Author: Slingshot Collective

In Still Life With Woodpecker, Tom Robbins asked, “How do you make love stay?” This question is pertinent, in my view, as the occupy movement considers “where do we go from here?” Love, in the macrocosmic, can be thought of as a kind of vitality, an explosion of life energy, a sensation of unity, a bigness. As a movement in the most literal sense, moving/revolving, we are faced with the significant task of maintaining (expanding) the love/energy on whose waves the Revolution, as imagination, merely surfs.

In Jerry Rubin’s 1970 revolutionary manifesto Do It!, he suggests that an anti (anti-war, anti-poverty, anti-anything) movement can not sustain itself energetically, in effect it can only run on negative energy for brief spurts, so that eventually (in combination with ignoring, minimizing, demonizing and/or disrupting) the Powers That Be can wait out any anti movement with nervous confidence that it will, given a little time, go home.

Positive energy, on the other hand, is the Revolution’s sustainable energy. To stand in opposition to something is to be fractionalized and is by it’s nature a passive act. It is to define ourselves in opposition to a dominant, thereby contextualizing the relationship in a subordinator/subordinated paradigm and allowing the subordinator to define the terms, to draw the boundaries of the conversation. Reaction is passive-action as action is positive-action. Do we allow our actions to be guided by the actions of others or do we allow our actions to be guided by our values, our experiences, our suspicions and our imaginations?

Every passive-action functions as a mirror, reflecting the suggestion of positive-action. The anti-hunger activist who decides to stop spending their time petitioning signatures for a ballot measure to “fight hunger” and instead volunteers to help build community gardens in impoverished neighborhoods and educate people about the mechanics of growing/raising their own food source, instantly becomes pro-urban gardening and positively effects the production of food in his/her community. To dismiss this as a purely semantic argument is, I believe, to seriously underestimate the power of language in the harnessing/invoking of energy. Passive-action is abstract (holding a sign to end homelessness) while positive-action is tangible (squatting a vacant house). Passive-action waits for a revolution, Positive-action is in perpetual revolution, and performs revolutionary acts.

What we learn from the occupy movement is not that a group of people can hold signs in a park for longer than the establishment could have imagined, but that a group of people can form a voluntary association and establish imaginative models of community governance. That a group of people can come together in a circle without the help of the State or would be authorities and figure out how to provide themselves with healthcare, food, clothing, counseling, libraries and music festivals. We learn, above all, that a community is made of people and that the strength of a community is relative to the strength of it’s people. The Occupation has provided an example of radical models of social organization and our neighborhoods provide the opportunity to imaginatively explore those models through positive-action. To borrow a term from Chris Carlson, the revolution is nowtopian, and it is our charge to create the infrastructure of the future right here in our neighborhoods, to fashion a viable, alternate way of existing together as a people right now, and, by doing so, to Make Love Stay.

It is an illusion of the technocratic worldview that only through changing the macro can we change the micro. That only through petitioning the goodwill of the leaders of the free world can we effect change in our communities. It seems much more plausible that only through changing the micro can we change the macro. A number of individuals make up a neighborhood just as a number of neighborhoods make up a city and a number of cities make up a geographical region and so on and so forth until we are finally, always, citizens of the earth in solidarity, victims (or not) of the same circumstance: birth, death, and the space in between. The primary unit is one, the universe extends from there. The Revolution on the inside, through positive-action, manifests itself on the outside. And so we are left with you as the revolution and me as the revolution. We are challenged to become the Revolution we seek, to tear open our hearts, to strip away the cultural clothing that hangs on us like ill fitting, damp, and worn out rags. We are challenged to mix it up in the dirt a little (or a lot), to question everything and believe nothing until further evidence, and to add our odd fitting pieces to the puzzle, never completed.

February 19 • 11 – 5

L.A Zine Fest – The Last Bookstore Zine wemakezines.ning.com

February 20 • Noon

Occupy 4 Prisoners – National Day Of Action – San Quentin, CA occupy4prisoners.org

February 25 • 1-6

NYC Feminist Zinefest- Brooklyn Commons wemakezines.ning.com

February 26 • 4 pm

Slingshot new volunteer meeting / article brainstorm – 3124 Shattuck, Berkeley

February 29 • 6pm

Funeral for capitalism – dancing on the grave to follow – Oscar Grant Plaza (14th & Broadway) in Oakland

February 29

Leap day action night – everywhere –www.leapdayaction.org

February 29

Shut down the Corporations national day of action vs. ALEC (see page 13) shutdownthecorporations.org

March 8

International Women’s Day www.internationalwomensday.com

March 10 • 3 pm

Article deadline for Slingshot #110 – email us something! slingshot@tao.ca

March 11 – 6-9 pm

Celebrate Slingshot’s 24th Birthday party – free food, music – 3124 Shattuck Ave. Berkeley

March 30 • 6 pm

SF Critical Mass bike ride – Justin Herman Plaza in SF and worldwide

March 31 – April 1

Bay Area Anarchist Book Fair County Fair Building Lincoln Way & 9th Ave., SF sfbookfair.wordpress.com

April 1

Berkeley Anarchist Students of Theory and Research & Development (BASTARD) conference – sfbay-anarchists.org

April 10 – 12 • 10 am

The Art of Social Justice – Tivoli Student Union – Auraria Campus, Denver CO.

