Ronnie cocked his head slightly as he crouched down beneath his desk. He was listening for boot heels clicking on the floor. He wasn't sure, exactly, what had compelled him to stay after class was dismissed. He was curious, he guessed, but the first announcement over the PA, designed clearly to help him, had scared him instead.
"This is the first warning. Any student found on the premises after the third warning is subject to arrest. We will not hesitate to use force. This is the first warning."
He had heard stories, of course, about students who had stayed in the school building after hours. Mark Y whose spine had been broken by a hall monitor's tackle. Linda K who had been ripped apart by guard dogs. Bobby R who had just...disappeared. But those were rumors, urban legends the kids told each other at sleep overs. Ronnie was 8, and he didn't believe in those stories now, any more than in Santa Claus or Jesus.
The second warning had been the same as the first. It should have shooed him out of the building, but he just froze, crawled under the desk.
At the third warning, the metal window shutters had gone down and the studded iron classroom door had swung shut and locked into place, just like when class started, but this time a small green light, rather than the usual small blue light, appeared at the handle and started blinking. Ronnie didn't know what was going to happen, but as the vault-handle started to spin, slowly, he lay on his side, curled up, and began to cry.
It's not dystopia, it's Texas!
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Friday, December 30, 2011
Top Ten Anti-Historical Characteristics of Top Ten Lists
10. What were your top ten seven minute walks of the year? Top ten mornings you woke up stressed about the day ahead? Top ten minor injuries that no one really knows about but acutely bothered you for a week or two?
9. Top ten awkward eye contacts with a stranger on the subway? Top ten mundane conversations with a coworker that you really wish you had skipped? Top ten moments of borderline suicidal depression?
8. The top ten list is a stopper in time, an anti-historical historical marker that produces what Debord referred to as psuedocyclical time.
7. "Pseudocyclical time is in fact merely a consumable disguise of the production system’s commodified time. It exhibits the latter’s essential traits: homogenous exchangeable units and suppression of any qualitative dimension. But as a by-product of commodified time whose function is to promote and maintain the backwardness of everyday life, it is loaded with pseudovalorizations and manifests itself as a succession of pseudoindividualized moments."
6. The top ten list is a key (anti)intellectual breaking of historical continuity by making the arbitrary calender year appear as a somehow relevant or meaningful aggregation of time and experience.
5. The top ten list encourages a particular form of acceptable nostalgia for past consumption, a nostalgia that reoccurs conspicuously simultaneous with the celebratory consumption period of the Holidays. The top ten list teams up with the always "anti-climatic" New Years Eve party and the ironically-indulged-in-but-designed-to-fail New Year's resolution to make the repetition of the same psuedo-experiences year after year after year seem historically differentiated.
4. The top ten list is often used to discuss cultural consumption: consumed, the film/book/blog post/song has become not a continuing art object which moves with us into the present and colors our experience, but rather becomes a singular (and hierarchichally rankable) past experience whose value becomes primarily its ability to appear on a top ten list for the year.
3. The top ten list functions to produce an anxiety about what cultural products or experiences were not had: this anxiety leads to, of course, consumption (maybe I should go see those movies after all!) and self-recrimination ("God I barely saw any great movies at all this year! I'm such a phony.")
2. The psuedo-rationality of the number ten (we operate in a base ten mathematics, after all) and the idea that a list of ten things can include all of the meaningful information helps to reproduce hierarchical and exclusive notions of the value of experience. Resistance to the idea of the top ten, then, can only think in terms of expanding the list (ten isn't enough! We need 20! 30! One hundred!), turning any grappling for meaning into a squabble over how many paper cuts are needed in order to kill the year.
1. The top ten list, then, functions to destroy any actual historical value of the experiences had over the 365 days by making those experiences 'history' in two senses: in the colloquial sense that gangsters use to mean dead, inert; and in the grade-school sense: something that happened, is over and is only of interest as a date or part of a pattern of progress. The top ten list takes events, products and experiences and makes them points on a time line in order to end any possibility of their continuing to exist meaningfully beyond January 1st.
