As I read my student’s Ethics exams (not bad, the kids are alright), I’m brought back to Dennett’s compatibilist conception of freedom developed in Freedom Evolves (and despite loving him remind me never to teach his books again, they’re an organizational mess). Early on Dennett suggests that those that believe they have free will actually have free will and those that do not believe they have free will do not have free will. His point here is elusive but, I think, very simple. A belief is not nothing but is one causal factor among others. Here Dennett seems to repeat a variation of the joke Lacan tells towards the beginning of The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, where he recounts the tale of the boy who said “I have three brothers. Paul, John, and myself.” Okay, this joke isn’t that funny, but Lacan’s point is that the boy counts well because he includes himself as one of the entities to be counted. Thus, for example, when, in a correlationist frame of mind, we treat objects as things opposed to a subject, we count poorly because we forget that we too are one of these objects in the world (this is one reason I never get suggestions that somehow OOO hates humans and wants to eradicate them because it champions the existence of objects. Er, humans are beings or objects too!). But I digress. My point is that Dennett is arguing that when we ask ourselves questions like “am I just a clockwork mechanism determined by mechanical rules and from the outside?” we forget that our beliefs are also causal factors in our action and that they make a difference in that action.
So this is the basic idea: if I believe that I am free, then I will be free because I will at least try to influence my circumstances and my own potentials. If I believe that I am determined, by contrast, I will be unfree because, believing myself determined, I won’t bother to try to change my circumstances. If I believe that it is possible for me to learn how to play guitar, I will actually put the effort in towards learning the guitar. I may not become Jimmy Hendrix, to be sure, but I will certainly learn something of guitar (can you tell I feel guilty that I haven’t tried to learn guitar… I’m looking at you Troy Doucet!). If, by contrast, I believe that through, say, some genetic disposition I am constitutively unable to learn guitar I will never try and therefore really will never learn how to play guitar. My belief here plays a crucial causal role in whether or not I change my circumstances and abilities.
read on!
And here it seems to me that there’s a bizarre and surprising way in which Dennett comes very close to Zizek and Badiou in his discussions of freedom. It seems to me that the work of Zizek and Badiou is primarily motivational. Where, for years, we got Continental social and political theory after theory demonstrating all of the ways in which we are secretly determined by forces behind our backs such as the secret machinations of language (Lacan will go so far as to say we’re “cuckold” by language in Seminar 5, that language uses us rather than we using language), or power or “social forces” or economics or any of the other sundry forces that invade our lives, where theory has paralyzed us with self-doubt, leading us to wonder “are these truly emancipatory aims and practices or are we just reproducing ideology?”, Zizek and Badiou have everywhere sought to cultivate the belief that we are free, that we can act, that we can decide. For them– and they’re right –the belief that we can choose and act is every bit as important as actually acting and choosing. And if this is the case, then this is because without that prior belief we never will choose or act (Zizek is quite explicit on this point throughout all of his writings).
What activist and emancipatory social and political theorist hasn’t looked at the social world, tugging her hair and frustration, and noting that “there is only one capitalist owner there and there are thousands of you, why don’t you do something, why do you put up with this?”, “there is only one slave owner with a gun there, and hundreds of you, why don’t you do something?”, “there is only one king there and all of you, why don’t you do something?” Echoing Reich, Deleuze and Guattari said that the real question is “why do people will their own oppression?” Why do we accept our own oppression. In many respects, Badiou and Zizek are the next dialectical step beyond Deleuze and Guattari. Understanding why we might will our own oppression is an important thing, but the next step must consist in cultivating the realization and the belief that we can do something, that all of this is contingent, that other ways are possible. And this is exactly what they strive to do. That’s why they like Saint Paul so much. The person that believes this is the only possible way, that you have to work with the constraints of the system as it is, that it is infantile not to negotiate and compromise, is the person that will never change the way things are.
But while believing that we can do something, that we have the freedom to change things, is a necessary condition for changing things, it is not sufficient. A few days ago an old friend of mine who often approaches me in an accusational and adversarial way that I find deeply unpleasant, wrote me expressing surprise that I haven’t written more about the Occupy Wall Street movement. I have written about OWS, but I also confess that I’m deeply ambivalent about this movement and rather pessimistic about their chances of producing change. To be sure, I share their ire and aims. There’s no question about that. But I have significant reservations about their methods. I don’t really like all this peaceful revolution talk. Mel and I have fought like cats and dogs over this, with her joyous over what she’s seeing and me pessimistic. I thus haven’t written much, instead watching, trying to understand what’s happening, and waiting.
