Dohiyi Mir

Drown The City Streets And Country Roads

We must try to radicalize the American people as so many of us have been radicalized--not by pushing them up against the wall, but by helping them to regain the sense of power over their destiny that should be their birthright.

 - The New Democrat, 29 August, 1970

Since #OWS is growing more powerful, and the powerful are flailing about with various degrees of violence in response, I guess it's inevitable that Kent State comes up in discussion.  A friend linked to this piece on FB yesterday, wherein Ann Coulter opines: It just took a few shootings at Kent State to shut that down for good.

Charles Pierce is right to be mad about the deadly implications in Coulter's comment, but he--understandably--missed an important myth contained therein.  As Allison Krause's younger sister, Laurel, wrote back in 2009 (emphasis mine):

To Allison, it was an obligation to show dissension to the government invading Cambodia. She made her decision, and we all know the outcome.
...
Allison’s death symbolizes the importance of our right to protest and speak our truths freely.
...
Looking back, did the Kent State protest and killings make a difference? Well, there was a huge response by Americans.

The Kent State shooting single-handedly created the only nationwide student strike with over 8 million students from high schools to universities speaking out and holding rallies afterwards.

Indeed, it turns out that violent repression often results in greater mobilization of the masses, and Kent State is a good example (emphasis again mine):

[T]he majority of Americans supported the Guard's actions at Kent State. Many parents viewed the shootings as the tragic lot of a generation weaned on permissiveness. This view directly contradicted student reaction and resulted in further division between generations. The country experienced its first national student strike, in which over one third of the Nation's campuses were involved. There were approximately one hundred strikes per day for the four days following the deaths, as universities throughout the nation were besieged by protesting students. One hundred thousand marched in Washington to protest the war and the killings at Kent. 

Jerry Rubin said afterward: It was the most significant day of all of our lives because in 48 hours more young people were radicalized, revolutionized and yippieized than in any single time in American history. 

What's more, in the wake of Kent and the Jackson State killings later that month, we saw "nearly a million marchers on both coasts in April, 1971; 12,000 activists performing civil disobedience in Washington in May; and 100,000 marching in 1972 against the mining of North Vietnam's harbors, and at the January, 1973, 'counter-inaugural' against the bombing of Hanoi."

Interestingly enough, Kent State happened in the midst of the first rumblings of student strikes, and the massacre appears to have galvanized the movement and became a rallying event as much as the Maine, Pearl Harbor or even 9/11 (emphasis mine once more):

The slight hope and deep frustration on which the Movement had been floating was transformed to pure despair and pure rage. There was nothing to talk about, only sides to be taken. After Nixon's speech announcing the invasion, scores of campuses had gone out on strike in a contagious competition. After Kent State, it was hundreds, and it was untenable for students opposed to the war to cooperate with the part of the System with which they had the most contact and the most control, their universities.

Not just for students but for their parents, who were part of the Silent Majority Nixon needed, Kent State was a stunning event. A gasp of recognition rippled through mainstream America: these were their kids being shot down! The madness of the war, if not the war itself, had finally come home. These "average Americans" could accept the use of state power to draft lower and middle-class kids...They could accept the unleashing of the raw power of the state against unruly and disdainful foreigners. They could even accept police killings of black activists...What they could not accept was the state turning on their own kind, and when parents of Kent State's dead went on television, bitterly denouncing the attack, the Silent Majority listened.
...
When I and two other strikers began leafleting in an advanced science class, the professor recovered from his astonishment at the sight of these hairy barbarians and politely asked us to wait a few minutes until class ended. We complied equally politely, but after Kent State, bands of raging strikers roamed the campus in search of offending classes, and Chicago went down for the count.
...
Now America's ruling elite worried less about how to win the war and more about how to avoid losing the country. The young were gone, the troops were unreliable, and unions were starting to break ranks with the hawkish AFL-CIO. America's house was becoming divided, and the owners' strongest instinct was to tone down the war as much as was needed to save their power at home.
...
By the fall of 1970, America's elite, unrepentant but pragmatic, had moved to a new consensus, in essence telling Nixon and congress to cut the necessary deal: the end of the war for the end of the Movement. Now the war was really over...The Movement dwindled and died from 1970 to 1973 as all US forces came home...After the US air and ground combat role ended with the signing of the 1973 peace accords, the Movement could only watch the slaughter from the sidelines. It had become a Sword of Damocles, as the SWP's Fred Halstead said, hanging over Nixon and then Ford should they try to increase aid or reintroduce US forces, but the sword stayed in its sheath.