0. The top ten list's relevance and production ends at the precise moment of its reenactment as the year-ending countdown. Dick Clark will ruin your shit. Till next year, fuckers!
9. Top ten awkward eye contacts with a stranger on the subway? Top ten mundane conversations with a coworker that you really wish you had skipped? Top ten moments of borderline suicidal depression?
8. The top ten list is a stopper in time, an anti-historical historical marker that produces what Debord referred to as psuedocyclical time.
7. "Pseudocyclical time is in fact merely a consumable disguise of the production system’s commodified time. It exhibits the latter’s essential traits: homogenous exchangeable units and suppression of any qualitative dimension. But as a by-product of commodified time whose function is to promote and maintain the backwardness of everyday life, it is loaded with pseudovalorizations and manifests itself as a succession of pseudoindividualized moments."
6. The top ten list is a key (anti)intellectual breaking of historical continuity by making the arbitrary calender year appear as a somehow relevant or meaningful aggregation of time and experience.
5. The top ten list encourages a particular form of acceptable nostalgia for past consumption, a nostalgia that reoccurs conspicuously simultaneous with the celebratory consumption period of the Holidays. The top ten list teams up with the always "anti-climatic" New Years Eve party and the ironically-indulged-in-but-designed-to-fail New Year's resolution to make the repetition of the same psuedo-experiences year after year after year seem historically differentiated.
4. The top ten list is often used to discuss cultural consumption: consumed, the film/book/blog post/song has become not a continuing art object which moves with us into the present and colors our experience, but rather becomes a singular (and hierarchichally rankable) past experience whose value becomes primarily its ability to appear on a top ten list for the year.
3. The top ten list functions to produce an anxiety about what cultural products or experiences were not had: this anxiety leads to, of course, consumption (maybe I should go see those movies after all!) and self-recrimination ("God I barely saw any great movies at all this year! I'm such a phony.")
2. The psuedo-rationality of the number ten (we operate in a base ten mathematics, after all) and the idea that a list of ten things can include all of the meaningful information helps to reproduce hierarchical and exclusive notions of the value of experience. Resistance to the idea of the top ten, then, can only think in terms of expanding the list (ten isn't enough! We need 20! 30! One hundred!), turning any grappling for meaning into a squabble over how many paper cuts are needed in order to kill the year.
1. The top ten list, then, functions to destroy any actual historical value of the experiences had over the 365 days by making those experiences 'history' in two senses: in the colloquial sense that gangsters use to mean dead, inert; and in the grade-school sense: something that happened, is over and is only of interest as a date or part of a pattern of progress. The top ten list takes events, products and experiences and makes them points on a time line in order to end any possibility of their continuing to exist meaningfully beyond January 1st.
0. The top ten list's relevance and production ends at the precise moment of its reenactment as the year-ending countdown. Dick Clark will ruin your shit. Till next year, fuckers!
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Hater of Two Evils
Dear Sir(s?),
In a change that will effect literally ones of people, I am going to be attempting to update this thing with a more controlled regularity. As a result, the need to produce will potentially involve more traditional topics as I ramp up. Like the following, about elections! That's how it's done around here baby.
With infinite hate,
WHO was Here
The right wing hates Obama so much that, despite continuously ascendent conservative policy for 30 years, Obama-hate produced a spontaneous on-the-ground right wing protest movement, which succeeded in two years in bringing the Republican party even further to the fringey right.
Mitt Romney is like a stack of instant pancakes without any butter or syrup: you're hungry, it's breakfast time, you'll eat it, but your mouth is gonna be incredibly dry and you're really gonna have to force a swallow.
But you know what? You'll still eat it. You might not love it, but it's just hard to hate a stack of pancakes. Ambivalent? Sure. But hate?
No one, and I mean no one, is coming to the polls in 2012 for people they like. Even Michelle misses the house in Chicago and is only sorta half-heartedly smiling for those cameras on November 6.