April 14 •

NYC Anarchist book fair – Judson Memorial Church, Manhattan.

April 15

Steal Something from Work Day stealfromwork.crimethinc.com

May 1

Global General Strike on May Day / International Worker’s Day

May 5 • 10 am

Protest the American Psychiatric Association – Counter-Celebration. March. Protest mindfreedom.org/campaign/boycott-normal/occupy-apa

May 19-20 • 10 – 5

Montreal anarchist book fair info@anarchistbookfair.ca

June 9-10 • noon – 10

SF Free Folk Festival. Presidio Middle School 450 30th Ave www.sffolkfest.org

June 16-24

Wild Roots Feral Futures – San Juan Mountains, Southwest Colorado feralfutures.blogspot.com

July 25-28

Shut down ALEC – Salt Lake City (see pg 2)

August 17 -19

Twin Oaks Intentional Community & Cooperatives Conference communitiesconference.org

Slingshot is an independent radical newspaper published since 1988.

We’ve pulled together this extra edition devoted to the occupy movement super quickly, running on the surge of enthusiasm pouring out of Occupy Oakland and related developments around the world. We had just finished our last (regularly scheduled) issue when Occupy Oakland started and a lot of us jumped right into the thick of it. We’re all having so many intense experiences, meeting so many new people, having so many amazing conversations and taking on so many new projects that life has felt overwhelming, like a blur, electric. It is humbling to be part of something so big, so complex, so fast-moving.

We’re having a blast mixed with moments of frustration, exhaustion and confusion. Is it too cheesy to say how much we love the people we’ve marched with, camped with, been in the general assembly with, and who’ve helped us through this? There is an amazing community developing on many levels and none of us could do all this without so many others holding down their parts.

Trying to create a coherent paper in just a couple of weeks has been challenging, and we know we’ve missed a lot of important topics and articles that we hope we can explore in our next issue — just 2 months away. We’ve each written a few notes here to share topics that didn’t make it into an article, but express something about what is going on. Join us and write something about your reality in all this!

• • •

Occupy has gifted us the public space to reveal parts of ourselves that had previously remained behind closed doors. Facets of our personalities that had been unable to emerge under the values of isolation and competition are beginning to blossom. Slowly but surely, we are developing post-capitalist identities. And once those identities have bloomed, there will be no going back: we will continue to demand the space we need to express them.

And, while some people at Occupy would like us to keep this process hidden–from the media and from each other–we will not let them stamp out the spark. We will not let the fear of looking bad on television derail us from experiencing the inward revolution: the process of decolonizing our behaviors, hearts, and minds. We don’t care if it doesn’t look pretty to outsiders. Let the media spin whatever they want about us: the pundits and talk show hosts are nothing more than yapping corporate lapdogs. Let them yap. Their power over us has ended: the media cannot spin our lives. Our experience belongs to us.

• • •

In all of the conversations about property damage and police violence, it is difficult sometimes to acknowledge that violent acts also happen within our communities. Chaotic moments of violence are part of the society we live in. The state and its financial patrons will always seize selectively on incidents of interpersonal violence as evidence that strong, authoritarian measures are needed to keep people safe. This is not true: at best these measures only push the misery around. More often, they exacerbate it. Emotional responses to trauma caused by institutional violence habitually lead to acts of interpersonal violence. The more our communities are composed of strong connections between people who are resilient and respect their own needs, the more manageable and less likely incidents of interpersonal violence become.

• • •

Events that linger fresh in our minds:

Sept 17: Occupy Wall Street camp begins

Sept 24: Video of unprovoked police pepper spraying of women goes viral

Oct 4: First Oakland General Assembly (GA) to discuss starting Occupy Oakland

Oct 11: Occupy Oakland encampment begins

Oct 25: Police raid OO in morning. That evening, 1000 people protest and are tear gassed; Iraq vet Scott Olsen’s scull fractured

Oct 26: OO camp re-established, 1600 person general assembly votes to call general strike

Nov 2: Oakland General Strike: thousands skip work and shut down the Port of Oakland

Nov 9: Occupy Cal begins at UC Berkeley. Those in tents are severely beaten and arrested

Nov 14: Police raid OO camp for 2nd time

Nov 15: UC Davis students occupy Mrak Hall. Occupy Cal strike and Open University. OO marches from Oakland to Berkley to join students

Nov 16: UC regents cancel meeting due to protests. Many march on their corporate sponsors and pitch a tent in the Bank of America in SF

Nov 17: Occupy Cal is raided at 3:30 am; Occupy UCLA begins

Nov 18: Demanding that the military cede power, tens of thousands of Egyptians flood Tahir Square; dozens are killed. UC Davis students are pepper-sprayed in the face while peacefully sitting in their quad in the middle of the day; 2 are hospitalized

Nov 21: The Davis General Assembly votes for a statewide strike on 11/28 to coincide with the Regent’s next budget vote. UCD faculty vote to support a resolution demanding that the UCD police be disbanded

• • •

Some of the best chants we heard:

“The system, has got to die, Hella, hella occupy!”

