Alright you jammers, occupiers and Springtime dreamers,
First they silenced our uprising with a media blackout… then they
smashed our encampments with midnight paramilitary raids… and now
they’re threatening to neutralize our insurgency with an insidious
campaign of donor money and co-optation. This counter-strategy worked to
kill off the Tea Party’s outrage and turn it into a puppet of the
Republican Party. Will the same happen with Occupy Wall Street? Will our
insurgency turn into the Democrats’ Tea Party pet?
It’s up to you to decide if our movement goes the way of Paris ’68,
the dust bin of could-have-been-insurrections, or something more daring,
more inspiring, something not yet dreamed.
Will you allow Occupy to become a project of the old left, the same
cabal of old world thinkers who have blunted the possibility of
revolution for decades? Will you allow MoveOn, The Nation and Ben &
Jerry to put the brakes on our
Spring Offensive and turn our struggle into a “
99% Spring” reelection campaign for President Obama?
We are now in a battle for the soul of Occupy… a fight to the finish
between the impotent old left and the new vibrant, horizontal left who
launched Occupy Wall Street from the bottom-up and who dreams of real
democracy and another world.
Whatever you do, don’t allow our revolutionary struggle to fizzle out
into another lefty whine and clicktivist campaign like has happened so
many times in the past. Let’s Occupy the clicktivists and crash the
MoveOn party. Let’s
#DEFENDOCCUPY and stop the derailment of our movement that looms ahead.
for the wild,
Culture Jammers HQ
OccupyWallStreet.org /
Tactical Briefing #25,
#26,
#27 and
#28 / Check out Oakland occupier
Mike King’s take on MoveOn’s 99% Spring
Last weekend, tens of thousands of activists participated in
training workshops put together by the 99% Spring, a project of
MoveOn.org and several other organizations that purports to move away
from clicktivism toward fomenting “non-violent direct action”–aiming to
transform America in the process.
“Change happens,” say actors Olivia Wilde and Penn Badgley, in a
video
created for the organization, “because people put their beliefs and
bodies on the line.” They go on to reference civil rights activism, and
the video cuts to crowds of peaceful protestors. Some journalists and
news outlets have
praised
this supposed shift, claiming its goal is to recruit a broad base of
regular Joes and Janes, and ally them with the Occupy movement.
Others
warned,
as early as March, that the 99% Spring’s links to MoveOn.org meant that
it would be a veiled Obama re-election campaign (making the movement’s
nod to the Arab Spring bitterly ironic, as the US is a major supplier of
arms used to quash democratic uprisings).
Is the 99% Spring movement a veiled attempt to co-opt and sanitize
Occupy? Is it a marketing ploy for Obama 2012? According to occupier
Charles Young, it would appear so:
“The first clue that my evening might go otherwise was the sign-up
table, where there were a bunch of Obama buttons for sale and one
sign-up sheet for the oddly named Community Free Democrats (are they
free of community?), which is the local Democratic clubhouse. That
killed the “inspired by Occupy Wall Street” vibe right there. No piles
of literature from a zillion different groups, as there had been in
Zuccotti Park. No animated arguments among Marxists, anarchists,
progressives, punks, engaged Buddhists, anti-war libertarians and what
have you. Just Obama buttons, which didn’t appear to be selling.”
Read the rest of Young’s report on his experience at the 99% Spring training at
counterpunch.org and weigh in below how on we can ensure that the soul of Occupy is never co-opted.
In this Al Jazeera video a profound discussion emerges
over the question of how Occupy should deal with the 99% Spring
movement. Can we co-opt the co-opters? Should we simply ignore the 99%
Spring? Or do we need a more visceral response?
Watch the video and let’s discuss how Occupy can win the battle for the soul of our movement.
The Nation Magazine wins Round #4.
“Boots. Check. Gas mask. Yup. Black pants. Got it. Water bottle and
Bandana. Tent. okay. People’s Library. Sounds good. Solidarity.”
“Will that be all?”
“Oh yes, and one revolution please.”
“And how will you be paying for that? Cash or credit?”
“Credit.”
As occupiers across the world prepare for a
May uprising,
The Nation magazine has some advice for what the movement should do
next. “Show your support today for Occupy Wall Street’s Move Your Money
Relay by applying for The Nation Magazine Platinum Visa® Rewards Card!”
writes Associate Publisher Peggy Randall. We hear some
99% Spring occupiers are even rushing out now to get their Nation credit card in time for the May Day
General Strike.