Kent State didn't shut down protest.  It did scare folks, but it wasn't The Movement: it was the very people we were resisting who had a vested interest in the status quo.  When did The Movement fade away?  After they'd essentially won.

While the level of thuggery from our current regime hasn't quite reached Nixonian levels yet--eerie coordination between DHS and city police forces notwithstanding--it's still dangerous, disturbing, and yet entirely expected.  What's been most amazing to me is the continued use of various nonviolent tactics in the face of brutality.  It's also been gratifying that so many observers now understand how violent repression only strengthens #OWS.

Let's keep flooding the streets and public places.  We're winning...

ntodd

A Vision Softly Creeping

Even more powerful video from UC Davis:

From The Second Alarm:

A press conference, scheduled for *4:00pm* between the UC Davis Chancellor and police with local press on campus, did not end in an hour, as planned. Instead, a mass of Occupy Davis students and sympathizers mobilized outside, demanding to have their voice heard. After some initial confusion, UC Chancellor Linda Katehi refused to leave the building, attempting to give the media the impression that the students were somehow holding her hostage.

A group of highly organized students formed a large gap for the chancellor to leave. They chanted “we are peaceful” and “just walk home,” but nothing changed for several hours. Eventually student representatives convinced the chancellor to leave after telling their fellow students to sit down and lock arms (around 7:00pm).

Often when people think of nonviolent protest, they imagine lots of chanting and yelling and such.  Yetsilence (Method 52) should not be forgotten as an old, very strong shaming tactic:

Corporate silence has...been used as a method of expressing moral condemnation.  The silence may be a main method for expressing the attitude, or it may be an auxiliary method combined with another, for example a march or stay-at-home demonstration...

During the 1964 free speech controversy at the University of California in Berkeley, one night (about October 1) a crowd of students opposed to the free speech movement heckled and molested student demonstrators and threw eggs and lighted cigarette butts at them.  The demonstrators responded with simple silence, and after forty-five minutes of provocations the hecklers left.

Bravo to the UC Davis students who really seem to get what nonviolent action is all about.

ntodd

Repeating Myself

I said this elsewhere, but once more for good measure: I'm heartened by the incident at UC Davis. All regimes flail when confronted with real people power, and the point of OWS is to provoke a response, so this is an inevitable and probably necessary stage on the way to change. And the response by occupiers all over the US shows that folks understand how nonviolent, collective action works.

ntodd

#OccupyMoreThanAPetition

Goodness, I wrote this a couple years ago:

Do people really think that Congress would just do the right thing because we got off our asses one day last year and cast a ballot?  Do people really think that with monied lobbyists in Congress' face daily that somehow they'd magically give us unicorns and healthcare without any effort on our part?  Do people really think signing a petition online is going to demonstrate our passion and resolve on this issue?

Petitions are all well and good.  They're important first steps in getting your position on record and showing a bit of strength in numbers.  But they are still passive and should not be considered "action" by any stretch of the imagination.

Yet that's where we are in the online sphere.  A-list bloggers like to tell their readers to "light 'em up" by calling Congress' switchboard.  I often wonder how many people actually do that, but even if every commenter and lurker on the threads did, it wouldn't really do much.

Having been in Senator Reid's office when one of these "floods" was happening, I see what impact such things have.  Calls come in, staff thanks the people for calling and promise to pass along their comments, rinse, repeat.  When I asked staffers about the backend process they said, "oh, well, we make a note of the relative volume of positive and negative comments, and then summarize for the Senator."

In other words, they don't tell Reid that Valerie Pringle from Reno said pass healthcare, and Reid doesn't even feel the wrath of angry callers, the weight of how many bothered to dial, or anything.  The whole thing is ephemeral, and staffers indicated that it's not something that generally makes much of an impression.  Calling is a step up from e-mailing, a step below a physical letter, and many orders of magnitude down from the tangible impact of your body in front of your elected employee.

