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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 weekend of Nov.12-13 over 300 people occupied Hendy Woods State Park in southern Mendocino County, CA, one of the last remaining public access old growth redwood groves in the state. The park is slated to be closed as of July 2012 along with 70 other California state parks due to budget constraints. Occupy Hendy Woods! stated: “We demand a re-prioritization in state budgeting which favors long-term thinking over short-sighted panic-driven ‘solutions.’ We want a stable budget which favors people, land and public services over corporations and banks. We refuse to sit back and watch our park destroyed by neglect and misuse. Short term measures, driven by a budget crisis we the 99% did not create, will steal our natural heritage unless we do something about it. We will not let this park close. Let’s get creative, inspired and loud!” The local organizers want to network and help inspire others to occupy state parks and other wild places in need of protection, contact occupyhendywoods@gmail.com. An occupation of China Camp State Park in the Bay Area is being planned for January 2012, contact fuschiafringe@gmail.com.

As Slingshot goes to press, the hundreds of occupations inspired by Occupy Wall Street are struggling to transition tactically from tent cities to other actions that will help the amazing momentum behind the movement to continue and expand. Many occupations have been swept away by police raids and those that still exist face severe challenges from internal dysfunction and winter weather. But the political moment that made the occupy movement possible is not about a particular tactical expression. It can and will continue without tents. In fact, moving beyond tents may help the movement expand since the residential aspect of occupations have eaten up so much energy on camp logistics.

No matter what tactics gain support next, the movement has to stick with the key aspects that have made it so extraordinary:

• Re-defining what is possible. Now isn’t the time to retreat to what may seem “realistic” and limit our ideas or demands to areas defined as acceptable by the system. Two months ago, none of what we have already achieved seemed within reach. The occupy movement is strong when it stretches the world to create its own reality. It is hard to think or write about what to do next precisely because at long last we’re in uncharted waters and we don’t actually know what is possible. We need to prolong and expand that sense as much as possible and see where it goes. We need to fight anything that is going to end this moment, narrow it, or concede to reality. The most important battlefield is in each of our heads and our collective consciousness — moving beyond the voices from the system that try to limit our imagination.

• Provoking dialogue and discussion. In just a couple of months, the occupy movement has dramatically shifted the social landscape by opening long-overdue debate over wealth and power inequality and whether the capitalist system is working for the average person. One of the most powerful parts of our General Assemblies has been break-out groups where we talk to people we’ve never met before about what is wrong with the world, and what we can do to create something new. These discussions have spread throughout society and millions of people are talking about class, power and injustice in new ways and for the first time in our lives. This explosion of dialogue is powerful. We need to do whatever we can to keep the conversation going and broaden it. Start some conversations with strangers at the bus stop, your neighbors, your family, co-workers, etc. These discussions are extra exciting and fruitful right now.

• Keeping the focus on the big picture and avoid getting sucked into reformism or single issue politics. Almost since the beginning, media pundits have asked for a list of demands — “what do they want?” To the credit of the occupy movement, we’ve mostly avoided reducing our movement to a laundry list of reforms. The key insight of the movement has been that the political / economic system is bankrupt and is the problem. This isn’t just a protest so we don’t want any crumbs the system can give us. We have to resist any effort to hijack the movement by pursuing single issues or to serve particular political parties or union leaderships.

• Maintaining horizontal structures such as the General Assembly and avoiding the development of leaders or bureaucracies. All of the three points, above, will be easier if we maintain the radical decentralization of the movement. How can we build the sense of community and equality we feel at the General Assembly into the fabric of everyday life? The goal isn’t just about running a particular meeting or structure with participatory democracy. Ultimately, these structures change how people treat each other and how each of us approaches the world. Decentralized structures change our assumptions — are other people hostile competitors or our community?

All of us are empowered to expand decentralized spontaneous actions to more neighborhoods and new groups of people. It’s up to each of us to take initiative to make this happen — everything that has happened so far has happened without any central leadership deciding it should happen, but rather based on individuals and small groups taking action on their own. Right on!

In Oakland, a number of specific tactical ideas are under discussion as of press time. No doubt more will be dreamed up by the time you read this in towns and cities around the world. No doubt you can think of some other ideas and do them yourself:

• Kittens. Early on, a speaker at the Oakland General Assembly pointed out how all our energy was focused on the few blocks surrounding the occupation, and how much better it might be if we spread our energy around the city talking to folks, organizing and agitating. What would we look like if we were kittens — adorable but with claws — climbing all over the place and getting into everything, as opposed to the herd-like formation of traditional marches?