The clown-car Chinese fire drill that has been the Republican nomination process sure makes it look like Obama could win this one on an anti-colonialist Kenyan-nationalism ticket, but remember, things are getting worse in America.
If ows generalizes and begins to look more like London, if unemployment continues to go up, if foreclosure chaos and student debt and health care costs continue apace, and they will, dear reader, saving some sort of catastrophic bubonic plague that wipes out everyone in the line for presidency up to Bernie Sanders, and that's ignoring the possibility of EU collapse, well, things aren't gonna look so good for Obama.
And honestly, is the Democratic base gonna freak out to stop Romney from getting elected? Sure, he's a milquetoast millionaire Mormon whose leadership qualifications are CEO-dom, but the dude ran Massachusetts for fucks sake. Romney-care precedes Obama-care. Hella liberal cred.
This dude is a boring, centrist piece of shit, which is to say, a wildly misanthropic neoliberal douchebag, which is to say, every president we've had since most of the people who ran Obama's campaign on the ground were born.
But you know what? Republicans hate Obama way more then Dems hate Romney. And when it comes time to step into that voting booth and pull that lever, only the most deluded liberals and 'moderate' republicans are going in there voting for their man.
And all those kids? Wild in the streets.
Hate will run the show this November, and this year hate runs red.
In a change that will effect literally ones of people, I am going to be attempting to update this thing with a more controlled regularity. As a result, the need to produce will potentially involve more traditional topics as I ramp up. Like the following, about elections! That's how it's done around here baby.
With infinite hate,
WHO was Here
The right wing hates Obama so much that, despite continuously ascendent conservative policy for 30 years, Obama-hate produced a spontaneous on-the-ground right wing protest movement, which succeeded in two years in bringing the Republican party even further to the fringey right.
Mitt Romney is like a stack of instant pancakes without any butter or syrup: you're hungry, it's breakfast time, you'll eat it, but your mouth is gonna be incredibly dry and you're really gonna have to force a swallow.
But you know what? You'll still eat it. You might not love it, but it's just hard to hate a stack of pancakes. Ambivalent? Sure. But hate?
No one, and I mean no one, is coming to the polls in 2012 for people they like. Even Michelle misses the house in Chicago and is only sorta half-heartedly smiling for those cameras on November 6.
The clown-car Chinese fire drill that has been the Republican nomination process sure makes it look like Obama could win this one on an anti-colonialist Kenyan-nationalism ticket, but remember, things are getting worse in America.
If ows generalizes and begins to look more like London, if unemployment continues to go up, if foreclosure chaos and student debt and health care costs continue apace, and they will, dear reader, saving some sort of catastrophic bubonic plague that wipes out everyone in the line for presidency up to Bernie Sanders, and that's ignoring the possibility of EU collapse, well, things aren't gonna look so good for Obama.
And honestly, is the Democratic base gonna freak out to stop Romney from getting elected? Sure, he's a milquetoast millionaire Mormon whose leadership qualifications are CEO-dom, but the dude ran Massachusetts for fucks sake. Romney-care precedes Obama-care. Hella liberal cred.
This dude is a boring, centrist piece of shit, which is to say, a wildly misanthropic neoliberal douchebag, which is to say, every president we've had since most of the people who ran Obama's campaign on the ground were born.
But you know what? Republicans hate Obama way more then Dems hate Romney. And when it comes time to step into that voting booth and pull that lever, only the most deluded liberals and 'moderate' republicans are going in there voting for their man.
And all those kids? Wild in the streets.
Hate will run the show this November, and this year hate runs red.
Saturday, November 26, 2011
Anonymous Letter From Cairo
[Anonymous letter from a comrade in Cairo. Crucial. Please share and spread widely.]