So why do I have reservations while sharing both the positions and aims of these protesters? I just can’t, for the life of me, understand how this strategy might compel a government that’s owned by the forces of capital and capital itself to bow to their demands. It is an important step for these demands to be articulated and for people to organize and form a new sort of community or collective, but, viewing, as I do, this situation as a warfare situation, I’m completely unclear as to how this current form of organization can bring about any concessions from the Wall Street owned powers of government and the banks and corporations. In my view, the only way to produce change in this situation is to hit these entities where they live: to interrupt their flows of capital. The Civil Rights transformations didn’t simply occur because people marched and said that race laws were unjust. No, you had to have something like the Montgomery Bus Boycott to make these forces give a damn. The Arab Spring wasn’t simply the result of people congregating in a square and refusing to leave, but rather there had to be something like a general strike that shut everything down and all flows of money.
And this is what I’m just not seeing yet. How are we hitting banks, corporations, and politicians where they live? How are we hitting their flows of money or capital? If you don’t hit or significantly impact these things, then we have nothing to bargain with. Remember the Magna Carta? The King had to be compelled to sign it at the point of a sword. Would he have signed it otherwise had he simply been presented with arguments about injustice? I doubt it. The formations of new collective bodies is an important step in the building of a sword, but as of yet I don’t see the appearance of the sword that would compel these bastards to do anything more than sit on their balconies drinking champagne and laughing at the protesters (and this has really happened). I don’t yet see the sword that would make the politicians, funded by these bastards such that they should be wearing their insignias on their suits as they campaign, that would compel them to take the protesters seriously rather than worry over whether or not they will get that campaign money they need to run. That’s my question: Where is the sword? What discomfort are you willing to endure to bring these assholes to their knees? What are you willing to do to shut things down? And in the absence of finding ways to shut things down, I just really don’t see much hope for change here. I think we have this fantasy that we can just get together, organize, and denounce and that the ethics and justice of our words will carry the day. Yet no one who has power has ever willingly given up that power unless they have something to lose by not doing so. And so far, as far as I can tell, nothing has been put on the table that would create a scenario where these guys have something to lose. As I write these words and think these thoughts, however, I worry that I might be placing myself in the position of the person that doesn’t believe he has freedom. Then again, while it’s important to believe you can learn how to play the guitar to actually become capable of playing the guitar, you have to actually gain access to a guitar to learn how to play the guitar. I’m not yet seeing the access.
So where are my reservations
October 20, 2011 at 6:35 am
In his later work Foucault remarked that ‘perhaps I’ve insisted too much on the technology of domination and power’ (Technologies of the Self, p.19). Which is perhaps why Deleuze had some disagreement about the possibility of ‘creativity’?
But your questioning of ‘belief is v. important. It’s like a causal power. If, like Lovelock, we ‘believe’ we are moving deckchairs around on the Titanic we are truly fucked (excuse the f word – is that ok on a blog?). It’s like Stengers’ ‘Capitalist Sorcery’, once you give up believing that ‘another world is possible’ – checkmate, paralysis. black magic.
And, this does inevitably raise the question of indivual and collective causal power. I like Guattari’s optimism in Chaosmosis – ‘in the long run tanks won’t stop it’. Let’s see when China starts too have, again, a genuine disgust for its ‘goverment’. That’s a lot of people….with even more problems than all those homeless repossessed mortgagees living in tents around L.A.
October 20, 2011 at 12:24 pm
I agree that we need direct contact, a “sword” but I don’t see why this need to be a break with non-violence. Non-violence isn’t some meek ethical plea that the powerful stop being such assholes. It looks for the points of contact, the ways that we cooperate with the current system, and finds creative ways to stop cooperating.
I can tell you that people on the ground are very much thinking of ways to enter into direct confrontation. 1) the victory on Oct. 14th was very important. We had 3,000 people willing to risk arrest in Zuccotti. The police backed down. 2) The next day we had a chance to expand to Washington Sq. I don’t know how many people we had there exactly, but it was at least as many as the day before. What we needed was for everyone to again risk arrest. If we had that no matter what the police did we’d win another victory. Filling the jails is one way to enter into direct conflict, a tried and true method. In the end things didn’t pan out that night. And the city is losing a tremendous amount of money trying to police the occupation. Time is a weapon here, if we can outlast them through the winter and grow big in the spring we’ll be building our resources while they’ll be running through theirs.
