Occupy 3.0 — a slow network movement
Posted 11 years ago on Sept. 18, 2013, 12:53 p.m. EST by OccupyWallSt (1) from Plainfield, NJ
It has been two years since the birth of the Occupy movement at Zuccotti Park — a movement organized through intensive in-person occupations connected through a wide range of online networks. Now, with the occupations long gone and those who supported them more dispersed than ever, activists must re-imagine digital infrastructure with an eye toward long-term network building. Nothing indicates the need for dynamic infrastructure more than the advertised theme of this second birthday, “Reconnecting with the 99%.” The time has come for a slow network movement, one in which infrastructures are developed from users’ perspectives and tailored to meet local needs.
I mean “slow network movement” in two senses. First, the movement must critique fast-paced corporate social networking for how it organizes us and prevents us from organizing effectively. Second, we need to learn the lessons of past organizing and recognize ourselves as part of a longer historical trajectory.
I recently traveled to New York City to catch up with the team behind InterOccupy — the global Occupy movement’s primary coordination platform — and discuss the infrastructure at work in the post-hurricane Occupy Sandy relief effort. While in town I also spoke with Todd Gitlin, the president of Students for a Democratic Society between 1963 and 1964. What piqued my interest was the similarity between the values outlined by SDS in the Port Huron Statement and OWS’s Declaration of the Occupation. While highlighting the continuity of values is critical, perhaps the most intriguing questions are much more banal: What skills were useful for organizing in the 1960s that are taken for granted now? Further, how does the current reliance on corporate social media make organizing both easier and more complex?
Read the full article here: http://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/occupy-3-0-slow-network-movement/
In compliment: OCCUPY ON ITS SECOND ANNIVERSARY
This week marks the second anniversary of Occupy Wall Street and the Occupations it engendered across the U.S. and the globe. Because the encampments are gone (at the hand of the state), Occupy’s opponents, bolstered by a compliant media, have proclaimed it dead.
While it serves those who steal from the poor and give to the rich to believe this rumor, the truth is Occupy is alive, well and 2 years old!
Occupy is part of a growing global social movement, fighting corporate rule through collaborative participation. Early on, Move to Amend endorsed Occupy http://movetoamend.nationbuilder.com/r?u=https://movetoamend.org/move-amend-solidarity-occupy-wall-street&utm_campaign=occupy_annivers&n=5&e=2ae135fada3068fbc9ccdd9b1d9214f03ddbbcaf&utm_source=movetoamend&utm_medium=email and joined in the collaborative process with them on the issues of corporate Constitutional rights and money as speech, and our members are still active with Occupy.
Occupy embraced MTA’s Occupy the Courts on the second anniversary of the Citizens United ruling, and recently passed an Official Statement of Solidarity with Move to Amend http://movetoamend.nationbuilder.com/r?u=http://interoccupy.net/blog/occupy-national-gathering-2013-voted-to-pass-proposal-of-solidarity-with-move-to-amend-at-ga-august-25/&utm_campaign=occupy_annivers&n=6&e=2ae135fada3068fbc9ccdd9b1d9214f03ddbbcaf&utm_source=movetoamend&utm_medium=email at the Occupy National Gathering this summer. Many Occupy groups have become full-fledged MTA affiliates.
On this occasion, we invite you to see an important film: American Autumn http://movetoamend.nationbuilder.com/r?u=http://move-to-amend.myshopify.com/products/dvd-american-autumn-an-occudoc&utm_campaign=occupy_annivers&n=8&e=2ae135fada3068fbc9ccdd9b1d9214f03ddbbcaf&utm_source=movetoamend&utm_medium=email : An OccuDoc -- a full-length feature documentary, by Dennis Trainor, capturing the fervor and passion that spread through the nation in fall 2011.
Protestors and organizers tell in their own words why they joined the protests and what they hoped to accomplish, featuring interviews that include Move to Amend organizers: David Cobb, Ashley Sanders, and George Friday.
There is good reason to rejoice on Occupy’s second anniversary.
We congratulate Occupy for not only changing the discourse in this country, but for standing up in the face of violent reprisals by the state, continuing to do the hard work of grassroots organizing, and for seeking solutions through collaboration.
Happy Birthday Occupy!
Ashley Sanders, Daniel Lee, David Cobb, Egberto Willies, George Friday, Jerome Scott, Kaitlin Sopoci-Belknap, Laura Bonham, Nancy Price, Richard Monje
Move to Amend National Leadership Team
PS -- Also check out a new film that premiers in theaters this week and on a new online network ( Pivot TV http://movetoamend.nationbuilder.com/r?u=http://www.pivot.tv/movies&utm_campaign=occupy_annivers&n=9&e=2ae135fada3068fbc9ccdd9b1d9214f03ddbbcaf&utm_source=movetoamend&utm_medium=email ) on October 2: 99% - The Occupy Wall Street Collaborative Film http://movetoamend.nationbuilder.com/r?u=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v%3DfmKXAMRb4C8%26feature%3Dyoutu.be&utm_campaign=occupy_annivers&n=10&e=2ae135fada3068fbc9ccdd9b1d9214f03ddbbcaf&utm_source=movetoamend&utm_medium=email. We're partnering with Pivot TV on this project and others (Move to Amend is a featured action that viewers are encouraged to join after watching the film).