Dear friends,
I am since 4 days in the middle of shooting and nerve gas, here in Bab El Louq square, 5 minutes behind Tahrir square, close to the Ministry of Interior. Right out of my window, I can see the fire of the guns and the gas cartouches and the motor cycles that take the injured out of the battle bringing them to the field hospitals, one after the other... hour by hour, day and night...There is shooting and this strange nerve gas all the time and at around 10:30 p.m. yesterday night the shebab were attacked for one hour by 30 unknown uniformed special forces in black with different live ammunition and gas, no street lightning at all, the scene only lit up by the fire of the guns, the dim light of the moon and some strange phosphoric light at the end of the street leading to the Ministry of Interior. After an hour, they reconquered Bab El Louq square where I am living with nothing than stones and unbreakable determination and solidarity. Into the face of the shooting and the attacks onto their bare bodies, the shebab were shouting into the night "hurriya" (freedom) and "madaniya" (civil state)... not "ilsamiya" (islamic)... In parallel, Tahrir square full with a millioniya (a million-man demonstration) was attacked at least twice during the night with a nerve gas which you cannot see or smell. I saw with my own eyes how people collapsed suddenly around me. As far as I understand, it's not clear yet from where the gas was coming - from an airplane, the metro air condition below the square or thrown from above the roofs of the surrounding buildings. It's war against the population, it's incredible, it's a crime. Me myself am full of gas and mentally and motorically slightly but continuously disoriented, respiration tract burning. I am deeply shocked. Whoever needs to understand: the Egyptian shebab will never give up, none of us will give up any more. This is about holding on to your remaining or may be first becoming a human being again.
Below a video of the Egyptian campaign "Occupy", a call to all Egyptians and everyone who understands that this is not about Egypt alone, that this is about the fight of all of us for freedom and for a future for everyone in this world to substitute the logic of accumulation and theft and the oppression needed to enforce it, a call to join the open-ended demonstration and sit-in in front of the Egyptian embassies all over the world starting at 3 p.m. next Friday in your countries. The video is in Arabic and English, the middle part is English.
Try to follow the news on the non-mainstream media (facebook and blogs) and the news on Al Jazeera, for those who speak Arabic preferably the Arabic version.
Also for those who speak Arabic below the link to one of the most important TV programs in Egypt after the revolution, the sequal that was broadcasted before yesterday. In it, the hosting journalist Youssri Foda gives space to three of our injured comrades to speak as well as to the well known journalist Bilal Fadl. The dentist Ahmed Harara, the blogger and activist Malek Mustapha and the photographer Ahmed Abdel Fattah of the Egyptian daily al-masry al-youm all lost their eyes due to deliberate shooting from close distances with what we call khartouche ammunition, a projectile with between 13 and 16 small bullets of different sizes, made of either hardened plastic or metal. Fired at close distances it can be lethal and if targeted at eyes, the eyes are destroyed. Ahmed Harara is a close friend of mine. He lost his right eye during the first revolution on 28 January 2011 and 4 days ago he lost his left eye. He will be forever blind but he went back into Tahrir square, right after his operation in the hospital. In the TV program you will see the young officer who fired the bullet and you will hear the voice of a shooting officer proudly reporting to his superior that he managed to get another eye...it was a premeditated campaign... targeting the eyes of the activists. But their response is to go back to Tahrir square, the square of liberation, because a shot eye is better than a broken eye as Ahmed Harara says in the program. They are not blind and they put everyone in front of the necessity to take position, no more lies, no more evasion. This is expressed very bluntly by the journalist Bilal Fadl in the program. The program also gives a good concise context of the events during the past month leading up to this second Egyptian revolution
part I with Ahmed Harrara and Bilal Fadl
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
Part II with Malek Mustapha and Ahmed Abdel Fattah
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
Warm greetings to all of you,
Anon
[reblogged from http://socialismandorbarbarism.blogspot.com/]
Dear friends,
