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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Anonymous
Any "movement" built on a foundation of Twitter, Facebook, and Flickr isn't just doomed to fail, it has failed already. When are you morons going to wake up and realize that you're just playing in the kiddie pool?
True revolution required violence. If you aren't willing to be violent, you are poseurs. If you're not willing to die for your cause, you don't really believe in it.
You people are an annoying distraction. Why not just go home to your mommy's basement and post more spring break pics on your Facebook wall?
Anonymous
You're wrong.
Read David Berger's comment, where he completely demolishes the entire post.
rob los ricos
ANYTHING that does not take banks out of the picture ENTIRELY is out of the question!
Time for humanity to GROW THE FUCK UP and stop relying on institutions of power and authority to make all our decisions for us.
Anonymous
Rely, my ass. No body voted for these bankers to rule the world. At least they didn't know they were voting for these bankers to rule the world. And again the only choice we have for a president is a financial industry puppet when no wants either of these Goldman Sachs Zombies in the driver's seat.
Daniel Johnson
Well, if they happen to also promote Obama on the side, many of those involved at the grassroots level will still be backing Ron Paul or the Greens or someone else, and it's better to get some of that coopted funding back down to the local activists. The 'training' thing they do looks like a good idea in itself, though you're right, it has an old-lefty bent, but tactically a lot of it is still useful. I reminds me of the 'Solidarity Works' program put on by the Unions here in Canada.
Daniel Johnson
Building a broad scale coalition was the point.... the problem is that when we want to talk about the banking system, and bailouts for major corporations at public expense, and regulations designed to give advantages to major corporations over small competitors, we have a chance at common ground with many in the 'TEA party' and many who are in the middle, who see the corruption but are wondering more about which party will attack their personal freedoms more. It seems both the official left and right have different fundamental freedoms they like to attack, and others they like to defend, so to many people in the middle, ultimately we lose either way. We can have an ACTUAL broad based coalition of the people who are not already part of one party or the other, that majority in the middle who don't agree with most of either side's platform and are sick of being forced to prioritize between freedoms to sacrifice. If enough people do that, and challenge the system in large numbers directly with a demand for fundamental changes to the financial and democratic systems, real change can happen. That can only happen if we stop letting issues that can be discussed later get in the way, they can be debated and voted on directly down the road, when we actually have a democratic system that will allow us to figure out solutions that are not within the official 'framework' of the left/right dichotomy every issue is forced into now. We can't get common ground with the non-right, non-left masses unless we drop a lot of the leftist social dogmas that drive centrists away.
Daniel Johnson
But still, I don't think it's a good idea to start a fight with a group whose front line people are also 'your' front line people. The people taking the spring training were part of Occupy in the fall, many of them could use the training, yet benefit from having the experience without the training too, and there is a lot of democrat type 'camera left' ideology slipped into the training, but the people involved have their own views on those subjects anyway, and it's the tactical stuff that's most helpful. I took the 'solidarity works' program here in Canada back in 2001, from what I understand it was similar, and even though I'm not a fan of most of the groups in the '99% spring' campaign, I know most of the people who are actually doing it on the front lines are dedicated occupiers who recognize useful assistance when they see it. I tried to see if we could sign Occupy Regina up for spring training funds and stuff but we're in Canada and it's only for the states. Perhaps a better course, based around core Occupy issues, bank reform, corporate welfare, etc. ,could be quickly designed in a way that could be spread quickly for the cities that didn't get spring training funds....? They don't have to be as glossy, it's mostly the people to do the teaching and an agreement about what is taught....
Anonymous
Robots. Yes. Many Robots. Thats the Answer; I am Certain.
Anonymous
Everyday I check this site, there's always an Anon who posts about robots. If you are the same one, then I salute your tenacity and desire to aid in your robotic creation quest.
samgreenlaw
PLAY WELL WITH OTHERS.
Move.on and the unions are using the Occupy Wall Street messages to go after the old Reagan Democrats and other workers who have been misled into supporting Republicans.
That is good.
Imagine a world without a competitive Republican Party.
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