“Keep the world in our hands, let’s refuse to make demands!”

“We’re here, we’re queer, burn the fucking banks!”

On Halloween: “I don’t want a Fun Size, I want a King Size!”

To cops: “You’re Sexy! You’re cute! Take off your riot suit!”

“MOVE banks, get out the way. Get out the way banks, get out the way!

• • •

The General Strike Poster: The night after Occupy Oakland decided to call the general strike (Thursday), a few Slingshot folks discussed making a 17 X 23 inch poster to promote it — in the spirit of autonomous action. Our printing press needed the artwork by 2 pm Friday to get the poster printed by 4:30 Friday afternoon. I sent an email seeking artists but as the clock ticked Friday, it looked like it wasn’t going to happen. At noon, Lucis called to say he could do art. We dashed down to the Long Haul and he drew art while I laid out words. I biked to the printer at 2 and by 5 pm, 2,000 posters got delivered to the Occupation. They ended up all over Oakland.

• • •

Occupy Scene Report by hurricane

I lost my housing a month in a half ago, my solution: Travel! Occupy everything! Here’s the best to the worst to the swag along the west coast.

Vancouver BC: Canadians know what’s up. Period. Tons of DIY “Nobody For President 2012” signs. Makes no sense, because I’m in fucking Canada.

Grass Valley: About 400 folks occupying. Nice variety of people who wouldn’t normally mix. Epic scenery.

Fresno: Fres-yes! Perfect weather, lots of actions organized with local labor unions. Right after I left camp, occupy was raided by the police. Damn!

Downtown LA: Across the street from Occupy is the county courthouse. Same location of the Michael Jackson murder trial. The mainstream media was there to film the outraged protesters. The strangest action I’ve ever participated in.

Overall I noticed a sense of unwarranted self-importance from the finance committees, everywhere! Just a suggestion to Occupy Camps universally: Money changes everything, money gives the illusion of power, that power needs to be destroyed. Or else money will destroy this movement. Check your privilege and get to know your fellow wingnuts at camp.

• • •

As we are putting the paper together, a series of raids that appear to have been federally coordinated forcibly are evicting Occupy encampments across the country. UC Davis cops are dousing sitting students with pepper spray. In Egypt, the military is murdering protesters in Tahir Square. Just a reminder: don’t believe them when they tell you they’ll manage your revolution.

• • •

Slingshot is always looking for new writers, artists, editors, photographers, translators, distributors, etc. to make this paper. If you send
something written, please be open to editing.

Editorial decisions are made by the Slingshot Collective but not all the articles reflect the opinions of all collective members. We welcome debate and constructive criticism.

Thanks to the people who made this: Babs, Bird, Claire, Darin, DA, Enola, Glenn, Ibrahim, Jesse, Joey, Josh, Kathryn, Kermit, Lew, Lucis, Micah, Samara, Sara, Sean, Suzanne, Solomon, Stella, Stephanie and all the authors and artists.

Slingshot New Volunteer Meeting

Volunteers interested in getting involved with Slingshot can come to the new volunteer meeting on Sunday, December 11, 2011 at 4 p.m. at the Long Haul in Berkeley (see below.)

Article Deadline & Next Issue Date

Submit your articles for issue 109 by January 14, 2012 at 3 p.m.

Volume 1, Number 108, Circulation 20,000

Printed November 25, 2011

Slingshot Newspaper

A publication of Long Haul

Office: 3124 Shattuck Avenue

Mailing: PO Box 3051, Berkeley, CA 94703

Phone (510) 540-0751

slingshot@tao.ca • slingshot.tao.ca

Circulation Information / free distribution project

Subscriptions to Slingshot are free to prisoners, low income and anyone in the USA with a Slingshot Organizer, or $1 per issue or back issue. International is $3 per issue. Outside the Bay Area we’ll mail you a free stack of copies if you give them out for free. Note: they come in 1 lb. packages – you can order 1 package or up to 6 (6 lbs) for free – let us know how many you want. In the Bay Area, pick up bulk copies for distro at Long Haul or Bound Together Books in SF.

Slingshot Back Issues

We’ll send you a random assortment of back issues of Slingshot for the cost of postage: Send $3 for 2 lbs. Free if you’re an infoshop or library. Also, our full-color, 200 page coffee table book about People’s Park is free or by sliding scale donation: send $1 – $25 for a copy. PO Box 3051 Berkeley, CA 94703.