I am since 4 days in the middle of shooting and nerve gas, here in Bab El Louq square, 5 minutes behind Tahrir square, close to the Ministry of Interior. Right out of my window, I can see the fire of the guns and the gas cartouches and the motor cycles that take the injured out of the battle bringing them to the field hospitals, one after the other... hour by hour, day and night...There is shooting and this strange nerve gas all the time and at around 10:30 p.m. yesterday night the shebab were attacked for one hour by 30 unknown uniformed special forces in black with different live ammunition and gas, no street lightning at all, the scene only lit up by the fire of the guns, the dim light of the moon and some strange phosphoric light at the end of the street leading to the Ministry of Interior. After an hour, they reconquered Bab El Louq square where I am living with nothing than stones and unbreakable determination and solidarity. Into the face of the shooting and the attacks onto their bare bodies, the shebab were shouting into the night "hurriya" (freedom) and "madaniya" (civil state)... not "ilsamiya" (islamic)... In parallel, Tahrir square full with a millioniya (a million-man demonstration) was attacked at least twice during the night with a nerve gas which you cannot see or smell. I saw with my own eyes how people collapsed suddenly around me. As far as I understand, it's not clear yet from where the gas was coming - from an airplane, the metro air condition below the square or thrown from above the roofs of the surrounding buildings. It's war against the population, it's incredible, it's a crime. Me myself am full of gas and mentally and motorically slightly but continuously disoriented, respiration tract burning. I am deeply shocked. Whoever needs to understand: the Egyptian shebab will never give up, none of us will give up any more. This is about holding on to your remaining or may be first becoming a human being again.
Below a video of the Egyptian campaign "Occupy", a call to all Egyptians and everyone who understands that this is not about Egypt alone, that this is about the fight of all of us for freedom and for a future for everyone in this world to substitute the logic of accumulation and theft and the oppression needed to enforce it, a call to join the open-ended demonstration and sit-in in front of the Egyptian embassies all over the world starting at 3 p.m. next Friday in your countries. The video is in Arabic and English, the middle part is English.
Try to follow the news on the non-mainstream media (facebook and blogs) and the news on Al Jazeera, for those who speak Arabic preferably the Arabic version.
Also for those who speak Arabic below the link to one of the most important TV programs in Egypt after the revolution, the sequal that was broadcasted before yesterday. In it, the hosting journalist Youssri Foda gives space to three of our injured comrades to speak as well as to the well known journalist Bilal Fadl. The dentist Ahmed Harara, the blogger and activist Malek Mustapha and the photographer Ahmed Abdel Fattah of the Egyptian daily al-masry al-youm all lost their eyes due to deliberate shooting from close distances with what we call khartouche ammunition, a projectile with between 13 and 16 small bullets of different sizes, made of either hardened plastic or metal. Fired at close distances it can be lethal and if targeted at eyes, the eyes are destroyed. Ahmed Harara is a close friend of mine. He lost his right eye during the first revolution on 28 January 2011 and 4 days ago he lost his left eye. He will be forever blind but he went back into Tahrir square, right after his operation in the hospital. In the TV program you will see the young officer who fired the bullet and you will hear the voice of a shooting officer proudly reporting to his superior that he managed to get another eye...it was a premeditated campaign... targeting the eyes of the activists. But their response is to go back to Tahrir square, the square of liberation, because a shot eye is better than a broken eye as Ahmed Harara says in the program. They are not blind and they put everyone in front of the necessity to take position, no more lies, no more evasion. This is expressed very bluntly by the journalist Bilal Fadl in the program. The program also gives a good concise context of the events during the past month leading up to this second Egyptian revolution
part I with Ahmed Harrara and Bilal Fadl
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
Part II with Malek Mustapha and Ahmed Abdel Fattahhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?
Warm greetings to all of you,Anon
[reblogged from http://socialismandorbarbarism.blogspot.com/]
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Analogies!
“I really feel horrible for what happened on Friday...If you think you don’t want to be students in a university like we had on Friday, I’m just telling you, I don’t want to be the chancellor of the university we had on Friday. Our university has to be better than it is, and it needs all of the community to come together to do that. We need to work together."
-UC Davis Chancellor Katehi, Refusing To Quit, Nov 2011
“We participated in things that were clearly wrong and have reason to regret, and we apologize." [Goldman Sachs is committed] “to working constructively with regulators and policymakers to address systemic weaknesses and gaps that may have contributed to the financial crisis.”
