Occupy Everywhere - Sept 17th - Day of Rage Against Wall Street and what it stands for!

[Peter Lemkin]

Client Nine: The Rise and Fall of Elliot Spitzer [Sheriff of Wall Street] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WldZazpFy7I

[Peter Lemkin]

This Weekend: #OccupyCPAC in DC, Occupy Town Squares in NYC, Resist Repression in SF

Posted 1 day ago on Feb. 10, 2012, 10:24 a.m. EST by OccupyWallSt

Today (Feb. 10th, 2012) in Washington, DC: Occupy CPAC!
12noon and 5pm at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel
2600 Woodley Rd. at Connecticut Ave. N.W - metro: Woodley Park

All this weekend, the right-wing Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) is happening in Washington, DC. The event - deemed the "summit of the 1%" - features a range of powerful conservative groups and politicians like Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Scott Walker, and more. The one thing they share in common: Their pockets are lined with corporate money and all of their agendas disproportionately benefit the 1% at the direct expense of the rest of us.

Labor groups like the Metropolitan Washington, D.C. Labor Council and local progressive organizations like the Washington Peace Center are organizing a variety of actions today. The AFL-CIO has promised "giant puppets, inflatables, chants, songs and of course tents to Occupy CPAC." Occupy DC and supporters plan to be out in full force, as well - demonstrating their commitment to the struggle for economic justice following their recent removal from their homes at McPherson Square. Follow #OccupyCPAC on Twitter.

Also today, Occupy San Francisco plans to march against police repression:

Occupy demonstrators nationwide have faced brutal police crackdowns, near lethal force, indiscriminate use of chemical weapons such as CS Gas, constant police violence & harassment and the illegitimate repression of our natural rights to assembly and free speech. Poor people, people of color and the homeless have been facing cruel and unjust police oppression and brutality on an everyday basis for decades. As an institution, the police stand between the 99% and the 1%, protecting the interests of the governments, banks and corporations that foreclose on our lives and homes, destroy our Mother Earth, and send us off to illegal wars for profit. If we are to liberate our commons, reclaim vacant buildings and unused homes, and occupy public spaces for social change, we must, one way or another, overcome the violent state repression that manifests itself as the Police. Join us this Friday, Feb. 10 at 6pm at 101 Market St, the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, near Embarcadero BART station. RESIST.



Later this weekend, Occupy Town Squares returns to New York City:

Saturday, Feb. 11th 2012
1pm - 7pm at West Park Presbyterian
165 West 86th St



On February 11th, come visit the second Occupy Town Square, at West Park Presbyterian. For one afternoon, Occupy Wall Street will fill the beautiful old church on 86th & Amsterdam Ave with teach-ins and trainings, speeches and discussion, pamphlets and performances. Come help us revive the great democratic tradition of public discourse and civic engagement. Whether you consider yourself a supporter of the movement or not, we want to meet you. Share our food and warmth; bring your stories and ideas; learn, argue, debate, coordinate, collaborate!

9 Comments
NYC: Stop the Vote to Close Schools - Occupy the PEP

Posted 2 days ago on Feb. 9, 2012, 7 a.m. EST by OccupyWallSt



Following a mass walk-out by high school students earlier this month in protest of Mayor Bloomberg's plan to close their schools. Even as the demonstration was harassed by Bloomberg's NYPD, students and allies denounced Bloomberg as "Mayor 1%" and demanded fair and accessible education for all. Today at 5:30pm until 8:30pm at Brooklyn Technical High School (29 Fort Greene Place, Brooklyn, NY 11217), there is another event to support NYC students:

(En español abajo)

This Thursday, the Department of Education's Panel for Educational Policy (PEP) will convene again to determine the fate of 25 schools the city is trying to close down.

Since the majority of the panel is appointed by Mayor Bloomberg - and has never voted against his will - this decision will be easy for them. The Panel has never heard or been responsive to voices of real students, parents, teachers, and community members who have already spoken out against their failed educational policy, nor will they be interested in the voices of the hundreds that will sign up to speak the night of. To date, no school slated for closure has been spared.

Join us as we use the People's Mic to reclaim our public meeting and block this fatal vote, while demanding accountability from the DOE to provide adequate support that schools and students need to thrive.

We are Occupy The DOE. We are the 99%. Expect us.

[Peter Lemkin]

Oakland Police apparently drive off with protesters car when they leave it for minute with keys, to yell at police for mistreating other occupant. http://www.ustream.tv/channel/therevolut...um=9917042

[Adele Edisen]

Occupy Movement Regroups for Spring 2012

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/12/us/occ...ups&st=cse

Adele

[Adele Edisen]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

February 11, 2012


Occupy Movement Regroups, Preparing for Its Next Phase

By ERIK ECKHOLM


The ragtag Occupy Wall Street encampments that sprang up in scores of cities last fall, thrusting "We are the 99 percent" into the vernacular, have largely been dismantled, with a new wave of crackdowns and evictions in the past week. Since the violent clashes last month in Oakland, Calif., headlines about Occupy have dwindled, too.