With this kind of boost, we’re sure to succeed.
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Round #5 - Will MoveOn knock us out?
As we prepare for the May uprising, two power centers of our
movement have announced plans for a spectacular bi-coastal May 1st
bridge blockade. On the West Coast, Occupy Oakland and Occupy San
Francisco are
planning rush hour disruptions on the Golden Gate Bridge while in New York City, occupiers
say
they will block one or more Manhattan-bound bridges. These acts of
nonviolent direct action will set the tactical tone for the next phase
of Occupy: they signal the turn towards
Strike
actions aimed at disrupting the flow of money. And, on a deeper level,
these blockades come at a pivotal moment for Occupy as the movement
grapples with a battle for its
soul.
The question many occupiers are debating is whether the spirit and
voice of Occupy will stay with the new left horizontals who launched the
uprising or whether it will move towards MoveOn’s
99% Spring, and their old left buddies at
The Nation magazine,
Ben & Jerry’s, et al.
For the first most spectacular days of Occupy – such as on September
24 when eighty Zuccottis were arrested and shocking footage of women
getting maced was replayed on national television – MoveOn ignored our
movement. They decided to jump on board much later when 700 nonviolent
occupiers were arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge. They saw this mass
arrest as an opportunity to fold Occupy into their electoral Rebuild the
Dream campaign to bolster Obama. At a time when Occupy was inspiring
hundreds of thousands of people across the nation to take the squares,
set up leaderless encampments and reinvent democracy in people’s
assemblies, MoveOn held an October 5 online “
Virtual March on Wall Street” with their friends at Rebuild the Dream.
At the peak of Occupy, when the people’s movement had catalyzed a global day of action on
October 15
that saw millions of us in 82 countries rally in financial districts
and capital cities for real democracy, MoveOn tried to cash in on
Occupy’s momentum with a donation pitch. “We have to capitalize on this
momentum now,”
wrote MoveOn in an email to its members. “Can you chip in $5?”
And now, MoveOn wants to hijack our movement with their
99% Spring.
MoveOn is an existential threat to our movement because they don’t
have a revolutionary bone in their body … if we give these clicktivists
any more room then they will pull off a managed cooling of our
revolutionary fervor … they will neuter the kind of bold, militant
nonviolent direct actions that are the key to the next phase of our
movement. Don’t let them do it!
Jump, jump, jump over the dead body of the old left!
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Occupy will come out swinging May 1 with a General Strike in
115 cities … A
month of visceral nonviolent actions will follow. We will flex our tactical muscles, dream of a new world order and
#playjazz like never before.
From Slavoj Žižek in today’s
Guardian:
“The protesters should beware not only of enemies, but also of false
friends who pretend to support them, but are already working hard to
dilute the protest. In the same way we get coffee without caffeine, beer
without alcohol, ice-cream without fat, they will try to make the
protests into a harmless moralistic gesture.”
The clicktivists at MoveOn are channeling Occupy’s intensity into
legal, symbolic rallies that bolster Democratic Party campaign promises.
Check out the 80 organizations backing MoveOn’s
99% Spring:
most of them are the same old lefty cabal that’s ruled over and stifled
the political left for the last 20 years.
But there are also some
flowers among the vegetables … and we should try to get them back. Folks
like the
Ruckus Society or the
Rainforest Action Network
… groups whose bold civil disobedience inspired us all in the past. We
still remember how the tactical brilliance of John Sellers, a former
Ruckus Society leader, was so feared that he was preemptively arrested,
charged with 14 misdemeanors, including “possession of an instrument of
crime” – his cell phone – ha ha! – and held on $1 million bail during
the Republican National Convention protests in 2000.
Hey jammers, let’s get some of these wild flowers back … Head over to the
99% Spring
and look through the list of affiliated organizations. Decide for
yourself which groups you respect then call them for a chat or send them
an email or a tweet. Ruckus Society is at 510-931-6339,
ruckus@ruckus.org,
@Ruckusociety; Rainforest Action Network at 415-398-4404,
answers@ran.org,
@RAN… Let’s nudge our friends back into the Occupy camp in time for the May Day General Strike.
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