-Lloyd Blankfein, Refusing to Lower Goldman Sachs Bonuses, Nov 2009
-UC Davis Chancellor Katehi, Refusing To Quit, Nov 2011
“We participated in things that were clearly wrong and have reason to regret, and we apologize." [Goldman Sachs is committed] “to working constructively with regulators and policymakers to address systemic weaknesses and gaps that may have contributed to the financial crisis.”
-Lloyd Blankfein, Refusing to Lower Goldman Sachs Bonuses, Nov 2009
Sunday, November 13, 2011
The First Shot of Occupied Cinema
The naked dialectics (riot police bisected by the graffitti that they can't see: "This is ours"), the earnest statement of legitimacy ("is this ok?"), the malicious systemic anonymity of police violence (You can see the rubber bullet's chem trail for fucks sake!).
The long, shaky single-shot that feels genuine but also visually purposed, well prepared and placed, the almost perfect conclusion of the shot's implicit (but mounting, because we've all seen the title of the video, and let's not pretend we didn't click through and don't know what the ending is gonna be) tension in the explosion of pain and the implosion of visual experience into empathetic anger and cursing.
The desire it creates to get out there and stop those fucking pigs.
I've been thinking a lot lately about what an Occupied Cinema would look like. I'm pretty sure this is the first we've seen of it.
Friday, October 21, 2011
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
To Jeremy Kessler, Cop Loving Sycophant and Classist Coward
Dear Jeremy,
I'm writing in response to your latest piece of drivel on Occupy Wall Street's relationship to the police, this time at LA Review of Books. I had hoped that Bernes, Clover, and McClanahan's completely excellent takedown of your bull shit meant we wouldn't have to hear from you for a while while you licked your wounds. Alas, we are not so lucky.
Your explanation of Washington Square Park reveals just how little you understand the relationship between protesters and the police. The protesters in the park (more like 1000, btw) were shown the spectacle of total force by police gathered at the North and South entrances. There were easily 300 cops, with horses, police buses, vans and cruisers massing around Washington Square Park from 11 pm onward. There was no media to film the arrests that were about to occur. The cops had their batons out. In other words, they were ready to beat the shit out of us and arrest us all. It was gonna be a massacre.
So what did protesters do? We made a decision. We took four snake marches out of the park, right past the piggies all in a row. The cops, prepared for a showdown in the park and wanting to evict us, let us march out, and then were stuck at the park, unable to catch up with our marches. We outmaneuvered them, and for an hour marchers took the streets of the Lower East Side, Chinatown and the Financial District with barely any police presence.
This is what resisting arrest means. Not waiting for the cops to come at you. Not 'resisting police violence' as you put it, but flanking it, escaping the possibility of it, outwitting the police and leaving them alone with nothing but their batons in their hands.
As for your disdainful, classist assumption that the people aren't ready for more serious action, and they just want to march on the sidewalk and hold hands with cops and sing about the 99%, well, who were all those hundreds on those marches? Why do actions like the Brooklyn Bridge or Tony-Baloney's pepper spray marathon increase numbers and coverage, while huge numbered but peaceful, sidewalk bound, sit-in style actions like the march to 1 Police Plaza do not?
Most notably absent (from both articles, actually) is the role of police violence in the lives of minorities, the poor, and women. The 'middle-class' that would be alienated by anti-police action is much smaller numerically and much less diverse than the group of people who see the cops (correctly) as a force of oppression and routinized daily violence in their lives.
There has been a lot of hand-wringing over the absence of genuine proletariat at OWS, and much of this has been ascribed to the lack of a coherent message. But that's goofy. One of the major reasons, if not the major reason, you don't have the poor and minorities at Zuccotti Park in high numbers is because it is completely ringed by police, because people dont stop cops from coming into the square and arresting protesters, because it is, in fact, an unsafe place if you feel even remotely unsafe around the police. Which, if you have lived the kind of life experienced by the vast majority of this city, you do.
