Forum Post: ----- So where do we go from here? Here's one view of the FUTURE OF THE OCCUPY WALL STREET MOVEMENT. Here's how we WIN.
Posted 13 years ago on Nov. 5, 2011, 6:44 a.m. EST by therising
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This content is user submitted and not an official statement
DC is going to receive a whole lot of attention in the next 8 weeks. All these actions help directly to promote real change and obviously have the side benefit of adding support to the movement.
Ultimately though, we're going to have to ALSO get to the less sexy but equally important part of putting together national general assembly through transparent process, getting our candidates in office etc. That's the only way we're going to win real changes we want.
The actions and protests are important, incredibly important, HEROIC! But the process of developing demands /solutions (even if they are eventually similar to ones in any of those we've all seen on this forum -- http://occupywallst.org/forum/our-turn/ -- etc. ) must be transparent and democratic. And the essential political pressure that comes from actions outside the buildings in DC must be paired with decisive and strategic actions INSIDE that help steer the results of all that pressure.
I think of it as harnessing energy. HUGE amounts of energy will build up in the halls and offices of Capitol Hill when the public has the place surrounded. But that's not enough. All that energy and angst inside those halls and offices has to result in something. And it can if we form national assembly, issue solution-oriented demands with a deadline and then run successful candidates for Congress if our demands aren't met.
I think these actions all around the country we're seeing now will and definitely should continue to happen before, during and after the more procedural part. Provides the fuel and brings real change.
I have been convinced (after reading the writing of others on this and other forums and by interacting with people at various occupations including NYC) that we need to focus right now on growing the movement by discovering what we have in common. Once we, the 99% REALIZE we're the 99%, realize that many or most of our basic interests align, then we can make decisions from a position of unified power rather than demands from a position of divided weakness.
The 1% who've benefitted for so long from the plutocratic neoliberal rigged system have loved watching us carp at one another and have fanned the flames wherever they could. They love seeing us fight over their scraps and divide up into camps. They love seeing us spend all that energy because every hour we spend tussling with each other is an hour we don't spend tussling with them!
But we're getting wise to it. And, trust me. I've been talking to them. They're scared.
That's something to celebrate, but it is also something to be wary of. More and more they will begin to act reflexively like cornered dogs and it won't be pretty.
I think we should expect more and more provocateurs from private security companies. We must accept that we cannot stop this. What we can do is practice our reaction so we are much less likely to act emotionally in the heat of the moment. There will be many setups where provocateurs attempt to incite violence so mainstream America (which is currently largely supportive) turns away from the movement.
Make no mistake. This is a struggle for the hearts and minds of mainstream America. Corporate America has largely had the allegiance for a good long while. They've had us transfixed with products and saddled with debt. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvVAPsn3Fpk&feature=youtube_gdata_player . But now the 99% are waking up and unifying. We, the 99%, are developing an allegiance to OURSELVES and our COMMUNITY. We are dropping our allegiance to consumption, a habit which only enriches the elite and enslaves us.
In order to continue this shift in allegiance, we must remain non-violent. It is essential. --------------
In the country clubs and the board rooms across the country, there is one conversation that is being had over and over and over again now that they realize the winter won't freeze us out. The 1% are praying for violence. It would be their dream come true. And they'll do just about anything to make sure that violence happens.
If you're involved in a protest anywhere in the country and someone starts to promote or perpetrate violence, sit down immediately and encourage everyone around you to do the same. Then point at the provocateur and say "This person is not part of our movement. We are non-violent."
I think we should be practicing this at every occupation in the country at least once a day so it becomes second nature. We need it to be our automatic reaction when emotionally charged situation is encountered. That way the story on the nightly news or CNN.com is about this one provocateur standing there looking like a fool.
Excellent post!
Hi Therising. Again, Excellent. Best Regards, Nevada
Cheers
"That's something to celebrate, but it is also something to be wary of. More and more they will begin to act reflexively like cornered dog and it won't be pretty. "
This is the bottom line and it will happen. How we deal with the oncoming brutality will set a course for either (A) totally tyranny or (B) social evolution. The winds of change are coming...we need to be prepared.
If I could press the arrow up button 100 times I would because this is one of the most important comments I've seen on this forum since the beginning. It sums up what's at stake. Huge moment. We are at a crucial crossroads and we must prepare and rise to the occasion. We have to dedicate ourselves to nonviolence and commit to coming out in large numbers and speaking up for our friends and neighbors and family, standing up for what's right.
This is a once in 5 generations chance for the American experiment to evolve to the next level in a very good way. This is our shot.
