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TACTICAL BRIEFING #19

Our Existential Moment.

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Hey jammers, dreamers, believers,

Here is a testimony from the streets of New York:

Lost my stuff, including power cord for my laptop, in the raid, something or someone cleared out my bank account, and it's raining. I could just write a country song. I'll tell you this: the resolve is still here. People I talk to are a healthy mixture of rage, comedy, resolve, and excitement. Also exhaustion. Maybe the raid was the best thing that could happen? I worry about the inevitable suffering that will occur in the cold now, and how it will be used to clear any encampment again. But there must be something like a people's library and kitchen. A physical heart. More soon. Must find money and charge my phone. Winning at last, winning at last, thank God Almighty, we are winning at last…

Our movement is living through an existential, make-or-break moment.

This is a tactical way of looking at it:

When Tunisia rose up, Ben Ali scoffed … when young people occupied Tahrir Square, Mubarak resorted to paternalism and then mob violence … in Syria, Assad's troops fire daily into the crowds. And on Tuesday, a military style assault on Zuccotti Park – news blackouts, tear gas, closed airspace, an LRAD "sound cannon" – was carried out in the dead of night to take out our movement's spiritual home.

For many weeks we had a kind of magic going for us … we held the high ground … we stuck doggedly to our Gandhian ways and blindsided the cynical world with our optimism, our camaraderie, our nonviolence, our determination to forge a different kind of future. With nothing more than twinkling fingers, mic checks, mutual respect, and hope for the future, we sparked a global democracy moment the likes of which the world had not seen since 1968.

But New York's billionaire Mayor decided to snuff us out. We wanted a Tahrir Moment, an American Spring, and he attacked us in the middle of the night while we slept. These kinds of attacks on peaceful protestors did not work in Tunisia, not in Egypt, they are not working in Syria right now, and – wake up Bloomberg & Co! – they are not going to work in America either.

This assault has stiffened our resolve. Now begins the second, visceral, canny, militant phase of our nonviolent march to real democracy. We regroup, lick our wounds and begin our counterattack as early as tomorrow.

We will turn this winter into a training ground for precision disruptions – flashmobs, stink bombs, edgy theatrics – against the megacorps and the unrepentant 1%, a festival of resistance in the snow with, or without, an encampment that'll lay the tactical foundation for our Spring Offensive.

The bottom line is this … you cannot attack your young and get away with it!

for the wild,
Culture Jammers HQ

404 comments on the article “TACTICAL BRIEFING #19”

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Page 17 of 41

ozyvort

LEG up. The memes continue to occupy our minds -- “the 99%,” "OWS" etc We have to think of those memes as being the way to rally a huge majority, if not 99%, in favor of some major changes. Voltaire said that things work out for the best in this best of all possible worlds. I hear the 99% suggesting that if this is the best of all possible worlds, then phooey, world suicide should be an option on the table. Of course, world suicide is probably the worst of all possible worlds, but if no changes are possible, then maybe that worst world is thinkable as an alternative, a choice, an exit where Sartre said there is none. To avoid world suicide as our choice I think we have to rein in excessive greed. Let people have private property, let them have obedience to law which makes it possible to enjoy private property, and let parents and teachers teach the young -- but society has to put limits on excessive greed. Why should we get the Supreme Court to split up Standard Oil of NJ and NY, and let them reunite? Why repeal Glass-Steagall, the only limit on a bankster class that can now, after repeal, keep investment winnings and be made whole by taxpayers for losses, an undeserving class feeding at the public trough. As a minimum, the US needs an estate tax and a 100% rate of tax on all annual incomes to the extent of the portion exceeding one billion dollars, with so-called tax-exempt sources such as municipal bond interest being included in the taxable income. The hardest problem is getting people in office who will enforce laws, especially anti-trust, labor, and democratic voting and vote counting laws. The most eligible candidate for capital punishment in my mind is a vote tabulator who takes a bribe or promise of advancement in return for tampering with vote counting. At some point the deep corruption in our system has to be reined in, and excessive greed is the basic affliction of the corrupt vote counter. Another meme to help the possibility of change might well be "Limit Excessive Greed" and don't let anyone pull your LEG.
//Walnut Creek, CA