So this made me fall in love with the Rude One just a little bit:

The genius (yes, genius) of OWS is that it's not being done online. Honestly, who gives a damn how many people sign an internet petition? Or how many people have signed up for MoveOn.org's stream of email? The Rude Pundit has done both, but he felt as if he had done almost nothing for a cause because he had.

As the human microphone says, read the whole thing.  And remember, decisions are made by those who show up, not those who sign fucking petitions.

ntodd

#BackingDown

Speaking of #OWS, it's good to see Oakland is ostensibly backing off the police brutality thing.  It really shows the power of nonviolence we've seen so many other places, increasing chances of success.  And keep in mind that repression has a tendency to mobilize resistance and further increases likelihood of victory.  This movement scares a lot of the right people, and their weakness is showing in Oakland and all around the nation.

ntodd

#HowMany99percentersCanDanceOnTheHeadOfABull

I was perusing a bit of Will Bunch's "Kindle Single", October 1, 2011: The Battle of the Brooklyn Bridge (OMG, does being able to read on my smartphone mean I cannot complain about corporate greed?), and he mentioned the promo AdBusters ran in July that you see on the right.  My favorite culturejammers have been preaching nonviolent change for a long time, and actually initially proposed #OWS back in February:

The mass protests that have erupted in Cairo’s Midan Tahrir square, and are close to toppling Mubarak’s regime, were orchestrated by a handful of Internet savvy organizers known as the April 6 Youth Movement. For two years they planned, strategized, thought things through. Their first act surprised even themselves: in the wake of Tunisia, they called for a day of protest and 90,000 supporters showed up. It was this initial mass, backed by popular enthusiasm, that then propelled the uprising.

...

What would it take for the people of America to suddenly rise up and say “Enough!”?...If we want to spark a popular uprising in the West – like a million man march on Wall Street – then let’s get organized, let’s strategize, let’s think things through.

I admit to being feeling a little downtrodden at the time, having been screaming into the hurricane myself for ages to little avail, so I made an uncharacteristically cynical "bread and circuses" remark: just imagine if we had the folks who will make up record-setting [Super Bowl] attendance in Dallas hit the streets against corporate power.

Well, sometimes when you imagine such things, they can become reality, provided the necessary work is done.  A few days after the #OWS promo appeared, I wrote (still not thinking about September's potential):

[O]ne could say the Wisconsin protests failed, as state GOP passed their anti-working class laws.  But they did change the dynamic: what would've been an easy, silent stripping of rights was thrust into the sunshine, showing the entire nation what extremists are doing; a safe race for an incumbent GOP justice turned into a nailbiter against an obscure Democrat; Governor Walker's approval has tanked; the whole situation has fueled a major recall effort that could tip the balance of power in the state and could even change the national 2012 environment.  None of that would be true without people bringing their passion to Madison.

I will once again admit to some small amount of gratification that stuff I've advocated for years--while perhaps not exactly as some of my strategic rough drafts--is finally being brought to bear on a massive, national scale.  An even better feeling is a renewed sense of hope and energy as the People rediscover their collective power and have a real shot at effecting change, should we follow through and escalate.

There of course are still some folks out there who would rather philosophically quibble about exact methods and giant puppets and whatnot, but their nattering negativity is quickly being made irrelevent by reality on the ground.  Time to get off the sidelines and put some skin in the game--unlike the Super Bowl, democracy ain't a spectator sport.

ntodd

That's A Lot Of Focus Groups

Freep has coverage of today's #OWS in Burlington, Times Argus not surprisingly has nothing on what went on in Monty. But they did post an AP article that is all confused about how people could self-organize and not have any leaders.

It's clear that the elites have no idea how to classify or counter this.  Keep at it.

ntodd

Solidarity And The Mustard Seed

Couldn't find Sam's "Gandhi Is My Homeboy" t-shirt--had to settle for "Lil Rebel"--though mine was readily at hand, so the fam piled into the hybrid and took in some leaf peeping on the way to Mount Peculiar for an #OWS march and rally.

Trees at the Statehouse.


We got there early and had a little fun.


The Golden Dome.

More below the fold...

I do love the majesty of stone steps and pillars.


Then folks started pouring in.


Occupy!


That's the point: most people aren't against capitalism and enlightened self-interest, but corporate GREED.