Far from dissipating, groups around the country say they are preparing for a new phase of larger marches and strikes this spring that they hope will rebuild momentum and cast an even brighter glare on inequality and corporate greed. But this transition is filled with potential pitfalls and uncertainties: without the visible camps or clear goals, can Occupy become a lasting force for change? Will disruptive protests do more to galvanize or alienate the public?

Though still loosely organized, the movement is putting down roots in many cities. Activists in Chicago and Des Moines have rented offices, a significant change for groups accustomed to holding open-air assemblies or huddling in tents in bad weather.

On any night in New York City, which remains a hub of the movement, a dozen working groups on issues like "food justice" and "arts and culture" meet in a Wall Street atrium, and "general assemblies" have formed in 14 neighborhoods. Around the country, small demonstrations often focused on banks and ending foreclosure evictions take place almost daily.

If the movement has not produced public leaders, some visible faces have emerged.

"I'm finally going to make it to the dentist next week," said Dorli Rainey, a Seattle activist. "I've had to cancel so many times. It's overwhelming."

Ms. Rainey, who is 85 and was pepper-sprayed by the police in November, has been fully booked for months. On a recent Thursday, she joined 10 people in Olympia, Wash., who were supporting a State Senate resolution to remove American soldiers from Afghanistan. She led a rally near Pike Place Market against steam incinerators, which the protesters complain release pollution in the downtown area. In March, she plans to join Occupy leaders in Washington for events that are still being planned.

"People have different goals," Ms. Rainey said. "Mine is, we've got to build a movement that will replace the type of government we have now."

Jumping on a proposal from Portland, Ore., groups in 34 cities have agreed to "a day of nonviolent direct action" on Feb. 29 against corporations accused of working against the public interest. Then on May 1, they will try to persuade thousands of Americans who share their belief that the system is rigged against the poor and the middle class to skip work and school, in what they are calling "a general strike" or "a day without the 99 percent."

"Inspiring more people to get angry and involved is the top priority," said Bill Dobbs, a member of the press committee of Occupy Wall Street and a veteran of the Act Up campaign for people with H.I.V. and AIDS. He added that people could "take action on whatever issue is important to them, whether economic justice, the environment or peace."

But some experts who credit Occupy's achievements to date wonder if the earnest activists will overplay their hand. Some question how many people will heed a call to stay home from work on May 1, especially since labor unions, which have generally supported Occupy's message, say they will not strike for the day. And beyond that, Occupy's utopian calls for democracy and justice may be drowned out by the presidential campaign.

"They've gotten the people's attention, and now they have to say something more specific," said William A. Galston, a senior fellow and an expert on political strategy at the Brookings Institution in Washington. "Average Americans want solutions, not demonstrations, and their patience for the latter won't last indefinitely."

Some of Occupy's dilemmas are those of any emerging movement. "Some of the stuff you do to get attention often puts off your audience," said David S. Meyer, a professor at the University of California, Irvine, who studies social movements. "It's a delicate balance, being provocative enough to get attention and still draw sympathy."

The issue has been posed most starkly in Oakland, where a militant faction is openly courting conflict with a hostile police department, undermining public support and leading to sharp ideological divides. Some activists have formed separate groups dedicated to nonviolent methods, though tensions are not as acute elsewhere. Crimes reported in some of the camps in the fall also discredited the movement in the eyes of its critics.

But without question, the unfurling of sleeping bags by a few dozen people near Wall Street on Sept. 17 struck a national chord. "In three months, this movement succeeded in shifting political discourse more than labor had been able to accomplish with years of lobbying and electoral campaigns," said Robert Master, the Northeast political director for the Communications Workers of America, which represents more than half a million telecommunications workers.

"I think there are going to be tremendous opportunities for labor and the Occupy movement to work together," Mr. Master said. "We have different roles as labor we are much more embedded in mainstream politics. But we understand that without the pressure of more radical direct-action tactics, the debate in this country won't change substantially."

Though President Obama has not publicly embraced the Occupy movement, its fingerprints are evident in his increased focus on economic fairness.

Mr. Galston, the political expert in Washington, said the movement's success in making inequality more visible "could have an impact down the road on campaigns and elections and agendas." But he also said that "to this day, the movement has never crystallized its ideas into an agenda."

So far, home foreclosures are the most consistent target. Groups in Minneapolis are currently camped in homes facing foreclosure. In Atlanta, they take credit for using this method to save the house of an Iraq war veteran, pressing the bank to offer her refinancing after it had already set a date for eviction.

In Providence, R.I., protesters made a deal with the city, agreeing to abandon their camp peacefully this month in return for the city's opening of a new day center for the homeless.

But many in the movement appear to be pinning their biggest hopes on the nationwide protests planned for the spring and summer. To foster personal ties, Occupy Wall Street veterans, mainly from New York, embarked on a five-week bus tour of a dozen Northeast cities to exchange ideas on protest goals and methods and to hold training sessions with other Occupy groups.

