsen added, "We plan to be down there from now on. Previously there were individual rank and filers, but now there will be a coordinated presence from the Transport Union; we'll be joining the protest, standing in agreement and solidarity. One of the things that drew the issue to my attention is the fact that no one can get away from the fact that the richest and wealthiest folks have received a significant tax break and there have been ongoing efforts to extract concessions from public sector workers. Their formula is to give tax breaks to the rich and balance the budget on people making 50 grand a year. These folks down at Wall Street are singing the same tune as we are."


More promising, is this quote from Jim Gannon, spokesman for the Local on the executive board's unanimous support for the protest, 


It's kind of a natural alliance with the young people and the students -- they're voicing our message, why not join them? On many levels, our workers feel an affinity with the kids. They just seem to be hanging out there getting the crap beaten out of them, and maybe union support will help them out a little bit."

What is particularly striking about Gannon's statement is the explicit reference to police brutality as a reason for supporting anti-capitalist youth. Any student of the Battle of Seattle can't help but get excited by statements  like this, especially if you have seen the remarkable indymedia doc "The Whole World is Watching". During the film their is a particularly poignant scene where a group of rank-and-file members of the USW (United Steelworkers) choose to defend marchers from police attacks. In another scene, a spokesperson for the AFL-CIO recalls being told by the ILWU that they intended to shutdown the ports if a massive group of protesters were not released from jail. While, Occupy Wall Street cannot compare to the size, intensity, and coordination of the Battle of Seattle, such moments of youth and rank-and-file solidarity should both remind us and inspire us: Direct action gets the goods! And, As I wrote yesterday, the timing for increased support from labor unions couldn't be better as folks gear up for a march against cops and capitalism tomorrow night. With the addition of a NYHC contingent and unconfirmed reports of a possible Radiohead concert tomorrow night, Liberty Plaza has the potential to be liberated. At the very least, it has the potential to draw large numbers and previously unaffiliated folks to Liberty Plaza. Combine this possibility of partying and play with the spirit of rage and frustration of the anti-cop march and things could get interesting. Either way tomorrow could see the largest crowds yet and I, for one, hope to be there.*
















*coincidently, the author of this post is looking for a ride from Western Mass to NYC in time for tomorrow's march. If you or someone you know wouldn't mind giving him a ride, he would greatly appreciate it. He can be reached at sja07@hampshire.edu

“…No permit, no plan, no steel fences!”: The Troy Davis March and The Future of Occupy Wall Street

“…No permit, no plan, no steel fences!”: The Troy Davis March and The Future of Occupy Wall Street

“After a few minutes we changed direction again, and finally got onto

Broadway. I'm sure many of us have been on numerous marches down Broadway

before. But this was different. There was no permit, no plan, no steel

fences. We had the street.” - Hena Ashraf on the Troy Davis March 

Part I. Cops, Cops, and more Cops: Race, Radicalism, and the Problem of the Ultra-left 

Ok, I admit it. I didn’t camp out in Liberty Plaza. I didn’t even stay long enough for the first general assembly the night of the 17^th. I was eating Pakistani food with some friends a few blocks away listening to a comrade talk about his experience with “Bloombergville”- a protest encampment just outside of City Hall occupied by students, union members, and social service workers in June of this year. Later we bought tall boys of cheap beer and went to see “The Black Power Mixtape” at the IFC. We left Liberty Plaza out of boredom and hunger (this was day one and the pizza had not arrived yet) in search of beer, food, and fun. We were tired of waiting and I, for one, was hoping that cops would actually try to kick us out to see how we would react. It was a beautiful night in the City and we wanted to party. At Liberty Plaza there wasn’t even a boom box, let alone booze or dancing (unless you count the brief and intermittent hippie jam sessions). In fact there was no entertainment at all, no movie screenings or street theater and at times the silence was deafening. For the most part folks were sitting and smoking, probably wondering if or when the media would show up. 