That would truly be something to see, everyone sitting down and denouncing the violent protestors. However, I believe that OWS protestors need to buy themselves gas masks and body armor. The police brutality is going to get much worse. The 1% would love nothing more than to stomp out a crazy mass of rioting people. They are going to provoke the crowd no matter how peaceful the protestors are.
Quite true. But no matter how hard they try, they can't stop us. Nothing can stop an idea whose time has come. United we are the 99%. And as we awaken to that fact, the absurdity of 1% ruling over and exploiting the 99% becomes more and more apparent. Soon we'll be making decisions from a position of unified strength rather than demands from a position of divided weakness.
Note: Things are a bit different now that we have more media outlets than they do. They are far more nervous about using violence overtly. They know that only strengthens the movement. I believe their provocation will come from agent provocateurs who pretend to be violent protesters.
Great Post! What we need is a full court press. It's great to see the focus shifting from one city to another. This is a grand tactic!
I think we're approaching what Malcolm Gladwell might call "the tipping point." I don't think the 1% realized how much water was building up behind the dam or how weak the structure of the dam was. All that consuming made them soft.
"First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win." - Gandhi
The more they struggle against the 99%, the stronger the 99% become. It doesn't hurt that the tables have turned and we have more media outlets than they do. They can't control the flow of information anymore. They thought they had it all locked up by having five corporations own all the news but it turns out that majority of the world doesn't get its news that way anymore. HA!
I get goosebumps when I say this, I believe you're right!
It's happening. I knew we were approaching tipping point when I saw the look on my congressman's face a few weeks ago. We were meeting about an unrelated matter and out of the blue he said that he and his fellow members were nervous that soon the Occupy Wall Street crowds would be literally at the doors of their office buildings. They know it's coming and they know there's nothing they can do about it. Most importantly, they can tell that it will remain nonviolent and know that its popularity will grow and grow and grow because of that.
Whole attitude of this Congressman was "We better start getting stuff done here on Capitol Hill or the supporters of this movement are going to be literally at the doors to our office buildings."
Picture it. Hundreds of thousands of people surrounding house and senate office buildings and blocking the entrances to Capitol. By definition, there are always entrances because there is always a point at which people who work there leave the public sphere and enter the Capitol complex.
The people are rising. Nothing can stop an idea whose time has come.
Bongo Jerry, the great Rastafarian poet, put it this way:
"Sooner or later but muss'....... The dam going to bus'....... And everyone will break out....... Who will stop us? The force?....... What force can stop a river of people who know their course?"
What would full court press look like from your perspective? I haven't really run through the scenarios so I'm curious about your thoughts.
Well, I think that inadvertantly this is what is starting to happen, that there are so many cities, forums and actions in play that the opposition is getting dizzy. In other words, I think the ideas of the movement at the outset were correct. The more we stay open to inclusion, the closer we get to the tipping point. People will eventually come out of their comma and conditioning and see they really have a voice. The full court press seems to be manifesting itself through the discemenation of ideas.
I think you're right. A real awakening. A birthing process as someone on this forum put it. Labor pains for all, the 99% and the 1%. We'll need compassion for all involved to minimize the pain.
How good it is to talk to someone who really gets it!
Likewise
Our end-goal should be changing American politics. The parties create to much division between WE THE PEOPLE, which is exactly what the corporations want. They have the politicians bought and paid for, they no that as long as mainstream politicians are elected they are safe. WE THE PEOPLE must take back our country.
Please read&share: http://mosesbaca.blogspot.com/
Thanks. I'll check that out.
Force Change, Boycott Capitalism
We know what the problem is, let us fix it and move forward together.
When you look at a republican or democrat, congress or FDA official, Judges and Justice Department, you see criminals.
Our corruption dates back many years to when those, who in trying to preserve slavery, had to find new ways to preserve it and so created a scientific and advanced form of slavery.
Only two components were required -- the illusion of freedom & choice and the taking away of the freedom to live off the land.
This is how they get a person to submit themselves to exploitation, mind numbing or degrading work, they fool and oppress them into it.
Our current system is rooted in corruption and every attempt in preserving it involves manipulating human thought and turning people against one another.
In America the population has been transformed into two major voting groups but they only have one choice.
They had been distracted up until now with television and American culture which prospered through the oppression of other nations.
Americans allowed themselves to be fooled into using their military and economic dominance to seize resources of other nations and create expanding markets for American profiteers.
Now that technology, competition and conscience have evolved Americans are realizing that our current system of government is damaging and unsustainable.
Our government officials have allowed private profits and personal benefits to influence decisions that affect the health and well-being of people all over the planet, not just in America... how much longer will we allow them to rule over us??