"Without the camps, we're in a bit of a lull," Austin Guest, 31, said in New York. He is one of the many younger men and women who have given over their lives to Occupy, often sleeping on sofas and scraping by with donated food or part-time jobs. The actions planned for the spring "will be more substantial and a much greater threat," he said.

On a recent Saturday evening, some 50 volunteers met in a Greenwich Village church to discuss May Day activities for the city. The group included a mix of ages and races, with graduate students, teachers, older labor veterans and some full-time activists.

In the style of the Occupy movement, it operated with a requirement of consensus. A person designated as the "stack taker" directed the order of speakers and people wiggled or "twinkled" their fingers in the air to show agreement. They discussed a possible schedule of protests for May Day: disrupting commerce that morning, perhaps, and then joining an immigrant rights demonstration at midday and staging a march in the evening.

"Is this O.K.?" the designated facilitator politely asked every few minutes as he moved along the agenda. "Does anyone object?"

A danger for a movement like this, driven by a committed core group with strong views, is political marginalization, said Todd Gitlin, an expert on social movements at Columbia University. Mr. Gitlin, whose book "Occupy Nation" will be published electronically by HarperCollins in April, said, "You can be big but still isolated," which he said was what happened to the radical antiwar movement he joined in the 1960s.

Another challenge will be sustaining public anger if the economy continues to show signs of recovery and unemployment falls. Jessica Reznicek, 30, a protester from Des Moines, said the economy in Iowa "is much stronger" than in other places, adding, "there's not the level of escalation here." After five demonstration-related arrests in recent weeks, she is taking a step back and refocusing on specific efforts, like challenging companies that make genetically modified crops.

But deeper concerns about inequality are not likely to disappear, said Damon A. Silvers, policy director for the A.F.L.-C.I.O., nor is the widely shared desire "for the economy to be run for the interests of the majority, not a tiny wealthy minority."

"Whether the individuals in Occupy Wall Street and their organization turn out to be the center of this sentiment in the next year, I don't know," Mr. Silvers said. "But that sentiment will be a powerful force in our country, and the Occupy movement deserves credit for that."


Reporting was contributed by Jess Bidgood from Boston, Robbie Brown from Atlanta, Dan Frosch from Denver, Ian Lovett from Los Angeles, Carol Pogash from Oakland, Steven Yaccino from Chicago and William Yardley from Seattle. Kitty Bennett contributed research.

Adele

[Peter Lemkin]

Interview With Chris Hedges About Black Bloc
Thursday 9 February 2012
by: J.A. Myerson, Truthout | Interview

Chris Hedges' syndicated Truthdig column "Black Bloc: The Cancer in Occupy," printed Tuesday at Truthout and elsewhere, created quite a stir among members of Occupy Wall Street (OWS). Some endorsed the sentiment. Among others, including some central organizers who helped plan the action over the summer, the column raised eyebrows and hackles. I compiled what I considered to be the best critiques of the piece that I came across (as well as my own questions) and interviewed Hedges over the phone.

I explained at the outset that I, too, had written in Truthout to urge doctrinal nonviolence and that I am enormously fond of Hedges' prodigious body of work. Nevertheless, I explained, there was a lot about the column that confounded me and many people I'd heard from, and I asked him to let me push for clarification on a number of points. Here is the transcript of that recorded interview, edited very minimally for clarity.

J.A. Myerson: A previous column of yours entitled "The Greeks Get It" insinuated that the riots there were productive and, as you know, they committed vandalism and arson and so did protesters everywhere from Iceland to Romania, where the prime minister just resigned. I wonder if the arsonists and vandals in those movements were cancerous to you as well.

Chris Hedges: Yes.

JAM: Then I wonder if you would explain your writing, "Here's to the Greeks. They know what to do when corporations pillage and loot their country... Riot. Shut down the city centers. Toss the bastards out ... The Greeks, unlike most of us, get it."

CH: The article and the column lauded the Greeks for responding. It was not an article about tactics. You use the word "insinuate." That's correct. You would have to insinuate that I supported rioting, but I don't know how you can in the long history of everything that I've written. The point that I was trying to make in that article was that the Greeks had gotten out on the street and risen up. I didn't agree with everything they'd done out on the street, but I was confounded by the passivity on the part of the American public that was being fleeced and abused in a manner not dissimilar to what was happening in Greece. I never in that article approve rioting. I had to put it in there, because it's what they did, but the point of the article was that the Greeks had responded and we hadn't - What's wrong with us?

JAM: You speak of the black bloc as though it were a political organization with membership, a violent, secretive, nihilistic cabal, which calls to mind the Black Hand, conveniently. It sounds like a really snarky question, but I swear I am genuinely interested in your answer: were you aware writing this piece that that is not an apt description of a black bloc, which is no organization at all, but a protest tactic that does more than just smash and burn?

