Battle for the Soul of Occupy
Alright you jammers, occupiers and Springtime dreamers,
First they silenced our uprising with a media blackout… then they smashed our encampments with midnight paramilitary raids… and now they’re threatening to neutralize our insurgency with an insidious campaign of donor money and co-optation. This counter-strategy worked to kill off the Tea Party’s outrage and turn it into a puppet of the Republican Party. Will the same happen with Occupy Wall Street? Will our insurgency turn into the Democrats’ Tea Party pet?
It’s up to you to decide if our movement goes the way of Paris ’68, the dust bin of could-have-been-insurrections, or something more daring, more inspiring, something not yet dreamed.
Will you allow Occupy to become a project of the old left, the same cabal of old world thinkers who have blunted the possibility of revolution for decades? Will you allow MoveOn, The Nation and Ben & Jerry to put the brakes on our Spring Offensive and turn our struggle into a “99% Spring” reelection campaign for President Obama?
We are now in a battle for the soul of Occupy… a fight to the finish between the impotent old left and the new vibrant, horizontal left who launched Occupy Wall Street from the bottom-up and who dreams of real democracy and another world.
Whatever you do, don’t allow our revolutionary struggle to fizzle out into another lefty whine and clicktivist campaign like has happened so many times in the past. Let’s Occupy the clicktivists and crash the MoveOn party. Let’s #DEFENDOCCUPY and stop the derailment of our movement that looms ahead.
for the wild,
Culture Jammers HQ
OccupyWallStreet.org / Tactical Briefing #25, #26, #27 and #28 / Check out Oakland occupier Mike King’s take on MoveOn’s 99% Spring
306 comments on the article “Battle for the Soul of Occupy”
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DumbBlondePolitical
Agree 100% How did this turn into an Ego Trip?. Right now, the more against Gov't,the better. And for the many who are trying to do something out of the G.A.s rigid process, are "Co-opters", lol. And I thought I was the Dumb one, lol.
Anonymous
are you implying that the lesser of evils' Obama buttons and nonviolence "policy" denouncing/exposing "violent" demonstrators, shying away from actual immediate group conflict with Statist Police forces, that the trend of liberal progressives is anti-government?? or are you a fascist teapartier who thinks they are revolutionary?
DumbBlondePolitical
Agree 100% How did this turn into an Ego Trip?. Right now, the more against Gov't,the better. And for the many who are trying to do something out of the G.A.s rigid process, are "Co-opters", lol. And I thought I was the Dumb one, lol.
Anonymous
it's about definition of the left, not ownership .. namely in fact(for many), actual anti-ownership. THAT is occupy.
Anonymous
Let go of the "proprietary" gated adbusters' community delusion.
Who needs adbusters if adbusters is "ate up" with ego isolationism.
Anonymous
Agreed.
Anonymous
Been to 2 trainnigs now in Durham, NC where I'm visiting from the Bay Area (California).
I see a realistic response to the stalemate over "diversity of tactics" vs. nonviolent direct action debates going on in Oakland and SF. We get to chose right? The trainers are local volunteeres who came together to learn how to facilitaet these things 3 weeks ago -- sounds like Occupy no?
The video is online. Yeah, its simple, but gets a little history to folks who might not all be as old as folks from the Upper West Side. it's got folks talking out of the Midwest Academy for community organizing out of Chicago, and the Highlander Institute in Tennesee both long-time radical change education/training centers that get my high respect. MoveOn's throwing its web platform, and paying some organizers, but they are not the doing the trainings alone.
All good for the mix!
Anonymous
I disagree. I went to a training today, it was completely lame. Everything about the experience reeked of co-optation.
Anonymous
The most elucidating comment I've read so far, is David Berger's on this thread here:
http://tech.nycga.net/2012/03/25/reportback-the-99spring-training-for-trainers-and-the-plot-to-coopt-occupy/
Anonymous
EXCELLENT STUFF. It eludes me that Occupy is about to commit suicide by rejecting Old Left groups. If movements succeed, they do so because they build broad coalitions, period.
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