3) I get a sense that we’re trying to build numbers and nerves to actually break through the barricades on Wall St. itself. This is what I want to see happen. I want to actually shut down the trading (I’m not sure how much trading could continue on-line or what we might be able to shut that down too). Already there have been 2-3 attempts to remove the barricades with small numbers getting arrested. If we get the numbers we can do it, at least temporarily. I think we need some mass arrests, ones that spark 3 times the numbers to turn out the next day to replace those in jail.
4) Almost everyone I’m talking to is talking about a debt strike. If we can organize something, perhaps this would be a good way to use the winter, we can hold Wall St/Washington hostage (through non-violence). They’ll do anything we say just to get the money flowing again. I think fundamental election reforms, Wall St taxes, large scale debt forgiveness need to be the main demands, but there are other good demands we can make too.
5) I think that within the next 5 years we’ll see our first truly global general strike. The IWW is already printing general strike posters in multiple languages. I don’t know if it will happen as a part of OWS or not, but this would be one way to bring things to a halt.
But most of all I would urge patience and endurance. We need small numbers to get arrested to convince larger numbers to follow. Courage is contagious. To my mind what OWS has already accomplished is pretty significant, even if it isn’t nearly enough yet. We’re disciplining our imaginations. More will be possible soon. On Oct. 14 there was a real sense that we were winning, that we had a lot of momentum. I feel like we lost a bit of that momentum when we didn’t take Washington Sq. on the 15th, but there will be more fights to come.
October 20, 2011 at 1:07 pm
Haven’t you said that politics begins when those outside the circles of power threaten to begin breaking through?
The City of Philadelphia has been begging those of us in Occupy Philly to sit down and talk with them (we’re working on it–crafting a letter in reply to a list of their concerns… consensus building takes time… and a LOT of work!).
This is not everything–it’s not a sign the old order is about to topple, but it’s not nothing either. As someone at last night’s GA pointed out, there are groups who have been trying for years to set up the kind of relationship with the Mayor’s office they are pleading with us to have: a weekly private sit down with the Mayor and top city officials. All I want to make of this, is that this movement is no longer a handful of ‘protesters,’ but has expanded to thousands of cities and crossed national powers, and here in one the largest cities in the US, the historical cite of the Constitutional Convention our first capital, they have begun to treat the occupation as a movement that has gained, through union backing, significant public support, real political leverage. It’s not everything, but it’s not nothing either. We are being courted. We bringing ideas into the political discussion never before more than a flicker on the distant horizon: repeal of Santa Clara County versus Southern Pacific (with its aborted child, Citizens United)… that alone would would re-craft the political/economic/legal landscape.
There is no little danger is this. We could screw it up. We could be absorbed and usurped without having used this new, still amorphous power to effect any significant change, but I can assure you that there are many here who share the concerns you’ve expressed in your post, and in sharing them, want to lend our voices to steering this movement into actions that will impact the economic/political structures threatening our very existence on this planet. But those demands have to flow out of working, responsive, thinking–and above all INCLUSIVE decision making bodies–I mean, inclusive of those marginalized and alienated by the established order. It is precisely in taking this seriously, in preserving our outsider status as we grow and engage with the standing political order, that we can ourselves BECOME a political force to be reckoned with.
In my 50 some years in and out of political and social actions, I’ve never seen anything like this–or which (speaking for my personal involvement) anything that called on me (as someone too deeply alienated to ever before feel completely engaged in any movement) — that welcomed everything I have to offer; all of my intellectual, artistic gifts, my personal charisma–such as it is–I’ve been able to bring to this movement with a fullness of being such as I have never known, and hardly dared to have believed would be possible.
We are breaking through.
This is REAL.
October 20, 2011 at 1:20 pm
It seems that what you’re arguing for, Levi, is a certain kind of POLITICAL realism. The historical divide between political realism and political idealism is complicated and only partly related to the philosophical arguments that use the same names. For instance the idealists of the interwar period were firm believers in science and believed that politics could be engineered to eliminate war. They were certainly believers in ‘the real world out there’ but believed in the possibility of the triumph of singular human rationality over even humanity itself. So, it’s complicated. But, however you cut it, the protests so far seem to be undergirded by idealism.
It’s striking how central (rather idealist) political theory has been for some of the protesters. I’ve read lots of little gems like:
“The injustice is so severe, we need a radical, open, transformative, prefigurative democratic space to explore the possible.”