CH: I put in there that they detest organization of any kind. I use part of their jargon - "feral" and "spontaneous" protest - whereby you walk down a street and nothing is planned. You walk by a window and you break it. They feel that any kind of attempt to plan immediately imposes a kind of hierarchy that they oppose. That's in the piece. There's a limit to expounding upon the internal - I didn't get into primitive anarchism and all this kind of stuff. But that was certainly part of the piece. It's precisely because they detest - there's a line in the article that says that they are opposed to those of us on the organized left. The operative word is "organization."

JAM: I have seen black blocs de-arresting their comrades (stealing people back from police custody), without hurting anyone or anything. I have seen them win a tug of war with the police and confiscate their kettle netting. I have seen them returning tear gas canisters from whence they came in order to mitigate the suffering of children and elderly protesters in their midst.

CH: Let's not paint these people as the Boy Scouts, come on.

JAM: Obviously, there is smashing and burning, but I wonder if tactics like those, which are also part and parcel of black bloc protests, are also cancerous.

CH: First of all, let's be clear. I don't have a problem with anarchism. The problem is they're not tactics I would engage in. I wouldn't classify them as "violent." I would classify violence as the destruction of property and vandalism, the shouting of insulting messages to the police, physical confrontations with the police. Those are very clear cut acts of violence. The issues that you raise are more nebulous and circumstantial. Throwing a tear-gas canister back that's been fired at you I would not classify as a violent act and yet it was something that probably would not have been done during the civil rights movement under King.

JAM: I think he might have thought of that as violent.

CH: I don't know that he would have thought of it as violent. He wouldn't resist arrest. I know that's an issue. When I've been arrested, I don't resist arrest. Many people do resist arrest. King never did resist arrest. But I prefaced it by saying that it's not something I would do. On the other hand, those are more nebulous issues, which may be part of black bloc activity, but let's be careful. Black bloc activity includes other things that are clearly defined as acts of violence. They don't limit it to those activities is what I'm saying.

JAM: Did you speak to people who had participated in a black bloc in the compilation of this column?

CH: No.

JAM: I've got some assertions you make in the column and I want to ask you about them. Let's start with the one you mentioned. "Black Bloc adherents detest those of us on the organized left and seek, quite consciously, to take away our tools of empowerment." How did you arrive at that conclusion?

CH: Because of the tactics that they embrace. Smashing the window of a coffee shop - which happened in November in Oakland to a local coffee shop owner and then the coffee shop was looted - is an activity that is destructive to OWS, in my view.

JAM: And it necessarily entailed detesting the organized left and consciously seeking to take away the tools of empowerment?

CH: If you look at the writings of black bloc ideologues, they're very clear. I did listen to several hours of Anarchy Radio before I wrote this, which is out of Eugene. None of that made it into the piece, but I was curious to hear them and hear them on the Zapatistas.

JAM: I'm interested in that, because the excerpts I have written out are instances of you describing black blocs and their attitudes and their ideology.

CH: This is the radio program that's run by John Zerzan. They're all archived online, plus his publications are online, so I read a lot of the publications and quoted from some of the publications and I listened to probably four or five hours of the radio broadcasts. Like I listened to them on Noam Chomsky. I was curious as to what their attitudes were on a variety of issues.

JAM: I'm struggling with the seemingly conflicting proposals that they are opposed to organization, have no organization and hate organization and, yet, monolithically ascribe to any ideology at all.

CH: I didn't say that they subscribe to an ideology. I said that they subscribe to tactics. I don't know how much you know about them, but it's the whole anti-civilization movement. That's another discussion. But there is a hostility towards civilization as it's currently configured and it must be taken down. Their problem with those of us on the organized left is that we, in essence, are attempting to reform it rather than destroy it. And that's their attack on Chomsky. Zerzan calls him a sell-out. They hate Derrick Jensen, which is why I called him. They've really gone after Derrick.

JAM: Here's another excerpt. "These acts, the movement argues, can never be organized. Organization, in the thinking of the movement, implies hierarchy, which must always be opposed. There can be no restraints on 'feral' or 'spontaneous' acts of insurrection. Whoever gets hurt gets hurt. Whatever gets destroyed gets destroyed." Where does "the movement" argue this?

CH: When they talk about the tactics. That's what "feral" activity is. It rises out of the moment. That's what they embrace. You don't walk down the street and say, "We're going to target that shop." It's a spontaneous response.

JAM: That's interesting taken in the context of this quotation. "The Black Bloc movement bears the rigidity and dogmatism of all absolutism sects. Its adherents alone possess the truth. They alone understand. They alone arrogate the right, because they are enlightened and we are not, to dismiss and ignore competing points of view as infantile and irrelevant. They hear only their own voices. They heed only their own thoughts. They believe only their own clichés. And this makes them not only deeply intolerant but stupid." How did you arrive at the conclusions that they're rigidly dogmatic and dismissive of all other points of view?

