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TACTICAL BRIEFING #18

Occupy the High Ground!

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Hey you creatives, artists, environmentalists, workers, moms, dads, students, malcontents, do-gooders and aspiring martyrs in the snow:

The last four months have been hard fought, inspiring and delightfully revolutionary. We brought tents, hunkered down, held our assemblies, and lobbed a meme-bomb that continues to explode the world's imagination. Many of us have never felt so alive. We have fertilized the future with our revolutionary spirit … and a thousand flowers will surely bloom in the coming Spring.

But as winter approaches an ominous mood could set in … hope thwarted is in danger of turning sour, patience exhausted becoming anger, militant nonviolence losing its allure. It isn't just the mainstream media that says things could get ugly. What shall we do to keep the magic alive?

Here are a couple of emerging ideas:

STRATEGY #1: We summon our strength, grit our teeth and hang in there through winter … heroically we sleep in the snow … we impress the world with our determination and guts … and when the cops come, we put our bodies on the line and resist them nonviolently with everything we've got.

STRATEGY #2: We declare "victory" and throw a party … a festival … a potlatch … a jubilee … a grand gesture to celebrate, commemorate, rejoice in how far we've come, the comrades we've made, the glorious days ahead. Imagine, on a Saturday yet to be announced, perhaps our movement's three month anniversary on December 17, in every #OCCUPY in the world, we reclaim the streets for a weekend of triumphant hilarity and joyous revelry.

We dance like we've never danced before and invite the world to join us.

Then we clean up, scale back and most of us go indoors while the die-hards hold the camps. We use the winter to brainstorm, network, build momentum so that we may emerge rejuvenated with fresh tactics, philosophies, and a myriad projects ready to rumble next Spring.

Whatever we do, let's keep our revolutionary spirit alive … let's never stop living without dead time.

for the wild,
Culture Jammers HQ

394 comments on the article “TACTICAL BRIEFING #18”

Displaying 141 - 150 of 394

Page 15 of 40

SomeMancunian

Hi guys,

seeing as the NYC camp and oakland has been closed down, and that your movement has gone worldwide, it seems that it has been forced underground, the winter doing its part. This is not defeat but a chance to regroup,understanding that we are the majority. My question is- what has been spoken about this week that has made the police finally shut OWS down? Whatever it is it must be dangerous to the ones pulling the strings, you are onto something.

I am no hacker but I think that maybe now is the time to get the hackers from Anonymous to band together and finish the darknet to be able to organise in future as the official communication as well as media are so obviously afraid and seeking to censor. Also maybe it's time to set up a manifesto of concrete demands that are global (legal personhood revoking, money reorganised,etc) and local (in UK, Brazil anti-corruption laws to be passed, etc). Each splinter group will probably fight for the global values on their own turf, but every locale will have local issues that have priority.

Greetings
Manchester Man

SomeMancunian

Hi guys,

seeing as the NYC camp and oakland has been closed down, and that your movement has gone worldwide, it seems that it has been forced underground, the winter doing its part. This is not defeat but a chance to regroup,understanding that we are the majority. My question is- what has been spoken about this week that has made the police finally shut OWS down? Whatever it is it must be dangerous to the ones pulling the strings, you are onto something.

I am no hacker but I think that maybe now is the time to get the hackers from Anonymous to band together and finish the darknet to be able to organise in future as the official communication as well as media are so obviously afraid and seeking to censor. Also maybe it's time to set up a manifesto of concrete demands that are global (legal personhood revoking, money reorganised,etc) and local (in UK, Brazil anti-corruption laws to be passed, etc). Each splinter group will probably fight for the global values on their own turf, but every locale will have local issues that have priority.

Greetings
Manchester Man

nickgrant

It is now time to take the fight into the workplaces and occupy them in a different sense of occupying the streets.

Workplaces are where the 99% is strongest. It is home turf compared to the privatised "public" spaces of most cities - even though they are also, of course, private spaces.

In the UK we will have around 3 million workers on strike against the government's plans to make us pay more, work longer and get less for our pensions in future. More strikes will probably be necessary to make them back off.

"Memes" are all well and good interms of encapsulating what needs to be said, but the masses have to move into militant resistance for any meme to become a social reality.

Let's move onto that level!

nickgrant

It is now time to take the fight into the workplaces and occupy them in a different sense of occupying the streets.

Workplaces are where the 99% is strongest. It is home turf compared to the privatised "public" spaces of most cities - even though they are also, of course, private spaces.

In the UK we will have around 3 million workers on strike against the government's plans to make us pay more, work longer and get less for our pensions in future. More strikes will probably be necessary to make them back off.

"Memes" are all well and good interms of encapsulating what needs to be said, but the masses have to move into militant resistance for any meme to become a social reality.

Let's move onto that level!

Anonymous

completly agreed, i would put it like this, the performance is finnish, is time to act seriously, occupy a square for a few weeks changes nothing, is just a performance, a festival, what is had to be occupied is the structures that affects people's lives, the bankers and corporations long ago hijacked our ways of life, we need to get it back, we live in an inherited system were the elite in power got there via violence and keep themselves there by the threat of it, most of the people don't feel or is aware of that because is part of their routines, the occupy movement is too distant from workers, marginal youth and the people that could really change something

Anonymous

completly agreed, i would put it like this, the performance is finnish, is time to act seriously, occupy a square for a few weeks changes nothing, is just a performance, a festival, what is had to be occupied is the structures that affects people's lives, the bankers and corporations long ago hijacked our ways of life, we need to get it back, we live in an inherited system were the elite in power got there via violence and keep themselves there by the threat of it, most of the people don't feel or is aware of that because is part of their routines, the occupy movement is too distant from workers, marginal youth and the people that could really change something

Anonymous

Given the tools available, Occupy# doesn't need a continuous presence in any one spot. It's a frame of reference. Occupy flashmobs can be called to assemble anywhere at any time. This is a movement that ought to sustain itself in perpetuity.

Anonymous

Given the tools available, Occupy# doesn't need a continuous presence in any one spot. It's a frame of reference. Occupy flashmobs can be called to assemble anywhere at any time. This is a movement that ought to sustain itself in perpetuity.

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