• Neighborhood assemblies. The Occupy Oakland general assembly often involves 400 or more people. For larger cities like this, it may make more sense to break up into smaller neighborhood assemblies or subcommittees of the citywide General Assembly. The Occupy Oakland General Assembly originally met every night, but after 2 weeks switched to four times a week. The nights without a citywide General Assembly could be a time to decentralize.

• Direct action and strikes. The initial occupations disrupted business as usual and brought people who were dissatisfied with the system together. Once we found each other, our sense of isolation and powerlessness vanished. In Oakland, the occupation has been the launching pad for numerous marches and actions against banks and other oppressive institutions. This can expand. While taking direct action, we need to figure out ways to target disruption against the rulers and minimize collateral damage where possible. The Oakland general strike is also a model for future wildcat (non-official) job actions that hit the 1% where it hurts — against one company or industry, or in one city, region, or nationally.

The system is fragile economically and politically. It is up to us to figure out all the ways in which its legitimacy is compromised and exploit those soft spots. Banks, corporations and mainstream electoral politics aren’t offering answers, but our direct actions can.

• Building occupations. Occupations don’t have to be in public parks. Many occupations around the country are experimenting with occupying bank-owned buildings or other buildings needlessly sitting empty because of the failures of the economic system. Closed factories? Closed schools, parks or other public buildings? These actions are highly symbolic and, when successful, provide space safe from the weather with doors to help limit access to individuals bent on disrupting us.

• Foreclosures. Another campaign under discussion is to research foreclosed buildings about to go to auction, or families about to lose their homes, and show up to disrupt the process (with the families blessing, of course.)

• Re-occupation. Since the second Oakland police raid on November 14, many have discussed how to re-occupy the original site downtown. Occupations have numerous components: the general assembly, space for informal discussion, libraries, medic tents, kitchens, kids areas, art supplies for making signs, media tents and residential tents for sleeping. One option under discussion is to continue activities during “legal” daylight hours and develop mobile versions of infrastructure like food, media, etc. — doing everything the occupation did prior to a raid except without residential tents.

Such a strategy could focus our energy on the best parts of the occupation — communication and community — while de-emphasizing the residential aspect, which is the most problematic for us to maintain for our own interna
l reasons.

In pursuing these transitional tactics, we can consider what have we learned over the past couple of months during these occupations, and add aspects that have been missing.

The current eruption of protest is more than just unfocused anger at recession and austerity. It reflects a widespread sense that the system is not working, growing out of the last 40 years of stagnant wages while corporate profits soared. For years, the 1% busted our unions, eliminated living-wage jobs, and privatized social resources with very little resistance. Now, finally, resistance seems to be breaking out all over all at once.

Now is a great time to start diverse discussions about the horrors of capitalism beyond just wealth inequality.

Capitalism has systematically sucked meaning, community and stability from our lives. With all the consumer items and labor saving inventions, we’ve lost our humanity. People want to cooperate and share with those around them, but capitalism requires constant competition, increasing isolation and loneliness, a relentless speed up, and a race to the bottom.

Capitalism is good at making more stuff, making it cheaper, and doing so with fewer people. As people psychologically adapt themselves to these economic goals — attempting to measure satisfaction with material wealth rather than with our connection to ourselves, other people and the world around us — we gradually drive ourselves insane. Consumerism, corporate jobs and mediated suburban life are meaningless. Human beings need more than computers and bank balances — we need freedom, emotional intensity, and un-managed, challenging adventures.

Moreover, capitalism is killing the planet. Some of the amazing energy behind this movement may be coming from an underlying, almost subconscious sense of despair about the environment. How much of our emotional energy is going to suppress and deny our awareness that the climate is changing, that rivers and oceans are dying, that forests and wild places are shrinking? We have to ignore these things to maintain our sanity as we do what is necessary to exist within this system — driving to work, plugging into the grid, buying our food from industrial farms far away.

The occupy movement can blow the lid off all kinds of un-discussed, unspoken aspects of our economic and political system. While the rhetoric of the 99% is theoretically weak, it is also charmingly and subversively inclusive — folks from many different walks of life with different ideas have to grudgingly agree that they are, in fact, part of the 99%. Most politics and the culture war, etc. have been all about looking at the world based on different assumptions and ideological positions. Occupy changes the lens from “what precisely should happen” to “what position in the system do I occupy and what benefits me?”