CH: From listening to anarchist radio and reading anarchist web sites.

JAM: You cite an article by someone named "Venomous Butterfly," which criticizes the Zapatistas on anarchist grounds, in a magazine called Green Anarchy, whose publisher, John Zerzan, you describe as "one of the principal ideologues of the Black Bloc movement in the United States." Seemingly on these grounds alone, you contend that "Black Bloc adherents" "argue" that the "real enemies" include "populist movements such as the Zapatistas." I can personally confirm that many Black bloc anarchists support the Zapatistas and I'm left wondering about the wisdom of thinking one article in one magazine that no one has endorsed as representative indicates much. An equivalent would be if someone attributed Alexander Cockburn's views on the climate crisis to Katrina van den Heuvel, furthermore adding that van den Heuvel is one of the principal ideologues of the Occupy movement and that therefore Cockburn's views on the climate crisis are broadly applicable to the Occupy movement. Did you have better grounds for this assertion than I've detected?

CH: I certainly, first of all, don't consider myself an expert on the black bloc. I am certain that there are, as with any group, varieties of opinions and divisions. I think it is pretty uniform that they are dismissive of the organized left and I see it as a value judgment. I think that their tactics are ones that essentially are destructive to the tools of empowerment of the organized left. The vandalism that they carry out and the cynicism that they express are juvenile. I am sure that there are black blocs who support the Zapatistas, but they are by and large hostile to any organized entities on the left, including unions, including environmental activists, including populist movements. If you look at the sentence, it says "populist movements such as the Zapatistas." I just pulled it out as an example. Zerzan is hostile to the Zapatistas. I'm sure that others are not. But I used it as an example of a movement that has been attacked by black bloc proponents.

JAM: You write, "The Occupy encampments in various cities were shut down precisely because they were nonviolent." I think I get the point, but I wonder if you'd game that out, because it seems to insinuate that, had camps been violent, they would not have been shut down.

CH: That's a pretty broad leap. They were shut down because they articulated the concerns and anger and frustrations of the mainstream. This is a mainstream movement. Any time you went to Zuccotti Park on a Saturday, it was filled with strollers from mothers and fathers from New Jersey. And the movement spread and resonated. There has been an extremely concerted effort to destroy it, first by physically removing their centers of operation and now attempting to create internal divisions within the movement, using black bloc activity to discredit the movement, attempting to set up front organizations like Van Jones to channel the energy back into the Democratic Party and electoral politics. I think these movements really terrify the power elite and, in particular, the Democrats. One could argue that the greatest enemy of the Occupy movement is Barack Obama. I don't want to see the movement destroyed. We cannot underestimate, in this security and surveillance state, the extent to which there are internal forces within this movement seeking to rip it apart. The black bloc is a gift to their hands.

JAM: What then is the solution to the problem? What is the prognosis for the cancer?

CH: There has to be a rigid adherence to nonviolence. That does not mean that the black bloc can't exist. We saw a multiplicity of groups in the 1960s - from the Yippies to the Panthers to the Weather Underground - but the movement itself has to continue to operate in a way that it does not alienate the mainstream. If the security and surveillance state is able to alienate the mainstream from OWS, then OWS will be far more vulnerable to being destroyed. That's very similar to the civil rights movement. I'm a huge admirer of Malcolm X. And, yet, the establishment didn't really fear Malcolm X; they feared King. That's true here. They fear OWS. They don't fear the black bloc.

JAM: That sentiment I agree with completely. But it's interesting to track the basis for your compunction in the piece. That expression seems sort of practical-strategic-pragmatic in a way that I really agree with, but you weren't quoting Gene Sharp, you were quoting "All's Quiet on the Western Front," so it seems like part of your objection to black bloc tactics is less strategic-tactical than almost spiritual.

CH: It's both. I've spent my life around mobs and groups and crowds and armies and they foster for me very frightening physical and emotional responses.

JAM: Thank you for taking the time to answer combative questions.

CH: I don't mind combative questions. But a lot of it was tenuous conjecture. The idea that because I mentioned the word "riot" in the piece about the Greeks, that I embrace rioting.

JAM: It's actually a thing that confuses me personally and I'm looking for your advice on it. I am myself a big nonviolent advocate. But Iceland, Italy, Tunisia, Egypt, Chile, Romania - all over the place ...

CH: That's a longer discussion. Eight hundred people were killed in Egypt. It's a different discussion. When we get to those levels, let's talk.

JAM: Will you expand on that? Are you saying that once there's a big, widespread revolutionary movement, then there's room for that kind of thing?

CH: I'm not going to go there. Personally, I'm always nonviolent. But once that kind of repression manifests itself, it inevitably provokes counterviolence. I wrote a whole book on this called "War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning." Violence is a poison and even when it's employed in a just cause, it's still a poison. This is something I intimately understand. I'm not a pacifist. You can push people to a point where they have no option but to employ violence. That's certainly what happened to the people in Sarajevo, but once you do, it's always tragic. I don't want to go there. That's why I've been such a fervent supporter of OWS, because I don't want us to descend into that.

