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
This what a unfocused, confused, multi-directional, Leaderless Revolution Sounds like.........
1st stop being hypocrites Zucatti Park was full of young occupiers smoking Uncle Phil's & Morris's cigarettes contributing to that which they feign to be against; next pick a cause to focus on that will rally the masses & regain momentum; otherwise go back to hiding in apathy like for the last 40 years.
Some of us marched for civil rights & stopped a war so let's not make like you've done anything yet; show us something real.....................
Anonymous
So true. What the occupation fights, they use and purchase.
They attack groups in a very generic sense, Corporations, Banks and so on.
Its a great idea with little focus of purpose.
The information they post as propaganda is slanted and nonfactual.
And don't get me started on Moveon.org. I saw a post from them stating that over 1000 people that make over one million dollars a year will not pay taxes this year, well what about the millions of other Millionaires that do pay taxes????? And these millionaires are the ones you work for!
Thank you for trying to make a difference but stop acting like a bunch of haters of what you support everyday.
Anonymous
Wow, Occupy inspires more mainstream groups to use their resources to help train people to do NVDA and that's a bad thing? Really? Isn't that exactly what we'd like to see these organizations doing?
Anonymous
You all had your chance and blew it. Game over. Might as well hand over the keys to the house.
Anonymous
I'm so unbelievably sick of occupy acting like it has a monopoly on the terminology they kind of coined (really just adopted). You can't claim to be the 99%, then say that 98% of the 99% can't use the term because it's somehow co-opting occupy. That's bullshit and elitism. Be glad that people are running with it and using it. Is everybody that will use it perfect? Will they always please you? No. But Occupy isn't the judge of the whole 99%, they are just a part of it. Nobody owns a concept. You can't lay claim to solidarity. Did somebody in move on say some dumb stuff about occupy? Could be. But if Occupy thinks it has a right to tell others that they can't rise up and represent themselves as the 99% which they are a part of... Then Occupy is dead (dead wrong, that is).
Where do you get off acting like you own the idea of the 99%?
So a bunch of people are organizing and planning actions using some ideas that you used. So you don't agree with everything they say or do. Maybe you inspired them to some extent.
Sounds familiar.
You might not agree with everything they say but you have no right to tell them to be silent. They might use terms you used and sing songs you sang and work with concepts you worked on... They might do all that and get some of it wrong. But you DO NOT try to delegitimize their movement and you DO NOT EVER tell them that they have no right to those ideas. Those ideas do not belong to you either. They belong to all of us.
You don't see the Wisconsin uprising pulling that shit with occupy, do you? Grow the fuck up.
Sincerely, A member of the Wisconsin Uprising
p.s. SHAME!!
p.p.s I know not all Occupiers are taking this stance. I speak harshly only to those who are. As for the rest, the good ones, the majority... Slap those fools down (figuratively, of course), just like I would if I saw someone in the WI uprising talking nonsense about Occupy. Power to the people! Occupy solidarity!
5:15 PM PT: People have requested references to the articles and statements I'm responding to... Here are The Adbusters articles:
And here is a good one from the other side of things:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
http://tech.nycga.net/2012/03/25/reportback-the-99spring-training-for-trainers-and-the-plot-to-coopt-occupy/
Anonymous
Fuck off.
Anonymous
Way to use your words. Your intelligence astounds me.
In awe,
Anonymous
Anonymous
Same thing OWS is saying to the very elements that will make it more than a mere footnote of history. The Weather Underground made the exact same mistake and became a footnote, having accomplished nothing of lasting import.
Anonymous
damn right OCCUPY THE WORLD WE ARE THE 99%!
Anonymous
A message from the Wisconsin Uprising to Occupy re: 99% spring:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/04/12/1082917/-A-message-from-the-Wisconsin-Uprising-to-Occupy-re-99-spring
Hypocrites.
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