ozyvort

LEG up. The memes continue to occupy our minds -- “the 99%,” "OWS" etc We have to think of those memes as being the way to rally a huge majority, if not 99%, in favor of some major changes. Voltaire said that things work out for the best in this best of all possible worlds. I hear the 99% suggesting that if this is the best of all possible worlds, then phooey, world suicide should be an option on the table. Of course, world suicide is probably the worst of all possible worlds, but if no changes are possible, then maybe that worst world is thinkable as an alternative, a choice, an exit where Sartre said there is none. To avoid world suicide as our choice I think we have to rein in excessive greed. Let people have private property, let them have obedience to law which makes it possible to enjoy private property, and let parents and teachers teach the young -- but society has to put limits on excessive greed. Why should we get the Supreme Court to split up Standard Oil of NJ and NY, and let them reunite? Why repeal Glass-Steagall, the only limit on a bankster class that can now, after repeal, keep investment winnings and be made whole by taxpayers for losses, an undeserving class feeding at the public trough. As a minimum, the US needs an estate tax and a 100% rate of tax on all annual incomes to the extent of the portion exceeding one billion dollars, with so-called tax-exempt sources such as municipal bond interest being included in the taxable income. The hardest problem is getting people in office who will enforce laws, especially anti-trust, labor, and democratic voting and vote counting laws. The most eligible candidate for capital punishment in my mind is a vote tabulator who takes a bribe or promise of advancement in return for tampering with vote counting. At some point the deep corruption in our system has to be reined in, and excessive greed is the basic affliction of the corrupt vote counter. Another meme to help the possibility of change might well be "Limit Excessive Greed" and don't let anyone pull your LEG.
//Walnut Creek, CA

Anonymous

Solidarity from abroad

I wish i could be there making new friends, talking, thinking, planning and freezing with everyone but I'll do what I'm capable of in the meantime.

I'm sure everyone under the sun has said this already but the path ahead is unknown, dangerous painful and definitely difficult however we're inheriting a long history of struggle. Countless generations of people once did the same thing at different epochs hoping they could make something happen, moving from defeat to defeat, starvation, lost enthusiasms, counter revolutionaries, fascist, wars, angry petite bourgeoisie, legal tactics from the governments, divisions, and dirty tricks. Many lost lives for an idea that they could declare their equality, their emancipation from societal rules they had no control of, but at all moments the did something they looked into the void and formed new pathways. Each generation might've at times thought the previous less prepared, less informed, less articulated, less able but each gave the preceding something...potential. We're a fortunate generation we've inherited the wealth of a history of struggles, of tactics of reforms, of failures and with that comes the potential to create new realities. Will it succeed? Its never certain but we march on...

Anonymous

Solidarity from abroad

I wish i could be there making new friends, talking, thinking, planning and freezing with everyone but I'll do what I'm capable of in the meantime.

I'm sure everyone under the sun has said this already but the path ahead is unknown, dangerous painful and definitely difficult however we're inheriting a long history of struggle. Countless generations of people once did the same thing at different epochs hoping they could make something happen, moving from defeat to defeat, starvation, lost enthusiasms, counter revolutionaries, fascist, wars, angry petite bourgeoisie, legal tactics from the governments, divisions, and dirty tricks. Many lost lives for an idea that they could declare their equality, their emancipation from societal rules they had no control of, but at all moments the did something they looked into the void and formed new pathways. Each generation might've at times thought the previous less prepared, less informed, less articulated, less able but each gave the preceding something...potential. We're a fortunate generation we've inherited the wealth of a history of struggles, of tactics of reforms, of failures and with that comes the potential to create new realities. Will it succeed? Its never certain but we march on...

Anonymous

No, they are a very diverse group. While some of them are idiots, others are morons, self-righteous assholes, hippies, radicals, Communists, mentally ill, and all manner of other delusional derangements.

Oh, wait a minute -- I guess you're right. All those other terms also describe idiots, don't they?

Yeah, what bunch of idiots!

Anonymous

No, they are a very diverse group. While some of them are idiots, others are morons, self-righteous assholes, hippies, radicals, Communists, mentally ill, and all manner of other delusional derangements.

Oh, wait a minute -- I guess you're right. All those other terms also describe idiots, don't they?

Yeah, what bunch of idiots!

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