[Keith Millea]

Published on Monday, February 13, 2012 by TruthDig.com

Occupy Draws Strength From the Powerless

by Chris Hedges

There is a recipe for breaking popular movements. I watched it play out over five years in the war in El Salvador. I now see these familiar patterns in the assault against the Occupy movement. It goes like this. Physically eradicate the insurgents' logistical base of operations to disrupt communication and organization. Dry up financial and material support. Create rival organizationsthe group Stand for Oakland seems to be one of these attemptsto discredit and purge the rebel leadership. Infiltrate the movement to foster internal divisions and rivalries, a tactic carried out consciously, or perhaps unconsciously, by an anonymous West Coast group known as OLAASMOccupy Los Angeles Anti Social Media. Provoke the movementor front groups acting in the name of the movementto carry out actions such as vandalism and physical confrontations with the police that alienate the wider populace from the insurgency. Invent atrocities and repugnant acts supposedly carried out by the movement and plant these stories in the media. Finally, offer up a political alternative. In the war in El Salvador it was Jose Napoleon Duarte. For the Occupy movement it is someone like Van Jones. And use this "reformist" to co-opt the language of the movement and promise to promote the movement's core aims through the electoral process.

Counterinsurgency campaigns, although they involve arms and weapons, are primarily about, in the old cliché, hearts and minds. And the tactics employed by our intelligence operatives abroad are not dissimilar to those employed by our intelligence operatives at home. These operatives are, in fact, often the same people. The state has expended external resources to break the movement. It is reasonable to assume it has expended internal resources to break the movement.

The security and surveillance state has a vast arsenal and array of tools at its disposal. It operates in secret. It dissembles and lies. It hides behind phony organizations and individuals who use false histories and false names. It has millions of dollars to spend, the capacity to deny not only its activities but also its existence. Its physical assets honeycomb the country. It can wiretap, eavesdrop and monitor every form of communication. It can hire informants, send in clandestine agents, recruit members within the movement by offering legal immunity, churn out a steady stream of divisive propaganda and amass huge databases and clandestine operations centers. And it is authorized to use deadly force.

How do we fight back? We do not have the tools or the wealth of the state. We cannot beat it at its own game. We cannot ferret out infiltrators. The legal system is almost always on the state's side. If we attempt to replicate the elaborate security apparatus of our oppressors, even on a small scale, we will unleash widespread paranoia and fracture the movement. If we retreat into anonymity, hiding behind masks, then we provide an opening for agents provocateurs who deny their identities while disrupting the movement. If we fight pitched battles in the streets we give authorities an excuse to fire their weapons.

All we have, as Vaclav Havel writes, is our own powerlessness. And that powerlessness is our strength. The survival of the movement depends on embracing this powerlessness. It depends on two of our most important assetsutter and complete transparency and a rigid adherence to nonviolence, including respect for private property. This permits us, as Havel puts it in his 1978 essay "The Power of the Powerless," to live in truth. And by living in truth we expose a corrupt corporate state that perpetrates lies and lives in deceit.

Havel, who would later become the first president of the Czech Republic, in the essay writes a reflection on the mind of a greengrocer who, as instructed, puts up a poster "among the onions and carrots" that reads: "Workers of the World Unite!" The poster is displayed partly out of habit, partly because everyone else does it, and partly out of fear of the consequences for not following the rules. The greengrocer would not, Havel writes, display a poster saying: "I am afraid and therefore unquestioningly obedient." And here is the difference between the terror of a Josef Stalin or an Adolf Hitler and the collective charade between the rulers and the ruled that by the 1970s had gripped Czechoslovakia.

"Imagine," Havel writes, "that one day something in our greengrocer snaps and he stops putting up the slogans merely to ingratiate himself. He stops voting in elections he knows are a farce. He begins to say what he really thinks at political meetings. And he even finds the strength in himself to express solidarity with those whom his conscience commands him to support. In this revolt the greengrocer steps out of living within the lie. He rejects the ritual and breaks the rules of the game. He discovers once more his suppressed identity and dignity. He gives his freedom a concrete significance. His revolt is an attempt to live within the truth."

This attempt to "live within the truth" brings with it ostracism and retribution. Punishment is imposed in bankrupt systems because of the necessity for compliance, not out of any real conviction. And the real crime committed is not the crime of speaking out or defying the rules, but the crime of exposing the charade.

"By breaking the rules of the game, he has disrupted the game as such, he has exposed it as a mere game," Havel says of his greengrocer. "He has shattered the world of appearances, the fundamental pillar of the system. He has upset the power structure by tearing apart what holds it together. He has demonstrated that living a lie is living a lie. He has broken through the exalted façade of the system and exposed the real, base foundations of power. He has said that the emperor is naked. And because the emperor is in fact naked, something extremely dangerous has happened: by his action, the greengrocer has addressed the world. He has enabled everyone to peer behind the curtain. He has shown everyone that it is possible to live within the truth. Living within the lie can constitute the system only if it is universal. The principle must embrace and permeate everything. There are no terms whatsoever on which it can coexist with living within the truth, and therefore everyone who steps out of line denies it in principle and threatens it in its entirety."