What is going on is fundamentally not a left-wing version of the tea party. The tea party has always remained firmly rooted in system-defined limits of what is possible. In fact essential to the tea party are assumptions that the structure of the markets are “natural” and inevitable, and that the US Constitution carries religion-like weight. To the contrary, the occupy movement is all about rejecting tired structures and ways of thinking that are no longer serving us.

The occupy eruption is so extremely exciting because we’ve broken our isolation and sense of powerlessness. We’re finally discussing topics long ignored. And we’re not assuming we’ve lost before we’ve even started to fight.

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.

As a participant in both the Occupy Oakland and Occupy SF movements, I have experienced three police raids on our camps. Residents’ tents and sleeping bags trampled, bookcases splintered, kitchens demolished, and all was thrown into dump trucks to be hauled to the city dump.

I understand the legitimate reasons for protestors to intentionally let themselves be arrested, to make a stand, and to not back down in the face of unchecked and unjustified aggression towards the movement. I also understand the necessity of our sustainable camps and the resources and facilities they bring to those who don’t have access to them under our current system, and the need for us to be physically occupying space in our protests. Considering this, but also realizing that our current modes of occupation leave both our resources and ourselves vulnerable to police attack, I propose a change of tactics.

Suppose, if instead of standing our ground every police raid and getting our gear smashed, our bodies beaten, and our friends arrested, we had a system of rapidly and effectively deconstructing our camps, so that they could be brought back the next morning after the police have left. What we need are guerilla tactics: having a committee in charge of organizing folks in the event of a police raid to rapidly dismantle and move the camp. Such a committee could see to it that kitchens and more permanent constructions were erected in ways which are easily deconstructed and can be quickly packed up, and that drivers and vehicles are on call and ready to move camp supplies, and that instructions are distributed in a timely manner before a raid.

Although we call ourselves occupiers, we are in effect the resistance, the resistance to oppressive and illegitimate aspects of our current oligarchical system and to the status quo as it stands. An effective resistance movement needs the ability to move about freely, and not be tied down to any one space for any given period of time. We should stop trying to fight the police on their terms. They will always have enough handcuffs, jail cells, and manpower to deal with our encampments as they exist now. So let them keep coming by the hundreds and “force” us out. We’ll just be back in the morning none the worse for wear.

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

Following is an interview with Amanda, a street medic active in Occupy Oakland.

What does it mean to be a medic at Oscar Grant Plaza?

To be a medic at Oscar Grant Plaza is a commitment to social change. Over the past month at the occupation, our perceptions of what Occupy is and what it stands for have changed. As medics we have had to adapt to the reality on the ground. The movement and the camp have a different reality. Without the power of the supporters and marches the camp would have not survived this long. Without the campers securing the camp the general assembly and organizers would not have had the community space for actions and meetings.

After the first raid the demographic of the camp started to change from the activist community to more of the general population of the camp being the disenfranchised community who are the most affected by the situations we as the Occupy Movement are confronting. As medics, we have to adapt to the reality of the camp–poverty and the desperate behavior, heath conditions and the darkness that comes with it.

Another facet of being a medic at the plaza is keeping the camp safe at night. Although the medic tent was rarely quiet during the day, if the camp had an emergency at night that it couldn’t handle, the cops or fire department would have come in to respond, thus weakening our ability to keep the camp alive.

If you want to march in the streets and chant “fuck the police,” we better learn to do our job.

Can you tell us a little about your history and experience with being a medic and with politics?

I volunteered in a rural fire department for a few years, was an EMT, wilderness first responder, I have personally been homeless off and on for 14 years, did forest defense, have worked in day shelters, been an advocate for homeless youth, rainbow gathering experience has been drawn upon, too…

What was your first experience with Occupy Oakland?

As I was coming into Oakland on a Greyhound bus, I saw several helicopters circling downtown, and I thought to myself “That must be where the occupation is.”

As I was walking onto the grounds for the first time (on the third day of the occupation), I was approached by a man who asked me if I needed help pitching my tent. I politely said no thank you, then he asked me if I wanted to stay in his tent, receiving a much more aggressive no thank you. Then he asked me if I wanted to smoke some pot, and he received a hearty fuck off. I moved along, trying to orientate myself. The situation repeated with another aggressor. At this point I became aware Occupy was not going to be the utopia some may have wished for.

Why medic?

I had it in my head that I would work first aid, since that is an applicable part of my background. However, at first I did not feel exactly welcomed by other medics, maybe even unwelcome. I tried not to take it personally. On one of the first nights I was there I cruised by medical and found one of my favorite Oakland street people needing psychological support. I was overjoyed she was still alive, it had been a few years since we’d crossed paths. At that point I identified my niche. Everyone who lives at the Occupation has one and it is crucial for the success of this movement for this to be honored and supported.

