Battle for the Soul of Occupy

Jump, jump, jump over the dead body of the old left!

306 comments Adbusters, 12 April 2012

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”

Displaying 281 - 290 of 306

Drew_nyc

17 April 2012 at 11:35 am

I was in Tompkins Square park every saturday for two months leading up to Occupy Wall Street and I did not see Adbusters there.

There is a big difference between planing a seed and helping it grow.

Don't get me wrong, they played an important role, but it would have been just another two page spread if it wasn't for people on the ground.

Anonymous

16 April 2012 at 06:46 pm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_1968_in_France

one two three four!

16 April 2012 at 10:23 pm

This was a protest that had more potential than any lame and boring reformist protest coming out of the states.

to complement your link this was May 68:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUJZgkhSCq8

one cannot forget Jean-Paul Sartre:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-aBxQCmu5Q&feature=related

only through the struggle, the external and the internal
from Paris, adieu

Anonymous

16 April 2012 at 10:21 pm

99% Spring is a coalition of many organizations that have gathered for common, progressive causes such as economic, racial, gender, environmental and social justice. To paint the entire offensive as MoveOn, and a corruption of Occupy, seems proprietary, paranoid and narcissistic to me, reminiscent of the libertarians who are trying to take over Occupy.

Occupy is a social movement that transcends 99% Spring and needs to remain non-partisan. Frankly, we each have our own ideas about what Occupy is, but it is evolving and this takes time. My suspicion is that the presence of 99% Spring will help Occupy maintain its unique nature and reduce the pressure to get political or make specific demands. Let's not tolerate people from Occupy trying to paint themselves as a race of pure citizens representing the one true path to enlightenment and citizenship. Folks, we've already been there and done that.

If you don't trust 99% Spring, take their online training and see what they are offering: http://training.the99spring.com/training/99spring/

Anonymous

16 April 2012 at 10:21 pm

Where do we go from here? At some point we have to stand for something and not just against everything. What do we want the complete destruction of the world; or just the world as we know it? The latter I hope! It's painful to watch everyone I love be degraded and beaten to try to force submission to a tyranical system. It makes us all so angry! But anger wont get us anywhere. Thats what they're trying to produce. First they ignore you, then they fight you, then you win. Gahndi? Anyway, what do we want to win? What is the prize we seek? A friend recently said "What is the opposite of pro? Con. So what is the opposite of progress? So if we wanna have progress what do we have to do away with? Real revolution creates real change. Not the change Obama failed to deliver, but real institutional change. Radical change like that of the civil rights era, like that of the labor unions that changed the whole fabric of american culture. Change like the founders of this country made; positive and lasting change.
I am proposing the overthrow of the sytem by nonviolent resistance. But to achieve this we have to have something to offer as a replacement, and every other systemm tried so far has been as bad or worse as/than this one. So we need to envision a new system, one that was never possible before.
That of a direct democracy. This system was the best we had to offer the world until now. It was put together at a time in history when the world was much larger. Distance represented a much greater divide in communication and culture, so a representative democracy made alot of sense. Direct democracy was more or less impossible. This is a much different world in wich we live. Communication is instant. We could do away with congress in the persuit of progress. Direct democracy means one person one vote, not for a person to make the laws to rule over us. But one person one vote for the laws we want to live with. All existing laws must be ratified, any new laws given an up or down vote by every citizen of this country. Thats the kind of vision that could give life to this movement. The key to to it all is that whatever we do we must leave the anger behind and do it with love. This will only work if we do it together. So even those now our foes will have to be our co-creators if we want to change this world by revolution of love.

Anonymous

17 April 2012 at 12:37 am

Irresponsible article. Occupy is needs to take advantage of every situation find. Now we are paralysed with paranoia and spring preparations ruined.

Anonymous

17 April 2012 at 01:09 am

From the beginning, Occupy had broad scale support among the left, some libertarians, and some anarchists. Now we see the anarchists thinking this was all about them all along, and thinking Occupy is "theirs." If this is an anarchist movement, that is all it will be, as everyone else goes elsewhere.