I’m not altogether sure what that means or why it has to happen where its happening but if that is what the protests are for then the condescending giggling coming from the right-wing media is largely deserved.
‘Opening up space for thought’ has been the epitome of intellectual radicalism since the 1960s yet its achievements are few and far between. Of course, like most theories, it is self fulfilling: if several decades of ‘opening up thinking space’ has led to nothing more than ever more meek assertions of the need to ‘open up thinking space’ then this is proof, no?, of the sheer oppressive weight of hegemonic ideologies. Of course, the recycling of lame platitudes only contributes to this hegemony but, hey ho, it’s easy, cheap and anyone with a graduate degree can do it. And as long as we believe that it is radically ‘political’ we can pat ourselves on the back and go home.
‘We lack space to think, we lack space to speak, we lack space to assemble.’ All may be true but they rather miss the point: fixation on these problems eliminates the ability to act.
You’re quite right: No amount of pleading will make the King acquiesce. On the contrary, the more the subjects ASK for what they want the more clear it becomes that they are incapable of TAKING what they ask for. Pleading only inflates the King’s ego, while he goes along ACTING. (Nietzsche needs to be saved from the ‘Nietzscheans’. The Nietzsche of today’s pomos is like a aged zoo lion: toothless and rather pitiful.)
If the protests were about alliance building then they’d be truly valuable. The protesters in London are camping out on the steps of St Paul’s cathedral. The powers that be of the C of E have given the protesters only the most condescending backing of their ‘right to protest’. An excellent post on this:
http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2011/10/16/its-time-to-demand-st-pauls-open-its-doors-to-occupy-london/
The Church of England is, of course, establishmentarian par excellence but wouldn’t a good use of everyone’s time be to try and shame them into doing what, as it is surely plain to see, ‘Jesus would have done,’ joining those on the side of the poor and put upon?
To build an alliance it is not necessary to agree on everything but only to agree on something.
The right has no problem building alliances between people who don’t agree on much but agree on enough to be able to ‘do business’. Witness the alliances between libertarian financiers and conservative evangelicals.
So, to cut a long ramble short, I share your scepticism (and scepticism as to my own scepticism).
I just think that, exactly like Zizek says over and over, if protesting seems like a nice time then you’re probably not doing it right.
Stop things working and then people will pay attention. Everyone agrees on the ‘right to protest’ – who agrees on the ‘right to civil disobedience’? It certainly doesn’t need to be a case of peaceful protest/violent protest – protest needs to cross over into disobedience. Even better: protest without consequence IS obedience par excellence. It’s repressive desublimation: ‘of course, shout all you want, we’re all democrats here! – but, oh no, your demands? that simply isn’t possible, sorry. There is no alternative.’ So, everyone goes home convinced that they’ve ‘done their bit’ and because it was so easy they needn’t miss work the next morning.
Remember, George W. Bush observed with a certain condescending fondness on the anti-war protesters chanting and marching outside his gates (I’m paraphrasing): ‘see, isn’t it wonderful? this is exactly the kind of thing we’re going to war to protect!’ The ‘right to protest’ is understood as the right to shout and scream while the King carries on regardless, his position assured by the very act of pleading and the ease with which he brushes it off.
October 20, 2011 at 1:34 pm
Jacob,
I’ve certainly said that I don’t see much in the way of politics through government or the political parties (precisely because they’re owned). But your point about the outside seems tangential to my point. My question is what this movement is doing to compel these forces to relinquish their power. Simply pointing out the injustice of what they’re doing is not enough. So long as they can continue what they’re doing they will continue to do what they’re doing regardless of whether they’re reviled or not. They could care less and even find the protests amusing. Until ways are found to interrupt the flows of capital that leads to them nothing will change. They will only begin to make concessions when you hurt their wallets or their ability to accumulate capital. So far I haven’t seen strategies in these protests that are doing this though I do find Thomas’ thoughts and observations above very heartening.
October 20, 2011 at 2:03 pm
Levi,
Being outside means not being owned, less dependent on the functioning of the machine, hence more able both to see the necessity & to contemplate the possibilities of disruptive actions. In that way, not at all tangential. This is already happening in small ways–closing accounts with banks, for instance–and the frustration and disaffection with the whole established order runs so deep among those actually working within the Occupations that I can’t see how this will not translate into both strategic and tactical actions to jam the gears of economic power. There’s also a realism that understands that to be too threatening too soon risks being crushed before we can put down roots deep enough to endure, strong & widespread enough to spring up in new waves.