Usually coupled with discussions of the fact that the Occupy Movement is largely leaderless, is the subject of demands. Although each Occupy camp is autonomous, and thus different, most of the camps have no demands. The fact is that with an absence of demands, movements effectively reject the logic of representation – a logic that at once disempowers the many and allows for a force to refocus, or manage, the energy of a movement.

Without demands, there is no room made for concessions with power. Instead of focusing on a new round of electoral politics (recall this, vote for that), people must act. This is where the power of no demands comes from. A reclaimation of space is certainly powerful. That such reclaimations have been generalized throughout the world is incredible. But we cannot think that this is an ends in itself. The Occupy camps should continue while looking to expand their function as a space for organizing actions.

The occupation as a political act is not new – its use by those in power is exemplary in the history of colonialism. To look at its counter, the use of occupations by the disenfranchised, gives us a number of historical examples to remember and learn from. Perhaps one of the more enigmatic occupation movements was the one that transpired in France in May of 1968. Following the occupation of the Sorbonne (a university in Paris), workers began taking over the factories they worked in. The generalized tactic was used with the goal of autonomous control – occupation provided the means of effectively reclaiming a place of work or enterprise, such as a factory, school, or farm. May ’68 was a failure because of the efforts of union bureaucrats who ultimately wanted workers to return to work as it was before the strike. Ultimately most returned to the normal situation of day-to-day alienation under capitalism.

The Landless Workers’ Movement in Brazil is another example of a political upheaval based around the reclaimation of space. The movement came out of a social climate in which 3% of the country’s population owned two-thirds of all arable land. It was, in a sense, an occupation movement concerned both with the equitable distribution of land and sustainable agricultural practices (which is to say they actively rejected the efforts of companies, like Monsanto, who had a vested interest in the proliferation of GMO crops). Their slogan was “occupy, resist, and produce.”

So here is the challenge: what if we were to use the occupation to takeover our workplaces and schools in order to reclaim and run it with our own goals in mind? Without bosses, without administrative classes, without politicians, our aim could be redirected towards collective empowerment on a very real level. What is clear is that those unwelcome “managers of society” pursue interests that are counter to the needs of the people. Why not takeover the tools of our own disillusionment? A factory that is an instrument of oppression in one hand could be liberatory in another after being repurposed by the workers themselves. Let us strike, forever.

At the point when the takeover is widespread, no longer limited to the public squares that formed the base of this movement, the worker as a subjectivity will soon dissolve. The delineations between employment and leisure (concepts best left to the realm of consumer capitalism) mean less and less as reclaimed enterprises suddenly fulfill a tangible role in our everyday lives. Such a movement “could then have proclaimed the expropriation of all capital, including state capital; announced that all the country’s means of production were henceforth collective property of the proletariat organized in direct democracy; and appealed directly (by finally seizing the some of the means of telecommunication, for example) to the workers of the entire world to support this revolution” (Situationist International Anthology, Knabb).

What is clear is that we must be proactive if we are to be effective. The Occupy Movement is at a fork in the road. Will we continue on the path of dead-ends and media fetishizations, or will we come together to reclaim and build a new world? Occupations of public space are certainly valuable. But we must now look to occupy workplaces and schools so that we can manage them in ways that speak to our needs and desires. This is not only possible, it is an essential move in a struggle for economic and social justice.

The proposal to the General Assembly calling for the Oakland general strike stated “All banks and corporations should close down for the day or we will march on them.” However, except for shutting down the Port in the evening, only a handful of banks were blockaded and shut down during the strike. Most of the thousands of people in downtown that day stayed close to the occupation except for a few short marches. As a result, while a few blocks were closed to traffic and totally disrupted, it generally seemed like a normal day only a few blocks from the occupation on November 2.

If there is another general strike, the participants will have to determine whether it makes sense to try harder at disrupting business as usual as much as our numbers might allow, or whether a mostly symbolic day of action is enough.

Following are suggestions on how to disrupt business as usual in an urban area:

In a protest, you request change from those in power. Direct action is when people ignore those in power and build new forms of social interaction on their own — cooperatively organizing housing, farms, workplaces, etc. Militant disruption falls between traditional protest and direct action — the common situation in which people reject the authority and legitimacy of those in power, yet don’t have sufficient social resources to just build a world outside the rulers’ control. Disruption seeks to prevent business as usual and resist social control, thereby weakening the rulers and opening possibilities for new social structures.

Tactics that evade the police are almost always the most disruptive. All too often, you see would-be militants getting caught up in the cop game by focusing on confronting the police — pushing against a police line, etc. This is a mistake. When you confront the police, it usually results in order, not disorder, because the police know precisely where you are. They can re-route traffic around you, maintaining productivity and business as usual everywhere else except on your tiny corner until they can amass enough forces to surround and bust your ass.