Cops, the only people in society who walk around with a utility belt of lethal weapons, produce violence. They make marches unsafe: so far no one has been hurt because they marched too fast into a wall. It is the police who make OWS unsafe, not the actions of the people, and to pretend otherwise is to collaborate.
That's how it works, Jeremy. The cops are not just the boys in blue. There's a little cop inside all of us, and we have to kill him. In your case, he seems to be at the controls. You might want to do something about that. If not, please spare us your belabored sincerity that amounts to little more than apologizing to the powers that be for protesting.
Love,
WHO Was Here
I'm writing in response to your latest piece of drivel on Occupy Wall Street's relationship to the police, this time at LA Review of Books. I had hoped that Bernes, Clover, and McClanahan's completely excellent takedown of your bull shit meant we wouldn't have to hear from you for a while while you licked your wounds. Alas, we are not so lucky.
Your explanation of Washington Square Park reveals just how little you understand the relationship between protesters and the police. The protesters in the park (more like 1000, btw) were shown the spectacle of total force by police gathered at the North and South entrances. There were easily 300 cops, with horses, police buses, vans and cruisers massing around Washington Square Park from 11 pm onward. There was no media to film the arrests that were about to occur. The cops had their batons out. In other words, they were ready to beat the shit out of us and arrest us all. It was gonna be a massacre.
So what did protesters do? We made a decision. We took four snake marches out of the park, right past the piggies all in a row. The cops, prepared for a showdown in the park and wanting to evict us, let us march out, and then were stuck at the park, unable to catch up with our marches. We outmaneuvered them, and for an hour marchers took the streets of the Lower East Side, Chinatown and the Financial District with barely any police presence.
This is what resisting arrest means. Not waiting for the cops to come at you. Not 'resisting police violence' as you put it, but flanking it, escaping the possibility of it, outwitting the police and leaving them alone with nothing but their batons in their hands.
As for your disdainful, classist assumption that the people aren't ready for more serious action, and they just want to march on the sidewalk and hold hands with cops and sing about the 99%, well, who were all those hundreds on those marches? Why do actions like the Brooklyn Bridge or Tony-Baloney's pepper spray marathon increase numbers and coverage, while huge numbered but peaceful, sidewalk bound, sit-in style actions like the march to 1 Police Plaza do not?
Most notably absent (from both articles, actually) is the role of police violence in the lives of minorities, the poor, and women. The 'middle-class' that would be alienated by anti-police action is much smaller numerically and much less diverse than the group of people who see the cops (correctly) as a force of oppression and routinized daily violence in their lives.
There has been a lot of hand-wringing over the absence of genuine proletariat at OWS, and much of this has been ascribed to the lack of a coherent message. But that's goofy. One of the major reasons, if not the major reason, you don't have the poor and minorities at Zuccotti Park in high numbers is because it is completely ringed by police, because people dont stop cops from coming into the square and arresting protesters, because it is, in fact, an unsafe place if you feel even remotely unsafe around the police. Which, if you have lived the kind of life experienced by the vast majority of this city, you do.
Cops, the only people in society who walk around with a utility belt of lethal weapons, produce violence. They make marches unsafe: so far no one has been hurt because they marched too fast into a wall. It is the police who make OWS unsafe, not the actions of the people, and to pretend otherwise is to collaborate.
That's how it works, Jeremy. The cops are not just the boys in blue. There's a little cop inside all of us, and we have to kill him. In your case, he seems to be at the controls. You might want to do something about that. If not, please spare us your belabored sincerity that amounts to little more than apologizing to the powers that be for protesting.
Love,
WHO Was Here
Thursday, October 6, 2011
Things are Getting Very Interesting Indeed
Wednesday, October 5th. 20,000 people gather for a Union rally in support of Occupy Wall Street, fed by a steady stream of students walking out of their colleges and high schools, who took the streets on their own marches to Foley Square. Permitted, the 20,000 were kept off the streets by police barricades, and shuffled slowly down sidewalks crammed with people towards Zuccotti Park. The numbers were incredible, but the march was boring, kind of wack.
