“Fight with your dollar”, “Fight for public opinion”, “participate in electoral politics”
These are examples of the same old, ineffectual arguments made by complacent liberals who want to make theater of social justice. The public is a fickle beast, it is used to consuming experience through media. The public wants to have the most impact while risking very little. While a successful strategy has yet to be discovered, it is clear that passive spectatorship and half measures will not bring about the fundamental, systemic change that is sought by so many around the world. Community will not be arrived at through social networking. Health and education will not be made accessible by writing to our elected officials, the starving and disenfranchised of the world do not have the option to fight with their dollars.

We must act out our desires in the real world. We must work together face to face, we must admit our faults and learn to overcome them together. The reality that awaits us in the midst of honest struggle is one that does not yet exist. That fact is an intensely problematic one because when an individual embarks on a journey of struggle they must necessarily start on familiar ground, that is, by using the tools they know, the methods that are known to them. The effect of this psychologically, is that one finds one’s self in a position to defend their methods or approach in the face of the need to transcend or synthesize all known methods. In other words, the reformist model by itself will not work, the militant insurrection model by itself will not work, small groups of autonomous affinity groups by themselves will not work, independent communes, scattered and isolated by themselves will not work.

Some of those ideas can be fused with others, and some of those ideas need to be discarded all together. The only way I can see to identify what works and what doesn’t is by trial and error and by extensive discussion and debate. Once again we come to the example of what was so strong, and so promising about the original incarnation of the occupy movement; The space and the moment for so many people to come together and experiment with and discuss vastly different and sometimes conflicting tactics of confronting the present plutocracy.

Whatever happens, this potential should not fade away. No matter what occurs, the fighters for social justice should not ease in the effort to find new ways to restructure society. This is because it is the most significant goal for any of us who strive for a new world. Our enemies are both visible and invisible. Our enemies hide among those we would call peers. Our enemies often speak the loudest about how they work towards the success of this and any other movement. Our enemies have impressive histories of participation in well-known struggles. It is interesting that these impressive histories tend to be the very source of the notion that we should do what has always been done. Namely: passive and short lived protest marches, rallies and actions that are full of rhetoric yet devoid of any concrete plan of action beyond that of spectacle.
It is unfortunate that we must approach each other with doubt, mistrust and skepticism, but division is the main object of social identity. We police ourselves, and we discourage each other from acting on our desires. This occurs in addition to the more overt antagonism that comes from the state as well as its apologists and opportunists. That is a major problem with the rhetoric of “The 99%”. Within the 99% there are serious issues that inhibit solidarity among people who, at least superficially, are on the same side, fighting for the same goals.

The text in this article is an excerpt from an article on Occupied Stories, found here: http://occupiedstories.com/anti-capitalist-march-brutality-and-victory.html

Check out the full story there!