If you see a police line, it is usually best to go the other way or melt away and regroup elsewhere. This keeps police guessing and confused while you’re free to cause chaos. The police are organized centrally and use radios which can only communicate between two locations at a time. If we can keep mobile in several different groups, their hierarchical structure has a much harder time keeping track of it all. If you’re lucky, you and a group of friends can get together, run through a business district, push some dumpsters into the middle of traffic, and generally run amok. If you keep moving, you’ll never see any police because by the time they arrive at a particular location, you’ll be gone. Sometimes you can watch cop helicopters to figure out locations cops are concerned with.

The police hope we’ll engage them on their level – it is up to us to figure out realms in which we hold the advantage:

• Maintaining traffic flow is a weak link for the system – causing traffic chaos is very disruptive to the system. The day the Iraq war started, a few hundred people were able to shut down traffic in downtown San Francisco with flying traffic blockades. As few as 20 people materialized on the street a safe distance from police, joined hands to block traffic, and stood in the street for a few moments. When police approached, the line melted away. These short interruptions in flow caused a ripple effect blocks away and gridlock for miles.

• Disruption and disorder can take many forms. Sometimes, creating beautiful or humorous expressions of the world we seek to build — music, art, gardens, public sex, bicycle swarms, etc. — can be disruptive while avoiding the system’s “us and them” paradigm. A disruptive march on leap day action night in 2004 invaded bank lobbies but threw only glitter and popcorn. Another tied doors shut with a pretty red bow.

What to Bring

For mobility, you want to travel as light as possible and avoid bulky signs, props or costumes. Leave those to the protesters. Carry water in a squirt bottle for drinking and to treat chemical weapons. Use a fanny pack or bag that doesn’t get in the way in case you have to run. Not everyone has to adopt the black bloc uniform – it can be like wearing a huge target on your ass. You may be able to get away with more if you’re dressed so you don’t stand out.

If weather permits, water repellent clothes protect skin from pepper spray. Layers are good because they provide padding and can be used for disguise/escape. In hot weather, dress comfortably — avoiding heatstroke and dehydration so you can run is way more important than protection from chemical weapons, padding or a disguise. Wear good running shoes. Don’t wear contact lenses, loose jewelry, loose long hair or anything the cops can grab, or any oil based skin product that may make chemical weapons exposure worse. Carefully consider if you want to bring drugs, weapons, burglary tools or anything that would get you in extra trouble if arrested.

Affinity Groups/Decision Making

Affinity groups are small action cells — usually 4-8 people — who share attitudes about tactics and who organize themselves for effectiveness and protection. The best affinity groups are people with pre-existing relationships who know and trust each other intimately. Decisions are (hopefully) made democratically, face-to-face and quickly on the spot. In a chaotic situation, affinity groups make decision making (as opposed to just reacting) possible, while watching each others’ backs. Affinity groups with experience and a vision can take the initiative and start something when the larger crowd is standing around wondering what to do next.

Some affinity groups use a code word which any member can yell if they have an idea for what the group should do next. Upon hearing the word, others in the group yell it too, until the whole group gathers up and the person who called the huddle makes a proposal. The group can then agree to the proposal, or quickly discuss alternatives, and then move. A code word can also allow regrouping when the group gets separated in a chaotic situation. Sometimes someone in the group holds a visible sign or flag to help keep the group together. It is a good idea for everyone in the group to discuss their limits before an action. During the action, taking time to check in about how everyone is feeling will keep the group unified. Don’t forget to eat and take pee breaks — a lot easier when someone can act as lookout while you duck behind a dumpster.

Chemical weapons

The police use these weapons to scare and disperse crowds. While these weapons can be painful and dangerous to people with medical issues, most people can endure tear gas and pepper spray just fine, thank you. Don’t believe rumors about use of these weapons — these rumors frequently circulate and are often false.

If you see tear gas, stay calm and focused and avoid it as much as possible. If there is wind, the gas is likely to blow away quickly. Some people are more chemically sensitive than others, so everyone has to decide individually what their body can accept, no questions asked. Throwing gas canisters back is heroic and looks great, but be careful of hitting other demonstrators or burning your hand. The canister might be fairly cool right after it goes off but heats up quickly — a heavy glove helps. Pepper spray is nasty — the best advice is to avoid getting hit by it. If you get hit, don’t spread it around or rub your eyes. You may need help from a medic to clean up. If you get hit with tear gas or pepper spray, avoid contact with others (including pets) until you wash off and change clothes.

My personal experience of the Nov. 2nd general strike in Oakland was that it was a blast. The event was beautiful and exhilarating — even the colors in the sky were perfect! More importantly, as the first attempt at a general strike in a U.S. city in sixty-six years, I hope Nov. 2nd in Oakland can stir a long-suffering and silent wage-earning class in the United States to see the collective power we can have when we use a mass-scale workplace walkout as a political weapon against the owners of America. This is a gift to our future from the Occupy movement as a whole, and in particular a tribute to the outward-directed and working class focus of Occupy Oakland. Today in the Occupy movement, Oakland leads the way.