A two hour general assembly.
Two snake marches take off from Zuccotti headed into the financial district. One stopped at Wall St. and Broadway, about 400 people milling around Broadway, sitting briefly, yelling at Wall St, then standing up again, working up the courage to try and take it. Someone tried to Mic Check (clearly now a tool of de-escalation, control) but they were drowned out by someone starting a countdown. "10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. CHARGE!!!!" People surged forward, and knocked down one barricade. They were immediately met with a cloud of pepper spray. A white shirt, as fat as all of them are, started swinging his baton in a 180° arc, slamming anyone around him, including two reporters who got hit in the gut.
Police helicopters buzzed constantly, the chop chop chop echoing through the canyons of the financial district, making it feel like a war zone.
A pair of kids in goggles clambered on top of a police car and jumped up and down.
A line of about 10 police on vespas drove into a crowd of 70 protesters. Rather than flee, the protesters held their ground, and the police panicked, stepping off their bikes. Protesters began knocking over the bikes, kicking them, fucking up their shit.
Five breakaway marches, six breakaway marches, lines of protesters snaked nervously through the financial district in every direction. I peeled out of one, waited at a corner for friends, only to find another coming from the other direction.
The people's mic is failing in Zuccotti, so people set up projectors displaying 30 foot tall messages on the walls of Men's Warehouse. "Great job guys! These marches look great!"
A cop is caught on camera saying "my little nightstick is gonna get a workout tonight."
The cops beat a man with nightsticks so badly that major hematomas form on his forehead and cheek. As he's being lead into a cop car, he cant focus his eyes.
A group of kids sprint through the streets, followed half a block behind by wheezing fat cops.
The last march, heading back to Zuccotti up Broadway, is about 50 protesters and 60 police.
Back at Zuccotti, the night is relatively peaceful. People eat food, and snuggle up against the cold.
Something is happening in the Financial District, something more than just a General Assembly based sit-in calling itself an occupation. You should be there.
A two hour general assembly.
Two snake marches take off from Zuccotti headed into the financial district. One stopped at Wall St. and Broadway, about 400 people milling around Broadway, sitting briefly, yelling at Wall St, then standing up again, working up the courage to try and take it. Someone tried to Mic Check (clearly now a tool of de-escalation, control) but they were drowned out by someone starting a countdown. "10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. CHARGE!!!!" People surged forward, and knocked down one barricade. They were immediately met with a cloud of pepper spray. A white shirt, as fat as all of them are, started swinging his baton in a 180° arc, slamming anyone around him, including two reporters who got hit in the gut.
Police helicopters buzzed constantly, the chop chop chop echoing through the canyons of the financial district, making it feel like a war zone.
A pair of kids in goggles clambered on top of a police car and jumped up and down.
A line of about 10 police on vespas drove into a crowd of 70 protesters. Rather than flee, the protesters held their ground, and the police panicked, stepping off their bikes. Protesters began knocking over the bikes, kicking them, fucking up their shit.
Five breakaway marches, six breakaway marches, lines of protesters snaked nervously through the financial district in every direction. I peeled out of one, waited at a corner for friends, only to find another coming from the other direction.
The people's mic is failing in Zuccotti, so people set up projectors displaying 30 foot tall messages on the walls of Men's Warehouse. "Great job guys! These marches look great!"
A cop is caught on camera saying "my little nightstick is gonna get a workout tonight."
The cops beat a man with nightsticks so badly that major hematomas form on his forehead and cheek. As he's being lead into a cop car, he cant focus his eyes.
A group of kids sprint through the streets, followed half a block behind by wheezing fat cops.
The last march, heading back to Zuccotti up Broadway, is about 50 protesters and 60 police.
Back at Zuccotti, the night is relatively peaceful. People eat food, and snuggle up against the cold.
Something is happening in the Financial District, something more than just a General Assembly based sit-in calling itself an occupation. You should be there.
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
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