Occupy Washington and demand that government officials resign their posts.
We will setup new online elections with a verification system that will allow us to see our votes after we cast them, put our new officials in office and work toward rebuilding our country and our world.
Pass this message along to any and everyone, we already occupy the world, unite.
Occupy Washington, Boycott Capitalism, Force Change -- http://wesower.org
Interesting. I need to study this a bit more before replying.
there's a lot of cleaning up to do, from the financial sector to the food and drug administration where big pharma writes our bills, energy, where energy companies write our bills, to weapons and manufacturing who fool us into war, drug enforcement which funnels money to weapons building and throws kids in privately owned jails for smoking a joint while letting the entire nation get hooked on pain killers, anti-depressants, pressure & cholesterol and most alarmingly children on behavior modification drugs. - "they" have wedged themselves between us and our freedom to live.
to go against them or the capitalist system they head would mean death.
this is a crime, the system for the exchange of goods and the system of government by and for the well-being of people should always be seperate.
this new form of slavery must end.
I think I agree with your diagnosis. Just need to understand the recommended treatment and prognosis better. Can you summarize briefly when you have a chance?
National General Assembly and / or a Virtual (online) General Assembly make a hell of a lot more sense than shutting down ports and crap like that. Because they are constructive actions instead of obstructive actions.
So, I agree with what you're advocating but I disagree with your support for some of the other actions as "providing fuel and bringing real change." I don't think so. I think they turn off more than they turn on, and they are a waste of energy which could be better spent toward constructive change.
From Martin Luther King, Jr.'s “Letter from Birmingham Jail”:
"Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks to so dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent-resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word "tension." I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth. . . The purpose of our direct-action program is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation.”
These methods have worked throughout the last hundred years in countless ways. And now it is our turn to use them. Our love of our country and sense of justice will fuel us. Our adherence to the core principle of active non-violent resistance will guide us. And our successes will lift us. Stay strong and get ready for action.
So, I think the occupation of Liberty Plaza is a great example of this. And I think closing down businesses and ports, etc are not.
Power responds to power.
Eh. There are better and more constructive ways to gain and exercise power than to engage in random acts of obstruction and destruction.
Martin King and Gandhi actively created a good kind of tension and they were very successful.
Right now the there are fewer than 200 thousand people active in the occupy movement. We can't seriously talk about winning until we organize expodentially more people than is currently the case. We shouldn't even talk about winning until we have mobilized at least 4 or 5 million people and even then I would argue that it is still premature. Our job now is to organize, organize, organize.
Occupy the foreclosures and the unused property. Repair and maintain it, create your countercultures and economies. continue to protest but rather by living the life you dream. Don't let a revolution be empty- make it of, with and for the people. Clean up the neighborhoods the government refuses to- the more we do as individuals the less the government can hold over our heads. Make it obsolete.
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. July 4, 1776.
Beautiful
Thanks! If you like it, please, help to spread the word.
We need to adapet Gandhi style
Gandhi beat the British empire wearing only a bed sheet.
There are plenty of ways to stop provocateurs. First and foremost is to "out" them - call out their actions and confront them! It's becoming fairly obvious that anyone committing property destruction is either a provocateur, or someone who has been fooled into following a provocateur ("anarchist" kids for example). People who are really intent on starting confrontations with police are suspect, as typically they will start something and then leave, only to have the remaining people bear the consequences.
A committed group of people can surround the instigator and restrain them if necessary. It's also possible to make citizen's arrests. The Rainbow Family has been known to duct tape dangerous and violent people inside of blanket rolls, for humane restraint and safe transport.
That is absolutely fucked up. You advocate that?
What does our current society do with violent and dangerous people?
Oh yeah, a mob of people surround them and duct tape them inside a blanket roll. I totally forgot.
Uhh, I'm guessing you are either retarded or you don't live in the USA?
You've never heard of tasers, incarceration, prison beatdowns/rape, and solitary confinement?
"Retarded." That's nice.
It was a little cruel, but I was getting tired of you leading me down this ridiculous "dumb path". I think you'll live.
Back to the matter at hand. Have you've heard/seen/read much about the "corrections" paradigm in this once-great nation?
It's not cruel to me, it's demeaning to people with developmental disabilities. You don't understand that? You think my feelings were hurt?
I'm aware of all the things you're talking about, what I'm having trouble with is understanding how you use that to justify a mob of so-called "rainbow" people piling on some shmoe and heavy on the duct tape. Look any way you slice it that is a violation of civil rights at best if not outright vigilante justice.
I hope you are a troll.
Because if you're not, you should really study up on how our society is structured. Hint: it's not FAIR.