The ever-more-alienated internet is now saturated with exhaustively detailed first-person accounts of this event and I don’t need to add to these. I’m not out to revel in a self-indulgent buzz. The San Francisco Bay Area anti-authoritarian protest-scenester-scene is at its most limber and energetic when patting itself on its back, reveling in imaginary victories, celebrating its manifest failings as glorious victories, and proclaiming the limits of its current endeavors as the highest possible point that future efforts can aspire to.

The word ‘strike’ means “to hit with force’ (Webster’s dictionary). Except for a few large windows of some wholly appropriate businesses, nothing got hit with force in Oakland on Nov. 2, 2011. It may be years until we have some accurate figure of the number of people who actually walked off the job in Oakland on Nov. 2nd, but my guess is that it was something less than 15% of the city’s wage earners. Below 10% might be even more likely.

A “strike” that the boss gives you permission to take part in isn’t really a strike. On Nov. 2nd in Oakland this meant:

1. Employees represented by the California Nurses Association making use of their sick days,

2. Oakland City government employees were given permission from the city to “participate,”

3. And the occasionally leftist-jargon-slinging port worker’s union, the ILWU, needed to have masses of protesters block the gates to port facilities, and with this in place got an official mediator to approve of one of the port worker’s shifts being cancelled. Other ILWU members went to work during an earlier shift on the day of the general strike.

A strike has to have some forcible, breaking-all-the-normal-rules, disruptive and destructive qualities to be a true act of social or class rebellion. It has to damage the economic interest of the bosses, and this didn’t happen with the strike on Nov. 2nd. Among other negative indicators here, I haven’t seen the bourgeois media offering any public estimate of money lost to businesses from the strike. You can generally count on this after similar episodes in all those other countries where the working class has been more assertive of its interests than we’ve been. An actual one-day general strike would deliver an economic rabbit-punch to the bourgeoisie, and if they had taken a real hit this way we would have heard them acting martyred about it afterward.

Still, this doesn’t mean that Nov. 2nd was a failure. The majority of working people in the contemporary U.S. are many generations distant from any directly lived experience of collective workplace-based confrontation with capital, let alone a large-scale, city-wide event taking the form of a mass workplace walkout. From the car culture to hip-hop, we’ve been subjected to an ever-more sophisticated hundred-year-long psychological operations campaign of consumer society that tells us that we are all free and atomized individuals. And of course in Uncle-Sam-Land everybody is “middle class,” only some have a lot more money than others. All this has preempted the emergence of a collective class awareness, even in a rudimentary defensive sense, let alone a widespread, conscious, irreconcilable, collective hostility to our exploiters and to the political and ideological mechanisms of their power. Fortunately, as the often tedious and dogmatic ultra-left Marxist Amadeo Bordiga noted, action tends to precede consciousness, and the simple fact that a general strike of sorts was attempted in Oakland in November 2011 may generate some awareness of the potential that an action like this can have among a wider U.S. audience.

Before the strike, the call for a city-wide walkout was not publicized in an even minimally adequate way. On the Saturday night before the Wednesday strike we had a march to the Oakland City Jail with a thousand people chanting anti-cop slogans. Two nights later I walked the length of Telegraph Avenue, one of Oakland’s main streets, from the center of downtown Oakland to the Berkeley border, a distance of several miles, and saw a total of less than two dozen handbills slapped up in a desultory manner, and these mostly along a short stretch in the semi-hipsterized/gentrified Temescal District. My guess is that this paucity of propaganda applied equally to other main thoroughfares as well. So, what’s that mean? A thousand people showed up for an entertaining, lightweight, low calorie episode of anti-pig posturing, but not one fiftieth of that number had the authentic dedication and commitment to form crews with paint brushes and buckets of wallpaper paste, or with tape guns, and cover the length of the main streets of Oakland with posters and flyers, with visible public propaganda calling attention to an action that had to strike most mainstream contemporary U.S. working people as a wholly unusual, exotic and foreign idea.

The main routes of the bus system AC Transit, major bus stops and BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) could have and should have been used as a platform for the message in the form of mass postering and flyering. This did not happen in the build-up to the general strike. In the days leading up to Nov. 2nd, rank and file union members and low-level union bureaucrats came to meetings of the Occupy Oakland General Assembly. Many of these folks sincerely tried to get their unions involved in the build-up to the general strike. Some union locals generated pious statements devoid of any threat of action. Participation of unions in an effort like this is like asking the U.S. Department of Labor to organize a general strike. Unions are capitalist business organizations — they cannot be transformed into something other than this by combative members, or compelled to act as anything other than transmission belts from capital to labor that help adjust labor to the requirements of capital. Eighty years of repressive labor legislation have also tied capital’s labor brokerages at the ankles, wrists and elbows to capitalist legality and to the capitalist state. The fact that unions are sociologically made up of working class people doesn’t make them an expression of the class interests of their members, much less of the working class as a whole. The U.S. Army is for the most part made up of individuals who are sociologically working class in origin, but that doesn’t make the Army a “working class organization.”