There’s no way power surrenders without unleashing violent reaction–we have to be ready for that. We have to build this movement, world-wide without being sucked back into electoral politics, and bring measured force to bear in a timely manner. This is not about ‘reform.’ There’s no going back. There’s no there, there… This is REAL.
October 20, 2011 at 2:09 pm
Frustration and dissatisfaction are not enough to jam those gears. That’s my only point. You’ll also note that in this post I did not disagree with the value of the formation of new collectives, I only observed that it’s a first step.
October 20, 2011 at 2:18 pm
What I say to thoughtful critics on the outside–who believe there are ideas & actions not sufficiently understood or expressed in the Occupations–find your nearest Occupation, sit in on a Direct Action Working Group, urge them to take a proposal to the GA… the only way anything happens here. So if you see something missing, it’s only missing cause you are! :-)
Peace&Solidarity!
October 20, 2011 at 2:22 pm
I think it’s entirely constructive and productive to discuss material strategies for bringing these forces to their knees. I don’t think it’s constructive or helpful to respond defensively to those criticisms and dismiss them. That defensiveness suggests to me an unconscious awareness of the current weakness of these things and anxieties about how to proceed and what to do.
October 20, 2011 at 2:26 pm
Defensiveness in this context reminds me of the hardcore Obama supporters who began sticking their heads in the sand, defending his every decision, and denouncing the canaries in the coal mine that began speaking. This led to the destruction of his presidency. That has to be avoided at all costs.
October 20, 2011 at 3:01 pm
Discussion and implementation are two different stages. Discussion is happening. As for implementation–we’re still largely preoccupied with creating internal structures to sustain ourselves and carry out those actions. If I sound defensive, it’s because I’m so frequently confronted by an impatience for significant action, or demands–or large strategic goals–that doesn’t take into account the developing character of the movement, in particular, the PROCESS by which ideas & concerns & discussion (A) have to be translated down the line into decision making (N) There are many steps between A … N, — a great deal of time- consuming work goes into IMPLEMENTING idea into action. A & N appear in stark relief from the outside. On the ground, we’re up to our necks, hours and hours a day, every day, in the cooperative, often tedious and exhausting work of bringing these ideas into the world of real action, where rain and immanent police action and what side of City Hall is more subject to wind, and where to put the quantities of food donors leave on the sidewalk, and how to feed–and not displace the homeless who were here first–all become PART of the configurations of idea and action, limiting and creating what is or is not possible hour by hour, day by day. There’s no separating the concrete particulars (shaped by what we’ve actually already done) from the Big Picture.
I take your concerns with all seriousness–not as impatience, but I hope you appreciate why I feel the need to return to the importance of PROCESS–the HOW of how we get where we want to be.
Peace&Solidarity!
October 21, 2011 at 3:24 pm
There is something that confuses me about this protest movement which seems to leave a pretty difficult contradiction between aims/ambitions and means/process/tactics – maybe someone can shed some light.
The movement and demonstrations so far have purposefully exhibited a lack of clear programmatic demands, as so gleefully highlighted by the rightwing media-political establishment. But this however has been turned into a badge of credibility of sorts within the protesting element – as indicative of the general sense of despondancy that capital has left us in, there are so many asymetries within society that what the majority of ‘people’ want is a systematic change – not an incremental legislative ‘ammendment’. All those except the 1% with clear vested (financial/power) interests in maintaining the status quo. So this seems to push towards a radical and imminent change, outside of the mechanism for change within the system (which is basically a false mechanism which maintains certain roles and divisions and is more like stasis than momentum)
However these demands, unrecognizable or even comprehensible by the system, seem to be wholly compromised by a method of protest which clearly mimicks a traditional, fully co-optable protest. If you are campaigning against a specific injustice, even if its extremely deep rooted etc, your own ambitions can still be satisfied by a change within the system. But if your very claim is something absolutely beyond the system or in absolute opposition then how can a method of protest which requires recognition by elements of authority, and action on their behalf, fulfill the ambitions of the movement.