I arrived in NYC early on Friday afternoon with a Timbuktu bag containing a heavy-duty painter’s mask, a pair of cheap blue swimmer’s goggles, a black turtle neck and a pair of black cut-off shorts, looking for a something to do. A comrade who volunteered as a medic during the Pittsburgh G20 recommended the mask and goggles. He said that when cops attacked a park where demonstrators were sleeping he wore a mask and goggles to protect him while he treated folks who had been gassed and pepper-sprayed. I even brought running shoes, and I can assure you that the last thing I enjoy is sprinting, unless it’s wildly through the streets with friends. At this point, you can see how naive and optimistic I was. I was hoping for enough of a ruckus that teargas would be deployed. Instead, the NYPD deployed scooters and surveillance teams. 

Marching on the sidewalk around Wall Street, I felt more like a child than an anti-capitalist, especially with the cops quietly blocking the street. I remarked to a friend, “I’m twenty- two years old and I can cross the street without looking both ways first, if I want to.” Unfortunately, no one seemed to share that desire and we continued to parade around Wall Street with our police escorts, like school children on a field trip at the Bronx Zoo. The tone was somber, even respectful. I was almost expecting to see folks in black hoods carrying some symbolic coffin with the words “Wall Street” or “Our Future” scrawled across it in white paint. In reality, things were not that theatrical. Pedestrians and tourists alike looked at us with expressions of disgust and humor, knowing full well how impotent we were flanked by cops and barricades on both sides. It was only when a group of anarchists started chanting, “Feed the Poor. Eat the Rich!” that I started to have a little fun. But that was day one of Occupy Wall Street. Since then we have witnessed the emergence of spontaneous solidarity marches between anti-capitalist youth, anti- PIC activists, grassroots organizations, and rank and file workers, as well as mass arrests and police brutality against demonstrators. 

So where can Occupy Wall Street go from here? In the last week, a dizzying number of public intellectuals, official "anarcho-liberal" pundits, bloggers, and celebrities have weighed in on the present possibilities and future potentialities of Occupy Wall Street. For a representative sample see here, here, and here. For the purposes of this post, my focus is on Malcolm Harris’s provocative piece published on the Jacobin Magazine blog, entitled, “Occupied Wall Street: Some Tactical Thoughts”. Harris's piece has received a flurry of attention from a variety of folks on the Left including the good folks over at Reclaim UC. Of Harris’s piece, Lindsay Beyerstein of In These Times observes, “…He (Harris) argues that the protest is failing to accomplish the two main goals one might have for occupying a plaza in the first place: disrupting your enemy's operations, or making a big show of commandeering his space for your own enjoyment” . While, Beyerstein does mention Harris’s critique of the police presence at Liberty Square, I want to draw more attention to it here. 

Not long after Harris’s piece started circulating through the usual channels, conversations about cop presence in Liberty Plaza surfaced on twitter. Sadly, in many of these conversations the very folks blogging and theorizing about Occupy Wall Street, declared their unwillingness to participate in the event itself, dismissing it as both a dissident dragnet and a excuse for the City to dole out time and a half pay to cops. In the interest of solidarity and out respect for those comrades, I don’t want to harp on such overblown dismissals, but I do want to identify their misguided logic. 

For one, cop-hating for cop-hating’s sake reeks of privilege and reveals a general isolation from and lack of connection with Occupy Wall Street itself. In this case, cops aren't a problem simply because they are cops (and thus agents of the State and Capital), they are a problem because they are brutalizing Occupy Wall Street protesters in the streets and low income communities of color (as well as queer, homeless, and trans youth) throughout NYC and beyond. A recent call for an anti-cop march on friday makes this very clear. Therefore, cops should be banned from Liberty Plaza in order to build a permanent space where those folks brutalized by Quality of Life ordinances, gentrification, and austerity can come to receive free medical attention and food, as well as organize and plan actions, and not because they (the cops that is) make a handful of ultra-leftists jittery. Second, if we are to accomplish the eventual goal of liberating the Park by keeping the cops out, organizing among affinity groups won’t help much. Only a diverse, spontaneous, and mass militant assemblage of actors can achieve that. 