Organizers at Occupy Oakland were probably and quite understandably overwhelmed by the task they had set for themselves in calling for a general strike, and they only had about six days to prepare for it and get the word out. Trying to get unions involved may have seemed like some kind of short cut into the world of the mainstream working class. It wasn’t. And it won’t be next time, either.

Today almost ninety percent of U.S. wage slaves aren’t members of labor unions. Among those who are union members, those who have any strong opinions at all about unions are as likely to have negative perceptions of “their” union as positive ones, and they may see “their” union as a wholly bureaucratic entity that steals dues from their pay and is either indifferent or actively hostile to their needs.

Any real future general strike has to do an end-run around unions. All future efforts of this so
rt will have to draw many energetic individuals to get the word out in a big way, using direct action methods, appealing to immediate needs, and do this with an uncompromising anti-capitalist message. This is no small task, and unions will do nothing to help us here.

The admirable and exemplary targeting by Black Bloc youth of windows of a store of the despicable market-libertarian-owned Whole Foods Market chain during the 2 p.m. “anti-capitalist” march points the way to where the Occupy movement must now go; into a much deeper involvement with the everyday life struggles of the mainstream wage-slave class in capitalist America, from a public, highly visible, aggressive anti-market/anti-money/anti-wage labor perspective. And for all its viscerally satisfying qualities, bricks through the windows of deserving capitalist enterprises aren’t going to draw in the large numbers of hard-pressed mainstream working people who have so much to gain from mobilization in a new mass social movement. The bricks can come later. A few broken windows won’t scare off the work-within-the-system types, either. Liberals of the MoveOn.org stripe and leftists including or akin to the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition are the deadly enemies of any liberatory potential that the Occupy movement has, but these counter-subversives have to be politically combatted and defeated in an open debate where the only weapon will be the weapon of language.

For all its admirable, spontaneous, anti-hierarchical and tremendously positive aspects, the Occupy movement in the United States is still just not enough of a mainstream working people’s movement. The problems with the Oakland General Strike prove that this is absolutely the direction that the Occupy movement must go in now.

MAINSTREAM WORKING PEOPLE, INCLUDING THE UNEMPLOYED, AND ENLISTED PEOPLE IN THE ARMED FORCES ARE THE PEOPLE WHO ARE GOING TO MATTER MOST

Amy doesn’t tend to wear clothes. When I first moved into Bird House, a co-op on the Berkeley-Oakland border, I was a bit startled whenever I encountered Amy’s curvy, bare, tattooed body passing me in the hall, washing dishes, sitting down for dinner–completely exposed, no shame, not a quiver of fear.

It took me a few weeks to get used to my new housemate, and to realize that, for Amy, being naked isn’t about sex or being sexualized. She simply isn’t ashamed of her body so she doesn’t hide it.

So, a few weeks ago, Amy was volunteering at the Occupy San Francisco kitchen, ladling baked beans onto the plates of hungry occupiers. As she did this, she was wearing pants, but had left her bra and shirt back in the tent.

As folks moved through the line, some grinned and blushed at Amy’s bare breasts. Others hardly seemed to notice the toplessness and thanked Amy for preparing the food. As Amy does at home, she smiled at everyone who moved through the line, warmly telling them, “I love you.”

And then a woman in a shoulder-padded blazer pushed through the line and confronted Amy.

“And what exactly are you trying to prove?” the woman spat.

“…nothing,” came Amy’s soothing, gender-neutral voice.

The woman’s eyes darted from Amy’s bare breasts to her Mother Mary tattoo to her unconventional haircut (half of Amy’s head is buzzed, while the other half has chin-length locks).

A tight frown crossed the woman’s face and she said, “I hope you realize you’re mis-representing the whole movement with your childish behavior!”

This type of internal-policing has broken out in Occupy encampments nationwide.

Unable to grapple with the idea of a true autonomous zone, self-conscious occupiers obsessively try to force everyone else to fit their preconceived notions of what the movement should look like. These people mistake representation for reality: they think that the news blurbs, photos, and videos are the movement. It is as if these people have internalized the media–news-cameras gazing out at them from within, driving them to perform Occupy instead of living their experience of it.

But Occupy is not a photo opp.

At encampments from New York to San Francisco to everywhere, people from all backgrounds are revealing themselves to each other, talking out their differences, agreeing to disagree, and healing from all these many years of suffering under an oppressive system that values symbols (grades, money, status, etc) more than the quality of our shared experience.

“Well,” the woman continued to yelp at Amy, “I hope you realize you’ve made yourself into a sex object to every male here!”

“Now that just ain’t true!” interjected a middle-aged man who was sitting nearby.