I still don't understand what that has to do with a mob of people duct taping some guy in a blanket roll. I really don't. I'm sorry to dash your hopes about being a troll, I just really, really think it is pretty fucked up to advocate that kind of shit. Life's not fair, so vigilante mobs should be encouraged and empowered to physically restrain individuals and "transport" them (whatever that means) against their will? Sorry I guess we just disagree.
AWESOME. A hundred up arrows to this post. Please send everyone you know a link to this post. The future of the movement may depend upon it.
You've put the Democrats in a box, many have offered some verbal support and now they are tied to the OWS movement. Most politicians though don't care about your ideals as long as they get reelected. If you could run some of your own honest, dedicated candidates you could actually change things. Continue any protest you want, but it's time to organize something more then feel good mic checks at political events or chanting outside a building. Get a platform of ideas and ideals and get people elected into Congress for real change. Look at your numbers, you may say you are the 99% but the actual number of activists is very small. It's time to use the positive feeling toward OWS in the general public and get good people elected.
That is underway but I think the actions you are seeing now are extremely important and must continue.
Great idea and insight. Thanks! It sounds like a sharp tactic to employ across the country--what stunning media coverage it would create--so visual. Like a defensive formulation, makes it impossible for the true aggressors to make the movement looks like the cause of violence in society. It turns their attempted violence right back at them, like a jujitsu tactic.
Jujitsu indeed! Gene Sharp has given us the manual. So has King. So has Gandhi. We just need to read and employ the tactics. There's a reason that dictators have branded Sharp a terrorist. There's a reason U.S military generals have a wary respect for Sharp.
There's a move in Aikido where, when your opponent leaps forward and attacks, you take a small step to side. Then, instead of aggressing towards him, you move WITH him and "help him to the ground where he'll be safer." The beautiful part is that you use his energy and you use it with the true motive of helping him. I agree with others that all power, the good kind of power, flows from that motivation and approach.
We need to spread the word about Sharp's books far and wide. Seriously.
Thank you, that's very, very interesting.
I'm not familiar with Gene Sharp, but I'll look him up.
If you’ll permit me, I’d like to include here a plea for immediate action by OWS including a mobilization of all our union support, as follows:
Urgent proposal: OWS to call for a massive EMERGENCY national action opposing Congress's upcoming attempt to impose--is it a trillion dollars?--in cutbacks to social programs that the 99% depend on. Obama will prove useless in opposing the cuts, so WE HAVE TO STOP THEM! I’m referring to the virtual dismantling of essential social programs that are vital to the survival of the 99%, using the deficit as an excuse. In an hour-long talk on YouTube to Occupy Boston, Noam Chomsky describes this projected assault on the 99% as a dagger aimed straight at the heart of the country.
Thank you again.
In solidarity in Lower Manhattan.
PS I would like to include this call in my other posts also.
By all means. Please spread the word however you can. I agree with you.
Thanks! Yes, as I've been pulling out my socialist library and looking through it this afternoon, I see where for decades all the revolutionaries have been warning about the coming crisis of capitalism, the crisis of capitalism, the crisis of capitalism. I don't know where we are at this current moment in the economy, but Noam Chomsky's characterization of the coming showdown in Congress is terrifying.
Thanks again.
Could you provide a link to that Chomsky item here for me and others?
Hi, oh, dear, I don't have it in front of me, but it's pretty easy to find in a google search. I've typed in Noam Chomsky Occupy Boston--his talk was a Howard Zinn Memorial Lecture. It's over an hour.
I learned so much, now I'm listening to Chomsky interviews and talks as I work on paperwork--there really is a lot. He's great.
Thanks, and the only reason I didn't do the search myself is that I don't know how to get back to your post if I switch to another internet site.
Awesome. Eager to check it out. Thank you :). Have a great evening.
Thanks, and you, too.
The manual you using is by saul alinsky , with credits to cloward and piven.
Nonviolence is powerful. Gandhi, King and their supporters had incredible impact but no weapons.
We can't stop provocateurs but we can control our reaction to them.
Yup, but millions of you will still buy that cool new iphone 4s. Please think about that. From Apple. Think about that. Now, think about what a fool you are. And what BS all of this is.
LOL. You're late to the party. We already determined that your critique wasn't logically sound. The logical conclusion of your criticism requires that OWS members become Luddite Amish people before they can make a sound argument. Silly.
Keep saying the words "iPhone" and "Apple" if you want to. Buy any brand phone you want. Whatever. But don't talk this nonsense about how OWS participants can't have cars or wristwatches or cell phones or computers. It's a silly argument. Besides, most revolutions used the tools of the oppressors against them. Stay tuned.