Can you tell us about any defining moments during the encampment?

I returned to the medic tent one evening after attending to a disturbing medical situation. I do have to say that when working on the ground, you have to put a lot of personal baggage away and be present for the situations at hand, often processing things later. So I returned to the first aid tent to find two children ages 3 and 5 putting band aids on their ouchies. Amused by their presence, I greeted them and shortly asked if their mom or dad was around. The first child responded “My daddy’s dead. He was shot in the arm and leg ’cause a bad guy was breaking into our building shooting people.” The second child responded “My daddy is in jail for a long time.” The two children then proceeded into a conversation about violence, the police system, how this affects their lives, human nature, and how they themselves cope and support their families. This is the reality for preschool aged children in 2011. This fight is really about them. What America has become needs something bigger than band aids.

What would you change about the camp or what do you think we could work on?

Occupy seems hardly tangible at this point. It is the definitive truth. It is raw, spontaneous, alive. The movement is its own being, an exposé on reality. The people have to, at this point, let history take its course. We as individuals have no control over what Occupy is, we only have control over the ideology of what Occupy is. As for the people of the movement, we must resign all desire for control. Empowerment, individual action and decentralization are the keys to breaking down the systems that control our culture. Control got us in this mess in the first place. We have to become willing to adapt to the changes we are asking for, and assume responsibility for what the government doesn’t do for us. This is our future: empty houses, empty bellies, empty schools.

All across the country masses of people are becoming radicalized through their exposure to the violent and dehumanizing tactics of the police, yet many people of color expect to be stopped, frisked, beaten or arrested on any given day. The occupy movement seeks to be all-inclusive, but can we simply re-appropriate without acknowledging the pre-existing meaning of the word “occupy”? We are used to a world in which the military occupies communities of color overseas and the police occupy communities of color inside the US and people of color occupy a hugely disproportionate number of prison cells. As black cultural theorist and journalist Greg Tate wrote in the Village Voice, “Out there on the street, though all we need is to feel like you got our backs like we got yours, herein might lie the rub. People fresh to the daily struggle might need to earn our trust more. Clearly we’re in no hurry to make loads of new friends spanking new to police brutality.”

In Oakland and many other places, people of color are a big part of the Occupy Movement, but there are inevitable racial tensions arising out of culture clashes and mutual distrust. Racial oppression, exclusion, and fear of different cultures are so ingrained in all of us that it may not be possible to achieve a genuine consensus in massive public forums. Therefore it is exciting to hear that some people of color are organizing local autonomous neighborhood assemblies to establish their goals and desires for the larger movement.

An organization calling itself Occupy the Hood (www.officialoccupythehood.org) has established a presence on Youtube, Twitter and Facebook, with links to chapters across the country, and Denise Oliver Velez published an inspiring blog posting in the Daily Kos asserting that the Occupy Movement can incorporate the concerns and causes of communities of color. For example, Occupy Flagstaff in Arizona has been raising awareness of a plan to cover a mountain sacred to native tribes with snow manufactured from treated waste-water, as well as a plan to reinstate uranium mining around the Grand Canyon. Occupy the Hood Boston was specifically initiated to address issues impacting their own community, in particular police brutality and the system’s indifference to inner city violence. One of Occupy the Hood Boston’s founders said that she, like many others who have lost family members to violence, simply wants peace of mind when it comes to living in the hood; “If they can sit in the South End [Boston] at one in the morning drinking cappuccino and not have a fear of being shot then the same thing should happen here.”

It seems obvious that the Occupy Movement should mean the same thing for communities of color that it does for white people, but the methods and/or tactics used to realize that vision might be very different. Compared to most of the other Occupy movements, which rely on hand signals, stacks, and group facilitators, Occupy the Hood Boston is a bit more reminiscent of the organizational structure of the civil rights movement, but without leaders. Any member can propose an action and those who agree form a ‘Coalition of the Willing’ and take direct action. Participants in the General Assemblies of most other Occupy movements must be on stack and use hand signals for the chance to be heard, while OTHB participants need only to rise and speak. This freewheeling nature of Occupy the Hood allows for vigorous debate and unrestrained free speech.

Despite their differences, it should be noted that all of the Occupy movements are essentially fighting for the same thing, each using the strength of its collective voice to create awareness of social and economic injustice. Occupy the Hood is simply representing the people most grossly affected.

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.