Those who do not carve out spaces separate from the state and its systems of power, those who cannot find room to become autonomous, or who do not "live in truth," inevitably become compromised. In Havel's words, they "are the system." The Occupy movement, by naming corporate power and refusing to compromise with it, by forming alternative systems of community and society, embodies Havel's call to "live in truth." It does not appeal to the systems of control, and for this reason it is a genuine threat to the corporate state.

Movements that call on followers to "live in truth" do not always succeed. They failed in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala in the 1970s and 1980s, as well as in Yugoslavia in the 1990s, triggering armed insurgencies and blood-drenched civil wars. They have failed so far in Iran, the Israeli-occupied territories and Syria. China has a movement modeled after Havel's Charter 77 called Charter 08. But the Chinese opposition to the state has been effectively suppressed, even though its principal author, Liu Xiaobo, currently serving an 11-year prison term for "incitement of subversion of state power," was awarded the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize.

Power elites who stubbornly refuse to heed popular will and resort to harsher and harsher forms of state control can easily provoke counterviolence. The first Palestinian uprising, which lasted from 1987 to 1992, saw crowds of demonstrators throw rocks at Israeli soldiers, but it was largely a nonviolent movement. The second uprising, or intifada, which erupted in 2000 and endured for five years, with armed attacks on Israeli soldiers and civilians, was not. History is dotted with brutal fratricides spawned by calcified and repressive elites who ignored peaceful protest. And even when nonviolent movements do succeed, it is impossible to predict when they will spawn an uprising or how long the process will take. As Timothy Garton Ash noted about Eastern Europe's revolutions of the late 20th century, in Poland the revolt took 10 years, in East Germany 10 weeks, in Czechoslovakia 10 days.

Occupy's most powerful asset is that it articulates this truth. And this truth is understood by the mainstream, the 99 percent. If the movement is severed from the mainstream, which I expect is the primary goal of the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI, it will be crippled and easily contained. Other, more militant groups may rise and even flourish, but if the Occupy movement is to retain the majority it will have to fight within self-imposed limitations of nonviolence.

I do not know if it will succeed. If it does not ,then I fear we will see the classical forms of violent protest that are used by an enraged and frustrated populace; for me such a turn to violence, while understandable, is always tragic. Violence is a poison, even when it is ingested in a supposedly just cause. It contaminates all who use it. I watched this poison work on repressors and the repressed from Latin America to the Middle East to the Balkans. I am not a pacifist. I know there are limits. But I desperately want to avoid going there.

"We would not have a movement if violence or property damage were used from the outset," Kevin Zeese, one of the first activists to call for an Occupy movement, told me. "People are not drawn to violent movement. Such tactics will shrink rather than expand our base of support. Property damage justifies police violence to many Americans. There is a wide range of diversity of tactics within a nonviolent strategy. Disciplined nonviolence is often more difficult because anger and emotion lead people to want to strike back at the police when they are violent, but disciplined nonviolence is the tactic that is most effective against the violence of the state."

The organizer Lisa Fithian is an author of one of the most concise arguments for nonviolence, "Open Letter to the Occupy Movement: Why We Need Agreements." The essay points out that without agreements that enshrine nonviolence, "the young [are privileged] over the old, the loud voices over the soft, the fast over the slow, the able-bodied over those with disabilities, the citizen over the immigrant, white folks over people of color, those who can do damage and flee the scene over those who are left to face the consequences."

" Diversity of tactics' becomes an easy way to avoid wrestling with questions of strategy and accountability," Fithian and two other authors write of the slogan used by the Black Bloc anarchists. "It lets us off the hook from doing the hard work of debating our positions and coming to agreements about how we want to act together. It becomes a code for anything goes,' and makes it impossible for our movements to hold anyone accountable for their actions."

"The Occupy movement includes people from a broad diversity of backgrounds, life experiences and political philosophies," the article goes on. "Some of us want to reform the system and some of us want to tear it down and replace it with something better. Our one great point of agreement is our call for transparency and accountability. We stand against the corrupt institutions that broker power behind closed doors. We call to account the financial manipulators that have bilked billions out of the poor and the middle classes.

"Just as we call for accountability and transparency, we ourselves must be accountable and transparent," the authors write. "Some tactics are incompatible with those goals, even if in other situations they might be useful, honorable or appropriate. We can't be transparent behind masks. We can't be accountable for actions we run away from. We can't maintain the security culture necessary for planning and carrying out attacks on property and also maintain the openness that can continue to invite in a true diversity of new people. We can't make alliances with groups from impacted communities, such as immigrants, if we can't make agreements about what tactics we will employ in any given action."