MOVE TO AMEND
PO Box 610, Eureka CA 95502 | (707) 269-0984 | www.MoveToAmend.org
We, the People of the United States of America, reject the U.S. Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling, and move to amend our Constitution to firmly establish that money is not speech, and that human beings, not corporations, are persons entitled to constitutional rights.
In compliment to networking:
Over the past two years, tens of thousands of people have taken to the streets to stop Keystone XL, stand against the addiction to fossil fuels and demand action on climate change.
We're hitting a critical moment this weekend and need you to stand with us.
Join the Center for Biological Diversity, 350.org and others around the country to "Draw the Line" on Keystone XL and other risky oil and gas developments.
President Obama says he's willing to reject Keystone if it significantly affects the climate. Well, it will. We need to show the president that it's time to draw the line and stop Keystone XL and other projects that will throw us deeper into climate chaos.
Come Draw the Line with Center staff and volunteers at one of these exciting events:
• On Friday, Sept. 20 in Albuquerque, N.M. at 11 a.m.;
• On Saturday, Sept. 21 at Pinnacles National Park, Calif. at 9:30 a.m.;
• On Saturday, Sept. 21 in Crescent Beach, Fla. at 12 p.m.; or
• On Saturday, Sept. 21 in Middlebury, Vt. at 12 p.m.
Our allies at 350.org are also holding events around the nation -- click to sign up for one of the big events happening in New York, N.Y. ; New Orleans, La. ; Seattle, Wash. ; York, Neb. and Detroit, Mich.
If you don't see an event near you, check out this map of events going on around the country or start your own.
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I have noticed that groups are beginning to network - like AARP and the Sierra club and the union of concerned scientists . . . . . . .
This networking as it grows will build synergy as the same issues are supported by each group - also by each group crediting each-other ( in their news-letters, petitions and such ) for taking similar action on issues.
One Main Difference - as I see it - that whether it was good - bad - or indifferent - the protests of the 60's got major MSM coverage.
We now have a communications tool that people did not have in the 60's - but - getting everyone up to speed using the internet is still a hit and miss proposition and so is also slow. But the good news is - once information is shared - it is out there for others to come across.
The main problem with your entire argument is that you believe that the SDS-style organization of workers in the 1960s was successful! It was NOT! Many SDS leaders – like Tom Hayden – “organized” themselves into comfortable niches as the agony aunts providing a “leftish” fig leaf for the warmongering, anti-worker, pro-capitalist Democratic Party post Vietnam. Others just bailed out after deluding themselves into believing that it was they who won the “victory” of the U.S. defeat in Vietnam – a victory that had nothing at all to do with the SDS or the anti-war movement and everything to do with the victorious revolutionary struggle of the COMMUNIST-LED workers of Vietnam, backed by China and the USSR. The SDS was a monumental FAILURE whose only residue has been a handful of shameless sellouts clinging to the coat tails of the Democrats. The Occupy movement’s determination to grasp at any political method OTHER THAN that of revolutionary socialism is not a strength but the vital weakness of Occupy. Instead of learning from the past and taking (or even seeking) a revolutionary road against the capitalist system which is at the root of poverty and exploitation of the world’s workers, Occupy seeks out every half-baked reformist method designed to beg for reforms from the capitalist class rather than seeking to overthrow it. The inability of Occupy to form a revolutionary movement of the working class is derived not from the lack of revolutionary will of the downtrodden working class but from the utter contempt in which the “leaders” of Occupy hold for the organized working class (especially union workers) and their thoroughly anticommunist philosophy. So, as currently constituted and led, Occupy can never be anything other than a clique of blind herdsmen “leading” a herd of politically naive bleating sheep begging for crumbs from the richly-laden banquet tables of the “1%”.
This yapping about a “slow network movement” is just so much puerile politics-babble from people thoroughly opposed to workers revolution against the capitalist system. It’s yet another detour from the road of revolution into yet another reformist dead end street of begging the Democrats to beg the capitalist class on the workers’ behalf for more tartar sauce* in the company cafeteria.
Without a revolutionary socialist party of the working class, organized and led by professional revolutionaries with a political program that fights to overthrow the capitalist system and place the working class in power there will be no workers revolution at all. That type of party is called a “Leninist vanguard party”. It is precisely what is needed; it is the only form of revolutionary party that has proven capable of leading a workers revolution in the modern era and it is PRECISELY what the “leaders” of Occupy hate far more than they hate poverty, homelessness, starvation and the capitalist system itself.
“Workers of the World, Unite!”
Independent Workers Party of Chicago Find us on Twitter, Facebook and WordPress
*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqQrkzZu148
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"make organizing both easier and more complex?"
It makes getting the word out much easier, but it also leaves a lot of "likes" and not as much "showing up".
Gene Sharp has some good books on this stuff.
Hedges breaks it down good here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8H0ty327o0