I don’t wish to make any predictions about what this current form of protest will acheive – as Levi said producing forms of collectivity is a good in itself, and the less reliant upon the system we become the better. But it seems so problematic that this form of protest – i.e mass presence in public space, is within a logic of the system and is accountable as an affordance of the system. And this is a system which is so highly complex in terms of our embeddedness within it, our complicity within its forms of production, that i feel that a real efficacy can only really be attained when we engage en masse in processes of either undermining, incapacitating or damaging the architecture of capital (which is as much public opinion and ideology as it is a material practice of the architecture of the metropolis). And i feel like this process will not begin, and hence strike at what will really affect the system in all its complex exteriority, until we think of more creative or direct action on capital as this relatively autonomous system – not sticking within the security of making action/injustices/demands visible (media reliant) within the very visible public sphere (again, only a single example of where capital functions within the system).
October 21, 2011 at 3:51 pm
I’ll be brief–said more than my share here already. The Occupations–the actual site-occupations, are part of a larger idea of ‘recovering the Commons’ –the erosion of the Commons has been a major effort of so-called ‘privatization’ and creating actual, physical space for democratic process is a necessary beginning for expansion to effective subversion and confrontation. The marches are mainly distraction… it’s true, but there’s real work going on beyond what the Media wants to acknowledge.
Peace&Solidarity from Occupy Philly!
October 21, 2011 at 10:42 pm
http://www.scribd.com/doc/13860350/In-Defence-of-Lost-Causes-by-Slavoj-Zizek
October 21, 2011 at 11:36 pm
I’ve been going down to Zuccotti Park quite a bit lately and can report that positions on long-term strategy are very diverse at this point. Two weeks ago I attended a teach-in by a guy representing a revolutionary Parecon organization. He argued that people need to build worldwide networks of radically democratic, collectively managed economic and political communities in order to establish a political block that has the requisite material and popular support for overthrowing the current order. His organization espouses a strategy of “dual power,” informed by Gramscian theory, that calls for the creation of an alternate socio-political order within the current system, the purpose of which is to gain popular legitimacy and thereby seize power from the old one. He was very articulate and extremely well-received by the crowd.
But there are also hardline orthodox revolutionary Marxists, liberal reformers, Ron Paul libertarians, many types of anarchist, and a bunch of seemingly single-issue protesters (i.e. opponenst of hydro-fracking, the Federal Reserve, Bank of America, etc.)
What I find most interesting in what I’ve observed is not the marches and the protests themselves, but rather the General Assembly meetings and the evolution of the people’s microphone into something whose range of expressive meanings has come to transcend its purely utilitarian purpose (i.e. to magnify voices in the absence of electronic amplifiers). At times there is something that feels like an authentic expression of radical solidarity-within-difference manifesting in the park. And at times the new types of political practices on display there seem pregnant with some of the “dual power” type possibilities that the Parecon guy was talking about.
There are also times when the whole consensus-based process starts to feel like a bit of a tedious and somewhat counter-productive fetishization of direct democratic forms at the expense of content… but I’ll save my take on that for the launch of my own blog.
October 21, 2011 at 11:51 pm
Levi,
I love the comparison between Dennet and Zizek/Badiou — was actually writing the outline for a potential paper on the subject just a few days ago!
But I wanted to comment on what you said about OWS. I’m deeply involved with Occupy Seattle, and here it really HAS come down to a split between those who, like you, see the essentials of DISRUPTING the flow of money, and those who simply want to petition our elected representatives for some sort of change and to make a loud noise inside the supposedly neutral free-speech-zone of civil society. We literally have two camps now, one composed of older white liberals located at City Hall (where they were INVITED by the mayor), and another in the original location, Westlake Park, in the center of the wealthiest part of Seattle, composed of non-whites and a large number of working class whites. Every night, those in Westlake are harassed by the cops, who arrest people for having tents, ticket people for having umbrellas or blankets and are even now ticketing those who are handing out free food. They come through the park every half hour to forcibly wake up anyone who is sleeping. For a while they were even ticketing folks for honking as they drove past. The “nice” protesters at city hall, of course, remain unbothered. The mayor even provided them with a private security contingent for Peace and Safety purposes. The difference, of course, is that at Westlake we are IN the Wall St. of Seattle, our very presence there threatens property values and damages business. We are literally camped outside the awning of Bank of America and across the street from Chase, not to mention in between a shopping mall, a Macy’s, the original Nordstroms and a collection of boutique outlets.
There ARE occupations trying to directly intervene in the smooth accumulation of Capital, fighting against being portrayed as “infiltrating anarchists,” and fighting for increased involvement of the lower class.
October 26, 2011 at 5:05 pm
[...] in a kind, generous, respectful and enthusiastic way, it often reaches back. It’s vitally important to believe that constraints are never so set in iron that alternative ways of living and doing things [...]