Part II. “We are all Sean Bell! NYPD go to hell!”: Militant Troy Davis Protesters Occupy Wall Street

"At 5th avenue just a few blocks north of Washington Square Park, the

police had gathered themselves and blocked the street. But we kept going, and there was a very tense moment where we shouted 'We are all Sean Bell! NYPD go to hell!' – Hena Ashraf

Interestingly, one of the most militant, spontaneous, and confrontational moments to occur in NYC since Occupy Wall Street, was not formally affiliated with Occupy Wall Street: the Troy Davis snake march from Union Square to Liberty Plaza on the evening of September 23^rd. This march witnessed the possibility of that assemblage yet received little attention from both corporate media and the ultra-left. Since this march wasn’t immediately about capital or property relations, or couched in the language of Italian Autonomism and insurrection many bright ultra-left commentators simply ignored the march altogether, failing to understand its radical potential and its truly militant, confrontational character.  As Hena Ashraf, a contributor to Left Turn magazine, recalled, “I had never seen a march like this or anything with direct confrontation or resistance to the police.” While I encourage everyone to read Hena Ashraf’s detailed, stirring account of the rally and subsequent snake march, there are a few highlights from Ashraf’s account worth mentioning for the purposes of this piece. First, while the rally at Union Square was planned the march was not. The decision to march, unlike the decision-making apparatus of the general assembly, truly came from both no one and everyone; a synthesis of direct action and direct democracy forged in a moment of excitement and uncertainty. Unlike Liberty Plaza and previous mass marches, there were no facilitators or marshals, no police liaisons and spokespeople. As Ashraf observed, “It was clear there was no one in charge, and I think that made it better, and more spontaneous, and thus harder for the police to contain us.”

In this sense, the snake march actually accomplished some of Harris’s goals, including both a celebration of collective resistance and a disruption of business as usual; albeit a temporary one. Additionally, as I previously mentioned, the snake march to Liberty Plaza from Union Square was unique in its diversity. Reporting on the march for New America Media, Ryan Devereaux wrote,

“Parents marched with children on their shoulders. Crust-punk activists joined demonstrators in pressed shirts, repeating the refrain, “The system is racist, they killed Troy Davis!” Wide-eyed Manhattanites poured out of restaurants and businesses, camera phones in hand, to capture what was unfolding. As the number of marchers swelled it became evident that some of the spectators had transformed themselves into participants.

This “crowd of love” as Ashraf described them demonstrates the potential for further disruption and sustained confrontation with the police as Occupy Wall Street advances. As I noted earlier, a group of activists calling themselves the “Bail Out the People Movement”, have called for a demonstration and march against “police brutality, harassment, and attacks” on Friday. Without knowing any details, I can only assume that this planned march does not have a permit or a planned route. If this march gathers the same sense of collective rage, spontaneity, militancy, and numbers as the Troy Davis march (and there is a good chance that it will considering the levels of police brutality in recent days) it has the potential to be a major moment of resistance. Yet, in order for that to work, two things need to happen first. One, organizers need to work harder to recruit the participation of labor unions and two, folks at Liberty Plaza need step up and confront the police, starting with the barricades surrounding Wall Street. 

Those barricades stand as gleaming testaments to our own passivity. We need to show the cops that we are not fucking around, that this is not another stupid symbolic march called for by the A.N.S.W.E.R. coalition. While Friday’s scheduled march against police brutality is a great start, we need both offensive and defensive tactics in this war. If "Wall Street is War Street" as the Black Mask collective declared so many years ago, then we will have to wage our own war (the class war that the GOP is so afraid of) against its shock troops, the police. The cops need to know that they cannot drag us through the streets, beat us, kettle us, or pepper-spray us without a fight. Similiarly, we need to know that we can count on each other to collectively resist them. More should be done to attempt to block or disrupt police movements. At the very least, we will have to step up and agree to make an effort to sabotage the arrest process itself. If that means circling a police wagon with comrades inside then so be it.