He stood up and calmly explained that the Occupy SF encampment is a place of love and community, and that seeing Amy’s breasts wasn’t going to make anyone stop loving her. “It’s Amy’s body. And if she don’t want to cover it, she don’t have to.”

Throughout our media-saturated lives, we are conditioned to believe that our naked bodies are a symbol. A symbol of sex. A symbol of shame. A symbol of liberation, even. But our bodies don’t need to represent anything. Symbols need only penetrate as deep as we let them. To Amy, Amy’s body represents nothing more than it is: a body. And by letting go of the symbols society has attempted to attach to our flesh, we can begin the slow process of occupying ourselves.

The shoulder-padded woman shook her head in disgust and walked away.

Amy thanked the man for his words.

He smiled. “I meant them.”

We are in it for the long haul, within this movement that has finally emerged. Folks in the US are waking up from such an extraordinary trance. We are so beautiful, discovering more of our strength daily, bracing for the ups and downs. There have to be ups to be downs that are necessary in order for us to learn. And we must find ways to sustain what we are doing because this is going to take us some time. So I share my thoughts in this moment and am excited to hear yours too!

The movement that we are creating is on a scale unlike what any of us have engaged in before. We are learning how to care for our neediest comrades and work together across huge racial, class and cultural divides. We’re creating a new way of engaging as a society, realigning our values and priorities, and getting more folks to come along. We can’t be in a hurry. The work isn’t just for the end results — the process and the time we take matter. We need to give ourselves the space to learn from our mistakes.

Even in the cases in which we think we cannot stand something one of us is saying, we need to see if we’re ultimately seeking the same things. We may be on the same team but playing different positions. The new reality we are creating will include ways of thinking, organizing and living that we currently think are impossible. Tactical differences that may appear to divide us may really be aligned. There can be space to respectfully disagree on particular points while still appreciating the efforts and results of people going at things a different way. None of us have to do it all or know it all or have all of the answers ourselves. If you can’t understand something or you really hate it, it may help to give others a chance to explain its value.

One of the best things about the general assembly is that we try to listen to each other even when we want to boo and hiss. Sometimes new folks boo and hiss and then our facilitators remind us that we are practicing hearing the opinions of people that think differently. We can still think differently and feel aggravated inside as we build our capacity to not react and shut others out.

If we cannot find ways to talk to people a few steps to our left or right within a general assembly or an occupation, who are we fooling when we think we can change the whole muthafucker? Stretching to make a just world isn’t supposed to be easy, or pretty, or without broken things. And yet we can’t actually break everything, because some of it (our relationships, the earth, young folks…) are worth our care and protection.

Don’t forget the amazing things you were likely doing before the occupy phenomenon. They were important, the glimpses of hope that were adding together to exponentiate this that we are in now. While we are reinventing things from scratch, it is important that we continue to breathe life into the things that hold our lessons and wisdom.

Oh my — do we need to take breaks. And remember: from each according to ability, to each according to need — that anarchist thing. We don’t all have the same amount of time, energy, strength, money, skin privilege. We can be super aware of the power we have given the ways we are able to step forward, the responsibilities we have. We are actually worth caring for.

Every time I engage in a GA or at the camp, or on the marches, or just about town, I find something surprising, inspiring, mortifying, infuriating. Big emotions. These are events most of us secretly never believed we would see. This isn’t just about external politics or power and economics — minds and hearts are growing and changing and we’re on a powerful adventure. I hold myself gently as all this emerges, knowing that thankfully I don’t have to do it all. I am not alone. I get even more excited when I consider the young people growing up right now that think this is normal, that will be politicized from this moment on. What seeds are we sowing my comrades? Such beautiful seeds.

December 20 – 31

Occupy the Holidays! Bring discussions about class, inequality and whether capitalism is working out to your family celebration everywhere. A decentralized, spontaneous action . . .

December 30 • 6 pm

Critical Mass bike ride – last Friday of each month in San Francisco and worldwide. In SF @ Justin Herman plaza

January 7-8

North American Anarchist Studies Network conference – San Juan, Puerto Rico naasn.org

January 14 • 3 pm

Article deadline for issue #109 Long Haul 3124 Shattuck Ave. Berkeley

February 21 • 3 pm

Mardi Gras – Berkeley parade at People’s Park

February 29

Leap day action night – do something with an extra day, at night – leapdayaction.org

March 8

International Women’s Day

May 1

International Worker’s Day – can we finally join the rest of the world and celebrate right in 2012?

May 5

Protest American Psychiatric Association national meeting – Philadelphia www.mindfreedom.org

May 15-22

Resist the NATO and G8 summits in Chicago

July 25-28

Shut down ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council) in Salt Lake City

Note: there are too many Occupy related calendar events happening in villages and cities worldwide to even possibly list or comprehend. Check your local occupation. For links to occupations everywhere, check occupytogether.org

In any case, no regrets