We must assume we are targets. And we must fight back by relying on our strength, which in the great paradox of resistance movements is embodied in our weakness. This does not mean we will avoid being repressed or persecuted. It will not keep us safe from slander, lies or jail. But it does offer the capacity to create internal divisions in the apparatus of the oppressors rather than permit the oppressors to create internal divisions within the movement. Divided loyalties create paralysis. And it is our job to paralyze them, not allow them to paralyze us.

© 2012 TruthDig.com

[Peter Lemkin]

Heavy article by Hedges. Welcome to El Salvador in the 'good' 'ol United Snakes. I believe Hedges has it just right!

[Peter Lemkin]

Global Square': Wikileaks-Backed Activist Platform Launching in March
Published on Wednesday, February 15, 2012 by Common Dreams

'Global Square': Wikileaks-Backed Activist Platform Launching in March

'To perpetuate and spread the creative and cooperative spirit of the occupations'

- Common Dreams staff

WikiLeaks Central announced a "Call to Coders" Tuesday as they prepare for the March launch of the "first massive decentralized social network in the history of the Internet."

"The goal of the Global Square is to perpetuate and spread the creative and cooperative spirit of the occupations and transform this into lasting forms of social organization, at the global as well as the local level. [...]

"The aim of the platform, in this respect, should not be to replace the physical assemblies but rather to empower them by providing the online tools for local and (trans)national organization and collaboration. The ideal would be both to foster individual participation and to structure collective action. The Global Square will be our own public space where different groups can come together to organize their local squares and assemblies."
* * *
ComputerWorldUK reports:
The Global Square, an online global collaboration platform for activists backed by WikiLeaks among others, plans to have a functional prototype by March, its sponsors said.
Styled on social networks like Facebook and Twitter, The Global Square, targeted at activists and the global community, will be developed around Tribler peer-to-peer technology.

"The goal of the Global Square is to perpetuate and spread the creative and cooperative spirit of the occupations and transform this into lasting forms of social organization, at the global as well as the local level."By using this particular existing P2P technology it becomes virtually impossible to break or censor the network, The Global Square said in a statement earlier this week. "The content files are not centralized in any physical server, so the network belongs to its users," it said.

The project has called for volunteer coders and developers to help implement the features planned for the new platform, which will be open source and multilingual.

WikiLeaks said in November that The Global Square would be an online platform for its movement.
Some activists said last year that there was a need for a global square "where people of all nations can come together as equals to participate in the coordination of collective actions and the formulation of common goals and aspirations".

Some of the tools for the platform will be an interactive map that lists all ongoing assemblies around the world, search options allowing users to find squares, events, and working-groups, an aggregated news feed, a public and private messaging system, and a forum for public debate and voting on specific decisions.

The project will start with a standalone PC application followed by a smartphone application later in the year. The team will use the Agile software development methodology, focusing on one feature or module for a few weeks, conduct tests, and do a release, and then focus on the next feature.

[Peter Lemkin]

Occupy Walk USA Press Release

Feb. 18, 2012

Civic Center Plaza
San Diego, CA 92101
Phone (760) 960-2944
http://www.occupywalk.org


Press Release Contact: Susan Sayler
Phone: (760) 960-2944
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
7 A.M. PST, February 18, 2012

OCCUPY WALK USA TAKES THE FIRST STEP OF A 3000 MILE JOURNEY

SAN DIEGO, CA, FEBRUARY 18, 2012: At 7am this morning, the Occupy Walk USA group take the first steps of their journey. Starting off at the Civic Center Plaza, downtown San Diego, the group intends to walk 3000 + miles toNew York City in effort to raise awareness of the movement's mission and to reach out to everyday American citizens in solidarity.

Six members of Occupy Los Angeles have joined three members of Occupy San Diego to begin the journey together. They will be met by various other occupy groups along the route. Day two will end around Encinitas, California where the group will stay at the home of a fellow occupier. Day four will end in Temecula, California where the Occupy Temecula will host a luncheon for the group.

The walk will be live-streamed most of the way and there is car support that will monitor the group's situation and progress -- which will be updated daily on the Occupy Walk USA website.

Another team is still needed to post flyers and organize townhall meetings in advance of the "walkupiers" to create an opportunity for community participation in the event.

The Occupy Wall Street Movement is a leaderless revolution seeking to regenerate democracy in the United States of America by exercising our civil rights and asserting our demand that elected representatives responsibly represent their constituents rather than the special interests of wealthy corporations and the elite one percent.

Presenting the positive side of the Occupy Movement is one important quest of Occupy Walk USA. We hope to dispel common myths created by mainstream media about who occupiers are and allow the nation to see that we are representing the interests of all American citizens. We are champions of the 99%.

For more information call Susan Sayler, Occupy Walk USA co-organizer, 760 960-2944 (cell) and please visit our website http://www.occupywalk.org
-End-

Visit Occupy USA at:
http://occupii.org/groups/group/show?id=..._mes_group