Part III. “No permit, No Plan, No Steel Fences”: The Future of Occupy Wall Street

“We need more class war in the streets and less camping in parks next to Wall Street.” Infshop.org facebook status update 9/28/2011

 “ No permit, no plan, no steel fences!” This should be the motto, the battle cry of Occupy Wall Street in the coming days, weeks, and months ahead. Occupy Wall Street must be a movement without fences and barricades, police escorts and permits, formalized plans and voting procedures. Direct democracy, in the form of the general assembly and the people’s mic, while an amazing and empowering experience, is not direct action. What Occupy Wall Street needs now more than ever is extralegal mass action in order to get new folks out of their offices, classrooms, and homes and into the streets. If Wall Street is truly “our street” then we must shut it down. If the police continue to brutalize us we must retaliate. If both the corporate and so-called progressive media continue to ignore us then we must, to borrow from John Jacobs, “bring the war home”. Wall Street can become “our street”, but first we need to take to the streets themselves, like the brave crowd of Troy Davis marchers who battled cops as they weaved their way to Wall Street. The following are suggestions for how to shift the focus from maintaining and preserving structures of direct democracy to mobilizing forms of direct action:

-Disrupt Wall Street: There is a long and storied history of such actions. According to ACTUP NY (Aids Coalition to Unleash Power), on “September 14, 1989: ACT UP once again makes history by stopping trading on the Stock Exchange floor. Seven ACT UP members infiltrate the New York Stock Exchange and chain themselves to the VIP balcony. Their miniature foghorns drown out the opening bell, and a banner unfurls above the trading floor demanding "SELL WELLCOME." Other ACT UP members snap photos which they then sneak out and send over newswires. Four days later, Burroughs Wellcome lowers the price of AZT by 20%, to $6,400 per year.”

-Target corporate media with disruptions and sabotage. If they are attempting to black us out of news coverage then we should black them out and prevent them from being able to cover anything at all.

 - Bring back Boombergville or similar encampments against austerity and police brutality outside of City Hall. Remember, he's the one who called on his dogs to rough up protestors in the first place. Target City Hall in general. ACT UP operation “Target City Hall” drew over 3,000 people to City Hall.

- Banner drops: Blanket the city with banners. Off of the top of my head, City Hall, the First Precinct, Buses, Subway entrances, and parks would all be good targets to start with.

-Take over parks close to or near police stations where protestors are being held. This establishes a base to plan, coordinate, and enact different forms of jail solidarity and support for those arrested. It also lets the cops know that we are not intimated.

-Occupy major roads, highways, and bridges

- Occupy/ disrupt banks

- Do more and continue to do outreach with labor unions and unemployed workers, as well as student, anti-war, and environmental justice, and anti-eviction movements in the hopes of building for a general Day of Action against austerity and cuts. The I.WW. General Defense Committee released at statement in support of Occupy Wall Street earlier this afternoon and we should view this as a good sign. Additionally, firedoglake is reporting that other union interest is increasing.

-Direct action training sessions: everyone has valuable experience to share with each other. People need to share their stories and tactics with each other if occupy Wall Street is to survive. I was fortunate enough to attend a direct action training session last fall at Cal hosted by the amazing folks from Gay Shame (a direct action, anti-capitalist network of queer and trans folk in the Bay Area) and it was an invaluable experience. We need to know what we are up against and how others have organized in the past

- Move beyond Liberty Plaza, closer to and beyond Wall Street. Every street is controlled by the logic of capital and regulated by real or threatened police violence, and thus every street is a perfect target for disruption. Every street is “our street”.

- Employ a diversity of tactics including street theater, dance parties, critical mass rides, die-ins, rallies, permitted marches, snake marches, strikes, walk-outs, four square games, bike polo etc. We should be able to play together and have fun with each other.

- Boycott or refuse to pay fare for public transportation. If you have to go to work ride your back and get there late or leave early. Numerous sudden and sporadic critical mass rides staggered throughout the work-day and into the night.

Hope to see you at the barricades in the near future.