Sorry, my inner Walker Evans burst out across the street from the Gov's office.


Sam showed no fear marching amongst the hippies.


A decent turnout for Monty.


Yeah, yeah, next we'll tell the 1% to be the change they wish to see.


Ethan Allen gave a rousing speech.


I admit that to me the call and response chant, pledge, whatever, was long and lacked energy, but people paid attention.


Sam ran.


And ran.


And ran.


And was chased.


And fell.


And got back up again.


And hippies had sex RIGHT OUT IN THE OPEN!


Did you SEE what they're doing?

Agitprop aside, the elites clearly see what we're doing, and fear it.  Remember that big things have small beginnings...

ntodd

Occupy Together Tomorrow & Today

Sunday, October 16, 2011, 12:30 PM, City Hall Park, Burlington, VT

http://www.meetup.com/occupytogether/Burlington-VT/402772/

And if you don't mind late notice, there's also an event in Monty today: Saturday, October 15 · 3:00pm - 5:00pm City Hall / Statehouse Montpelier, VT

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=132527380182887

If you can't get to NYC or Boston, show solidarity here at home. Let's keep #OWS rolling and show our resolve as things escalate. This is how big things start...

ntodd

For What It's Worth

A lot of revolutions begin with assemblies of protest or support:

Opposition to the policies or acts of an opponent, or support for certain policies, may be expressed by public assembly of a group of people at appropriate points, which are usually in some way related to the issue.  These may be, for example, government offices, courts, or prisons.  Or people may gather at some other place, such as around the statue of a hero or villain.  Depending on the particular laws and regulations and on the general degree of political conformity, such an assemblage may be either legal or illegal (if the latter, this method becomes combined with civil disobedience).

...

In Berlin in 1943...about six thousand non-Jewish wives of arrested Jews assembled outside the gate of the improvised detention center near the Gestapo headquarters demanding release of their husbands.  And in the entry for March 6, 1943, Goebbels wrote in his diary: "Unfortunately there have been a number of regrettable scenes at a Jewish home for the aged, where a large number of people gathered and in part even took sides with the Jews."

From there as the movement gathers steam, you can start escalating with a variety of other tactics including boycotts, withdrawing bank funds, and general strikes.  We've had a combination of these nonviolent methods brought to bear against repression just over the last year or so, and despite naysayers on the Left and Right, they've made a difference.  I wrote this past summer:

It seems that much of the change happens so stealthily and with little notice in spite, or because, of the "in your face" agitation that some folks complain "sets the movement back".  Activists push the bounds of what's acceptable and next thing you know, attitudes have changed and the unthinkable becomes political reality.  Activism is the gravity that bends the arc of history toward justice.

Similarly, as we don't generally think about gravitational forces' impact on our daily routines over the course of our lives, many people often aren't consciously aware of the benefits and successes of forces for change.  For example, it's easy to take for granted the 40 hour work week and other things labor won for us all, whether we belong to a union or not.

Thus one could say the Wisconsin protests failed, as state GOP passed their anti-working class laws.  But they did change the dynamic: what would've been an easy, silent stripping of rights was thrust into the sunshine, showing the entire nation what extremists are doing; a safe race for an incumbent GOP justice turned into a nailbiter against an obscure Democrat; Governor Walker's approval has tanked; the whole situation has fueled a major recall effort that could tip the balance of power in the state and could even change the national 2012 environment.  None of that would be true without people bringing their passion to Madison.

I think #OccupyWallStreet is a direct evolution from what we've seen in Wisconsin and elsewhere.  A truly organic, grassroots and distributed exercise of power that is growing as folks start to realize what's at stake and to see others get engaged.  And I still admit to a certain level of satisfaction that the stuff I've been doing and talking about is really coming to a head.  

I was hoping something like this might happen to push for universal healthcare:

• Weekly vigils in front of local Congressional and insurance offices.
• Coordinated national marches in state capitals and/or major cities.
• Weekend march in DC in conjunction with mass lobbying on the Hill.
• Boycotts (at least secondary targets like cable companies if not riskier focus on primary targets like ins cos).
• "Sick-in" strikes.
• Weekday marches in DC and around the nation, mass lobbying, and civil disobedience.

Sounds like the People have figured it out all on their own.  The way it should be.  Let's keep it up...

ntodd